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.
Salina, also in her nightdress, stood over them to supervise the last prayer of the day.
"Gentle Jesus meek and mild Cathy was already in her own bed, hair ribboned for the night, writing the day's entry in her diary by the light of the guttering candle made from buffalo fat and cloth wick.
pity my simplicity -" gabbled the twins, at such a speed that it came out as, "Pretty mice, and pretty me!"
Arriving at the "Amen" in a dead heat, the twins leaped into the bed that they shared, pulled the blanket to their chins and watched with fascination as Salina began to brush her hair, one hundred strokes with each hand, so that it rippled and flamed with white fire in the candlelight. Then she came to kiss them, blew out the candle, and the thongs of her bed squeaked from across the small thatched hut as she climbed into it.
Tina?" whispered Victoria.
"Vicky, go to sleep."
"Just one question, please."
"All right then, just one."
"Does God allow a girl to marry her own cousin?"
The silence that followed the question seemed to hum in the darkened bedroom like a copper telegraph wire struck by a sword.
Cathy broke the silence.
"Yes, Vicky," she answered quietly. "God does allow it.
Read the Table of Kindred and Affinity on the last page of your prayer book."
The silence was contemplative now.
Una?"
Uzzie, go to sleep."
"You allowed Vicky to ask a question."
"All right then, just one."
"Does God get cross if you pray for something just for yourself, not for Daddy or Mama or your sisters, but just for you alone?"
"I don't think so," Salina's voice was becoming drowsy.
"He might not give it to you but I don't think He will be cross. Now go to sleep, both of you."
Cathy lay very still, on her back with her hands clenched at her sides, staring at the lighter oblong across the hut where the moon defined the single window.
"Please God," she prayed. "Let him look at me the way he looks at Salina, just once. Please."
"What do you think of Zouga's boy?" Robyn took Clinton's arm as they stood together on the darkened stoep and looked out at the star-pricked black velvet curtain of the African night.
"He's a powerful lad, and I don't mean merely muscle." Clinton took his pipe from between his teeth and peered into the bowl. "His wagon is loaded with cases, long wooden cases from which the markings. have been burned with a hot iron."
"Guns?" Robyn asked.
"I think so."
"there is no law against trading guns north of the Limpopo Robyn reminded him. "And Lobengula needs all the power he can get to defend himself."
"Still, guns! I mean, it does go against the grain." Clinton sucked at his pipe, and each puff of smoke he exhaled was denser and ranker. They were both silent for a while.
"He has a hard and ruthless streak, like his father Robyn judged at last.