A Sin of Omission Read online

  August 1878

  If you have a firearm please hand it in immediately to your District Magistrate. Please ensure that all those in possession of firearms at your mission (including outstations) do the same. Those who fail to comply risk imprisonment.

  He had written to the Mfundisi and told him that fifteen guns had been handed over by him to the Magistrate. All had belonged to Mfengu and many had been used in combat in support of the government against the Ngqika in an earlier war.

  He did not elaborate on the disbelief and anger – the betrayal – of these men at losing their weapons.

  How could he blame them?

  Angry and then conscience-stricken, he had lifted his father’s gun from its hiding place at the back of the bookshelf to take to the Magistrate. Mzamo had trusted him to care for it, left instructions – but he had always thought of it as his father’s gun, earned through heavy labour. He had examined it, smoothed the butt with his palm, felt its weight in his hands.

  No – it was not Mzamo’s. And even if Mzamo had appropriated it, it would always be their father’s gun.

  Proof of manhood, not a weapon of war.

  Stephen had not taken the gun to the Magistrate. He had not done his civic duty.

  – He who robs his father is a son who brings shame and disgrace.

  Such was the Word of God. Greater than the Law.

  He had hastily wrapped it in a cloth and concealed it in the only place he knew where others would not think – nor dare – to pry. He went at night when the mission workers thought he was at private prayer and, easing the boards from the base of the altar cabinet he had made to house his communion plate and Bible, he had hidden it between them and the earthen floor. He had kneeled in the darkness, his candle extinguished, head bowed, and recalled his father, so long ago, standing in the mission yard, gripping the travelling stick yoked across his shoulders on the day he had left Mzamo at the mission.

  That terrible silence. That mute farewell.

  It was the last time he had seen him.

  Stephen crept back to the house. He handed Mzamo the gun. A moment of exchange, fingers touching. He hesitated, then he said, ‘My horse is in the shed.’ More firmly, ‘You must take it.’

  He looked into his brother’s face. ‘Be careful when you let it out. The churchwarden lives close by.’

  ‘I cannot take your horse,’ said Mzamo, shaking his head.

  ‘There’s an old bridle at the back of the door,’ urged Stephen, ignoring him. ‘But don’t take the saddle. Mfundisi Rutherford gave it to me. If you are caught they will trace you back here and I will be arrested for helping you. I do not wish to lie.’

  ‘You have lied to them already.’

  Stephen did not reply.

  A dog barked in the distant valley, answered by another. ‘You must go,’ Stephen said. ‘It will be sunrise soon.’

  ‘When the fighting is over you may fetch the horse from our mother. As it is yours, she will guard it well.’ Mzamo went to the door. ‘And do not fear, I will repay my debt to your friend, Newnham.’ He paused, turned. ‘Baz’ iindlebe!’ Attend me, brother.

  Far off the dogs were barking once again, others joining as the challenge was taken up, homestead to homestead. ‘You must go!’

  ‘Baz’ iindlebe!’ Mzamo said more urgently. ‘My son must inherit that land.’

  ‘He is not the son of your wife. It will not be granted.’

  ‘I will marry his mother.’

  ‘You are already married to Nokhanyiso.’

  ‘She is barren. And she has deserted me.’

  ‘She is still your wife.’

  ‘By someone else’s laws.’

  ‘They are the laws of the land. And of God’s Christian Church.’

  ‘Why do you think I have had to ask for money? Why do you think I humbled and abased myself before Canon Rutherford, asking for help? Why do you think I cannot buy a weapon to protect myself? Why do I, who once owned horses and a carriage, have to come on foot in the dead of night?’ He paused, looked at Stephen squarely. ‘It is because I have sold everything that was mine and sent every penny that I could to her. To sustain her. To sustain our son. To do what was honourable and right, even in your eyes and the eyes of the Church. And I will marry Elizabeth Madikane. By the same customary union as our father married our mother. She will be my Great Wife. It is my right to choose the mother of my heir.’

  ‘She is a Christian. She is still someone else’s wife. She will never agree.’

  ‘How can you know?’

  Stephen looked away. How indeed.

  ‘In the meantime,’ said Mzamo, ‘you will fetch him and bring him here. You will teach him, Malusi, to be a man like you.’

  ‘To speak like me?’ Stephen’s voice was unsteady. ‘Ihlungulu?’

  ‘No.’ Mzamo came forward and laid his hand on Stephen’s shoulder, shaking it slightly – not in anger but in supplication. ‘You are a man of stature. Unesithunzi. Yes, I know that now.’ He gazed into Stephen’s face, then dropped his hand and turned again towards the door. ‘He must have an education, know English well. It’s the only weapon left.’

  ‘You can do that yourself, better than me.’

  ‘I am a soldier,’ Mzamo said. ‘Soldiers die.’

  Chapter Two

  The churchwarden at Nodyoba had lent Stephen a horse for his journey to the nearest railhead. It was a shanky bay – hardy, wayward, it preferred to triple. Old Dyoba’s eagerness in helping his missionary was touching. At the time of Mzamo’s secret visit, when Stephen’s horse had so ‘mysteriously disappeared’, Dyoba had organised a party of boys to search the veld and hillsides. They had found the tracks across the high ground.

  ‘It is the rebels,’ Dyoba had said. ‘I am surprised you did not hear them.’

  ‘It was a night of high wind. It blows very loudly round this house.’

  Dyoba had mused a moment. ‘Perhaps you should get a dog, Mfundisi. To give a warning.’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  If Dyoba believed that the theft had been reported, Stephen omitted to contradict him and he avoided going into the town. He wanted no speculation by people there as to why he walked instead of trotting down the high street on his grey, raising his hat to passers-by: the war was reason enough to stay at the mission although visits to his nearest outstations could not be avoided. Having to go on foot meant he had had to spend the night at each of them. It had been many months before he was able to venture to the more distant settlements. When at last he did, in July 1879, it was from the headman at kwaJingqi that he had heard the news of Mzamo’s capture. The old man had said, ‘I am grieved to hear about your brother.’

  Stephen had stared at him, uncomprehending. ‘I do not understand you, Mhlekazi.’

  ‘News does not lie in the road, Mfundisi,’ the man had said gravely. Iindaba azilali ndleleni.

  ‘What news?’

  He glanced about and then hastily took Stephen into his house and closed the door. ‘Your brother was captured some weeks ago like those other men from Grahamstown. All grand gentlemen indeed. Zizinoni. Very learned.’ He paused. ‘Christians like you.’

  Stephen sat down on a chair, uninvited, steadying himself. ‘I did not know.’

  ‘Yehl’ intlekele!’ Indeed, it is a great misfortune!

  ‘Where was he captured?’

  ‘He was up near the Indwe, going, perhaps further into Thembuland. I cannot think why he was so far north.’

  Stephen was silent.

  The Indwe and Albert Newnham’s mission: I have my own reasons for sparing Mr Newnham’s bell.

  ‘Your brother had a gun.’ The old man was defiant. ‘Why may a man not carry his own gun? What treason is that? Why may he not ride his own horse?’

  ‘Where is he now?’

  ‘He was taken to the gaol in Grahamstown where the others they call rebels have been kept. Since then they have been sent to the Cape, some to the island, some to break stones in the harbour. Many have go
ne. Those that break stones can see across the water to the place – esiqitini – where our chief Jongumsobomvu Maqoma has twice been exiled.’

  The Breakwater of the harbour – and beyond, across a forbidding stretch of sea, the bleak small island where Maqoma, the finest of their generals, lay buried in an unmarked grave.

  ‘Kanti ke, and yet,’ the old man said, ‘it is a lie that Jongusobomvu is dead. It is what the government wants us to believe, to break our spirit.’

  Stephen did not contradict him. He knew the legend of Maqoma’s immortality: Jingqi, Maqoma’s great mottled riding-ox, had long been heard bellowing at night, lamenting for its master. It was said that it had walked five hundred miles to the Cape and braved the surf and currents of the sea, swimming to the island to rescue the chief and that sometime – unknown to any man – they would emerge from hiding and triumphantly lead their people out of bondage.

  But Stephen knew that no man could escape from that island no matter how near the shore, no matter how close the city’s lights might seem. It was a place where graves ranged side by side under a shrieking wind: convicts, lepers, lunatics – the discarded of the earth.

  Stephen had left the headman and kwaJingqi not knowing who to call on, who to confide in, how to confess that he had desecrated his church by concealing a gun in it – a gun that had led to his brother’s arrest. There was no one from whom he could learn the truth of how it had happened without exposing his own role.

  The gun. The horse.

  Who would believe that both were stolen when each could be so clearly identified with him, the rebel’s only brother?

  And now – so many, many weary months after the confusion of that news, the anxious silence, the absence of any visits from a fellow missionary, the curfews, rumours and uncertainties – the truth of what had happened was explicit in the letter which he carried in the inner pocket of his coat as he rode east along the low escarpment towards the train station in the town.

  It was a truth that he could share only with Albert Newnham – and not be judged.

  As soon as the letter had arrived informing him of Mzamo’s death the previous January, Stephen had written to Albert.

  June 13th 1880

  My dear Albert,

  It is urgent that I see you. DV, on Friday fortnight I will ride to Stutterheim and leave the horse with an acquaintance and proceed by train to Queenstown. Could you meet me there on the 27th? If I could spend a day or two with you it would be a comfort to me in a time of great anxiety and sorrow. I will give you details when I see you. If I could impose on you further – I wonder if you could spare a horse which I would return within the week. If, by any chance, you are unable to meet me, I will make my own way to your mission.

  He had given no details of the reason for his journey. It seemed unwise when his letter might fall into unfriendly hands and, though he was anxious to reach his mother, he was more anxious to be armed with Albert’s counsel. He needed someone with whom he could pray. Someone to confide in. Someone to return to when his task was done.

  The road from Stephen’s mission at Nodyoba led along a hillside between clusters of huts. Many had been burned in the fighting the year before, left to disintegrate. The smell of smoke had long deserted them and the wind had sent the cinders of their thatch far and wide. Passing them, Stephen remembered the goats and the sheep, the flocks among the sweet thorns. But there had been few cattle. More than twenty years ago they had been slaughtered and the fields laid waste for the coming of a new Universe when herds would arise, fat from the earth, the crops would sprout spontaneously and all white men would be driven into the sea. He had only a faint remembrance of those herds of cattle and the time of the great hunger when he was lost in the bush and Mfundisi Rutherford had found him and taken him to his mission. He could just recall – an earliest memory – the bellow of their dying, the vultures and the crows, the sky black with wingbeats, his fear of their beaks and venom eyes.

  Now, picking his way down the hillside, taking a shortcut across the slope, he greeted women hoeing, he stopped to speak to a man in the path, an old wall-eyed heathen, his blanket draped across his shoulders.

  ‘Maneli.’ Reverend missionary.

  ‘Mnumzana.’

  The courtesy of titles, the tip of the old man’s stick touched briefly to his forehead.

  Usually, when he rode from homestead to homestead evangelising, Stephen sang hymns. He did not sing today. He wondered if he would ever raise his voice in song again or preach with conviction. He simply gazed across the arc of the horse’s neck as the hills seemed to dip and stumble to its gait.

  If belief was fragile and his hymns could give no comfort, he knew – he trusted absolutely – that Albert would be waiting for him. Albert with his long thin legs, his jaunty beard, his beaming little spectacles, his short-cropped sandy hair. At the Missionary College in Canterbury, even when he had chivvied Stephen, he had never been impatient, only rolled his eyes and laughed at Stephen’s dawdling. ‘Come on, old chap! You have no sense of time at all!’

  And Stephen would shrug good-naturedly. What was the use of rushing?

  ‘The teashop closes at five. The bell will go before we’re done and we’ll be late.’ Ah yes, the bell!

  But time was not the only constraint in visiting the teashop. Stephen did not have the money and he could not always allow Albert to pay.

  ‘Bother the Bishop!’ Albert would say if Stephen shook his head at every invitation. ‘After all, you’re not earning fees to teach me your language and I’m hungry! So we’ll have two Welsh cakes and bring a penny bun back with us. That’s only fair. Come along.’

  No, Albert would not let him down.

  Even if he had a cheerful innocence about the world, he had a sense of duty and a touching loyalty on which Stephen had always depended. How many times Albert had saved him from awkward moments in the drawing rooms of Canterbury, or shown him unobtrusively the way to hold his knife, to greet a lady, to ignore a slight. If he could not share in the gravity of Stephen’s burden now, Stephen could count on his kindliness and tact. Stephen knew he would help him in any way he could – with food, a bed, a horse.

  And prayers.

  When Albert prayed, he would always close his eyes quite tightly, raise his chin and chat confidingly with God – so different from the Warden of the Missionary College, Dr Bailey, or Mfundisi Basil Rutherford, intoning through their noses, alert to the sonorous sound of their own voices. So different from Stephen’s own silent, apprehensive reverence. Albert did not have the gravity of a man in Holy Orders. He was more like a child kneeling at his bedsidelooking up into his father’s face before the candle was blown out and loving hands tucked him in between the sheets.

  Once they had prayed, Stephen knew Albert would suggest a pot of tea and then divert him with memories of Canterbury – japes at the tutors; jokes in the dining hall; waylaying the Superintendent of Students or old Blunsom, the porter, with outrageous requests – and laugh at how the Warden had chided them both for irreverent behaviour.

  They had been friends almost since the day that Stephen had walked through the door of the Missionary College, standing, simply overwhelmed, his eyes scanning in bewilderment the towering arches and Gothic windows.

  To begin with he was led about in a haze of staring confusion – unprepared, unrehearsed and silent – until he was taken to the workshop and given a lathe by the carpentry master, who began by speaking to him in a pidgin English and explaining the tool as if it were an artefact from another world and he an idiot.

  But here Stephen was on familiar ground: Mr Simeon Gawe’s coaching at the Native College had been expert and swift. ‘Thank you, sir,’ Stephen had said quietly to the master. ‘On what would you like me to work?’

  A little nettled, the carpenter had given him a length of wood. ‘Round this off and let me see how you do.’

  Expected to fail, Stephen had failed.

  He had no vice to hold the wood and, under scrutiny,
he had allowed the lathe to slip and clatter to the floor, damaging the handle.

  Everyone in the carpentry shop had stopped their work and looked up.

  It would have been better to have been chastised, to have been cuffed as Mr Gawe would have done with a few well-aimed but not ill-natured curses, calling him ‘Sidenge’, a useless fellow, rather than this polite and supercilious silence.

  Except for Albert.

  ‘Ah!’ He hurried over – a young man with inordinately thin, long legs – ears flushed red as if the condescension had been directed at him instead of Stephen. ‘Sorry, old chap,’ he said under his breath as he picked the lathe up off the floor. He examined it. ‘I know this lathe,’ he said more loudly. ‘It’s got a tricky handle. I believe I split it long before today. Bad luck.’

  ‘Newnham,’ the carpentry teacher said, ‘get back to your work.’

  ‘Got a replacement?’ said the young man airily, looking directly at the master.

  ‘No.’

  ‘I can share mine then,’ he said and grinned ingenuously. He took Stephen by the arm, leading him away to his workbench. ‘He always does that to new students,’ he said, winking at Stephen. ‘It’s an old trick to put them in their place, especially if they’re foreign.’ He meant ‘native’. He had often heard the master call them ‘uncouth little animals’. But he was far too tactful to say it.

  After that, Stephen – hanging back but eager – had looked for Albert Newnham, an anchor in his bewilderment. Albert had even been good enough – making a detour though pretending not to – to show him the more secluded lavatories behind the chapel. ‘I find fellows bother one,’ he laughed, ‘when one doesn’t want to be bothered!’ And the reddening about his ears was more earnest than embarrassed. ‘If you ever need a dose of castor oil, tell me rather than Mrs Blunsom, who will advertise your complaint all over College. She’s used to me now and doesn’t make remarks any more.’