The Angels Weep (43 page)

She steeled herself, and then glanced into the interior,
trying not to look at the little man in the chair. One quick
glance was enough. The telegraph machine had been ripped from the
wall and smashed into pieces on the floor of the hut. She reeled
back and leaned against the iron wall beside the door, clutching
her swollen stomach with both hands, forcing herself to think
again.

The war party had struck the railhead and then disappeared
back into the forest – and then she remembered the missing
servants. The camp, they had not disappeared, they would be
circling up through the trees towards the camp. She looked around
her desperately, expecting at any moment to see the silent black
files of plumed warriors come padding out of the thick bush.

The Service train from Kimberley was due late that afternoon,
ten hours from now, and she was alone, except for Jonathan. Cathy
sank down on her knees, reached for him and clung to him with the
strength of despair, and only then realized that the boy was
staring through the open doorway.

‘Mr Braithwaite is dead!’ Jonathan said
matter-of-factly. Forcibly, she turned his head away. ‘They
are going to kill us too, aren’t they, Mummy?’

‘Oh Jon-Jon!’

‘We need a gun. I can shoot. Papa taught me.’

A gun – Cathy looked towards the silent tents. She did
not think she had the courage to go into one of them, not even to
find a weapon. She knew what carnage to expect there.

A shadow fell over her and she screamed.

‘Nkosikazi. It is me.’

Isazi had come down the hill as silently as a panther.

‘The horses are gone,’ he said, and she motioned
him to look into the telegraph hut.

Isazi’s expression did not change.

‘So,’ he said quietly, ‘the Matabele jackals
can still bite.’

‘The tents,’ Cathy whispered. ‘See if you
can find a weapon.’

Isazi went with the lithe swinging run of a man half his age,
ducking from one tent-opening to another, and when he came back
to her, he carried an assegai with a broken shaft.

‘The big one fought well. He was still alive, with his
guts torn out of him and the crows were eating them. He could no
longer speak, but he looked at me. I have given him peace. But
there are no guns – the Matabele have taken
them.’

‘There are guns at the camp,’ Cathy whispered.

‘Come, Nkosikazi,’ he lifted her tenderly to her
feet and Jonathan manfully took her other arm, though he did not
reach to her armpit.

The first pain hit Cathy before they reached the thick bush at
the edge of the cut line, and it doubled her over. They held her
while the paroxysm lasted, Jonathan not understanding what was
happening, but the little Zulu was grave and silent.

‘All right.’ Cathy straightened up at last, and
tried to wipe the long tendrils of her hair off her face, but
they were plastered there by her own sweat.

They went up on the track at Cathy’s pace. Isazi was
watching the forest on both sides for the dark movement of
warriors, and he carried the broken assegai in his free hand with
an underhand stabbing grip.

Cathy gasped and staggered as the next pain caught her. This
time they could not hold her and she went down on her knees in
the dust. When it passed, she looked up at Isazi.

‘They are too close together. It is
happening.’

He did not have to reply.

‘Take Jonathan to the Harkness Mine.’

‘Nkosikazi, the train—’

‘The train will be too late. You must go.’

‘Nkosikazi – you, what will become of
you?’

‘Without a horse, I could never reach the Harkness. It
is almost thirty miles. Every moment you waste now wastes the
boy’s life.’

He did not move.

‘If you can save him, Isazi, then you save part of me.
If you stay here, we will all die. Go. Go quickly!’ she
urged.

Isazi reached for Jonathan’s hand, but he jerked
away.

‘I won’t leave my mummy.’ His voice rose
hysterically. ‘My daddy said I must look after my
mummy.’

Cathy gathered herself. It took all her determination to
perform the most difficult task of her young life. She hit
Jonathan open-handed across the face, back and forth, with all
her strength. The child staggered away from her. The vivid
crimson outlines of her fingers rising on the pale skin of his
cheeks. She had never struck his face before.

‘Do as I tell you,’ Cathy blazed at him furiously.
‘Go with Isazi this very instant.’

The Zulu snatched up the child, and looked down at her for a
moment longer.

‘You have the heart of a lioness. I salute you,
Nkosikazi.’ And he went bounding away into the forest,
carrying Jonathan with him. In seconds he had disappeared and
then only did she let the sobs come shaking and choking up her
throat.

She thought then that being entirely alone is the hardest
thing in life to bear. She thought of Ralph, and she had never
loved nor wanted him the way she did at that moment. It seemed
for a time that she had used the last grain of her courage to
strike her only child, and to send him away for a faint chance of
salvation. She would be content to stay here, kneeling in the
dust in the early sunlight until they came for her with the cruel
steel.

Then from somewhere deep within her she found the strength to
rise and hobble on up the path. At the heel of the hill, she
looked down at the camp. It looked so quiet and orderly. Her
home. The smoke from the camp-fire rose like a pale grey feather
into the still morning air, so welcoming, so safe; illogically
she felt that if she could only reach her tent then it would be
all right.

She started and she had not gone a dozen paces, before she
felt something burst deep within her, and then the abrupt hot
rush down the inside of her legs as her waters broke and poured
from her. She struggled on, hampered by her sodden skirts, and
then, unbelievably, she had reached her own tent.

It was so cool and dark within, like a church, she thought,
and again her legs gave way beneath her. She crawled painfully
across the floor, and her hair came tumbling down and blinded
her. She groped her way to the wagon chest set at the foot of the
big camp cot, and threw the hair out of her eyes as she rested
against it.

The lid was so heavy that it took all her strength, but at
last it fell open with a crash. The pistol was tucked under the
crocheted white bedcovers, that she had hoarded for the home that
Ralph would one day build for her. It was a big service Webley
revolver. She had only fired it once, with Ralph steadying her
from behind, holding her wrists against the recoil.

Now it needed both her hands to lift it out of the chest. She
was too tired to climb onto the cot. She sat with her back
against the chest, both her legs straight out in front of her
flat against the floor, and she held the pistol with both hands
in her lap.

She must have dozed, for when she started awake, it was to
hear the whisper of feet against the bare earth. She looked up.
There was the shadow of a man silhouetted by the slanting rays of
the sun against the white canvas of the tent like a figure in a
magic lantern show. She lifted the pistol and aimed at the
entrance. The ugly black weapon wavered uncertainly in her grip,
and a man stepped through the flap.

‘Oh, thank God.’ Cathy let the pistol fall into
her lap. ‘Oh thank God, it’s you,’ she
whispered and let her head fall forward. The thick curtain of her
hair fell open, splitting down the back of her head, exposing the
pale skin at the tender nape of her neck. Bazo looked down at it.
He saw a soft pulse throbbing beneath the skin.

Bazo wore only a kilt of civet-tails, and about his forehead a
band of mole-skin – no feathers nor tassels. His feet were
bare. In his left hand he held a broad stabbing assegai. In his
right he carried a knobkerrie like the mace of a medieval knight.
The handle was of polished rhinoceros horn, three feet long, and
the head was a ball of heavy leadwood studded with hand-forged
nails of native iron.

When he swung the knobkerrie, all the strength of his wide
shoulders was behind the blow, and his point of aim was the pulse
in the pale nape of Cathy’s neck.

Two of his warriors came into the tent and flanked Bazo, their
eyes were still glazed with the killing madness. They also wore
the mole-skin headbands, and they looked down at the crumpled
body on the floor of the tent. One of the warriors changed his
grip on the assegai, ready for the cutting stroke.

‘The woman’s spirit must fly,’ he said.

‘Do it!’ Bazo said, and the warrior stooped and
worked quickly, expertly.

‘There is life within her,’ he said. ‘See!
It moves yet.’

‘Still it!’ Bazo ordered, and left the tent,
striding out into the sunlight.

‘Find the boy,’ he ordered his men who waited
there. ‘Find the white cub.’

T
he driver of
the locomotive was terrified. They had stopped for a few minutes
at the trading-post beside the tracks at Plumtree siding, and he
had seen the bodies of the storekeeper and his family lying in
the front yard.

Ralph Ballantyne thrust the muzzle of the rifle between his
shoulder-blades, and marched him back to the cab, forcing him to
go on northwards, deeper and deeper into Matabeleland.

They had come all the way from the Kimberley shunting-yards
with the loco throttle wide open, and Ralph had spelled the
stoker on the footplate, shovelling the lumpy black coal into the
firebox with a monotonous rhythm, bare-chested and sweating in
the furnace glare, the coal dust blackening his face and arms
like those of a chimney-sweep, his palms wet and raw from the
burst blisters.

They had clipped almost two hours off the record run to the
railhead. As they came roaring around the bend between the hills
and saw the iron roof of the telegraph shack, Ralph hurled the
shovel aside and clambered onto the side of the cab to peer
ahead.

His heart leaped joyfully against his ribs, there was movement
around the hut and between the tents, there was life here! Then
his heart dropped as swiftly as it had risen, as he recognized
the skulking dog-like shapes.

The hyena were so intent on squabbling over the things they
had dragged out of the tents, that they were totally unafraid. It
was only when Ralph started shooting that they scattered. He
knocked down half a dozen of the loathsome beasts before the
rifle was empty. He ran from the hut to each tent in turn, and
then back to the locomotive. Neither the driver nor the fireman
had left the cab.

‘Mr Ballantyne, these murdering bloody ‘eathen
will be back at any minute—’

‘Wait!’ Ralph shouted at him, and scrambled up the
side of the cattle-truck behind the coal buggy. He knocked out
the locking-pins and the door came crashing down to form a
drawbridge.

Ralph led the horses out of the truck. There were four of
them, one already saddled, the best mounts he had been able to
find. He paused only long enough to clinch the girth, and then
swung up into the saddle with the rifle still in his hand.

‘I’m not going to wait here,’ the driver
yelled. ‘Christ Almighty, those niggers are animals, man,
animals.’

‘If my wife and son are here, I’ll need to get
them back. Give me one hour,’ Ralph asked.

‘I’m not waiting another minute. I’m going
back.’ The driver shook his head.

‘You can go to hell then,’ Ralph told him
coldly.

He kicked his horse into a gallop, and dragging the spare
mounts on the lead-rein behind him, took the track up the side of
the kopje towards the camp.

As he rode, he thought once more that perhaps he should have
listened to Aaron Fagan, perhaps he should have recruited a dozen
other horsemen in Kimberley to go with him. But he knew that he
would never have been able to abide the few hours that he would
have needed to find good men. As it was, he had left Kimberley
less than half an hour after he had received the telegraph from
Tati – just long enough to fetch his Winchester, fill the
saddlebags with ammunition, and take the horses from
Aaron’s stables to the shunting-yard.

Before he turned the angle of the hill, he glanced back over
his shoulder. The locomotive was already huffing back along the
curve of the rails towards the south. Now, as far as he knew, he
might be the only white man left alive in Matabeleland.

Ralph galloped into the camp. They had been there already. The
camp had been looted, Jonathan’s tent had collapsed, his
clothing was scattered and trampled into the dust.

‘Cathy,’ Ralph shouted, as he dismounted.
‘Jon-Jon! Where are you?’

Paper rustled under his feet and Ralph looked down.
Cathy’s portfolio of drawings had been thrown down and had
burst open, the paintings of which she was so proud were torn and
crumpled. Ralph picked up one of them, it was of the lovely dark
scarlet trumpet flowers of
Kigelia africana
, the African
sausage tree. He tried to smooth out the rumpled sheet, and then
realized the futility of that gesture.

He ran on to their living-tent, and ripped open the flap.

Cathy lay on her back with her unborn child beside her. She
had promised Ralph a daughter – and she had kept her
promise.

He fell on his knees beside her, and tried to lift her head,
but her body had set into an awful rigidity, she was stiff as a
carven statue in marble. As he lifted her, he saw the great
cup-shaped depression in the back of her skull.

Ralph backed away, and then flung himself out of the tent.

‘Jonathan,’ he screamed. ‘Jon-Jon! Where are
you?’

He ran through the camp like a madman.

‘Jonathan! Please, Jonathan!’

When he found no living thing, he stumbled into the forest up
onto the slope of the kopje.

‘Jonathan! It’s Daddy. Where are you, my
darling?’