Echoes from the Past (The Brigandshaw Chronicles Book 1)

by Peter Rimmer

  "Look at him," called Piers and everyone in the commando followed his upward look. The female eagle had caught a three-foot snake and was struggling to rise into the sky. Three hundred feet above the ground the bird let go and the snake, still writhing, plummeted to the hard rock below. Before the female could reach the dead reptile, the male swooped and snatched the snake with both claws. The female caught up and snatched at her prey, twisting and turning the birds in flight. The snake came apart just above the craggy rocks and the birds settled fifty yards from the men, the hooked beaks tearing at the flesh. Both birds were facing the men, staring them down with eagle eyes.

  Later the birds flew off, rising slowly on the thermals, higher and higher into the African sky.

  "It won't work, sir," said Major James Brigandshaw. "Or, rather, it won't work for a very long time and by then the bitterness between the white races of Africa will last a hundred years. If we place their women and children in camps we must look after them. In one of the camps the children are dying of measles. Kill a man's child and he'll fight you for the rest of his life. Men like that won't negotiate."

  "Are you, sir, contradicting a major-general with forty years' service?" said Colonel Hickman.

  "The job of British Intelligence is to give the high command intelligence. I advocated bringing in their women but only to protect them instead. They are dying in British protection. Disease spreads in close confinement, we know that. We know we are not deliberately introducing disease to the confusion of the camps but to the Boer in the field it will look like we are murdering his women and children."

  "Major Brigandshaw! Are you accusing us of murder?"

  "That is how other people will see this campaign, how they will see emptying the veld, burning their houses, chopping the veld up into areas and running a grouse shoot to flush out the Boer commandos."

  "How else do we do it Brigandshaw?" said the general, folding his arms across his chest. "Let us hear what the major would do if he, God forbid, were Lord Kitchener."

  "I would hunt them. At the moment the small bands of mounted Boers run rings round us. They literally see us a mile away and avoid us if they wish, attack us if they wish. Never once are they under threat until they decide when to attack. These are not birds frightened by the beaters. These are intelligent men in their own bushveld. Unless the sweeping soldiers link arms in the night, the Boers will slip through the cordons; silently fight their way through, make a gap and then go back for their horses. The African bush is not a flat Scottish grouse moor."

  "How, Brigandshaw do you propose hunting these wily Boers?" The general was smiling.

  "By sending out hundreds of small, mounted units with trackers. Make the Boers know the war is always just over the ridge, just through the trees. Make him feel like a hunted fox with the dogs baying for his blood. And stop the women and children dying in the camps. Whatever happens in the end we British have to live with these people in Africa."

  "Are you proposing native trackers? That won't do."

  "No, sir. Rhodesians. Men who know the bush as well as the Boers. Men who also know they have to live with the Boers when the British army has sailed back over the sea. We want hunters not barbed wire, pillboxes and camps for women and children. Hunt them at night as well as the day. Then they'll negotiate. A man can only take so much and then he cracks up. Ask the fox. The dogs get him nine times out of ten."

  "An interesting idea, Brigandshaw," said the general, "but totally impractical. How do you supply these men all over the place? There would be no discipline. No, sir, we are a professional army and no professional army runs around like that. The Boers are finished anyway. Just a few stragglers. And don't forget Brigandshaw, there are a lot of dead birds on a grouse moor. Wouldn't like to be a grouse on the twelfth of August."

  Around the table, everyone but James began to laugh.

  Colonel Hickman waited for the general and his staff to leave the room; James Brigandshaw thought the nose and cheeks were redder than usual but the merriment had gone out of the man's eyes.

  "Close the door, Brigandshaw," he said and walked round the conference table to look out of the window. "Jacarandas," he said. "Very pretty. Don't have them in my English garden. The blue's the same colour as the African sky…You were right on one thing. This war isn’t over by a long way. Think you're idea will work?"

  "I don't really know."

  "Forgive me laughing with the general. There's as much politics in the army as Westminster. Never does for the chief of Intelligence to rub up a major-general the wrong way round. Why we have rank. Works in the overall picture. Your leave's cancelled, of course."

  "Rather thought so when you brought me down from Salisbury."

  "Give me a written report on our merry band of hunters. Some of your Mashonaland Scouts, I presume. Well you can forget about fighting with them. You're back in intelligence here in Pretoria. Those men you gave leave, better cancel in case I like your idea. Who would set it up? Train the Scouts to 'liaise' with our commando units."

  "My brother."

  The colonel turned from the open window and began to laugh. "He's a priest, for goodness sake."

  "Not Nathanial. Sebastian. He's the black sheep of our family. Scandal when he was seventeen and ran away to Africa with an Englishwoman. Daughter of a baronet. He's thirty now. Lived in the bush all those years, first as an elephant hunter and then as a farmer.

  "Why was it such a scandal? They married of course."

  "Not yet, sir. The girl was married to my elder brother, Arthur. Marriage was annulled. My brother said the son was his."

  "Which brother, for God's sake?"

  "Sebastian. You see Arthur stole Emily with the help of my father. Emily was always Seb's since they were children."

  "And you want me to employ this black sheep?"

  "Yes, sir. He knows the bush like the back of his hand."

  "I should think he would, keeping away from the girl's father. What did the baronet do when this Sebastian ran off with his daughter?"

  "He lives with them, sir, on the farm in Rhodesia."

  The colonel glared at him and turned back to look out of the window. "Well, its been done before in time of a war. Fact is there have been quite a few black sheep who did quite well in difficult situations. Put it all in your report, though leave out your family's dirty linen. And there's one more thing. The Irish Times first made a hero out of one of these hit- and-run merchants. Gave him the nom de guerre of the Giant. The British and South African press have picked up on it and the anti-war lobby has made a hero out of him in the English press. He's been good for Boer morale which isn't good for us. Some say he was a white hunter up north. Others say he's a farmer from the Cape and a British subject. Probably a figment of the Irish newsman's imagination. Anyway, I want you to find out who he is. He rides a black stallion with a white blaze on its chest. One of our remounts most probably. Or again it's all a lot of hogwash. The worst thing that ever happened in this war was letting the press run around the battlefield. Instant story back in England. Not like the good old days in India when the problem was all over before they heard anything about it at home. Let a soldier fight his own war without interference. If the man exists I want him killed. If he's a British subject I want him captured. Then we'll hang him for treason. Stop a lot of the Cape cousins doing anything foolish. Men are less inclined to be heroes when they feel a noose round their necks."

  "I've read about him."

  "Good. So you know what I'm talking about."

  Kei had found an overhang on the face of a cliff and made himself most comfortable. At the back he could light a fire so at night when the temperature dropped he sat in comfort with the five dogs sprawled on the ground and was content. If anyone saw the flickering light high on the cliff they would think it was the spirits of the dead. Every night and one by one the dogs came to him for their fur to be searched for parasites. From the far side of the cave, the horse watched them with brown, liquid eyes, the horse's
tack and Kei's rifle in the fire-thrown shadow of a boulder. The dogs had found the cave by following up the steep and crumbling path that climbed from the open plain, the path forged by the course of a now dried-up stream that dropped from the top of the cliff.

  In the mornings from his eyrie overlooking the plains he was king of all he surveyed. First the dogs went out to sniff the morning air, followed by the horse. The sun rose out of a far distant range of hills while the birds sang and Kei went to the spring and doused his face in cold water. And when the dogs reached the open grassland Kei sat on a high rock and watched them hunt while the horse grazed at the foot of the cliff.

  On the Monday after James began his inquiries into the true identity of the Giant, Blackdog made the left horn of the bull curving out and round while the bitch made the right. Deep in the grass, watched by Kei from his rock, the three dogs waited in a line, their long bodies flat to the ground. Kei counted eleven springbok in the herd oblivious to the danger lurking in the grass. With the rising sun at his back, Blackdog led the charge chasing the buck towards the dogs lying in the grass. The male springbok lowered its horns but Blackdog ran round him as the dogs in the long grass sprang at the smallest in the herd tearing at its throat. By the time Kei scrambled his way down the path, the dogs had ripped open the belly of the young springbok to get inside and their heads were covered in warm blood. Whistling for the horse at the foot of the cliff, he tossed the carcass over the horse's back, forcing the delicate front hooves between the tendon and bone of the back legs. Slowly, walking behind his horse, he mounted the path, the dogs left behind to eat the warm entrails of the springbok.

  By the time the springbok was hanging by its back legs inside the cave, and Kei came out to whistle for his dogs, there were horsemen sweeping across the plain. The dogs were not sure which way to run as some of the sound was bouncing back at them from the face of the cliff. The dogs ran the wrong way straight at the horsemen into short grass. The dogs stopped and though Kei could not see from the distance he knew they were shivering with their tails between their legs. One of the horsemen pulled his rifle from his saddle holster, dropped to the ground and walked towards the cowed dogs.

  Standing up from the cover of his rock, Kei shouted in Afrikaans: "Don't shoot my dog." The man with the gun ignored him and Kei began to shiver. "Don't shoot!" he called in a small voice.

  Down below the man with the gun went down on one knee putting the rifle on the ground. Kei heard the whistle and saw his pack of dogs rush the kneeling man to attack. Another of the men dismounted and ran towards the dogs who were now slobbering over the first man who was lying on his back in the grass with a dog wrapped in each of his arms. Blackdog leaped from the ground and landed on the chest of the second man, knocking him to the ground. The rest of the horsemen were shouting encouragement and a man on a black horse was signalling to Kei with his arm. Reluctantly Kei walked slowly down to the dried-up river bed, twice falling on his bottom. His rifle was behind him in the cave with his horse. The wind had come up and pushed towards him the rancid smell of unwashed bodies. The smell was slightly sweet, the distinct smell of white men. All the men were bearded with long dank hair, knotted and dirty. Bandoliers of cartridges hung across their bodies and their clothes were dirty and looked like rags tied together. Only the guns were clean. Kei waited his last moments of life at the foot of the cliff. He could see the two men walking towards him, their chests above the long, brown grass. The smaller of the two men began running towards him and Kei looked behind for a way to escape. Blackdog ran through the grass first followed by the bitch and then the man was hugging him. The bigger of the two men spoke from behind.

  "Sarie's dogs. It is a miracle. And Kei. We thought all you blacks was dead. Even in the middle of a war you can find your friends…These are Sarie Mostert's dogs, Frikkie's woman," he said to the big man on the black horse. Kei could now see a white diamond- shaped blaze on the horse's chest. Then he began to laugh hysterically. He had run away from them and they had found him here in the middle of nowhere. Now he would have to run away again.

  "How'd you get here?" asked the big man on the horse.

  "I have a horse in a cave."

  "And a rifle?"

  "Yes, I have a rifle."

  "Then you'd better join us. You won't get far on your own. And bring the dogs. Are they any good at hunting?"

  Chapter 2: March to April 1901

  Major-General William Gore-Bilham believed in comfort. Campaigning was part of the pleasure of being a soldier and in South Africa he was enjoying himself. To make sure his stomach was kept in order he had bought with him the cook from his English estate along with one of the footmen, the butler being too old. In Cape Town, soon after he landed, the general had purchased two ox-wagons together with the requisite number of oxen. The one had been made into a splendid caravan with a double bed, cupboards and a toilet he could use so as not to expose himself to the African elements at night. Being a man of sixty-two he required the toilet three times every night and such a weakness was never to be shown to the men. The second wagon contained his personal possessions, a large bell tent, chairs, tables, crockery, cutlery, a stock of two hundred bottles of '72 Heidsieck Dry Monopole champagne, three hundred bottles of assorted burgundies, clarets and German hocks and a small upright piano that had travelled out from England with him on the boat. There were tins of foie gras, caviar, jars of gentlemen's relish, his favourite pickles from his estate and every penny of his considerable wealth had been inherited including his army commission in a good regiment that had been bought for him by his grandfather. There was a saying that no one in the regiment would ever have said to his face, that it took three generations to make an English gentleman: William Gore-Bilham's grandfather, from whence the family fortune had sprung, was anything but a gentleman, having built a fortune out of his workers, some as young as ten, working twelve hours a day, six days a week for enough money to feed themselves so they would not collapse from hunger at the looms. As the general rose in rank to colonel of his regiment and beyond, the size of his private income was more important than his skill as a soldier, the etiquette in the officers' mess more important than the skill of reading a map. The general had felt guiltily glad when his grandfather died as the man's accent was appalling.

  By the end of March, the worst of the summer heat was over, the rains now intermittent and the general was determined to fulfil the orders of Lord Kitchener and bring the Boer general back to Pretoria one way or the other. The man they now knew as Martinus Jacobus McDonald Oosthuizen had created havoc from the Northern Transvaal down to the Northern Cape, once attacking a British column with over two thousand men and disappearing into the veld without trace. The man's myth was doing more for Boer morale than of damage to the British army and it was going to stop.

  The general's immaculate caravan was parked on the banks of the Crocodile River, equidistant from Pretoria and Mafeking, one hundred and forty miles to the south. The general's headquarters that surrounded the caravan, was in the bush thirty miles from the Bechuanaland border and all reports indicated Oosthuizen and a small band of Boers were between the general and the border: to the general's considerable satisfaction the Cape rebel was about to be caught in the dragnet of eight thousand British and Colonial troops that were slowly drawing the noose around his neck. Twenty armed sentries stood guard on the perimeter of the divisional headquarters while the troops were faraway sweeping the rugged bush, slogging their way forward in the African sun under full kit, only the officers riding horses; half the men had been in Africa less than three months and most were red raw from the sun. In the large bell tent set up under a sixty-foot high acacia tree, General Gore-Bilham amused himself by watching the crocodiles on the sand banks that dotted the river down the long, steep bank from his bell tent. He was immaculately dressed as were his staff officers. Every man above the ranks of major had laid a small bet on how long it would take the army to capture the rebel. Not one of them had any fear for h
is own safety as they waited for lunch to be served at the long, cloth-covered table set up under the rich shade of a cluster of river-watered trees. From somewhere they could hear the hippopotamuses grunting in the pools away from the main flow of the river. The sky was pale blue with just three small clouds lost in the firmament but not one of the British had looked further than the height of the tree. Apart from the heat and the grunts of the hippo they could just as easily have been in Aldershot, the home of a large part of the British army south-west of London.

  From across the river in thick bush Tinus Oosthuizen could not believe his eyes. All the sentries had their backs to the river and according to his scouts the nearest British soldier was ten miles from the Bechuanaland border at least a six-hour slog from what he was watching through his binoculars. A man in a fancy red uniform was sprawled in a deck chair at the entrance to a round tent, seemingly engrossed in the flow of the river. Men in white jackets and white gloves were laying a long table and from so close Tinus was able to count three wine glasses at each place setting; most of the officers were standing drinking what Tinus presumed to be sherry. They were dressed in an assortment of colourful uniforms nearly all with stripes of different colours down the outside of their trousers. Some of the officers wore sashes round their well-fed stomachs but none carried swords; the most lethal weapons within their grasp being the knives laid out in perfect order with the forks on the white tablecloth that dropped just short of the red dust of Africa. The elderly man from the round tent managed, with effort, to push himself out of the deck chair. When he joined the sherry-drinking officers every one stopped talking until a mess steward had sidled up to the right of the man's elbow with a silver tray and one glass in the dead centre. Without looking at the tray or the steward the man picked up the glass of sherry and began to drink sending the rest back into conversation. Quietly, Tinus handed Magnus du Plessis the glasses.