Echoes from the Past (The Brigandshaw Chronicles Book 1)

by Peter Rimmer

  Alison was put in a small cabin on her own with Harry and food sent down to both of them. An hour later she felt the sails crack and the ship got underway. Trusting in God and Emily Manderville-Brigandshaw, Alison put Harry down to sleep. For a while, lying in her bunk, she felt the movement of the wooden ship increase as they moved out to sea, the bunk tilting to the steady pull of the sails. Then she slept right through the night alongside her ward. Her dreams were full of clear blue skies and fluffy white clouds none of which she remembered when she woke with a winter's sun shining on her face through the porthole. Outside the porthole there was no sign of land. She answered the knock on her cabin door and Emily came in with a tray of tea and hot milk for Harry.

  To Alison's surprise, Emily poured the tea and sat down on Alison's bunk. Harry was still fast asleep from the journey.

  "I think I owe you a full explanation," said Emily.

  "It's young Sebastian, isn't it?"

  "Yes."

  "And he's Harry's father, isn't he."

  "Yes. How did you know?"

  "Your Cousin Maud told the new housekeeper."

  "I see."

  "So there's nothing to explain. Where is Mr Sebastian now?"

  "Talking to Captain Doyle. If the wind stays fair Captain Doyle says we will be in Cape Town the week after Christmas. It's summer in Cape Town which will be nice."

  "Won't they look for us there?"

  "Maybe. The day we reach Cape Town we start the journey north by train. My husband won't give a damn. Only The Captain. Well, we shall see. Central Africa is large and mostly virgin land. That's where Seb says we are going to get away from them all."

  The Indian Queen was under full sail thirty miles out of the Bristol Channel having brought Seb to the Port of London, sailed with a full cargo a week later, rounded the south of England and waited for Seb at Avonmouth.

  "Captain," said Seb, "if my father finds out you'll lose your job along with the officers and crew. Why did you all help me?"

  "Some things are right and some things are wrong," said Captain Doyle standing on his bridge. "Just 'cause The Captain employs us doesn't say he's right in everything. Loyalty I give ‘im. Honesty I give 'im. But as captain of this ship I 'ave the right to say what sails on her. Those are The Captain's rules. When he made them he wasn't thinking of you. We've talked, me and the officers. If he takes away our ship, we'll buy our own thanks to your ivory. My guess is The Captain will turn a blind eye to you sailing on this voyage. Funny how people never want to throw away a good profit. It's not the ship what makes the money it's an honest crew. Money will speak louder than The Captain's temper. I know 'im. Sailed with 'im. If he gets his hands on you he'd be very rough but he won't harm me and the crew. Money, Mr Brigandshaw. The only thing that matters in the end. The best things in life may be free but the second best are bloody expensive if you'd pardon my words. The Captain won't piss in 'is own rice bowl if you'll excuse my words again. You go up north and bring back some more ivory. By then this will all 'ave blown away in the wind. Remember the rice bowl. Nobody ever pisses on their own money unless they are stupid. And The Captain ‘aint stupid. Not by a long way. One day he'll see the matter more clearly. That's my opinion. Now, if you'll excuse me Mr Brigandshaw I have a ship to sail."

  Book 2 – The Occupation

  Chapter 1: September 189

  From the advantage point of the kopje, Trooper Gregory Shaw watched the ceremony down below in the plain as the Union Jack rose slowly to the top of the newly constructed masthead, the officers of the Pioneer Column rigidly saluting the flag. With the dismissal of the flag-raising party Gregory Shaw and Henry Mandeville were free to occupy their reward of land or search for gold.

  Rhodes’s Pioneer Column had cut a road from British South Africa to the high ground of the interior, six months of work, tension and expected attack that had never materialised. Below the kopje Fort Salisbury was taking shape, a town been laid out by the surveyors with roads wide enough for an ox wagon to turn. British Africa had taken a long stride forward. Looking further than the ceremony now dispersing, Gregory looked for signs of native occupation. The land he searched was fallow, long grass the height of the man's waist interspersed with flat-topped trees whose canopies had spread under the weight of the sun. The sky and clouds, fluffy white and powder blue, were close to the earth the further he looked towards the heat-shimmered horizon. There were no huts or villages, nothing but herds of animals. Far away to his left the vultures circled the kill.

  Turning to the hunter, Frederick Selous, who had guided the column, Gregory asked the question that had been on his mind the months they had cut the road through the mopani and msasa trees.

  "Where are the people? The land is bush, well watered, animals everywhere but where are the people?"

  "Africa," said Selous, "looks easier than it is. The animals have adapted to the droughts better than man. Then there was Mzilikazi and Lobengula, Zulu impis raiding the cattle and grain and killing what they were unable to carry away with them. There are people but they hide. Now they are hiding from us. Africa is cruel Mr Shaw. I wish you all the best of British luck."

  "That kind of luck I'd rather not have wished upon me," said Henry Manderville when the hunter was out of earshot. "But all this has got to be better than the relics of Rome and the Medici. Now we go and buy us a pick and shovel and go and find us that pot of gold. When does it rain in this country? Nothing since we started the road. Nothing."

  That evening, having handed in their uniforms, Henry Manderville and Gregory Shaw left Fort Salisbury as prospectors. Behind each of their horses, on long reins, followed the packhorses. All the animals were salted, immune to the tsetse fly that killed most of the domesticated animals. They were heading north-west through the bush following a course set by the sinking sun. Henry had shot a small buck, which hung over the back of Gregory's packhorse. There were pools of water among the rock outcrops that made up part of the riverbed. The river had stopped flowing months before and the heavy sand between the rocks had been trampled by animals. Far behind them the campfires of Fort Salisbury were no longer visible and for the first time since leaving Italy they were alone. From the largest pool a twelve-foot crocodile watched them malevolently, the stone green eyes reflecting the fiery red of the setting sun. Carefully, Henry chose a campsite on high ground, overlooking the pools. They gathered wood for the nightly fire.

  With the sky blood red behind them, Gregory gutted the small buck and skinned it like a rabbit cutting off the feet and head. With the first coals, they roasted the heart liver and kidneys as the sun came down and the insects screeched in the long grass. From further down river and from a larger pool a hippopotamus grunted with pleasure before climbing out of the pool in search of grazing. The warm night air quickly dried the animal’s hide. Then the night belonged to the frogs calling for mates in diligent cacophony.

  Having fed, the two men lit their pipes and smoked for a while in silence. They recognised the animal calls from the night and were content. The fire flickered comfortably in front of them some ten feet from their outstretched legs. The horses were tethered within the firelight. Both men had their army issue haversacks at their backs. There were no mosquitoes, a blessing to both of them.

  Gregory Shaw was the first to break the companionable silence.

  "Henry, old boy. Do you think we English are a bit potty?"

  "What makes you say that?"

  "Well, here we are in the middle of nowhere looking for gold we don't need."

  "It's the hunt for the gold that counts, Gregory. Not the gold."

  "The excitement, you mean?"

  "Of course. We were both bored stiff in Italy. A man has to do something. Probably why we ended up with an empire. That and England's dreadful climate. I might even stay in this country. Stake out the allotted farm. They say the thing to grow is native tobacco and ship it back to England. Even steal a bit of seed from the Americans and give those Virginians a run for their money."


  "So you don't think we’re potty, old boy?"

  "Probably not."

  Sir Henry Manderville woke in the middle of the night. It was pitch black and the frogs were silent. The fire had burned down and he got up to put on more wood, the crush of the new branches throwing sparks up into the night. Gregory was asleep, curled around his service revolver, the new firelight reflecting from the gunmetal. The night air was pleasantly cool and still free of mosquitoes. He smiled to himself. He was thirty-eight-years old and fitter than at any other times in his life.

  In Cape Town it had been quickly clear that Major Johnson wanted troopers to cut his road through the bush, there being officers aplenty. Happily, Gregory had buried his captaincy in the past and Henry had not mentioned his title. They were two fit men looking for a challenge and sufficiently educated to occupy the new territory, soldiers for six months and pioneers for the rest of their lives. Rhodes wanted strong men to hold the occupation of his new country between the Limpopo and the Zambezi rivers, men who would take up roots in the new, virgin soil that stretched in every direction.

  Henry sat still, wide-awake and pondered the absurdity of his situation all the time strangely content. An owl hooted behind the river and was answered by its mate. For a while Henry listen to their conversation and then they were silent. The expectancy was palpable all around him. Had his ancestor felt the same when he had helped William the Conqueror to subdue the Saxons and conquer the land of the Britons? Was man ever satisfied in staying put, he asked himself which made him smile at the generations of Mandervilles at Hastings Court, the generations to follow. Then he thought of Emily by now content with Brigandshaw, absorbed in her son and probably pregnant again. The old house needed the cry of children. Maybe here he would make his second home and bring up a second family in a new country. Then he chuckled inwardly at the absurdity. What kind of Englishman would live in the middle of the African bush, far from friends and neighbours. Now there was a real problem with both of them, he and Gregory if they were serious about Africa.

  Satisfied with the fire he lay back against his haversack and was quickly asleep. Soon afterwards the moon rose and showed the clouds in the heavens in shades of black and white, the moonlight pale and colourless. The moon struck the sleeping men through the trees but neither of them woke and the owls took up on their conversation. A soft wind came up and rustled the last dry leaves and the msasa trees. Just before dawn the hippo got back into its pool. Slowly a pale light came in the east and the birds began to sing.

  Gregory was the first to wake in the new dawn and hung a can of water over the embers of the fire, throwing in a handful of ground coffee. Henry stirred, his dream broken by the smell of coffee.

  "Hell, it's good to be alive, old boy," said Gregory Shaw and Henry smiled to himself. On an average day, Gregory said 'old boy' more than thirty times. Henry had counted them. Strangely, he rather liked being an 'old boy'.

  "Yes," he replied, "it is rather nice to be alive. Have the ants eaten the rest of our venison?"

  "I hung the carcass in a tree."

  "I think we're learning."

  "I rather think we are…You any idea what gold-bearing rock looks like?"

  "No idea at all."

  "Then how do we find the stuff, old boy?"

  "Find a native who knows what it looks like. This was the kingdom of Monomotapa. They traded gold with the Portuguese."

  As the day progressed the clouds built up in the west, a prelude to the rains.

  The last place Alison Ford expected to find herself was standing on a rock high on the escarpment overlooking the valley of the Zambezi River in the company of two white hunters, one the size of the mountain, a two-year-old boy and a woman who had run away from her husband. And she was happier than she had ever been in her life before. Down below what Tinus had told her was bushfire haze obscured any site of the river that had meandered over the millenniums and cut the deep valley now teaming with game. The young black boy who spoke good English had gone off to make contact with the remnants of the local tribes still hiding away from Lobengula.

  She had been in Africa seven months and taken the train from Cape Town to Kimberley the day after the Indian Queen docked in Cape Town harbour. She had first met Tinus Oosthuizen and the black boy Tatenda on the train. In Kimberley they had purchased two ox wagons, sixteen oxen, supplies for a year and without a pause headed out into the bush and out of reach of reprisal. As the weeks turned into months they made their way into the interior, calling first at Gu-Bulawayo to ask the king of the Matabele for permission to hunt, Harry became the child of his parents. By the end of the third month on the train, Tinus had taught her how to fire a shotgun without bruising her shoulder and she was as brown as a berry, the soft brown hair had been bleached by the sun and her body was taut from the constant exercise. For weeks on end their party was alone in the bush, the men hunting for the old bull elephants among the great herds, the tusks cut from the dead animals and left on the ground overnight for the ants to clean before loading on top of the wagons.

  By the end of September, when Henry Manderville and Gregory Shaw were camped one hundred and twenty three miles to the south-east, the clouds had built up and Alison heard the first rumblings of thunder and Tatenda returned to camp with the news Tinus Oosthuizen had searched for even before Sebastian had joined the hunt. The local tribesmen had seen the spore of the great bull elephant, the elephant tusks so big he was forced to rest them on the ground when his old body made him stop for rest.

  Tinus had listened to Tatenda's story of the rogue bull elephant, far from its herd, that had ripped through the storage silos, tearing down the rickety bush timber legs that held up the covered platforms from the ground and the maize away from the rats and mice, scattering the cobs among the bent, brown stalks of the old maize stands, trampling the cobs in the dust and squashing three of the pole and dagga huts in its rage. One small girl had been trampled to death and half the food that would feed the people until the rains grew the next crop had been eaten or destroyed.

  "Did he rest his tusks on the ground?"

  "The people ran away, Baas. Not look. Very frightened. The marks of feet in dust bigger than I see."

  "Where did the elephant go?"

  "To big river," and Tatenda pointed down into the valley.

  Sebastian argued the heat and mosquitoes in the valley were too dangerous for the women and children once the rains broke.

  "Then I will hunt alone," said Tinus "I have seen him once, from a distance. He is old now and needs my help. You see, Sebastian, a man is brave when he is alone but he can never be brave for his family. To die is to die but to be left alone when you have found your family is worse than death. Our own deaths we don't know about. It is the death of others we feel. Make a camp up here and I will come back from the valley when I have killed him. When the rains break some of the herds will migrate this way and you can have your picking. Make the best of it. This will be our last hunt."

  "Why?"

  "Rhodes. He wants everything. The minerals, the land and the elephants. We Boers know you British. With you British there are always rules and all of them stop a man from being free to do what he wants."

  "Then next time we hunt north of the Zambezi."

  "Rhodes will go north of the river until he fills the vacuum between the Belgians to the far north and the Portuguese to the east and west."

  "Are the mosquitoes any bigger down there?" Emily was asking later. "Won't there be some comfort from the cool water of the river? How am I going to explain to Alison that the apple of her eye is off alone chasing an elephant bigger than a house? Now if we all go down together we can have a nice time and come back altogether with the trophy that would excite the whole wide world. Hunting elephant is better in pairs you have both said a dozen times. Are we women so weak we can't get a little hot and bothered every now and again? I think the best thing is to start our journey down there first thing in the morning before all this evening thu
nder turns to rain. If we hurry I am sure we can reach the river and build ourselves little grass huts before the rains break. Now won't that be nice? Little grass huts on the bank of a very nice river. I'm going to tell Harry. He'll be very excited."

  Six thousand miles away at Hastings Court Mathilda Brigandshaw, mother of Sebastian, was in one of her 'states'. Her husband, The Captain, had built up a cold rage and none of her timid words of protest had had any effect. After seven months of constant badgering, the case against her youngest son had been heard in the Bow Street Magistrates’ Court and Sebastian was now a criminal, wanted anywhere in the Empire for abducting his brother's wife and kidnapping his brother's son. When found the penalty was death and there would be nothing the family could do to change the court's decision. After the months of fruitless search, her husband had seen fit to use the courts to bring down his rage on his own son for frustrating his ambition. Mathilda was well aware The Captain did not give a jot about Emily. All he wanted was Harry, the future master of Hastings Court, his grandson dressed up as a Manderville.

  When she had first met The Captain he was a common seaman sailing out of the Port of Liverpool for sixteen shillings a month, coming back a year later after each voyage with less than five pounds in his pocket.