She staggered against him and his arms closed about her. For a moment
she was pressed to his chest, could feel the lean, rubbery resilience
of his body and smell the man smell of it. it was a shock for both of
them, this unexpectedly intimate contact and when she broke away her
eyes were wide and grey with fear of the thing she had felt stir within
her.
'I'm sorry,' she whispered. 'That was an accident.' And the wind
caught her hair and streamed it across her face in a dancing, snapping
black tangle.
'We'll up saddle and ride with the daylight that is left, ' Sean
decided. 'We won't be able to move tonight.'
The clouds rolled in on the wind, spreading upon themselves, changing
shape and dropping closer to the earth. Clouds the colour of smoke and
bruises, heavy with the rain they carried.
The night came early, but still the wind roared and buffeted them in
the gloom.
'It will drop in an hour or so, then we'll get the rain. We'll try and
find shelter while there's still light enough to see. ' On the reverse
slope of a kopJe they found an overhang of rock and offloaded the packs
beneath it. While Sean pegged the horses out on their head ropes to
prevent them walking away before the storm, Mbejane cut grass and piled
it into a mattress on the rock floor beneath the overhang.
Huddled in their oilskins they ate biltong and cold mealie bread and
afterwards Mbejane withdrew discreetly to the far end of the shelter
and disappeared under his blankets. He had that animal knack of being
able to sleep instantly and completely even under the most adverse
conditions.
'All right, boy. Get into your blankets.
I
'Can't I just . . . II Dirk began his nightly protest.
'No, YOU can't.' 'I'll sing for you,' Ruth offered.
'What for?' Dirk was puzzled.
'A sleepy-time song-haven't you ever had a lullaby?'
'No.' But Dirk was intrigued. 'What you going to sing?'
'Into your blankets first. ' Sitting beside Sean in the darkness, very
conscious of his bulk and the touch of his shoulder against hers, the
muted roar of the wind as her accompaniment-Ruth sang.
First the old Dutch folksongs,
'Nooi, Nooi- and
'Jannie met die Hoepel been,' then other old favourites like
'Frere Jacques. ' Her voice meant something to each of them.
Mbejane woke to the sound of it and it made him remember the wind on
the hills of Zululand and the singing of the young girls in the fields
at harvest-time. It made him glad he was going home.
To Dirk it was the voice of the mother he had hardly known.
A safe sound-and soon he slept.
'Don't stop,' whispered Sean.
So she sang for him alone. A love-song from two thousand years ago,
filled with all the suffering of her people, but with joy in it also.
The wind died away while she sang and her voice died away with it into
