"I wish to do so immediately." There were three weird crones squatting outside the door of the private, ward on the top floor in the south wing of the hospital. They were dressed in the dried skins of wild cat and jackal and python, and hung about the neck and waist with bottles and gourds and stoppered buckhoms, with dried goat-bladders and bone rattles, with phials and the leather bags that contained their divining bones.
"These are the old woman's followers," Leila St. John explained, "they will not leave her." "They will," said Tungata softly, "when I decide that they will One of them hopped towards him, whining and snivelling, reaching out to touch his leg with filth-encrusted fingers, and Tungata spurned her aside with his foot, and opened the door to the private ward. He went in, and Leila followed him and closed the door behind them. It was a small room with bare tiled floor and the walls were painted with a white gloss paint. There was a bedside locker with a stainlm-steel tiny of medicines and instruments upon it. The bed was on castors with an adjustable handle and screw at the foot. The head of the bed-frame was raised and the frail figure under the single sheet seemed no larger than a child. There was the glass bowl of a drip suspended above the bed, and a transparent plastic tube snaked down from it.
The Umlimo was asleep. Her un pigmented skin was a dusty pinkish grey, crusted with dark scabs that extended up over the pale bald scalp. The skin that covered her skull was so thin and fragile that the bone seemed to shine through it like a water-worn pebble beneath the surface of a mountain stream, but from her brow down to the edge of the white sheet beneath her chin, the skin was impossibly wrinkled and folded, like that of some prehistoric relic from the age of the great reptiles. Her mouth was open, the scabbed lips trembled with each breath, and there was a single yellow worn tooth left in the desiccated grey gums. She opened her eyes. They were pink as those of a white rabbit, sunk deeply in folds of grey skin, swimming in their own gummy mucus.
"Greetings, old Mother." Leila went to her and touched the age-ravaged cheek. "I have a visitor for you," she said in perfect Sindebele.
The old woman made a small keening sound in her throat, and she began to shake, her entire body taken by convulsions, as she stared at Tungata.
"Calm yourself, old Mother." Leila was concerned. "He will not harm you." The old woman lifted one arm from under the sheet. it was skeletal, the elbow-joint enlarged "and distorted by arthritic processes, the hand was a claw, with lumpy knuckles and twisted fingers. She pointed them at Tungata.
"Son of kings," she wailed her voice surprisingly clear and strong, "father of kings. king that will be, when the falcons return.
Bayete, he that will be king, Bayete!" It was a royal salute, and Tungata went rigid with shock. His own skin-tone changed to dark grey, and little blisters of sweat burst out upon his brow. Leila St. John fell back until she was against the wall. She stared at the frail old woman in the high steel bed. Spittle frothed on the thin scabbed lips, and the pink eyes rolled back into the ancient skull, yet the wailing voice rose higher.
"The falcons have flown afar. There will be no peace in the kingdoms of the Mambos or the Monomatopas until they return. He who brings the stone falcons back to roost shall rule the kingdoms." Her voice rose to a shriek. "Bayete, Nkosi nkulu. Hail, Mambo. Live for ever, Monomatopa." The Umlimo greeted Tungata with all the titles of the ancient rulers, and then collapsed against the soft white pillows.
Leila hurried back to her side, and placed her fingers over the sticklike wrist.
"She's all right," she said after a moment, and looked up at Tungata. "What do you want me to do?" He shook himself like a man awakening from deep sleep, and with the sleeve of his white coat, wiped the icy sweat of superstitious dread from his forehead.
"Look after her well. Make sure she is ready to leave by morning. We will take her north across the great river," he said.
Leila St. John backed up her small Fiat into the ambulance bay beside the casualty department, and screened from curious eyes, Tungata slipped through the back door and crouched down between the seats.
Leila spread a mohair travelling-rug over him and drove down to the main gates. She spoke briefly to one of the guards, and then swung the Fiat onto the branch road that led to the superintendent's residence.
She spoke without looking back or moving her lips.
"No sign of security forces, not yet. It looks as though your arrival has gone unnoticed, but we will take no chances." She parked in the lean-to garage which had been added to the old stone-walled building, and while she unloaded her valise and a pile of files from the seat, she made certain they were still not observed. The garden was screened from the road and the thatched church by trellised creepers and -flowering shrubs.
She opened the side door to the house, and said, "Please keep low, and go in as quickly as you can." He ducked out of the Fiat, and she followed him into the living-room. The shutters and curtains were drawn and it was half-dark.
"My grandmother built this house after the original was burned down during the 1896 troubles. Fortunately she took precautions against the troubles of the future." Leila crossed the floor of sawn Rhodesian teak, the highly polished surface of which was strewn with tanned animal skins and hand-woven rugs in bold patterns and primary colours.
She entered the walk-in stone fireplace and drew aside the black grate. The floor of the fireplace was of slate flags, and she used the fire irons to prise and lift one of these. When Tungata stepped up beside her, he saw that she had exposed a square vertical shaft, into one wall of which were set stone steps.
"This was where Comrade Tebe was hiding that night?" Tungata asked. When the Scouts, the kanka, could not find him?" "Yes, he was here. It would be best if you went down now." He dropped nimbly down the shaft and found himself in darkness. Leila closed the slate hatch and came down beside him. She groped along the wall and turned a switch. A bare electric bulb lit on the roof of the tiny stone cell.
There was a deal table on which were stacked a few well-thumbed books, pushed beneath it was a low stool and there was a narrow truckle-bed against the far wall. A chemical toilet stood at its foot.
"Not very comfortable," she apologized. "But nobody will find you here." "I have had less luxurious accommodation," he assured her. "Now let us go over your arrangements." She had the medical certificates ready on the table, and she sat on the stool and wrote down his requirements for the transportation of the Umlimo as he dictated them.
When she had finished, he said, "Memorize that and destroy it."
"Very well." He watched while she went over the list carefully and then looked up.
"Now, there is a message for you to take to Comrade Inkunzi,"she said. "It is from our friend in high places." "Give it to me,"he nodded.
"Ballantyne's Scouts, the kanka, they are planning a special operation. It is to destroy Comrade Inkunzi and his staff. Your own name is high on their list." Tungata's expression did not change.
"Do you have any details of their plans?" "All the details," she assured him. "This is what they will do-" She spoke slowly and deliberately for almost ten minutes, and he did not interrupt her.