Fire Across the Veldt (2 page)

Fonthill grinned and looked at Jenkins, standing only five foot four inches tall but, menacingly, almost as broad as he was tall. ‘Because, my little giant,’ he said, ‘you’re so easily overlooked, look
you.’ He turned to his wife. ‘Alice, if I may say so, you were bloody marvellous. I think you saved the day, there.’

Without looking up from where she was scribbling, Alice nodded. ‘Yes, you may indeed say so.’ She tossed her head. ‘Barbaric toad, threatening to kill Mzingeli. He wasn’t even holding the bloody rifle. I had forgotten how bad these Afrikaners are with natives.’ She looked across at Mzingeli, who stood listening to the exchange with a faint smile lingering on his very black, seamed face. ‘Sorry, Mzingeli,’ she said. ‘I hope all of that didn’t upset you.’

The tracker shook his head. ‘Ah no, Nkosana. Reminded me of the old days, when I was in the Transvaal. Not good, though. Not good.’

‘Certainly, not good.’ Then Alice looked across at Simon and gestured to her notes. ‘But I’ve got the first interview ever with this famous commando leader. Darling, it’s what you’ve always called a shovel and the Americans call a scoop. It’s an exclusive. He’s told me of their determination to go on until the bitter end and, what’s more,’ she waved her pencil in the air in triumph, ‘he revealed that they’re going to invade the Cape Colony and raise the rebels there. He didn’t mean to, but he did.’

Simon Fonthill gazed at his wife with affection. The sun was now setting quickly, peeping through a purple cloud and sending beams of light low across the plain. Alice stood smiling, her face illuminated, emphasising her high cheekbones and the bronzed skin – not for her the pale aversion to sunshine of the Indian memsahib. Her grey eyes were alight with delight at her achievement and Simon revelled once more at his good fortune in marrying such a blithe, unquenchable, free spirit. She stood there now, dressed in a white blouse, riding breeches, with an old green scarf tied around her fair hair, her legs thrust apart
in a masculine fashion and yet looking delightfully, intriguingly feminine. Alice was now forty-five – his age – but only the rather intrusive squareness of her jaw prevented her from being classically beautiful. Their relationship had not been without its vicissitudes. She had married unhappily for the first time and, newly widowed, had rushed into his arms only to see their child stillborn, with no hope of a second pregnancy. Since then, fifteen years ago, they had farmed together and fought together, with Jenkins, in a series of adventures, she reporting for the
Morning Post
, he and the Welshman following their sporadic careers as freelance army scouts. Now they had landed once again in South Africa, where they had first served together in the Zulu War, she as a young, untried war correspondent and he as an equally young subaltern, with Jenkins as his servant.

Fonthill returned her smile. They made a handsome couple in their young, healthy, middle age. At five foot nine inches he was broad-shouldered, with only an incipient trace of corpulence now just beginning to break the slimness of a body hardened by years of farming and campaigning. His fair hair was still full, his cheeks as tanned as those of his wife and his brown eyes retained a slightly withdrawn gentleness unusual in a man of good birth who had spent so much time in remote corners of the British Empire. The only obvious evidence he carried of past hardship, however, lay with the nose which, years before, had been broken by a Pathan musket and had been left slightly hooked, giving him a predatory air, that of a hunter, slightly uncertain, perhaps, but one still seeking his prey.

Opposite the pair Jenkins stood loosely at ease, as befitted an ex-soldier of Her Majesty’s 24th Regiment of Foot. Lugubrious, perhaps, was the term that best described him. Known usually only
as ‘352’, the last three figures of his army number to distinguish him from the other Jenkinses in this most Welsh of regiments, he had met Fonthill at the regimental hospital at Brecon and had become the young subaltern’s servant-batman, mentor and friend, crossing the divisions of class in this most hierarchical of periods in Britain’s cultural history. He was four years older than Simon but no grey strands had had the audacity to push through the thicket of black hair that stood up vertically on his head, nor in the great moustache that swept from ear to ear across his face. Five inches shorter than Fonthill, he was hugely broad, exuding great strength, a fighting machine at home in barrack room, bar and battlefield anywhere in the world.

The quartet was completed by Mzingeli, who now selected a blanket from the tangled tent on the ground and draped it round the shoulders of Alice, who was beginning to shiver as the sun slipped away. Of indeterminate age – although the white hair tightly curled to the scalp showed him to be by far the oldest of the four – he was also the tallest. Slim as a flagstaff, his name meant ‘The Hunter’ and he looked the part. He was dressed in old corduroy trousers, boots that had seen better days and a loose flannel shirt. His face, under its wide-brimmed Boer hat, was not without nobility, for his lips were thin and his nose long, with flared nostrils. Of the Malakala tribe, his black eyes seemed to carry all the sadness of his race. He had met the other three when they had hired him to track for them as they hunted in the far north of the Transvaal in the 1880s, then sharing in their adventures as they crossed into Matabeleland with Cecil G. Rhodes’s invading force, before agreeing to manage the Fonthills’ farm in the newly created colony of Rhodesia. Summoned by Simon’s telegraph, he had met the others after they had landed in Cape Town,
for Fonthill knew that he would be needed in the tasks that lay ahead of them all.

Mzingeli’s draping of the blanket stung Jenkins into life. ‘Right, then,’ he said, rubbing his hands, ‘better get this bleedin’ tent up, then – ah, sorry Miss Alice. Language again. Sorry.’

Alice tugged the blanket tighter in frustration. ‘352, if you apologise for your disgraceful language again, I shall scream. How many more times have I to remind you that I am a brigadier’s daughter. As a reporter, I have covered the British army’s campaigns in Zululand, Afghanistan, East Africa, Egypt, the Sudan, the Transvaal and China, so I am well acquainted with army terminology. So do stop bleedin’ apologising. D’you hear?’

Jenkins had the grace to look crestfallen. ‘Ah, yes, miss – missus. Sorry. I’ll put the ordinary tent up, then.’

‘No, don’t do that.’ Fonthill extricated his compass and took a bearing on the horsemen who were fast disappearing in the twilight towards the kopje.

‘Blimey, bach sir.’ Jenkins looked woebegone. ‘It’s September, look you, which means the rainy season’s just round the corner. If we don’t freeze ’ere out in this veldt place, we’ll drown in one of them sudden storms. You remember ’em?’

‘Yes, of course, I do. And you have a point. But we’re not going to camp.’

‘What we goin’ to do, then?’

The others were now looking at Fonthill in some consternation. The wind that had made Alice shiver was not unusual in this early spring, for the veldt of the Orange Free State stood some five to six thousand feet above sea level.

Alice pulled the blanket tightly round her. ‘Yes, Simon,’ she repeated. ‘What are we going to do, then?’

‘We’re going to get our horses back – and our rifles, too, if we can.’

‘What?’ Jenkins’s jaw dropped for a moment and then his face gradually segued into a wide grin. ‘Of course we are,’ he said. ‘Of course we are. I should ’ave known.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous, Simon.’ Alice stamped her foot. ‘There are probably two hundred horsemen camping behind that kopje. There is no way you can drive this stupid mule cart up there and demand our horses back. This time we
will
all be shot.’

‘I’m not going to ask for them back. I’m going to take them. Now …’ He gazed around him. The sun had slipped down behind the purple cloud and the horizon that it hid and a soft, velvet light had fallen across the plain, deepening as he looked. Only a few other kopjes – black, flat-topped rocky hills that rose vertically – gave features to the plain and they were now slipping out of sight as the darkness grew. They were now quite alone again on this endless veldt.

His tone sharpened. ‘352, get the revolvers from Alice’s bag. Good thing we hid them. Mzingeli.’

‘Nkosi?’

‘I’ve got a compass bearing on the kopje so we can find it in the dark. But do you think you can track the horsemen and find where the commando is camped? They won’t be riding on in the dark.’

‘Better when moon comes up. But I find them, I think.’

‘Good man. But I hope the moon’s not too bright. We will wait until it is properly dark, then we’ll move across to the kopje.’

‘Simon!’ Alice looked like some chastising governess as she stood frowning, the blanket wrapped tightly around her. ‘Let us camp for
the night and then get in the cart early in the morning and make for that hoped-for train and then get on to Pretoria where I can file my story. For God’s sake, you can’t take on a whole Boer commando with three men, three handguns and a feeble woman.’

He grinned at her. ‘I can’t see a
feeble
woman anywhere. And I don’t intend to take them on. We shall steal the horses. Now, put the tent back on the cart and let’s make for the kopje. Then Mzingeli will have to take over. Move now.’

Mzingeli urged the mules into life and the two men walked alongside Alice as she sat in the cart. There Simon outlined his plan such as it was.

‘The Boers,’ he said as they trudged along, ‘are magnificent horsemen, probably the best shots in the world and good soldiers, up to a point. What they lack, however, is discipline – the discipline of a trained soldier. They fight like tigers but I remember from the Transvaal War that on the simple bread-and-butter things of soldiering they fall down. And why shouldn’t they? They’re farmers who fight, that’s all. So I am gambling that they will not have set proper guards on the horses. They will have tethered or hobbled them so that they can’t stray but, hopefully, will have set only one or, at the most, two sentries. After all, they believe that we will be no threat to them and they know that the nearest British force is ten miles at least to the south, trying to fix the broken rails with the armoured train.’

‘So …?’ asked Jenkins.

‘So we leave Alice at the foot of the kopje with the cart and we three steal up on them, put the guard or guards out of action – although no shooting, mind – and lead the horses quietly away.’

‘Humph!’ The snort came from Alice. ‘Even if this works, they will
find the horses gone, and come after us. And, slowed down by this damned cart, they will easily overtake us before we get to the railway line.’

Simon shook his head. ‘We won’t go north, towards Pretoria, because they will expect us to go that way. And we will leave the cart and set the mules free. We will go – on horseback, because we can make better time that way – to the south and rejoin the train. I hear that commandos rarely take black trackers with them so I am gambling that they won’t pick up our spoor until it is too late.’

Jenkins nodded. ‘Very good, bach sir. That sounds a good plan.’

‘Now that’s just fine,’ said Alice. ‘There are four of us and three horses. Tell me, pray. Do I walk?’

‘Only if you want to, darling. No, you share a horse with me. Uncomfortable, but we only have about ten miles to go.’

‘With respect, bach sir,’ said Jenkins, ‘I think Miss Alice should ride with me. That way she won’t fall off.’

‘When you say “with respect”, 352, you damn well don’t mean it. I’m a much better horseman than I used to be.’

‘Ummph! But she should still ride with me.’

‘Oh, very well.’

They proceeded in silence until eventually a wan moon rose, bringing the kopje suddenly into focus before them. It stood like a black, squat thumb rising from the plain but, as they neared, they could see that a track of sorts wound upwards between the fissured rocks. Mzingeli looked at it and at the ground and shook his head.

‘Not that way,’ he said. He led them around the base of the kopje until its verticality gave way to a more gentle incline and a much wider track threading its way upwards. ‘Here,’ he said. ‘Boers like to
camp high so that they have view of plain. We keep very quiet now.’

‘Right,’ whispered Simon. He turned to his wife. ‘Stay here with the cart and take this.’ He gave her one of the Webley revolvers. ‘It is fully loaded. But I recommend you don’t fire at the Boers with it. It might annoy them. If we are not back by daylight, make your way back along the railway track the way we came until you meet the train.’

‘I’d rather come with you.’

‘No.’ He grinned. ‘Can’t have a feeble woman with us. If we are caught, then I doubt if the Boers will shoot us. They don’t like to be bogged down with prisoners, so they will probably slap our wrists and turn us loose again. In which case we shall be back where we started. But I intend to get those horses. Be careful, darling.’ He kissed her quickly and turned away. ‘Lead on, Mzingeli.’

Treading carefully in the semi-darkness, the three men began their climb. It was not arduous, for it seemed as though the Boers had not dismounted, although, in truth, Simon could see little sign of the party having come this way, for there was no soil or sand lining the track, only shreds of coarse grass struggling through the rocks. It betrayed no indentations. Mzingeli, however, showed no hesitation and continued to stride upwards.

After fifteen minutes, he held up his hand and waited for the others to join him. ‘Horses up just ahead,’ he whispered. ‘I smell them. I go alone now. Come back and tell you.’ And he was gone.

Jenkins crouched down next to Fonthill, his knife gleaming in his hand. ‘What’s the plan, then, bach sir?’

‘Put the knife away, 352. I don’t want any killing unless we absolutely have to. It depends how many guards there are. If there
is only one, I want you to creep up behind him, put a revolver at his head and tell him to be quiet. Here’s a gag and some tent cord. We will bind him and take the horses – but quietly, oh so quietly.’

‘An’ if there’s more than one guard?’

‘I’ll have to think again.’