Return to Corriebush

by Lynn Bedford Hall

  Lightheaded from hunger and fatigue, Sara moved forward obediently. She moved forward, trance-like, with the children who were still able to walk. Anna Maria’s death was the final blow to her bruised consciousness. Perhaps this ultimate severing with her past made it easier for her to accept the present. Now she was no-one. So she picked up the children who had fallen. She treated their cut feet with juice squeezed from leaves. She spoke to them in their own language, for by now she understood much and could communicate with ease.

  One evening, at the end of an arduous day threading their way between the rocks and crags of the Zoutpansberg mountains, Sara found a young woman collapsed at the side of the track. Perspiration was streaming down her face, her body was shaking with fever, and she was babbling deliriously. On her lap lay a tiny naked infant; by her side sat a small boy, his face covered with scabs, his stomach grossly enlarged, snivelling.

  Two women stopped. ‘It is Fulata, the king’s wife,’ said one. ‘The Swazi woman.’

  ‘Then we must help her,’ replied the other.

  ‘No, no. If she dies, or her children die, the king will blame us. Let us rather pretend we never saw her. We shall know nothing about it. The vultures will do the rest.’

  And they wandered on.

  Sara had half a calabash of sour milk. She was one of the lucky few who had slept near several cows the previous night, and managed to squeeze a small quantity of milk from the shrivelled udders in the morning. Now she dropped some, little by little, into the baby’s mouth and then passed the calabash to the boy who lifted it and swallowed greedily. ‘Nyumbakazi!’ she called ‘Nyumbakazi, come! They will die if we do not help them! It is growing dark and their mother is very sick and the wild beasts will come and eat them! We must help them, Nyumbakazi!’

  ‘Yes, it is Fulata,’ said gentle Nyumbakazi, bending down. ‘And the look of death is already in her eyes.’ Carefully the old woman laid her down on the yellow grass. ‘She will not see the sun rise in the morning. But we will take the children. They are Ningi and Lobengula and my master will not be pleased if I leave his children here to be eaten by the lions and picked at by the vultures.’

  So saying, she picked up the baby, Ningi, and told Sara to take the boy’s hand. ‘Carry him, if you can, when he gets tired,’ she told her.

  Gently, Sara picked up her frail little charge and together she and the small boy descended the mountain. Lobengula – ‘He Who Drives Like The Wind’ – and his strange, new foster mother.

  For Lobengula, Sara searched out the juiciest berries; scooped the mountain water over his face when they came across a stream; saved for him any amasi she could beg or steal. By day she picked bunches of grass to help Nyumbakazi shield the infant Ningi from the sun, and by night she collected bunches of soft, evergreen leaves for their beds.

  Unexpectedly, they found themselves in the old country of the Crocodile People where a few settlements still flourished. Spurred by their hunger, they ransacked the granaries stacked with grain, ripped bare the fields of melon, pumpkins and corn and then, with renewed strength they crossed the treacherous, mosquito-infested swamps that lay in their path and found themselves on the northern banks of the Limpopo River. Now the women danced and clapped with joy for here the grass waved as high as a man’s shoulder; here antelope abounded; there were bubbling streams and clear blue skies and tall, flowering trees.

  A rumour spread that Gudwane would soon call a halt. This was good, fertile country and their king would surely catch up with them soon, leaving the threat of armed Boers and the menace of Dingaan far behind. And so, thankfully, they built a village on the plains. At last the weary tribe was able to settle down and start planting their crops.

  Sara and her small charge, now a fat, strong little boy, became a familiar sight in the village. Still too young to be sent out herding calves, Lobengula was able to spend all his time with his foster mother.

  Sara was growing tall. Her face and body – now deeply browned – and her bright blue eyes, contrasted strangely with the rich colour of her skin. Her hair was still very long and fair, but she was no longer so thin and wiry. She was filling out slowly, her legs were sturdier, her hips slightly rounded, and, because she was so gentle and kind, the others called her Little Mother. But although she cared for and played with any child who crossed her path, Lobengula was her chief concern, her only interest. For all the love she would normally have given to her mother and father, her sister and brother, she now lavished on him. He was her child; her plaything; the substitute for her family; and her solid little anchor in a tumultuous world.

  When Sara went with the other young girls to hoe the fields, Lobengula went with her. ‘Come and sit with me,’ she would sometimes call. ‘Come and sit with me under the Moshokaphala tree and let us catch its tears.’ Little drops fell from the clusters of purple flowers on the Moshokaphala tree – fine sprinklings of drops, sliding from the beautiful coloured trusses. ‘Look, the tree is raining,’ Sara would say, and Lobengula would rush, laughing, trying to catch the drops as they fell. At other times she would fashion a span of oxen from the river mud. ‘They are yours, for you are a rich king. Here are your huts,’ and she would pile little stones one on top of the other, ‘and here are your people,’ scratching open a nest of ants. ‘See how they hurry backwards and forwards. They are building for their king, and finding food. Do not stamp on them, or they will rise and bite you.’ And she would pinch his arm and, laughing, run away as he tried to catch her.

  Sara taught her foster child not to touch the scorpions under the stones, and to retreat from snakes and spiders. She taught him which fruits were good to eat and which would make him sick. And at night, when they sat round the fires, and the old women told tales of magic and the spirits of ancestors, Sara whispered little stories of her own to Lobengula. And he would sit enchanted, enormous black eyes never leaving her face, as she told of guns and horses and white rolling wagons; of chairs and tables and quill pens and bonnets.

  ‘Come, Sara,’ the women would sometimes call after the evening meal. ‘Let us dance now! Leave your little black rabbit and let us sing and stamp and clap our hands!’ And Sara would get up and join the women, first putting Lobengula, heavy as he now was, on her back, where she tied him securely inside a skin. She was learning to sway and to chant; most of the songs of the Matabele were repetitive, went on and on, with little tune to them and no more than six words, so they were easy to learn. And Lobengula would fall asleep on her back, and wake up in the morning to find that she had gently put him to sleep on the mat beside hers, and was already up and sweeping the floor.

  ‘She works like an old Matabele woman,’ the others laughed, pointing at her. ‘Our little white bird, you work too hard!’ Sara would smile and continue her job grinding dry tobacco leaves with which to make snuff. Nyumbakazi enjoyed taking snuff, and kept it packed tightly into small horns which she hung round her neck, or stuck into her ear hole.

  After twelve months had passed, the village – with its domed huts nestling inside a high hedge – was flourishing. The rains had come in time, and they were able to harvest good crops of pumpkins and corn and maize. The cattle were fat, and game was plentiful. They were hungry no longer.

  ‘Au! Look how she runs, my young white antelope, my little magogo,’ Nyumbakazi said one day, as she and several other women sat weaving beer strainers from the strong grass that grew so abundantly. ‘Her legs are as long as a giraffe’s.’

  ‘Yes, she will soon be a woman, Nyumbakazi,’ another answered. ‘It is time she set aside her small apron now, and you must give her a proper girl’s cloth to her knees.’ Nyumbakazi nodded. ‘She is tall like a woman but she has not the body of our young girls. See how flat are her nipples, still, and how slender her buttocks. She is like a reed by the river, and although I love her greatly, though my heart is as white as milk when I think of her, yet I do not believe she is a desirable young girl. She will not be looked at by any of our men. A woman must be soft; her br
easts full and ripe; her thighs large and warm.’

  ‘Au! Do you not remember how thin the man Moffat was also?’ the other asked. ‘Perhaps it is the way of the white people.’

  So they dressed Sara in a longer skin apron and hung more beads around her neck and wrists and bracelets round her ankles, but Sara only found these ornaments a nuisance, and she and Lobengula took them off and played with them in the sand. They played in the sand, and worked in the fields, and bathed in the river – two children, one orphaned, one motherless, who grew closer and more dependent on each other every day, little dreaming that Mzilikazi was about to return and that soon their world would, once more, be shattered.

  The Great Bull Elephant was not dead, as so many had come to believe. He and his army had been put to flight by their old enemies, the Makololo, and had fled southwards, finally coming to rest at the Mahrikari Salt Pans, south-east of the Okavango. Little did they know that they were only ten marching days away from the rest of the clan. Nor did Mzilikazi know that there was talk of choosing another king.

  The truth of the matter was that there was a lack of law and order in the kraal. Old uMncumbata, the regent, was inefficient and had been banished. Without their king, Mzilikazi’s wives were growing restless and imprudent, and the young men were beginning to take the law into their own hands.

  ‘Let us crown Kulumane! He is the king’s eldest son and the rightful heir to the throne. And because he is still young, we will put a regent in his place for a while.’

  ‘Never!’ retorted the other indunas. ‘We say our king is still alive! And we shall search for him, the length and breadth of the country, before we will accept a new king.’

  They found Mzilikazi at the Salt Pans. ‘So they planned to put Kulumane on the throne, did they? The dogs! The sons of foxes! They would make my son, that yellow lizard, the king – while I, The Great King, am still alive? Lead me to the people at once! You say certain indunas wanted to put Kulumane on the throne? Then they shall die!’ He screwed up his eyes, banging his fist. ‘I will kill them all! And my son shall be first. You will twist his neck. Snap! Like a chicken. And call the people to come and see that their king, The Great Bull Elephant, is alive!’

  The following day Mzilikazi issued another command which would ensure that he was, once again, the undisputed king of the tribe.

  ‘You have done away with Kulumane,’ he said. ‘Now you must take the other sons too. Ubuhlelo. And Lobengula.’ With all three members of his family directly in line to the throne put out of the way, he would be safe. So Ubuhlelo was put to death. ‘But where was Lobengula?’ the indunas whispered amongst themselves. ‘We saw him only a short while ago.’ Enquiries revealed nothing. The women shook their heads. ‘We do not know where he is. He and his white mother have gone.’

  And where were Sara and Lobengula?

  Life in the kraal had become more and more unpleasant for the two children. Umoaka, mother of Kulumane, was a cruel and jealous woman. In Lobengula, she had, for a long time, seen a future threat to her son, and she mulled over ways of getting rid of them. ‘Scum of the earth!’ she would mutter, her enormous body shaking with anger. ‘Toads! Wretched, yellow spawn of frogs!’ And she would spit at them. ‘The crocodiles will have you! For I, I alone, am the king’s great wife and only my children are royal. Kulumane will be king! A great Black Calf! Eater of the Sun! But you, Lobengula – you and your sick-white playmate – you shall know nothing of it for you will be lying at the bottom of the river!’

  Umoaka did not know that by driving them away, she was actually saving Lobengula from being killed by his father. Her wrath had frightened Sara so much that she had lain awake all night making plans. Pictures of hundreds of men and women who had, for various reasons, been put to death, now flashed before her eyes. The writhing figures with sharp poles stuck up through their bodies, left to the vultures who swooped in before they were dead; the screaming women who, bound with thongs, were tossed into the river like bundles of chaff; others, with lips or ears or hands sliced off. All night she lay and schemed, and very early in the morning, when the blackness of the night turned to grey and the stars paled, and the cattle started their clumping and blowing, she slid out from under her kaross and prepared to leave.

  Taking a large wooden pail, she filled it with corn, a hunk of goat’s meat and stewed beans. Then she woke Lobengula, putting her finger to his lips, wrapping his kaross round his shoulders. Crossing to where Nyumbakazi lay, fast asleep, Sara bent down and kissed the wrinkled forehead. How kind she had been to them! ‘Dear Nyumbakazi, do not think badly of me,’ she whispered. ‘It must be done; we have to go now.’

  Together they walked past the sleeping huts and into the bush.

  The sky was turning from flame to gold, the birds singing shrilly in their hidden nests, the earth already beginning to throb with the approach of another hot day, when they found themselves on the top of a rise overlooking a valley. The valley was spiked with mopani trees and sharp cactuses and ringed by a tumble of granite boulders which rose steadily higher to the peak beyond. Here, high above the valley towered M’lindidzimo – the mountain of Ngwali, the ancient high priest of the Makalanga.

  On the morning that Sara and Lobengula rested under the mopani tree, Ngwali was sitting high above, watching them. His shrewd little eyes missed nothing. He had seen them the instant they emerged from the forest and by the time they lay down under a mopani tree next to the stream to sleep, his plans were already made.

  Ngwali chuckled to himself. Was fortune not playing right into his hands? His ancestors knew that he was eternally resentful of the Matabele invaders; that he was always watchful for ways in which he might rid his country of this conquering tribe – they who had butchered his people and feasted on their corn. Perhaps his chance for revenge lay right down there, in the valley, fast asleep!

  He would, of course, send his women to go and fetch them. Once in his possession, he could put them to good use. Very good use indeed! Ngwali sat outside his cave, thoughtfully drawing pictures in the sand with a mopani twig. Down in the south, near the Zoutpansberg, lived the white people, the Boers. He knew of their leader, the man called Potgieter or Enteleka; and he had heard from his spies that Enteleka still sought the white children. ‘I shall send word to him,’ he muttered. ‘I shall send messages with the Bechuana hunters. They shall tell him that a white girl is being held at the kraal. That she is being treated badly.’ Then, without a doubt, the Boers would come thundering up from the south. There would be a clash, perhaps even a war. ‘And if the power of the Matabele is broken? Au! The country will at last be returned to my people – the Makalanga!’

  Ngwali opened his little leather pouch and threw the contents on the ground before him: the ankle joint of a monkey, the eye of a crocodile, the bladder of a lion, a few shrivelled seedpods and a dead night adder. His beady eyes shone. The signs were good, very good indeed.

  When Sara and Lobengula woke, the sun was already sinking in the west. Sara sat up, rubbing her eyes, not knowing where she was, not knowing who these women were who sat watching her. They spoke, and although the language was strange, there were some words that Sara did understand.

  ‘Our master sends for you,’ they told her.‘He is waiting for you, with a big pot of boiled meat and pumpkin and as much milk as you can drink. Come!’ and they held out their hands. ‘If you stay here the lions will come out of the forest and eat you; and the crocodiles will squirm out of the river and snap their jaws over your heads. Come!’ And Sara and Lobengula followed them up the rocky mountain paths, along the edges of precipices, squeezing through gaps between giant boulders, climbing up and up until, when it was very late and very dark, they came to a village, and to Ngwali – head of the mountain priests and wizards.

  Now Sara felt more at ease. She could not imagine why Ngwali had sent for them, but it was good to be among such friendly people and safe from the wild animals that prowled at night. The two young refugees settled very happily into th
eir new life on the mountain. They were kindly treated and well fed and the eerie fabric of witchcraft and sorcery held endless fascination for them and occupied much of their time.

  Only one member of the Matabele tribe knew of their whereabouts. This was uMncumbata, the old regent who had been driven out because he had been unable to control the indunas and the royal wives during the king’s absence. Now he lived on the fringes of the settlement, and had befriended the priests on the mountain, who threw bones for him, and gave advice in return for a sheep or a beast.

  uMncumbata often visited the children, and he kept their secret. ‘You are safest here,’ he reasoned. ‘They searched for you for many days in the village, and Nyumbakazi wept and wailed for a long time. But no-one was brave enough to tell the king. Mzilikazi thinks that you are dead, Lobengula, and therefore no longer a threat to him.’ The children now felt truly secure and happy in their mountain hide-out with the Makalanga women, under the protection of Ngwali.

  They remained inseparable, this young boy and his devoted guardian. Sara felt responsible for him, like a mother feels responsible for the welfare of her child, and to Lobengula her presence meant security and constant attention. Instead of learning to herd his father’s cattle, join the military and become a blood-thirsty warrior, Lobengula grew up with witchcraft on one hand and the gentleness of the Dutch girl on the other.

  And then one morning in the year l847, while Lobengula was teaching Sara how to skin a buck, while they stood at the top of their mountain with the bloody skin spread-eagled across a rock at their feet, they saw, far below, a stream of men on horseback. Ngwali had sent his message. Enteleka had come.