The Angels Weep (45 page)

‘I will never forgive you for this!’ she panted
through white lips, but she could see he meant the threat
seriously.

‘Robert,’ Mungo St John ordered his son, ‘go
to your mother. Immediately!’

The child scampered to the coach and climbed into it.

‘Elizabeth!’ Mungo St John bellowed again.
‘Hurry, girl. All our lives depend on haste now.’

Elizabeth ran out onto the veranda with a bundle over her
shoulder.

‘Good girl!’ Mungo St John smiled at her. So
pretty and brave and level-headed, she had always been one of his
favourites. He jumped down to boost her into the coach, and then
vaulted back into the saddle.

‘Troop, Walk. March! Trot!’ he ordered, and they
wheeled out of the yard.

The coach was in the rear of the column. The ten troopers in
double ranks ahead of it, and five lengths out in front of them
again rode Mungo St John. Despite herself, Elizabeth was thrilled
and deliciously fearful. It was all so different from the quiet
monotonous round of life at Khami Mission, the armed men, the
urgency and tension in each of them, the dark threat of the
unknown surrounding them, the romance of the faithful husband
riding through the valley of the shadow of death to save his
beloved woman. How noble and dashing he looked at the head of the
column, how easily he sat his horse, and when he turned to look
back at the coach, how reckless was his smile – there was
only one other man in all the world to match him. If only it had
been Ralph Ballantyne come to save her alone! The thought was
sinful, and she put it away quickly, and to distract herself
looked back down the hill.

‘Oh, Mama!’ she cried, jumping up in the swaying
coach, pointing wildly. ‘Look!’

The Mission was burning. The thatch of the church stood in a
tall beacon of leaping flame. Smoke was curling out of the
homestead, and as they stared in horror, they saw tiny dark human
figures running down the pathway under the spathodea trees,
carrying torches of dry grass. One of them stopped to hurl his
torch onto the roof of the clinic.

‘My books,’ whispered Robyn. ‘All my papers.
My life’s work.’

‘Don’t look, Mama.’ Elizabeth sank down
beside her on the seat, and they clung to each other like lost
children.

The little column reached the crest of the pass; without a
pause the weary horses plunged down the far side – and the
Matabele came simultaneously from both sides of the track. They
rose out of the grass in two black waves, and the humming roar of
their war chant swelled like the sound of an avalanche gathering
momentum down a steep mountainside.

The troopers had been riding with their carbines cocked, the
butts resting on their right thighs, but so swift was the rush of
Matabele that only a single volley rippled down the column. It
made no impression upon the black wave of humanity, and then as
the horses reared and whinnied with terror, the troopers were
dragged from their saddles, and stabbed through and through, ten
and twenty times. The warriors were mad with blood lust. They
swarmed over the bodies, snarling and howling, like the hounds
tearing the carcass of the fox.

A huge sweat-shining warrior seized the coloured driver by the
leg, and plucked him off the driver’s seat of the coach,
and while he was still in the air another warrior transfixed him
on the broad silver blade of an assegai.

Only Mungo St John, five lengths ahead of the column, broke
clear. He had taken a single assegai-thrust through the side, and
the blood streamed down one leg of his breeches, down his
riding-boot and dripped from the heel.

He still sat high in the saddle, and he looked back over his
shoulder. He looked over the heads of the Matabele straight into
Robyn’s eyes. It was only for an instant, and then he had
wheeled his horse, and he drove back into the mass of black
warriors, riding for the coach. He fired his service pistol into
the face of a warrior who leaped to catch his horse’s head,
but from the other side another Matabele stabbed upwards
overhanded, deeply into his armpit. Mungo St John grunted and
spurred onwards.

‘I’m here!’ he shouted to Robyn.
‘Don’t worry, my darling—’ and a warrior
stabbed him through the belly. He doubled over. His horse went
down, sharp steel driven through its heart, and it seemed that it
was all over, but miraculously Mungo St John rose to his feet and
stood foursquare with the pistol in his hand. His eye-patch had
been torn from his head, and the empty eye-socket glared so
demoniacally, that for a moment the warriors fell back and he
stood in their midst with the terrible spear wounds in his chest
and belly running red.

Gandang stepped out of the press, and a silence fell upon them
all. The two men stood face to face for a long second, Mungo
tried to lift the pistol, but his strength failed him, and then
Gandang drove the silver blade through the centre of Mungo St
John’s chest and it shot a hand’s span out of his
back.

Gandang stood over the body and placed one foot upon Mungo St
John’s chest and pulled the blade free. It made a sucking
sound like a boot in thick mud. It was the only sound, and after
it was silence. The silence was even more terrible than the war
chant and the screams of dying men.

The dense press of black bodies hemmed in the coach, and hid
the corpses of the dead troopers. The
amadoda
formed a
ring around where Mungo St John lay upon his back, his features
still twisted into a grimace of rage and agony. His one eye
glaring at the enemy he could no longer see.

One at a time the warriors lifted their heads and stared at
the huddle of women and a child in the open body of the coach.
The very air was charged with menace, their eyes were glazed with
the killing madness, and blood still splattered their arms and
chests and speckled their faces like a macabre war paint. The
ranks swayed like prairie grass touched by a little breeze. In
the rear a single voice began to hum, but before it could spread,
Robyn St John rose to her feet and from the height of the coach
looked down upon them. The hum died out into silence.

Robyn reached forward and picked up the reins. The Matabele
watched her and still not one of them moved. Robyn flicked the
reins, and the mules started forward at a walk.

Gandang, son of Mzilikazi, senior induna of the Matabele,
stepped off the track, and behind him the ranks of his
amadoda
opened. The mules passed slowly down the lane
between them, stepping daintily over the mutilated corpses of the
troopers. Robyn stared straight ahead, holding the reins stiffly.
Just once as she drew level with where Mungo St John lay, she
glanced down at him, and then looked ahead again.

Slowly, the coach rolled on down the hill, and when Elizabeth
looked back again, the road was deserted.

‘They have gone, Mama,’ she whispered, and only
then did she realize that Robyn was shaking with silent sobs.

Elizabeth put her arm around her shoulders, and for a moment
Robyn leaned against her.

‘He was a terrible man, but, oh God forgive me, I loved
him so,’ she whispered, and then she straightened up and
urged the mules into a trot towards Bulawayo.

R
alph
Ballantyne rode through the night, taking the difficult and
direct path through the hills rather than the broad wagon road.
The spare horses were loaded with food and blankets that he had
salvaged from the railhead camp. He led them at a walk over the
rocky terrain, husbanding them for whatever efforts lay ahead of
them.

He rode with his rifle across his lap, loaded and cocked.
Every half hour or so, he halted his horse and fired three spaced
rifle shots into the starry sky. Three shots, the universal
recall signal. When the echoes had muttered and rumbled away down
the hills, he listened carefully, twisting slowly in the saddle
to cover every direction, and then he called, yelling his despair
into the silences of the wilderness.

‘Jonathan! Jonathan!’

Again he rode on slowly through the darkness, and when the
dawn came he watered the horses at a stream and let them graze
for a few hours, sitting on an antheap to guard them, munching
biscuit and bully, and listening.

It was strange how many of the sounds of the bush could seem
like the cries of a human child to someone who listened
wishfully. The mournful ‘quay’ of a grey lourie
brought Ralph to his feet with his heart hammering, the screech
of a meercat, even the wail of the wind in the tree-tops
disturbed him.

In mid-morning he up-saddled and rode again. He knew that in
daylight there was greater danger of running into a Matabele
patrol, but the prospect had no terrors. He found himself
welcoming it. Deep inside him was a cold dark area, a place that
he had never visited before, and now as he rode on, he explored
it and found there such hatred and anger as he had never believed
was possible. Riding slowly through the lovely forests in the
clean white sunshine, he discovered that he was a stranger to
himself; until this day he had never known what he was, but now
he was beginning to find out.

He reined in his horse on the crest of a high bare ridge,
where watching Matabele eyes could have seen him from afar
silhouetted against the blue, and deliberately he fired another
three single shots. When no file of running warriors came to the
summons, his hatred and anger were stronger still.

An hour after noon, he climbed the ridge of the ancients where
Zouga had killed the great elephant and looked down onto the
Harkness Mine.

The buildings had been burned. On the far ridge the walls that
Harry Mellow had built for Vicky were still standing, but the
empty windows were like the eyes of a skull. The roof beams were
stark and blackened, some of them collapsed beneath the weight of
charred thatch. The gardens were trampled, and the lawns were
strewn with the debris of two young lives – the brass
bedstead with stuffing bursting out of the torn mattress, the
chests of Vicky’s dowry broken open and the contents
scorched and scattered.

Further down the valley the mine store and office had been
burned also. The stacks of blackened goods still smouldered, and
there was the stink of burning rubber and leather on the air.
There was another smell mingled with it, a smell like greasy pork
cooking, the first time Ralph had smelled human flesh roasting,
but instinctively he knew what it was, and he felt his stomach
heave.

In the trees about the burned-out buildings roosted the
hunch-backed vultures. There were hundreds of these disgusting
birds, from the big black vultures with their bald red heads to
the dirty brown birds with obscene woollen caps covering their
long necks. Amongst the vultures were the carrion storks, the
raucous crows and the little wheeling black kites. It must be a
rich banquet to attract such a gathering.

Ralph rode down off the crest and almost immediately found the
first bodies. Matabele warriors, he saw with grim satisfaction,
they had crawled away to die of their wounds. Harry Mellow had
held out better than the construction gang at the railhead.

‘That he should have taken a thousand of the black
butchers with him,’ Ralph hoped aloud, and rode on
cautiously with his rifle at the ready.

He dismounted behind the ruins of the mine store and tethered
the horses with a slippery hitch, ready for a quick run. Here
there were more dead Matabele, lying amid their own broken and
discarded weapons. The ash was still hot, and three or four
corpses lay within the shell of the store. They had been burned
to unrecognizable black mounds, and the smell of pork was
overpowering.

Holding his rifle at high port, Ralph stepped carefully
through the ash and debris towards the corner of the building.
The squawk and flap of the vultures and the scavengers covered
any small sounds he might make, and he was ready to meet the
sudden charge of warriors that might be lying in ambush for him.
He steeled himself also to the discovery of the corpses of Harry
and pretty blonde little Vicky. Burying his own mutilated loved
ones had not hardened him to the horror of what he knew he would
find here.

He reached the corner of the building, removed his hat and
carefully peeked around the wall.

There were two hundred yards of open ground between the
burned-out store and the open mouth of the No. 1 adit shaft that
Harry had driven into the side of the hill. The open ground was
heaped with dead warriors. There were piles and skeins of them,
drifts and windrows of them. Some were twisted into agonized
sculptures of black limbs and some of them lay singly, as though
resting, curled into the foetal position. Most of them had been
ripped and gnawed by the birds and the jackals, but others were
untouched.

This killing ground gave Ralph a bitter feeling of
pleasure.

‘Good for you, Harry my boy,’ he whispered.

Ralph was about to step into the open, when his eardrums
cracked with the brutal disruption of passing shot, so close that
he felt his own hair flap against his forehead. He reeled back
behind the shelter of the wall, shaking his head to clear the
insect humming in his ears. That bullet must have missed by an
inch or less, good shooting for a Matabele sniper. They were
notoriously poor marksmen.

He had been careless. The piles of dead warriors had
distracted him, he had presumed that the impi had finished its
bloody business and gone on, a stupid presumption.

He crouched low and ran back down the length of the burned
building, sweeping his open flank with an eye sharpened by the
hot rush of adrenalin through his veins. The Matabele loved the
encircling movement: if they were out front, then they would soon
be in his rear, up there amongst the trees.

He reached the horses, slipped the tether and led them over
the hot ash into the shelter of the walls. From the saddlebag he
took a fresh bandolier of ammunition and slung it over his other
shoulder, criss-crossing his chest like a Mexican bandit, and
muttering to himself.