The Shangani Patrol

by John Wilcox

  The biggest crowd of all, of course, was provided in Bulawayo itself, where it seemed that many hundreds of people swarmed out to accompany the party on the last mile or so of the entry into the capital. Here, the escort took its duty very seriously, using spear and shield to keep the crowds away from the wagons as the little procession approached the outlying thorn zariba that enclosed the town. Now, however, there was no praise-singing to precede the meeting with the king, for Lobengula was waiting for them outside his house, sitting under the shade of the great indaba tree, on an ox cart where, Fonthill was later told, he often preferred to sleep. Despite the heat, he was dressed in his European garb, complete with billycock hat, and carrying a short assegai. He descended with great care, for it was clear that his right foot was still swollen, and as his wooden throne was quickly brought from his house, he gestured with a broad grin and his spear for the visitors to sit on the goatskins laid before him.

  No provision for interpretation had been made, so Fonthill nudged Mzingeli to translate as Lobengula began to speak.

  ‘He say,’ began the tracker, ‘that his good friends are welcome once again to his kingdom. He does not care what they bring for it is their good company he wishes.’

  Fonthill, Alice at his side, inclined his head. ‘I too am delighted to see his majesty again and I thank him for his warm welcome.’ He had agonised for days wondering how to address the fact that his cargo was not all that had been promised, and in the end he had decided simply to ignore the matter until it was raised. ‘I bring warm greetings to the king from Mr Rhodes, who apologises for the fact that he could not come himself. This is because he is about to be made prime minister of the Cape Colony, and he was forced to remain in the great city of Cape Town to receive this honour.’

  The king waved his assegai in acceptance. ‘It is understandable,’ translated Mzingeli, perspiration beginning to appear on his brow as he grappled with his unfamiliar and important task. Fonthill waited for Lobengula to make some reference to the cargo, but the king remained silent, beaming at Simon and his wife. It was obviously beneath his dignity to refer in public to the gold, guns and ammunition. Again Fonthill marvelled at the innate good manners of the man.

  Simon cleared his throat, but Alice spoke first. ‘How is his majesty’s foot?’ she enquired, with a sweet smile.

  ‘Ah.’ A comic expression of great suffering came over Lobengula’s face. ‘It is . . . what you say?’ enquired Mzingeli desperately.

  ‘Hurting?’ offered Alice.

  ‘Yes, hurting.’

  ‘Is the king still drinking much champagne and brandy?’

  A frown descended upon the royal countenance, to be replaced by a look of petulant annoyance that in turn gave way to another of his face-splitting grins. ‘Less than before but still too much. Does the Nkosana doctor bring with her the painkiller?’

  Alice inclined her head. ‘As before, I can help a little, but the main cure will come from the king drinking less of the white man’s alcohol and eating less red meat. It is, I fear, the only way.’

  ‘Good. Then the Nkosana perhaps will visit later to put the little spear into bottom . . . ?’

  ‘Of course.’ The king’s relief was clear.

  Fonthill cleared his throat. ‘We have brought with us, your majesty, the . . . er . . . goods that Mr Rhodes promised as his part of the treaty he signed with you—’

  Lobengula interrupted the translation by waving his assegai across his face, as though brushing away impertinent flies. ‘That is good but not of great importance. We can talk of this later. Now we have beer . . .’

  ‘’Ow very, very sensible,’ breathed Jenkins.

  ‘. . . and then, when you have rested from journey, you will eat with us.’ He clapped his hands, and gourds of beer were brought by young Zulu girls, shepherded in by the great bulk of Nini, the king’s sister, who beamed on them all. This time, Fonthill noted with approval, Mzingeli, Ntini and all the boys were served also.

  Small talk ensued for a few minutes as the king enquired about their long journey. Simon had decided that he would make no reference to the two attacks on them by de Sousa - at least not in public - and conversation quickly petered out. Then the king waved his assegai again.

  ‘You go to huts now,’ he said. ‘Then, at sunset, we eat. Good meat,’ he caught Alice’s eye and finished lamely, ‘with many berries. Can Nkosana come early and cure foot?’

  ‘I will come, of course.’

  With that the meeting broke up and the party retreated to their wagons, where Ntini presided over the unloading of the personal possessions, which were taken to the huts that had housed them before. Fonthill was glad to see that the hole cut into the back of his hut had been carefully repaired.

  ‘What about the gold an’ stuff?’ enquired Jenkins.

  ‘Look.’

  Silently, six of the king’s men had appeared and were quietly offloading the cases. ‘He can’t get into them until I unlock them,’ said Fonthill, ‘but it’s clear that he is not so uninterested in them as he made out. At least everything will be under guard overnight and we won’t have to worry about them.’ He turned to Alice. ‘Shall I come with you into the treatment room?’

  ‘No. Witch doctors don’t like to be watched when they’re casting their spells.’

  ‘All right. But take Mzingeli with you.’

  ‘Of course. I shall need him to translate anyway.’

  Alice carefully unpacked her medicine bag and checked its contents. ‘Right, Mzingeli. Let’s go.’

  This time, however, they were forced to wait outside the king’s house by a very nervous servant as loud voices came from within. Mzingeli frowned. ‘King angry with someone,’ he whispered. ‘Man inside steal royal cattle, I think. Ah. Yes. Man is to have hand cut off and he thrown to crocodiles in river.’

  ‘Oh my God.’ Alice blanched. ‘How disgusting. He can’t do that.’

  The tracker shrugged. ‘It is the way here. He not always cheerful man. He very cruel.’

  Alice took a deep breath. ‘Then he can cure his own blasted gout.’

  ‘No, no, Nkosana. Don’t make him more angry. We all in his power here. He . . . er . . . value you. Perhaps if you make him angry, we all die.’

  They were forced to remain silent, until a scream came from within. At that, Alice thrust her way past the servant and entered the smoke-filled interior. The sight that met their eyes was repellent. Lobengula had removed his European clothes and was standing, wearing just a loincloth. The black folds of his skin were glistening in the firelight and his eyes were aflame. Kneeling in front of him, writhing in agony, was a native, whose right hand had been hacked away by an axe. Blood was spurting from the stump.

  As Alice watched, he was dragged to his feet by two men and hauled towards the door, presumably on his way to the river. She barred the way.

  ‘Put that man down,’ she cried, pointing to the ground. A silence fell on the room, broken only by the crackling of the fire. The two men stood, gripping the victim, who had now slumped into unconsciousness. Their jaws had dropped and their eyes, widened in surprise, were white spheres in the half-light. They turned in consternation, looking for direction from the king, but Lobengula stood immobile, frozen by surprise.

  Alice turned. ‘Mzingeli, bring my bag. Quickly now, or this man will bleed to death.’

  The tracker shook his head. ‘No, Nkosana. No interfere. They kill us.’

  ‘Do as I say. Here, yes. Good, thank you. Now, hold the man’s arm up. Quickly.’ She unclipped her bag and fumbled inside. ‘Higher than that. I don’t want the bag filled with blood. That’s better.’

  Kneeling and working quickly, she produced a narrow strip of bandage, which she folded lengthways and wrapped around the stricken man’s arm above the elbow, knotting it loosely. Then she looked around, plucked a knife from the girdle of one of the two executioners, thrust its handle into a fold of the bandage and twisted it to act as a tourniquet. ‘Hold this, Mzingeli,’ she said.
‘Keep it tight until the bleeding stops, then, when it does stop, loosen it slightly, and tighten it again. Now . . .’

  Alice rummaged in her bag once again and produced a large pad of cotton wool, which she screwed tightly, wrapped in gauze and drenched in antiseptic from a bottle. Perspiration was now pouring from her brow. Wiping it away with the back of her hand, she pressed the pad on to the bloody stump and looked around in some desperation. Her eye fell on the nearest of the executioners.

  ‘You,’ she cried. ‘Yes, dammit, you. Come here.’

  Uncomprehending and fearful, the man remained unmoving. Alice reached across and pulled him towards her roughly by his forearm. ‘Here. Hold this. This, you bloody fool. Look.’ She gently pressed her hand on to the pad. ‘Hold it like this. Yes, well done, you great barbarian. Hold it still while I bandage.’

  Kneeling awkwardly, Alice wound a bandage around the thief’s forearm and then crossed it several times over the pad to hold it in place on the stump, before doubling it back to the forearm, cutting it off with her scissors, slicing the cotton into two strips and firmly knotting the two together to hold the bandage in place. She looked up and blew out her cheeks. ‘Keep the tourniquet tight for the moment,’ she ordered the tracker.

  Then she caught the eye of the king.

  There was no sign now of the grinning, genial monarch. Lobengula’s face was contorted with rage. The King of the Matabele had never in all his life had his way thwarted when ordering an execution - and certainly not by a woman, whatever her colour. He opened his mouth to speak - or scream - but Alice interrupted him.

  ‘Your majesty,’ she said in a loud but precise tone that seemed to cut through the hot, smoky atmosphere like a jet of cold water, ‘this man has suffered enough for his crime.’ She turned to the kneeling Mzingeli. ‘Go on. Interpret.’

  The tracker did so, in a low, hesitant voice. ‘I have tried to staunch the bleeding,’ Alice continued, ‘but I am not sure I have succeeded. The man may well die during the night. So it will certainly not be necessary to feed him to the crocodiles. If you are a wise and tolerant ruler, as I am sure you are, the compassionate thing to do would be to leave him to die in his bed, with his family at his side. By severing his hand, you have already punished him for his crime. I am sure you agree.’ She summoned up a smile.

  It was clear, however, that the king did not agree. He gave a shouted order and the victim, now regaining consciousness, was roughly seized again by his captors, so that Mzingeli was forced to remove the knife from the tourniquet loop.

  Alice took a deep breath. ‘Ah, I see that your majesty has lost respect for my healing powers. In that case, of course, I can no longer treat your painful foot. I wish you good evening.’

  As Mzingeli translated, Alice bent down and slowly began repacking her medical bag. Then she stood, and with a deferential nod, turned and began making her way to the door.

  A shout from the king halted her. ‘Why you interfere with our customs and judgement?’ he demanded. ‘Do I do this with Queen Victoria in your country?’

  There was a logic to the question that confounded Alice for a moment. ‘Ah, but Queen Victoria would never give two punishments to one man for the same crime,’ she said. ‘The loss of the hand would be considered sufficient in any civilised country.’ The criticism implied by the use of the word ‘civilised’ put her on even more dangerous ground, she realised, but she was determined to hold her position.

  Mzingeli translated, though unhappily. ‘Careful, Nkosana, please,’ he pleaded. But the king was speaking again. This time he was addressing the inDunas, wives and others crowded into the room. The tracker continued: ‘He say your words have wisdom and ask why no adviser said same to him in past. He say he cannot do all thinking himself. InDunas should advise like you. You clever woman. You heal and you speak well. Man shall go to his family.’

  Alice felt relief flood over her. ‘The king is gracious, wise and compassionate,’ she said. ‘If he will allow me to finish my work with this man, I will attend to his majesty’s foot.’

  Lobengula nodded, a touch petulantly, and Alice knelt again at the thief ’s side. The stump was still bleeding, of course, but less so. She applied a second pad, bound it more tightly, and retied the tourniquet, less tightly. Then she selected a white cotton sling from her bag and arranged it around the man’s neck, so that the arm was held pointing upwards, close to the chest. Finally she nodded. ‘Take him,’ she said.

  The king gestured with his assegai, and while the mutilated man was helped to his feet and escorted from the room, Lobengula lowered himself on to his couch. Alice asked for water to wash, and a bowl was brought. Then she inspected the royal foot. It was swollen, of course, and still discoloured, but not as enlarged as when last she had seen it. Perhaps the king was, indeed, reducing his indulgences. Certainly the pile of bottles had disappeared.

  Alice returned to her bag. In Cape Town she had resorted to a pharmacy, and now she laid out on the beaten earth the fruits of her visit: a box of Blair’s Gout Pills, ‘The Great English Remedy’, and a bottle of Clarke’s World Famed Blood Mixture. She had been assured by a doctor she had consulted in the Cape that these, coupled with a restrained and balanced diet, would reduce the symptoms of the affliction and indeed help to remove it altogether. She was anxious to lessen the king’s reliance on her injections of morphine, for she wished to keep the drug for more serious emergencies.

  She doled out a week’s supply of the pills and explained that one should be taken every day with water, supplemented by a teaspoonful of the Blood Mixture. Then she injected the king, as before, with morphine, this time reducing the dose.

  Immediately the king’s good humour was restored, although it was unclear whether this was because the drugs took immediate effect - which was unlikely - or because he had managed, narrowly, to keep face over the sentencing of the thief. The great beam came back.

  ‘How long you stay this time?’ he asked.

  ‘I am not sure,’ replied Alice, thinking quickly. ‘I know that my husband is anxious to seek the king’s agreement to a question he will put to your majesty, but certainly we are not anxious to leave Bulawayo. In due course, however, I understand that we intend to explore to the east, towards the Indian Ocean coast.’

  ‘Oh! Very difficult country that way. Very dangerous. Why you go?’

  ‘Er . . . I understand that Mr Rhodes is anxious to find a route to the coast, either by river or by land.’

  ‘Why he want that?’

  ‘Your majesty must ask my husband. I do not know.’

  ‘Ah. Rhodes always want something.’

  ‘Um . . . yes.’ She smiled, packed her bag, bowed and left, Mzingeli in tow.

  The two walked together in silence back to the huts until, nearly there, Mzingeli spoke. ‘You very brave woman,’ he said. ‘Very fine.’

  Alice gave the tracker a sad smile. ‘Thank you. The trouble is that I very much doubt whether it was worthwhile, for I am sure that the man will die, probably of shock or blood poisoning. Still, better he dies in bed than being dragged under by some foul-smelling crocodile.’ And she gave an involuntary shudder.

  Alice decided not to tell Simon of her intervention, and they prepared for their dinner with the king in companionable silence - broken, inevitably, by the arrival of Jenkins, who still perforce shared their hut.

  ‘Been to Mr Fairbairn’s,’ confided the Welshman, ‘just to see if ’e’d ’eard anythin’ about the Portuguese bloke, look you.’ The strong smell of whisky he exuded gave the lie to that, but apart from exchanging glances, neither Simon nor Alice decided to issue a rebuke.

  ‘And what did he say?’ asked Fonthill.

  Jenkins gave a chortle. ‘I got Gouela all right. In the shoulder. ’E’s walkin’ about with ’is arm in a sling. An ’untin’ accident, ’e’s tellin’ everybody.’

  Simon nodded. ‘Well,’ he reflected, squatting on a stool and pulling his head through his best shirt, ‘if there was any doubt abou
t who was behind that attack, that settles it.’

  ‘Do you intend to tell the king?’ asked Alice.

  ‘I think not. However . . .’

  ‘Yes?’

  Fonthill grinned. ‘If Lobengula does make a fuss about being short-changed with the number of guns I have brought, I would be sorely tempted to say that old Gouela took half of them when he attacked us.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t think . . .’

  ‘No, neither do I. It would be wrong to lie about it, and anyway, I could never prove it. So I will just keep quiet and see how things develop.’

  Alice sat for a moment in silence, and then decided it would be wise to tell Simon about her intervention after the mutilation, and of her brief conversation with the king following her treatment of his foot. Jenkins and her husband listened with rapt attention as she unfolded her brief tale, and at its end, Fonthill shook his head slowly.