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 shoulders.
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.
She gave up struggling. She understood. There was even something in her look which spoke of relief to be yielding. Here was someone she might trust, whereas all her own people had done was wail in despair.
He motioned for her to inch back.
But Mbopa's men were now hastening towards the isigodlo.
He pushed her to the ground again and flattened himself beside her.
They heard the warriors going in by the far opening in the hedge, not thirty yards from them – the bravado of those entering a forbidden place. He nodded to her; they crawled inside the hut.
But their line of escape was cut. They could only pray.
XVIII
PURSUIT
Minutes later
The Zulu ran in like hunting lions – from nowhere, with bewildering speed, pouncing, bringing down.
Brereton's right marker fell to a spear he did not even see, though a seasoned lance-corporal.
The dragoons, sitting at ease, smoking, exchanging the crack, were suddenly fumbling for sabre or carbine, too late to do other than desperately fend off the iklwa.
Zulu dashed in low, spears ripping open the bellies of the horses, demounting the wretched dragoons to be finished off by others that followed.
Private Hanks, enlisted but a year, fell under his trooper's dead weight and fought like the devil as two warriors taunted him with the iklwa point and feinted with their shields, before disembowelling him alive.
Corporal Connell, Brereton's coverman, spurred forward to the aid of his captain, managing to get between his charger on the offside and the taller of two spearmen. He drove his blade down hard – Cut Two – but the toughened cowhide shield took the edge. The Zulu sidestepped and thrust his iklwa into Connell's thigh. The corporal's sword arm swung full circle, and the sabre came down again to an exposed head. The Zulu fell instantly to his knees, blood bubbling from the cleft in his skull like water from a spring. Connell was only a length in front of Brereton as he reined hard left to deal with the other warrior – but too late, for Brereton had taken a spear in his left side, deep. The Zulu, in his surprise at bettering so braided an adversary, stepped back instead of turning to meet the coverman. Connell, sabre lofted again, made his third cut in as many seconds more, and sent the man to his maker. Dropping his reins, he grabbed Brereton to hold him in the saddle, but a third Zulu sprang from nowhere to drive his iklwa through Connell's spleen.
Cornet Petrie, new out of Eton and the only other officer, by sheer agility held off three jabbing spears for a quarter of a minute, until he too fell to their combined points.
Two dragoons, old hands, stood back-to-back as their horses thrashed on the ground, entrails spilling out like offal on a butcher's block. It took a full minute for four times their number to cut both men down.
One by one the rest of the dragoons fell. Not a shot was fired – for there was not a carbine primed. Private Johnson, astride a Cape pony, holding Hervey's charger and his bat-horse twenty yards off, turned to make away, but a Zulu running like a gazelle caught them and lunged with his spear before he could get them into a gallop.
Johnson kicked out blindly, deflecting the point, which pierced his pony's flank instead. The startled mare and bat-horse bolted, but the charger stopped, the reins, looped round Johnson's wrist, jerking him clean from the saddle.
The Zulu pulled him to his knees roughly, raising his spear for the thrust to the heart. Suddenly the charger squealed, sprang forward and took off after the pony, dragging Johnson a hundred yards before both horses stopped. He scrambled to his feet, half stunned, swearing foully. He hauled Hervey's rifle from the saddle sleeve, checked there was a percussion cap in place, then dropped to one knee to take unsteady aim at the pursuing warrior.
The shot was ear-splitting. The bullet found its mark, a perfect mark, in the Zulu's breast.
'Bastard kaffirs!' spat Johnson. 'Bastard, bastard, bastards!'
He took the cartridge bag from the saddle and began reloading as he walked back towards the slaughter.
He fired three times – and three more Zulu fell. Only when he was too close to reload again did he perceive the danger, or that there was no dragoon still standing.
Hervey, hearing the first shot, had made to rise, but stopped himself just in time as warriors began running from the isigodlo in alarm.
One shot: what was Brereton doing?
And then three more.
But all he could do was wait – and trust to Brereton to deal with whatever it was.
They lay a long ten minutes. When at last he thought it safe enough, they began to crawl towards the inner line of huts. From here they were able to work their way, one hut to another, to the edge of the isigodlo, and thence dash, crouching, round its thorn fence to the serving-girls' entrance in the outer thorn fence on the far side of the kraal. They crawled on hands and knees for three hundred yards, and then another hundred, leopard-like, through the long, ungrazed grass just without the kraal, which was reserved for the serving-girls to gather flowers, to a bushy rise to the north-west. He reckoned he might be able to see the troop from here.
He peered above the waist-high grass, but could see nothing. What was Brereton doing? All he had told him to do was watch the kraal. Had he taken off in pursuit of Mbopa's men?
They crawled onto the forward slope, to a wild pear tree. He rose to his feet, out of sight of the kraal, to gain a clearer view.
He froze. His gut felt as if it had been torn open. Even without his telescope he could see – Zulu, a hundred and more, stripping the dead like the peasants at Waterloo. Here and there a troop horse stood obligingly. The rest were vulture meat.
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There would be no human survivors. This much he knew. And Johnson would be there. What could have happened that twenty men were overwhelmed, and but a few shots? If some had got away, where were they now? Why could they not show themselves? The Zulu could not touch them beyond a spear's throw. Why, in that case, had those who escaped not just retired out of range to fight back with the carbine? Even if Brereton had lost his head there was Serjeant Hardy . . . No; Hardy was with Somervile. He had insisted that Hardy go as first cover. But there was Connell . . .
He lowered himself to his forearms again, his face drained of all colour, his eyes misted. Johnson – his old friend, Georgiana's old friend, Henrietta's: he had not drawn a sabre or carbine in years. This was no sort of death for his old friend. It was no death for anyone. Not a soldier's death with but four shots. Had they been duped? Had the Zulu approached them under parley flag, and then turned on them treacherously? How could he know? How would he ever know, unless he caught Mbopa and made him speak the truth?
Pampata had also observed; and she saw his look. She pulled at his shoulder. 'Come.'
Slowly, reluctantly, but knowing that he must, he did as Pampata bid, numb with the sense that a part of him had been torn away . . .
They were on their feet now, stumbling down a gulley towards a thicket of fig trees, Pampata leading. When they reached the bottom, a startled bush pig shot from the undergrowth, and between them, faster than Hervey could draw his sword or even sidestep. It jolted him awake like a carriage wheel in a pothole. He looked about, sabre in hand, as if wishing for an opponent with whom to test it, then turned for the cover of the fig trees, where Pampata was already concealing herself. Here he could think over his – their – predicament, see what actions lay open to them, decide his plan.
His first thoughts were whether Mbopa's men would be looking for them. Had he been observed with the half troop, before they had slipped into the kraal? If he had been, then Mbopa would soon discover that his body did not lie with the others. And what of Pampata? Would Mbopa know that she had come into the camp last night? He was thankful that her overalls and cape – mere functionals when she had put them on – served as some disguise. He concluded it was unlikely that Mbopa would suppose he was at large, but that his henchmen would be trying to find Pampata. That, indeed, was what she had said last night, that Mbopa would hunt her down – as he would Shaka's child?
But Pampata was not merely concealing herself; she was plucking fruit, filling the pouch that hung at her waist. He asked her why she did this, for the figs were unripened, hard as iron, and she answered – as far as he understood her – that if they chewed the pith of the fig it would ward off sleep, and that they would have need of its fortification if they were to travel to Ngwadi's kraal.
This assumption, Ngwadi's kraal their destination, he balked at. Somervile had not too many hours' start on them, and if there were any loose horses they would likely as not be following, for horses had a sort of sixth, herding, sense. Perhaps he would be able to catch one of them. In any case, Somervile would stay a while at Nonoti, the chief minister's kraal. He and Pampata would be able to make the ten miles or so before dark, and he was sure Somervile would not risk a night march from Nonoti. And even if Somervile did press on to Ngwadi's kraal, without resting at Nonoti, then he and Pampata would at least have Ngomane's protection, a man they could trust.
Except he was not certain he could trust this chief minister. That Pampata did was reassuring, but it was not definitive. It was only natural that she should be seeking someone of her own tribe in whom to trust, for it was not enough for the white man alone to be her protector. And what would be the outcome if they were to go to Nonoti, finding that Somervile had left already? They would not know the success or otherwise of his embassy until it was too late. And so, reluctantly, like Pampata he concluded that the safest course was that which was most arduous – Ngwadi's kraal.
'How do you know the way?' he tried.
In truth, Pampata had no difficulty with his Xhosa, for what they had to speak of was so elementary that the words were almost the same as her Zulu. And her Zulu, once he had accustomed his ear to the pronunciation, was not so very difficult to follow – especially since she seemed to have infinite patience in making herself understood.
She replied that she knew every hill and stream, that she could take him there by night, even.
He studied her for a moment; a considerable moment. A hundred miles was a prodigious distance. But it was not such an impossible thing to believe, perhaps, for did he not know the Great Plain in Wiltshire as well? It was not a hundred miles – not even fifty – but its folds and ridges, which might look the same to a stranger's eye, were to him as the churches and statues of London were to a native of that place. Yes, he would trust her to lead him to Ngwadi's kraal. And if there were a moon as good as last night's, he might even trust her to lead him when it was dark.What perils an African night might bring, he had better not imagine.
XIX
DADEWETHU
Later
Not only did Pampata know the way – (she hesitated not once in their first dozen miles) – she knew how to cross ground. She avoided skylines, keeping lower than would a warrior crossing the same country, for she expected they would be followed, or even intercepted. She told Hervey not to worry on this account, however, for she would detect Mbopa's men long before they detected them.
He believed her. She possessed something that compelled belief. He made her show him their new line when they reached a landmark on which they had just marched, but beyond that he found himself following her – and quite literally, for no matter how much he quickened his pace, Pampata remained at least an arm's length in front of him. They had no conversation: Hervey scarce had breath to keep up (and he could not claim the extra weight of sabre and pistol, for Pampata marched – half ran – with nothing on her feet). When they rested, just after midday, the sun hot, it was by a spring in a hollow on the side of a dry valley, and he marvelled at her hale condition.
She said they paused only for water, but Hervey insisted they remain longer. Three hours at a pace between walk and trot – he would certainly rest his troop horses after such a stretch. And he wanted to spy out the land lest they were being followed, or about to be intercepted. He wished he had his telescope.
But there was neither heat-haze nor mist to penetrate, and he was able to see as far as the lie of the land would allow – see the beasts of the field (there were surprisingly few), but no sign of Mbopa's men. No sign of human movement at all. Either they rested or else followed the same method of traversing the country, unseen. But why would they take any but the direct route? They had no need to follow their trail, for they surely knew the destination. No, he felt sure that if they were being followed they remained undetected still, their pursuers a comfortable distance behind them.
He felt hungry suddenly. How would they eat? They would be well enough today, but it would go hard with them tonight, an empty belly. It could be borne, but a second day and they would begin to feel fatigue. They might find ripe fruit, although it was not the season, except that here the seasons were not as they were in England. Fruit, however unseasonal, would be better than nothing, for it would stop the colic (so long as they did not eat too much), but no amount of fruit was substitute for meat when it came to wind and limb, and he could not risk a shot to bring down game. But he had gone hungry before. It was a commonplace of the service: no commissary, however diligent, could keep an army in constant supply of fresh rations. And even the standby, biscuit, ran short from time to time. Before Waterloo he had had nothing in his belly for the best part of two days.
With few words, they resumed the trek in the direction of the sun, and slightly north. The veld before them was spring-green, less broken and scrub-covered than that which the party had first traversed on their march to Shaka's kraal, and spotted with brilliant patches of yellow, a flower he did not know, without distinction but its pleasing colour. Here and t
here was a splash of orange-red, the solitary fire lily, and he marked that there were now deer – antelope – grazing at some distance. But there were none of the nyamakaza, the wild beasts, that Johnson had been so keen to see.
Johnson . . . He felt sick in his gut at what had befallen him. They had been together so long. They had been friends; so many happy hours shared. He could not imagine being without his stoic cheeriness, which had so often prompted him to second, and useful, thoughts. He forced the picture from his mind.
Pampata's gait was unlike any Hervey had seen before. She had discarded the overalls (concealed them in a thorn bush), but she kept the cloak about her, though the day was warm. It was her high step that intrigued him: the warriors of both the Xhosa and the Zulu, in their loping march, kept the foot low, daisy-cutting, expending as little effort as possible, their weight alone seeming to carry them forward. And the exertion in Pampata's lower body was matched by inactivity in the upper part, for she neither swung her arms nor flexed her shoulders. Yet this curious action neither impeded nor fatigued her.
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