CHAPTER FORTY

Monday, 20th December

When Suzanne woke the following morning, Tshu had gone. Tia was her usual bright self, but Harrie seemed to be struggling. The mark on his face where Odendaal’s cane had struck seemed more pronounced. She wanted to ask how he was feeling, but suspected he would not welcome the question. He was a private man, and a proud one.

Suzanne stretched and looked out from the encampment to the vista laid out before them. It was going to be another beautiful day. An apricot dawn sky silhouetted the trees on the ridge to their left, the sun beginning to rise in the sky sending slants of light across the green land. She drank a little water, ate a sweet biscuit, banged her boots together to check no insect had taken refuge there in the night, and put her knife back on her belt.

Harrie saddled her horse, refusing all help though Suzanne noticed he was moving more stiffly than before. Then they doused the fire, stamping the last embers into the dirt until the red turned to grey. Wildfires on the plains and in the forests were a constant threat during the hot, dry summer months.

They set out as the sun was rising, walking east: Harrie led the way with his spear in his right hand, Tia brought up the rear, her knife at her belt, and Suzanne rode between them.

‘Are we now going to where the old chief allotted Louise a parcel of land?’ she asked.

‘We are, but not directly,’ Harrie replied. ‘When you were sleeping, Tshu and I talked further. Although he knows nothing more from his own experience, he remembered something else.’

‘Yes?’

‘There is a clan who tend their animals to the north of here, towards the Simonsberg mountains. He remembered that there was a very old woman who claimed to have delivered a child to one of your kind.’

Suzanne felt a jolt in her stomach.

‘Women hear different stories to men,’ Tia said. Suzanne knew this to be true. She thought of Florence sitting with her friends in the meeting room, sharing every piece of gossip between them, and smiled, feeling a sudden longing to be in her grandmother’s company. What stories she would have to share with her when she returned to the Colony. Perhaps she would even be back in time to mark her own birthday on the first day of the New Year?

‘Where will we find this clan?’ she asked.

‘Tshu last had sight of them near the Groot Berg River.’ He looked up at her. ‘It will be the same, you understand. We will only learn something if the midwife passed on her story to her daughter and her daughter’s daughter.’

‘I do, but someone must have said something, for even a whisper to have reached Tshu’s ears.’

‘I agree.’ Harrie nodded. ‘We should be there by the time the sun is at its highest.’

Suzanne looked at the sky. By her reckoning, if they kept a steady pace, that should be in six hours’ time.

They rode through the emerald landscape. Softly undulating hills, the land less dry as they made their way. Mile after mile, hearing the jackals that seemed ever present, but never visible. Tia pointed out a herd of bontebok. Suzanne was pleased at how much she could identify for herself, knowledge amassed like treasure in the four months she had been in Africa. Then an embarrassed smile lit her face. The truth of the land lay far beneath the surface and would take a lifetime to understand.

Suddenly, Harrie stopped. Suzanne pulled up her horse, too, her heart speeding up. Tia came from behind to stand beside her brother, her hands pressed together almost as if she was praying.

‘Look, miss,’ she said in a voice full of awe. ‘They have come to welcome us. The forceful ones.’

Suzanne followed the line of Tia’s finger, allowing her gaze to narrow down, seeing the grey against the green, and caught her breath. She reached into her satchel, withdrew her eyeglass and adjusted the sight. Elephants. No description had done justice to these magnificent beasts. Even at a distance, she could appreciate their majesty.

‘Can we go closer?’ she asked in awe.

‘A little, but we do not want to disturb them,’ Harrie said. ‘Can you see, many of the females have little ones? Your people, as well as ours, hunt elephants for their tusks – ivory is very precious – but not in calving season.’

‘Do both male and female elephants have tusks?’

‘They do,’ replied Tia. ‘The herd are ruled by the females, the males come and go.’

Suzanne could see the smaller animals beside the adult elephants, half hidden by their trunks and their vast grey ears, triangular like a lateen sail.

Silently, they moved forward until, even without her eyeglass, Suzanne could see there were six adults and four calves. They came as close as Harrie would allow and stood in silence. Then in a low voice, almost as if he thought the elephants might hear them, he whispered: ‘We must go around them to go on.’

As they set a line to the left, then back through the valley, Suzanne thought about how hard it would be to give birth to a child in these surroundings, aided only by a woman who did not speak your language. Wondering how Louise would have felt, the fear of it and the pain. Assuming that Louise was the mother. For if not her, then who?