Read Online The Shangani Patrol by John Wilcox - Free Book Online Page B

he could hardly refuse the man’s request.
     
    ‘Your majesty will know,’ he began, ‘that we do not believe in curses. The problem with your foot will be a medical one . . .’ He sought for simple words that would explain it. ‘It will be the result perhaps of something you have eaten or drunk too much of. Or maybe a thorn that has settled deeply in the foot.’
     
    The king scowled. The scowl was reflected in Mzingeli’s translation. ‘He say he know all about thorns. No thorn in his foot.’
     
    Simon bowed his head. ‘Very well, sir. My wife is not a witch doctor, but nor is she any other sort of doctor. She does, however, have some basic skills in healing that might help you and perhaps relieve your pain. I will ask her.’
     
    The big smile returned to Lobengula’s face. ‘Good. Ask her come soon. Now, I give more food to you tonight. Is there more you want?’
     
    Smiling, Fonthill shook his head. ‘Only our horses and wagon from the border, sir. We are anxious to travel south.’
     
    ‘My men go get them today. Is good you go soon - to see Rhodes.’ Then he added quickly, ‘After your lady help me.’
     
    Fonthill rose, pulling Mzingeli with him, and they both bowed and shuffled out of the room. As they trudged back to the hut, Simon confided, ‘I shall be glad to get out of here, Mzingeli. I seem to be getting deeper and deeper into I don’t quite know what. But I don’t like it.’
     
    The tracker nodded. ‘King is cunning. You must be careful.’
     
    Alice herself was just returning to the hut as Fonthill approached. ‘I’ve been to Fairbairn’s store to pay him,’ she said. ‘I’ve left Jenkins up there, trying to haggle with him about the price of a bottle of whisky. The man was not exactly giving anything away last night, but I don’t begrudge him what he charges. He lives behind the shop, so to speak, and I can’t help feeling that he doesn’t have much of a life. But it’s his choice. Now, what did his majesty want?’
     
    They both sat on a log and Simon recounted his conversation with Lobengula, beginning with the king’s request for help with Rhodes.
     
    Alice pulled a face. ‘I have never met the great Cecil John,’ she said, ‘but he sounds a bit of a slippery customer to me. I would not like you to become too involved with him.’
     
    ‘Oh, as millionaires go, I don’t think he’s too bad. Of one thing I am sure - he’s a genuine patriot. When I met him in Kimberley seven or eight years ago, he gave me his vision of a British route to the north, with much of his map painted red. Then, he was just the company secretary of a mining outfit. I have read since that he has made two fortunes: the first in diamonds, of course, and the second from gold in the Transvaal. It’s my bet that he is not really interested in Matabeleland or Mashonaland for the mineral rights. He would rather settle the land with Britishers if he could and then try and build a road, or even a railway, to the north. The king is a shrewd old cove and I believe that he suspects this is what Rhodes is up to and he is worried about it.’
     
    Alice sniffed. ‘Well on that matter, I would be on Lobengula’s side. I know he is a cruel old despot, but he has done nothing to harm the British or any other Europeans, for that matter. Why can’t we leave him gradually to slip into the nineteenth century in his own way and his own time? We’ve got the biggest blasted empire the world has ever seen. Why do we need to add a few more African acres to it?’
     
    ‘I don’t quite agree, my love.’ Simon smiled. They had been over this ground before. Alice’s radical views were familiar to him. She yearned for the return to power of William Ewart Gladstone as prime minister of Great Britain, and for a resumption of a Liberal government’s anti-imperialist policies. As a war correspondent for the Morning Post , she had even managed to infiltrate her views into her reports for that most Tory of