Chapter I

 

 

THE LIEUTENANT-GOVERNOR
The eastern frontier, Cape Colony , April 1828

The spearhead sliced through the blue serge of Private Parks's tunic, driving deep into his chest. The dragoon, wide-eyed at the sudden, silent assault, tumbled from the saddle like a recruit at first riding school, dead before his feet quit the stirrups. He lay with the spear stuck fast, and barely a twitch, at the feet of his troop horse, which stood still throughout as if possessed of the same paralysing shock. Sir Eyre Somervile, lieutenant-governor of the Cape Colony, fumbled with the cartridge for his cavalry pistol. Serjeant-Major Armstrong's sabre flashed from its scabbard. The covermen closed to Somervile's side, swords drawn, to quieten his excited little arab. Serjeant Wainwright unshipped his carbine, cocked and aimed it in a single motion, more machinelike than human, and fired. The spearman was sent to meet his Maker with the same rude promptness of Parks's own despatch.

A second assegai winged from the thicket, higher than the first (and thus better seen). Corporal Allott, the coverman on Somervile's offside, thrust up his sabre - 'head protect' - just catching the shaft at the binding to deflect it clear of his charge, who then dropped his cartridge ball and cursed most foully. But the impact knocked the sabre clean from Allott's hand to hang by the sword knot from his jarred wrist. Before he could recover it another Xhosa darted from the thicket and between his horse's legs, thrusting with his spear to hamstring Somervile's arab. Armstrong spurred to his side and cut savagely at the back of the Xhosa's neck as he scrambled from beneath. The razor-sharp blade left but a few bloody sinews joining head to torso. The Xhosa staggered, then fell twitching in a gory, faecal sprawl. Somervile jumped from the saddle to check his mare's leg. 'No, sir!' cried Armstrong. 'Get back up!'

Two more Xhosa ran in. Armstrong cut down one but the other lunged straight for Somervile. The nearside coverman, Corporal Hardy, urged his trooper forward to get his sabre to the guard, but couldn't make it. An arm's reach from his quarry, the Xhosa lofted his spear. Somervile could smell the animal odour of his fury as he raised his ball-less pistol, and fired. At an arm's length the blank discharge was enough. Flame and powder grain scored the Xhosa's face, blinding him so that he jabbed wildly but ineffectually with his spear until Corporal Hardy put him out of his frenzied agony with a cleaving slice from crown to chin. The little arab hobbled a few steps, her off-foreleg held up pitiably as if begging. Hardy jumped from the saddle. 'Sir, here!' He grabbed Somervile by the arm and motioned for him to mount. Somervile, more exasperated than dazed, made to protest, but Armstrong decided it. 'Get up, sir! Get astride!' Hardy heaved Somervile's paunchy bulk into his trooper's saddle, as with a deep-throated cry more Xhosa burst from the cover of the bushwillow thicket twenty yards away.

There was no time to front with carbine or pistol; it was for each to do as he could. Serjeant Wainwright, nearest, spurred straight at them, sword and carbine in hand, reins looped over his left arm. He parried the spear on his right a split second before the one on the left thrust through his canvas barrel belt and into his side. He fired the carbine point-blank, taking off the top of the spearman's head like a badly sliced egg, and then carved deep between the shoulders of the first Xhosa with a backhand cut. His trooper halted a few strides beyond, and Wainwright slid helplessly from the saddle, leaving a broad red stripe down the grey's flank. The remaining spearmen pressed home the attack with a courage and determination Armstrong had not seen in Xhosa before. He turned his mare just in time to get the reach with his sword arm, swinging his sabre with all his strength down behind the nearest shield, all but severing the Xhosa's wrist. Piet Doorn, burgher-guide, coming back up the trail from checking for spoor, fired his big Hall rifle at fifty yards, felling the tallest Xhosa, but the three others sprang at Somervile and his covermen like leopards on the fold. Corporal Allott, sabre now in left hand, made not even a retaliatory cut, the spear plunging into his gut and pushing him clean from the saddle. Corporal Hardy dived between the little arab's legs to slash at the nearest bare, black heel. The Xhosa staggered momentarily but just long enough for Somervile to urge his new mount forward, tumbling and trampling him like a corn rig. The last Xhosa hesitated, as if unsure of his target rather than whether to fight or run, in which time Armstrong had closed with him to drive the point of his blade deep into his side, bowling him over to writhe in a bloody pool which spread with uncommon speed. Now Armstrong could risk turning his back on him to despatch Somervile's tumbled assailant.
But the Xhosa had no fight left in him. His hands and eyes pleaded. Armstrong gestured with his sabre. 'Bind him up, Corp' Hardy. We'll take him a prize.' He turned to Somervile. 'You all right, sir?' he asked in an accent so strong as to sound strangely alien. But Somervile knew that it was action that revealed the man, and if Armstrong reverted to the Tyne in such a moment, then so be it: without his address they would none of them be alive. Could they stay alive? 'I am well, Serjeant-Major. The others?' Armstrong was already taking stock. 'Corp' Hardy, watch rear, the way we came. Piet, go look ahead, will you? Stand sentry.' Piet Doorn nodded as he tamped the new charge in his rifle. Armstrong sprang from the saddle and looked in turn at Corporal Allott and Private Parks, satisfying himself there was no sign of life, before making for where Serjeant Wainwright lay. 'Jobie, Jobie!' he said sharply, shaking Wainwright's shoulder as if it were reveille. There was no response. Yet blood was still running from the wound. 'Come on, Jobie, lad - rouse yerself!' said Armstrong quietly but insistently, unfastening Wainwright's barrel-belt, taking off his own neckcloth to staunch the flow of blood.

Somervile was now by his side. 'Brandy, do you think, Serjeant-Major?' 'Ay, sir. Anything that'll bring 'im to,' replied Armstrong, taking the flask. It was not easy to guess how much blood Wainwright had lost - in Armstrong's experience it always looked more than it was - but to lose consciousness... He lifted Wainwright's head and put the flask to his mouth, tipping it high to let the brandy pour in copiously. A spasm of choking signalled that Wainwright was at least fighting. 'That's it, Jobie, lad!' He poured in more. Another fit of choking brought back up the contents of the flask, and Wainwright's eyes flickered open at last. Somervile rose, and shook his head. It had been a deuced ill- considered thing, he reckoned. He was not a military man (although he wore the ribbon of the Bath star for his soldierly bearing during the Vellore mutiny), but he knew it to be a sound principle not to divide one's force unless it were necessary. And it had not been necessary: he was perfectly capable of holding his own with pistol and sword! Captain Brereton, the officer in temporary command of E Troop, 6th Light Dragoons, had had no need of sending him to the rear so - into the very jaws, indeed, of the wretched Xhosa reiving party they were meant to be evading! What manner of tactician was this new-come captain? Sweat poured down Somervile's brow, though the day was not hot. His hat was lost, his neckcloth gone, and his coat was fastened with but its single remaining button. But exhilaration, alarm and anger were in him combined to unusual degree: he was at once all for battle and for retreat. For this was no warfare like that he had seen in India. This was more the hunting of savage beasts, the leopard or the tiger. Or rather, the contest with beasts, for he and his escort had been the prey. Were these men, these Bantu, Kaffirs, Xhosa - whatever their rightful name - were they cognitive, as the natives of the Indies? Or did they act merely from instinction, as the psalmist had it, like the horse, or the mule, 'which have no understanding, whose mouth must be held in with bit and bridle'? What parley could there be with such primitives, who had not even the accomplishment of writing? Parley, though, depended first on surviving. They had beaten off one attack, but another... It had been his, Somervile's, idea to make this reconnaissance of the frontier. He had wanted to see for himself the country, and the settlers who were often more cause for annoyance to Cape Town than were the native peoples. And of course those very people - Bantu, Kaffirs, Xhosa (it would be so very useful to have these names, at least, unconfused) - about whom he had read much that was contrary, and over whom his friend Colonel Matthew Hervey had lately gained some mastery. But Hervey was not with him. He was on leave, in England, recovering from his wounds and the remittent fever, and about to marry. Somervile had not wanted to undertake the reconnaissance without him, yet he could not wait for ever on his friend's return to duty: it was autumn, and although the winters here were nothing to those of India, the nights could be bitter chill, and the rains in the mountains of the interior could swell the rivers of the frontier into impassable torrents.

And it had begun well enough, in a quiet way - an official progress through Albany and Graaff Reinet, a pleasant ride beyond the Great Fish River to Fort Willshire, where he had inspected the little garrison of His Majesty's 55th Foot (which regiment had so distinguished itself at Umtata with Hervey and the Mounted Rifles a few months before). And he had been most attentively escorted the while by a half troop of the 6th Light Dragoons under the command of Captain the Honourable Stafford Brereton, not long joined from the regiment in England. Hervey had originally asked for an officer to take temporary command because he was himself occupied increasingly with the Rifles, which corps he had raised, but after his wound at Umtata, and the recurrence of the malaria, the request had proved providential, and Brereton's early arrival a particular boon, allowing him to take home leave with rather more peace of mind. Not that he knew Brereton well, or even much at all. The younger son of the Earl of Brodsworth had joined the Sixth some five or so years earlier, but had not gone out to India, having served first with the depot troop at Maidstone before the general officer commanding the southern district had claimed him as an aide-de-camp.

Brereton had bought his captaincy via another regiment and then exchanged back into the Sixth. There was nothing unusual in such a progression, although it meant that, a dozen years after Waterloo, and with India experience in short supply, there were many regiments whose officers had never, as the saying went, been shot over. Brereton had certainly not been. He had, however (doubtless in consequence), been keen to get to the frontier, and had been especially glad when the lieutenant-governor had not insisted on any larger escort, and therefore one requiring a more senior officer from the garrison. Somervile had not been expecting trouble, though. Halting the Zulu incursion at the Umtata River had done much to quell the unease among the Xhosa, who had been so fearful of Shaka's depredations they had been migrating ever closer to the frontier, and frequently across it. But then, when Somervile's party had been returning, a league or so west of the Great Fish River, which marked the border for the settled population of the Eastern Cape, word had come of the Xhosa raid to the north, a much bigger foray than the frontier had seen in some time. It took even the most hardened burghers by surprise, requiring the immediate reinforcement of Fort Willshire and a doubling of the frontier patrols. By the time Somervile's party had re-crossed the Fish into the unsettled buffer tract - 'to see the beggars for myself' - the reivers were back across the Keiskama River into Xhosa territory proper. But Xhosa raids were by their nature fissiparous affairs, and the proximity of burgher cattle to the Keiskama (against the rules of the buffer treaty), and the leafy cover which the season afforded, as well as the ease of river crossing, had evidently tempted at least one sub-party to remain in the unsettled tract.

Serjeant Wainwright was supporting himself on an elbow. 'There were nothing I could do, sir; not with so many spears.' 'Half a dozen, Jobie; half a dozen,' replied Armstrong, bemused. 'But there were two less when you'd done with them!' 'Noble conduct,' echoed Somervile. 'Finest traditions of the cavalry.' 'Thank you, sir. But what service a shotgun would've been!' 'Indeed.' Or even one of the double-barrelled Westley-Richards which the Cape Mounted Rifles carried, thought Armstrong; though now was not the time to question why the Rifles were not with them. 'What do we do, Serjeant-Major?' asked Somervile, not afraid to confess thereby that he had no certain idea of his own. Armstrong shook his head, and sighed. 'I don't want to leave young Parks and Danny Allott for the vultures, or the Xhosa for that matter. They've a nasty way with a blade.' Somervile was ever of the opinion that a man's mortal remains meant nothing (nor, for that matter, did he believe there was anything immortal): the Parsees of Bombay put out their dead so that the vultures could pick the body clean. But he thought not to debate the point at this exigent moment. In any case, he recognized in Armstrong's reluctance the habitual pride of the regiment. A man who bore the numeral 'VI' on his shako plate was not abandoned lightly by another who bore the same.

'Shall we carry them astride then?' Armstrong nodded. 'We've no chance of making a mile unless we're mounted. Not if those Xhosa don't want us to. We can get Parks and Allott across the one horse, and Jobie here fastened into the saddle. You take Danny's trooper, sir. And I'll have Corp' Hardy get up his carbine, and Parks's.' 'And the prisoner? I should like very much to interrogate him when there is opportunity.' A bullet through the head would be the most expedient, reckoned Armstrong, but it would not serve; it had not been the way for years, not even with savages. 'I don't see us managing more than a trot, sir: he can keep up on his shanks.' 'Indeed.' Armstrong offered Wainwright the flask again. 'You right enough for the saddle, Jobie, bonny lad?' 'Right enough, sir,' replied Wainwright, though shaking his head at the need of help. 'I'll maybe want a leg up...' Piet Doorn came back down the track in the peculiar loping gait that was the Cape frontiersman's - part jogging trot, part native bound. 'No cattle is past this way in two days,' he reported to Armstrong, his English heavily accented. 'But I can smell Kaffir still. A dozen of them maybe.' Armstrong nodded. 'Will you ride rearguard for us, Piet?' It was no part of a guide's duty to ride behind, let alone to fight off attackers. But Piet Doorn relished the opportunity to reduce the odds for the burghers of the frontier, as the gamekeeper shoots vermin at every opportunity. 'I will.' Somervile dabbed at his brow with a red silk handkerchief. 'But why do they attack us when there is quite evidently no cattle to be had?' Armstrong shook his head. 'Don't know, sir. A mystery to me.' Piet Doorn had a theory, however, though he shuddered at the thought of it. 'They wants our guns. Can be no other.' Somervile shuddered too. It was futile to suppose they wanted them merely for hunting. But if it were so, did the Xhosa intend them against the Zulu or the colonists? 'Well they're not having 'em unless they sign for 'em,' said Armstrong, matter of fact. 'And since these heathens can't read or write...' That half his troop couldn't was neither here nor there. What he was saying was that he would part with firearms only - and literally - over his dead body. Others might throw down the weapons, having spiked them first, but these Xhosa, even if heathens and savages, were not incapable blacksmiths, as any who had examined their spears knew: they would soon enough fathom how to put carbines to rights again. 'When do you ride, Serjeant-Major?' asked Piet. 'As soon as I can get Jobie Wainwright into the saddle.' Armstrong turned to Somervile. 'Sir, will you call in Corporal Hardy?' Somervile nodded, realizing he was less use to Armstrong for the moment than was Piet Doorn. Such things were important for a man to recognize, and he was thankful he had learned the necessity of such humility in his early days in Mysore. 'I had better despatch my mount, too. Is it safe to risk a shot d'ye think?' Armstrong thought the word 'safe' hardly apt, but he saw no objection to a shot. 'Piet?' Piet Doorn shook his head, indicating that he too could see no reason to deny the animal a clean death.

Somervile doubled off breathily to recall the remaining able- bodied dragoon, before returning to his stricken mount. The little arab was quietly pulling at a clump of wild ginger the other side of a bushwillow tree, just out of sight of Armstrong and the others, her near foreleg off the ground, the hamstring severed. Somervile detested the business, always. For a dragoon it was, he supposed (and had indeed occasionally observed), a routine of his occupation; but for him it was somehow a debasement. He held no truck with Scripture (or rather, he admired much of its poetry while disputing its authority), but he took powerfully the responsibility of dominion, and the horse was, to his mind, the noblest of 'every living thing that moveth upon the earth'. He took off the saddle, and then had to check his pistol (he could not remember whether he had successfully reloaded it or not), but the little mare stood obligingly. When he was sure he had got the new-fangled percussion cap on the nipple properly, he took a good hold of her reins, short, on the offside, put the pistol muzzle to the fossa above her right eye, aiming at the bottom of the left ear, closed his eyes and fired. The mare dropped like a stone onto her left side, the reins running through Somervile's hands while his eyes were still closed, the off foreleg catching him painfully on the shin. He returned to the others limping slightly. Armstrong was not inclined to draw too unfavourable a conclusion: he had known old hands botch a despatch, and in any case, Somervile had chosen to do it himself rather than ask another. For that he could respect a man - even one who got himself kicked by a dead horse. 'Well done, sir. Horrible duty to perform. Such a bonny little thing an' all.' Somervile cleared his throat. 'Indeed, Serjeant-Major.' He had bought the arab for the endurance that the breed was noted for, but also in truth for her looks. There was not a better-looking horse in Cape Town. 'I wonder what to do with the saddle.' It was a good leather-panelled one, worth a deal more than the military issue, but this was not the time to be changing horses, let alone saddles. 'Sir, I think it best if you leave it be. It might just buy us a minute or so when the Xhosa come on it.' Somervile nodded. 'Sir, will you lash up Serjeant Wainwright's bridle to lead him? Run a rein through the bit 'stead of the halter, though. If he passes out and the horse takes fright it'll be a deal easier to keep a hold.' Somervile nodded again, and made to do Armstrong's bidding, for he understood the purpose well enough (whatever his un acquaintance with the particulars of cavalry work, he was no greenhorn when it came to horses). He unfastened the bridoon rein on the offside, slipped it over the trooper's head and under its chin, then back through the offside bit ring, which would leave Wainwright with the curb reins. He presented himself ready for duty with some satisfaction. Armstrong, having replaced the compress on Wainwright's wound and bound the barrel sash even tighter, stood up, turned to Somervile, and sighed. 'I'm sorry, sir, I should have said: would you lead from the nearside, please?' Somervile looked puzzled. 'But I cannot then use my sword and pistol arm so freely.' 'I know, sir,' replied Armstrong, as Corporal Hardy hauled Wainwright to his feet. 'But, with respect, Wainwright here will be able to.' Somervile's jaw fell. He was being written off as worse than an invalid - all because he dropped the pistol ball. 'It's just, sir, that it's Wainwright's job, this. We're the ones in uniform. We're the escort.' Somervile could scarcely credit it. Three dragoons, one of them only half conscious, and a burgher, a part-civilian - that was what the escort amounted to. And yet Serjeant-Major Armstrong was insisting on the proprieties as if the entire regiment were on parade. Doubtless were there a trumpeter he would have him sound the advance! But there could be no argument.

In a quarter of an hour they were ready to move, the bodies of Corporal Allott and Private Parks lashed across the saddle of Parks's trooper, the lead rope in Armstrong's hands, with another around the captive. Then came Somervile leading Wainwright's mount, with Piet Doorn fifty yards behind, and Corporal Hardy scouting the same distance ahead. It would be scarcely true scout work, though (Armstrong was only too aware of it). In any sort of country, let alone such trappy country as here, the leading scouts needed twice the space to do their work properly. The same went for the rearguard. And there were no flankers. All Hardy would be able to do, at best, was give the others a few seconds in which to take aim or throw up a guard. A few seconds. To Armstrong, however, it was better than nothing: a few seconds might allow him to get to Somervileside, before turning to fight off the attack. What more to it was there than that? He raised his right arm and motioned to Corporal Hardy to advance. Turning to Somervile, he smiled grimly. 'Very well, sir, just a couple of miles.' Somervile nodded. Serjeant Wainwright's face was bereft of all colour, even the browning of the summer's sun, but he was conscious enough to gather up the reins - no doubt instinctively, Somervile supposed. The hoofs sounded like so many drums on that parched earth. A little flock of Cape starlings left a nearby kiaat tree noisily. They must have sat out the Xhosa attack, or else alighted soon after, he reckoned; why did they take off now? He was certain that in India the branches would by this time be full of vultures. A weasel ran across the track between him and Armstrong a dozen yards ahead, its white-striped back arched like a cat at bay. His trooper stopped dead. 'Just a couple of miles,' he thought, wearily, as he dug in his spurs to get her moving again. It was strange, this country. Not at all like India, yet so different from England as to make a man wonder powerfully about the nature of Creation. Why was there no native civilization in Africa? There might conceivably be something in the middle of the great dark continent - ex Africa semper aliquid novi - but he imagined the place was so vast as to be unexplorable inside a hundred years, even if they set the whole of the Ordnance Survey to the task. Whatever an explorer might find, however, he could not suppose it likely to approach the advancement that India had known even five centuries ago. The savagery of the kind they were seeing here was as primitive as ... well, if Mr Hobbes had wished to demonstrate his theories, he could have found no more brutish state of nature than here. Why, there was not a single road but that was cut by a colonist; even the track they rode along now was made by the beasts of the field. The trouble was- Piet Doorn's big American rifle went off like a cannon. And then two more shots, less thunderous - his pistols, perhaps. Armstrong turned to look, without halting. The rifle boomed again. Armstrong nodded with grim satis faction: fifteen or twenty seconds to reload - a sure sign that Piet had things in hand (it certainly helped to have a breech-loader in the saddle). Warning shots, maybe? There was silence for a full minute but for the plodding hoofs. Armstrong cursed he had not a man to drop back to see the business. He could only wait for Piet to canter in and tell him.

Another minute passed. He felt like handing the two lead-ropes - Parks's trooper's and the one binding the captive - to Somervile and going himself. But that would have been asking too much. It was the deucedest luck that this stretch of the track was so thread with trees: he could see nothing to the rear beyond fifty yards. Then he had his answer. Instead of Piet Doorn, it was Xhosa who came down the trail - warily, almost stealthily, though not concealing themselves. One of them carried Piet's rifle; others brandished his pistols. Had they known how to load them? Now was the reckoning. Perhaps they could make a run for it; or threaten to put a bullet into the captive's brains? But these savages had shown no sentiment for one another before. And how could they outrun them, making the river without being cut off? There were probably Xhosa waiting for them astride the track even now. Armstrong got down from the saddle and handed the reins to Somervile. 'If you wouldn't mind, sir? Just for a short while.' Somervile looked appalled. 'Sarn't-Major, what-' 'Be so good as to hold the reins, sir. That's all.' Armstrong glanced at Serjeant Wainwright as he pushed the captive to his knees and bound his legs and ankles with the rest of the lead-rope. 'Jobie, I want you to take a good deep breath of this fine Cape air and cover me with that excellent firearm His Majesty gave you.' 'I will, sir,' gasped Wainwright, reaching painfully for his carbine. 'This is madness,' said Somervile, beneath his breath, looping the reins of the serjeant-major's trooper round his wrist, trying to work out how he might do as he had been bidden while taking some more active part in the destruction of the enemy. Armstrong unshipped his carbine from the saddle sleeve, coolly checking it was ready, and began to walk back along the track. The Xhosa halted, as if puzzled - as if it were not at all what they had expected from the men on horses. At forty yards Armstrong dropped to one knee, took careful aim resting an elbow on his left foreleg, and fired. It was the limit of accurate shooting for the carbine, but the Xhosa with the rifle crumpled and fell backwards, dead. Two more Xhosa appeared - six now. Armstrong cursed as he bit off the cartridge, took the ball between his teeth, tapped a little powder into the pan, and emptied the charge into the barrel. Still the Xhosa made no move. Armstrong spat in the ball and brought the carbine to the aim again without tamping, firing a split second later and felling another of Piet Doorn's slayers. The five that remained suddenly woke. They began again to close, with the same wary walk, half crouching, gesturing with their spears. Armstrong knew he had one more shot before they would rush him, and then there would be four, and Wainwright would have one of them, and he, the non-commissioned officer in charge of Somervile's escort, would have the other three - one with the pistol at his belt, the other two (if they pressed home the attack) with the edge of the sword. He fired. Another Xhosa fell. He laid down his carbine to draw his sabre, transferring it to his left hand, then took the pistol from his waist belt with his right and cocked the hammer. At a dozen yards Wainwright's carbine fired. The biggest of the four Xhosa clutched at his chest, stumbled, then fell. Armstrong levelled his pistol at the middle Xhosa - twice the distance he wanted, but he needed time to transfer the sabre to his right hand. He pulled the trigger, the hammer fell. There was no spark. Nothing. The Xhosa checked, but seeing there was no more to fear from the pistol, came on, crouching lower, animal-intent. Armstrong switched pistol for sabre, coolly weighing the blade as he took stock of the new challenge: three Xhosa, three spears - odds he would not have faced willingly. They edged towards him. He could see their eyes - murderous as the tiger's. He stayed on one knee. They checked again. He sprang - left, well left, to the flank of the right-hand Xhosa, cutting savagely, backhand, tearing open his shoulder. He leapt thence at the furthest before he could turn, slicing deep through the back of his neck. The remaining Xhosa spun round and feinted with his shield. But Armstrong knew the ruse. He dropped to one knee and drove his sabre under the shield into the gut with savage force. Two more points finished off the other two, leaving Armstrong on his feet, heart pounding, surveying the bloody outcome of twenty years' drill and gymnasium. Somervile could not speak, such was his admiration: Armstrong Agonistes.