'All Zulus are thieves and dung-eaters." 'How much?" Moses asked with a smile. 'How much did he need to compensate him for a marriage outside the tribe?" 'Five hundred head of prime cattle, all cows in calf, none older than three years,' Hendrick scowled with outrage. 'All Zulus are thieves and he claims to be a prince, which makes him a prince of thieves." 'Naturally you agreed to his first price?" Moses asked.
'Naturally I argued for two more days." 'The final price?" 'Two hundred head,' Hendrick sighed. 'Forgive me, my brother. I tried, but the old dog of a Zulu was like a rock. It was his very lowest price for the moon of his night." Moses Gama leaned back in his chair, and thought about it. It was an enormous price. Prime cattle were worth œ50 the head, but unlike his brother, Moses Gama had no yen for money other than as a means to procure an end.
'Ten thousand pounds?" he asked softly. 'Do we have that much?" 'It will hurt. I will ache for a year as though I have been whipped with a sjambok,' Hendrick grumbled. 'Do you realize just how much else a man could buy with ten thousand pounds, my brother? I could get you at least ten Xhosa maidens, pretty as sugar birds and plump as guinea fowl, each with her maidenhead attested by the most reliable midwife --' 'Ten Xhosa maidens would not bring the Zulu people within my reach,' Moses cut him off. 'I need Victoria Dinizulu." 'The lobola is not the only price demanded,' Hendrick told him.
'There is more." 'What else?" 'The girl is a Christian. If you take her, there will be no others.
She will be your only wife, my brother, and listen to a man who has paid for wisdom in the heavy coin of experience. Three wives are the very minimum a man needs for contentment. Three wives are so busy competing with one another for their husband's favour, that a man can relax. Two wives are better than one. However, a single wife, a one and only wife, can sour the food in your belly and frost your hair with silver. Let this Zulu wench go to someone who deserves her, another Zulu." 'Tell her father that we will pay the price he asks and that we agree to his terms. Tell him also that if he is a prince, then we expect him to provide a marriage feast that befits a princess. We expect a marriage that will be the talk of Zululand from the Drakensberg Mountains to the ocean. I want every chieftain and elder of the tribe there to see me wed, I want every counseller and induna, I want the king of the Zulus himself to come and when they are all assembled, I will speak to them." 'You might as well talk to a troop of baboons. A Zulu is too proud and too full of hatred to listen to sense." 'You are wrong, Hendrick Tabaka." Moses laid his hand on his brother's arm. 'We are not proud enough, nor do we hate enough.
What pride we do have, the little hatred that we do have, is misspent and ill-directed. We waste it on each other, on other black men. If all the tribes of this land took all their pride and all their hatred and turned it on the white oppressor - then how could he resist us? This is what I will talk about when I speak at my wedding feast. This is what I have to teach the people. It is for this that we are forging Umkhonto we Sizwe, the Spear of the Nation'.
They were silent awhile. The depth of his brother's vision, the terrible power of his commitment, always awed Hendrick.
'It will be as you wish,' he agreed at last. 'When do you wish the wedding to take place?" 'On the full moon of mid-winter." Moses did not hesitate. 'That will be the week before our campaign of defiance begins." Again they were silent, until Moses roused himself. 'It is settled then. Is there anything else we should discuss before we take the evening meal?" 'Nothing." Hendrick rose to his feet and was about to call his women to bring their food, when he remembered. 'Ah. There is one other thing. The white woman, the woman who was with you at Rivonia - do you know the one?" Moses nodded. 'Yes, the Courtney woman." 'That is the one. She has sent a message. She wishes to see you again." 'Where is she?" 'She is close by, at a place called Sundi Caves. She has left a telephone number for you. She says it is an important matter." Moses Gama was clearly annoyed. 'I told her not to try and contact me,' he said. 'I warned her of the dangers." He stood up and paced the floor. 'Unless she learns discipline and self-control, she will be of no value to the struggle: White women are like that, spoiled and disobedient and self-indulgent. She must be trained --' Moses broke off and went to the window. Something in the yard had caught his attention, and he called out sharply. 'Wellington!
Raleigh! Come here, both of you." A few seconds later the two boys shuffled self-consciously into the room, and stood just inside the door, hanging their heads guiltily.
'Raleigh, what has happened to you?" Hendrick demanded angrily.
The twins had changed their furs and loincloths for their ordinary clothing, but the gash in Raleigh's forehead was still weeping through the wad of grubby rags he had strapped on it. There were speckles of blood on his shirt, and the swelling had closed one eye.
'Babo!" Wellington started to explain. 'It was not our fault. We were set upon by the Zulus." And Raleigh darted a look of contempt at him before he contradicted his twin.
'We arranged a faction fight with them. It went well, until some of us ran away and left the others,' Raleigh raised his hand to his injured head. 'There are cowards even amongst the Xhosa,' he said, and again glanced at his twin. Wellington stood silent.
'Next time fight harder and show more cunning,' Hendrick Tabaka dismissed them and when they scurried from the room he turned to Moses.
'Do you see, my brother. Even with the children, what hope do you have of changing it?" 'The hope is with the children,' Moses told him. 'Like monkeys, you can train them to do anything. It is the old ones who are difficult to change." Tara Courtney parked her shabby old Packard on the edge of the mountain drive and stood for a few seconds looking down on the city of Cape Town spread below her. The south-easter was whipping the waters of Table Bay to cream.
She left the car and walked slowly along the verge, pretending to admire the flush of wild flowers which painted the rocky slope above her. At the head of the slope the grey rock bastion of the mountain rose sheer to the heavens, and she stopped walking and tilted her head back to look up at it. The clouds were driving over the top, creating the illusion that the wall of rock was falling.
Once again she darted a glance along the road up which she had driven. It was still empty. She was not being followed. The police must have finally lost interest in her. It was weeks since last she had been aware of being tailed.
Her aimless behaviour altered and she returned to the Packard and took a small picnic basket from the boot, then she walked quickly back to the concrete building that housed the lower cable station. She ran up the stairs and paid for a return ticket just as the attendant opened the doors at the end of the waiting room, and the small party of other passengers trooped out to the gondola and crowded into it.
The crimson car started with a jerk and they rose swiftly, dangling below the silvery thread of the cable. The other passengers were exclaiming with delight as the spreading panorama of ocean and rock and city opened below them, and Tara inspected them surreptitiously. Within a few minutes she was convinced that none of them were plain-clothes members of the special branch and she relaxed and turned her attention to the magnificent view.
The gondola was climbing steeply, rising almost vertically up the face of the cliff. The rock had weathered into almost geometrical cubes, so that they seemed to be the ancient building blocks of a giant's castle. They passed a party of rock-climbers roped together inching their way hand over hand up the sheer face. Tara imagined being out there, clinging to the rock with the empty drop sucking at her heels, and vertigo made her sway dizzily. She had to clutch the handrail to steady herself, and when the gondola docked at the top station on the brink of the thousand-foot-high cliff, she escaped from it thankfully.