Men of Men - Smith Wilbur (книги бесплатно без txt) 📗
She had firmly embraced the beliefs of lean-Jacques Rousseau and had added her own refinements to them. Her round condemnation of all settlers, hunters, prospectors and traders, and of their treatment of the noble savages, had been too salty for her European readers.
Indeed, scandal and contention seemed to follow Robyn Codrington as vultures and jackals follow the lion, and at each new provocation all her previous adventures would be recalled: What decent female missionary would provoke men sufficiently to make them fight a bloody duel over her?
Robyn Ballantyne had.
What God-fearing lady would sail aboard a notorious slaver, unchaperoned and with only slavers for company?
Robyn Ballantyne had.
What lady would choose for husband a man who had been court-martialled, stripped of his naval rank and imprisoned for piracy and dereliction of duty? Robyn Codrington had.
What loyal subject of the Queen would hail the terrible reversal of British arms at Isandhlwana, the bloody death of hundreds of Englishmen at the hands of the savage Zulus, as a judgement of God, Robyn Codrington had, in a letter to the Evening Standard.
Who, other than Robyn Codrington, would write to Lord Kimberley demanding that half the profits of the diamond fields that bore his name should go to the Griqua captain, Nicholaas Waterboer?
Only Robyn Codrington would demand of Paulus Kruger, the newly-elected President of the little Transvaal Republic, that he return to Lobengula, King of the Matabele, the land below the Cashan mountains from which the Boer commandos had driven Mzilikazi, his father.
She spared no one. Nothing was sacred to her except her God, whom she treated rather like a senior partner in the business of running Africa.
Her enemies, and they were legion, hated her fiercely, and her friends loved her with equal passion. It was impossible to be unmoved by her, and Ralph found himself fascinated as she sat beside him on the church pew and subjected him to an exhaustive catechism that covered every aspect of his life and that of the family.
"You have a brother," she seemed to know it all.
"Jordan? That is his name, isn't it? Tell me about him."
It was a comnand.
"Oh, Jordie is everybody's favourite; everybody loves him."
Ralph had never met anybody like her. He doubted he could ever bring himself to like her, she was far too prickly. That was the exact word to describe her, but he would never doubt her strength and her determination.
Clinton Codrington came back into the church as the light outside was mellowing into late afternoon.
"My dear, you really must let the poor fellow go now."
He turned to Ralph. "Your wagon has come up. I showed your driver where to outspan. He seems a first-rate chap, I must say."
"You will sleep in the guest house," Robyn announced as she stood.
"Cathy has taken your soiled clothes from the wagon, and she has washed and ironed them," Clinton went on.
"You will want to put on a fresh shirt before Evensong," Robyn told him. "We shall not begin the service until you return."
He had liked it better on the open road, Ralph thought sourly; then he had made his own decisions as to when he made his ablutions, as to how he dressed and where he spent his evenings, but he went to change his shirt as he was bidden.
The distaff side of the Codrington family filled the front pew. Clinton Codrington faced them from the pulpit. Ralph was between the twins; there had been a brief but ferocious competition between Victoria and Elizabeth to decide who should sit closest to him.
Apart from the family, there was nobody else in the church, and Victoria saw his glance and explained to Ralph in a penetrating whisper, "King Ben won't let any of his people come to our church."
"King Lobengula," Salina corrected her sweetly, "not King Ben."
Despite the full attendance, Clinton delayed the commencement of the evening service, finding and losing his place in the Book of Common Prayer half a dozen times and glancing repeatedly towards the rear of the tiny church.
From this quarter there was a sudden commotion. A "iretinue of Matabele women had arrived outside church. Clearly they were servants, house slaves and the ladies-in-waiting to the imposing female figure in their midst. She dismissed them with a royal gesture and came in through the doors of the church. Every one of the Codringtons turned their heads and their faces lit with pleasure.
The way in which this matron paced majestically down the aisle left not a doubt as to her high breeding and her place in the aristocracy of Matabeleland. She wore bangles and bracelets of beaten red copper, strings of highly prized sam-sarn beads that only a chief would afford. Her cloak was of beautifully tanned leather, ornamented with feathers of the blue jay and worked with designs of chipped ostrich shell.
"i see you, Nomusa," she declared.
Her huge naked breasts shone with an ointment of fat and red clay; they pushed out ponderously from under her tanned cloak and dangled weightily to the level of her navel.
Her arms were thick as a grown man's thigh, her thighs as thick as his waist. There were rolls of fat around her belly, and her face was a black full moon, the glossy skin stretched tightly over her abundant flesh.
Her merry eyes sparkled from between creases of fat, and her teeth flashed like the sunlit surface of a lake as she smiled. All this size was evidence to the world of her station, of her amazing beauty, of her fecundity. It was also unassailable proof of the high regard of her husband, of his prosperity and importance in the councils of Matabeleland.
"I see you, Girlchild of Mercy," she smiled at Robyn.
"I see you, Juba, the little dove." Robyn answered her.
"I am not a Christian," Juba intoned. "Let no evil one bear false tidings to Lobengula, the Black and Mighty Elephant."
"If you say so, Juba," Robyn answered primly, and Juba pinioned her in a vast embrace while at the same time she called to Clinton in the pulpit.
"I see you also, Hlopi. I see you, White Head! But do not be deceived by my presence here, I am not a Christian." She drew an elephantine breath and went on, "I come merely to greet old friends, not to sing hymns and worship your God. Also I warn you, fflopi, that if you read the story tonight of a man called the Rock who denied his God three times before the call of the cock, I shall be displeased."
"I shall not read that story," Clinton answered. "For by now you should know it by heart."
"Very well, Hlopi, then let the singing begin." And led by Juba in a startlingly clear and beautiful soprano, the entire Codrington family rollicked into the first verse of "Onward Christian Soldiers", which Robyn had translated into the Matabele vernacular.
After the service Juba bore down on Ralph.
"You are Henshaw?" she demanded.
"Nkosikazi!" Ralph agreed, and Juba inclined her head to acknowledge the correct style of address to the senior wife of a great chief that Ralph had employed.
"Then you are the one whom Bazo, my first-born son, calls brother," Juba said. "You are very skinny and very white, Little Hawk, but if you are Bazo's brother, then you are my son."
"You do me great honour, Umame!" Ralph said, and Juba took him in those mammoth arms. She smelled of clarified fat, and ochre and wood-smoke, but the embrace was strangely comforting, not at all unlike the feeling, only half remembered, that he had once experienced in Aletta's arms.
The twins knelt side-by-side at the low truckle cot, both in long nightdresses, their hands clasped before their eyes which were so tightly closed that they seemed to be in pain.
