Echo of an Angry God

by Beverley Harper

  ‘Tell us,’ the King commanded.

  Diogo paused for effect, then went on. ‘It was a dark night, Holy One. The moon was young and not yet risen. We hid in the trees outside the Great Enclosure and waited for all sound to cease.’

  ‘How many of you?’

  ‘My men numbered twenty-five. We brought nearly two hundred Nguni with us as well,’ he added, naming the tribe to which the King himself belonged.

  The King sneered. ‘Then you had as many as lived there.’

  ‘Only to carry the treasure, Holy One. The Nguni did not enter Great Zimbabwe with us.’

  Finally, the King looked impressed.

  ‘The treasure was stored in the Mambo’s tower. We killed the four guards and took everything. My men and I made many trips between Great Zimbabwe and the trees. We were not seen or heard.’ Diogo permitted himself a small smile of self-congratulation. ‘By the time the moon had risen we were on our way.’

  ‘And the battle?’

  ‘Ah, Holy One, what a battle it was. The Rozvi caught up with us four days later as we approached the Zambezi River. By the end of the day, not one Rozvi remained alive. The river ran red with their blood. I lost seven of my men. Of the Nguni, only two dozen were killed.’ Diogo refrained from mentioning that 300 of the Munhu Mutapa’s warriors joined his side of the battle. He was gambling on the fact that news of such an insignificant scrap would not have reached the King’s ears. King Lundu’s words confirmed that it had not.

  ‘That is good. And now you sail for Malindi?’

  ‘In the morning,’ Diogo confirmed. ‘The treasure will remain here until arrangements can be made to transport it to Kilwa. I will let you know when.’

  Their business conducted, the tale told, the two men had little left to discuss. King Lundu left the reception chamber and Diogo went to a guest sleeping room where he would spend the night.

  Three days later, in a ferocious storm which whipped up waterspouts reaching high into the air, Diogo Pegado’s ship sank, drowning all hands, off the rugged Makanjira Point. King Lundu, waiting to hear from him, soon forgot about the treasure (which was meaningless to him in terms of value) as a virulent strain of malaria took hold of his small kingdom, eventually claiming the life of the King and eighty per cent of his people. Those who survived left the small island of Likoma and headed for the mainland, leaving the large fortified building, which had been their home, to the invasion of surrounding bush, ants, the passage of time and erosion. By 1886, nearly 200 years later, when the Anglican Church decided, in their wisdom, to build a cathedral on Likoma, all trace of King Lundu and his people had disappeared. Ironically, St Peter’s Cathedral was erected at Chipyela – the burning place – above the beach where Diogo Pegado witnessed the young warrior’s execution. The aim of the Anglican Church being to bury the evil history of the place with good intentions.

  Ng’ona lived for sixty-three more years. Although the food so obligingly thrown to him on occasion by King Lundu ceased, the great lake abounded in fish. Coinciding with Ng’ona’s death, Likoma Island was once again settled, this time by Nguni fishermen. They nonetheless avoided the cove where the great crocodile had once lived. In 1871, though nowhere near as large, another Ng’ona took up residence. The sheltered cove with reeds covering the bottom, the large, dry cave containing strange golden objects, were very much to his liking.

  TWO

  NORTHERN LAKE NYASA – 1887

  The woman knew she was about to die. She knew too, that long before she was dead, she would have lost her sanity in unspeakable agony.

  The hard, rasping cough of a male leopard as he called for a mate was close. The growling, sawing snarl sliced through the soft velvet warmth of the African night with savage malevolence. However, it was not the big cat that kept the woman, and the man standing next to her, frozen with fear.

  Tightly woven fibrous walls, reinforced with hard-packed river mud, surrounding the Nganga’s enclosure danced in sinister waves in the flickering firelight. Behind the walls, the long, pestle-shaped mapondela pounded its morbid death knell, mocking the woman as it pulverised the poisonous bark from a mwavi tree.

  Fear was a palpable blanket over the bowed heads of Chief Mbeya’s people. Fear of the unknown, of the magic spells of the Nganga, fear that one day they too might stand accused like the man and woman in the centre of the burning place. Fear ruled the Nkonde people and kept them obedient.

  Those who broke the rules, those whose usefulness had ended, had good reason for fear.

  The villagers sat or stood in a tight circle around the accused, leaving a path for the Nganga once he emerged from his hut. The woman tried to still the tremors in her hands. The prospect of death was less terrifying than her superstitious dread of the Nganga. His power was said to be supernatural, his displeasure brought instant and awful reprisal, his appearance, daubed and painted to look fierce, struck terror into every heart, and adornments of teeth and bones, gruesome reminders of past enemies or wrongdoers, rattled on his chest and ankles.

  The pounding behind the wall ceased abruptly. Agonising silence followed. Then the drums began their chilling death message, spreading the woman’s shame from village to village until the whole of central Africa knew that another witch was about to be tested. Although her eyes were lowered, the woman knew the instant the medicine man stepped from his enclosure. The warm night air turned icy cold and goose bumps rose on her flesh and itched at the base of her skull.

  ‘You may look upon my magnificence.’ The Nganga’s voice was reedy with extreme age.

  The woman raised her eyes. A hideous grinning hyena mask covering the medicine man’s face appeared alive in the light of dancing flames. She could see the steely glint of cold appraisal through slits cut for the Nganga’s eyes. The drums reached a crescendo then stopped abruptly, and the only sound left was that of the leopard as he passed in the night. The Nganga squatted on the ground in front of the accused. Monkey tails hanging from copper wire around his waist fanned out around him in a perfect circle, protecting him from evil.

  Opening a bag made from baboon skin, he emptied the powdered mwavi bark onto a banana leaf. Onto this he spat sap from the same tree. While the bark was poisonous, the sap was not, but only the Nganga knew this. Taking the hollowed end of a nyala horn, which was strung around his neck on finely woven fibre, he added a generous proportion of mixed owl and hyena excrement. Using his fingers, the witchdoctor mixed the ingredients into a sticky paste. Then, scooping up the poisonous brew he scraped it into two roughly sculptured containers of mud. His concentration was total as he thinned the paste with water.

  Satisfied that the poison was ready, the medicine man rose and gravely observed the two terrified people in front of him. Then he took the first steps of his ‘smelling out’ dance which would continue until he was foaming at the mouth in an eyes-glazed, body-convulsed trance, at which point he would stretch an accusing finger at one or both of the trembling suspects.

  The dance took an agonising twenty-five minutes. It seemed the Nganga must surely collapse from exhaustion. Finally, with a chilling scream, he pointed a bony finger at the man and then the woman. Both had been ‘smelled out’ and now had to prove their innocence.

  No-one noticed that one of the cups contained a much larger dose of poison than the other. Cunning, as his calling required him to be, the witchdoctor did not want the man to die for, although he had strayed too close to the Nganga’s enclosure yesterday, he was a fine and strong young man with many years of usefulness left. The woman, however, was of no consequence. She had no man to take care of her, her parents were dead and she had no brothers or sisters. Her five small children needed feeding and she and her offspring were a drain on the village. If she had been more agreeable perhaps she could have found a husband but her sharp tongue made her unpopular. Someone had to die; a death kept the villagers obedient. Accusing both victims of witchcraft gave the Nganga a perfect excuse to get rid of the woman and reinforce his authority.

/>   The Nganga’s power was awesome. No-one questioned it. Omens and dreams, rigid rules of behaviour, the witchdoctor reigned supreme. Two river stones in the corner of the woman’s hut were proclaimed proof that she was a witch. That was all it took.

  The poison, if given in large enough quantities, brought about violent vomiting, which was considered a sign of innocence. A smaller amount, however, induced agonising convulsions which inevitably led to death.

  The Nganga handed the woman the smaller amount.

  With trembling hands she put the cup to her lips and swallowed the foul-smelling paste. The drums started up again. No-one moved or spoke. Then the man began to vomit and the woman knew her fate. Someone always had to die. As she was gripped by the first painful cramp and her limbs began to twitch, the villagers pressed closer, raining insults and blows down on her. Her last sight on this earth, just before the agony of her death blotted out all other considerations, was of half-a-dozen warriors running to her hut to kill her children.

  The Nganga’s powers and medicines had been handed down from father to eldest son for countless generations. But while he used tricks and stage-managed most ceremonies, he also possessed the gift of second sight and this, coupled with his special effects and gimmicks, had earned him the fearful respect of everyone in his own and surrounding villages.

  Three days after the ‘smelling out’ ceremony, the awful prediction he had made that night came true.

  Ferig sat in the shade of an enormous sycamore tree with a dozen other young, married women, and kept glancing up from the blanket she was weaving to look with awe, fear and revulsion at the strange looking man who had stormed into the village and demanded to speak with the Chief. She wondered how the witchdoctor could possibly have known.

  ‘I have had a terrible vision,’ he had said, removing his mask and gazing sternly at the villagers clustered around the convulsing woman on the ground.

  Ferig had shuddered. The last time he warned of danger he predicted death by water. Four nights later the river flooded with no warning and twelve people had drowned.

  ‘You have heard of the man with skin so white it burns in the sunlight?’ The Nganga had rattled three sticks in his hand to protect himself and the others from the evils attributed to the white man. ‘One such man is coming here very soon. He will warn of bad things affecting Nkondeland.’

  Chief Mbeya, who stood in as much awe of the witchdoctor as the rest of them, stepped forward. He never made an important decision on behalf of the village without first consulting the Nganga. ‘What will this white man want from us?’

  ‘He will tell us to move to the big village where he lives. He will say he can protect us.’

  There was shuffling and unease among the men. They needed no white man’s protection.

  ‘What am I to tell him?’

  ‘You are Chief. You will tell him that which you know in your heart is right.’ Neatly shedding responsibility, the Nganga knew that if Chief Mbeya made the right decision it would be whispered that the Nganga had known he would. If the wrong decision was taken, the blame would belong to the Chief entirely. Either way, the Nganga’s reputation remained intact. Before the Chief could question this decision, the witchdoctor had dismissed the villagers.

  And now, as the Nganga had said, a white man had come to the village.

  Monteith Fotheringham presented an astonishing spectre to the unsophisticated inhabitants of the isolated Nkonde village. His face, surrounded as it was by a bristling and wild red beard, seemed to have adopted the same colour. His eyes looked like those of a fish which, Ferig had been told, was considered a great delicacy by the Wahenga people who lived on the shores of the great water. The only skin she could see, other than that on his strangely red face, was on his hands. They were the colour and shape of cattle udders and she wondered whether, if squeezed, milk would squirt from them. His body was encased in the skins of an animal unknown to Ferig. That is, she assumed it to be an animal, never having encountered cloth. And what a strange animal it must be, for she had never seen one the colour of fire and milk.

  Ferig herself wore only a tiny apron of bark cloth, as did all the women. The men wore nothing more than copper wire around their waists. She wondered what the white man was hiding to wrap himself from head to toe.

  The Wankonde, those who belonged to the Nkonde tribe, lived in small villages scattered across fertile plains from the top of the great water and extending north, east and west along the soft contours of the southern end of the Rift Valley. Some lived on the shores of Lake Nyasa. Others, like Ferig, lived two days’ walk from the great water.

  Only a handful from Chief Mbeya’s village had ever glimpsed a white man before. The villagers were filled with curiosity but good manners required that he not be approached, stared at, harmed or ridiculed.

  He had brought with him, however, three Nkonde tribesmen from the town of Karonga. Ferig and her friends lured one of them away with the promise of food and bombarded him with questions. He told them that, behind his back, the white man was called ‘thunder and lightning’, an apt name since his voice alternated between a crackle and a rumble. To his face he was called ‘Montisi’ which was as close as they could get to ‘Monteith’.

  He had come to Karonga to build a big house which kept many items of value which could be traded for other items. Men brought him tusks from the elephants they hunted. Ferig could not imagine what they would want in return. She was content. The Wankonde lived almost exclusively on bananas and cattle. The banana fruit was pounded into porridge; the leaves were used for a variety of purposes including thatch, plates, towels or were burned in their cooking fires; the sap was used as soap; and strong fibre was used to weave baskets and blankets.

  The man also told Ferig and the other women that Montisi owned a thunder stick which made such a terrible noise that those who had the stick pointed at them fell down dead, the noise being so loud that it made holes in their bodies. Montisi, however, must have swallowed some medicine to protect him from such a noise for, although others fell, he always remained standing.

  To Ferig, the white man was so utterly and incomprehensibly unlike any human she had seen that she wondered if he was a real person or some strange god from across the great water. Her life was spent in a radius not exceeding one day’s walk and she had never spoken to anyone other than a fellow Nkonde tribesman or woman. This one was so strange that she was both fascinated and repulsed. His appearance, and the rude manner in which he had entered the village, were enough to frighten everyone. His utterings were garbled noises that no-one else could possibly understand. He showed no deference to the Chief and had walked straight past the Nganga shaking his head. In a society where pleasantries were always eagerly exchanged and haste taken as a sign of either fear or guilt, this white man appeared to be in a suspicious rush.

  She peeped up at him again. The isolated villages thrived on the gossip of travelling storytellers, men whose life work was to spread stories of tribal history, news of distant relatives and interesting tidbits collected in their wanderings. The last one to visit her village had told of the coming of a white race. Ferig hadn’t believed him. He had told of how they were supposed to be so clever and have many miracles. Hau! If this man was so clever why then did he have to crane his neck to look up at the Chief. Clever people were leaders and leaders could not lead unless others had to look up to them.

  Only the Nganga was allowed to be small. But even the Nganga would ask, ‘From how far did you see me?’ The only prudent response was, ‘I saw you from very far away.’

  The white man turned abruptly and stomped away from the Chief in the same brusque manner as he arrived, with rapid aggressive steps. She watched him from under her lashes, her fingers busy weaving. As he drew level with the spot where Ferig and the other women sat he slowed and stared at Ferig. She raised her head and looked at him and he appeared to be lost in thought as he looked back. Then, shaking his head, he set off again, saying something in his own
language.

  Ferig, like all the Wankonde, had a high proportion of Egyptian blood in her. Unlike other tribes in Central Africa with their very black skin and short stature, the Wankonde were generally tall, with bronze skin, finely chiselled features and proud bearing. Although she had not understood his words, they frightened Ferig. She’d have been more frightened had she understood.

  Monteith Fotheringham, struck by the beauty of the Wankonde, and especially by the young woman who stared back at him in a manner which was innocent, calm, aloof and apprehensive all at once, had been moved to say, ‘Aye, lassie, you’ll be gracing the court of the Sultan afore this year’s oot, you mark my word.’ Then, as he turned to go he added savagely, ‘If you live.’

  The women had to wait until the men returned from hunting to hear why the white man had come, for the Chief spoke to the women only through their husbands, fathers and brothers. Pambuka, Ferig’s husband of five moons, related the Chief’s words.

  ‘The chief at the village of Mpata has allowed a stranger to build a small city there.’

  Ferig glanced at him. In the flickering light of her cooking fire, his handsome face was serious. ‘Mpata is very far from here.’

  Pambuka nodded slowly. ‘Indeed.’ He adjusted a stick in the fire and grinned cheekily when Ferig readjusted it to her liking. He often teased her because her gentle reprimands delighted him. ‘This man has the name Mlozi. He is a very evil man. He is a friend of the ruga-ruga.’

  Ferig shivered at the mention of the ruga-ruga although she had never seen them herself. Once they had ruled and raided the whole of central Africa. Savage and cruel, without a shred of compassion, they were rumoured to run with the evil spirits and eat the flesh off live captives. Although tales of their deeds circulated, Ferig, like most Wankonde, half believed the ruga-ruga to be myth. ‘This man Mlozi must be a devil who walks the earth.’