War on the Drakensberg - 5
The brick building on Mount Argus hill outside Dublin was no more interesting to look at than a child’s first drawing of a house. But it did have three stories. It was on the top floor that the three monks lived. The status of the group was obscure, but they were dedicated, and tolerated by the bishop, who had plans. What those plans were, nobody knew - or rather, nobody admitted to knowing - but money was available, that was certain. The two lower floors were occupied, and all that the monks knew about the occupants was that the bishop would call in there before checking up on the monks, which he did ten times a year. The monks were under a vow not to speak to them.
This irked Padraig, the fourth inhabitant of the top floor. But Padraig kept his eyes and ears open - he was not a monk, and he knew more than he let on.
This Tuesday in March Padraig was digging in the vegetable garden. The potato blight was now a thing of the past, and although Padraig would never forget his life in Connemara, he had now put three years into supporting the place that had given him sanctuary. He wondered how much longer this stage of his earthly life could continue. But fate had already taken the plunge on his behalf - whether for good or for ill.
Brother Martin, old and bearded Brother Martin, interrupted Padraig and beckoned him over to the seat. It was a sunny day.
Brother Martin spoke.
“The abbot has given permission for me to talk to you, Padraig.”
“The abbot, Brother Martin?”
“Not just the abbot, but the bishop.”
“And what transgression am I being taxed with today, Brother Martin?”
Brother Martin did not answer directly - though his look was direct. He paused, more for effect than from uncertainty. He had already chosen his words - or perhaps had had them chosen for him. The bishop, thought Padraig - there’s a plot, for sure.
Brother Martin began at last. “You have been here now for three years, and you have worked hard.”
“I know about the cabbages and the carrots and the pratees, and that’s been useful to the monks. I have earned my keep, have I not?”
“Indeed you have, my son. You have also been under observation.”
“If you were waiting for me to show signs of wanting to join the brothers, you must be disappointed.”
“We are, we are. But the whole world cannot be monks.”
“The cells don’t suit me. I have to live in the open.”
“We have heard you, my son, as well as watched you. We think it is not the whole truth. We have allowed you to walk the hills and to ride, but what we have not told you is that it was on the bishop’s orders that you have been followed.”
Padraig said nothing. He had known for months that he had been followed.
“What do you know about me?” Brother Martin asked, suddenly.
“I know what everyone else knows,” said Padraig, on his guard.
“And what is that?”
“I know that you have been a missionary, but I don’t know where. I know that you have been sick and are here to recover. You are surely better, fitter now than when I first saw you - two years ago now.”
“That is true, but not entirely. Hear me. I have vowed to return to take up my missionary work again. Will you go with me me? I ask with the full authority of the bishop.”
For the second time in his life Padraig did not hesitate, despite the revelation of the plot.
“Yes, brother Martin, I am ready to go with you. So are the ponies. They are nearly full grown. I can see the abbot offering up a prayer of thankfulness to see the back of them. They drive him wild. When can we leave? And where are we going?”
“Not so fast, my son. It is Africa I must return to. Your task will not be missionary work - we accept that this is not your vocation - but to assist me, for there are many things I cannot, alas, do for myself. We are going to a wild place, and you may have to hunt for food, and to kill animals, and maybe even to care for me.”
“Brother Martin, how did you know I can shoot?”
“We followed you. You have been to Dublin. You have purchased a firearm, one of the new rifles, so I am told, and you have practised with it on the hillsides, and you are skillful.”
“It seems you did not know that I had money from the bishop to do this, Brother Martin.”
“No, by St Joseph I did not. I have seen you throw pebbles straight enough to kill birds. I have seen you striding the hills. You have told us how before the Famine you climbed the Twelve Black Bens of Connemara faster than anyone else. ... And you and I, my son, we do not argue.”
“True, brother Martin. Now I now know why the bishop supported me, and in secret. It was our secret, the bishop’s and mine, that he would keep my rifle so that the monks would not see it. He used to leave it in a special place behind a wall whenever I wanted to practise.”
“Can you tell me why the bishop should have paid to allow you to buy a rifle?”
“So that I could be of use to you in Africa. I know that now. But I think the bishop did not tell the abbot. The abbot’s story is different. The plans are to build onto this house and to make it a consecrated monastery. I cannot belong to a monastery. So either I must leave or some other task must be found. This is not all. You must know, as the abbot has talked to you, that he is not pleased with my behaviour, which is disturbing to the monks. I ask questions and do not accept the discipline and ritual that a monk has to accept without questioning. So we came to an agreement, an agreement limited by time.”
“And when will that time be completed?”
“A year from this very month.”
“And the terms of the agreement, my son?”
“That on my side I will go where he and the Bishop decide to send me, and he on his side will allow me certain privileges and freedom to come and go.”
“And the Bishop wishes you to go with me to Africa.”
“Indeed. But why am I being told now, and why by you, brother Martin?”
“Because you must learn the language of the peoples I wish to convert, and I shall be your teacher, and it will take a while. I must warn you. The language that the Englishman James Lancaster heard the native Saldanians speak when he landed on the Cape of Good Hope two hundred and fifty years ago must have been similar, for he tells us that they ‘spoke through the throat’ and ‘clocked with their tongues in such sort that in seven weeks the sharpest wit amongst us could not learn one word of their language’. Tell me once more. Will you come?”
“I have already said I will. ... Africa! Africa!”
“And you will have the ponies with you, Padraig.”
“We shall have them with us,” said Padraig, but he thought: a piece of Connemara will travel there too.
“A monk lives by a personal motto, to guide him. You will not be a monk or a missionary, my son, but will you have a motto?”
“Indeed I shall, Brother Martin. But not from the Bible. It is from Connemara. ‘I say what I think -- and do what I can.’ “
War on the Drakensberg - 6
The date is, I think, Saturday 10th September 1854. The reason I am not sure is that I have lost track over the six months that Brother Martin and I have been in the country of the Wafizi mountain people and the Wagoro hill-people. On Thursday, if the date is right, Brother Martin died, and I buried him yesterday, at the opening of this kloof or gulch, beneath the tree he used to sit under when his strength gave out. With him I placed his Bible and missal and prayer books, but not his Wafizi language notes, which he said I could keep. I laid stones over his grave, which has a cross with his rosary looped over the top and a likeness of him that I made. He might not approve of that, but it is my parting gift to a dear, kind, hardworking man to whom I owe much. Have I done my duty? Have I repaid my debt to the monks, and to the bishop, to the abbot, to Brother Martin, for the three years spent in Mount Argus? Will they ever know? As part of my debt I must set down what has happened here since we arrived in rock-strewn Africa. The story belongs to Mount Argus, and Brother Martin asked me to make a record. Perhaps one day it will reach them, but there is no bottle and no ocean to throw it into. Brother Martin devoted all his weakened body and soul to his missionary work. After the first two weeks he wrote nothing, but he told me everything. These are my first notes, for events have followed hard one upon another and I have not kept a diary - religiously or otherwise.
Our three weeks’ autumnal journey inland from Port Natal towards and over the pass in the Maloti Drakensberg mountain range was initially uneventful. We did not need a guide as Brother Martin was remembered and recognised, and word of his return, in the company of a younger man and two strange furred beasts, preceded us. Then we entered Wafizi country. The reception was noticeably cooler, even suspicious. Brother Martin had to explain to every village that he had not deserted them but had been ill and had had to return to his own country, but now he was back, and with an able-bodied helper. This placed me in an awkward situation, for I had no wish to be associated with Brother Martin’s missionary work, yet I had to give him all the physical and practical support within my power. I spent as much time as I could hunting, practising my Wafizi language, learning about the tribal customs, and being friendly. The gifts we had brought for the local chiefs allowed Brother Martin to set up shop outside each village to preach the Gospel. On these occasions, unless there were indications of threatening behaviour or some physical problem, I tried not to be there. I noticed that the nearer we came to the main Wafizi kraal - I can hardly call it the capital - the cooler the reception became. At the last village the chief refused our presents and would not allow Brother Martin to preach. He also wanted to take my rifle from me, but a present sorted that out. I also won a public wrestling match against the local strong man, which impressed the shouting crowd - and when I gave a present to the loser there was celebration and drum-beating and singing for half an hour or more. I think it was the nearest that Brother Martin came to envying me. It must also have helped us as we approached the ominous kraal, which was a fortified emplacement defended by several hundred spear-carrying warriors, because my reputation had preceded me, arousing as much curiosity as Brother Martin aroused suspicion and hostility.
The reason for the hostility became plain when it appeared that the witch-doctor Brother Martin had known was no longer there - I sensed that it was dangerous to enquire why or how he had been replaced by the new witch-doctor, Rimbi-Laga. Rimbi-Laga wielded power. The chief was respected but elderly and failing. We had arrived in a time of crisis in which Rimbi-Laga’s plotting, whatever its aim, was itself threatened by Brother Martin’s missionary endeavours because they undermined Rimbi-Laga’s authority.
The ambiguity of my position, with its conflict of duty and conscience, called for practical day-to-day decisions. While Brother Martin tried to set out his stall - his knowledge of the Wafizi language was still better than mine, though mine was improving - I decided to cash in on my reputation as a muscular athlete and crack shot. Well, not cash in, but quietly to make myself known and popular and useful - we had medicines - and to find out as much as I could about the politics in the chief’s kraal.
On one day I let it be known among the Wafizi children that I would show some magic that evening, on the steep slope the opposite side of the kraal from our camp, just before sunset. I chose this time and place because I knew that Rimbi-Laga would be presiding over his own indaba a mile away. It would be an opportunity for me to get some feedback gossip, from which I might be able to form some plan to ensure Brother Martin’s safety. As an afterthought I took the ponies along.
I counted fifty noisy children in my audience, all of them friendly. I knew about ten of them by name, but none of them well. I did tricks with stones and eggs and string and a knife, and then asked if any of the children knew any tricks. I made a point of showing in slow motion how each trick was done, saying that it was not ‘magic’ at all. Several children said that Rimbi-Laga did magic, but his magic was different. I asked if Rimbi-Laga’s magic frightened them. They didn’t answer, and I didn’t press the point. But I was looking for different reactions, and I noticed one in particular, from a boy called Tsiguni. As the sun went down and the children dispersed, Tsiguni, who was about the same age as my younger boy would have been but for the Famine, hung back, staying with the ponies, but so that no one would notice.
From this and from other experiences I soon sensed that time was not on our side. There was opposition to Rimbi-Laga, but it was not vocal. The old chief’s nephew was a strapping young man called Kanoko, who strutted about showing off his prowess with weapons, but who was clearly under Rimbi-Laga’s thumb. Perhaps Rimbi-Laga was planning to have the chief, who had a loyal and fierce bodyguard (small in numbers), supplanted by Kanoko, whom he could then manipulate. Brother Martin and I set up camp as near to the kraal as we dared, but as the days passed it became increasingly difficult for us to obtain provisions. Whenever I used my rifle to shoot game, Rimbi-Laga saw, or chose to see, provocation and abuse of hospitality. We were harassed by hostile chanting and refusal to supply water. So I was not surprised when, after some weeks, on Rimbi-Laga’s orders a handful of warriors arrived to escort us away. We were banished to the limits of Wafizi territory. By this time Tsiguni had been visiting us and our ponies almost every day. We had come to know him well, and he us. Brother Martin told him Bible stories, I treated him as a son, and he and the ponies became inseparable. Tsiguni had great curiosity and an excellent physique, as well as surprising stamina for such a young lad. It was clear that he admired me, as he admired Kanoko, and that Kanoko and I were being compared. Tsiguni had a built-in restlessness of body as well as of mind. He never stayed in the same place for long. If he was out of sight no one knew where he was or where he had been. He had been everywhere. He knew the peaks and the slopes and the woods and the plains as well as I knew the Twelve Bens of Connemara. So he was just right to advise us where Brother Martin and I should pitch our new camp. He led us to one of the several tight little valleys or passes linking the Wafizi and Wagoro territories, where there was also a track leading in the direction of the plains tribe. If we knew we were in danger we had a choice of escape routes. But our remoteness made information all the more vital, so we encouraged Tsiguni to visit us and tell us all the tribal gossip. His visits were unpredictable but apparently no obstacles were put in his way, either by his parents, or by Rimbi-Laga, who may have hoped that we would simply go away. If so, it was his mistake, for Tsiguni not only became our close friend and Brother Martin’s pupil, but he was useful with the ponies, supplied us with information, and gave me much needed practice with the language.
Back to prose index
Next two chapters
Back to home page