"Walk! commanded the one with the flashlight, who was clearly the leader of the group, and with the barrel of his automatic rifle prodded the children up the back steps onto the kitchen veranda.
Stephanie tripped and sprawled. With her hands tied behind her she could not regain her feet. She wriggled helplessly.
"You bastards," whispered Nigel. "Oh, you filthy bastards." One of them took a handful of the child's hair and lifted her to her feet. She stumbled, weeping hysterically, to where her sister stood against the veranda wall.
"Don't be a baby, Stephy," Alice told her. "It's just a game." But her voice quavered with her own terror, and her eyes in the lamplight were huge and brimming with tears.
They lined up Nigel and Helen beside the girls, and the flashlight played back and forth into each face in turn, blinding them so they Could not see what was happening out in the yard.
"Why are you doing this?" Nigel asked. "The war is over we have done you no harm." There was no reply at all, just a beam of brilliant light moving across their palekices, and the sound of Stephanie weeping, a racking *eous sobbing. Then there was the murmur of other Voices in the darkness, many subdued frightened voices, women and children and men.
"They have brought our people to watch," said Helen softly. "It's just like the war days. It's going to be an execution." She spoke so the girls could not hear her. Nigel could think of nothing to say. He knew she was right.
J wish I had told you how much I love you, more often," he said.
"That's all right," she whispered. "I knew all along." They could make out a throng of Matabele from the 11 farm village now, a dark mass of them beyond the glaring torch, and then the voice of the leader was raised in Sindebele.
"These are the white jackals that feed upon the land of the Matabele. These are the white offal that are in league with the Mashona killers, the eaters-of-dirt in Harare, the sworn enemies of the children of Lobengula-" The orator was working himself up into the killing frenzy. Already Nigel could see that the other men guarding them were beginning to sway and hum, losing themselves in that berserker passion where no reason exists.
The Matabele had a name for it, "the divine madness'.
When old Mzilikazi had been king, one million human beings had died from this divine madness.
"These white lickers of Mashona faces are the traitors who delivered Tungata Zebiwe, the father of our people, to the death camps of the Mashona," screamed the leader.
"I embrace you, my darlings, "Nigel Goodwin whispered.
Helen had never heard him say anything so tender before, and it was that, not fear, that made her begin to weep. She tried to force back the tears, but they ran down and dripped from her chin.
"What must we do with them?" howled the leader.
"Kill the mP cried one of his own men, but the massed farm Matabele were silent in the darkness.
"What must we do with the mP the question was repeated.
This time the leader leapt down from the veranda and shouted it into the faces of the farm people, still they were silent.
"What must we do with them?"Again the question, and this time the sound of blows, the rubbery slap of a rifle barrel against black flesh.
"What must we do with them?" The same question for the fourth time.
"Kill them! An uncertain terrified response, and more blows.
"Kill them! The cry was taken up.
"Kill the mP "Abantwana kamina!" A woman's voice, Nigel recognized it as that of fat old Martha, the girls" nanny. "My babies," she cried, but then her voice was lost in the rising chorus.
"Kill them! Kill them!" as the divine madness spread.
Two men, both denim-clad, stepped into the torch light. They seized Nigel by his arms and turned him to face the wall, before forcing him to his knees.
"The leader handed the flashlight to one of his men and he took the pistol from the belt of his jeans, and pulled back the slide forcing a round into the chamber. The breech made a sharp snapping rattle. He put the muzzle of the pistol to the back of Nigel's head and fired a single shot. Nigel was thrown forward onto his face. The contents of his skull were dashed against the white wall, and then began to run down it in ii jellylike stream to the floor.
His feet were still kicking and dancing as they forced Helen down to her knees facing the wall beside her husband's corpse.
"Mummy!" screamed Alice as the next pistol bullet tore out through her motherkforehead and her skull collapsed inwards. Alice's pafttic little show of courage was over.
Her legs gave way, and she crumpled to the veranda floor. With a soft spluttery sound her bowels voided involuntarily.
The leader stepped up to her. Her forehead was almost touching the floor. Her gingery curls had parted, exposing the back of her neck. The leader extended his right arm full length, and touched the muzzle of the pistol to the tender white skin at the nape. His arm jerked to the recoil and the shot was muffled to a jarring thud. Blue tendrils of gunsmoke spiralled upwards in the beam of the flashlight.
Little Stephanie was the only one who struggled, until the leader clubbed her with the barrel of the pistol. Even then she wriggled and kicked, lying on the veranda floor in the spreading puddle of her sister's blood. The leader placed his foot between her shoulder blades to hold her still for the shot. The bullet came out through Stephanie's temple just in front of her right ear, and it gouged a hole not much larger than a thimble in the concrete of the veranda floor. The hole filled swiftly with the child's blood.