Shaka spoke again. ‘Now, reward.’

  All faces turned to the open gate.

  More boys came through the gate. Again, they did not carry ivory: instead, they drove in a herd of cattle.

  Shaka held out his arms.

  ‘This is your reward,’ said Thabisa.

  It took a tremendous effort for Ralph to hide his reaction.

  ‘That is a very generous gift,’ he said. The cattle were still coming in, trudging past like an army on parade. There must have been over a hundred of them, some tawny red, others with mottled black and white coats, all with wide-spreading horns and wet black noses. ‘But I have nowhere to keep them.’

  ‘Shaka give you kraal. Talala kraal, near Thukela. Good land.’ Shaka leaned forward and added something more. ‘Big kraal. Space for many wives.’

  ‘I do not have any wives.’

  Shaka considered that. For the first time, he seemed to notice Ann. ‘She not wife?’

  Ralph and Ann shared a quick glance. ‘No.’

  Was it his imagination, or did Thabisa’s eyes narrow at that. Shaka pointed to Harry. ‘And him? Son?’

  ‘Not mine.’

  ‘Then you need wife. Shaka find.’

  ‘I do not need a wife. Shaka has given me more than enough.’

  He saw Shaka’s frown. But before the king could respond, Dingane spoke.

  ‘Have you forgotten that the Talala kraal belongs to me, brother?’ he said in his stony voice. ‘You cannot take what is mine and give me nothing in return.’

  No one else could have spoken to Shaka that way and remained alive. Even for Dingane it was surely an enormous risk.

  That is how much he despises me, Ralph thought. He cannot hide it even if it means defying the king.

  But Shaka did not bristle, as Ralph had expected. He looked away, and said curtly: ‘What do you want?’

  ‘Give me her.’

  Dingane pointed at Thabisa.

  What is he doing?

  Ralph’s mind raced. His command of isiZulu was not nearly good enough to manage alone. Without Thabisa, he would not be able to understand the customs of the court, the king’s orders, he would not be able to make himself understood when he needed to. He would be helpless.

  ‘Please, Nkosi,’ Ralph said to Shaka. ‘How can I serve you well if I cannot understand what you command?’

  Ralph could see the calculation behind Shaka’s eyes. He could not take back the rewards he had given Ralph without looking weak. But he did not want to publicly humiliate his brother.

  Shaka flicked his stick, like a man shooing away a fly.

  ‘Take her,’ he said to Dingane.

  ‘No!’ cried Ralph. All eyes turned to him. He saw triumph on Dingane’s features, the satisfaction of a bully who has found a weakness. ‘I need Thabisa.’

  ‘I will give you another servant,’ said Shaka.

  ‘What is happening?’ Ann asked.

  Thabisa began to walk towards Dingane, eyes downcast. From the age of eight, she had been a slave, to be passed from owner to owner. She did not believe that a different life was possible for her.

  The sight filled Ralph with rage. Is there nothing I can do to save her?

  He felt his powerlessness like a void inside him. The fine clothes he had put on scratched his skin; the necklace weighed like a yoke on his neck.

  Shaka looked away, his attention already turning to other matters. ‘If there is something you can do for her, then for God’s sake do it,’ said Ann.

  She had no reason to love Thabisa, but she could not look at Dingane’s face without feeling, deep in her body, what Thabisa would endure. She would not wish that on any woman – and she would not forgive Ralph if he let it happen.

  ‘There is something,’ Ralph murmured. The seed of an idea had begun to grow. ‘But it would have consequences.’

  ‘Do it,’ Ann said firmly. ‘Do it now.’

  ‘Wait!’ Ralph called out, so loudly it silenced the surrounding courtiers. He felt the power of Shaka’s attention descend on him again.

  ‘You said an induna must have a wife.’

  Shaka nodded.

  ‘I will marry Thabisa.’

  The words died away without translation. Thabisa turned to stare at him in disbelief.

  Ralph could not bring himself to look at Ann, though he could feel the agonising heat of her gaze on him. His hand touched his cheek. Once before in his life, he had given up what he desired most to do what he felt was right. He had lived with that ever since.

  Ann looked at Ralph; the colour had drained from her face, she felt breathless. Perhaps this is what he wants, she thought, and thinking it made the pain easier to accept. She remembered how she had found him in the forest with Thabisa, naked. Perhaps I am the serpent in the garden. Perhaps they were in love, and I tempted him away.

  More likely, she concluded, Ralph had never cared about her as much as she had imagined. That sparked anger in her heart, and though it seared her, it was better than what came before. She nursed it, using it to fight the pain. To a man like Ralph, so hard and coarse, one woman was like any other. No wonder I was so afraid to open myself to him. I knew the danger. Yet even as she tried to cling to her anger, she could feel the ache of loss in her heart. She told herself it was her shame at having been deceived.

  I was a fool.

  Thabisa still had not spoken.

  ‘Tell him,’ Ralph said to her.

  Thabisa spoke a few short, quiet words.

  Shaka was uncharacteristically quiet. Dingane stepped forward, stomach pushed out, peppering his brother with an angry tirade. Thabisa did not translate it, but Ralph could guess the gist.

  I cannot let him win the argument.

  ‘How many cattle does it take to buy a bride?’ he asked at the top of his voice, interrupting Dingane.

  If Ralph’s intervention had given Thabisa hope, she did not show it. She translated the question in a low, flat voice, as if it was irrelevant to her. She was beside the point. The real currency was not cattle or women or slaves: it was power.

  ‘Nine cows,’ said Shaka.

  Ralph gestured to the herd of animals he had been presented with earlier.

  ‘I will pay Dingane twelve cows to have Thabisa as my bride.’

  Dingane started to object – he did not want to sell – but Shaka cut him short. He spoke briefly.

  ‘What did he say?’ said Ralph.

  Thabisa looked at the ground. ‘umRalph give Dingane twelve cattle. Dingane give Thabisa wife.’

  Shaka thumped the butt of his stick on the ground to emphasise the point. The matter was closed. He bared his teeth in a smile that said any more dissent might be fatal.

  ‘Everyone have what he want,’ he announced.

  FOUR YEARS LATER . . .

  TALALA KRAAL

  T

  he induna sat in judgement.

  The trial had been going on all day – and the day before, in fact – but that did not dim the litigants’ enthusiasm. The two men stood opposite each other, arguing as vociferously as ever. A great crowd gathered around them. Some were there to offer testimony as witnesses, others as supporters of one side or the other. Many had come for the entertainment, and the chance of a free meal.

  A Zulu trial was a boisterous affair, more like a boxing match than the hushed proceedings of the Old Bailey. As the claimants argued, the crowd around them would nod and murmur agreement, or shake their heads and hiss through their teeth if they were unconvinced.

  None of the participants showed the least interest in the fact that the judge was not a Zulu. The novelty had worn off long ago. Over the past four years, they had grown used to having a white man as their chief. In their minds, Ralph was an induna in reality as much as in law.

  Ralph’s mind often wandered during these disputes. He did not need to be a judge of facts, only a judge of men. The people would decide the merits of the case. The induna’s job was to read their mood until there was a consensus, and then reflect that in his judgement. It left plenty of time to think.

  The scar on his back was not the only mark time had left. His limbs carried their own stories written in scar tissue: an elephant tusk, a wild dog, a knife. And some marks that notched the passage of time with less violence: the lines around his eyes, the crease across his forehead. His thirtieth birthday had been and gone, though he could not have said when. He marked time the Zulu way, moon by moon and season by season, with the great first fruits ceremony as the linchpin of the year. He had no concept of the date according to European reckoning, except that if four years had passed, it was probably 1828.

  When he told Thabisa about his birthday, she did not understand. When he tried to explain, she stared at him like he was an idiot.

  ‘Why celebrate get older?’

  Ralph had no good answer. It was just what people did. But that wasn’t true – the Zulus didn’t do it. It was just what he had grown up with. ‘Because I am wiser,’ he tried.

  Thabisa’s face had told him what she thought of that. ‘Old man no good.’

  Four years we have been married.

  The wedding, he remembered as a blur of details: Thabisa with her hair pulled up into a topknot, caked with red ochre; the short spear she had pointed at him as they danced; his feet fumbling as he tried to repeat the steps that Hamu had taught him, and the watching Zulus roaring with laughter.

  The night before the wedding, he and Ann had spoken under the bushwillow that stood outside the kraal. Everyone was asleep; the moon shone through the tree’s purple leaves and turned them silver.

  ‘You know this is not a true marriage,’ he had said. ‘It is only to save Thabisa.’

  He had longed to touch her, but Ann had held herself away. ‘Thabisa thinks she is marrying you.’

  ‘What does that matter?’

  ‘It matters to her.’

  ‘Zulus have many wives.’

  She shook her head. ‘You are not a Zulu. And nor am I.’

  ‘Then why did you let me do it?’

  She had reached out then and cupped her hand against his cheek. Her palm was cool. ‘You have made your choice. Now we must both live with the consequences.’

  ‘I am always living with the consequences,’ he had wanted to say. But he had stood there, until at last she took her hand away and found her fingers wet with his tears.

  That was the last time she had touched him. For four years since then, they had held themselves apart, even though she and Harry lived in his kraal. Sometimes, Ralph spotted her looking away hastily when his gaze caught her; sometimes, he knew, he did the same. When they spoke, she was polite and formal. Many times, he had wanted to shout at her: Why do you not go away? Leave me in peace? But he had never said it. He feared that she might take him at his word. When he returned from court, or from war, hers was always the first face he looked for. Even though he knew when he saw her, it would only hurt him.

  He did not know why she had stayed. What is there to keep her among the Zulus? She showed no interest in taking a husband, and she could not participate in the rituals of the Zulu women. Harry was old enough now to look after himself during the day. Ralph had the impression Ann was waiting for something, biding her time.

  Perhaps it was simply that she had nowhere else to go.

  Ralph forced himself back to the trial in front of him. He scanned the crowd, noting who had fallen silent; whose eyes were downcast; who stood straighter and spoke more loudly. He could understand their speech almost perfectly by now, but body language told him more about who’d had the better of the argument. Many of their faces were familiar to him: the headmen of various kraals that were built on his land, their families and retainers. He had been accepting their service, taking their tithes, settling their disputes and leading them in battle for four years.

  A new face at the back of the crowd caught his eye. He smiled in recognition. He did not see Hamu often these days, but when they met it was always with the warmth of old friends.

  It was time to draw the proceedings to a conclusion – he had made his decision. The crowd fell silent as Ralph stood.

  ‘You, Gouzi,’ he said to the man on his right. ‘You say that Mbikwana has built his kraal too close to yours, and your cattle do not have enough pasture to graze.’ He turned to the other man. ‘But you, Mbikwana, you say that Gouzi’s kraal was yours, before, and that you have the right to live there, too.’

  He tipped back his head, so that his eyes slanted down, and glanced around the assembly. It was a gesture he had copied from Shaka and used many times.

  ‘The kraal was granted to Gouzi by King Shaka. Therefore, it belongs to Gouzi, and all the land he needs for grazing,’ announced Ralph. Murmurs of agreement from one side, disappointment from the other. ‘But Mbikwana should be properly compensated. I will give you the fields by Inkwenkwe, in the next valley, to build a new kraal.’

  Gouzi smiled; Mbikwana bowed his head. The men around them nodded approvingly. It was a just decision.

  ‘We will eat as friends,’ Ralph declared, picking up his spear.

  A cow was led into the centre of the kraal. It was so tame, it stood still, even as Ralph walked to it and plunged the spear into its shoulder. This, too, he had done many times. He had learned that if he stabbed too deeply, he could pierce the heart at once and kill the beast outright. This was poor form, for the Zulus believed that if the animal did not bellow loudly when it was killed, it reflected the ancestors’ displeasure. If it died without making a sound, another cow would have to be offered up, and that was wasteful. The trick was to hurt the animal enough to make it cry out, and then swiftly end its ordeal.

  The cow bellowed and then fell dead. In minutes, it had been skinned and butchered, while girls knelt around it with basins to collect the blood. It was vital that not a drop be left on the ground, lest a wizard find it and use it to make medicines and spells against the village. When the cow’s entrails had been removed, Ralph cut out the inanzi, the fourth stomach, with its characteristic folds that always reminded him of the nautilus shell, and which the Zulus held sacred. He carried it into his hut, together with other choice cuts from the cow’s shoulder blade and abdomen. Some of the meat was mixed with the yellow flowers of the impepho plant and thrown on the coals to burn, filling the hut with a thick smoke that smelled to Ralph like liquorice and molasses. The rest of the offering was laid on a damp hide and covered in branches, where it would be left overnight for the spirits of the ancestors to lick at and satisfy their hunger.

  Are my ancestors watching? Ralph wondered. His father and his grandfather had both been conquerors, grinding India’s complex, ancient civilisations under the heel of white rule. What would they say if they could see me now? What would they think of my actions?

  His European clothes were long gone. He wore a kilt made of black and white ox-tails woven together in the Zulu style. He went bare-chested, save for the necklace of lion claws that Shaka had given him. His body was bronzed by the sun and honed by many hours of hunting and exploring. His hair had grown so long that he wore it in a plait down his back, which amused the Zulus greatly. All that remained of the man he had been were those piercing blue eyes, and the mesh of scars on his cheek.

  Black smoke licked the air as the beef began to sizzle over the fire. Ralph moved through the throng of people, exchanging greetings and pleasantries, until he found Hamu near the gate.

  ‘Yebo,’ Ralph greeted him, with a broad grin.

  ‘Yebo.’

  ‘You look well,’ said Ralph.

  ‘You look too thin. Thabisa does not feed you enough.’

  ‘I feed him plenty. He does not eat.’

  Hamu’s arrival had brought Thabisa out of her hut. She gave Hamu a shy smile as she presented him with a bowl of beer. It reminded Ralph how rarely he saw her smile these days.

  Hamu glanced between the two of them. He could not have missed how they kept apart and rarely looked at each other. He had long since stopped asking when Thabisa would bear children.

  It had not been a successful marriage. Thabisa understood why Ralph had taken her as his wife, but she was still lithe and beautiful when they married, and Ralph had been a young man. They had lain together before, why not again? But on their wedding night, when she had opened her thighs to him, he had gently pushed them closed. The hurt and shame on her face had pained him, but he did not relent.

  ‘I will not have children,’ he had told her.

  For a while, Thabisa had thought he might change his mind. She knew men, she knew what they liked and Ralph was, after all, just a man. One way or another, he would succumb to her charms. But he never did. Instead, the more she tried, the more he resisted and the more she got hurt.

  ‘No children, why wife?’ she had shouted at him, during one of their frequent fights in the early days of their marriage. ‘Why marry? Why not leave me in isigodlo?’

  I married you to save your life. That was the only reason. But Ralph never spoke those words. He was not so cruel, and in any case, she knew it as well as he did.

  ‘Uncle Hamu!’ Harry came running up, beef fat smeared over his face. Thabisa scowled. ‘Did you bring me a present?’ the boy asked.

  Hamu squatted down and tousled Harry’s hair.

  ‘You speak our language better than umRalph,’ he said.

  The boy was bilingual and could make the uniquely Zulu sounds – the tongue-click, the hum – that still made Zulus laugh when Ralph tried them.

  ‘Did you bring me a present?’ Harry asked again. He had learned from experience that Hamu would not arrive empty-handed.

  Hamu lifted off the necklace of red glass beads he wore and put it around Harry’s neck. Harry fingered it in delight. In this, too, he was a proper Zulu.

  ‘You spoil him, Hamu,’ said Ann, coming out from behind one of the huts. Ralph had not seen her all day: the sight of her now lifted a weight from his heart that he had not realised was there.

  ‘Do you bring nothing for me?’ she asked Hamu, pretending to be offended. She, too, spoke in Zulu. She still dressed in the English fashion, but had picked up certain mannerisms from the Zulu women. In particular, she had perfected the scornful toss of the head and impatient roll of the eyes that said a man was barely worth her time.