lashman and the Golden Sword

by Robert Brightwell

  “Why will they wait?” asked Chisholm.

  “Because they saw my Collier pistol and I convinced them that all British soldiers are being equipped with Collier-style muskets and rifles. I also told them that we have similar devices on our artillery that will send down an endless stream of shells into their forces. So, you have longer to prepare or,” I added hopefully, “abandon the territory.”

  “But why will all these imaginary weapons make them attack in August?” repeated Chisholm. “Are they hoping that we will all be down with fever?”

  “Partly that,” I admitted. “But all these weapons rely on dry gunpowder and they are planning to come when the rain is at its worst as then our powder will be wet.”

  Chisholm and Rickets exchanged a glance and I had a nasty ominous feeling. “August is the worst month for fever because of the damp mists,” said Chisholm at last. The worst month for rainfall is normally June.”

  I had lost track of the seasons during my captivity and time on the road, “What… er… is today’s date?” I asked hesitantly.

  “Sunday the sixth of June,” said Rickets quietly as, with perfect timing, there was a crash of thunder and some raindrops splashed onto the windowsill.

  Chapter 22

  In the circumstances, the two officers took my unwitting part in their imminent destruction quite well. There was no sobbing, wailing or biting at the rug, which might have been the result if the situation had been reversed. They just sat there calmly as though fifteen thousand angry Ashanti about to attack, behead and possibly eviscerate them was not the worst news they had heard that day.

  The only thing that kept me from chewing on the carpet was the thought of those vessels in the bay. “What is happening with those ships at anchor off-shore?” I asked. “Surely the sensible course of action is to try to evacuate the garrison?”

  Perhaps mindful of McCarthy’s previous promises to find me a berth on the first available ship, Chisholm was quick to dash any hopes of escape. “Sutherland has ordered them all to stay here until the danger is passed. Most of the crews are already ashore to help with the defence as are many of their guns.”

  I felt nauseous for a moment as the implications of those words settled in. There was a grim inevitability to it, really. When in my entire career of dangers and disasters had I ever been given the opportunity to duck quietly out of the way at the critical moment? Despite everything I had been through, it seemed that I would have to face another Ashanti attack, with the odds of success pretty much the same as McCarthy’s last stand. The only comfort was that the ships were there at all. There would be an unavoidable fall back to the beach and the boats once the fortress was stormed and some would get away. I was going to make damn sure I was one of them, for my destiny if I fell back into the hands of the Ashanti king did not bear thinking about. I looked up and saw Chisholm and Rickets watching me closely as realisation of my fate sank in. I knew that the gallant hero I was supposed to be would be ready with some offhand response. “Well that is just as well, really,” I managed to say. “I always get seasick at the start of a sea voyage.”

  “That is the spirit,” said Rickets patting me on the back. “I will be proud to fight again alongside you, sir.”

  Before I could say more the door to the room banged open and a small boy entered. I recognised him as McCarthy’s son. “Hullo, young shaver,” I greeted him with forced cheeriness. “What are you doing here?”

  Despite the beard he must have recognised me as he pointed at my waist and shouted, “Gun.”

  “I can’t show you my gun today,” I told him. “The Ashanti king has taken it.” I turned to Chisholm, “What is going to happen to McCarthy’s wife and son?”

  The major glanced at the boy, who had now run off to play with a wooden carved animal on the floor in the corner of the room. “His mother is ill with the fever. I am letting them stay here so there is no need to disturb them.” He rolled his eyes towards the still open door and added, “This morning my orderly is supposed to be looking after the boy.” I had a sudden memory of the severed head of the boy’s father and wondered what the son’s fate would be if he was not able to escape in the coming battle.

  “Jaysus, Mary and the fecking Holy Ghost, I thought ye were dead.” I turned and there was O’Hara, standing a little unsteadily in the doorway with another wooden toy in his hand. He shook his head as though he could not quite believe what he was seeing and then stared at me again. “How the blazes are ye here?” he demanded before taking in the others in the room and belatedly bringing himself to attention and adding, “Sor.”

  “It’s good to see you too, O’Hara,” I grinned at him and noticed that somehow, he had managed to recover his sergeant’s stripes. “The Ashanti king got bored of my company and so I decided to leave.” I nodded at the boy and added, “I see you are as good at being a nursery maid as you are an orderly. Your charge has escaped.”

  Before he could reply the boy ran to him and hugged his leg shouting, “Paddy Ginty, Paddy Ginty!”

  O’Hara gave a rueful grin back and explained, “I have been singing Paddy McGinty’s Goat for him, the clean version,” he added hastily glancing at Chisholm. He turned back to me, “Am I to be your orderly again, sir,” he asked with a note of hope in his voice.

  “I think you will have to serve us both,” answered Chisholm. The major turned to me, “There is still a chest of McCarthy’s clothes here that you can borrow from and there is a spare razor you can use. I am sure that Mrs McCarthy would not mind.”

  An hour later and I was looking quite respectable. O’Hara had offered to shave me, but having seen how his hands shook, I did it myself. He cut my hair, though, and found me some decent clothes from McCarthy’s chest. The boy had been passed to a kitchen maid to look after and had bawled at being parted from the Irishman.

  “He seems fond of you,” I said.

  “Ah he is no bother. When the maids cannot watch him, I put four drops of tonic into his glass of goat’s milk and he sleeps like a log through the night. Would ye like a wee nip?” He held out the huge silver flask.

  “God no, I am surprised you have not killed the child, giving him that.”

  “It’s safer than water,” insisted O’Hara sounding offended. You go and look in the rainwater tanks on the roof,” he said. “They are full of green slime and all sorts of wriggling little creatures. I can’t be drinking that, and neither should you. Not unless you put some tonic in it to kill the bugs.”

  “Where were you when we were attacked?” I asked.

  “I was with Chisholm. We did not know anything about them bastards attacking you until the day after your battle. McCarthy’s first messenger had got lost and arrived with the second one that day. The major was in a fever to get to you, but we had to cross two rivers with only one canoe. Most of us swam across, but we had to keep the muskets dry and some could not swim. It took forever with that bloody boat going backwards and forwards. Then we got word that Cap’n Rickets was lying ill in a nearby village. That was when we discovered that we were too late. The major thought that the Ashanti would attack the castle straight away and so we rushed back. Hardly anyone returned from McCarthy’s column; only King Dinkera came back with a group of survivors.”

  “What about this Colonel Sutherland?” I asked, knowing that O’Hara would not be as diplomatic as Chisholm.

  “He is more dangerous than the bloody Ashanti!” exclaimed the Irishman. “He has no clue what he is doin’ but he does not let that stop him giving orders. He is also determined not to get his own hands dirty with any actual fighting. He damn nearly killed all of us, sending us out like that when we had no idea what we would be facing. He left the castle defenceless.”

  We were interrupted by a knock at the door. A bemused sentry appeared to ask if I could go down to the main gate where a big Arab gentleman was insisting on seeing me. I pulled on one of McCarthy’s waistcoats and followed the sentry through the castle. As I approached the gatehouse I saw Jasmin
a standing beside a man I presumed was her father. As she pointed me out he started wailing and throwing his arms about and actually prostrated himself on the ground in front of me.

  “He is pleased to have you back, then?” I asked Jasmina with a wry grin.

  She winced with embarrassment as her pater pounded the dirt at my feet and continued to shout and wail. “He says that you have done him the greatest service a man could do and he will forever be in your debt,” she shouted over his din.

  I reached down and started to pull the old man back to his feet, he was causing a scene. He must have brought half the town with him on his way up to the castle and they were all standing around and watching curiously. “Tell him that I am in your debt too and that we helped each other,” I told her. She smiled at me and I realised that now she was home again she was no longer wearing the veil with her Arab scarf. She passed on my reply, yet this only resulted in more wailing until she reached forward and kissed me firmly on the lips. “My father is not the only one indebted to you,” she whispered. There was a scandalised murmur from the watching crowd, but she did not care. She took the arm of her father, who had at least been shocked into silence, and turned him back towards the village. I watched her lithe body move under her gown and realised that I had perhaps misjudged my feelings for her after all.

  Chapter 23

  I spent the next two weeks helping the garrison prepare for the expected onslaught. Despite reinforcements from the crews of the ships offshore, it was backbreaking work and no one could be spared. We all knew that the Ashanti could arrive at any time and that every ounce of effort now could be critical in delaying them. Many of the soldiers and sailors were confident that we could stop their army, but then they had not been with McCarthy. I knew that the Ashanti weren’t just well armed and would arrive in huge numbers; they were also likely to be well organised. They had used diversionary attacks to distract us at Nsamankow from their larger flanking forces and I did not doubt that they would assault us on several fronts at the castle. My main fear was that they would send an army along the beach to cut us off from the ships.

  Each morning would begin with a funeral service for those who had died the day before. Around half of those who caught the fever died from it and the rest resumed light duties, looking pitifully thin and weak.

  Of those that were fit and able, none were excused. O’Hara and I soon found ourselves put to work preparing the defences. On the highest hill nearby was a large mudbrick tower that served as an observation post. But the sailors soon made it much taller by building a wooden tripod on the top, secured with stay ropes and with a rope ladder to a platform at the summit like a fighting top on a mast. They armed it with swivel guns and swore that on a clear day they could see for over twenty miles. Most of that was thick jungle, however, so unless the Ashanti started to chop down trees to make roads for the handful of cannon I had seen at Coomassie, they might still approach unobserved. But if they built any cooking fires then the rising smoke would soon give away their position.

  Two new mudbrick forts were being built on the outskirts of town. I spent most of my time with the one on our right, on a hill top named for McCarthy. There was no time to properly dry the bricks, but I knew from experience that wet mud was far better at absorbing shot than brittle, dry clay. When I was not helping to make mud bricks, I was wielding an axe and chopping down trees and brush to give the fort a clear field of fire. The timber was then used to provide supports that the mud bricks were built against or to make temporary roofs to stop our work being washed away in the torrential rain. There was a downpour at least every other day and sometimes for several days in a row. A huge trench had been dug around the fort to excavate the mud, but this quickly turned into a moat. More pits were dug nearby but each time they filled with water as the ground was now almost entirely waterlogged.

  At the end of each day an army of brown men, caked in mud from head to foot, would stagger wearily down to the beach. We would leave our tools on the sand and wade into the sea to wash the stinking ooze off our bodies and clothes, emerging as different people once more: white, black, soldiers, sailors and civilians, but all of us exhausted from our labour.

  O’Hara was right about the water. From my time on board various ships I was used to the greenish tinge, but when I poured some into a glass I saw that it was alive with tiny wriggling creatures. The Irishman had supplied me with a small jug of his tonic. When I poured a splash into the glass I watched the little critters in it slowly die. After half an hour they had all sunk to the bottom. Despite its dilution, the tonic still had a considerable kick to it. It reminded me of its effect during my preaching down the coast. One evening I asked O’Hara if he had any news of Eliza. I had been looking out for her as we walked through the village to and from our work and in the castle where she had taught, but there was no sign of her. I had feared that she had died of the fever, but instead it turned out it was the reverend who was ill.

  “She is nursing her husband,” O’Hara said. “I have seen Bessie a few times and she tells me it is bad. He has been ill for weeks; it is over a month since you Protestants gathered in your church.” I felt a pang of sadness for Eliza. Often those that nursed the sick got ill themselves and from the sound of things old Bracegirdle was fighting the fever hard. It was probably not his first dose. Those that had suffered it before recovered more often that those catching it for the first time. I wondered if she knew I was back, but I realised that she could hardly abandon her saintly husband’s sickbed and rush to see me without creating scandal in the tightknit community around the fort.

  On the first Wednesday after I returned, I received a note from Chisholm asking me to call on Appea. The major had relayed to the king details of Malala’s death, but the African had wanted to hear the story first hand from someone who was there. So that morning instead of heading out to the quagmire, I tooled along to the king’s room. He was there with several of his courtiers and it was immediately apparent to me that he was not long for this world. The room stank of vomit and worse, and several of his servants had cloths tied around their faces. I made a point of going no closer than the foot of the bed. On seeing me the king summoned a smile and whispered the word, “Champion,” while pointing weakly in my direction. Then he gestured in the corner of the room and repeated the word. Looking around I saw Hercules, his own giant champion, regarding me impassively from a face not protected by a kerchief.

  “The king wishes to hear about the death of Malala,” a wizened old man requested in English. So I slowly told him the tale, much as I have described it here. How I tricked the spy with tales of fictional weapons, then persuaded her to help me escape with promises of foreign travel. The king beamed with delight at the news of his nemesis being bested, but when I glanced over my shoulder his champion looked singularly unimpressed. I was sure he thought I was telling stretchers. But when I explained how she had poisoned the maids, Hercules did react. He babbled excitedly in his language to the king and was most agitated. Eventually the translator explained that one of the guards detailed to protect Malala had died in a similar manner. They now suspected that this guard had discovered her treachery and been killed for it. I told them about the tools that we had found hidden in her staff. While she did not have a staff when she served Appea, there was little doubt that she had her instruments of death on her person somewhere.

  “But tell the king how she died,” persisted the translator. “The king wishes to know if she suffered.”

  So I told him about the blowpipe on the log and how I unbalanced her and stabbed her with her own dart. They chuckled darkly at that and then again as I described cutting the creeper. I had seen little of her fall into the water, but I knew what my audience wanted and so I relayed – with some embellishments – what Jasmina had seen.

  “She fell into the jaws of two crocodiles. There were horrible screams as they bit into her and tussled between them for the prize. The river turned red with her blood and she went under the water
twice, still gripped by their teeth. The larger crocodile tore her free, leaving a leg in the mouth of the other. Then they both disappeared beneath the water and were not seen again.”

  The king beamed with delight at this graphic description. I had clearly given him the news that he wanted. “The king says he would give the last days of his life to have been there to witness her death. He will die knowing that this treachery has been avenged and that the British know him to be a loyal friend,” the translator told me.

  That evening when I returned to my quarters from another afternoon of shovelling mud, I found, lying on my bed, a sword covered in gold. It was a generous gift and must have come from Appea as it was identical to those I had seen carried by his captains months before. I realised as I held it, that it was in fact made of steel, but with a thin sheet of gold along the blade almost up to the edge. The handle, which was engraved with swirling patterns, was also covered in gold. It was a well-balanced weapon, with a leather scabbard that hung over the shoulder.

  We finished Fort McCarthy the next day. The men had been working on it long before I arrived, but it was not a thing of beauty. A squat round tower only two storeys high, built on the top of a hill. Three cannon had been hoisted onto the top by sailors using spars and ropes. A thin roof of large leaves and grasses was being placed on a high wooden frame covering the platform. This was not to provide shade for the gunners, but to stop the rains from weakening the mud walls. There was even a thick hawser tied around the top of the tower to stop it falling apart. Despite its appearance, however, I thought that it would be a formidable obstacle. On three sides it was surrounded by a wide moat of liquid mud that had been dug out in its construction. The hill it stood on had been cleared of all vegetation and cover. We could all vouch that the wet mud made it extremely slippery. The Ashanti would not cover the ground quickly and would have no protection from the cannon at the top firing grape shot at them. With the ships in the bay, there was now no shortage of powder and ammunition. The ground floor of the tower had been filled as a magazine. It was a safe place as there was no door to the tower on the ground floor, just a hatch from the roof. To get in you had to climb a wooden ladder up the side and then drop down.