The Missionary's Wife

by Tim Jeal

  Francis walked along the line of wagons towards the Haslams’ Cape cart and was greeted brusquely by Robert. ‘Why must we travel by night, sir? No consideration for man or beast.’

  ‘I mean to reach the chief’s stronghold by dawn.’

  ‘No point, Mr Vaughan. He’ll be ready for you night or day.’

  ‘Let’s wait and see,’ replied Francis, sounding unruffled. ‘In any case, I want you to come with the column tonight; I may decide you should speak to the chief sooner rather than later.’

  ‘Mrs Haslam must come too.’

  ‘I’ll find horses for you both.’

  ‘What about my cart?’

  ‘Your boy can bring it on with the wagons at first light.’ Francis was always pained to see Clara sitting beside her husband, but he could not resist glancing at her whenever he had the chance.

  For miles the column struggled through thornbushes until, at last, they came to higher ground, where the scrub thinned. An hour before dawn, they were within sight of the hills where Mponda had gone to earth. Fynn had made many drawings of a rocky promontory, honeycombed with caves, and now this elevated headland rose before them, jutting into a green sea of vegetation. The American’s drawings showed it as joined, on its northern side, to the adjacent hill by a gently sloping neck. Mponda would clearly expect the soldiers’ main onslaught to be delivered here, and Francis decided to encourage this idea by sending a strong party to capture the neck, while he made his real push on the steeper southern slopes.

  Fynn argued that Mponda would divide his force in two, with one group defending the hill and the other kept mobile to attack any besiegers from behind. With this in mind, Francis placed fifty men and a Maxim under the American’s direction, with orders to defend the hussars’ rear and to guard their horses while they attacked the hill on foot.

  The hussars dismounted and off-saddled near a stream to fill their water bottles. Tension crackled in the air as the men waited to set off on this final leg of their march to the hill. Before they did, every man was given a piece of chocolate, a few biscuits, and some dried meat. Each troop commander was handed his orders and a map. While Francis was encouraging any men who looked scared, he was alarmed to see the missionary addressing a knot of troopers.

  ‘My friends, listen to a Shona parable.’

  Francis touched him on the shoulder. ‘Quieter, Mr Haslam, or not at all.’

  ‘Brethren,’ continued Robert Haslam, in a loud whisper. ‘God sent a chameleon with this message for mankind: “Though you must die, you will live again.” The chameleon was overtaken by a serpent, which reached mankind first and said, “If anyone comes and says that you live after dying, it’s all lies. You perish as an ox, and that’s an end of it.” When the chameleon arrived, people laughed at him. “Oh, it’s you at last. Don’t bother with your message; we know it’s nonsense.”’ Haslam raised his arms as if to quell amusement. ‘My friends, don’t listen to cynics; trust the chameleon. God offers eternal life to all his children, wherever they may be.’

  Seeing no harm in this parable, Francis went in search of Fynn, whom he found unloading muzzles, barrels, wheels, and ammunition belts from the backs of the mules.

  ‘I want you to look after the Haslams for me.’

  Fynn stroked his beard. ‘You reckon God’ll look after me if I do?’ He chuckled quietly. ‘My idea o’ salvation is two hundred rounds a minute from outa these little fellers.’ He slapped the side of a machine gun barrel.

  Before moving off with his men, Francis checked his Lee-Metford carbine and the single-action Colt that Clara had used so tellingly. He released the catch and flicked the empty cylinder, watching it spin noiselessly. He wanted Clara to have it again today, not only because he was afraid for her but as a token of everything they had shared. But she was near her husband, and he found no opportunity to give it to her. Fynn’s protection would have to be enough.

  The sky was already brightening as Francis led his men towards the hill. Here and there in the half-light, the monotonous browns and greens of the scrub were flecked with mauve and white convolvulus and more startlingly with what looked like a splattering of blood on plant and tree. Suddenly the spots moved. Francis hoped that the restless dartings of these scarlet weaverbirds would not betray his position to enemy eyes.

  *

  By nine o’clock, the sun was hot enough to make men crawl under thornbushes. The troopers nearest to Francis had been held back as a reserve. Through his Zeiss binoculars, Francis watched three hundred of his men advancing in straggling lines up the southern face of Mponda’s hill. A deep central gully, choked with rocks and scrub, obliged the hussars to clamber up on either side of it along two parallel ridges that resembled bony fingers. These rose to a knobbly line of crags, which looked like knuckles.

  As Francis moved his glasses, he saw dark heads and shoulders bobbing about among the rocks, apparently reinforcing the tribesmen already there. A runner informed him that the hussars had taken possession of the neck with scarcely a shot being fired. This could only men that Mponda’s main force was not on the northern side of the hill at all but right here, on the southern slopes, behind these knuckle-like crags. As if to confirm this, a ragged volley rang out and several men fell. The hussars on the slope now dropped behind rocks or flattened themselves under overhanging ledges.

  Francis scribbled an order for the runner to take back to Lieutenant Carew on the neck. If Carew’s detachment could get around the hill without descending at all, they should be able to take Mponda’s main body in the rear within an hour or so. In the meantime, the soldiers faced a new danger. Warriors were working their way down into the gully between the ridges and, from there, were able to subject the hussars on the ridges to a vicious cross fire. Nor could these natives in the gully be easily expelled, since they had crawled so close to his own men that Francis could not risk ordering his seven-pounder field gun into action. The only way to flush them out would be to drag a Maxim right up the gully – a task made extremely hazardous by the rugged terrain.

  So what should he do? Francis was still pondering when the rat-tat-tat of Fynn’s Maxim stammered out sharply in the bush about a mile from where they had left him. Francis’s head swam. If Fynn and his men were annihilated, the hussars on the slopes would be caught between two native forces. For a moment Francis considered ordering his trumpeter to sound the recall. The men on the ridges would then be able to fall back and go to the aid of Fynn and the Haslams. But to leave the hill while Mark Carew was up there somewhere, preparing to attack Mponda’s rear, would be to murder him and his men. Francis told himself that so long as Fynn’s Maxim kept firing, he needn’t worry. Someone coughed quietly. Francis turned and saw Sergeant Barnes’s large red face. Sweat was dripping freely from under his melon-shaped pith helmet. A drop dangled on the end of his nose.

  ‘What is it, Sergeant?’

  ‘Sorry for mentioning it, sir, but those niggers – the ones coming down like that—’ He pointed to the gully, then lowered his voice so that the trumpeter, waiting for Francis’s orders, should not hear him. ‘I don’t like the look of them, sir.’

  ‘Quite so, Sergeant,’ snapped Francis, enraged that the man should think it necessary to proffer advice. ‘I intend to take a Maxim up there to give ’em snuff.’

  At that moment, Fynn’s Maxim stopped firing. Francis felt as if someone had punched him in the stomach. For several seconds he could only think of Clara lying dead; then other thoughts raced. Either the gun had jammed or the gunner had been hit. No; either the danger was over or the whole party had been overwhelmed. Barnes was trying to speak, so Francis shouted at him to be quiet. Even if the Maxim was done for, there still ought to be rifle fire going on. Not everyone could have died in an instant. Relief swept through him. The silence must mean that the danger was over.

  He spun around. ‘Well, Sergeant? Where’s my gun crew? I want six first-class marksmen, four pioneers, and four mules.’

  Sergeant Barnes fiddled with
his sword hilt. ‘Who will be leading them, sir?’ Francis recognized the fear in Barnes’s voice. A year from retirement, he was desperate to avoid a hero’s death.

  ‘I will, Sergeant,’ replied Francis.

  ‘Is that wise, sir?’

  Francis did not know whether to be touched by the man’s concern for him or irritated by his doubts about the outcome. He said quietly, ‘If I’m killed, Mr Arnot will take command.’

  As the sergeant cast his eyes up to the crags, frantic efforts were being made to bring down a wounded man. One of the rescuers twisted and fell. Francis showed no emotion. It had been an article of faith at the Staff College that loss of composure in front of his men cost an officer their respect.

  Twenty minutes later, Francis himself was crouching behind a rock halfway up the gully. He was bruised, breathless, and soaked with sweat; but at least he was no longer thinking about Clara. His immediate opponent was an old native who knew how to use a Martini-Henry rifle and was an expert at concealment. A few paces behind Francis was his trumpeter, and six paces from him was a dead mule. The other three animals had been sent down after efforts to drag the Maxim over jagged rocks had been abandoned. The gun being little use at the bottom of the gully, Francis and his marksmen had clawed their way higher without it, hoping to achieve with their rifles what the Maxim might have done. Slowly but surely, Francis and his little band were driving out the native snipers.

  With the air cracking and whining as bullets ricocheted off rocks at crazy angels, Francis fought his fear by compiling a visual inventory of all the odd spots from which his adversary’s grizzled head had bobbed up when he fired. He even managed to enjoy his men’s repertoire of tricks: tossing a coat to tempt a snapshot; throwing an arm out and screaming as if hit, then shooting the triumphant native if he tried to look. One of these men had served in Afghanistan, another in Zululand, and thanks to their daring, Francis was able to press onwards.

  He dropped down into a new cleft between two rocks and almost fell over a body – the old warrior’s. The man’s thigh had been smashed by a ricochet, but this had not caused his death. In his agony, with all his ammunition gone, the veteran had wedged his assegai in a crevice and flung himself forward so that the blade severed his windpipe. Flies were buzzing inside his gaping mouth. As Francis moved again, he felt his hat struck from his head as if by a stick. He picked it up and saw a neat hole in the crown. Francis was still shocked and breathless when a roll of musketry echoed from behind the ridges. A distant cheer went up. Carew was attacking.

  ‘Trumpeter!’ gasped Francis. ‘Sound the charge!’

  As the notes rang out, the men on the ridges scrambled forward again, magically restored to life. Francis was laughing. How many cavalrymen in history had charged like this, on their hands and knees?

  When it dawned upon the hussars that they were no longer being fired upon from above, their pace quickened. Francis joined them as they swarmed over the granite ledges that had thwarted them when defended. Clutching at the roots of rockfigs and trusting to precarious tufts of grass as handholds, the troopers helped each other up, scenting victory.

  Francis dropped down on to the litter of loose rocks and stones behind the crags and found Mponda’s men in full retreat. From the continuous firing, he had expected to see hundreds dead, but there were no more than forty bodies, and not one dressed like a chief or headman. Up here, the hillside was seamed with cracks and wider openings. Francis watched hussars scrabbling at these cave entrances, tearing down barricades of rocks and branches. Again and again puffs of smoke and flashes spurted from concealed loopholes.

  When the obstacles had been cleared from the mouth of one of the caves, three troopers entered with their bayonets held before them, as if they were about to prize some dangerous crustacean from its shell. But shots from within sent them reeling back. Seconds later, one was dragged out from the cave by his comrades, stone dead. After six other men had been shot in identical circumstances, Francis told his trumpeter to sound ‘cease firing’. The odds had swung against the attackers. In these low-roofed caves, they had no means of knowing what lay just yards away in the darkness.

  Soon after Francis had ordered a general recall, he learned from Sergeant Barnes that Matthew Arnot had been killed on the ridges. Carew was still slapping his men on their backs and shouting for three cheers. Francis’s elation vanished. Arnot, with his dark good looks and suave self-confidence, had seemed far above an ordinary soldier’s casual death.

  While making arrangements for the removal of the men who had been killed, Francis acknowledged that his small success had been bought too dearly. Only the lucky timing of Carew’s arrival behind the hilltop crags had denied Mponda the honours of the day. Would the hussars fare so well in a second encounter? Francis doubted it. The moment had arrived to see what Robert Haslam could do.

  *

  By the time mauve evening light was falling upon bush and hill, a laager had been made, its sides formed from the squadron’s wagons and from felled trees and thornbushes. Pickets had been sent out and Maxims strategically placed. The dead had been buried close to Mponda’s hill, and now the living, including eighteen wounded, were preparing to spend the night in a shallow valley flanked by a mopane wood.

  The sun was sinking below the hills when Francis was buttonholed by Heywood Fynn and asked to walk out with him beyond the picket lines. Assuming that the American had found evidence of an impending attack, Francis followed with a heavy heart. After a few yards, he was unlucky enough to touch a buffalo bean plant with his hand. The discomfort never lasted more than an hour or two, but the burning sensation at the outset was severe enough to stop him from worrying about whatever Fynn might be on the point of revealing. Francis’s shock was therefore all the greater when they came upon two young Matabele warriors trussed up like wild animals and guarded by three scouts. One of these guards was Francis’s former orderly, Arthur Winter.

  The captives were wearing traditional oxtail anklets, which would have fluttered if the men were running but hung down now, bloodstained and bedraggled. The warriors were young and had been beaten so badly that they could hardly open their eyes. Both were vainly trying to hide their fear.

  ‘Who the hell did this to them?’ shouted Francis.

  ‘I did,’ growled Fynn. ‘We gotta know who these guys are.’

  ‘They may be spies from that impi, sir,’ stammered Arthur Winter.

  ‘They may be spying for Mponda,’ pointed out Francis. ‘We know he has some Matabele in his force.’

  Fynn cleared his throat and spat. ‘We’re kiddin’ ourselves if we don’t figure a link with that big impi.’

  Francis nodded towards the captives. ‘Where did they come from?’

  ‘Over there,’ said Fynn, indicating the opposite direction from Mponda’s stronghold.

  ‘They could still have come from Mponda’s hill.’ Francis knew he sounded too eager to believe this.

  Fynn was exasperated. ‘If they crawled up the bed of the stream and doubled back, sure they could have come from the hill.’ The American thrust his face closer. ‘But maybe they came from just where their tracks tell us they did.’

  Francis said quietly, ‘All right, I take your point. But don’t torture them.’

  ‘Are you nuts, Vaughan?’ Fynn was beside himself. ‘They’d skin us alive without thinkin’ twice. There may be three thousand savages on our trail.’

  Fear moved in Francis like a living thing. ‘No torture,’ he insisted.

  ‘Then how do we make ’em talk?’ grated Fynn. ‘I’m not gonna die for your principles.’

  Something had to be suggested quickly. Francis said, ‘We’ll stage a mock execution tonight. Hoist them off their feet for a few seconds. They’ll talk.’

  Fynn shook his head. ‘We hang ’em proper or not at all. If folk get the idea they was hanged and came alive, they’re gonna reckon we couldn’t kill them.’

  Francis cried, ‘You think Haslam will help us if we murder o
ur prisoners?’

  ‘Who says we tell him? Send me six men who can button their mouths.’

  Francis let out a long breath. ‘All right, Fynn. You speak their language. Tell them they’ll be hanged unless they talk, but remember, I decide the outcome.’

  In camp again, Francis told Sergeant Barnes what he wanted and asked that the quartermaster and all others involved keep whatever happened to themselves. Then he visited the wounded. One hussar had been shot in the genitals; five had lost limbs, and four of these would probably be dead in a week. The exception was a young trooper whose passion had been football and who had lost his right leg. While talking to him, Francis was absurdly conscious of his smarting hand.

  Francis had given orders for an encircling ring of fires to be built so that his Maxim gunners could see to shoot down attackers in the darkness before they could reach the tents and horses. As night fell, the firelit trunks of the closest mopane trees were etched brightly against the black wood behind.

  In the same glowing light, Francis saw Robert Haslam hurrying towards him. His grey hair was disordered, and his eyes were bright and staring.

  ‘Why have you been avoiding me, Mr Vaughan?’

  ‘I’ve had much on my hands.’

  ‘Blood, sir. You have that on your hands.’

  ‘Blood?’ faltered Francis, fearing that Clara had been hurt.

  ‘Don’t play the fool with me,’ rasped the missionary. ‘I speak of the blood of the innocent men you shot and killed today.’