He didn’t know how to answer, and was silent.
“See—you would be. You can’t risk it. I should have realized. I’m so sorry. I am humiliated.”
“That’s not it! It might even be intriguing.” But he regretted it the moment he said it. He had spoken without thinking.
“Oh! I’m a freak!”
“No! I’m sorry I said it, but it’s true. You are so lovely that I’d feel privileged to be. . . in you. . . when it happened. To possess you when you are naked, as it were.” But he was horrified to hear himself talking like this, as though having sex with her were an option. “I shouldn’t have said that either. I wish I could unsay all of it.”
She paused briefly. “You do desire me.”
“Yes, curse me! I do desire you. You are so much like your mother, whom I wish I could have married. But it is forbidden.”
“So there’s a chance.”
“There’s no chance!”
“Kiss me, and I will let you be.”
It seemed a fair offer. He lay beside her and put his face to hers. She clasped him, half bestrode him, and kissed him with savage passion.
He knew then that if she tried to take it further, he would not be able to resist.
But after an eternal contact, she released him, settling for what he had offered. “Thank you, Keeper. I will always love you.”
“And I you, I fear,” he said. “But—”
“I understand.” She closed her eyes. She was letting him be. He realized that she was not certain either, and needed some resolution of their problem.
But it was too late. He knew as he gathered the blanket about him again that he did love her as a woman, forbidden though she was. And that if she came to him again, he would succumb. He had always liked her, and now he loved her.
Hero shook his head. “That was too real.”
“It is love denied,” Rebel said. “But it will not be denied much longer unless firm action is taken. I repeat: My own Vision suggests that it would be better to let them do it. The alternative is worse.”
“No! Nothing could be worse!”
She did not argue. “Then I think Keeper must go elsewhere, and soon.”
“Our cousins could use his expertise. We can send him there.”
“She might follow him. Her passion makes her headstrong.”
“Then send him where nobody knows. Immediately.”
She rose and departed without further word.
When Tourette discovered that Keeper was gone on private cattle business, she threw another kind of fit. But she was unable to express her reason, and no other member of the Family inquired. They all knew. It would just have to blow over in its own time and manner.
Hero was nevertheless nervous. Tourette’s affliction could affect her in more than mere tics and sounds. She was not a vengeful person, but her mind could be devious. The way she had approached Keeper suggested that balking her illicit passion could be dangerous.
Yet what could she do? She was a fifteen-year-old girl, her prime destiny being marriage to a suitable man. She understood why they had sent Keeper away, even if her passion wished otherwise. Time would surely bring her emotional as well as her rational agreement.
Rebel caught his eye, and shook her head. She was nervous too.
Two days later Tourette had her Vision. She and her friend Nombanda had gone to fetch water from a pool near the mouth of the river. There she had met the spirits of three of her ancestors.
“They told me that the Xhosa people must destroy our crops and kill our cattle, the source of our food and wealth. In return the spirits will sweep the British settlers into the sea. They will replenish the granaries and fill the kraals with healthier and more beautiful cattle. No more lung sickness. It will happen on February 18, next year, when the sun will turn red, confirming the spirits’ presence.”
Hero didn’t believe it. Oh, he suspected she had had a Vision, but that it derived in part from her malady and in part from her stress at losing access to Keeper. For one thing the date she named would be her sixteenth birthday, when by local tradition she would become adult and able to take charge of her own life and love. That was the fulfillment she craved, when the Family could no longer stop her from seeking her uncle.
If this was the worst result of the Family’s action, they were reasonably well off.
But the Family consulted, and decided to let others dispose of the Prophecy. Just so they could not be accused of suppressing anything. There were those among their people who were credulous about such things. So Craft went to Chief Sarhili to repeat the prophecy.
And the chief, perhaps motivated by the need to do something about the cattle lung sickness and the detested presence of the British, did something astonishing. He ordered his followers to obey the Prophecy. To kill the cattle.
That launched another Family conference. “This is sheer folly!” Hero said. “The spirits have never interfered with mortal affairs to this extent before, and it doesn’t make any sense anyway. Why should killing our cattle please the spirits?”
But Tourette was adamant. “My ancestors did not say why, just what. They must all be killed.”
“And the chief believes this nonsense!” Craft said.
Tourette glanced sidelong at him, and Hero saw a flash of that compelling beauty Rebel had described. She had set her sights on Keeper, but had she oriented on Craft instead, she might have succeeded similarly. Yet that did not explain the action of the chief, who had not seen her, just heard the relayed prophecy. “Its not nonsense. It’s a Vision. I saw it.”
“Well, we’re not doing it,” Hero said decisively. “We need our cattle and crops to survive. We’re not going to depend on magic or any other foolishness.”
Tourette didn’t respond. She never opposed her will directly to his. But obviously she still believed her Vision.
As it turned out, they did not have a choice. When they did not slaughter their own cattle, the chief sent a posse to do it for them. Suddenly all their cattle were dead.
Hero remembered what Rebel had said about the alternative being worse than the secret incest. This would not have happened if they had just let Tourette have her way with Keeper. Yet how could that ever have been justified?
The destruction of their crops followed. All the families were doing it, secure in their belief of reward from the spirits of the ancestors. At this point all Hero could hope for was that the Prophecy was correct, though he didn’t believe it. He directed the Family to save all of the grain possible, and hide it, because he knew there would soon be desperate need.
The slaughter continued, spreading across the entire Xhosa nation, not just Chief Sarhili’s clan. For a time there was feasting as the tribesmen consumed the flesh, but soon what was not eaten was rotting, and there was no more.
Now came the hunger. Their meager stock of grain diminished. Other families had already run out of food and were raiding their neighbors.
“Plan for defense,” Hero said grimly. “We must keep a guard out always, especially at night.”
They took turns, one Family member always alert. This paid off, for there were furtive attempts to sneak in and steal whatever was available.
But the bad siege occurred by daylight. A rogue posse charged the farm, six men running in tandem, brandishing spears.
They were ready. Haven, still a well favored woman, took her position, standing bare-breasted before the house as if caught unaware. Harbinger crouched behind her with his club.
Hero strode out toward them, pretending that he didn’t know their business. “Hail, fellows!” he called. “What is the nature of this visit?”
They ignored him, charging on. So Hero became more assertive. He brandished one of his spears. “If you do not come in peace, we will smite you.”
Still they charged, trying to get close enough to hurl their spears. Well, they had been given fair warning, and were obviously not going to be reasonable. Hero glanced meaningfully at Haven, who exaggerat
ed her pose, turning to display herself more fully.
Craft had fashioned a small catapult that could place a stone with almost pinpoint accuracy. He oriented on the lead warrior and took him out with a stone to the chest. Then the second, closer. The raiders obviously had never seen such a device, and were heedless of it until too late. They continued their charge.
Now they were in Hero’s spear range. He hurled his first spear before the third warrior got within his own range, and it transfixed the man, who had been foolishly distracted by Haven. Three down.
The fourth man had the sense to weave as he ran so that Hero could not be sure of accuracy. He reached Haven—only to be bashed as Harbinger sprang out from concealment, club swinging.
The fifth man, surprised, paused momentarily. That was enough; Hero got him with his second spear.
But the sixth man was right on his heels, bearing down on Craft while Hero and Harbinger were occupied. And Rebel sprang naked with a knife, and sliced his throat before he could react.
The first two warriors, bashed by Craft’s stones, were stirring. They had been knocked out but not killed. Hero ran to dispatch them. But while he was spearing one, the other caught him about the legs, bringing him down. He had to twist around, get his hands on the man’s throat, and throttle him to death. This took more time and was ugly to watch, and the man’s blood from the stone strike smeared messily across them both. But in due course it was done.
They had won this battle. The six raiders were strewn across the landscape, dead and dying. But Hero knew it was just the beginning. Their real enemy was hunger.
“Harvest the two closest,” he murmured to Craft. “Let the others lie as a warning to others.”
Craft nodded. They had discussed this privately. He and Harbinger hauled each of the last two raiders into the house, after making sure they were dead. Hero maintained watch, in case another contingent attacked. Crenelle brought him a damp cloth to wipe the blood off.
No other attack came. In due course he turned the watch over to Tourette, who had to take her turn as they all did. She had had the Vision, but she did not approve of being a patsy for criminal raids.
Rebel intercepted him. “Do we really have to do this?” she asked.
“Unless we prefer to starve, or become food for others.”
She nodded. “We have no choice. But I hate it.”
“So do I. So do we all. But this was perhaps inevitable the day Tourette decided to become a seeress.”
“She couldn’t help it, Hero.”
He was struck by doubt. “Should I have let her be with my brother?”
“No, of course not.” But her protest lacked conviction.
It was a lack Hero was coming increasingly to share. He had known his daughter was vulnerable, because of her malady. Because it robbed her of a normal life. And possibly it extended into her mind, and was responsible for the Vision. He should have known better than to force the issue. It wasn’t as if incest, like cannibalism, wasn’t known. The two would have been circumspect.
Rebel put her hand on his arm. “You did what you had to do. None of us anticipated what would happen. The chief should never have credited the Vision.”
“He had his own reasons. We should have seen the politics of it.”
“Easy to say now. But no one could have seen this particular awfulness coming.”
He wasn’t sure he agreed with her, but he appreciated her effort to console him. Not that this did any of them much good. “Let’s get on with it,” he said gruffly.
They joined Haven and Crenelle, who were carving the bodies. Both looked ill, but they too were doing what they had to. There simply was no other food available any more.
No one ate that night. They focused on getting the meat prepared and roasted so that it would keep longer. Craft kept a fire going in the cooking framework, and they scorched arms and legs as they severed them, and buried them in sand for storage. The sweetish smell of the singed flesh made more than one of them try to vomit, but fortunately their stomachs were empty.
In the morning the other four bodies were gone. Others had sneaked in by night and taken them. That was all right; the message would be spreading. It was not safe to raid this farm.
When the meat of the two bodies ran out, Hero and Rebel went out to find what else was available. They walked deliberately into an ambush, pretending ignorance, then reversed it, killing the attackers, who were weak from hunger. More meat.
So they survived, unpleasantly, while the majority of their neighbors fled the region or starved to death. Or ate the bodies.
The British came. It was not possible to fight them off; they were armed with guns, and were savvy about combat. So Hero did what he could, talking to them. “We survive as we have to,” he said.
“To be sure,” the British officer said. “We have come to arrest the perpetrator of this mischief, that idiot girl.”
“Nongqawuse,” Rebel said. “My niece.”
“It’s really for her own safety, as much as anything else,” the officer said. “There are those who don’t appreciate starving to death.” Presumably that was British humor. “She will be given a fair trial.”
And probably fed, and not raped. It was the best they could hope for. They had to let Tourette go. Had they resisted, they would have been exterminated in short order.
“The Xhosa tribe is finished,” Rebel said grimly.
That about covered it.
Hero knew he could have avoided all this, by letting the willful girl have her way. Had it been worth it?
When the prophesied day came, the sun rose with its normal color, and the spirits delivered no replacement cattle or grain. The Prophecy was revealed as false. But the damage was done; the Xhosa were finished as an independent force, and their vacated land was resettled by Europeans. The Xhosa population of the area dropped from 105,000 to less than 27,000. It was regarded as one of the most remarkable instances of misplaced faith recorded in history. They had destroyed themselves by their eagerness to believe the Vision of a teenage girl.
The historical Nongqawuse survived the situation. After her release by the British she lived on a farm in the Alexandria district of the Cape, and died in 1898. What motivated her Vision, and the general acceptance of it, remains a subject of intense speculation.
18
SACRIFICE
The 50,000-plus-year history of the Australian Aborigines was drawing to a painful close. There might have been as many as a million of them at the time the European colonization began in 1788, subsisting across the continent as hunter/gatherers. But they were devastated by European diseases, deprivation of habitat, and the vicious nineteenth century policy of “pacification by force.” In fact the British settlers seemed to be eager for pretexts to usher the natives into extinction. By the late nineteenth century this process was largely complete, and few independent Aborigines remained. Those remaining had to compromise desperately just to survive.
The place is the vicinity of Alice Springs, January 1, 1901. On that day Australia achieved independence from England. That freedom, ironically, did not extend to the natives.
Rebel returned from her gathering of tubers and berries to find the family grim. “What happened?” she asked Craft as she set the roots to bake in the hot ashes of the fire he had made, fearing his answer.
“A white family has been killed. We got the news from a child sent by a neighbor clan.”
Rebel felt an ugly thrill of dread. “And they’ll blame us. They always do.”
“And it will be a pretext to go on a rampage and wipe us all out,” he agreed grimly. “That’s what they want. It could even be that one of them did it, to frame us.”
“We’ve got to act, fast,” she said. “We’ll have to travel tonight, before they get organized.”
“Hero says they’ve already got men with guns guarding the road. We’re trapped.”
“Then I’ll have to go to George. You know what that means. I don’t even know wheth
er he’ll be able to do anything. It has been only spot favors, before.”
“It’s our only chance,” Craft said. “You’ll have to beg.” All the Family knew about George and what he expected of Rebel. They let it be, because they needed what she garnered in that manner. It was really another kind of foraging. They lived far from the shore, but via the white man they sometimes obtained seafood like crabs, clams, and fish.
“It’s not that he won’t,” she said. “It’s that I fear he can’t. This may be too big.”
“Go now. Try. Our lives depend on it.”
“Tell Haven to take Harbinger tonight.”
“I already have.”
She looked sharply at her brother, but he wasn’t smiling. He had known this was the only course. They all knew it. “Then I’m on my way.”
She paused only long enough to put on her clean skirt and blouse, clothing the whites required of any natives who entered their domains, and to brush her hair neat. Then she kissed Craft quickly and hurried away. She hadn’t eaten, but that didn’t matter, because George would feed her. She also did not take her sleeping blanket, because George lived in a house that had a bed, and she would share it with him. She preferred the ground by the fire, as they traveled from place to place within their range, but could accommodate.
She had first encountered George two years before. He was then a stripling of twenty, a decade younger than she and impressionable. She had been gathering in the field, and he had been painting a picture of it. He had asked her to pose for a picture, offering a precious bag of sugar in exchange, and she, flattered, had agreed. She had kept her figure, but knew that age would inevitably make her fade, so this was a chance to be immortalized in her late prime. She was nude, as she normally was in summer, and saw that this aroused him, though he was too shy to make any advance. It was an effect she was pleased to have on him; it meant she still had her sex appeal.
The painting made her dynamic and beautiful, more so than she really was. George was a skilled artist who had fathomed her independent spirit and somehow captured it in paint. In the picture her hips were wider, her breasts firmer, and her eyes more piercing. She loved it. So she kissed him, and departed with the sugar, leaving him stunned.