The Angels Weep

Mungo St. John's mare was lathered in dark streaks down her shoulders and his riding-boots were splattered with blown froth from her gaping jaws as he drove her over the top of the neck between the kopjes, and without pause pushed her down towards the white Mission buildings. The mare's hoof beats rang against the hills and echoed from the mission walls, and Elizabeth's slim skirted figure appeared on the wide veranda of the homestead. She shaded her eyes to peer up the slope at Mungo, and when she recognized him, hurried down the steps into the sunlight.

"General St. John, oh, thank God you have come." She ran to take the mare's head.

"How is she? "There was a wild, driven look upon Mungo's bony features. He kicked his feet from the stirrups and jumped down to seize Elizabeth by the shoulders and shake her in his anxiety.

"It started as a game, Vicky and I wanted you to come to Mama because she needs you she wasn't bad, just a little go of fever."

"Damn you, girl," Mungo shouted at her, "what has happened?" At his tone the tears that Elizabeth had been holding back broke with a sob and streamed down her cheeks. "She has changed it must be the girl's blood she is burning up with the girl's blood." "Pull yourself together." Mungo shook her again. "Come on, Lizzie, this isn't like you." Elizabeth gulped once, and then her voice steadied. "She injected blood from a fever patient into herself." "From a black girl?

In God's name, why?" Mungo demanded, but did not wait for her reply.

He left Elizabeth and ran up onto the veranda, and burst in through the door to Robyn's bedroom, but he stopped before he reached the bed.

In the small closed room, the stink of fever was as rank as that of a sty, and the heat from the body in the narrow cot had condensed on the glass of the single window like steam from a kettle of boiling water. Crouched beside the cot like a puppy at its master's feet was Mungo's son. Robert looked up at his father with huge solemn eyes, and his mouth twisted in the thin pale face.

"Son!" Mungo took another step towards the cot, but the child leaped to his feet and silently he darted for the door, ducking nimbly under Mungo's outstretched hand, and his bare feet slapped on the veranda as he raced away. For a moment Mungo yearned after him, and then he shook his head and instead he went to the cot. He stood over it and looked down at the still figure upon it.

Robyn had wasted until the bones of her skull seemed to rise through the pale flesh of her cheeks and forehead. Her eyes were closed, and sunk into deep leaden-purple sockets. Her hair, laced with silver at the temples, seemed dry and brittle as the winter grasses of the parched veld, and as he leaned to touch her forehead, a paroxysm of shivering took her that rattled the iron bedstead and her teeth chattered so violently that it seemed they must shatter like porcelain.

Under Mungo's fingers her skin was almost painfully hot to the touch, and he looked up sharply at Elizabeth who stood beside him with a stricken expression.

"Quinine?"he demanded.

"I have given her more than I should, a hundred grains since this morning, but there is no response." Elizabeth broke off, reluctant to tell him the worst.

"Yes, what is it?" "Before this, Mama had not taken quinine for six weeks. She wanted to give the fever a chance to strike, and to prove her theory." Mungo stared at her aghast. "But, her own studies-" He shook his head in disbelief. "She has shown herself, that abstinence followed by massive doses-" He could not go on, as though the words might conjure up the spectre he feared most.

Elizabeth had anticipated his fears. "Her pallor," she whispered, "the total lack of response to the quinine I am so afraid."

Instinctively Mungo put his arm around Elizabeth's shoulders, and for a few seconds she shrank against him. Mungo had always enjoyed a special relationship with the twins, they had always been his willing accomplices and secret allies at Khami Mission, from the first day that he had arrived, dying of the suppurating gunshot wound in his leg.

Though they had been barely pubescent at that time, the twins had not been proof against the strange mesmeric effect he had on women of all ages.

"Vicky and I tempted fate by telling you that Mama was dying."

"That's enough." He shook her gently. "Has she passed water?" And then, roughly, to cover the embarrassment between them, "Has she urinated?" "Not since last night." Elizabeth shook her head miserably, and he pushed her towards the door. " "We must force her to take liquid. There is a bottle of Cognac in my saddlebag. Get lemons from the garden, a bowl of sugar and a big jug of boiling water." Mungo held Robyn's head, while Elizabeth forced small sips of the steaming liquid between her white lips, and Robyn fought them in her delirium, hounded and driven by the terrible phantoms of malarial fever.

Then, as they worked, the icy chills that had racked Robyn's body gave way abruptly to a baking heat that desiccated her, and though she did not recognize either Mungo or Elizabeth, she drank thirstily from their hands, gulping and choking in her eagerness, even though she was so weak that when she tried to lift her head, it lolled and rolled to one side, so that Mungo had to steady her. His hands, powerful and brutal-looking, were strangely tender and gentle as he cupped her chin and wiped away the drops that dribbled from her lips.

"How much has she taken? "he asked.

"Over four pints," Elizabeth answered, checking the level in the jug.

The light in the room altered as evening began to fall, and Elizabeth stood up and held her back as she went to the door and looked across the veranda at the road that led down from the neck.

"Vicky and Juba should have been home before now," she said, but her mother cried out again, and she closed the door and hurried back to the cot.