‘We’ll be right, sir.’
Hervey smiled to himself. This was not bravado, just the proper confidence of a non-commissioned officer who had learned his trade in a dozen different scrapes. ‘I would have wished those pandours had a faithful taste for scouting, that’s all. We should have a better notion of whether we’d been followed.’
‘Maybe, sir; but not certain. We’re doing only what we’d be doing anyway.’
Hervey nodded. Wainwright spoke the truth. There could never be a time to take the night’s ease for granted.
‘Do we break camp before first light if we hear nothing in the night, sir?’
It was the usual practice, so long as the enemy could not get wind of the move: not an easy thing to manage even with some distance between the lines, so to speak. Here, where the Xhosa might rush in from no further than the spear’s flight, and with the moon set, it would be the very devil of a fight. No, Hervey’s instinct was to let the dawn come, when they would then have the advantage of their firearms. He shook his head. ‘We’ll stand to as if defending our position, Corporal Wainwright.’ And then, fearing he had exposed his own doubts too much, he half smiled. ‘It’s of no matter. I do not count the Xhosa especially brave. Had they pressed a little more determinedly we should have been caught, I think. There cannot have been but the three of them.’
‘I reckoned so too, sir. But I think as I should do the scouting in the morning. If they gets behind us tonight then I don’t think the pandours’ll be right. I mightn’t know the country as well as them, but I’d do a better job if it comes to another fight.’
Hervey put a hand to Wainwright’s shoulder. ‘I don’t doubt it – than both of them combined. Very well. And you’ll take the first watch, until midnight?’
‘Sir.’
‘Good man.’ Hervey turned; but then he had second thoughts. ‘We’ve come a long way since that morning on Warminster Common, have we not, Corporal Wainwright?’
‘Sir.’ Wainwright smiled ruefully. ‘And not yet five and twenty.’
Hervey had not considered it. ‘Indeed?’
‘Tomorrow, sir.’
‘The strangest thing!’
‘There’s not been too many birthdays since the Common when I haven’t heard a shot, sir.’
‘The devil!’
‘But I reckon it must be the same with you, sir.’
Hervey knew it, but he doubted he had ever been in such position: no notion of where or how many the enemy, and so little with which to defend himself – and his reputation. He smiled back, dutifully. ‘What should we do with peace, eh, Corporal Wainwright?’
‘Ay, sir,’ replied his coverman, just as dutifully.
Hervey nodded, fixing him with a look that said everything that would not be permitted in words, and then turned and stepped sharply to where Johnson was crouching by the pack saddles.
Johnson stood and held out a mess of tea. ‘Just mashed.’
Hervey took it, again with but a nod. It had been more times than either of them could count: Johnson’s ability to make tea in the most unpromising conditions seemed rarely short of miraculous. There had been tea before dawn on the morning of Waterloo, when the rain had lashed down all night (Hervey reckoned there could have been few general officers so favoured), and Johnson had since perfected what he called his ‘patent storm kettle’, first fashioned ten years ago in an Indian bazaar. It was rather easier now to get a flame, though: no need of flint and tinder-box with Mr Walker’s new sulphur friction matches.
‘Thank you, Johnson. You must remind me, when we get back to England, to see if Welch and Stalker will give you a pension for your storm kettle.’
‘Ay, right, sir. So tha does think we’ll get back then? Ah sort o’ thought we’d end up ‘ere wi’ an ass’s thing up us arse.’
Hervey could not have suppressed the smile if he had tried. ‘Assegai.’
‘Summat sharp, any road.’
Hervey shook his head. ‘Johnson, after all we’ve seen, I don’t think we shall meet our end by a gang of cattle reivers carrying spears.’
‘Well, ah’m right glad tha’s sure on it, sir. Them spears looked the job to me. Wouldn’t ‘ave managed if Cap’n Fairbrother ‘adn’t got in first. Ah reckoned ah weren’t long for this world.’
Hervey was determined to be bright. ‘Oh, I think “Guard” and then “Cut One” would have done the business.’
Johnson frowned. ‘Well, ah’m right glad tha’s sure on ‘t, sir. Does tha want any snap?’
Hervey nodded. ‘I think I’ll have one of those corn cakes. Has Captain Fairbrother had anything?’
‘Ah took ‘im some tea, but ‘e said ‘e didn’t want owt else. ‘E’s been cleanin them guns o’ ‘is since we stopped.’ He shook his head. ‘That blackie’s poorly, sir. Ah tried to give ‘im tea an’ all, but ‘e weren’t wi’ it.’
‘That was good of you. I doubt he’ll see the morning, I’m afraid.’ Hervey took a second corn cake, for Fairbrother, and a bottle of brandy. ‘We’ll stand to in about half an hour.’
Johnson nodded, the sideways nod that said he understood and would get on with it, come what may.
Hervey took the bottle and the corn cakes to where Fairbrother sat under a milkwood tree reloading his pistols after their vigorous cleaning. ‘I can’t say I like these, but we must eat something.’
Fairbrother took the corn cake with little pleasure. ‘You are content with things for the night, now?’
Hervey sat down next to him, uncorked the bottle and poured brandy into Fairbrother’s mess tin, and then his own. ‘As content as may be. I only wish those pandours had been able to show more address. It’s the strangest thing to have no idea what your enemy intends or where he is.’
At that moment one of the pandours started suddenly, scuttling back a good ten feet from the bush he was posted next to. Hervey reached for his pistol, but it was soon evident the man had given himself a fright.
Fairbrother continued calmly sipping his brandy. ‘To the man who is afraid, everything rustles.’
Hervey laid down his pistol, and looked at him ruefully. ‘Colony lore, or your own observation?’
‘Sophocles.’
‘Oh.’ Hervey half smiled. ‘You would get on famously in the Sixth.’
‘I think not.’
Hervey tutted. ‘I shan’t indulge you in your self-disregard. You would be received handsomely for what you did at the river.’
Fairbrother finished his brandy, and Hervey poured him more. ‘You are not a poet, Colonel?’
Hervey braced himself: Fairbrother was the most intriguing mix of superiority and resentment he had known, a man who had sat with his books in Cape Town for … how many years he didn’t rightly know, and yet able to comport himself in the field as if he had been continually on campaign. Neither did it seem to him a contemptuous sort of courage, a display of scorn for the fears of the common herd, despite the Sophocles. When this sojourn at the frontier was over, Hervey was determined that Edward Fairbrother should have some proper place in the military society of the Cape. It was not merely a matter of desert, but of resource.
‘I am not a poet. Though I am fond of Milton.’
Fairbrother nodded gravely. ‘I was rather minded of Wordsworth.’
‘I confess I’ve never read him.’
‘Really? You astonish me, Colonel Hervey. So martial a man, Wordsworth.’
Hervey frowned incredulously. ‘Martial? I thought him pastoral.’
‘In part, of course. But he was an enthusiastic militiaman, as I have read.’
‘I did not know it. Good.’
‘So you will not know “The Happy Warrior”?’
‘No.’
‘ “Who is the Happy Warrior? Who is he that every man in arms should wish to be?” ’
‘And the answer?’
‘The answer is contained in but a single sentence.’
‘Then it must be trite.’
‘Ah, indeed you are the man I tho
ught! A single sentence, but of many dozen lines!’
‘Then I would have no more of it now, unless it contains anything of defence against the Xhosa. I shall read it when we return to the Cape.’
Fairbrother smiled. ‘I leave the comfort of my hearth and the solace of my books, come within a trice of death, and shall pass the night in anticipation of a murderous onslaught, and yet I am content to do so in the company of a happy warrior.’
‘And a Collier revolver.’
Fairbrother smiled even broader. ‘Yes, I confess I am excessively content to be in the company of Mr Collier.’
‘Then tell me, what do you believe the Xhosa will do?’
Fairbrother sighed as he took another sip of his brandy. ‘The Xhosa are a simple people, Hervey. They are superstitious, as are all the native tribes, but they aren’t troubled greatly by the spirits of their ancestors, as the Bushmen are. They will not have a fear of the night, only inasmuch as they might meet a leopard. And unlike their cousins the Zulu, of whom you will have heard, they fear death’ (he smiled wryly) ‘which is to our advantage, of course.’
‘But they do not fear it any more at night than day.’
‘No. Indeed, if anything, they are quite animated by the coming of the night. They have a saying: alitshonanga lingenandaba – the sun never sets without fresh news.’
It was not what Hervey wanted to hear. ‘I don’t think our Xhosa will see the morning.’
Fairbrother thought for some time before speaking. ‘We should try to take out the ball from his shoulder.’
Hervey looked bemused. ‘I once had a ball taken from mine, but I knew very little of it. Do you know how it is done?’
‘I have seen a ball removed, yes. Several, indeed.’
It was not the same as knowing what to do, but he was in part encouraged. ‘Shall you try?’
Fairbrother rose. ‘Bring the bottle.’
They removed the bloody dressing from the unconscious Xhosa. He did not stir. Fairbrother decided not to force brandy into him, giving the bottle back to Hervey instead.
‘If he wakes, pour this down his throat in as big a measure as you can.’
The light was beginning to fail, but it made no difference, for Fairbrother had no surgeon’s instruments and therefore no need of light. His would be all probing with the finger, hoping he could identify iron from bone. How he would extract the ball he had no idea: only when he saw how deep it lay might he begin thinking.
‘At least the wound’s clean,’ he said, rolling up his sleeves. ‘There’s no cloth and such taken in by the ball, as far as I can see. It’s that which makes a wound putrid.’
He found the ball easily enough, and not deep. At least, he was fairly sure it was the ball; he would need more light to be certain.
‘His pulse is very weak,’ said Hervey, thinking that so deep a sleep must be close to death.
‘I can’t help it,’ said Fairbrother, dabbing away some of the dried blood about the wound, though fresh soon followed. ‘And it’s as well, since he’d now be screaming like a hyena.’ He turned. ‘Johnson, would you fetch me a small spoon, please.’
Johnson brought a silver teaspoon, which he had had since progging in Vitoria a dozen years before.
Hervey watched as Fairbrother began easing it into the wound, as carefully as he might spoon for the stone in a ripe plum.
‘I think I have it.’
Indeed, out came the one-ounce ball with not a great deal more trouble than the stone from the fruit, and clean with it.
‘I am all astonishment, Fairbrother. I never saw anything as neat!’
Fairbrother sighed. ‘I confess it has been some time, but it was a sight easier than anything I had to do with the Royal Africans.’
‘You were not their surgeon?’
‘I assisted the surgeon on many an occasion. He was in want of it, poor man. Johnson, do you have needle and thread?’
When, an hour later, they were stood down and attuning to the sounds of the night, just as their eyes had by degrees become accustomed to the black dark, Hervey and Fairbrother sat under the milkwood once more.
‘You did not say before, directly, if you thought the Xhosa would attack, only that they did not fear the night.’
Fairbrother replied extra softly, just as Hervey had spoken. ‘Be thankful they are not Zulu. They would now be bringing on reinforcements, scenting blood. The Xhosa are more likely to lie up, taking their ease. They chanced with us back at the Gwalana, and we beat them off. They still have their cattle, though; and we should not forget that it was cattle they came for. Neither do they guard their honour as jealously as the Zulu: they will not feel bound to avenge their defeat. In that they are most pragmatical.’
‘They’ll not feel bound to recover a fellow tribesman?’
‘Not obliged, no. Not unless he’s of some consequence; and I saw nothing about ours that marked him thus.’
The brandy was now filling their mess tins again, serving a therapeutic purpose as welcome as it would have been to the Xhosa had he woken. Hervey settled back against the gnarled trunk of the milkwood and pushed his legs out straight. ‘It occurs to me the Xhosa’s chief – Gaika – might ponder with advantage on the return of one of his tribesmen who has been tended well, especially one who has sought to steal cattle and shoot one of the King’s men. If he lives, it will only be because of your address.’
‘And your decision that he should not be abandoned, or summarily executed. You do intend that he stands trial for shooting a redcoat? That, surely, is the landdrost’s business.’
Hervey crossed his legs. ‘He must stand trial, well enough. But it were better that it were Gaika’s punishment and not ours. It would at least be the better seen to be done.’
‘You may be right, Hervey. But you know, the Xhosa call us omasiza mbulala: “the people who rescue, then kill”. It began when Somerset made demands on the Xhosa in return for our protection.’
Hervey had well understood the difference between Britain in India and Britain in the Cape Colony before leaving England; but perforce in the abstract. The purpose of the British in India, to be precise the ‘Honourable Company of Merchants of England trading to the East Indies’, was just that – trade. Its crab-like expansion from the coastal factories of Malabar, Coromandel and the mouth of the Ganges was not so much intentional as consequential. The directors of the company had no wish for the expense of campaigning and conquest, even where the territory acquired yielded riches more than enough to compensate: they had wanted the prosperity of what they understood best – commerce. They did not wish for war, but if native adventurists would challenge their right to their perfectly legal business, then the Court of Directors would not flinch from opposing them. They had not tried to settle India, however. On the contrary, outside the cantonments the Company had been strict in discouraging the activity of missionaries and others who would try to turn the native population from its own ways. Land was not given to white-faced immigrants; and those who had title to it, or even nomadic rights to range, were not displaced and forbidden to set foot on the land again. Not that Hervey had observed perfect peace in the one and nothing but war in the other; both places seemed to him just as hostile.
He would have to admit, however, just a certain unease here in Cape Colony. If the British – and before them the Dutch – had taken land from the native tribes in the belief that there was plenty of land for them to have instead, then where was the evil in that? If, however, they had taken the best land, and the tribes now suffered because of it, then that was an offence against the most fundamental instinct of right and wrong. In which case there would be no end of trouble on the frontier until the Xhosa, and any other of the aggrieved tribes, were comprehensively beaten into submission. That meant, quite simply, the slaughter of so many of them that those remaining feared extinction if they continued to resist. It was not a prospect that appealed to any part of him. But he had read, as was only expedient to a soldier of tender conscience,
the doctors of the Church, Augustine and Aquinas. He could take some comfort from the knowledge that as a soldier he was not obliged to consider jus ad bellum. That was a matter for the lawful authorities of the nation. His concern must be jus in bello. And yet had he himself not said to Lord John Howard, ‘On becoming a soldier I have not ceased to be a citizen’? He smiled to himself. ‘Do not Cromwell me, Hervey!’, Lord John had replied, ever practical. The trouble was, Lord John Howard, far from the field, was so busy about the commander-in-chief’s business that thinking was an indulgence. He, Hervey, on the other hand, between bouts of intense action frequently had a great deal of time to think. It was a cruel sort of irony.
‘Do you consider the Xhosa might be pacified other than by military means?’ he asked, in an absent sort of way.
Fairbrother detected the change of tone. ‘Not as long as there are men in Cape-town like the Somersets.’
Hervey understood the response, but it was not enough. ‘I mean, are they susceptible to making peace at all?’
‘Ah, Colonel Hervey, you declare yourself not a poet, but you are evidently something of a philosopher! You really must read the Wordsworth.’
Hervey scowled. ‘Fairbrother, do not try me. There was never yet philosopher that could endure the toothache patiently.’
Fairbrother thought a while before answering. ‘The Xhosa are not a warlike people, for all that they may fight savagely. But they have begun to speak of a deliverer; they say kukuza kuka Nxele – the coming of Nxele. Makana Nxele was a warrior, and a fine one. Before Nxele, the Xhosa had been mere herdsmen, and Gaika a grey-haired old chief whom both tribesmen and Somerset treated kindly but otherwise ignored. Nxele was their leader in the frontier war. He led the attack on Graham’s-town, and believe me, Hervey – I saw it with my own eyes – it was not for want of courage that they failed. Afterwards, Colonel Willshire’s punitive raids on the kraals were – I speak my mind in this – brutal. Your Duke of Cumberland could have done no worse.’
Hervey 08 - Company Of Spears Page 25
