at least thirty years before. Even some Of the Matabele Indunas carried muskets, although they always handed these to a servant to carry when there was serious fighting in the offing. These people had built kraals, such as we build for our cattle, but these were filled with people, a great multitude of people and with them we were bound with the insimbi, the links of iron. ' She rubbed her wrists instinctively at the memory, and the callouses raised by the slave cuffs still blemished the skin of her forearms. Each day that we stayed at this place in the mountains, more people came. Sometimes only as many as the fingers on both your hands, on other days there were great numbers so we could hear their lamentations at a distance. And always there were warriors guarding them. Then before the sun one morning, at the time of the horns, Robyn recalled the expression for the time of dawning when the horns of the cattle first show against the morning sky, 'they led us from the kraals, wearing the insimbi, and we formed a great snake of people so long that the head was out of sight ahead of me in the forest while the tail was still up in the clouds of the mountains when we came down the Hyena RoadThe Hyena Road, Ndlele umfisi. ' It was the first time that Robyn had heard the name spoken. It conjured up an image of a dark trail through the forests, beaten by tens of thousands of bare feet, with the loathsome eaters of dead flesh slinking along beside it, chuckling and shrieking their inane chorus. Those that died, and those that fell and could not rise again were released from their chains and dragged to one side. The fisi have grown so bold along the road, that they rushed out of the bushes and devoured the bodies while we passed in full sight. It was worst when the body still lived.'
Juba broke off and stared unseeingly at the bulkhead across the cabin. Slowly her eyes filled with tears, and Robyn took her hand and held it in her lap. I know not how long we followed the Hyena Road, ' Juba went on, 'for each day became as the one before it, and as the one that followed it, until at last we came to the sea.'
Afterwards Zouga and Robyn discussed the girl's story. She must have gone through the kingdom of Monomatapa, and yet she says there were no towns nor signs of occupation. 'The slavers might have avoided contact with Monomatapa's people. 'I wish she had seen and remembered more. 'She was in a slave caravan, Robyn pointed out. 'Survival was her only concern. 'If only these damned people could even read a map. 'It's a different culture, Zouga, and he saw the spark in her eye, and sensed the drift of the conversation and turned it aside swiftly. Perhaps the legend of Monomatapa. is only a myth, perhaps there are no gold mines. 'The important thing about Juba's story is that the Matabele are dealing in slaves, they have never done so before. 'Nonsense! ' grunted Zouga. 'They are the greatest predators since Genghis Khan! They and all the Zulu splinter tribes, the Shangaan, the Angoni and the Matabele. War is their way of life, and plunder is their main crop. Their whole nation was built on a system of slave-taking. 'But they have never sold them before, said Robyn mildly. 'At least as far as we know from all that grandfather and Harris and the others have written. 'The Matabele never found a market before, Zouga replied reasonably. 'Now they have at last made contact with the slavernasters, and found an opening to the coast. That was all it lacked before. 'We must witness this, Zouga, ' Robyn spoke with quiet determination. 'We have to bear witness to this terrible crime against humanity and carry word back to London. 'If only the child had seen evidence of the Monomatapa, or the gold mines, ' muttered Zouga. 'You must as her if there were elephant. ' He pored over the Harkness map, lamenting the blank spaces. 'I cannot believe that it does not exist. There is too much evidence. ' Zouga looked up at his sister. 'One other thing, I seem to have forgotten almost every word of the language that mother taught us, except some of the nursery rhymes and lullabies. Munya, mabili zinthatu, Yolala umdade wethu, ' he recited, and then chuckled and shook his head. 'I shall have to study it again, you and Juba will have to help me.'
The Zambezi comes to the sea through a delta of vast swampland, and a hundred confused shallow channels spread out for thirty miles down the low featureless coastline.
Floating islands of papyrus grass break free from the main pastures which blanket the waters of the delta and are carried out to sea on the dirty brown water. Some of these islands are many acres in extent and the roots of the plants so entangled that they can support the weight of a heavy animal. On occasions small herds of buffalo are trapped and carried twenty miles out to sea before the action of the waves smashes up the islands and plunges the great bovine animals into the water, prey for the big sharks which cruise the tainted estuary waters for just such a prize.
The muddy smell of the swamps carries far from the land when the wind is right, and the same wind carries strange insects with it. There is a tiny spider no bigger than the head of a wax Vesta which lives in the papyrus banks of the delta. it spins a gossamer web on which it launches itself into the breeze in such numbers that the gossamer fills the sky in clouds, like the smoke from a raging bushfire, rising many hundreds of feet and eddying and swirling in misty columns that are touched by the sunset into shades of pink and lovely pale mauve.
The river pours a muddy brown effluent into the sea, One, two, three, Go to sleep my little sister, silt enriched with the bodies of drowned animals and birds, and the huge Zambezi crocodiles join the shark packs at the feast.
Black joke found the first of these hideous creatures ten miles from land, wallowing in the low swells like a log, the rough scales glittering wetly in the sunlight until the gunboat approached too closely and the reptile dived with a lash and swirl of its powerful ridged tail.
Black joke steamed obliquely across the multiple mouths of the river, none of which offered passage for a vessel of her size. She was headed further north for the Congone channel which was the only passage upriver to the town of Quelimane.
Clinton Codrington planned to enter it the following morning, after having lain hove-to during the night off the mouth. Robyn knew that she must remove the stitches from the wound under his armpit, though she would have liked to leave them a few days longer. They must come out before she left the gunboat at Quelimane.
She decided to use the same opportunity to give him the answer for which he had waited so patiently. She knew it was going to be painful for him to hear that she would not marry him, and she felt guilty that she had so encouraged him. it was alien to her nature to inflict suffering on another, and she would try to tell him as gently as possible.
She ordered him to her cabin for the removal of the horsehair stitches, seating him on the narrow bunk naked to the waist, with his arm raised. She was delighted with the way the wound had healed, and proud of the neatness of her work. She cooed over each knot as she snipped it with the pointed scissors, then seized it with the forceps and gently tugged and worried it free of his flesh. The stitches left twin punctures, one on each side of the raised purple welt of the scar and they were clean and dry. Only one of them leaked a single drop of blood which she swabbed away gently.
Robyn was training Juba as her assistant, teaching her to hold the tray of instruments, and receive the discarded and soiled dressings or instruments. Now she stood back and appraised the healed wound, without looking at Juba. You may go now, she said quietly. 'I will call you when I need you.'
Juba smiled like a conspirator, and murmured, 'He is truly beautiful, so white and smooth, and Robyn blushed pinkly, for that was exactly what she had been thinking. Clinton's body, unlike that of Mungo St. John, was hairless as a girl's but finely muscled, and the skin had an almost marble sheen to it. His eyes are like two moons when he looks at you, Nomusa, Juba went on with relish, and Robyn tried to frown at her but her lips kept puckering into a smile.
Go swiftly, she snapped, and Juba giggled. There is a time to be alone, and she rolled her eyes lewdly. 'I shall guard the door, and hardly listen at all, Nomusa. ' Robyn found it impossible to be angry when the child used that name, for it meant 'the daughter of mercy', and Robyn found it highly acceptable. She would have had difficulty
