but which to her seemed merely supercilious. 'When we get to Majuba, Zama will have the hunter's pot going. I hope he has filled it to the brim. I would place money on you in an eating contest with the good colonel.' He sprang up on Drumfire's back. 'First, though, we have something else to do here.'
He set off at a trot in the direction of High Weald, but he circled well clear of the homestead. By now it was after midnight, but still he did not want to chance running into his father or Uncle Dorian. The news of his escapade would have reached their ears almost as soon as he had plucked the girl out of the sea. He had seen many of the family freed slaves and servants among the spectators on the beach. He could not face his father now. We will get no sympathy there, he thought. He will try to force me to turn Louisa over to the colonel. He rode instead to a cluster of huts at the east side of the paddock. He dismounted in a stand of trees and handed Drumfire's reins to Louisa. 'Stay here. I won't be long.'
He approached the largest mud-walled hut in the village carefully and whistled. There was a long pause, then a lantern flared behind the uncured sheepskin that covered the single window in place of a curtain. The reeking fleece was drawn aside, and a dark head poked out suspiciously. 'Who's there?'
'Bakkat, it's me.'
'Somoya!' He came out into the moonlight with a greasy blanket tucked around his waist. He was as tiny as a child, his skin amber in the moonlight. His features were flattened and his eyes had a curious Asiatic slant. He was a Bushman, and he could track a lost beast for fifty leagues over desert and mountain, through blizzard and storm. He smiled up at Jim, and his eyes were almost hidden in a web of wrinkles. 'May the Kulu Kulu smile upon you, Somoya.'
'And on you also, old friend. Call out all the other shepherds. Gather up the herds and drive them over every road. Especially all the paths heading towards the east and north. I want them to chop up the ground until it looks like a ploughed field. Nobody must be able to follow my tracks when I leave here, not even you. Do you understand?'
Bakkat cackled with laughter. 'Oh, j'a, Somoya! I understand very well. We all saw the fat soldier chasing you when you ran off with that pretty little girl. Don't worry! By morning there won't be a single one of your tracks left for him to follow.'
'Good fellow!' Jim clapped him on the back. 'I am off.'
'I know where you are going. You are taking the Robbers' Road?' The Robbers' Road was the legendary escape route out of the colony, travelled only by fugitives and outlaws. 'Nobody knows where it leads, because nobody ever comes back. The spirits of my ancestors whisper to me in the night, and my soul pines for the wild places. Do you have a place for me at your side?'
Jim laughed. 'Follow and be welcome, Bakkat. I know that you'll be able to find me wherever I go. You could follow the tracks of a ghost over the burning rocks of hell. But, first, do what you must do here. Tell my father I am well. Tell my mother I love her,' he said, and ran back to where Louisa and the horses were still waiting.
They went on. The storm had blown itself out, the wind had dropped,
and the moon was low in the west before they reached the foothills. He stopped beside a stream that ran down from the hills. 'We will rest and water the horses,' he told her. He did not offer to help her dismount, but she dropped to the ground as lithely as a cat, and took Trueheart to drink at the pool. She and the mare seemed already to have established an accord. Then she went into the bushes on her own. He wanted to call after her and warn her not to go far, but he held back the words.
The colonel's wine flask was half-empty. Jim smiled as he shook it. Keyser must have been nipping at it since breakfast time yesterday, he thought and went to the pool to dilute what remained with the sweet mountain water. He heard the girl come back through the bushes and, still hidden from him by a pile of tall rocks, go down to the water. There was a splash.
'Damn me if the mad woman is not taking a bath.' He shook his head, and shivered at the thought. There was still snow on the mountains, and the night air was chill. When Louisa returned she sat on one of the rocks at the edge of the pool, not too close to him nor again too far away. Her hair was wet and she combed it out. He recognized the tortoiseshell comb. He went over to her and passed her the wine flask. She paused long enough to drink from it.
'That's good.' She said it like a peace-offering, then went on combing the pale hair that reached almost to her waist. He watched her quietly but she did not look in his direction again.
A fishing owl darted down on the pool on silent wings like a gigantic moth. Hunting only by the last rays of the moon it snatched a small yellow fish from the waters and flew with it to a branch of the dead tree on the far bank. The fish flapped in its talons as the owl tore chunks of meat out of its back.
Louisa looked away. When she spoke again her voice was soft and the faint accent appealing. 'Don't think I'm not grateful for what you have done for me. I know you have risked your life and maybe more than that to help me.'
'Well, you must understand that I keep a menagerie of pets.' He spoke lightly. 'I needed only one more to add to it. A small hedgehog.'
'Perhaps you have the right to call me that,' she said, and sipped from the flask again. 'You know nothing about me. Things have happened to me. Things that you could never understand.'
'I know a little about you. I have seen your courage and your determination. I saw what it was like and how it smelt on board the Meeuw. Perhaps I might understand,' he replied. 'At least, I would try.'
He turned to her, then felt his heart break as he saw the tears running down her cheeks, silver in the moonlight. He wanted to rush to her and
hold her tightly, but he remembered what she had said: 'Never touch me like that again.'
Instead he said, 'Whether you like it or not, I'm your friend. I want to understand.'
She wiped her cheeks with the palm of one small dainty hand, and sat huddled, thin, pale and disconsolate in the cloak.
'There is just one thing I must know,' Jim said. 'I have a cousin called Mansur. He is closer to me than a brother could be. He said that perhaps you are a murderess. That burns my soul. I must know. Are you? Is that why you were on the MeeuwT
She turned slowly towards him and, with both hands, parted the curtain of her damp hair so that he could see her face. 'My father and mother died of the plague. I dug their graves with my own hands. I swear to you, Jim Courtney, on my love for them and on the graves in which they lie, that I am no murderess.'
He heaved a great sigh of relief. 'I believe you. You don't have to tell me anything else.'
She drank again from the flask, then handed it back to him. 'Don't let me have more. It softens my heart when I need to be strong,' she said. They sat on in silence. He was just about to tell her that they must go on deeper into the mountains when she whispered, so quietly that he was not sure that she had spoken, 'There was a man. A rich and powerful man whom I trusted as once I trusted my dead father. He did things to me that he did not want other people to know about.'
'No, Louisa.' He held up his hand to stop her. 'Don't tell me this.'
'I owe you my life and my freedom. You have a right to know.'
'Please stop.' He wanted to jump to his feet and run into the bushes to escape her words. But he could not move. He was held mesmerized by them, as a mouse by the swaying dance of the cobra.
She went on in the same sweet, childlike tones. 'I will not tell you what he did to me. I will never tell anyone that. But I cannot let any man touch me again. When I tried to escape from him, he had his servants hide a packet of jewellery in my room. Then they called the watch to find it. They took me before the magistrate in Amsterdam. My accuser was not even in the court room when I was condemned to be transported for life.' They were both silent for a long time. Then she spoke again. 'Now you know about me, Jim Courtney. Now you know that I am a soiled and discarded plaything. What do you want to do now?'
'I want to kill him,' said Jim at last. 'If ever I meet this man I will kill him.'
'I have spoken honestly to you. Now you must speak honestly to me.
Be sure of what you want. I have told you that I will let no man touch me again. I have told you what I am. Do you want to take me back to Good Hope and hand me over to Colonel Keyser? If you do, I am ready to go back with you.'
He did not want her to see his face. Not since he was a child had anyone seen him weep. He jumped to his feet and went to saddle Trueheart. 'Come, Hedgehog. It's a long ride to Majuba. We have no more time to waste in idle chatter.' She came to him obediently and mounted the horse. He led her into the deep defile in the mountains and up the steep gorge. It grew colder as they climbed, and in the dawn, the sun lit the mountain tops with a weird pink light. Patches of old unmelted snow gleamed among the rocks.
It was late in the morning before they paused on the crest at the limit of the treeline and looked down into a hidden valley. There was a tumbledown building among the rocks of the scree slope. She might not have noticed it, were it not for the thin column of smoke rising from the hole in the tattered thatch roof, and the small herd of mules in the stone-walled kraal.
'Majuba,' he told her, as he reined in, 'the Place of the Doves, and that is Zama.' A tall young man
