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One Hundred and Four Horses
Mandy Retzlaff
‘A letter is handed to you. In broken English, it tells you that you must now vacate your farm; that this is no longer your home, for it now belongs to the crowd on your doorstep. Then the drums begin to beat.’As the land invasions gather pace, the Retzlaffs begin an epic journey across Zimbabwe, facing eviction after eviction, trying to save the group of animals with whom they feel a deep and enduring bond – the horses.When their neighbours flee to New Zealand, the Retzlaffs promise to look after their horses, and making similar promises to other farmers along their journey, not knowing whether they will be able to feed or save them, they amass an astonishing herd of over 300 animals. But the final journey to freedom will be arduous, and they can take only 104 horses.Each with a different personality and story, it is not just the family who rescue the horses, but the horses who rescue the family. Grey, the silver gelding: the leader. Brutus, the untamed colt. Princess, the temperamental mare.One Hundred and Four Horses is the story of an idyllic existence that falls apart at the seams, and a story of incredible bonds – a love of the land, the strength of a family, and of the connection between man and the most majestic of animals, the horse.
One Hundred and Four Horses
A family forced to run
The horses they had to save
An epic journey to freedom
MANDY RETZLAFF
William Collins
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 77–85 Fulham Palace Road London W6 8JB www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
First published in Great Britain
by William Collins in 2013
Text © 104 Horses Ltd, 2013
The author asserts her moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
Cover photographs (posed by a model) © Lara Wernet/NA/Novarc/Corbis (woman and horse); Panoramic Images/Getty Images (tree).
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
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Source ISBN: 9780007477555
Ebook Edition © AUGUST 2013 ISBN: 9780007477579
Version: 2014-08-22
This book is dedicated to all our beautiful horses, and especially to those no longer with us— may their spirits run free.
Set a beggar on horseback, and he’ll outride the devil.
—GERMAN PROVERB
Contents
Cover (#u9d43c6db-c846-5a44-b55f-d09820ac8b22)
Title Page (#u7ca9595b-0b43-50b6-a211-059ddbbdd5af)
Copyright (#u0e92f6bc-a24d-5b80-ad61-8e86532ffae3)
Dedication (#u388c97a0-0787-5ae3-a930-d05b3c930cc3)
Epigraph (#u9cfe91b9-03a1-564d-8919-7119077d5673)
Prologue
Ten Years Earlier
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Mozambique
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Epilogue
Picture Sections
About the Publisher
Prologue (#u9c733899-7e83-5c84-9f6c-5c07d2106e2c)
THEY SET OUT as night was falling, but it is almost dawn and there has been no sign of my husband or our horses.
I stand on the wide veranda of the old colonial farmhouse, trying to make out shapes in the early morning gloom. Before Pat left, he told me to get some sleep, but he has done this before—midnight missions to rustle our own horses off land we no longer own—and I know how it goes. Tonight, there is no way I can close my eyes. Whenever I do, all I see are images of the terrible things that might be happening, even now: my husband, so near to me, yet surrounded by men who might block the roads and build up barricades to stop him from getting out. Consumed by thoughts like that, I can do nothing but wait.
It is September 2002, and it has been only twelve hours since the Land Rover arrived at the gates of Biri Farm, our home in Zimbabwe, southern Africa, for the past nine months. Biri Farm stands ten kilometers across the veld from where I now stand, but it might as well be in another world.
Once the Land Rover was gone, Albert handed me a letter. We had, the letter said, only four hours to leave Biri Farm. If we dared to remain, we would lose everything: our horses, our worldly possessions, even our lives. By government decree, Biri Farm was no longer a safe haven.
Now I stand in the eerie chill before dawn, wondering what has taken my husband so long. The farmhouse behind me belongs to Nick Swanepoel, a good friend and neighbor. So far, his farm, Avalon, has been safe from the chaos spreading like cancer across our beautiful country of Zimbabwe. He has agreed to shelter us for the night, to take in our herd of horses until we can spirit them to a new home, and the farmhouse is piled high with all the boxes we managed to rescue from Biri. Somewhere in there, my mother is sleeping too, barely able to comprehend the madness that has become our lives.
There are ten kilometers between here and Biri Farm, but the mist is low and I can hardly see the end of the field in front of where I stand. Pat should have been back by now. I shift nervously. All he had to do was get back onto Biri, rope up the horses, and lead them to the safety of Avalon. There was never any question, I knew, of leaving our horses behind. They are the horses of our friends, the horses of our neighbors, horses we have promised to protect. Some of them have been with us since the very beginning. Others joined us along the way. Many have already been driven from their own homes, attacked with spears or pangas—knives—or abandoned on farms as their owners fled. They are our responsibility, and we are all that stands between them and long, drawn-out deaths from cruelty and neglect.
I hear movement behind me. Knowing that it is my mother, come out to make a fuss over her daughter—even though she is well into her seventies, she will always make a fuss—I turn around, preparing to tell her that everything is fine.
“Any sign?”
I shake my head.
“They won’t be long,” she promises, though she can hardly know. “It’s a long trek with seventy horses.”
I close my eyes. When I open them again, at last I sense movement. It seems only that there is something out there, yet everything around me is black. All the same, something tingles up and down my neck. I am certain now: there are different textures in the darkness.
“Mum?”
“What is it?”
“It’s them …” I whisper.
Slowly, the shapes appear out of the darkness. At first they are like ghosts. It is only when I move forward, willing the ghosts to come to life, that those shapes begin to have definition. First, a man, a groom, trailing a long rope behind him. Then, a horse, bobbing contentedly forward, wearing a halter but no saddle. Then, more horses alongside, each with a lead rope dangling from its halter. One, two, three, four, five … The procession continues into reaches of darkness I still cannot see.
“Is Pat with them?” asks my mother.
I cannot see my husband yet, but still I nod.
They weave along a track between fields of irrigated wheat, disappearing behind reefs of low gray mist and then coming back into sight. I know how many horses there will be, because I know them all by name. We have seventy-one now, but before long there will be more. Some days, the phone does not stop ringing. All across this once-proud nation, farms are being abandoned; farmers are fleeing, but in their wake are the animals they cannot take with them.
Then, at last, I see Pat. He is moving on the far side of the herd.
He is holding a lead rope in his hand—though, in truth, he does not even need that. The young mare he is leading, though a new addition to the herd, will do whatever he asks. The tallest and proudest of all our horses, she stands seventeen hands high, an aristocratic dun mare with beautiful black points and eyes that positively shimmer with keen intelligence. Shere Khan is the self-appointed queen of the herd and, like the queen that she is, helps Pat guide horses and grooms to safety.
There is an old German proverb, one I sometimes imagine Pat’s great-grandfather might have used. Set a beggar on horseback, they used to say, and he’ll outride the devil.
We have to outride the devil, that much is true—but watching the herd walk onto Avalon Farm, I wonder how long we can stay in the saddle.
“I see you’re back,” I say when Pat comes closer, not wanting to tell him how worried I’ve been.
“All of us.”
Damn him, but he is almost grinning.
“Well?” I ask. “What now?”
Pat makes as if he is thinking about it. Behind him, the half-Arabian Grey and our daughter’s mare, Deja-vous, are grazing the long grass, but even they must have some idea of what is going on all around us.
“We’ll do what we always do,” Pat says. “We’ll make a plan.”
TEN YEARS EARLIER (#u9c733899-7e83-5c84-9f6c-5c07d2106e2c)
Chapter 1 (#u9c733899-7e83-5c84-9f6c-5c07d2106e2c)
I REMEMBER A place that was wild and filled with game. I remember a house with a giant mango tree in the garden and stables out back, where our horses grazed contentedly and waited to be ridden along dusty red tracks that wound their way into the bush. I remember picking up our children from school and driving home with the tsessebe—those powerful antelopes with chestnut hides, spiral horns, and strange, ridged bodies—flocking into the trees alongside us. The farm was called River Ranch, the farmhouse Crofton. The farm’s thick-forested hills and scrubby lowlands were held in the cradle of two rivers; its boundaries were patrolled by elephants tamed and trained to keep away poachers. Its soils held the promise of a new future, and on the day that my husband, Pat, and I took our children there for the very first time, in 1992, we thought it would be home forever.
That day, long ago and yet seemingly so near, we drove north on the Chinhoyi road, through fields of tall maize. Our car was laden with suitcases and packs, saddles and straps, and three squabbling children in the back. In the middle seat, our second son, Jay, was chattering animatedly about the game he might see. If there was one way of sparking the often taciturn Jay to life, it was to talk about the game he might track and hunt at our new home. The kudu, that large African antelope with its striped hide, huge horns, and powerful legs Pat and I had seen when we were first looking over the farm, had been one of the things that propelled us to go to the auction and place a bid; this wild place was where we would spend our lives.
We followed the winding, dusty road and could soon see the farmhouse of Two Tree Hill, the farm that bordered our own, looming above us, with big workshops and a water tank in front. Farther on, we saw the glistening waters of the dam. A herd of the enormous black antelopes known as sable looked curiously at us then turned and sped away, through the wheat and into the cover of the thick bush. Behind us, the truck that was following jarred on patches of uneven road, but the four horses inside were content. This, after all, was to be a new home for them as well.
We reached the farmhouse early in the afternoon, when the midday sun was at its hottest. The building had a broad white facade and a simple roof of corrugated iron. Pat pulled the car around, into the shade of the mango tree, and, even before we had ground to a halt, the children tumbled out.
Paul, our eldest, was fourteen years old, big and broad and the perfect image of his father. Jay, just turned nine, had a mop of wild blond hair that almost hid his searching green eyes. Our youngest, Kate, was three years Jay’s junior, a gorgeous girl who, surrounded by brothers and cousins, was growing up as tough as any of them and gave as good as she got.
“Is this it?” Kate asked.
“Your new home,” I replied. “The farmhouse is called Crofton. What do you think?”
As Paul, Jay, and Kate inched forward to investigate, Pat and I turned our attention to the truck that had followed us onto the farm. Pat undid the latches and let down the ramp. Inside the truck, he ran his hands up and down the four horses’ noses, promising them fresh air, clean water, and more grazing than they could wish for.
Frisky came first, her ears twitching inquisitively. An old skewbald mare, more than twenty years old, she barely needed leading. She simply followed the sound of Pat’s voice. It was the same voice she had been hearing for twenty-two years, since the days when they would race antelopes together at Enkeldoorn (now called Chivhu), where Pat grew up. She was his very first horse, perhaps his very first friend, and I sometimes wondered which one of us was the real love of Pat’s life.
After Frisky came her foal Mini, a bay mare with a wild temperament who had produced some very special foals. Once they were out, they turned to survey their new surroundings, while the other two horses, Sunny and Toffee, lingered in the shade of the horse trailer, unsure if they too should emerge.
While the children were looking up at the face of their new house, Pat ran his hands along Frisky’s flank and listened to her responsive snort. His old friend took a few steps forward and dropped her head to start pulling the strange new grass between her teeth. When next she looked up, her nostrils twitched and she rolled her eyes.
This will do, she seemed to be saying. If you say so, Patrick, this will do.
When I look back now, moving to Crofton was a new beginning. Crofton was a place in which we wanted to invest the whole of our lives. We were to be surrounded by rugged, virgin bush, and we had set our sights on opening up and forging a productive farm, one that we might one day hand down to our children. It would be a place for the generations to come, and Pat and I would found it while our children had the most amazing childhood they could, running wild in our beautiful Zimbabwe.
I did not know that nine years later, our world here at Crofton would end.
I had met Pat in 1976, when he was studying at the University of Natal in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa. I had not met many Rhodesians before, having been born in Ghana and brought up in South Africa, but as soon as I met him I knew that he was the man for me. I had taken temporary work as a barmaid at a hotel popular with the university’s students. Although I had never been to university myself, student life had become my life. My nights were filled with raucous laughter and parties, and I had become part of a big circle of friends, all of whom were studying at the university. Every year, the university held a fund-raiser they called Rag Day. On Rag Day, the students would build huge floats. Vast figures would be cast in plaster of paris, and garlands of flowers would cover trailers and cars. The students would climb on top of the floats and the procession would move along the streets of Pietermaritzburg, while we would all collect loose change for charities.
On Rag Day of 1976, I clambered onto one of the floats and headed off with the other students. As the floats lumbered along, we leaped on and off, proffering our tins, and the crowds in the street cheered wildly as each float passed by.
From somewhere in the crowd, I heard somebody calling my name. Standing, pressed between two other students, was a good friend from the university called Charlie Bender. He had caught sight of me on the float and was trying to attract my attention. When I spotted Charlie I waved back enthusiastically.
I did not notice Charlie’s tall friend who was standing beside him. His name, I would later find out, was Patrick Hugo Retzlaff. It was much later in our relationship that I found out that Patrick had nudged Charlie and asked him who the waving girl was. When Charlie told him my name, Pat said, “Well, that is the girl I am going to marry. I have had a strange premonition.”
