'All we have to do is get Lobengula to accept them.'
'That, Papa, is your job. You are mister Rhodes' agent.'
Yet three weeks later the wagons still stood outside Lobengula's kraal, their loads roped down under the tarpaulins while Zouga waited each day from early morning until dusk in front of the king's great hut.
'The king is sick,' they said.
'The king is with his wives.'
'Perhaps the king will come tomorrow.'
'Who knows when the king will tire of his wives,' they said, and at last even Zouga, who knew and understood the ways of Africa, became angry.
'Tell the king that Bakela, the Fist, rides now to Lodzi to tell him that the king spurns his gifts,' he ordered Gandang, who had come to make the day's excuses, and Zouga called to Jan Cheroot to saddle the horses.
'The king has not given you the road.' Gandang was shocked and perturbed.
'Then tell Lobengula that his impis can kill the emissary of Lodzi on the road, but it will not take long for the word to be carried to Lodzi. Lodzi sits even now at the great kraal of the queen across the water, basking in her favour.'
The king's messengers caught up with Zouga before he reached Khami Mission, for his pace was deliberately leisurely.
'The king bids Bakela return at once, he will speak with him at the moment of his return.'
'Tell Lobengula that Bakela sleeps tonight at Khami Mission and perhaps the night after, for who knows when he will see fit to talk with the king again.'
Somebody at Khami must have put a spy-glass on the dust raised by Zouga's horses, for when they were still a mile from the hills, a rider came out to meet them at full gallop, a slim figure with long dark plaits streaming behind her lovely head.
When they met, Zouga jumped down from his saddle and lifted her from hers.
'Louise,' he whispered into her smiling mouth. 'You will never know how slowly the days pass when I am away from you.'
'It's a cross you make us both carry,' she told him. 'I am fully recovered now, thanks to Robyn, and still you make me loiter and pine at Khami. Oh, Zouga, will you not let me join you at Gubulawayo?'
'That I will, my dear, just as soon as we have a roof on the cottage, and a ring on your finger.'
,'You are always so proper.' She pulled a face at him.
'Who would ever know?'
'i would,' he said, and kissed her again, before he lifted her back into the saddle of the bay Arab mare which had been his betrothal gift to her.
They rode with their knees touching and their fingers linked, while Jan Cheroot trailed them discreetly out of earshot.
'We shall have only days longer to wait,' Zouga assured her. 'I have forced Lobengula's hand. This matter of the rifles will be settled soon and then you can choose where you will make me the happiest man on earth, the cathedral at Cape Town perhaps?'
'Darling Zouga, your family at Khami has been so kind to me The girls have become like my own sisters, and Robyn lavished care upon me when I was so ill, so burned and desiccated by the sun.'
'Why not?' Zouga agreed. 'I'm sure that Clinton will agree to say the words.'
'He has already, but there is more to it. The wedding is all planned, and it is to be a double wedding.'
'A double wedding, who are the others?'
'You would never guess, not in a thousand years.'
They looked more like brothers than father and son, as they stood before the carved altar in the little whitewashed church at Khami.
Zouga wore his full dress uniform, and the scarlet cket, tailored twenty years before, still fitted him to perfection The gold lace had been renewed to impress Lobengula and his indunas, and now it sparkled bright and untarnished, even in the cool gloom of the church.
Ralph was dressed in expensive broadcloth with a high stock and cravat of watered grey silk that on this hot June day brought beads of sweat to his forehead. His thick dark hair was dressed with pomade to a glossy shine, and his magnificent moustache, twirled with beeswax, pricked out in two stiff points.
Both of them were rigid with expectation, staring fixedly at the altar candles which Clinton had hoarded for such an occasion, and lit only minutes before.
Behind them one of the twins fidgeted with excited anticipation, and Salina pumped up the little organ and launched into 'Here comes the Bride', while Ralph grinned with bravado and, out of the side of his mouth, muttered to his father, 'Well, here we go then, Papa. Fix bayonets and prepare to receive cavalry!'
They turned with parade ground precision to face the church door, just as the brides stepped through it.
Cathy wore the mail-order dress which Ralph had brought up from Kimberley, while Robyn had lifted her own wedding dress from its resting place in the leatherbound trunk and they had taken in the waist and let down the hem to fit Louise. The delicate lace had turned to the colour of old ivory, and she carried a bouquet of Clinton's yellow roses.
Afterwards they all straggled across the yard. The brides tottered on their high heels and tripped on their
