The Angels Weep - Smith Wilbur - Страница 79

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"Mama! Mama! Come quickly!" Her voice rang with excitement.

Elizabeth burst in through the door.

"Control yourself, girl." Robyn shook her shoulder, and Elizabeth took a deep breath.

"Old Moses has come up from the village he says that there are soldiers, hundreds of soldiers riding past the church." "Juba, get Bobby's coat." Robyn took her woollen shawl and her cane down from behind the door. Tlizabeth give me the lantern!" Robyn led the family down the driveway under the dark spathodea trees, past the go downs of the hospital, towards the church. They went in a small tight group, with Bobby bundled up in a woollen coat riding on Juba's fat hip, but before they reached the church, there were many other dark figures hurrying along in the darkness around them.

"They are coming out of the hospital." Juba was righteously indignant. "And tomorrow they will all be sick again." "You'll never stop them." Elizabeth sighed with resignation. "Curiosity killed the cat." And then she exclaimed, "There they are! Moses was right just look at them!" The starlight was bright enough to reveal the torrent of dark horsemen pouring down the road from the neck of hills. They rode two abreast and a length between each rank. it was too dark to see their faces under the broad brims of their slouch hats, but a rifle barrel stuck up like an ate user finger behind each man's shoulder, silhouetted against the frosty fields of stars that filled the heavens.

The deep dust of the track muffled the hooves to a soft floury puffing sound, but the saddles squeaked with the rub of dubbined leather and a curb chain tinkled as a horse snorted softly and tossed its head.

Yet the quiet was uncanny for such a multitude. No voice raised above a whisper, no orders to close up, not even the usual low warning, "Ware hole!" of massed horsemen moving in formation across unfamiliar terrain in darkness. The head of the column reached the fork in the road below the church, but took the left hand turning, the old wagon road towards the south.

"Who are they?" Juba asked with a thrill of superstitious awe in her voice. "They look like ghosts." "Those aren't ghosts," Robyn said flatly. "Those are Jameson's tin soldiers, that's his new Rhodesian Horse Regiment." "Why are they taking the old road?" Elizabeth, too, spoke in a whisper, infected by Juba and by the unnatural quiet. "And why are they riding in the dark?" "This stinks of Jameson and his master." Robyn stepped forward to the edge of the road and called loudly, lifting the lantern above her head, "Where are you going?" A low voice from the column answered her. "There and back to see how far it is, missus!" and there were a few low chuckles, but the column flowed on past the church without a check.

In the centre of the column were the transports, seven wagons drawn by mules, for the rinderpest had left no draught-oxen. After the wagons came eight two-wheeled carts with canvas covers over the Maxim machine-guns, and then three light field guns, relics of Jameson's expeditionary force that had captured Bulawayo a few short years ago.

The tail of the column was again made up of mounted men, two abreast.

It took almost twenty minutes for them all to pass the church, and then the silence was complete, with just the taint of dust in the air as a reminder of their going. The patients from the hospital began to slip away from the roadside, back into the darker shadows beneath the spathodea trees, but the little family group stayed on silently, waiting for Robyn to move.

"Mummy, I am cold," Bobby whined at last, and Robyn roused herself.

"I wonder what devilry they are up to now," she murmured, and led them back up the hill towards the homestead. " "The beans will be cold by now," Elizabeth complained, as she hurried back into the kitchen hut while Robyn and Juba climbed up the steps onto the stoep.

Juba let Bobby down from her hip, and he scampered back into the warm lamplight of the- dining-room. Juba was about to follow him, but Robyn stopped her with a hand upon her forearm. The two women stood together, close and secure in the love and companionship they bore each other. They looked out across the valley, in the direction in which the dark and silent horsemen had disappeared.

"How beautiful it is!" Robyn murmured. "I always think of the stars as my friends, they are so constant, so well remembered, and tonight they are so close." She lifted her hand as though to pluck them from the firmament. "There is Orion, and there is the bull.". "And there Manatassi's four sons," Juba said, "the poor murdered babes."

"The same, stars," Robyn hugged Juba closer to her, "the same stars shine upon us all, even though we know them by different names. You call those four white stars Manatassi's Sons but we call them the Cross. The Southern Cross." She felt Juba start and then begin to shiver, and Robyn's voice was instantly concerned.

"What is it, my little Dove?"she asked.

"Bobby was right," whispered Juba. "It is cold, we should go in now." She sat silent during the rest of the meal, but when Elizabeth took Bobby through to his bedroom, she said simply, "Nomusa, I must go back to the village." "Oh Juba, you have only just returned, whatever is the matter?" "I have a feeling, Nomusa, a feeling in my heart that my husband needs me." Then," said Robyn bitterly. "If we could only be shot of all of them life would be so much simpler if we women ran the world." "It is the sign," whispered Tanase, holding her son to her bosom, and the light from the small smoky little fire in the centre of the hut left her eyes in shadow like those of a skull. "It is always the way with the prophecy of the Umlimo, the meaning becomes clear only when the events come to pass." "The wings in the dark noon," Bazo nodded, "and the cattle with their heads twisted to touch their flanks, and now-" "And now the cross has eaten up the hornless cattle, the horsemen have gone south in the night. It is the third, the last sign for which we waited," Tanase exulted softly. "The spirits of our ancestors urge us on. The time of waiting is over." "Little Mother, the spirits have chosen you to make their meaning clear. Without you we would never have known what the white men call those four great stars. Now the spirits have other work for you. You are the one who knows where they are, you know how many are at Khami Mission." Juba looked at her husband, and her lips trembled, her great dark eyes were swimming with tears. Gandang nodded to her to speak.

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