They got Gideon back on his horse and tied him to the animal by a six-foot length of rope, apologising as they did so. Their theory was that if they came under attack, he’d be able to get off and hide behind the bulk of the animal. If, however, the horse bolted and he couldn’t stay on top, he’d be dragged over the veldt – scraping through bushes, bouncing on rocks, having his skin torn off his body – for the remaining minutes of his life. It wasn’t the best of prospects. Four of them mounted and tied his horse between two of theirs, ropes going left and right. One rider scouted ahead at a distance of about a hundred yards. Another hung back, not quite so far. As they set off, the occasional tug from one side or the other pulled Gideon’s horse off balance, shaking him up. The two riders beside him kept their distance, physically and otherwise. This is what you get for becoming so hopelessly entangled in the crossed strands of loyalty and betrayal, Gideon thought – this precarious ride.
He hoped his escorts were more alert than him. The last thing he needed now was to ride into a Boer ambush. There was too much at stake, more even than his life. Dawn came with trepidation. First light was a favourite time for attacks.
Gideon received a jolt as one escort’s horse lurched forward. He grabbed onto the saddle with both hands to steady himself. He gave the rider an angry look, but the man simply pointed ahead in response. ‘The horse is smelling something. Senekal is just behind that rise.’
They arrived in town as reveille was sounded in the military base that had sprung up on the edge of the town. Half-dressed soldiers emerged from tents, scurrying about to do their ablutions. Gideon remembered that feeling of constantly being hurried that was the conventional soldier’s lot.
They took Gideon to a command post and handed him over to new guards, two infantrymen fresh from Yorkshire, who took him to a house to wait for instructions. They allowed him to go to the latrine and to drink water before being taken inside, where he was made to sit on a kitchen chair. It was an amazing luxury. Almost three months in the veldt had made him appreciate what a wonderful invention this simple piece of furniture was. He didn’t complain even when they tied him to it. The floor was slightly uneven, made of wet manure that had been smoothed and left to harden, so the chair wobbled a bit. At the back door, the floor had been worn away, crumbling into dust. There was a table made of light-yellow wood with the patina of years of use, a black Dover stove and some cupboards with curtains in front. On the whitewashed wall an embroidery proclaimed the Apostle Matthew’s admonishment about the wide and the straight gate, in Dutch. When the house had been requisitioned, the owners must’ve left everything intact, or maybe they were dead or sent to a concentration camp. These days there could be many explanations for an empty house. The ceiling was made of closely packed reeds laid over half-smoothed beams that bore clear evidence of the trees they had been.
Sitting in a kitchen made Gideon realise how hungry he was. ‘I haven’t eaten since lunch yesterday.’ That bread he had with Esther, a lifetime ago.
The older of the two guards gave Gideon a surprised look. He himself had not yet lost the layer of soft fat that had insulated him at home. Going hungry seemed an unthinkable deprivation. ‘Your English is good.’
‘It should be. I’m one of you.’
‘How come you’re a prisoner then?’
Gideon sighed. ‘Long story.’
Now the younger one piped up. ‘I’ll see if I can find you anything.’ He left and returned minutes later with bread, butter and jam, putting the plate on the table in front of the prisoner. ‘I tried to get breakfast, but the cooks weren’t ready yet.’
‘I’ll need my hands to eat.’
The two guards conferred and then the younger came around to untie Gideon’s hands. The other held a rifle trained on him the whole time. Gideon took the knife they offered and buttered his bread, scooping a large dollop of jam on top. The bread was still warm, melting the butter. It tasted even better than the one Esther had brought him. The company was worse though, he thought wryly. Having a full stomach shored up his confidence. Things would probably turn out all right. His optimistic attitude may have been born from a lack of experience or imagination, but it had served him well all his life and he hadn’t yet found compelling reason to change it.
The back door opened, scraping a dry leaf across the floor. A young subaltern with a smudge for a moustache entered. ‘We telegraphed Bloemfontein. We’ll hold you here till we hear from Major Bryce.’
Kiepersol trees lined one side of Bloemfontein’s Fort Street. Cycling past them, Major Bryce kept a leisurely pace, feeling the unevenness of the road with the front wheel. He had done a hard ride the day before, out of the city. He was no longer much concerned with avoiding thorns, as he had lined the inside of the tyres with strips of rawhide. It was a trick he got from a prisoner who used to be in the Boer scout Danie Theron’s wheel-riders corps. Bryce foresaw that some day most infantry units would use bicycles to get around. Mechanisation was the future of warfare. He had seen horseless carriages in London, but was unimpressed. They were noisy, so an enemy would hear them coming from afar. They were too complex and therefore unreliable. Besides, they needed special fuel and who knew where one would get enough of that to keep an army going. ‘The bicycle,’ he’d say to Lieutenant Farrell. ‘Mark my words, it’s the way we’re going. It may not work in jungles, but on the African savanna and Europe with its road network … You’ll see.’
He loved Farrell’s distant smile at times like these, not letting on if he was impressed or just bemused. The young man had a certain inscrutability that appealed to Bryce. They had become more comfortable around each other. Bryce had to admit to himself that he enjoyed the man’s company, despite the implied threat that he was being watched. What the hell, he was doing some watching too, though not to the same ends. Farrell’s long limbs held a boyish appeal. The dark-lashed turquoise eyes were perhaps a bit too pretty, but his assistant had charm, no getting away from that.
In front of his office, Bryce nimbly hopped off his cycle and onto the steps, swinging the metal frame up onto the stoep in a fluid motion. He put the bike against the wall and entered the open doorway. Lieutenant Farrell was already at his desk, writing away fervently. He jumped to his feet when Bryce came in. ‘Morning, Major!’ The two saluted each other as protocol demanded, but with a lack of form that would’ve outraged any drill sergeant. Bryce couldn’t help but notice the haste with which Farrell swept his papers into an open drawer. There goes another report on the actions, or more accurately the lack thereof, of a certain stout, red-faced intelligence officer.
Bryce feigned joviality. ‘What’s up this morning?’
‘The war is still on.’
Bryce hung his cap next to Farrell’s on the hatstand and smoothed back his hair. ‘That’s not a problem, is it?’
They were joking, but both knew that the concern at the highest level was not if the Empire would win the war, but what it would cost. Kitting out all these men, bringing them here and feeding them, having them gallivanting across the veldt rather than working at something useful … It was all costing money. To make matters worse, while the war was on, the Johannesburg gold mines weren’t producing at capacity. There was a hard cost and an opportunity cost to this war that was painful to all, so it had to be wrapped up as soon as possible. Bryce once confided in Farrell that he thought this was what they were really fighting for, that whenever any of them got paid a penny, it was because someone else was getting a pound.
Farrell took a letter from his pocket and said with a sigh, ‘Seems that the war is a problem to some.’
‘Who’s that from?’
‘This girl back home who thinks we have an understanding I don’t understand. It’s that blessed Jane Austen – too many impressionable girls read those books. I was actually trying to write a reply when you came in just now.’
Bryce decided on the spot that he had to look at what Farrell had put in that drawer. The quick hiding plus an unasked-for expl
anation added up to something worth investigating. ‘Women …’ he said, shaking his head. ‘Say, you can’t find that Truia girl and ask her to get me some of those koeksisters she always seems to have? I saw her just up the road.’ Bryce wondered about making such a personal request, but his love of the local confection was well established and Farrell had often in the past offered to buy some for him.
‘I’ll go have a look.’
Bryce waited till Farrell had left, going off on a wild goose chase. Then he stepped over to his sidekick’s desk and had a look in the drawer. The letter was on official army paper. It had a purple ‘SECRET’ stamp and the heading said Re. Project Apollo. It was addressed to C-in-C, Lord Kitchener, starting with the usual formalities and then this: There is no evidence to suggest that persisting with the current assignment of the officer in question will aid the war effort in any way. In the absence of concrete results, it has to be recommended that … Farrell left the reader dangling in mid-sentence. Bryce tried to guess at the words to come in that blank space, but there was no way he could make the lead-in fit with a positive outcome.
He closed the drawer and went back to his desk, his heels clicking on the wooden floor. Was it the end of this assignment? He had grown fond of this office, being surrounded by maps and schemes. It was the cushiest job he’d ever had and the one most worthwhile. He still believed it could work, that he could affect the outcome of the war. It was other people who let him down, his agents in the field and his impatient superiors. Nobody had patience; they just wanted concrete results, and quickly. He was surrounded by the kind of people who’d skip to the last page of a novel rather than enjoy the story as it unfolded. He turned to a wall-mounted map of the Orange River Colony. No matter how hard he looked, he saw nothing but roads leading nowhere. How many times had he stared at that map, wondering where De Wet might be at that moment? If only he could swoop down on the man like a hand swatting a mosquito … The weekly Under the Union Jack would proclaim him as The Man Who Captured De Wet. It would be like Kitchener of Khartoum, a name that sticks. Ah, we can dream.
‘Staring at the map again?’ Farrell was at the door. ‘I couldn’t find the girl anywhere. Don’t know where she has disappeared to.’
‘Maybe it’s in the Boers’ blood – she’s as elusive as De Wet himself,’ said Bryce. ‘Damn. I could do with something sweet.’
‘Good things come to those who wait.’
‘You don’t really believe that.’
Farrell smiled. ‘No.’ Maybe that was the thing Bryce liked most about Farrell, that his conformist outward behaviour belied his sense of knowing. ‘You have a better chance of pinching a drop of mercury than getting hold of De Wet.’
‘You know, something that’s been bothering me.’ Bryce had been wondering if he should raise this with Farrell. Now seemed a good time. ‘There are these two brothers, both Boer generals, and Piet de Wet just falls into our lap, joins our side of his own volition and leads his men against his former comrades, while his brother insists on being the most damnable thorn in our side. How does that happen?’
‘Maybe one’s smarter.’
‘But which one?’
‘I know you’d say differently, but I think Piet. Once the war is lost, you fight to end it.’
‘I don’t know …’ Bryce traced his fingers across the map. ‘History will forget the traitor. People like dumb heroes, men who defy reason. Smart men, men who subtly steer the course of events, slip between the pages of history, unseen.’
‘Feeling unappreciated, are you?’
‘Don’t mock me.’
‘Sorry, Major.’
Everything was a joke to this young man, Bryce thought. And well it may be if you’re young and have opinions instead of beliefs. Farrell was charming as hell, but lacked a moral compass. He didn’t have enough to lose, or did not yet know he could lose what he had. It’s what made youth so irresistible to scarred old men.
‘What’s on the programme for today?’
Wait and hope, Bryce wanted to say, like every day. ‘I have a meeting with Colonel White of the quartermaster-general’s office at eleven, something about an anomaly in the maps of the Heilbron district. One has to keep up appearances.’
Steps clattered on the stoep and a pimply soldier banged on the open door. ‘Telegram for Major Bryce!’ The messenger was hardly more than a boy, his nose his only fully grown feature. He saluted and held out a folded paper. ‘Arrived this morning, Sir.’
Bryce came to the door and read the message, twice. The day could become interesting yet, he realised. ‘Lieutenant Farrell, find out when we can catch a train to Winburg. Then you and I will be doing some riding. We have to get to Senekal forthwith.’
General De Wet wore tinted glasses, two small ovals of smoked glass in a wire frame. Jacob Eksteen had seldom seen something of the sort, but the general’s demeanour discouraged any comment. He strode up to Jacob, whipping the loose flaps of his riding breeches with a small sjambok. It was known that he used the whip on men sometimes, lashing out if his patience wore out. His square-tipped beard had gone notably greyer since Jacob had seen him last, but otherwise the general seemed in good shape, having lost none of his compact bulk. Jacob held the reins of his sweaty horse in one hand, extending the other to his commander. He had slept on the bare ground the night before, without blankets even, and was aware of grass seeds and dust on his jacket, and the spot on his shoulder where the fabric had worn through. De Wet’s clothes looked well kept, like he had just stepped out of a meeting with a Bloemfontein bank manager. Jacob found it disconcerting to talk to someone whose eyes he couldn’t see, but the general made it easier by keeping things light, enquiring about family and the weather, and seeming genuinely interested in trivial things. It was part of an ingrained social ritual. De Wet was a farmer at heart, an ordinary man blessed with a singular talent that would’ve been useless in peacetime or perhaps even in another kind of war.
‘You came alone?’
‘I brought a man, but his horse threw him and he couldn’t continue. Foreigner, didn’t know how to handle a horse in a thunderstorm.’
‘I don’t know about trusting foreigners.’
‘This one seems good.’
It was impossible to read De Wet’s expression. He took off his glasses to clean them, squinting in the sun. ‘Let’s go talk in my tent.’
Once inside, De Wet indicated a small folding stool and sat down on one himself. ‘I know it’s a bit hot in here, but it gives us some privacy.’
Jacob wondered what the general could have to say that others shouldn’t know about. ‘Are you worried about spies?’
‘Not worried, careful. One never knows whose loyalty you can rely on.’
‘I give my men an incentive.’
‘So I’ve heard.’
How could the general know what’s been going on miles away at another commando? Jacob reminded himself never to underestimate this man. The silence that followed compelled him to justify his actions. ‘You yourself said they should shoot Morgendaal and Wessels that time.’
‘Not my proudest moment. Dealing with traitors never is. When men stop being honourable, it tarnishes everyone around them.’ De Wet lit a small pipe with what smelled like real tobacco.
In the confined space, the smoke made Jacob’s single eye water. ‘My men find it difficult if it’s someone they know.’
‘Remind them that everyone, every soldier we shoot and every traitor, is dear to someone. We cannot make exceptions just because we happen to be the ones who hold that person dear … You know my own brother is fighting with the enemy now. I dread the day that I encounter him, but if it happens I’ll have to shoot. I cannot condemn another man’s brother and then spare my own. A man has to live by principles or stop being a man altogether. My father used to say, “Woeful is the man whose principles are tested, but not half as woeful as one who fails that test.”’
‘Your father must’ve been a wise man.’
‘He
was harsh … Why are we talking about such terrible things? That’s what I hate about all these hands-uppers and joiners, that we have to waste so much time on them when we should be thinking of dealing to the enemy. We need to take positive action, do things that hurt the Khakis and keep up the spirits of our men.’
‘We attacked a supply convoy at Retief’s Nek a few days ago.’
‘How did it go?’
‘We didn’t lose anyone, just two light wounds, and got lots of supplies. Mostly food, some ammunition. They lost six that we know of, two of them Boer traitors.’
‘That sort of thing is good, but I think we need to do something bigger that would really shake up the Khakis. That’s why I wanted you here, to see if we can combine a couple of the commandos in the eastern Free State and hit them in one of their bases, not just on the road. They must know they can’t feel safe anywhere.’
‘Of course. Do you have a target in mind?’
‘Anywhere I find a suitable number of the bastards together.’
Late that afternoon, the arrival of a sweaty, puffing cyclist, moustache flapping in the wind, caused quite a stir among the British soldiers in Senekal, especially when he revealed that his companion was coming on horseback and could only be expected much later. Major Bryce had a quick drink of water and washed the dust off his face and neck before asking to be taken to the man in custody.
Since Bryce’s reply had come through in the morning, they moved Gideon to what had originally been the pantry, now converted to a holding cell. The racks on one side had been taken out and a narrow cot took up most of the room. It had a small horizontal window, four square panes of glass high up on the wall that couldn’t open. Air circulated through narrow openings between some of the bricks, covered by flyscreen. The place still smelled of onions, dry peaches and coriander. Gideon took off his boots, hung his shirt on a nail on the wall and slept for six hours straight, woke up and didn’t change position. Much as he hated it, there was nothing to do but wait. He tried to make peace with the inevitability of it.
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