by John Wilcox
The corporal’s jaw dropped as he regarded the mud-caked trio, but Simon’s air of command and the mention of the General’s name were enough for him. ‘Very good, sir,’ he said, saluting. ‘Right away, sir.’ And he took Alice’s arm.
‘No, no,’ cried Alice, but the corporal’s grip was firm and Simon and Jenkins were already running towards the horse lines. Turning his head, Simon shouted, ‘You must stay out of trouble. Don’t worry about me. See you in the morning . . .’ His last view of Alice was of her wet face looking anxiously after him as the corporal led her away.
The horses were tethered under the care of a glistening wet Ndebele.
‘Do you speak English?’ demanded Simon. The native nodded wordlessly, his mouth open. ‘Did a big man - looks like a Boer - just come up and take a horse?’
‘Yes, baas. Him say he got urgent message for the General and to give him best horse.’
‘Damn. Which way did he go?’
‘That way, baas.’ He pointed to the north. ‘He don’t stop for saddle or bridle.’
Simon and Jenkins exchanged glances. ‘He’s making for Lorenzo Marques,’ said Simon. ‘If he’s stopped he’ll bluff his way through our lines. He can’t be far ahead. I’ll get the horses and you get the saddles. Come on.’
Simon ran down the lines of horses and found their own mounts while Jenkins staggered up with saddles and bridles. They lost several precious minutes in saddling up but then set off to the north, galloping through the milling crowds of colonial troops and British redcoats, all in various stages of undress. Of the fleeing bePedis there was no sign. They seemed to have vanished from the valley as though by magic.
The pair galloped as fast as their horses would take them, Simon setting a course to the north as best he could, taking as guiding marks the dark, lowering blurs of the hills on either side. Eventually they were forced to rein back to a walk to save their mounts, from whose glistening flanks steam was now beginning to rise as the sky grew lighter to the east.
‘We mustn’t flog the horses,’ said Simon. ‘We may have a long ride ahead of us. At least the rain is easing off.’
‘Yes,’ grunted Jenkins, ‘but will we find ’im in this country? It’s not goin’ to be easy.’
‘Don’t worry. We will find him.’ Simon thought for a moment. ‘I don’t think he would have recognised me on the kopje in that rain and darkness, so he won’t suspect that anyone is following him. Why should they? He looks and sounds like an Afrikaner. He will think that he has got clean away. So he won’t be pressing his horse now and he will have difficulty anyway in riding without saddle or bridle. So I think we should come upon him soon. But we must find him before he gets on to the plain proper, because if he hasn’t got a compass or is not absolutely sure of the quickest way to the border, he could stray across the veldt. I think we had better separate, the better to spot him. But we must keep each other in sight.’
Jenkins sighed. ‘Oh, yes please. You know ’ow good I am at gettin’ lost, like.’
‘Right. Let’s diverge here, each to go at an angle. You go that way. Then, after about ten minutes, turn to the left a bit, with the sun on your right, but keep me in sight. Wave your handkerchief if you see anything.’
‘Huh, lost it hours ago.’
‘Then wave your rifle. But don’t let him see you if you can help it.’
‘Very good, sir. But don’t forget - I want ’im.’
It was Simon’s turn to sigh. ‘Now look, 352. We cannot kill him in cold blood. We will arrest him and take him back to be charged by the authorities. Is that clear?’
‘Oh, very clear.’ But Jenkins’s voice was cold. ‘You don’t even ’ave a rifle, look you.’
‘No, but I’ve got my Colt. Go on. Get on with it.’
As the sun came up, the rain ceased and in the growing light Simon realised that they had left the valley and the Lulu range behind and were indeed on the open veldt. The seeming flatness of the plain was deceptive, because it was broken by low scrub and gentle undulations that could hide a single horseman even if he was not seeking cover. But it soon became clear that Mendoza felt he was in no danger, for about a mile away to the south, Simon perceived a thin column of smoke rising into the now blue sky. Jenkins spotted it almost simultaneously, and the two immediately converged.
‘It has to be him,’ said Simon, ‘although he must be a good bushman to have lit a fire on this sodden plain. Now.’ He turned to Jenkins. ‘No shooting unless in the last resort. We will walk our horses up to him as though we are not looking for him and I will pull my hat over my eyes so that, at first, he won’t recognise me. My feeling is that he will not be expecting to be pursued and will just attempt to bluff his way through. I intend to charge him formally, and while I do so, keep him covered with your rifle. But don’t raise it until we are near enough to talk to him. I don’t want to provoke him needlessly.’
Jenkins made no reply but merely nodded, his face set.
The distant figure could now be discerned sitting by the small fire, his saddle-less horse tethered to a bush a little distance away. Simon raised his field glasses and focused on the man. It was the Portuguese all right, his greasy, wavy hair hanging down and the pock-marks on his face clearly visible in the strong magnification. He must by now have seen the two riders approaching him, but he showed no sign of alarm, for he was munching away, his rifle propped against the same bush to which he had tethered his horse. He could have been out on a Sunday-afternoon picnic. Even when the pair were less than one hundred yards away he still did not raise his head.
‘Right,’ murmured Simon, swallowing hard. ‘Don’t do anything rash - and I mean it. Don’t threaten him with the rifle unless he makes an aggressive move. Then warn him before you shoot.’
At last, when they were about fifty yards away, Mendoza looked up and slowly rose to his feet. He continued eating something - presumably biltong - from a dirty cloth which he held in both hands. Then he grunted a greeting in Afrikaans, but there was no inquisitiveness in his gaze or his voice.
‘Joachim Mendoza,’ Simon began, speaking slowly and loudly, ‘I am Captain Simon Fonthill of the British Army. This is Sergeant Jenkins. I arrest you on charges of diamond stealing and smuggling, attempted murder and the abduction of Miss Nandi Dunn. It is our duty to take you to the British authorities for trial on those counts.’
Recognition dawned on Mendoza’s face, but he looked unperturbed and his gaze shifted from one to the other. Then a smile crept over his face, although it did not reach his eyes. ‘Ah, the Zulu girl,’ he growled. He looked at Jenkins as though deliberately to provoke him. ‘She not a good fook, she rubbish.’
A snarl came from Jenkins, and his rifle barrel, which he had obediently kept pointing at the ground, now came up. But Mendoza was quicker. The rag was flicked away to reveal a revolver, which he fired first at Jenkins and then, a split second later, at Simon. Jenkins cried out and then crumpled and fell from his horse. The second bullet tore into Simon’s mount, which reared and toppled over, trapping Simon’s leg beneath its body and sending his Colt, which he had just had time to pluck from his belt, spinning away across the damp sand of the veldt. Winded but otherwise unhurt, Simon tried desperately to pull his leg free, but the inert body of the dead horse trapped it firmly.
Unhurriedly, Mendoza walked over to Simon, tucked his revolver back into his cummerbund and stood over him, still chewing. He spat out a piece of meat and regarded the trapped man with no obvious emotion.
‘English,’ he said, ‘you cause me lotta trouble. You take my diamonds, kill my men and take my girl. Now I kill you.’ He gestured with his head to the fallen Jenkins. ‘But not quick like him. I kill you slow, with this.’ He pulled out a knife. ‘I cut you up a bit at a time. I hurt you.’
Simon still had both hands free, and as the Portuguese bent down, he lunged forward to grasp his leg. But the big man was quicker. Evading Simon’s arm, he stamped on his wrist with his boot and then stood on it, pinioning that arm to
the ground. Bending lower, he prised free the fingers of Simon’s other hand from round his ankle and, holding the wrist firmly, slowly began working the tip of his knife into the palm of Simon’s hand.
The pain was immediate and piercingly sharp as the point of the knife was screwed into the flesh, and Simon screamed. The scream almost, but not quite, drowned out the crack of Jenkins’s revolver. The bullet took Mendoza in the thigh and he fell to the ground, clutching the wound, blood spurting through his fingers. He fumbled for his own revolver in his cummerbund but a second shot shattered his shoulder and he lay pawing the ground in pain.
Jenkins rose to his feet, his face a mass of blood from where the bullet had seared along the side of his head. ‘You all right, bach sir?’ he asked as he staggered towards Simon.
‘Watch out, he’s got a pistol in his belt.’
‘I know.’ Jenkins’s voice was so low that Simon hardly heard him. ‘But ’e’s not goin’ to use it. In fact, ’e’s not goin’ to use anythin’ ’else, ever.’
Simon grimaced from the pain in his hand and from another abortive effort to free his leg. ‘Don’t kill him, 352. Let’s take him back to hang.’
‘Sorry, bach sir,’ said Jenkins as he bent to retrieve Mendoza’s knife, ‘but some things ’ave to be done my way. Now don’t you look if you don’t want to.’
Knife in hand, he stood over the Portuguese, whose black eyes regarded him without expression. ‘Now,’ whispered Jenkins, ‘this is for the Captain ’ere,’ and he plunged the knife into Mendoza’s uninjured shoulder. The big man’s head went back and he gasped in pain, his mouth open. Jenkins withdrew the knife. ‘This, matey, is for poor little Nandi.’ The knife plunged again, this time into Mendoza’s genitals. ‘And this, this, you bastard, is for me.’ With one quick sweep of the blade, Jenkins cut the Portuguese’s throat. His grim work done, he flung away the knife with a contemptuous gesture, stepped back three paces and then slowly slumped to the ground and put his head in his hands.
Both men stayed silent for perhaps half a minute, the munching of Jenkins’s horse as it sought fodder from the barren ground and the soft cry of a martial eagle wheeling high overhead the only sounds, until the buzzing flies found the blood oozing from Mendoza’s body. Simon regarded Jenkins with wide eyes, stunned by the ferocity and the suddenness of the violence and by the execution that had ended it all. There was, however, no sign of exultation in the man who sat, head bowed, shoulders drooping, opposite him now. It was as though the prospect of vengeance had given purpose to the little Welshman for the last few weeks, and now that retribution had been done, the life force had suddenly drained out of him. Simon felt a sharp sense of compassion for his friend.
He broke the silence. ‘It doesn’t matter about that evil man, 352,’ he said. ‘He’s dead now and that’s all there is to it. I should have been much more alert, but thank you. Once again you saved my life.’
Jenkins regarded him with red-rimmed eyes and spoke in a voice hardly above a whisper. ‘You know, bach sir, this may surprise you, but I’ve never killed a man like that before. In cold blood, so to speak. Except that my blood wasn’t cold, it was bloody ’ot. So p’raps I’ll be forgiven up there.’
‘I think somehow that you will. Don’t brood on it. Look, no one knows about what has happened here and I am sure that we have not been missed. So we will say nothing about it to anybody. Agreed?’
Jenkins nodded glumly.
‘Now, what about your head?’
‘Ah, he just winged me.’ Jenkins raised a tentative hand to the long red weal running through his thick hair. ‘Knocked me out for a second or two but I came round just in time, I think. Couldn’t get me rifle, though, so ’ad to use this pop gun. I never could handle these things. That’s why I only got ’im in the shoulder, see.’
Simon summoned up a grin and raised his injured hand, into which he had stuffed a handkerchief to stop the bleeding. ‘I do see. Now, although I must look very comfortable lying here, with a hole in my hand and a horse lying on top of me, I can’t move and I would like to get up.’
‘Oh, sorry, bach sir. Anythin’ broken?’
‘No. See if you can ease this poor animal off me.’
Together they extricated Simon and, using strips of shirt tails, washed and bandaged each other’s wounds. They found tea, a water bottle and a billycan near Mendoza’s fire - he must have equipped himself for the ride before his plunge down the Fighting Kopje - and brewed themselves a hot drink. Simon looked down at the dead man and, on an impulse, searched his pockets. He found a small bag containing about twenty diamonds. He held them up to Jenkins: ‘To add to Nandi’s dowry,’ he said.
‘What’s a dowry, then, when it’s at ’ome?’
‘Oh, never mind.’
They dismissed the idea of attempting to bury Mendoza, for they had no tools and under the sandy topsoil, soggy from the recent rain, the veldt was rock hard. They covered him inadequately with the few stones they could find but were under no illusion that his body and that of Simon’s horse would escape the ravages of vultures. Then, with Jenkins riding bareback on Mendoza’s horse, the two comrades set off back towards Sekukuni, the crisp, healthy air of the high veldt beginning its gentle task of blowing away the smell and memory of the reckoning with Joachim Mendoza.
Chapter 16
Walking through the lines to the General’s tent, Alice looked with curiosity and just a touch of apprehension at the note in her hand summoning her to meet Wolseley ‘as soon as is convenient’. Could it be that something had happened to Simon? Her heart leapt at the thought. But then, she reasoned, the General would not know that she was in love with this strange scout, so why should he bother to summon her with the news? No - and she felt better at the thought - perhaps it was to receive a reproof for slipping through the lines and getting among the fighting on the kopje? But the young corporal had been happy to receive a sovereign ‘not to tell my uncle’, and had released her at the press compound with a smile. She had rejoined her colleagues without fuss and written her story. Her dispatch reporting on the battle had been suitably complimentary to Sir Garnet and his troops, even though she had taken care to give due credit to the Swazis and other black levies who had born the brunt of the fighting, and had also praised the bravery of the defeated bePedis. But all of this should not be controversial to a seasoned soldier like Wolseley who himself was not above commending the skill and courage of the enemy. It did, after all, enhance the scale of his victory. Perhaps he merely wanted to ply her with sherry! She smiled at the unlikely thought.
On arrival at the General’s tent, she was ushered into his presence without delay - a fact which did cause a momentary shaft of anxiety. Wolseley looked tired (she had heard that an old wound in his leg was causing him pain), but he leapt to his feet gallantly and pulled up a chair for her.
Smiling her thanks, Alice said, ‘Congratulations, Sir Garnet. It sounds as though it has been a comprehensive victory. London will be pleased.’
He nodded. ‘Thank you, Miss Griffith. Much of the praise must go to Baker Russell, you know. I put him in command for I felt it was time he had an opportunity to show what he could do. He - and the troops, of course - performed splendidly.’
‘What about the King?’
‘Yes, well, he did escape with about five hundred of his tribesmen during that damned storm. But most of those, and, indeed, all of the bePedis who were left in the caves, have now surrendered. We have received information about the whereabouts of Sekukuni.’ He smiled. ‘The old varmint is holed up in a cave, I gather, about twenty miles from here. We have sent a small party to get him and he should be safely in custody within a day or so.’
‘Good. May I quote you on that?’
Wolseley’s smile widened. ‘Of course. My goodness, Miss Griffith, you don’t usually ask.’
Alice let the shaft pass with a reciprocal smile as she scribbled on her pad.
The smile gradually faded from the General’s face. ‘However, I did
not ask you here, my dear, to speak about the battle and its now rather boring consequences - the mopping up and so on. No, I am afraid that I have some rather bad news for you.’
Alice looked up, wide-eyed. ‘Oh dear. Pray tell me quickly.’ It was Simon, after all. She had wondered why he and Jenkins were nowhere to be found, although she had been so busy with her dispatches that she had had little time to search for him. Oh God! To lose him so soon after finding him at last . . .
‘It is Covington, I am afraid, your fiancé. Now don’t be upset, because the news is not half as bad as it might have been.’ Wolseley looked down at a piece of paper on his desk. ‘He has been wounded but has survived and is responding to treatment very well. He is now in no danger, I am informed.’
‘Wounded?’ Alice’s thoughts raced. ‘How? In what manner?’
‘It seemed that his left forearm was shattered by, of all things, an elephant gun fired at him at quite short range by one of the bePedi as he descended the mountain with the Swazis. I am afraid, my dear, that it has had to be amputated.’
‘Oh God!’
‘But that is not all, I am afraid.’ The General coughed. This was clearly not to his liking. ‘Yes. As he staggered away from the force of the shot - luckily his arm was extended so his body was not injured - as he fell away, a bePedi spear caught him in the face. He has lost his right eye and . . . er . . . I fear that his face has been rather badly slashed. However,’ he hurried on quickly, ‘as I say, he has been operated on with great success by one of our splendid medical chaps here and has recovered well from both operations. To repeat: his life is not in danger and he will be sent home just as soon as arrangements can be made for him.’
The little man now smiled. ‘May I say from personal experience, Miss Griffith, that losing an eye and suffering some . . . ah . . . facial disfigurement is not the tragedy that it might at first appear. As you can see from the example before you, it can leave a chap positively enhanced.’ He gave a chuckle and Alice produced a weak smile in response, but the General was continuing. ‘Ralph is conscious now and, in fact, is wondering whether you can spare time from your . . . ah . . . duties to visit him.’
