by James Whyle
What about me?
Colonel Ire looked at the Captain and the Captain looked at Waine.
You’ve taken your punishment, he said.
So, said Colonel Ire. The men who do the work will get the land.
The irregulars waited in silence in that dappled arcadia. A large beetle buzzed about in the branches above and the cicadas sang.
The heathen believe, said Colonel Ire, that they are undefeated. They think that they can hold out for better terms. General Cathcart is a methodical man and he will pursue and starve them methodically. For years if necessary. And under Jinqi’s and Branders’ command they will elude us and harass us for years. It would be better for all concerned if the next time we went into the Kromme was also the last.
The sentinel ape barked a command and he turned and moved up the ledges and the young scampered after him. When the clan had cleared the top of the cliffs the sentinel stopped and looked down. He seemed to frown and he passed his palm over his eyes and felt with a long searching finger in his ear and then he looked again. Far below him in the glade the hominids stood ill-omened about their leaders.
XXIV
Prospective landowners – A lesson.
THE IRREGULARS RECRUITED themselves at Fort Cox for some weeks and on the day they were paid they ventured to the canteen. They sat in a dim mud-walled room on rough stools formed from tree trunks. A long shaft of light came from the door onto the street and the marauders’ boots and the ragged ends of their trousers were in sunlight and all above was darkness. They discussed what they should drink.
Cape Smoke, said the kid.
Why, said Evans.
It’s cheap.
A good point, said Higgs.
Landowners, said Evans, don’t drink something because it’s cheap.
Since when are you a landowner, said the joiner.
Going to be.
The men pondered this remark and then the joiner rose and collected coins and negotiated with the settler at the counter and came back with a bottle of brandy and some cracked glasses which were filled and emptied and filled again.
So it’s true, said the kid.
What?
They’ll give us farms.
If Colonel Ire says it is, said Basson, it is.
That man, said the joiner, would talk a dog off a meat wagon.
How many villages you think we have to do, said Smith.
Four or five, said Evans. A week’s work maybe. Maybe two.
And then?
And then the word will get around.
And then?
Then they’ll leave.
Evans looked across the room.
Perhaps we should offer the ladies a drink, he said.
There were Hottentot women in the gloom along the wall and they stared back at him. They were dressed in a variety of shifts and cast-off dresses and they had bare feet and two were missing their front teeth and both of these spoke together.
Hello Johnny.
Evans looked at Higgs.
You take the one on the left.
Higgs spat.
Looks like her face caught fire. And they beat it out with a spade.
Do you know what Totties are, said Basson.
What?
Living proof that Dutchmen mate with buffaloes.
Evans poured more brandy and they drank it and some Highlanders came in and a corporal of the Cape Mounted Rifles. Evans rose and went across to the women and an hour later the kid lay in the dust outside the canteen with a left eye that protruded like a split fig and shouting drunks kicked him as they stumbled into the street.
XXV
Arms to Fort Adams – Jinqi on a white horse – The discipline of General Branders – Surrounded – Return to Fort Cox – An attempt at peace – Bounty on a defector’s head – The Captain’s motive.
TOWARDS THE END of August the irregulars assembled with a strong party to escort a wagonload of arms and ammunition to Fort Adams. The road was in good condition and they made the journey in eight hours and when the wagons were unpacked on the day following the Captain saw that they contained Minié rifles. The Captain was considering this fact when a patrol of the 2nd Queen’s Regiment rode in and the bugle summoned the assembly. The patrol had been taking up a position to cover the return of General Cathcart’s column when they were attacked and forced to retreat.
Daybreak on the day following found the irregulars marching under the command of a Major Watt across an open plain in the foothills of the Eastern Mountains. To their north the land rose in forested slopes that broke up into grey crags. They proceeded up a green valley and came upon the ruins of a settler village that had been attacked at the commencement of the war. A lone jackal skulked away past a burnt chapel and trotted up the single street of gutted houses. They followed the jackal and stared about at the place. There were many bones that lay in the dust and someone had placed a skull on a charred log in a leaning doorway so that it gazed back at the irregulars as if from a shrine.
They marched on and made their bivouac at the head of the valley and a Dutch scout stood and pointed to the ridge above. The Captain took out the Dollond and saw that parties of defectors and heathens were beginning to form there. A group of defectors moved down the slope and the irregulars formed a line in opposition and fired a volley at six hundred yards that saw the defectors go skipping back up the slope.
The Captain passed his lens over the landscape and saw a party of heathen horsemen coming down a ridge to the north. They followed a chieftain on a white horse and as they passed out of sight a mounted defector emerged on the path behind them. The defector wore a uniform and he was attended by mounted staff and a bugler and his men marched in file with sloped arms. The force came to a position commanding the bivouac and they halted and piled their weapons with a discipline the Captain could only admire.
He handed the Dollond to Lieutenant Bruce.
If Jinqi goes round to the bottom of the valley, he said, and they stay there …
Yes, said Lieutenant Bruce.
They’ll have us stoppered up like a foetus in a bottle of alcohol.
Lieutenant Bruce stood frowning with the glass to his eye.
The Captain looked behind him.
They can line these ridges, said the Captain, and pick us off like coconuts at a fair.
They appear to be surrendering, said Lieutenant Bruce.
He handed the Dollond back to the Captain and the Captain trained it on the ridge and saw a party coming down towards them with a white flag.
The officers conferred with Major Watt and then Johnny Fingo rode out with four others and met the flag party as they came down the slope. The groups conferred and Johnny Fingo rode back down and gave the Major a letter. The Major took the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger and squeezed. He looked at the letter and then he looked up at the defectors on the slope. The officers waited and watched and Major Watt opened the letter and read it.
Tell General Branders, he said, that he has my word his party will not be harmed.
News of the parley passed about the bivouac and the men were given orders not to fire but many charged their weapons on the assumption that the order would change. They gathered round in a semicircle with rifles in hand and the Major stood at its centre and they watched the defector party descend. The Captain focused the Dollond on their leader.
General Branders wore the braided frock coat of a British staff officer. His black trousers had a red stripe down the side and there was a red-and-gold morocco sword belt about his waist and a cavalry sword hung in its scabbard. He had a black cape around his shoulders and he wore a straw hat.
The kid stood next to Evans. The swelling on his left eye was all but gone but that quarter of his face was as dark as a ripe plum.
What the hell is that, he said.
Hottentots, said Evans.
He shook his head.
They a caution to snakes.
Close in the Captain’s lens was a man of indeterminate age
. The pale yellow skin of his face was as creased and creviced as a rocky outcrop of Gondwanaland and his slanted eyes were blue. His horse was held by an attendant and he had a secretary with him who was equipped to make notes in a small black notebook. Behind the secretary were five men who wore bright red coats.
The Captain spoke aside to Lieutenant Bruce.
Those are sapper coats, he said.
From the party they killed on the rocky pass, said Bruce. On the Gatestown road.
Last week.
Yes.
We should just shoot them.
I mentioned the possibility to the Major.
And?
His said orders are to cover General Cathcart’s return from the Big Fat.
The Captain shook his head and they watched as General Branders conferred with the Major and Johnny Fingo and then the defector party turned and moved away. The officers gathered around the Major and the Major told them that Branders said he was tired of war and wanted to know on what terms General Cathcart would make peace. He said that Branders was fluent in Dutch and that he didn’t trust him as far as he could spit and he doubled the guard.
On the day following the kid woke to shouts of fall in, and the irregulars stood to their arms as a group of Fingos came down the valley. They were outriders of General Cathcart’s expedition across the Big Fat, wild men whose stride devoured the landscape, and they passed in rags with their firelocks over their shoulders. They carried bulging daghasacks and they wore great plumes of grey and white feathers on their heads and they shouted, molo Johnny, molo Johnny, as they went.
A group of horsemen came up with word that General Cathcart had already arrived at Fort Adams by a different route and the irregulars decamped and marched back down the valley. They had gone not more than half a mile beyond the deserted village when a bugle sounded the halt from a ridge above them and they stopped in much confusion. The Captain took out his Dollond and trained it on the ridge where he saw three Hottentots descending with a white flag. A group of horsemen rode out and met the defectors and returned with a letter from General Branders to General Cathcart.
Close by Fort Adams the Captain was met by an acquaintance from the 2nd Queen’s Regiment who had been on General Cathcart’s expedition. The two men rode together and the acquaintance told the Captain that they had burned the great place of the chieftain of the Tsaleka to the ground and returned with a hundred horses and a thousand goats and ten thousand head of cattle. He said that the chieftain of the Tsaleka was unlikely to forget this punishment, as the original fine had involved only two thousand head.
On the day following the irregulars returned to Fort Cox by a road through bush covered with white twining jessamine. They came over a rise and saw a small valley where the earth shifted darkly. They marched down puzzling and saw that the ground was hidden by a mass of immature locusts. The insects proceeded with a strange rustling whisper across the landscape and they ate what they landed upon and they moved away before the marauders’ footfalls like iron filings obedient to a shifting field.
They came into the village in the evening by the smooth green down and they passed through herds of cattle whistled on by blanketed herdsmen with weapons in hand. They passed through the Fingo settlement where maidens squatted in the dust as they milked the goats and men praised the returning cattle and youths knelt at the udders of the cows and women of all ages strode in with piles of firewood upon their heads.
On the day following the headquarters of the Big Fat expedition came in and the kid stood with the crowd in the town centre and watched. The streets about were blocked by herds of bellowing cattle and ragged soldiers thronged the square. Mounted officers rode half-starved horses and their bare elbows protruded from rents in soiled jackets whose original colour was obscure. Shouting Fingos drove oxen laden with tottering piles of green fragrant hemp. Camp followers led pack horses weighed down with blankets and kettles and great ropes and lumps of raw flesh covered in shifting veils of flies.
The kid pushed through the throng and out through the bellowing cattle to the canteen. He entered on the same bright bridge of afternoon sunlight that had led him previously into the darkness. He stood illuminated below the knee and surveyed the place.
There were men and women in the gloom along the walls and there was one who sprawled on a table with arms outstretched as though crucified. Evans was seated in a corner with Higgs and Basson and Smith and the joiner and there was a woman of complicated provenance and scattered teeth upon his knee.
The kid put down his coin and drank a tot of Cape Smoke and he sat there and listened to the conversation but it didn’t satisfy him. He turned to the joiner.
Why you sign up for this?
The joiner scratched a hand in his beard.
You could make money in the Cape. You’re a joiner. You can make things.
I used to.
So why you sign up?
To get away from a woman.
Why?
Because she made me mad.
How?
Don’t ever get married, said the joiner. It’s like quicksand.
The kid drank thoughtfully in silence and Evans and the Hottentot woman went through a dark passage that led to the back of the place and the kid left just after sunset before the fighting started. He walked back through the square and out to the camp and approached the lines at a place where Clayton was standing guard. The kid identified himself with a sound which was like the call of a nightjar and Clayton let him through.
The kid went through the camp as silent as a shadow and he walked by habit in the footsteps of others and the sentry outside General Cathcart’s tent did not look up at his passing.
Inside the tent General Cathcart sat at a long table with his senior officers.
I have received, he said, a letter from Branders. It is written in surprisingly good English. It proposes terms of peace which exclude the surrender of himself and other leaders. I will make no response to this letter. I will ignore it. And tomorrow I will put out a proclamation offering a reward of five hundred pounds to any man who can bring him in. Dead or alive.
On the day following the Captain sat at his camp table and wrote a quick note on a loose piece of paper:
Dear Father,
I recently escorted a wagon train to a nearby frontier fort and found on arrival that two of the wagons contained new Minié rifles. I presume and hope that these were despatched by Uncle Samuel. At the Horse Guards the Duke of Beaufort’s man was quite clear that if the Minié proved itself in the guerrilla warfare any orders would be made through the firm.
I will write at some stage to give you an update of my recent adventures with both the heathen, and my own unruly force, but have soon to depart for a final assault on the Kromme ravines. It is going to be difficult work, but has to be done. We have all seen the victims of the heathen’s tortures. Women disembowelled, and their unborn progeny laid before them. Men mutilated, and their amputated members placed in derision to adorn their yet-living bodies, their wounds exposed to flies and maggots, and fated to feel death crawling over them.
The Captain signed the letter and folded it and sealed it in an envelope and gave it to Higgs to take to the Sergeant Major who acted as postmaster. He watched the departing irregular for a moment and then he went back into his room and sat thoughtfully at his writing table. The five hundred pounds on Branders’ head was an amount roughly equivalent to the yearly income of the First Lord of the Treasury and the Captain could think of numerous ways to invest the money.
XXVI
Their analogues in history – A caveat in Eden – Prisoners taken – Resolute suicide – Strange fruit – Desperate mothers – Ire turns to prophecy – The dead above.
ON THE 14TH OF SEPTEMBER 1852 the irregulars left the yellow dog in Clayton’s care at the Fort Cox camp and marched through the sleeping town. The dog followed for a mile and then the Captain dismounted and borrowed a short whip from a Dutch scout and walked back and cursed it. Th
e dog lowered its curved yellow tail and turned and retreated for a few yards. When the kid looked back it was just a silhouette in the moonlight with its ears pricked forward as it watched them go.
Their uniforms were ragged patchworks and their shirts hung like rags from beneath their jackets. They trod quietly with their rifles held at the end of the barrel and carried over the shoulder in the manner of bandits. Seen from the shanties of the Hottentot village they were no more than shadows that clanked and tramped in the night. They passed like a hint of carrion on the breeze and they might have been the spectres of Rameses’ men deploying through the darkness about Kadesh or the risen ancestors of Scythian hordes asearch for plunder upon the steppe.
They moved westwards below the southern slopes of the Kromme and they joined with a force under Colonel Ire and they breakfasted at a little river. They were watched by small groups of warriors who stayed at the very extremity of the range of a Minié rifle in the hands of a good shot.
They marched on and they bivouacked in a ruin below the path where Hartung was taken. At four o’clock on the morning of the day following they started up the rocky track. They came to the place of ambush and disembowelment and the skeletons lay where the living had fallen. Fronds of creeper twined and flowered brightly among them and they appeared in that September dawn like an aberration, a ghastly caveat glimpsed in Eden.
They came out of the forest and onto the spur in a thick mist and felt their way up to the escarpment. They moved west along the southern heights of the Kromme and then they stopped and waited. When the sun was fully risen the mist dissipated to some extent and the scouts saw heathen warriors moving towards an outcrop of ridge which jutted into the Great Western Ravine.
The main body marched on in frontal assault and the irregulars approached the same objective by a forest path just below the spur’s eastern edge. They came out onto the prominence just as the main body arrived. Scattered balls passed over their heads and they moved forward towards the rocky natural fortress on the extremity. The irregulars returned the fire from good cover and crawled forward and fired again and the heathen descended into the Western Ravine by routes more commonly used by apes and down which the marauders were not confident to advance.