by Peter Rimmer
“If he’s still alive, Brigandshaw.”
“Of course he will be. God’s protecting him. Didn’t he tell you so? Thank you for the lunch, Slater. My other piece of military advice, which I understand is what I am here for, is to patrol the outskirts on horseback. Then you know where they are coming from if they try anything silly. And tell the settlers to give their servants the night off and to lock the doors with the dogs inside. All fundamental but usually works. We only have twenty thousand British running the whole of India. Makes you rather think, doesn’t it? You were rather impressive just now, Slater. Most impressive. Now, if you’ll excuse me I’ll be off to visit my brother. Three lovely children, I’m told. Never met them except the youngest in the cot. Yes, I’d better get married and have some of my own. Toodle-oo, old chap.”
They had wandered around all morning looking for someone to kill, disorientated by the drug they had smoked in the clay pipe, passed from man to man until the smoke was finished. On the second smoke, Gumbo spilt the pouch in his excitement and the powder fell among the grass. Tatenda had choked each time he drew on the pipe and by the time they came back to the Mazoe River and followed its course, the drug had worn off. They had asked him about his white masters before he knew their intention and had gladly described the cluster of houses looking down towards the small river that cuts through the hills to the plain and the rich red topsoil cleft by the flooding waters over millions of years. In the red soil, the maize grew tall now the white man had chopped down the trees and the first sight of Elephant Walk was the lands of green maize he had helped to prepare and the guilt made his stomach sick. The village in the valley came back to him, the vultures on the ground, himself looking at death sprawling between the huts of his family. Alone he might have died, eaten by the wild animals.
They smoked the last of the powder to turn the white man’s bullets to water and turned the corner of the last stand of tall green maize and took in the flat open land, cut clean of trees, the long grass burnt black. The stockade was flung thickly around the houses he remembered and Tatenda, half drugged by the sparsity of their smoke, saw the error of his ways. Vividly the drawings came back to him.
On Sundays, when Tinus Oosthuizen observed the day of the Lord, Harry would ask the big man to show him the books in the big wooden chest and, though the words meant nothing to Harry, the pictures drew a babble of questions. With Harry on one big knee, the leather-bound open book on the other and Tatenda looking over the broad shoulder, Tinus Oosthuizen would explain the meaning of the pictures, what the drawings meant in the context of the story the boys were unable to read. Most often, the pictures were of wagons drawn round in a ring with thorn branches in the gaps and between the great wheels of the wagons. Inside the circle were boys hiding among the piles of sacks and boxes, the bigger boys loading the guns, the guns passed to the women in long dresses and then to the bearded men firing through the spokes of the wagon wheels. Puffs of smoke were all around the laager of the wagons and black men like himself, some with guns, most with spears, were attacking the wagons, headdresses topped with feathers, courage written on their faces and in front of the wagons piles of his people dead, and he understood.
Tinus Oosthuizen had thrown a laager around the houses and through the holes in the fence would point the barrels of guns and the bullets would not turn to water and the witch was wrong and Tatenda had no wish to die.
In awe of the prospect, Tatenda hung back as Gumbo led the charge across the open ground with the white-topped sticks at regular intervals. When Gumbo reached the first post a gun fired from the stockade and the bullet tore through Gumbo, tearing out a piece of his back. Horror struck as Tatenda watched his friends, in turn, reach the posts and die and when they were all down on the black ground, blackened by the burnt grass, not even grass to protect them, he turned and ran back to the river. He dropped his gun and cartridge belt before jumping into the river to fight the rain-filled waters to the other side. When he reached the bank, water coughing from his lungs, his brain clear of the drug from his effort, he began to run through the trees with no idea of where he was going, the horror of death screaming in his mind as he ran and ran.
Half an hour later the doves had recovered their wits from the fusillade of sound. It was an hour before dusk and the dove-calls carried over the silence and then the crickets began to sing and the frogs croaked from the river, and far away up the river a fish eagle called its plaintive cry.
On the other side of Salisbury, the doves were silenced by the cantering horse and James Brigandshaw hoped he had taken the right directions expecting a church spire above the trees, and then he found the sign written on a plank of wood, St Mary’s Mission, and the horse broke through the trees along the rutted path and chickens scattered with the goats but no one came to greet him. The surrounding silence was tangible; the late sun through the trees on the weathered buildings a yellow glow. A slight wind had come and banged a door somewhere inside the building. Safer in the saddle than on the ground, James pulled his rifle from its holster in front of his right thigh and sent a bullet into the firing chamber and rode the animal up to the veranda of what he took to be his brother’s house. Away from the house was a shed and by the side of the shed, two horses were grazing quietly. James rode around the house looking through the windows and then across to the shed. Inside his brother and sister-in-law were still upon their knees while the children played quietly between the school desks. The boy had the cantankerous look of The Captain while the girls bore no resemblances to his family. Everywhere else there was not a sign of a soul. James got down from his horse and walked into what he perceived to be a church. Then he coughed to draw their attention.
“You may kneel and pray with us, James,” said Nathanial looking round. “The Lord has answered our prayers. The Lord has spared me for His work.”
“You don’t think the deliverance might have had something to do with a soldier riding hard, old chap? But please, right about now I have to ask you all to be going. There is a native uprising and you are all to be brought into Salisbury. I believe, old chap, the acting administrator, nice chap name of Jack Slater, has declared martial law so you’ll be a good fellow and do what you are told. Dead missionaries stir up much anger in London and we have all we want right now.”
“Who’s the funny man?” asked the boy standing up from behind a school desk. “Why’s he wearing a red coat?”
“He’s your uncle James from India,” said Bess, trying to get up.
“Kneel, Elizabeth,” snapped Nathanial. “Now is the time to give thanks to the Lord. The Lord in his wisdom at the time of our need has sent our brother from India, a true miracle, a true miracle. Pray, Elizabeth, pray. The Lord is surely powerful.”
James strode across the floor and yanked his brother up onto his feet and looked straight into his eyes. “It’ll be pitch dark in an hour. Two hours to Fort Salisbury, maybe three with the trap. I will rope you into the trap if needs be. There’s a nice big church in Fort Salisbury where you can do all the praying you want tomorrow morning. And I came from England, not India. Mater and Pater send you and yours their regards.”
“Have you seen Sebastian?”
“Of course not. He’s the black sheep of the family. Now, please get a move on before I lose my temper in your nice little church. Where is everyone?”
“They ran away.”
“Exactly. Now come along, Bess, and give your brother-in-law a kiss and get the children into the trap while I harness the horses.”
The dusk had come and gone and inside the stockade the dogs were quiet and outside in the pale colourless light of the full moon, the corpses of men lay where they had fallen. Sebastian continued his round of the stockade listening for the cans to rattle, his hunter’s senses pitched to screaming point. Once, with Tinus, a leopard had leapt at him out of the night, a snarling fetid mouth and claws flung out from the reaching paws. Instinct had thrown up the gun and he had fired, dropping the cat dead at his feet.
He still had the skin of the male leopard in the house behind him where his children slept. The night was quiet. Small fires burnt at intervals. Looking up he saw the black heart of a passing cloud. The dogs lay still around the fire, content with the company of a man, and Sebastian bent down to stroke their heads in turn, two Rhodesian ridgebacks and two fox terriers, meeting their eyes in the light of the burning fire.
At midnight he gave the guard to Gregory Shaw and walked across to his house and pushed open the screen door to the veranda. He checked Harry’s bedroom, and the boy was fast asleep. In the bed next to him, with the sheet flung off, Madge was asleep in the protection of her almost eight-year-old brother, and his heart swelled with pride for both of them, and when he found his room, Emily was asleep on her side and he got into the bed and within a moment he was fast asleep.
All through the night the leopard chased him, running and running from tree to tree. When he woke, the day had come and when he got up and looked, the bodies were still strewn on the blackened earth. The flies had found the corpses and beyond the blackened grass, the bush was alive with song and the orange glow of dawn flamed the sky above the trees and the scattered clouds were belly-red, and from the river Sebastian could see their glow reflected on the surface of the river and beside the river, buck were drinking.
The breaking dawn found Jeremiah Shank asleep in his swivel chair, the dome of his observatory open to the day, the stars fading quickly to obscurity. Below the tower, four black men were looking in at the closed windows of the ground floor and one of them went across to the farm sheds where the grain was stored. When he came out a yellow glow was in the heart of the building and directly behind, some three miles away, there was a similar glow from St Mary’s Mission.
Jeremiah woke to the sound of breaking glass from below and got up to look down at what was happening. The small windows around the base of the dome were open to catch the cool breeze and Jeremiah put out his head to see the back of a man disappearing into his house.
His shout of, “Hey, what the hell are you doing?” was received from below by the discharge of an old muzzleloader knocking the man below onto his back, the shot ricocheting off the stone wall, making Jeremiah pull his head back into the tower. Now he could hear the man breaking furniture in the drawing room and rage began to build. Taking down the ancestral cutlass from the wall he threw down the scabbard onto the floor. Outside he could see the barn burning and rage took possession. Slamming the door open, the small man with the crooked nose came down the spiral staircase, cutlass in hand and shouting. He crossed the passage to the main staircase.
The man at the bottom of the stairs, high with dope, came rushing up the carpeted steps with his assegai ready to kill. Behind him, a second man stood below the banister and fired his gun at the white man. The bullet hit a portrait of somebody else’s grandfather. As the shot struck the dark portrait, Jeremiah’s naval training made him cut hard and he backhanded at the first man’s neck, severing his head. The second man took the curved blade in his belly, the thrust coming up and twisting, taking out the man’s bowels on the red staircase. The third man was running away towards the smashed windows when the cutlass cut through the back of his neck. The fourth man who had lit the fire in the corn shed was standing at the front door trying to get it open when the door leapt inwards and the handguard of the cutlass hit him in the face, knocking him back down the five steps. He put his arm up to fend off the cut. Perfectly balanced, Jeremiah changed the position of his feet and cut open the right side of the man’s neck.
In front of him, the fire was burning in the store shed as the fury drained from his mind. Only then did he shiver.
Harry found the .410 shotgun by the river and did not understand why it was there. When the sun was overhead he watched his father bury the five dead men. Tinus said a prayer in English and the Taal while Harry from a distance muttered his own prayer in Shona so the dead blacks would understand.
Part 4 – Shifting Sands
1
July 1897
A year to the day since Jack Slater hanged the leaders of the first unsuccessful Chimurenga, Captain Doyle of the Indian Queen, who first took Sebastian into exile, walked into the office of Baring Brothers in Threadneedle Street three hundred yards from the Bank of England. He was fifty-five. The dark suit he was wearing had been carefully tailored in Savile Row and was matched with a high stiff collar and black cravat. He had been perfectly shaved by an expert barber who had also cut his hair to hide the hole in his right ear lost to frostbite sailing the Horn as coxswain to The Captain in ’64. There was no mistaking the weather-beaten lines on his face that told the most casual of glances the short, stocky man entering the offices of the first merchant bank in the City of London was a sea captain. No one took any notice as sea captains had been coming to the City for generations to sell their ships and cargo on the Baltic Exchange, insure them with Lloyd’s of London, and raise capital from the likes of Baring Brothers. It was the sea captains and their like who had made Britain the greatest trading nation on earth with the largest maritime fleet the world had ever known.
In London, to appease President Kruger of the Transvaal Republic, Doctor Jameson had been tried and jailed for his abortive raid on Johannesburg but the foot soldiers were sent back to Rhodesia where calm returned to the colony. Cecil Rhodes, who had engineered the Uitlander rebellion to take over the Transvaal, resigned as chairman of the Chartered Company and as Prime Minister of the Cape. Captain Doyle in his new suit was convinced the stand-off in the Transvaal would lead to war with the Boers.
In hushed tones, Captain Doyle was shown into the private office of the senior partner. The man behind the sparse desk was tall and thin with a sharp nose, hooked slightly to the right. The man’s skin was swarthy, inherited from his parents and not from the sun. In front of him on the desk was the current balance sheet of African Shipping, owned fifty-one per cent by Captain Doyle, and the balance shared equally by Sebastian Brigandshaw and Tinus Oosthuizen. By the time Captain Doyle sat down opposite the sharp-nosed banker, African Shipping owned five modern steamers and was in direct competition with The Captain’s Colonial Shipping.
“Do your partners concur with your plans?” asked the investment banker.
“My partners are far away in the middle of Africa.”
“Do they know your plans?”
“No, but I control fifty-one per cent of the company and have a valid power of attorney from both my partners over their shares. The shares given to my original crew have been repurchased by the company when they left our employ. There is a partnership agreement binding the remaining officers and crew by controlling interest, their shares part of my fifty-one per cent. They have all been greatly rewarded for their loyalty to me when I left command of the Indian Queen and Colonial Shipping.”
“We shall want your partners’ agreement.”
“You shall have it. A surprise to them I expect. They think I have one ship. When I sent them the first set of accounts, Sebastian said he neither understood a word written on the paper nor wished to understand. They both gave me their full trust. They have a large farm, you see, in Rhodesia.”
“You don’t correspond?”
“By Christmas cards once a year.”
“Very quaint… Why did they invest in you?”
“They thought they owed me a favour. Or rather, Brigandshaw owed me a favour.”
The man with the sharp nose did not blink, the dark eyes boring into Doyle’s soul. The seaman stared back without flinching, a faint smile reflected in his eyes. They were summing each other up, the lender and the borrower.
“Is this Brigandshaw a relation of the Chairman of Colonial Shipping?” asked the banker, his perfectly manicured hands now resting on either side of the open balance sheet.
“He is The Captain’s youngest son.”
“There was some scandal.”
“There was.”
“Does The Captain know of his son’s shareholding?”
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“No.”
The silence ticked along with the clock that stood over and behind the banker’s leather-bound chair. Captain Doyle knew there was nothing more for him to say, everything was there in front of the banker. The clock reached twelve-thirty and chimed the half hour. The dark eyes had not blinked and the faint smile half evaporated from Doyle’s eyes.
“If we are to underwrite a share offering in your company, Captain Doyle, I would like to take you to lunch. At Barings we have found over the many years it is important to invest in people. Facts and figures are important but it is people who make them a success. I have a table booked at my club. Shall we go? I do hope you like oysters as they are rather good at this time of the year. Over lunch, I would be glad if you would explain how the son fell out with his father. Fortunately, my children have followed me into the bank. Barings has been a family affair for many generations.
“You will also tell me why you think Joseph Chamberlain, our esteemed Colonial Secretary, will bother going to war with bearded farmers of Dutch descent. Because if you are right, the shipping requirements to the Cape will be enormous. Should, and I repeat should, we take a position in your company, does twenty per cent sound equitable? We like to share in our clients’ success. The flotation will bring us eight hundred thousand pounds, enough to double your fleet. Maybe one of your farming partners will wish to sell their shares. Sleeping partners are very useful at the beginning. Afterwards, they tend to be rather expensive… Was it raining when you came to the office?”
