The Shangani Patrol (6 page)

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Authors: John Wilcox

BOOK: The Shangani Patrol
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Fonthill leaned down to Mzingeli. ‘Can you translate for us?’
 
‘He is asking the
inDuna
where they come from. And,’ he waited a moment, ‘man is telling truth.’
 
The king frowned for a moment, then his face split into a smile and he nodded cordially to the trio. He beckoned behind him, and a large wooden chair was brought and set under the broken shade of the indaba tree, and then a collection of goat skins were scattered before him. Lobengula lowered himself into the chair and beckoned with his assegai for the three to sit before him on the skins. Simon grabbed Mzingeli by the shirtsleeve and dragged him down beside him.
 
The king was speaking. ‘He say that you very welcome to his home and he thank you for gifts,’ interpreted Mzingeli. ‘He say that lion is not hunted here for sport because animal can contain spirit of past Matabele chiefs and bad to kill him. But if lion is attacking cattle then he must be a bad chief. King thanks you for protecting cattle of his people.’
 
‘Well that’s very nice of ’im, I’m sure,’ whispered Jenkins. ‘P’raps ’e’s goin’ to offer us a drop of somethin’ to drink now, d’you think?’
 
As if the king had heard, he turned his head and shouted an order over his shoulder towards the interior of his house. Immediately - someone must have prepared them already - gourds of beer were brought out and presented to the three Britains. Fonthill took a grateful gulp. It was similar to the Kaffir beer he had drunk in the Transvaal: made from corn, the grain from which had been left to vegetate, dried in the sun, pounded into meal and gently boiled. Cool now, and with a slightly acidic taste, it was delicious. Noticing that nothing had been brought for Mzingeli and his boys, he handed his half-full gourd to the tracker. Alice did the same with hers to Sando and, with rather less grace, Jenkins followed suit with Ntini.
 
‘Tell the king,’ said Fonthill, ‘that we are grateful for his welcome. We are sorry not to have sent ahead to ask for permission to cross into his land, but we were diverted by the people of the village near the Limpopo.’
 
The king waved his assegai in airy acknowledgement of the apology and spoke again. ‘Why did you not come here on horse or wagons, as all white people do?’
 
‘Because,’ replied Simon, ‘we left our horses and wagon at the village and set out to kill the lions on foot. We expected to return to the village but we were brought to you immediately.’
 
On translation, a frown immediately descended on the royal features, and then they twisted into an expression of fury. Within seconds the benevolent, welcoming monarch had changed into a despotic tyrant, hurling abuse at the
inDuna
, who bowed his head and knelt in submission, his forehead touching the ground.
 
‘He say that the man has caused king to lose honour with white visitors by bringing you here without horses, wagon and clothes,’ translated Mzingeli quietly. ‘I think they take him away to kill him now.’
 
‘Oh no. Tell him that we were so anxious to meet the king, about whom we had heard so much, that we were happy to leave our things behind. The
inDuna
must not be blamed.’
 
Hearing this, Lobengula’s face lightened and he waved his assegai to the
inDuna
in what appeared to a gesture of forgiveness. The man sat up slowly and shot a quick glance of thanks at Fonthill. But the king was speaking again.
 
‘He want to know if you have met Queen Victoria.’
 
Simon smiled. ‘Tell him yes. I met her at her palace in Windsor. So too did Mr Jenkins here.’ Fonthill was not lying. Both he and Jenkins had attended investiture ceremonies at Windsor Castle when they had received the order of Companion of the Bath and the Distinguished Conduct Medal, respectively, for their services on General Wolseley’s abortive expedition to relieve General Gordon at Khartoum. The king gave an expansive smile.
 
‘He say he has written to Queen Victoria and she has written to him.’
 
‘Ah. How . . . er . . . very interesting.’
 
Lobengula now broke off to give a string of orders to his attendants and then turned back to his visitors.
 
‘King say that he will send people to my father’s village to bring horses and wagon here. He also give hut for you to live in and send food. He want you to stay a while as his guest. He say he have other white people here but they have not met Queen Victoria. He say that he don’t think big man in south, Nkosi Rhodes, has met queen either. But you have. He like to talk to you later.’
 
‘Oh blimey,’ muttered Jenkins. ‘I don’t like the sound of that.’
 
‘Neither do I,’ whispered Alice. ‘I wonder what’s wrong with his foot?’ For the first time, Fonthill noticed that the king’s right foot seemed swollen around the big toe, and remembered that he had limped as he had come towards them. ‘I would say he’s got gout,’ Alice continued. ‘Too much champagne and brandy, I would think.’
 
Lobengula rose slowly to his feet to indicate that the audience was at an end, and Simon and the others rose too. Fonthill bowed his head in acknowledgement.
 
‘The king is very kind,’ he said as Mzingeli interpreted, ‘and my wife, servants and I would be honoured to stay for a short time as his guests. But we must return to the south soon, for we have urgent business in Cape Town. In the meantime, however, we are at the service of your majesty to give you whatever assistance we can.’
 
With that, the king gave a cheery smile, barked further commands to his attendants and then limped back into his house. The
inDuna
leaped to his feet and beckoned the visitors to follow him. They all walked out of the king’s enclosure towards where a party of Matabele women were hurrying in and out of a large beehive hut set apart from the rest, crawling agilely on their hands and knees through the narrow opening carrying blankets, drinking vessels and other domestic utensils.
 
At the entrance, Fonthill paused and, with one restraining hand on the
inDuna
’s shoulder, addressed Mzingeli. ‘Tell him,’ he said, ‘that I would like proper accommodation also to be given to you and your boys.’
 
The tracker shook his head. ‘Thank you, but is not right here, Nkosi. We just slaves here.’
 
‘No you are not. The British abolished slavery in 1807 and I don’t recognise it anywhere. Go on, tell him. The man owes me a favour, dammit.’
 
Hesitantly Mzingeli translated. Simon’s request was treated with a frown but the Matabele shrugged his shoulders and then nodded his head in acquiescence.
 
Once inside the hut, Alice spread a sleeping mat, laid a blanket upon it and sat down. ‘Well, my darling,’ she said with a warm smile to Simon, ‘do you know, I didn’t realise that you were so well acquainted with our gracious Queen. As a result, it seems you have just been appointed Grand Vizier Extraordinary to his fat majesty here, and we are doomed, it seems, to stay here while you advise him for years and years and bloody years. Eh?’
 
Fonthill returned her smile sheepishly. ‘Well, I only answered a question.’ He looked around. ‘It’s not exactly the Ritz, I agree, but it will serve until our transport arrives. Then we shall be off, I promise.’
 
That evening, a young goat was delivered to Mzingeli from the king with instructions to slay it and cook it for his master. It came with a calabash of beer, a sack full of corn and a basket containing the delicious local umkuna plums. Later, they gathered outside the hut, squatting by firelight under the stars in the cool of the evening, tearing chunks of the goat meat apart with their hands and washing it down with the beer.
 
‘Well,’ said Jenkins, inevitably, ‘I’m startin’ to take to this postin’ now, bach sir. The old king is lookin’ after us right well, I’d say.’
 
Their meal was interrupted towards its end by the arrival of a visitor. A portly, bearded white man, dressed in conventional slouch hat, loose cotton shirt and corduroy trousers, he stood deferentially for a moment at the edge of the light cast by the fire before stepping forward to introduce himself.
 
‘James Fairbairn,’ he said. ‘I trade here. Thought I would walk over and introduce myself and welcome you to this Paris of Africa. I’ve heard that you came here in a bit of a rush, so I’ve brought you a few things you might need, toothbrushes, soap and the like. All from the store. You can pay me later,’ he added hurriedly.
 
‘My word, you are welcome’, said Alice. The introductions were made and Fairbairn joined them at the fireside and helped them to munch the plums and drink the beer. He was, he said, one of a small group of traders who had made their homes in Bulawayo some years ago and eked out a not particularly profitable living. They existed under the eye of the king but they were more or less left alone, as long as they gave Lobengula presents from time to time, ‘as a kind of fee for being allowed to stay,’ he explained. But it wasn’t a bad life. ‘At least we are all our own men.’
 
There was, he added, a local British missionary who spoke the Matabele language fluently and who had become intimate with the king, drafting the occasional letter for him to the authorities in the Cape Colony and even, once, to Queen Victoria. The man ran a school for the children but so far had made no conversions to Christianity.
 
‘Why are you here?’ Fairbairn asked.
 
Simon explained the circumstances.
 
The trader seemed relieved. ‘We are getting a lot of white visitors here now,’ he said. ‘Usually they cause trouble.’
 
‘Why?’
 
‘Well.’ Fairbairn scratched his beard. ‘I don’t know too much about politics back home, or in Europe for that matter. And I am no mining engineer. But I do know this much - the scramble for Africa by the white man is still going on and old Lobengula’s kingdom is one of the juiciest bits that is still available, so to speak. Available, that is, if you can get the old rogue to put his cross on a piece of paper and then move in and develop it.’
 
‘Cecil John Rhodes?’
 
‘Yes, but not just him. Look.’ Fairbairn pulled a stick from the edge of the fire, snapped off its charred end and used it to sketch a rough map of southern Africa in the dust at their feet. ‘Here is Matabeleland, including Mashonaland to the north, which the king controls anyway. The British are well entrenched down at the bottom in South Africa, here. The Portuguese have vast territories in Mozambique in the east and Angola in the west, right next door, so to speak. Belgium has the Congo in the centre of Africa to the north-west here. We’ve got the Germans, under . . . what’s his name?’
 
‘Bismarck?’ prompted Alice, her chin in her hand.
 
‘That’s the chap. Yes, the Germans here, in Damaraland, to the south-west, just itching to get more land. Then, very importantly, old Kruger with his Boers in the Transvaal here, just south of the border with Matabeleland, all cock-a-hoop after rubbing our noses in the dirt at Majuba. He wants a route to the sea for his state and reckons he can best do it through Lobengula’s nation. On top of all that there’s the French at the top of Africa and in the Sahara who would love to put our noses out of joint by taking the king’s land. Everybody thinks that there is gold here. There’s a bit of mining at Tati just over the border to the south, as you know, but no traces have really been found anywhere else around here, as far as I’m aware, although the king has not really let anyone mine in his land yet. So everyone seems to be beating a path to the old devil’s door.’
 
Fonthill smiled. ‘For someone who doesn’t know much about it, that’s what I would call a pretty fair summing-up of the situation, Mr Fairbairn, and matches what I heard in the Cape.’
 
The trader looked a touch embarrassed and scratched his head. ‘Well, it’s important to us all, I suppose.’
 
‘But you said that all these visitors cause trouble.’
 
‘Yes. Everybody makes all kinds of promises to Lobengula - promises that they don’t keep. He’s no fool, you know. He knows the white man pretty well now. It is true that he is well disposed towards the English - mainly I think because we knocked over the Zulus a few years ago, and also because the stories of the wealth created by the British in the diamond and gold fields down south are rife here. So he thinks we are strong. But he says that all white men are liars.’ Fairbairn grinned. ‘And so we are, I reckon.’
 
Jenkins had been listening with care. Now he lifted his head. ‘Tell me, Mr Fairbairn, why do people want this land anyway? It don’t look much good to me, see. Lot of woodland and these big high rocks stickin’ up all over the place.’
 
‘I suppose it’s the promise of gold and other minerals, as I’ve said, although there’s good farming land around here and in Mashonaland. But Matabeleland is also the route to the north, to the big lakes up there. You’ve got to go through here to get there, to get to whatever they’ve got to offer.’ He scratched his head again. ‘Seems to me that the powers in Europe have gone a bit mad about all this. I can see it leading to a scrap in the end.’

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