Echo of an Angry God Read online

  Pambuka hunched forward. ‘Listen carefully, wife. Mlozi and the ruga-ruga are taking the Wankonde for slaves. The white man warns of lines of captives so long that they would stretch from one end of our village to the other. Mlozi wants to take our lands for the Wahenga. Those he does not take for slaves are killed. The white man is a good man. He tells of terrible deeds, of slaves so hungry their bones poke out, of women being used by the ruga-ruga against their wishes, of flesh split by the kurbash.’ Pambuka took a deep breath. ‘They are travelling great distances to take our people. The white man wants us to move to Karonga where we will be safe.’

  Ferig said nothing. This was men’s business. Her role was to obey whatever decision they reached.

  ‘Our Chief has refused.’ Pambuka could not keep the pride from his voice. The Wankonde were peaceful and gentle people but they were not cowards. The Nganga had told Chief Mbeya that he would find the answer to the white man’s request in his own heart. If this was the right decision, and Pambuka would not dream of questioning it, then the Nganga had put it there.

  Convinced as he was, however, Pambuka was a man who loved his wife and wanted to protect her. ‘If this terrible thing comes to our village and I am killed, you must promise to kill yourself.’ He reached over and stroked the velvet bronze of her cheek. ‘Believe me, wife, it is better you die from your own hand.’

  Ferig stared at him wide-eyed, her heart fluttering at the enormity of what he was asking. To take your own life meant your spirit wandered restlessly forever.

  ‘Promise me,’ Pambuka said softly, his dark eyes penetrating and commanding.

  Ferig nodded slowly. ‘I promise, husband.’ She had no option. If he told her to jump in the fire she was obliged to obey.

  Pambuka smiled, relieved. He knew what he was asking of her. But he had to make sure she understood. ‘I know your blood has stopped running, wife. For two moons you have not journeyed to the women’s hut.’

  Ferig hung her head, embarrassed. A women’s bleeding was not a fitting subject, even between husband and wife. When the bleeding was upon a woman she had to sleep in a special hut, for fear of contaminating her own home.

  ‘Look at me, wife.’ Pambuka knew he had overstepped the boundary of good manners. But he had more to say. He was prepared to die at the hands of the ruga-ruga but he feared for Ferig. She was the most beautiful woman in the village and the white man had been specific. The women’s fate was worse than death itself. ‘If the ruga-ruga come after our child has been born, they will kill him.’

  Ferig placed her hands over her stomach, as if to protect the small being which had only begun to grow a short while ago.

  Pambuka went on remorselessly. ‘They will kill our child and take you away. You will go far away, wife, to distant lands. There you will be the wife of a stranger. But before then, the ruga-ruga will treat you as their own. They are cruel men, wife. They do terrible things to women. Animal things. Do you understand?’

  Ferig’s heart beat wildly at the horror of what Pambuka was saying. She had never heard anything like it in her life. ‘I will do as you say, husband. No-one will touch me as you do. I would rather be a restless spirit.’

  Pambuka nodded, satisfied. ‘What are you doing with our food, wife?’ he teased, to take the terror from her heart. ‘Are we to eat it in the morning?’

  The women of the village clustered together next morning, each one aghast at the terrible warnings of the night before. The events of recent days, ever since the Nganga told them of his vision, had them buzzing with a multitude of mixed emotions. The white man’s visit alone was enough food for speculation to last them many months. Each one had made some small observation, unnoticed by the others. Ferig’s fantasy about the white man’s fingers spouting milk had them all rocking with laughter.

  In the normal course of events, the stories about their strange visitor would circulate and grow until reality was replaced by make-believe and the truth lost in legend.

  Added to the excitement now were the unbelievable things the white man had told the Chief, things which had then been related back to them by their menfolk. The advice the women had received varied. Some had been told to run, others to fight, a few had been advised to submit in order to save their lives. Only Ferig had been ordered to kill herself.

  Pambuka’s instructions frightened them nearly as much as the threat of the ruga-ruga. ‘What is your man thinking?’ one of them asked angrily of Ferig. ‘Does he know what he is saying?’

  ‘He knows,’ Ferig replied, ready to defend her beloved husband. ‘He knows it is wicked. But he is a wise man as you all know. He would not ask it of me if he did not think it best.’

  The others nodded, each one wondering why their own husbands did not love them the way Pambuka loved Ferig.

  As the days passed the dire warnings of the white man slipped into their subconscious lives. There was work to be done, cattle byres to be cleaned, huts to be swept, blankets to be woven, food to be cooked. The villagers returned to their daily lives and the prospect of the slave-trader Mlozi and his terrible ruga-ruga faded to a vague possibility, not to be dwelt upon in case they willed it to come true.

  Ferig was dreaming. In her dream she was walking through banana groves, and the lovely sycamore and cotton trees which grew between them. Her as yet unborn son, in the strange way of dreams, rode high on Pambuka’s shoulders. They were all laughing. Dimly, through the soft corners of her dream, she heard Pambuka stir and mumble something in his sleep. Her dreaming eyes saw her son’s hand reach out in slow motion and take a banana. He handed it to Ferig and she took it, happy and content, for the banana symbolised food in plentiful supply. Feeling secure, she rolled on her sleeping mat and curled her body into Pambuka’s. The strength and warmth of that familiar back sent her into a deeper sleep where no dreams can reach.

  It was an hour before dawn and three weeks after the visit of the white man. The slumbering inhabitants of the isolated Nkonde village, like Ferig and Pambuka, slipped into that delightful predawn slumber which would ensure vitality and enthusiasm for the daily chores which lay ahead. One or two cooking fires smouldered still, their smoke rising far above the banana groves and the tidy clay brick and bamboo huts to dissipate in the cool mountain breath which sped down from the Livingstone Mountains and flattened out over the northern tip of Lake Nyasa, fanning little waves.

  Ferig and Pambuka lay curled together like children.

  Outside, in the byres, a wave of unease ran through the cattle, corralled for the night to protect them from predators. A scent, alien and unpleasant, was suddenly all around them. Ghostly figures flitted past. The cattle, usually content to doze through the night, began to move restlessly, sensing danger. But the figures ran on and were soon out of sight and the smell of them, which had so disturbed the cattle, went with them. One by one the cows settled down.

  Five minutes later a scream split the silence. It was the war cry of the ruga-ruga. Loud and hideous, bloodcurdling in its savage ferocity, it sped its chilling message into the huts and jerked even the deeply asleep into a dry-mouthed, nameless terror. Blinking away his dreams, Pambuka sat up. His heart was beating wildly. Was it a dream? A wild animal in pain?

  In the next instant he knew. Gunfire was intermingled with loud shouts. Pambuka had never heard the sound of guns but the aggressive brutality of it was a violent penetration of the harmonious and peaceful village and Pambuka knew with absolute certainty that he was about to die.

  Ferig clung to him, crying with fear. ‘Remember your promise, wife,’ he whispered fiercely. ‘My spear is my love for you. Go where the spirits take you. I will find you.’

  Ferig could only cry harder.

  He heard his neighbour and friend call his name from the hut next to his. He hugged Ferig roughly and stumbled up, ready to defend the village. ‘Do it quickly,’ he bellowed, bursting from his hut, ancient warrior traditions flooding his body in one last desperate act of unremitting bravery.

  The ruga-r
uga were waiting for him. One on either side of the door. Pambuka was clubbed to death. The two ruga-ruga men rained blows down on his head until it became a bloody pulp. Ferig sat rooted to the spot with fear, listening to the sickening sound of Pambuka’s head being crushed. She delayed obeying Pambuka because her paralysed mind could think of nothing. Violence was everywhere, where a minute earlier there had been nothing but the gentle sound of his breathing and the warm security of his body next to hers. A rustle at the door broke through the panic which had arrested her body. She lunged for Pambuka’s spear. But she had delayed too long. The ruga-ruga grabbed her and hauled her outside.

  Dawn was rapidly lighting the eastern sky. Ferig could just make out a group of villagers, huddled together in terrorised stupor. Women were wailing. Not in full-throated harmony as they did at the death of a loved one in order to encourage a happy passage to the spirit world. Fear constricted their throats so that their wails were like those of an ailing baby.

  Children clung in sleepy confusion to their mothers. A few men, their heads hung in shame that they had not died in defence of their village, stood among the women. The Nganga stood with them and Ferig, in a blinding realisation, saw him for what he really was: a short, skinny old man who trembled with the rest of them as he faced the prospect of his own death. ‘Why did he not warn us?’ she thought angrily. She had no way of knowing that the Nganga’s second sight came and went at will and that he had no control over his visions. Of the Chief there was no sign. Ferig was pushed roughly into the crowd.

  Shaking from head to toe, with silent tears running down her face, she confronted her fate. The truth of it was so horrible she began to wail out loud in fear.

  ‘Be silent, you foolish girl,’ an older woman next to her hissed. ‘Do you want them to kill you?’

  ‘Yes. Oh yes.’ Ferig wanted that more than anything. She had failed in her promise to Pambuka. He had died defending her and she had failed him. The knowledge gave her the courage to act. She broke from the huddle of her friends and ran straight at the ruga-ruga.

  She was seized by half-a-dozen eager hands and flung to the ground. She lay there, anticipating the blows from their clubs, or the searing, stinging pain of their spears. A voice shouted, loud and menacing. From the corner of her eye she watched the filthy bare feet of the ruga-ruga shuffle away. Another foot, one clad in sandals, hooked under her side and flipped her on her back. Ferig stared upwards into the coldest eyes she had ever seen. They flicked over her body, assessing, contemptuous, unfeeling eyes, and she knew he was not seeing her as anything other than an animal. He eyed her as dispassionately as she would pick through a bunch of bananas, in search of the most succulent.

  His white robe flowed down to his feet, a red sash thrown over one shoulder. A small white cap sat on his shaven head. She felt a horror which ran through her body and sat in her bowel like a hard, red-hot object.

  Mlozi! The one who walks with devils. His half-caste Arab/African face – with a tidy beard and two protruding front teeth which pushed out his top lip and sat, like white pebbles, over his bottom lip – was almost benign. But his eyes were dead and deadly all at once. Ferig felt deeply afraid.

  He snapped out an order in an unfamiliar tongue and the ruga-ruga stepped forward and pulled her to her feet. Mlozi gestured impatiently and they broke the twine holding her modesty apron so she was naked before him.

  Mlozi moved around her slowly. Ferig had no idea how beautiful she was but there was no way she could misinterpret the appreciation on this man’s face. She tried to place her hands over her mons veneris but the ruga-ruga snatched them away. She was trembling so badly she believed she would fall down. She was certain that Mlozi was planning to eat her.

  But Mlozi had things commercial rather than culinary on his mind. This one was a treasure. She would fetch far more than the average slave. The sultan in Zanzibar would pay handsomely for one so proudly beautiful, yet so fearful. He hoped she would survive the trip – not a foregone conclusion; the ruga-ruga were not oblivious of her charms and there was nothing he could do to protect her. Although he controlled the savage band of ragged and inhumane warriors with food, wages and use of the slaves, he, like everyone else, was also afraid of them.

  He nodded and Ferig was pushed back into the huddle of mute and fearful villagers. Then he nodded again and ran his finger under his throat in an obscenely murderous gesture and the ruga-ruga, grinning and laughing, pulled each of the captives forward and, depending on a nod or shake of Mlozi’s head, either led the wretched villager away to stand in a bewildered huddle with others, or killed them on the spot with clubs or spears.

  Ferig quickly realised that a dispassionate selection process was taking place, where only the fittest were left alive. The elderly, pregnant, ill, deformed or very young were killed. The all-powerful Nganga was killed with one blow to the head and in death his once indestructible body became a pathetic jumble of arms and legs, a sight so shocking to those who had regarded him with awe that they dumbly submitted to their own death. ‘Please let me die,’ Ferig begged silently, wishing the baby which had only just begun to grow inside her was more obvious. But she was led away to join the chosen few where she was yoked by the neck with a forked stick, a goree, the long end of which stuck out behind her. The front was locked into place with an iron staple and the fork narrowed so rapidly it rubbed the skin on either side of her neck. The stick at the back was bound to another goree which in turn was placed around another’s neck, this time with the fork rubbing cruelly at the front of the captive’s throat once it was secured by a staple at the back. Ropes, tied around the waist, linked a line of some forty people and then children were tethered by a neck-iron with the other end of their chain attached to the length of goree which stretched between two people yoked together.

  Those yoked by the gorees quickly realised that any movement by them, or the child linked to them, caused instant pain as the sticks rubbed their necks and threatened to cut off their breathing. Trembling and fearful, the captives stood in mute lines, their minds unable to take in the carnage around them.

  Ferig’s village was burning. The ruga-ruga ran through it setting it alight, amid shouts of encouragement from each other. Mlozi seemed content to let them take their time. It crossed Ferig’s mind that he could not have stopped them even if he wanted to. The ruga-ruga’s eyes were glazed in the aftermath of human slaughter and the joy of looting and burning. She did not see her own home set alight since she was facing the other way and to move was too painful. So she was spared the sight of Pambuka’s once strong and loving body, mutilated beyond recognition and set alight. Ferig was, in any case, staring at the mountains, devouring the familiar sight which she vowed she would not forget until the chance came for her to fulfil her promise to Pambuka.

  Finally the ruga-ruga, smeared with fresh blood and displaying large yellow teeth in a dreadful parody of a grin, appeared to have satisfied their blood lust. Mlozi realised they were under his control once more and barked an order. Reluctant to move away from the only home they had ever known, and despite having understood they were supposed to move, the bewildered captives stared dully at him. Ferig heard a hissing sound, followed by a tremendous crack and a cry of pain from someone.

  The Arab kurbash, in the hands of Mlozi, danced and hissed and split tender flesh with its needle-thin end until the slaves realised the only thing to do was obey the command to move immediately. Shuffling, reluctant, with terror pounding in their hearts, they moved away from the burning village, leaving the bodies of loved ones and friends to the scavenging village dogs and the already circling vultures.

  They walked all day. The ruga-ruga marched beside them, beating tom-toms, lashing them with the kurbash, taunting and poking them, particularly the women. Very few adult men had been spared.

  The first part of the journey was a nightmare. Coming down from the foothills of the mountains meant the slave in the front yoke was always below the level of the one yoked behind. The chafing
on Ferig’s neck was bleeding. She could feel the warm blood running down either side and trickling over her shoulders. But she bore the discomfort quietly. As bad as it was for her, it was worse for Pambuka’s sister, Makeba, who was behind her. Several times she heard her friend and sister-in-law choking for air as they laboured down a particularly steep slope.

  The ruga-ruga made no effort to take them around thorny stands of acacia trees. Ferig’s arms and legs were torn in several places. Flies, attracted to the blood, followed the pathetic caravan like a sinister cloud, inflicting stinging bites onto the torn flesh. They were given no food or water.

  By the end of the day Ferig was so tired she could barely put one foot in front of the other. Mlozi called a halt just as the sun disappeared behind the mountains. The ruga-ruga went among the captives, removing their yokes. These were immediately replaced by neck-irons. Sharp, rusty edges cut into the soft skin rubbed raw from the sapling yokes but, so glad were they to be able to turn their heads, no-one made a sound. Once the ruga-ruga had moved away Ferig asked softly, ‘Are you well, sister?’

  ‘I am as well as you,’ Makeba replied.

  Freed from the restraining goree, the two women moved together and clutched each other in terror.

  ‘I am going to kill myself,’ Ferig said. ‘I promised Pambuka.’

  ‘I will kill myself also,’ Makeba agreed. ‘But how?’

  ‘We will find a way, sister.’

  Up and down the line of bone-weary captives, speculation was whispered back and forth.

  ‘What will happen, what will happen? They’re going to eat us. Will we be sacrificed to their devils? Roasted alive? Turned into monsters?’

  The speculation fell silent as the ruga-ruga dispensed small quantities of food. Corn kernels, raw and hard, poured into the sand at the feet of each slave. They were so hungry that, despite misgivings that the little yellow beads would poison them, they ate ravenously.