"Then how do you rate your latest effort? "Are the six hundred northern shareholders in a position to take up their debentures?" Ralph mimicked his prim old maidish diction, then nodded farewell and went out to where his horse was tethered and rode down the road to Fordsberg Dip and the city.
Elizabeth rose at a glance from her mother, and began to gather up the soup bowls.
"You haven't finished, Bobby," she told her young brother.
"I'm not hungry, Lizzie," the child protested. "It tastes funny."
"You always have an excuse not to eat, Master Robert," Elizabeth scolded him. "No wonder you are so skinny, you'll never grow up strong and tall like your papa." "That's enough, Elizabeth," Robyn spoke sharply. "Leave the boy, if he's not hungry. You know he isn't well."
Elizabeth glanced at her mother, then dutifully stacked Robert's boWl with the others. None of the girls had ever been allowed to leave food, not even when they were giddy with malaria, but she had learned not to protest the unfairness of Robyn's indulgence of her only son.
With the kerosene lantern in her other hand, Elizabeth went out of the back door and crossed to the thatched kitchen hut.
"It is time she had a husband." Juba shook her head mournfully.
"She needs a man in her bed and a baby to her breast to make her smile." "Don't talk nonsense, Juba," snapped Robyn. "There will be time for that later. She is doing important work here, I could not let her go. She is as good as a trained doctor." "The young men come out from Bulawayo one after the other, and she sends them all away, "Juba went on, ignoring Robyn's injunction.
"She's a sensible, serious girl," Robyn agreed. "She is a sad girl, with a secret." "Oh Juba, not every woman wants to spend her life as some man's chattel," Robyn scoffed.
"Do you remember when she was a girl?" Juba went on unperturbed.
"How bright she was, how she shone with joy, how she sparkled like a drop of morning dew." "She has grown up." "I thought it was the tall young rock-finder, the man from across the sea who took Vicky away."
Juba shook her head. "It was not him. She laughed at Vicky's wedding, and it was not the laughter of a girl who has lost her love. It is something else," Juba decided portentously, "or somebody else." Robyn was about to protest further, but she was interrupted by the sound of excited voices in the darkness outside the door, and she stood up quickly.
"What is it?" she called. "What is happening out there, Elizabeth?" and the flame of the lantern came bobbing back across the yard, lighting Elizabeth's flying feet but leaving her face in darkness.
"Mama! Mama! Come quickly!" Her voice rang with excitement.
Elizabeth burst in through the door.
"Control yourself, girl." Robyn shook her shoulder, and Elizabeth took a deep breath.
"Old Moses has come up from the village he says that there are soldiers, hundreds of soldiers riding past the church." "Juba, get Bobby's coat." Robyn took her woollen shawl and her cane down from behind the door. Tlizabeth give me the lantern!" Robyn led the family down the driveway under the dark spathodea trees, past the go downs of the hospital, towards the church. They went in a small tight group, with Bobby bundled up in a woollen coat riding on Juba's fat hip, but before they reached the church, there were many other dark figures hurrying along in the darkness around them.
"They are coming out of the hospital." Juba was righteously indignant. "And tomorrow they will all be sick again." "You'll never stop them." Elizabeth sighed with resignation. "Curiosity killed the cat." And then she exclaimed, "There they are! Moses was right just look at them!" The starlight was bright enough to reveal the torrent of dark horsemen pouring down the road from the neck of hills. They rode two abreast and a length between each rank. it was too dark to see their faces under the broad brims of their slouch hats, but a rifle barrel stuck up like an ate user finger behind each man's shoulder, silhouetted against the frosty fields of stars that filled the heavens.
The deep dust of the track muffled the hooves to a soft floury puffing sound, but the saddles squeaked with the rub of dubbined leather and a curb chain tinkled as a horse snorted softly and tossed its head.
Yet the quiet was uncanny for such a multitude. No voice raised above a whisper, no orders to close up, not even the usual low warning, "Ware hole!" of massed horsemen moving in formation across unfamiliar terrain in darkness. The head of the column reached the fork in the road below the church, but took the left hand turning, the old wagon road towards the south.
"Who are they?" Juba asked with a thrill of superstitious awe in her voice. "They look like ghosts." "Those aren't ghosts," Robyn said flatly. "Those are Jameson's tin soldiers, that's his new Rhodesian Horse Regiment." "Why are they taking the old road?" Elizabeth, too, spoke in a whisper, infected by Juba and by the unnatural quiet. "And why are they riding in the dark?" "This stinks of Jameson and his master." Robyn stepped forward to the edge of the road and called loudly, lifting the lantern above her head, "Where are you going?" A low voice from the column answered her. "There and back to see how far it is, missus!" and there were a few low chuckles, but the column flowed on past the church without a check.
In the centre of the column were the transports, seven wagons drawn by mules, for the rinderpest had left no draught-oxen. After the wagons came eight two-wheeled carts with canvas covers over the Maxim machine-guns, and then three light field guns, relics of Jameson's expeditionary force that had captured Bulawayo a few short years ago.
The tail of the column was again made up of mounted men, two abreast.
It took almost twenty minutes for them all to pass the church, and then the silence was complete, with just the taint of dust in the air as a reminder of their going. The patients from the hospital began to slip away from the roadside, back into the darker shadows beneath the spathodea trees, but the little family group stayed on silently, waiting for Robyn to move.
"Mummy, I am cold," Bobby whined at last, and Robyn roused herself.
"I wonder what devilry they are up to now," she murmured, and led them back up the hill towards the homestead. " "The beans will be cold by now," Elizabeth complained, as she hurried back into the kitchen hut while Robyn and Juba climbed up the steps onto the stoep.
Juba let Bobby down from her hip, and he scampered back into the warm lamplight of the- dining-room. Juba was about to follow him, but Robyn stopped her with a hand upon her forearm. The two women stood together, close and secure in the love and companionship they bore each other. They looked out across the valley, in the direction in which the dark and silent horsemen had disappeared.
"How beautiful it is!" Robyn murmured. "I always think of the stars as my friends, they are so constant, so well remembered, and tonight they are so close." She lifted her hand as though to pluck them from the firmament. "There is Orion, and there is the bull.". "And there Manatassi's four sons," Juba said, "the poor murdered babes."