Men of Men (37 page)

When Rhodes looked up and saw Jordan, he dismissed the overseer with a curt word and a nod.

‘Jordan,’ Rhodes’ greeting was grave, perhaps he sensed the mood of the young man before him, ‘you have brought it?’

When Jordan nodded, he turned back to the waiting overseer.

‘Bring four of your best men,’ he ordered. ‘I want this cart unloaded – and carefully. It’s a valuable work of art.’

He watched keenly as they untied the ropes that held the tarpaulin in place, but cocked the large curly head when Jordan spoke.

‘If we have to lose it, then I’m glad it’s you that it goes to, Mr Rhodes.’

‘The bird means something to you also, Jordan?’

‘Everything,’ Jordan said simply, and then caught himself; that sounded ridiculous. Mr Rhodes would think him strange. ‘I mean, it has been in my family since before I was
born. I don’t really know what it will be like without that goddess. I don’t really want to think about losing it.’

‘You don’t have to lose it, Jordan.’

Jordan looked at him, unable to bring himself to ask the meaning.

‘You can follow the goddess, Jordan.’

‘Please don’t tease me, Mr Rhodes.’

‘You are bright and willing, you have studied Pitman’s shorthand, and you have an excellent pen,’ Rhodes said. ‘I need a secretary – somebody who knows and loves
diamonds as I do. Somebody whom I feel easy with. Somebody I know and whom I like. Somebody I can trust.’

Jordan felt a vast soaring rush of joy, something sharper, brighter and more poignant than he had ever known before. He could not speak; he stood rooted and stared into the pale blue and
beautiful eyes of the man whom he had worshipped for so many years.

‘Well, Jordan, I am offering you the position. Do you want it?’

‘Yes,’ Jordan said softly. ‘More than anything on earth, Mr Rhodes.’

‘Good, then your first task is to find a place to set up the bird.’

The white overseer had pulled the tarpaulin aside to expose the statue, and the sheet hung down over the side of the cart.

‘Easy now,’ he shouted at the gang of black labourers. ‘Get a rope on it. Don’t drop it. Watch that end, damn you.’

They swarmed over the statue, too many of them for the job, getting in one another’s way – and Jordan’s heady joy at Rhodes’ offer was submerged in a quick stab of
concern for the safety of the bird.

He started forward to set the ropes himself, but at that moment there was the clatter of hooves and Neville Pickering rode into the yard. He was astride his mare, a highly bred and finely
mettled bay, and he reined her down to a walk.

He shot a glance at Jordan, and his face clouded for an instant – a quick show of irritation, or of something else. With a sudden intuitive flash Jordan realized that Pickering resented
his presence here.

Then as quickly as it had come the shadow passed from Pickering’s handsome features and he smiled that sunny charming smile of his and looked down at the statue in the cart.

‘What have we here?’ His tone was gay, his manner carefree and relaxed. As always he was elegantly dressed, the drape of broadcloth showing off his broad shoulders, the tooled
leather belt emphasizing his narrow waist, as the polished half boots did the length and shape of his legs. The low-crowned, broad-brimmed hat was cocked forward over one eye, and he was
smiling.

‘Oh, the bird.’ He looked up at Rhodes on the stoep of the bungalow. ‘So you have it at last, as you said you would. I should congratulate you.’

The day had been still and too hot, it would change soon. The wind would come out of the south and the temperature would plunge, but until then the only movements of air were the sudden little
dust devils that sprang out of nowhere, small but violent whirlwinds that lifted a high churning vortex of dust and dry grass and dead leaves a hundred or more feet into the still sky as they sped
in a wildly erratic course across the plain, and then just as suddenly collapsed and disintegrated into nothingness again.

One of these dust devils rose now, on the open ground beyond the milkwood hedge. It tore a dense red cloud of spinning dust off the surface of the road, then swerved abruptly and raced into the
yard of Rhodes’ camp. Jordan felt his heart gripped in a cold vice of superstitious dread.

‘Panes!’ The cry was silent in his head. ‘Great Panes!’

He knew what that wind was, he knew the presence of the goddess – for how many times had she come to his invocation? Suddenly the whole yard was filled with the swirling torrents of dust,
and the wind battered them. It flew into Jordan’s face, so that he must slit his eyes against it. It flung his soft shiny curls into his face, and it flattened his shirt against his chest and
his lean flat belly.

The broad-brimmed hat sailed from Pickering’s head, the tails of his coat flogged into the small of his back and he lifted one hand to protect his face from the stinging sand and sharp
pieces of twig and grass.

Then the wind got under the ragged old tarpaulin, and filled it with a crack like a ship’s mainsail gybing onto the opposite tack.

The harsh canvas lashed the bay mare’s head, and she reared up on her back legs, whinnying shrilly with panic.

So high she went that Jordan thought she would go over on her back, and through the red raging curtain of dust, he jumped to catch her head; but he was an instant too late. Pickering had one
hand to his face, and the mare’s leap took him off balance; he went over backwards out of the saddle, and he hit hard earth with the back of his neck and one shoulder.

The rushing sound of the whirlwind, the grunt of air driven from Pickering’s lungs and the meaty thump of his fall almost covered the tiny snapping sound of bone breaking somewhere deep in
his body.

Then the mare came down from her high prancing dance, and she flattened immediately into full gallop. She flew at the gateway in the milkwood hedge, and Pickering was dragged after her, his
ankle trapped in the steel of the stirrup, his body slithering and bouncing loosely across the earth.

As the mare swerved to take the gap in the hedge, Pickering was flung into the hedge, and the white thorns, each as long as a man’s forefinger, were driven into his flesh like needles.

Then he was plucked away, out into the open ground, sledging over rocky earth, striking and flattening the small wiry bushes as the mare jumped them, his body totally relaxed and his arms flung
out behind him.

One moment the back of his head was slapping against the earth, and the next his ankle had twisted in the stirrup and he was face down, the skin being smeared from his cheeks and forehead by the
harsh abrasive earth.

Jordan found himself racing after him, his breath sobbing with horror – calling to the mare.

‘Whoa, girl! Steady, girl!’

But she was maddened, firstly terrified by the wind and the flirt of canvas into her face, and now by the unfamiliar weight that dragged and slithered at her heels. She reached the slope of the
trailing dumps and swerved again, and this time, mercifully, the stirrup leather parted with a twang. Freed of her burden, the mare galloped away down the pathway between the dumps.

Jordan dropped on his knees beside Pickering’s inert crumpled body. He lay face down; the expensive broadcloth was ripped and dusty, the boots scuffed through to white leather beneath.

Gently, supporting his head in cupped hands, Jordan rolled him onto his back, turning his face out of the dust so that he could breathe. Pickering’s face was a bloodied mask, caked with
dust, a flap of white skin hanging off his cheek – but his eyes were wide open.

Despite the complete deathlike relaxation of his arms and body, Pickering was fully conscious. His eyes swivelled to Jordan’s face, and his lips moved.

‘Jordie,’ he whispered. ‘I can’t feel anything, nothing at all. Numb – my hands, my feet, my whole body numb.’

They carried him back in a blanket, a man at each corner, and laid him gently on the narrow iron-framed cot in the bedroom next door to Rhodes’ own room.

Dr Jameson came within the hour, and he nodded when he saw how Jordan had bathed and dressed his injuries and the arrangements he had made for his comfort.

‘Good. Who taught you?’ But he did not wait for an answer. ‘Here!’ he said. ‘I’ll need your help.’ And he handed Jordan his bag, shrugged out of his
jacket and rolled his sleeves.

‘Get out,’ he said to Rhodes. ‘You’ll be in the way here.’

It took Jameson only minutes to make certain that the paralysis below the neck was complete, and then he looked up at Jordan, making sure that he was out of sight of Pickering’s alert,
fever-bright eyes, and he shook his head curtly.

‘I’ll be a minute,’ he said. ‘I must speak with Mr Rhodes.’

‘Jordie,’ Pickering whispered painfully, the moment Jameson left the room, and Jordan stooped to his lips. ‘It’s my neck – it’s broken.’

‘No.’

‘Be quiet. Listen.’ Pickering frowned at the interruption. ‘I think I always knew – that it would be you. One way or the other, it would be you—’

He broke off, fresh sweat blistered on his forehead, but he made another terrible effort to speak. ‘I thought I hated you. But not any more – not now. There is not enough time left
for hate.’

He did not speak again, not that night, nor the following day. But at dusk when the heat in the tiny iron-walled room abated a little, he opened his eyes again and looked up at Rhodes. It was
frightening to see how low he had sunk. The fine bones of forehead and cheeks seemed to gleam through the translucent skin, and his eyes had receded into dark bruised cavities.

Rhodes leaned his great shaggy head over him until his ear touched Pickering’s dry white lips. The whisper was so light, like a dead leaf blown softly across a roof at midnight, and Jordan
could not hear the words, but Rhodes clenched his lids closed over his pale blue eyes as though in mortal anguish.

‘Yes,’ he answered, almost as softly as the dying man. ‘Yes, I know. Pickling.’

When Rhodes opened his eyes again they were flooded with bright tears, and his colour was a frightening mottled purple.

‘He’s dead, Jordan,’ he choked, and put one hand on his own chest, pressing hard as though to calm the beat of his swollen heart.

Then quite slowly, deliberately, he lowered his head again, and kissed the broken, torn lips of the man on the iron-framed cot.

Z
ouga thought the voice was part of his dream – so sweet, so low, and yet tremulous and filled with some dreadful appeal. Then he was awake,
and the voice was still calling, and now there was a light tap on the window above the head of his bed.

‘I’m coming,’ Zouga answered, as low as he was called. He did not have to ask who it was.

He dressed swiftly, in total darkness, instinct warning him not to light a candle, and he carried his boots in his hand as he stepped out onto the stoep of the cottage.

The height of the moon told him that it was after midnight, but he barely glanced at it before turning to the figure that leaned against the wall beside the door.

‘Are you alone?’ he demanded softly. There was something in the way the figure slumped that frightened him.

‘Yes.’ The distress, the pain, were clear in her voice now that they were so close.

‘You should not have come here – not alone, Mrs St John.’

‘There was nobody else to turn to.’

‘Where is Mungo? Where is your husband?’

‘He is in trouble – terrible, terrible trouble.’

‘Where is he?’

‘I left him out beyond the Cape crossroad.’

For a moment her voice choked on her, and then it came out with a forceful rush.

‘He’s hurt. Wounded, badly wounded.’

Her voice had risen, so that she might rouse Jan Cheroot and the boys. Zouga took her arm to calm and quieten her, and immediately she fell against him. The feel of her body shocked him, but he
could not pull away.

‘I’m afraid, Zouga. I’m afraid he might die.’ It was the first time she had used his given name.

‘What happened?’

‘Oh God!’ She was weeping now, clinging to him, and he realized how hard-pressed she was. He slipped his arm around her waist and led her down the verandah.

In the kitchen he seated her on one of the hard deal chairs, and then lit the candle. He was shocked again when he saw her face. She was pale and shaking, her hair in wild disorder, a smear of
dirt on one cheek and her eyes red-rimmed and bloodshot.

He poured coffee from the blue enamel pot at the back of the stove. It was thick as molasses. He added a dram of brandy to it.

‘Drink it.’

She shuddered and gasped at the potent black brew, but it seemed to steady her a little.

‘I didn’t want him to go. I tried to stop him. I was sick of it. I told him I couldn’t take it any more, the cheating and lying. The shame and the running—’

‘You aren’t making sense,’ he told her brusquely, and she took a deep breath and started again.

‘Mungo went to meet a man tonight. The man was going to bring him a parcel of diamonds, a parcel of diamonds worth one hundred thousand pounds. And Mungo was going to buy them for two
thousand.’

Zouga’s face set grimly, and he sat down opposite her and stared at her. His expression intimidated her.

‘Oh God, Zouga. I know. I hated it too. I have lived with it so long, but he promised me that this would be the last time.’

‘Go on,’ Zouga commanded.

‘But he didn’t have two thousand, Zouga. We are almost broke – a few pounds is all that we have left.’

This time Zouga could not contain himself and he broke in.

‘The letter of credit, half a million pounds—’

‘Forged,’ she said quietly.

‘Go on.’

‘He didn’t have the money to pay for the diamonds – and I knew what he was going to do. I tried to stop him, I swear it to you.’

‘I believe you.’

‘He arranged to meet this man tonight – at a place out on the Cape road.’

‘Do you know the man’s name?’

‘I’m not sure. I think so.’ She passed her hand over her eyes. ‘He is a coloured man, a Griqua, Henry – no, Hendrick Somebody—’

‘Hendrick Naaiman?’