by Anne Perry
Pitt listened patiently. So far this was of no help to him at all. He tried to imagine the heat of the African plains, the courage of these men and the greed that drew them.
“Of course there were other people seeking mineral concessions as well,” Matthew went on. “We very nearly lost them.”
“We?” Pitt interrupted.
Matthew grimaced. “As far as one can call Cecil Rhodes ‘we.’ He was—is—acting with the blessing of Her Majesty’s government. We had a standing agreement, the Moffatt Treaty, made with Lobengula in February of the same year, that he would not give away any of his territories, I quote, ‘without the previous knowledge and sanction’ of the British government.”
“You say we nearly lost them,” Pitt brought the conversation back to the point. “Because of information going to the Germans?”
Matthew’s eyes widened very slightly. “That’s curious. The German Embassy certainly, but it began to look as if the Belgians might have known about it too. All of Central and East Africa is swarming with adventurers, hunters, mining prospectors and people hoping to be middlemen in all sorts of ventures.” He leaned a little further forward across the desk. “Rudd was successful because of the advent of Sir Sidney Shippard, deputy commissioner for Bechuanaland. He is a great supporter of Cecil Rhodes, and believes in what he is trying to do. So does Sir Hercules Robinson at the Cape.”
“What do you know that without question has passed from the Colonial Office to the German Embassy?” Pitt pressed. “For the time being, exclude suspicions. Tell me the information, and I’ll find out how it came in, by word of mouth, letter, telegram, who received it and where it went after that.”
Matthew reached out his hand and touched a pile of papers beside him.
“I have several things here for you. But there are other things also, which have very little to do with the Foreign Office, matters of money. A great deal of this rests on money.” He looked at Pitt to see if he understood.
“Money?” Pitt did not know what he meant. “Surely money would be useless in buying land from native kings? And the government would equip explorers and scouts going to claim land for Britain?”
“No! That’s the point,” Matthew said urgently. “Cecil Rhodes is equipping his own force. They are well on their way even now. He put up the finance himself.”
“One man?” Pitt was incredulous. He could not conceive of such wealth.
Matthew smiled. “You don’t understand Africa, Thomas. No, actually he’s not putting up all of it, but a great deal. There are banks involved, some in Scotland, and particularly Francis Standish. Now perhaps you begin to see the sort of treasures we are speaking of: more diamonds than anywhere else in the world, more gold, and a continent of land owned by people who live in the dark ages as far as weapons are concerned.”
Pitt stared at him, ideas uncertain in his mind, cloudy images, remembered words of Sir Arthur’s about exploitation, and the Inner Circle.
“When men like Livingstone went in, it was completely different,” Matthew continued, his face bleak. “They wanted to take medicine and Christianity, get rid of ignorance, disease and slavery. They may have gained a certain immortality out of it, but they didn’t look for anything for themselves. Even Stanley wanted glory more than any kind of material reward.
“But Cecil Rhodes wants land, money, power, and more power. We need men like him for this stage in the development of Africa.”
His face shadowed over even more. “At least I think we do. Father and I argued about it. He thought the government should have taken a larger part in it and sent over our own men, openly, and to the devil with what the Kaiser or King Leopold thought. But of course Lord Salisbury never really wanted anything to do with it right from the beginning. He would have left Africa alone, if he could, but circumstances and history would not allow.”
“You mean Britain is doing it through Cecil Rhodes?” Pitt still could not believe what Matthew seemed to be saying.
“More or less,” Matthew agreed. “Of course there is quite a lot of other money as well, from London and Edinburgh. It is that information which has reached the German Embassy, at least some of it.”
They heard footsteps in the corridor outside, but whoever it was did not stop.
“I see.”
“Only part of it, Thomas. There are a lot of other factors as well: alliances, quarrels, old wars and new ones. There are the Boers to consider. Paul Kruger is not a man ever to overlook with impunity. There is all the heritage of the Zulu Wars. There is Emin Pasha in Equatoria, and the Belgians in the Congo, the Sultan of Zanzibar in the east, and most of all there is Carl Peters and the German East Africa Company.” He touched the pile of papers at his elbow again. “Read these, Thomas. I cannot allow you to take them with you, but it will show you what you are looking for.”
“Thank you.” Pitt reached his hand for them, but Matthew did not pass them across.
“Thomas …”
“Yes.”
“What about Father? You said you would look into the accident.” He was embarrassed, as if he were criticizing, and hated it, but was compelled by conviction to do it. “The longer you leave it, the harder it will be. People forget, they become afraid when they have time to realize that there are those who …” He took a deep breath and his eyes met Pitt’s. They were bright hazel, full of pain and confusion.
“I have already started,” Pitt said quietly. “I spoke to Sturges when I was in Brackley. He is convinced the business with the pups was Danforth’s mistake. Danforth sent a letter saying he didn’t want them, he’d changed his mind. At least it purported to come from Danforth, whether it did or not, but Sturges saw it, it was addressed to him. It had nothing to do with Sir Arthur.”
“That’s something.” Matthew grasped onto it, but the anxiety did not leave his face. “But the accident? Was it deliberate? It was a warning, wasn’t it?”
“I don’t know. No one else saw it, as far as Sturges knows, though both the smith and the wheelwright saw the horseman careering up the street at a breakneck gallop, apparently completely out of control. But even a bolting horse won’t usually charge into another it can clearly see, or go close enough for the rider to catch someone else with his whip. I think it was deliberate, but I don’t know any way of proving it. The man was a stranger. No one knows who he was.”
Matthew’s face tightened. “And I suppose the same will be true of the underground railway. We’ll never prove that either. From everything we can learn, no one he knew was with him.” He looked down. “Clever. They know how to do it so if you say anything, tell anyone, it sounds absurd, like the ramblings of someone who has been eating opium, or lives permanently in his cups.” He looked up suddenly, panic in his eyes. “It begins to make me feel helpless. I’m not consumed with hatred anymore. It has turned into something a lot more like fear, and a terrible weariness, as if it is all pointless. If it was anyone but Father, I might not even try.”
Pitt understood the fear. He had felt it himself in the past, and now its cause was real. He also understood the enveloping exhaustion, now that the first shock of grief was over. Anger is a very depleting emotion; it burns up all the strength of the mind and the body. Matthew was tired, but in a while he would be renewed, and the anger would return, the sense of outrage, the passionate desire to protect, to prove the lie and restore some semblance of justice. He hoped profoundly that Harriet Soames was wise enough and generous enough to be gentle with him, to wait with patience for him to work his way through the tiredness and the confusion of feelings, that she would not just at that moment seek anything from him for herself beyond trust and the knowledge that he was willing to share all he was able to.
“Don’t do anything alone,” Pitt said very seriously.
Matthew’s eyes widened a fraction, surprise and question in them, then after a moment, even a shadow of humor.
“Do you think I’m incompetent, Thomas? I’ve been fifteen years in the Foreign Office since we kne
w each other. I do know how to be diplomatic.”
It had been a clumsiness of words rather than thought, and a desire to protect him which still lingered from youth.
“I’m sorry,” Pitt apologized. “I meant that we could duplicate our efforts, and not only waste time but cause suspicion by it.”
Matthew’s face relaxed into a smile. “Sorry, Thomas. I am oversensitive. This has hit me harder than I could have foreseen.” He gave Pitt the papers at last. “Look at these in the room next door, then give them back to me when you have finished.”
Pitt rose and took them. “Thank you.”
The room provided him was high ceilinged and full of sun from the long window, also facing the park. He sat in one of the three chairs and began. He made no notes but committed to memory the essence of what he needed. It took him to the middle of the day to be certain he knew precisely where to look to trace the information he could be quite certain had reached the German Embassy. Then he rose and returned the papers to Matthew.
“Is that all you require?” Matthew asked, looking up from his desk.
“For the moment.”
Matthew smiled. “How about luncheon? There is an excellent public house just ’round the corner, and an even better one a couple of hundred yards along the street.”
“Let’s go to the even better one,” Pitt agreed with an attempt at enthusiasm.
Matthew followed him to the door and along the corridor to the wide stairs down and into the bright busy street.
They walked side by side, occasionally jostled by passersby, men in frock coats with top hats, now and then a woman, highly fashionable, carrying a parasol and smiling and nodding to acquaintances. The street itself was teeming with traffic. Coaches, carriages, hansoms, broughams and open landaus passed by every few minutes, moving at a brisk trot, horses’ hooves rapping smartly, harnesses jingling.
“I love the city on a fine day,” Matthew said almost apologetically. “There is such life here, such a sense of purpose and excitement.” He glanced sideways at Pitt. “I need Brackley for its peace, and the feel of permanence it has. I find I always remember it so clearly, as if I had only just closed my eyes from seeing it, smelling the sharp coldness of winter air, the snow on the fields, or the crackle of frost under my feet. I can breathe in and re-create the perfume of the summer wind from the hay, the dazzle of sunlight and the sting of heat on my skin, the taste of apple cider.”
A handsome woman in pink and gray passed by and smiled at him, not as an acquaintance, but out of interest, but he barely noticed her.
“And the glancing light and sudden rain of spring,” he went on. “In the city it’s just wet or dry. There’s no bursting of growth to see, no green haze over the fields, no strong, dark furrows of earth, no awareness at once of the turning seasons, and the timelessness of it all because it has happened since the creation, and presumably always will.”
A coach rumbled by, close to the curb, and Matthew on the outside stepped in hastily to avoid being hit by the jutting lamps.
“Fool!” he muttered under his breath.
They were a dozen yards from the crossing.
“My favorite time was always autumn,” Pitt said, smiling with recollection. “The shortening days, golden at the end where the long light falls across the stubble fields, the piled stooks against the sky, clear evenings where the clouds fall away towards the west, scarlet berries in the hedgerows, wild rose hips, the smell of wood smoke and leaf mold, the blazing colors of the trees.” They came to the curb and stopped. “I loved the bursting life of spring, the flowers, but there was always something about autumn when everything is touched with gold, there is a fullness, a completion….”
Matthew looked at him with a sudden, intense affection. They could have been twenty years younger, standing together at Brackley, gazing across the fields or the woods, instead of at Parliament Street, waiting for the traffic to allow them to cross.
A hansom went by at a brisk clip and there was a space. They set out smartly, side by side. Then out of nowhere, swinging around the corner, a coach and four came careering over the curb edge, horses wild-eyed, frightened and squealing. Pitt leaped aside, pushing Matthew as hard as he could. Even so Matthew was caught by the near side front wheel and sent sprawling across the road to fetch up with his head barely a foot from the gutter and the curb edge.
Pitt scrambled to his feet, whirling around to catch sight of the coach, but all that was visible was the back of it as it disappeared around the corner of St. Margaret Street heading towards the Old Palace Yard.
Matthew lay motionless.
Pitt went over to him. His own leg hurt and he was going to be bruised all down his left side, but he was hardly aware of it.
“Matthew!” He could hear the panic rising in his voice and there was a sick terror in his stomach. “Matthew!” There was no blood. Matthew’s neck was straight, no twisting, no awkward angle, but his eyes were closed and his face white.
A woman was standing on the pavement sobbing, her hands up to her mouth as if to stifle the sound.
Another woman, elderly, came forward and knelt down beside Matthew.
“May I help?” she said calmly. “My husband is a doctor, and I have assisted him many times.” She did not look at Pitt, but at Matthew. She ignored the permission she had not yet received, and touched Matthew’s cheek lightly, taking her gloves off, then put her finger to his neck.
Pitt waited in an agony of suspense.
She looked up at him after a moment, her face quite calm.
“His pulse is very strong,” she said with a smile. “I expect he will have a most unpleasant headache, and I daresay several bruises which will no doubt be painful, but he is very much alive, I assure you.”
Pitt was overwhelmed with relief. It was almost as if he could feel the blood surge back into his own body and life into his mind and his heart.
“You should have a stiff brandy yourself,” the woman said gently. “And I would recommend a hot bath, and rub your bruises with ointment of arnica. It will help, I promise you.”
“Thank you. Thank you very much.” He felt momentarily as if she had saved their lives.
“I suppose you have no idea who the driver was?” she went on, still kneeling at the roadside by Matthew. “He should be prosecuted. That sort of thing is criminal. It was only by the grace of God your friend avoided the curbstone, or he would have cracked his head open and might very well have been killed.”
“I know.” Pitt swallowed hard, realizing with force how true that was. Now that he knew Matthew was alive, he could see it more sharply, and begin to understand all that it meant.
She looked at him curiously, her brow puckered, sensing there was much more to it than the accident she had seen.
Other people were beginning to gather around. A stout man with splendid side-whiskers came forward, elbowing his way.
“Now then, what’s happened here?” he demanded. “Need a doctor? Should we call the police? Has anyone called the police?”
“I am the police.” Pitt looked up at him. “And yes, we need a doctor. I’d be obliged if anybody would send for one.”
The man looked doubtful. “Are you indeed?”
Pitt went to fish in his pocket and produce his card, and to his disgust found that his hands were shaking. He pulled out the card with difficulty and passed it to the man without bothering to see his reaction.
Matthew stirred, made a little choking sound which turned into a groan, then opened his eyes.
“Matthew!” Pitt said stiffly, leaning forward, peering at him.
“Bloody fool!” Matthew said furiously. He shut his eyes in pain.
“You should lie still, young man,” the elderly lady advised him firmly. “We are sending for a doctor, and you should receive his counsel before you make any attempt to rise.”
“Thomas?”
“Yes … I’m here.”
Matthew opened his eyes again and focused them on Pitt’s face
. He made as if to speak, then changed his mind.
“Yes, exactly what you are thinking,” Pitt said quietly.
Matthew took a very deep breath and let it out in a shudder. “I shouldn’t have taken offense when you told me to be careful. I was childish, and as it turns out, quite mistaken.”
Pitt did not reply.
The elderly lady looked around at the man with the whiskers. “May we take it that someone has been dispatched for a doctor, sir?” she enquired in much the manner a good governess might have used towards an indifferent butler.
“You may, madam,” he replied stiffly, and moved away, Pitt was certain, in order to perform that task.
“I am sure that with a little help I could stand up,” Matthew said. “I am causing something of an obstruction here, and making a spectacle of myself.” He began to struggle to climb to his feet and Pitt was not able to prevent him, only to give him his arm and then catch him as he swayed and lost his balance. He clung on for several seconds before his head cleared and he was able, with concentration, to regain himself and stand, not unaided, but at least upright.
“I think we had better call you a hansom to take you home, and then send for our own physician as soon as possible,” Pitt said decisively.
“Oh, I don’t think that is necessary,” Matthew argued, but was still swaying a trifle.
“You would be exceedingly unwise to ignore that advice,” the elderly lady said severely. Now that Pitt and Matthew were both standing, she was considerably beneath their height, and obliged to look up at them, but her assurance was such that it made not the slightest difference. Pitt at least still felt as if he were in the schoolroom.