Warrior mh-10

by Allan Mallinson

  Only Mbopa followed.

  A dozen paces, then as Shaka appeared to stumble, Mbopa quickened, and stabbed him twice more from behind.

  Still Shaka did not fall. He turned, slowly, with a look of desolation. 'Hau! Nawe Mbopa ka Sitaya . . . So, you too, Mbopa, son of Sitaya: you, too, are killing me . . .'

  But Mbopa, as defiant as the brothers were hesitant, stood his ground. He had no doubts now of the mortality of this or any other king.

  Without a sound, Shaka crumpled to his knees.

  And for a full minute he remained upright, as if praying. Then the King of the Zulu fell forward, his face to the red earth, which he had reddened even more with the blood of countless warriors.

  The assassins stood in watching silence. Fairbrother, certain he must be discovered, got to his belly and brought his pistol to the aim.

  At length, when the spear wounds no longer bled, Mbopa spoke to the brothers – sharply, for they seemed paralysed. He raised his spear, gesturing towards the dragoons' encampment.

  The brothers fled.

  Mbopa now strode back to where Shaka's two ancient attendants crouched, terrified. They were witnesses – the only witnesses.

  They did not flinch. If Shaka demanded their lives it was their duty to submit – and was it not Shaka's own chamberlain who took upon himself the king's mantle thus?

  Fairbrother took careful aim. And then – iciest of calculations – he lowered the pistol.

  The cudgel struck twice, and then the spear; and then there were no more witnesses to the death of Si-gi-di. He who was equal to a thousand warriors.

  XVII

  LAMENTATIONS Later

  'Ku dilike intaba. Inkosi ye lizwe ishonile – The mountain has fallen. The Lord of the World is dead!'

  Rumour spread like flame along a trail of powder – a trail lit by Mbopa. He told of how the Izi-Kwembu had struck down the great Shaka.

  Harem lilies and warriors alike fled the kraal, as if they would somehow be swallowed up in the great convulsion of the Earth that must follow the death of the Most High.

  Fairbrother lay flat to the ground for what seemed an age, certain that in the frenzy, no foreign face could expect quarter. The shadows were long when at last he judged it safe to beat back to camp.

  There he found Hervey and Somervile, oblivious of what had happened.

  'Fairbrother?' said his friend, anxiously, seeing him dust-covered and greatly exercised.

  'Shaka's dead. Murdered. Mbopa and the brothers.' He stumbled over the words, breathless. Hervey had not seen him so discomposed.

  Somervile was at once agitated. 'You saw?'

  'Everything. I thought I should not live to tell the tale.'

  Hervey beckoned an orderly. 'Have the camp stand-to-arms,' he said, calmly.

  'Who else saw?' asked Somervile.

  'No one.'

  'Damnation! Did you not try to prevent it?'

  Fairbrother gave him a look of pity.

  'Forgive me: I did not mean to imply. . . Tell me everything.'

  When the account – a full and considered one – was finished, Hervey shook his head, and turned to Somervile. 'I'm sorry I doubted your trust in Pampata. He might be alive still.'

  Somervile held up a hand. 'No. Mine is the responsibility. I told Pampata she would have our support, and I failed her.'

  'We needn't fail her again. If we move at once we can have command of the kraal before last light.'

  Somervile shook his head. 'Command?'

  'Yes, command! We can apprehend the assassins!'

  Somervile was calculating rapidly. 'That would present us with certain difficulties, do you not see? Dingane is heir; if we move against the kraal we shall become implicated in the plot.'

  Hervey turned to Fairbrother. 'There's another heir, is there not? Mbane? Are his hands clean?'

  'Mpande. No, he wasn't there with the other two. But Isaacs said he likes his pleasures in excess, did he not? He hardly sounds likely. There's Ngwadi – but he's illegitimate.'

  He turned back to Somervile. 'Then what of this child of Shaka's? Is he not the rightful heir?'

  'As I understand it,' replied Somervile, and sounding weary at his own incapability, 'the Zulu are not a people with settled precedent in these matters. More's the point: do you see them ruled by a boy? Who would be regent? Regency's a desperate enough affair in the most civilized of nations.'

  Hervey pressed him for a conclusion. 'And so we look to our own defence, and withdraw to Port Natal as soon as may be?'

  Somervile was still deep in thought, however.

  When at last he broke silence, it was with a look that said he was resolved on something novel. 'Our own late regency was perhaps not entirely devoid of merit. Perhaps this is our opportunity to bring order to their benighted affairs, deliver them from error's chain.'

  'You mean an English regency?'

  'Why not? We have had such arrangements in India.'

  Hervey cleared his throat. 'Forgive me, Somervile, but is that within your authority? Would the duke approve?'

  'I have certain plenipotentiary powers . . . '

  Hervey was still unconvinced. 'Even if that be so, how are we to find the child?'

  Fairbrother, beginning to dust himself down, smiled grimly. 'I suspect that all we need do is follow Mbopa's trail, for he will be Herod-like.'

  'Or statesmanlike? Himself as regent?'

  'He might will it, Sir Eyre, but there's the little problem of his rank. There's Ngomane.'

  Somervile nodded, conceding the point. Ngomane was chief minister, Mbopa merely chamberlain. 'He's at his kraal, did not Pampata say – Nonoti?'

  'She did.'

  'How far is it?'

  Hervey took out his map. 'If this is at all faithful, nine or ten miles, but what the country is like, I cannot say.'

  'Then we ought to send word there at once.'

  Hervey agreed, but he was reluctant, still, to remain so much on the defensive. 'Might we try also to discover the state of affairs here, in the kraal?'

  Somervile thought for a moment. 'Very well. We'll go at once.'

  Hervey shook his head. 'That would be a needless risk. Fairbrother and I will go.'

  Somervile looked faintly vexed at being once more excluded from a more active role in his own embassy, but was wise enough not to object. 'As you wish.' And then he turned again to Fairbrother, seeming to recollect something. 'What did they do with Shaka's body?'

  Fairbrother frowned. 'I didn't observe, Sir Eyre. I confess that my head was in a hole.'

  'Quite so,' he replied, chastened. 'But I think we must discover it. A king's obsequies should not lightly be set aside.'

  They found Pampata kneeling by Shaka's side, alone, rocking to and fro, and moaning softly.

  'This is Mbopa's work, I tell you,' she said without rising. 'It is as I foretold. Like the hyena, he circled, waiting.'

  'You saw it, Nkosazana, madam, little chieftainess?' asked Fairbrother, gently.

  She did not look at them, or move her head this way or that to signify her answer. 'I know it to be true. And then with those other dogs, Dingane and Mhlangana, he crept in for the kill when my lord was pulled down.'

  How did she know this? Fairbrother pressed tenderly. 'Who has told you, Nkosazana?'

  'My lord tells me.'

  Hervey wanted to console her, as he would the widow of one of his own men. He crouched beside her, put an arm around her shoulders and lifted her to her feet, nodding to Fairbrother to cover the body – which he did with the bloody cloak. 'Come, Nkosazana. We shall bear him into the kraal.'

  Fairbrother beckoned Serjeant Hardy and his six dragoons.

  Hervey stood supporting her as they took up the body.

  'Nkosazana,' began Fairbrother, judging it the moment that she would answer truly. 'Do you know where is Shaka's son?'

  She understood. But her look of anxiety told him she had misunderstood his purpose. 'Nkosazana . . .' He struggled to find the words. 'We wish t
o find the boy to make him chief under King George's protection.'

  Pampata looked searchingly at him, and then at Hervey. She had trusted them, and yet her lord was dead. Yet what alternative was there? Dingane and Mhlangana would hunt down the child; they would hunt her down. Her peril could be no greater.

  The dragoons bore Shaka's body with as much observance as they would one of their own officers, at first across the saddle, and then, as they neared the entrance of the kraal, on foot. They did so in part because their commanding officer rode with them, and Serjeant Hardy's sharp eye was on them, but also because Shaka's majesty somehow exerted a power even in death. And there was, too, the soldier's rough-hewn sympathy for the widow of the fallen warrior (if mingled with less worthy feelings).

  The kraal was deserted, ghostly in its sudden emptiness. Night was fast falling; there would not be time to dig the traditional grave of a chieftain, to slaughter the customary black ox and wrap the body of her lord in its skin, but Pampata did not despair: instead she brought Shaka's most treasured cloak from the isigodlo, and dressed Inkosi ye lizwe, the Lord of the World, for the journey of his spirit to the place of his ancestors. And when she had done this, they went and found an empty grain pit, near the great council hut, and into the pit they reverently lowered the earthly remains of Shaka Zulu.

  It was dark when they were finished. They sealed the grave with a stone and covered it with thorn bushes so that Mbopa and the brothers might not discover the last resting place of the king, and defile it. Yet although it was dark, Pampata would not leave the grave except by the most strenuous urging, and even then she was intent on making at once for the chief minister, Ngomane. Only with the gentlest persistence were Hervey and Fairbrother able to persuade her to come back to the encampment with them: there she could rest safely, they assured her, and then travel with them the next day, for Somervile himself intended going to Ngomane's kraal.

  The camp stood-to-arms a full hour before first light. Every man knew what had happened, and expected – feared – the worst. Hervey himself had slept but little, doing the rounds of the picket twice before midnight and twice after. He did not know if the Zulu attacked at night, but he could take no risks. He did not believe that their burying Shaka had gone unseen, and it might serve Mbopa in implicating them in his death, if he had a mind to. In the febrile condition of the place, as Fairbrother had put it, Mbopa might have his warriors cast aside all that Shaka had taught, and throw themselves at once on these izinkonjane, these 'swallows'.

  But morning came peacefully, if overcast. Hervey had lain with his telescope trained on the distant kraal from the first signs of daylight, and observed only stillness – no smoke of cooking fires, no singing, no calling of the herd boys. He could not recollect so complete a flight in Spain or in India, and wondered on the fear that wrought it; and the peril which fear of that degree threatened.

  They breakfasted quickly – cold, just smoked cheese and rum. He had considered striking camp and quitting the hillside while it was dark, but he could not be certain that his patrols would detect Mbopa's men in the pitch black, and to be caught off balance so might have gone badly for them. And so he had decided instead to follow the Indian practice – chota hazree, 'little breakfast', then two hours' marching before an hour's off-saddling, a good mash of tea, and boiled bacon and biscuit.

  They would divide into two parties. Somervile would go first to Ngomane's kraal, at Nonoti, and tell him what had happened (Pampata said they would find him willing to believe them, for the chief minister had always mistrusted Mbopa), and the other party would alert Ngwadi, Nandi's son, Shaka's best-loved half-brother.

  Somervile had thoughts that Ngwadi might be vice-regent, for there would be need of a native minister. And when Pampata revealed that Shaka's son, by her great rival Mbuzikaza, would be at Ngwadi's kraal, raised by a nurse in the greatest secrecy, he became certain of it. Pampata should not go, therefore, to the chief minister's kraal, but to Ngwadi's, escorted by Hervey: she knew the way (it was a hundred miles, perhaps more), and was confident of her welcome there.

  This troubled Hervey at first. His prime duty was the safety of the lieutenant-governor. But by degrees he accepted that this did not require his being at Somervile's side at all times: Fairbrother would accompany him to Ngomane's kraal, and Fairbrother he trusted as himself. It was not, after all, hostile territory, except (perhaps) where Mbopa stood. But he did insist that the major part of the force, the Rifles and half the dragoons, would escort Somervile to Nonoti; Captain Brereton he would take with him to Ngwadi's kraal.

  Somervile's party was first to move off. So eager was Somervile to leave, indeed, that he himself disassembled his field bed while his two servants folded up his tent. He wished to arrive at Ngomane's kraal before Mbopa or his news, although Pampata said that even if they galloped the ten miles to Nonoti, they could not be sure of it, for news, especially evil news, travelled fast in this country.

  Hervey's party was delayed, however. Pampata had first to be instructed – coaxed – into the saddle, and before that, accoutred in a manner more suitable for the journey (both for comfort and modesty). Johnson found her a pair of overalls, and a cape, but as they were making ready to leave, Pampata suddenly shrieked in dismay: she had left in the kraal the one thing that would reassure Ngwadi that she spoke the truth, for only death would have parted Shaka from it – the little toy spear with the red wooden shaft which Nandi had given him when a child. With a deal of gesture and pointing, she managed to make Hervey understand.

  Reluctantly, he agreed to let her retrieve it, fretting that the sun was risen a good way further – half an hour and more, now, since Somervile's party had broken camp.

  They formed column of twos – twenty-odd dragoons – and struck off, mounted, down the hill towards the kraal, Pampata's bat-horse on a lead rein in the charge of Farrier Rust.

  At Shaka's private entrance to the isigodlo, in the outer fence, they halted. Hervey told Brereton to withdraw a hundred yards to the north and keep a sharp lookout over the kraal while he and Pampata went inside.

  When the dragoons had withdrawn, the two slipped silently into the royal quarters. As they rounded the guard hut, Pampata gasped in delight: the isigodlo was covered in white blossom – a heavenly sign that her lord was favoured!

  Hervey smiled, for not only was the blossom delightful, it was the first note of joy he had heard in Pampata. She was a stranger, but her grief had touched him.

  'I would see the resting place of Nkosi,' she said.

  Hervey hesitated . . . But he could not deny her one last glimpse of the grave. He nodded.

  He half expected the ndlunkulu to have been rifled, but the great palace-hut was exactly as before. Pampata quickly found the spear, and a string of beads that had belonged to Nandi, but tears filled her eyes at the sight of the bed of leopard skins on which she and her lord had spent many a loving night.

  'Yiza, come away,' said Hervey, softly, taking her arm.

  Outside, Pampata braced herself, resolved to do what she must. They hurried to the inner entrance of the isigodlo, and thence for the grain pit.

  But a sudden movement at the far side of the byre made him push her roughly to the ground and flatten himself beside her.

  A cowherd, or a guard returning? 'Hlala! Stay!' he whispered.

  He inched towards the nearest hut to spy from the cover of its walls.

  Pampata inched after him. Hervey tried to stop her, but she struggled with his restraining hand, and with a strength that took him aback.

  'What is it you see?' she demanded, beneath her breath.

  He gave up the struggle, rising to his knees to get a clearer look across the enclosure.

  Pampata leaned on his shoulders to see. 'Mbopa!' she gasped. 'The hyena returns!'

  Hervey's blood ran cold. He watched, trying to slow his rapid breathing as Mbopa and his henchmen picked over the blossomstrewn ground.

  'He wears red!' hissed Pampata, angrily gripping his shoul
ders.

  Mbopa was a hundred yards off, but the red-lory feather at his neck was plain to see.

  Pampata was now beside herself. 'He declares himself a chief, though he is nothing but a common dog – and a murderer!'

  Hervey tried to calm her – subdue her – fearing she would run at Mbopa and decry him in front of the guards. He struggled to explain: 'We must . . . watch what he does. If he looked for Shaka's body and . . . could not find it, he . . . might think it is . . . concealed here.'

  But her eyes burned. She made to rise.

  He grabbed her by the shoulders, made her look at him, stared hard into her eyes to impress his meaning.