Book Read Free

The Missionary's Wife

Page 32

by Tim Jeal


  ‘Just a “colour”.’ Fynn laughed. ‘Plenty o’ streams have colours and nothin’ else.’

  While scrutinizing the opposite hilltop through his binoculars, Fynn related how he had once spent time prospecting in the Mogollon Mountains in Arizona and had lost everything he owned on the venture. When the scouts splashed their faces in the stream, he warned them that too much washing encouraged bush sores. Was there nothing this man hadn’t seen or done? They knew there were other American scouts in Mashonaland, but for Arthur Winter and his friend Wilfred Birch, Heywood Fynn was unique.

  On setting out, he had told them a story about Mr Haslam. The missionary, he said, had first won the respect of Chief Mponda because of a bizarre event. In 1886, Haslam had shot an ox in celebration of his first wife’s birthday. The bullet had passed through the animal, ricocheted off a tree behind it, and landed inches from the missionary’s feet. A woman passerby who had witnessed this freak shot saw him calmly pick up the spent bullet and put it in his pocket, just as the ox sank to its knees. Mponda heard the news within the hour and decided that Haslam must be a great nganga. Who else could call back bullets at will?

  The scouts found the tracks again exactly where Fynn had anticipated. The young men were at once affected by their mentor’s gravity. As always, Fynn questioned them about their observations. How could they be sure of the age of these tracks? They whispered their answers: no rain had fallen on the footprints; few seeds had blown across them; the edges of some of the imprints were still damp; grasses that had been bent or broken by the natives’ feet had not yet dried or withered. Arthur knew that their enemies must be very close. The utmost caution was essential.

  At the brow of the next hill, they left their horses under some trees. Before reaching the top, Fynn ordered Arthur to go on alone. He liked his young apprentices to show what they could do. Arthur chose to crawl and did not breach the skyline until finding a tree stump to peer around. These two young townies almost made Fynn wish that he had had a son.

  Arthur moved his head gingerly to the side of the stump, and feared he would faint. Too scared to make a sound or raise his head, he slewed around on his stomach and scrambled back toward Fynn and Wilfred on all fours.

  ‘Niggers,’ he gasped. ‘Hundreds of them.’ Many had been hiding in the long grass, but he had seen enough headdresses and spears to fancy there must be a small army out there.

  ‘How far?’ cried Fynn, already running back towards their horses.

  ‘Hundred yards. Could be less.’

  As his two companions swung up into their saddles, Fynn studied the terrain in the direction from which they had just come. Warriors were crawling out of the elephant grass in the valley bottom. His mind was working fast. The men Arthur had just seen over the brow of the hill had shown themselves deliberately, so Fynn guessed they wanted him to turn back and retrace his steps towards the men coming up from the valley bottom. He and his young scouts could probably ride through these warriors in the elephant grass, but once they were past them, the boggy ground would slow down their horses to a trot, giving the running spearmen a fine chance to overtake and kill them.

  At any second, warriors would appear on the skyline, intent on forcing them back towards the men in the valley bottom.

  ‘We’ve gotta ride straight at ’em,’ announced Fynn. The two young men looked back nervously, as if wishing to retrace their steps. ‘Hell no!’ cried Fynn, pointing to the brow of the hill as he mounted. They loaded their rifles, and Fynn kneed his horse around. ‘Stay close,’ he urged. Then, with a whoop and a yell, he thumped in his heels as if heading for a jump.

  They flew over the brow of the hill knee-to-knee. A gently dropping slope stretched ahead, spotted with bushes and stunted thorn trees. Not a soul was to be seen. Fynn signed to them to trot. These tribesmen were cleverer than he had expected. Were they luring him and his friends forward into a ring that would close behind them? He turned sharply and saw men racing from bush to bush far to his left. The trap was already being sprung. With no time to guess where the circle would be weakest, he acted on instinct and rode hard to the left.

  ‘If I fall, leave me,’ he shouted. ‘Get through and warn Vaughan.’

  The three of them were already galloping as they came up to their enemies. Fynn’s wrists were strong enough for him to hold a rifle in one hand, and he fired now from the saddle, hoping to unsettle the natives’ aim. His bullets kicked up dust around the bushes ahead. Arthur drew his sword and Wilfred his revolver. Fynn saw heads and shoulders weaving among the bushes. The tribesmen’s rifles began to crackle. Bullets whipped past with weird little phit, phit noises or a shrill wb-e-e-e-w as they flicked off the ground. Arthur was ahead, just to the right. Wilfred was level, to Fynn’s left. The thunder of hooves and his own thumping heartbeats filled Fynn’s ears. The sun flashed on Arthur’s sword as he slashed and cut, carrying the weight of his horse into the blows. Men spun backward, shields and spears lifting in the air.

  Fifty yards away, a tribesman with a Martini-Henry dropped on one knee and drew a steady bead on Arthur. Fynn fired the last two bullets in his magazine but missed with both. The native squeezed the trigger. Arthur’s horse fell heavily in a tangle of legs and saddlery. Fynn was past in a flash but not too fast to see Arthur rolled on to the ground by a man with a short assegai. Fynn tried to turn his horse, but the animal refused, desperate to leave the fray. Crashing a boot along his horse’s jaw, he swung him around by main force. As Wilfred galloped by, Fynn roared at him to keep riding, then he broke the cardinal rule of a scout’s duty to his column and rode back to help his fallen comrade.

  Arthur was kneeling behind his horse’s body. Bright blood was oozing from his thigh. A knot of spearmen faced him at a distance, intimidated by his carbine. Closing from behind, Fynn shouted and discharged his rifle. He hit one man with a lucky shot, and as he charged, the others turned and fled. Dismounting, he hoisted Arthur up on to his own stallion, before running back to the young corporal’s horse and cutting the ammunition pockets from the saddle.

  Fynn mounted in front of Arthur, and they rode on. The tribesmen’s deadly tactic soon became clear. They would creep into bushes, wait till he had passed, and then jump out and fire at his back. Arthur, clinging on behind, was terrified.

  ‘Wilfred’s broken through,’ Fynn reassured him.

  Ahead, more warriors were blocking their escape. These men wore Matabele head-rings, unlike the more numerous Venda, with their ostrich feathers. Fynn fired and missed. Seeing antiquated wide-bore guns levelled at him, he lowered his head to protect his eyes. A volley of birdshot peppered his scalp and his horse’s shoulders. The maddened animal burst forward as if in the final furlong of a race.

  Fynn and Arthur were level with their enemies now. Wielding his rifle like a club, Fynn sent two men spinning away. Blood from his head was blinding him. Warriors were closing in, their skin kilts swinging as they ran. One seized Fynn’s foot but lost his grip. To Fynn’s amazement, the way ahead seemed clear. Yet something had happened. Something was horribly wrong. Why was his horse not moving faster? The animal was rising and falling on the spot, up and down like a hobbyhorse. A hundred yards away, natives were pointing and starting in pursuit.

  Fynn dismounted. A spear was sticking in his horse’s belly, just beside the girth. The poor creature was finished. So it was the end for him and Arthur too. As the dying animal’s forelegs splayed out, Arthur slipped to the ground, his face grey with pain and terror. The muscles at the back of his thigh had been torn apart by a spearpoint, and he was bleeding profusely. Fynn carried him ten yards to a tall ant hill, then ran back to his horse. Many a time the dilation of his stallion’s nostrils or the pointing of his ears had warned Fynn of danger. Today the horse had done his best to save him. Fynn held his revolver out of sight and nuzzled against the animal’s neck. The stallion whinnied for the last time, as if being brought his corn. Then Fynn sent a bullet through his brain.

  Bowed down by his saddle and ever
ything attached to it, the American staggered back to the ant hill. With two rifles and plentiful ammunition, he and Arthur might last fifteen minutes. More if they were very unlucky.

  Fynn loaded their four guns. He then bandaged Arthur’s leg and gave him water and brandy. He knew the Africans would not move in for the kill until they had completely surrounded the ant hill. When the attack came, it would be from all sides and would culminate with a dash. Seeing tears welling from Arthur’s eyes, Fynn squeezed his hand.

  ‘You won’t let them …?’

  ‘I won’t,’ Fynn promised, mentally kissing the bullets in his revolver.

  ‘Why don’t they come, Mr Fynn?’

  ‘They won’t be long.’

  Arthur whispered, ‘Why can’t we end it now? Why should we wait?’

  ‘Say we kill maybe ten or twenty … That’s a handy few who ain’t gonna be botherin’ Captain Vaughan.’

  ‘I can’t even stand.’

  Fynn moved the saddle, scraped out a shallow depression behind it with his knife, and scooped away the loose soil with his hands. ‘Lie here and shoot around the cantle.’ He helped the wounded man position himself. Arthur’s breeches were stained with blood and excrement.

  Fynn listened hard but could hear no rattle of trinkets or spears against shields. The Africans were still far enough away for him to risk clambering on to the ant hill. From the top he could see natives converging from every side, a couple of hundred at least. They were approaching gingerly, using the bushes and thorn trees for cover. He raised his rifle and shot three of them. In retaliation, bullets sang past so close that Fynn half slid, half fell down the ant hill to the ground.

  He swiped at the inferno of flies buzzing around Arthur’s legs. The boy was weeping openly, and with each sob his heels gave a little jerk. High above, vultures circled in the pale-blue sky. Fynn tried not to imagine the images that had caused the boy’s terror – and yet his own bowels were loosening. The nearest bushes were less than a dozen yards away. They would come running and leaping across that flat ground in seconds: firing, screaming, flinging spears. Would that leave him time to use his revolver?

  Fynn had been almost as close to death before. When he was three, his mother had hidden him from the Sioux in a stack of newly shocked corn. He had lived because it had been too green to burn. Since then he might have died at the hands of a score of enemies: the Apache, cattle rustlers, outlaws, Mexicans, the Zulus in Natal, and in ’93 the Matabele. And now, three years later, his sands of time had finally run out.

  The torment of waiting made him long to fling himself into the open, away from the sheltering pile of clay. Or he could reach down and lift death to his temple. Instead he knelt beside Arthur.

  ‘Not long now.’ He eased the neck of his brandy flask between Arthur’s teeth. ‘These men are warriors … Remember the guys we strung up? We can do well too.’

  For a time Fynn could not hear the approaching men above the sound of his own breathing, but soon the swish of grass was unmistakable. They were close enough to stand in the open and pour in a single lethal volley. But that was not their way. Already individuals were cutting loose with wild and uncoordinated shots.

  ‘Don’t waste your bullets, Arthur. Pick your man.’

  And then Fynn saw the blur of war paint on rich brown skin, and he was firing. Flame spurted from muzzle loaders, an oxhide shield loomed close enough to touch. A wind seemed to whip across Arthur’s shirt, scorching his back with a raw red furrow. He leapt up with a scream and fell against the ant hill. Released from fear by rage and pain, he swivelled with incredible speed. His rifle came up to his shoulder, and he shot three men with six bullets.

  Fynn was picking up his second rifle when a shot sent him spinning around. Blood welled from his shoulder. Yet his arm still functioned. The bullet had clipped his collarbone, missing both nerve and artery. Arthur’s gun was silent, its magazine empty. Fynn tossed him his revolver.

  Around the ant hill lay dead and wounded men. Only moans and cries broke the stillness. The first onslaught was over. Fynn knew it was no more than a lull: an interlude before the final act. His heart was hammering. A strange, high-pitched voice cut through the silence, the speaker’s words distorted by some kind of horn.

  ‘Won’t the Lightning Bird help you?’ sneered the voice. At once, Fynn knew that Nashu was speaking. The American remembered making the nganga’s beer catch fire and claiming to have tamed the Lightning Bird.

  ‘What does he say?’ gasped Arthur. Fynn motioned to him to be quiet.

  ‘Only the eagle can safely offend,’ rasped the screeching voice.

  Fynn knew this Venda proverb well. The eagle could afford to offend because he could fly away. Fynn yelled back, ‘The lion that roars has not yet caught his prey.’

  ‘The Lightning Bird will kill you and the Umfundisi too.’

  Silence again. So that was why so many men had been creeping close to the camp. Nashu was desperate to kill the missionary before he could persuade Mponda to make peace. One day Nashu would surely kill Mponda too and replace him with Makufa. But that would be after Mponda had been weakened by the hussars. What a fool Vaughan had been to think he could use a man like Nashu without being used by him. In the end the nganga would probably betray the English to the Matabele.

  Fynn was binding up his shoulder when he smelled fire. This puzzled him, since the grass on the hilltop was scarcely dry enough to burn. Only when he saw Nashu’s men dragging up smoking branches of mimosa and thorn did he understand the Lightning Bird’s revenge.

  Arthur was slumped against the saddle, fighting the pain of stiffening wounds. His head was thrown back, and his eyes were tightly closed. At any moment he might smell his fate. The revolver lay in the dust, inches from the young man’s hand. Fynn reached for it. Haslam would say a man should prepare for his death. Prepare to be burned alive? Fynn lifted the gun to Arthur’s head and squeezed the trigger. No second shot was needed. The smoke was thicker now. Fynn spun the cylinder. Three bullets left. He pressed the barrel to his temple, then let it drop.

  Why sneak away when he could meet it squarely? He flung down the gun and, like a sprinter, burst from the shelter of the ant hill. He leapt a burning barrier and ran on, blinded by smoke. Already he could hear their pounding feet. The fleetest were soon at his shoulder. He heard the rattle of their ornaments, smelled their grease. Others pressed in from every side. An assegai pierced his side; another entered behind his knee, bringing him crashing down. Fynn made no effort to roll aside as the fatal spear was driven between his ribs.

  CHAPTER 23

  Ordinary men could be killed, but not him, not Heywood Fynn. Wilfred’s cracked and dust-caked lips were trembling as he related the manner of Fynn’s suicidal turning back. When Francis had heard as much as the trooper could tell him, he was shaken and grief-stricken but not really surprised. He and Fynn had often enacted half-mocking images of each other: Francis the quixotic gentleman, part English hypocrite, part chivalrous fool; Fynn the brutal pioneer, hard-bitten, cynical, realistic. Fynn a realist? He was a man who had done everything for adventure, nothing for luxury or gain, never settling, never prospering, drawn only by the raw life of the frontier.

  Wilfred was looking at him with deepening anxiety. Francis realized that he was scowling. Why couldn’t poor Arthur have been the one to escape? Why should it have been this nondescript Trooper Birch – this boy who couldn’t say whether two hundred or two thousand men were about to attack? Arthur would surely have done better than that. And Fynn, miraculous Fynn – he would have told him not only their numbers but their intentions.

  In the early afternoon a messenger arrived at the camp and said that he had orders from Chief Mponda to lead the Umfundisi to a secret meeting place. But if anyone attempted to follow, the messenger explained, he had instructions to turn back.

  What was to be done? wondered Francis. Fynn’s killers could be an advance guard of the impi, part of Mponda’s force, or even a different group entir
ely. So should Haslam be allowed to leave the camp when native regiments were threatening on every side? The answer ought to be no; but this was the direst of emergencies. Only the missionary’s personal pleas could now dissuade Mponda from launching a mass onslaught on the column. The problem would be how to stop Clara from going too.

  The sun was blazing down and the midday silence still hung over the camp as Captain Vaughan laid his plans. He and half a dozen men would tail Robert Haslam (or both Haslams), along with the chief’s messenger, as closely as they could without betraying themselves. A long way behind, a cavalry troop would follow, leading their horses. Francis’s trumpeter would be at his side to summon these men should the need arise. Meanwhile the camp, with Carew in charge, would remain in readiness.

  As Francis strode towards the Haslams’ tent, he was terrified for Clara. Because his duty to his column meant that he had to encourage Haslam’s mission, the best he could hope for would be to shame her husband into leaving her behind.

  Outside the missionary’s tent, Simon was grinding coffee beans with a stone. On catching sight of Francis, the boy darted inside with the speed of a gecko. So now I’m the devil incarnate, thought Francis, saddened to recall the boy’s former friendliness. Francis had decided to break the news of Fynn’s death, before telling them that the chief’s messenger had arrived. That way, he hoped to make Haslam nervous about taking Clara with him.

 

‹ Prev