Now the feasting and the beer-drinking could begin in earnest, and the raw red meat was heaped upon the coals and snatched off again barely singed, while the beer-pots passed from hand to hand and the young girls went swinging down the slope bearing fresh pots upon their heads.
Suddenly there was an uproar and a band of plumed warriors came dashing up the slope towards where Victoria sat at the kraal entrance. They were her brothers and half-brothers and nephews, even Joseph Dinizulu was amongst them, and they shouted their war cries as they came to rescue their sister from this stranger who would take her from their midst.
However, the Buffaloes were ready for them, and with Hendrick at their head and sticks whistling and hissing, they rushed in to prevent the abduction. The women wailed and ululated and the fighting-sticks clattered and whacked on flesh, and the warriors howled and circled and charged at each other in a fine mist of dust.
It was for this that all metal weapons were strictly banned from the ceremony, for the fighting, which was at first playful, soon heated up and blood dripped and bones cracked before the abductors allowed themselves to be driven off. The blood was staunched with a handful of dust clapped on the wound, and both victors and vanquished had worked up a fine thirst and shouted to the girls to bring more beer. The uproar subsided for only a few minutes to be resumed almost immediately as from the top of the slope came the rumble of motor cars.
The children raced up the hill and began to clap and sing as two big motor cars appeared over the brow and came bumping slowly over the rough track that led to the kraal.
In the leading vehicle was a large white woman, with a red face as lined and craggy as that of a bulldog, and a wide-brimmed oldfashioned hat on her head from under which grey hair curled untidily.
'Who is she?" Moses demanded.
'Lady Anna Courtney,' Victoria exclaimed. She was the one who encouraged me to leave here and go into the world." Impulsively Victoria ran forward to meet the vehicle, and when Lady Anna descended ponderously, she embraced her.
'So, my child, you have come back to us." Lady Anna's accent was still thick, though she had lived thirty-five years in Africa.
'Not for long." Victoria laughed and Lady Anna looked at her fondly. Once the child had served in the big house as one of her house maids, until her bright beauty and intelligence had convinced Lady Anna that she was superior to such menial work.
'Where is this man who is taking you away?" she demanded, and Victoria took her hand.
'First you must greet my father, then I will introduce you to my husband." From the second motor car a middle-aged couple climbed down to be enthusiastically greeted by the crowd that pressed forward around them. The man was tall and dapper, with the bearing of a soldier.
He was tanned by the sun and his eyes had the far-away look of the outdoor man. He twirled his moustaches and took his wife on his arm. She was almost as tall and even slimmer than he was, and despite the streaks of grey in her hair, she was still an unusually handsome woman.
Sangane Dinizulu came to greet them.
'I see you, Jamela!" His dignity was somewhat tempered by a happy grin of welcome, and Colonel Mark Anders answered him in perfectly colloquial Zulu.
'I see you, old man." The term was one of respect. 'May all your cattle and all your wives grow fat and sleek." Sangane turned to his wife Storm, who was the daughter of old General Scan Courtney. 'I see you, Nkosikazi, you bring honour to my kraal." The bond between the two families was like steel. It went back to another century and had been tested a thousand times.
'Oh, Sangane, I am so happy for you this day - and for Victoria." Storm left her husband and went quickly to embrace the Zulu girl.
'I wish you joy and many fine sons, Vicky,' she told her, and Victoria answered, 'I owe you and your family so much, Nkosikazi. I will never be able to repay you." 'Don't ever try,' Storm told her with mock severity. 'I feel as though my own daughter is getting married today. Introduce us to your husband, Vicky." Now Moses Gama came towards them, and when Storm greeted him in Zulu, he replied gravely in English, 'How do you do, Mrs Anders. Victoria has spoken of you and your family very often." When at last he turned to Mark Anders, he proffered his right hand.
'How do you do, Colonel?" Moses asked, and a wry smile flitted across his lips as he saw the white man hesitate momentarily before accepting the handshake. It was unusual for men to greet each other thus across the dividing line of colour, and despite his fluency in the language and his pretended affection for the Zulu people, Moses recognized this man.
Colonel Mark Anders was an anachronism, a son of the English Queen Victoria, a soldier who had fought in two world wars, and the warden of Chaka's Gate National Park which he had saved from the poachers and despoilers by dedication and sheer bloody-mindedness, and made into one of Africa's most celebrated wild-life sanctuaries.
He loved the wild animals of Africa with a kind of paternal passion, protecting and cherishing them, and to only a slightly less degree his attitude towards the black tribes, especially the Zulus, was the same, paternalistic and condescending. By this definition he was the mortal enemy of Moses Gama, and as they looked into each other's eyes, they both recognized this fact.
'I have heard the lion roar from afar,' Mark Anders said in Zulu.
'Now I meet the beast face to face." 'I have heard of you as well, Colonel,' Moses replied, pointedly speaking English.
'Victoria is a gentle child,' Mark Anders persisted in his use of Zulu. 'We all hope you will not teach her your fierce ways." 'She will be a dutiful wife,' Moses said in English. 'She will do what I ask of her, I am sure." Storm had been following the exchange, sensing the innate hostility between the two men and now she intervened smoothly.
'If you are ready, Moses, we can all go down to Theuniskraal for the ceremony." Victoria and her mother had insisted on a Christian ceremony to reinforce the traditional tribal wedding. Now Sangane and most of the other guests who were pagan and ancestor-worshippers, remained at the kraal, while the diminished bridal party crowded into the two motor vehicles.
Theuniskraal was the home of Lady Anna Courtney and the original seat of the Courtney family. It stood amongst its sprawling lawns and unruly gardens of palms and bourgainvillaea and pride of India trees at the foot of the Ladyburg escarpment. It was a rambling old building of oddly assorted architectual styles, and beyond the gardens stretched endless fields of sugar cane, that dipped and undulated to the breeze like the swells of the ocean.
The wedding party trooped into the house to change into garb more suitable than beads and furs and feathers for the second ceremony while Lady Anna and the family went to greet the Anglican priest in the marquee that had been set up on the front lawn.
When the bridegroom and his attendants came out on to the lawns half an hour later, they wore dark lounge suits and Victoria's elder brother, who had pranced and swirled his plumes in the giya just a few hours before, now wore his Law Association tie in an impeccable Windsor knot and aviator-style dark glasses against the glare of Theuniskraal's whitewashed walls, as he chatted affably with the Courtney family, while they waited for the bride.
Victoria's mother was decked out in one of Lady Anna's cast-off caftans, for the two ladies were of similar build, and she was already sampling the fare that was laid out on the long trestle table in the marquee. Colonel Mark Anders and the Anglican priest stood a little aside from the main group; men of the same generation, they both found the proceedings disquieting and unnatural. It had taken all Storm's powers to persuade the priest to perform the ceremony, and then he had only agreed on condition that the wedding was not held in his own church in the village where his conservative white congregation might take offence.