by Peter Rimmer
The Captain had sent horsemen to all the ports in southern England with letters to the Port Captains. The brat could hide in England but in the end, the police would find them. The Captain’s wife was packed off back to Hastings Court. To The Captain, Emily mattered little. It was her son, his grandson, the heir to all his wealth and Hastings Court, with the blood of ancient knights and aristocrats pumping through his veins, the heir that would be recognised for all time as a gentleman, that was what hurt him to the quick. The boy was the reason for everything The Captain had ever done in his life. If they would not let him become a gentleman, they would never gainsay his grandson, Harry Manderville-Brigandshaw.
After recovering from the shock of recognising Seb’s voice and seeing a stranger coming through her bedroom window, Emily turned up the gaslight, recovered her wits and went straight down the long, old corridor with the Manderville family portraits on the walls to the nursery and her son. The young nurse was asleep in the bed next to the child’s cot, and when the gaslight at the door was turned up, the girl awoke.
“I’m going away, Alison, and taking Harry with me. Would you care to come with us?”
“Where are you going?”
“At this moment I have no idea but I won’t be back. If you don’t come, I’m afraid you won’t have a job and Harry is very fond of you. We have to go back to my bedroom as I don’t wish to wake the servants.”
“How are we getting out of your bedroom, ma’am?”
“Down a ladder to be exact. Pack his warm clothes and some for yourself and we’ll be away before anyone else is awake.”
Within half an hour of Seb’s breaking into Hastings Court, the nurse was the first to go down the ladder carrying a small case. She dropped into the flowerbed and looked up at the second-floor window where the man was coming down with the boy clinging to his back, Harry’s arms around the man’s throat. Acting on the instinct of the trouble she would be in with the boy disappearing from her care, she thought it better to abscond. The man handed her the child and went back up for the blankets and the second case. It was freezing cold in the grounds and she wanted to stamp her feet to make them warm. She could neither see horse nor coach and when they were all together on the ground, they walked away through the elm trees, across the well-kept lawns. Five minutes later the nurse saw a coach and horses standing next to the unoccupied gatehouse. Behind them, there was no sign of life at Hastings Court, the only light coming from the old house the one they had left on in the bedroom. The young girl could not make up her mind whether she was excited or terrified. The coachman cracked his whip and a journey she had never imagined began. To her surprise when they passed through the village as the day was dawning, they took the Guildford Road to the west rather than the road to London. Harry was asleep again on her lap. Opposite, the bearded stranger and her mistress were in deep conversation.
“We are going out of Bristol, Em. Father would know to block the ships out of London. We sail out of Avonmouth on the evening tide.”
“Where are we going?”
“As far away from my father and brother as possible. Africa.”
“They’ll find us in the colonies.”
“Not where we are going. It’s over, Em.”
“It’s never over.”
Only then did the nurse understand. The stranger had come to collect his son. Even if The Captain and Arthur Brigandshaw could not count, Cousin Maud was not so stupid. “The boy belongs to young Sebastian. You can count on that,” she had told the new housekeeper as she left Hastings Court to live off the annuity settled on her by Sir Henry Manderville. “The girl belonged to Sebastian from when she was five years old, not that dreadful Arthur.”
Alison Ford had gone into service as there was nothing else she could do, her parents dead and her brother gone to sea. Six years older than Emily, she had been to school up to the age of fifteen. When her father died without leaving her mother any money, she had taken a job as a child nurse in a house with eleven children, the three youngest each with a nurse to keep them out of trouble while their parents did more important things than looking after their children. Young Harry was the third child for whom Alison was a surrogate mother. Children were brought up in the nursery whatever Emily tried to change. In the nursery and as far away from the grown-ups as possible. When they were fifteen going on sixteen, the father had a look at the son to see if he had bred anything worthwhile. Some of the fathers took more care of their horses than their children. The mothers fussed around the girls of the same age trying to marry them off as well as possible and as soon as they could. It was the way it was done in the English upper classes and every time she had had to leave the child in her care, it broke Alison’s heart. At five, the children were placed under a governess for their training in manners and the nurse was asked to look for a new position.
Through the day, the coach raced through the English countryside changing horses twice on the way. If they missed the tide, the venture would come to an ignominious end and with the young man Alison suspected of being The Captain’s younger son sent to prison or forced to leave England alone forever. When Harry woke and found himself in a pounding coach, he was delighted and tried to pull down the window and climb out of the racing coach. A strong male hand pulled the boy back by the scruff of the neck. With the light in the sky well gone, they drove through Bristol and along the River Avon to the Port of Avonmouth. The bearded man knew exactly where he was going and within minutes of finding their ship, they went on board. It was obvious to Alison that the bearded man had bought the captain of the ship before they arrived. They seemed to know each other as friends. Papers and tickets were ignored.
Alison was put in a small cabin on her own with Harry and food sent down to both of them. An hour later she felt the sails crack, and the ship got underway. Trusting in God and Emily Manderville-Brigandshaw, Alison put Harry down to sleep. For a while, lying in her bunk, she felt the movement of the wooden ship increase as they moved out to sea, the bunk tilting to the steady pull of the sails. Then she slept right through the night alongside her ward. Her dreams were full of clear blue skies and fluffy white clouds, none of which she remembered when she woke with a winter’s sun shining on her face through the porthole. Outside, there was no sign of land. She answered the knock on her cabin door and Emily came in with a tray of tea and hot milk for Harry.
To Alison’s surprise, Emily poured the tea and sat down on Alison’s bunk. Harry was still fast asleep from the journey.
“I think I owe you a full explanation,” said Emily.
“It’s young Sebastian, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“And he’s Harry’s father, isn’t he?”
“Yes. How did you know?”
“Your Cousin Maud told the new housekeeper.”
“I see.”
“So there’s nothing to explain. Where is Mister Sebastian now?”
“Talking to Captain Doyle. If the wind stays fair, Captain Doyle says we will be in Cape Town the week after Christmas. It’s summer in Cape Town, which will be nice.”
“Won’t they look for us there?”
“Maybe. The day we reach Cape Town we start the journey north by train. My husband won’t give a damn. Only The Captain. Well, we shall see. Central southern Africa is large and mostly virgin land. That’s where Seb says we are going to get away from them all.”
The Indian Queen was under full sail thirty miles out of the Bristol Channel having originally brought Seb to the Port of London. Then she had sailed with a full cargo a week later and rounded the south of England to wait for Seb at Avonmouth.
“Captain,” said Seb, “if my father finds out, you’ll lose your job along with the officers and crew. Why did you all help me?”
“Some things are right and some things are wrong,” said Captain Doyle standing on his bridge. “Just ’cause The Captain employs us doesn’t say he’s right in everything. Loyalty I give ’im. Honesty I give ’im. But as captain of this sh
ip I ’ave the right to say what sails on her. Those are The Captain’s rules. When he made them he wasn’t thinking of you. We’ve talked, me and the officers. If he takes away our ship, we’ll buy our own thanks to your ivory. My guess is The Captain will turn a blind eye to you sailing on this voyage. Funny how people never want to throw away a good profit. It’s not the ship what makes the money, it’s an honest crew. Money will speak louder than The Captain’s temper. I know ’im. Sailed with ’im. If he gets his hands on you, he’d be very rough but he won’t harm me and the crew. Money, Mr Brigandshaw. The only thing that matters in the end. The best things in life may be free but the second best is bloody expensive, if you’d pardon my words. The Captain won’t piss in ’is own rice bowl, if you’ll excuse my words again. You go up north and bring back some more ivory. By then this will all ’ave blown away in the wind. Remember the rice bowl. Nobody ever pisses on their own money unless they are stupid. And The Captain ain’t stupid. Not by a long way. One day he’ll see the matter more clearly. That’s my opinion. Now, if you’ll excuse me, Mr Brigandshaw, I have a ship to sail.”
Part 2 – The Occupation
1
September 1890
From the vantage point of the kopje, Trooper Gregory Shaw watched the ceremony down below in the plain as the Union Jack rose slowly to the top of the newly constructed masthead, the officers of the Pioneer Column rigidly saluting the flag. With the dismissal of the flag-raising party, Gregory Shaw and Henry Manderville were free to occupy their reward of land or search for gold.
Rhodes’s Pioneer Column had cut a road from British South Africa to the high ground of the interior; six months of work, tension and expected attack that had never materialised. Below the kopje Fort Salisbury was taking shape, a town being laid out by the surveyors with roads wide enough for an ox wagon to turn. British Africa had taken a long stride forward. Looking further than the ceremony now dispersing, Gregory looked for signs of native occupation. The land he searched was fallow, long grass to the height of a man’s waist, interspersed with flat-topped trees whose canopies had spread under the weight of the sun. The sky and clouds, fluffy white and powder blue, were close to the earth the further he looked towards the heat-shimmered horizon. There were no huts or villages, nothing but herds of animals. Far away to his left, the vultures circled the kill.
Turning to the hunter Frederick Selous, who had guided the column, Gregory asked the question that had been on his mind all the months they had been cutting the road through the mopane and msasa trees.
“Where are the people? The land is bush, well watered, animals everywhere, but where are the people?”
“Africa,” said Selous, “looks easier than it is. The animals have adapted to the droughts better than man. Then there was Mzilikazi and Lobengula, Zulu impis raiding the cattle and grain and killing what they were unable to carry away with them. There are people but they hide. Now they are hiding from us. Africa is cruel, Mr Shaw. I wish you all the best of British luck.”
“That kind of luck I’d rather not have wished upon me,” said Henry Manderville when the hunter was out of earshot. “But all this has got to be better than the relics of Rome and the Medici. Now we go and buy us a pick and shovel and go and find us that pot of gold. When does it rain in this country? Nothing since we started the road. Nothing.”
That evening, having handed in their uniforms, Henry Manderville and Gregory Shaw left Fort Salisbury as prospectors. Behind each of their horses, on long reins, followed the packhorses. All the animals were salted, immune to the tsetse fly that killed most of the domesticated ones. They were heading northwest through the bush following a course set by the sinking sun. Henry had shot a small buck which hung over the back of Gregory’s packhorse. There were pools of water among the rock outcrops that made up part of the riverbed. The river had stopped flowing months before and the heavy sand between the rocks had been trampled by animals. Far behind them, the campfires of Fort Salisbury were no longer visible and for the first time since leaving Italy, they were alone. From the largest pool, a twelve-foot crocodile watched them malevolently, the stone green eyes reflecting the fiery red of the setting sun. Carefully, Henry chose a campsite on high ground, overlooking the pools. They gathered wood for the nightly fire.
With the sky blood-red behind them, Gregory gutted the small buck and skinned it like a rabbit, cutting off the feet and head. With the first coals, they roasted the heart, liver and kidneys as the sun came down and the insects screeched in the long grass. From further downriver and from a larger pool, a hippopotamus grunted with pleasure before climbing out of the pool in search of grazing. The warm night air quickly dried the animal’s hide. Then the night belonged to the frogs calling for mates in a diligent cacophony.
Having fed, the two men lit their pipes and smoked for a while in silence. They recognised the animal calls from the night and were content. The fire flickered comfortably in front of them some ten feet from their outstretched legs. The horses were tethered within the firelight. Both men had their army-issue haversacks at their backs. There were no mosquitoes, a blessing to both of them.
Gregory Shaw was the first to break the companionable silence.
“Henry, old boy. Do you think we English are a bit potty?”
“What makes you say that?”
“Well, here we are in the middle of nowhere looking for gold we don’t need.”
“It’s the hunt for the gold that counts, Gregory. Not the gold.”
“The excitement, you mean?”
“Of course. We were both bored stiff in Italy. A man has to do something. Probably why we ended up with an empire. That and England’s dreadful climate. I might even stay in this country. Stake out the allotted farm. They say the thing to grow is native tobacco and ship it back to England. Even steal a bit of seed from the Americans and give those Virginians a run for their money.”
“So you don’t think we’re potty, old boy?”
“Probably not.”
Sir Henry Manderville woke in the middle of the night. It was pitch black, and the frogs were silent. The fire had burnt down and he got up to put on more wood, the crush of the new branches throwing sparks up into the night. Gregory was asleep, curled around his service revolver, the new firelight reflecting from the gunmetal. The night air was pleasantly cool and still free of mosquitoes. He smiled to himself. He was thirty-eight years old and fitter than at any other time in his life.
In Cape Town, it had quickly become clear that Major Johnson wanted troopers to cut his road through the bush, there being officers aplenty. Happily, Gregory had buried his captaincy in the past and Henry had not mentioned his title. They were two fit men looking for a challenge and sufficiently educated to occupy the new territory. Soldiers for six months and pioneers for the rest of their lives. Rhodes wanted strong men to hold the occupation of his new country between the Limpopo and the Zambezi rivers, men who would take up roots in the new, virgin soil that stretched in every direction.
Henry sat still, wide awake, and pondered the absurdity of his situation, all the time strangely content. An owl hooted behind the river and was answered by its mate. For a while, Henry listened to their conversation and then they were silent. The expectancy was palpable all around him. Had his ancestor felt the same when he had helped William the Conqueror to subdue the Saxons and conquer the land of the Britons? Was man ever satisfied in staying put? The question made him smile at the generations of Mandervilles at Hastings Court, the generations to follow. Then he thought of Emily by now content with Brigandshaw, absorbed in her son and probably pregnant again. The old house needed the cry of children. Maybe here he would make his second home and bring up a second family in a new country. Then he chuckled inwardly at the absurdity. What kind of Englishman would live in the middle of the African bush, far from friends and neighbours? Now there was a real problem with both of them, he and Gregory, if they were serious about Africa.
Satisfied with the fire, he lay back against
his haversack and was quickly asleep. Soon afterwards the moon rose and showed the clouds in the heavens in shades of black and white, the moonlight pale and colourless. The moon struck the sleeping men through the trees, but neither of them woke and the owls resumed their conversation. A soft wind came up and rustled the last dry leaves and the msasa trees. Just before dawn, the hippo got back into its pool. Slowly a pale light came in the east and the birds began to sing.
Gregory was the first to wake in the new dawn and hung a can of water over the embers of the fire, throwing in a handful of ground coffee. Henry stirred, his dream broken by the smell.
“Hell, it’s good to be alive, old boy,” said Gregory Shaw, and Henry smiled to himself. On an average day, Gregory said ‘old boy’ more than thirty times. Henry had counted them. Strangely, he rather liked being an ‘old boy’.
“Yes,” he replied, “it is rather nice to be alive. Have the ants eaten the rest of our venison?”
“I hung the carcass in a tree.”
“I think we’re learning.”
“I rather think we are… You any idea what gold-bearing rock looks like?”
“No idea at all.”
“Then how do we find the stuff, old boy?”
“Find a native who knows what it looks like. This was the kingdom of Monomotapa. They traded gold with the Portuguese.”
As the day progressed the clouds built up in the west, a prelude to the rains.
The last place Alison Ford expected to find herself was standing on a rock high on the escarpment overlooking the valley of the Zambezi River in the company of two white hunters, one the size of a mountain, a two-year-old boy, and a woman who had run away from her husband. And she was happier than she had ever been in her life before. Down below, what Tinus had told her was bushfire haze obscured any site of the river that had meandered over the millennia and cut the deep valley now teeming with game. The young black boy who spoke good English had gone off to make contact with the remnants of the local tribes still hiding away from Lobengula.