Hervey 10 - Warrior (35 page)

Pampata had also observed; and she saw his look. She pulled at his shoulder. 'Come.'

Slowly, reluctantly, but knowing that he must, he did as Pampata bid, numb with the sense that a part of him had been torn away . . .

They were on their feet now, stumbling down a gulley towards a thicket of fig trees, Pampata leading. When they reached the bottom, a startled bush pig shot from the undergrowth, and between them, faster than Hervey could draw his sword or even sidestep. It jolted him awake like a carriage wheel in a pothole. He looked about, sabre in hand, as if wishing for an opponent with whom to test it, then turned for the cover of the fig trees, where Pampata was already concealing herself. Here he could think over his – their – predicament, see what actions lay open to them, decide his plan.

His first thoughts were whether Mbopa's men would be looking for them. Had he been observed with the half troop, before they had slipped into the kraal? If he had been, then Mbopa would soon discover that his body did not lie with the others. And what of Pampata? Would Mbopa know that she had come into the camp last night? He was thankful that her overalls and cape – mere functionals when she had put them on – served as some disguise. He concluded it was unlikely that Mbopa would suppose he was at large, but that his henchmen would be trying to find Pampata. That, indeed, was what she had said last night, that Mbopa would hunt her down – as he would Shaka's child?

But Pampata was not merely concealing herself; she was plucking fruit, filling the pouch that hung at her waist. He asked her why she did this, for the figs were unripened, hard as iron, and she answered – as far as he understood her – that if they chewed the pith of the fig it would ward off sleep, and that they would have need of its fortification if they were to travel to Ngwadi's kraal.

This assumption, Ngwadi's kraal their destination, he balked at. Somervile had not too many hours' start on them, and if there were any loose horses they would likely as not be following, for horses had a sort of sixth, herding, sense. Perhaps he would be able to catch one of them. In any case, Somervile would stay a while at Nonoti, the chief minister's kraal. He and Pampata would be able to make the ten miles or so before dark, and he was sure Somervile would not risk a night march from Nonoti. And even if Somervile did press on to Ngwadi's kraal, without resting at Nonoti, then he and Pampata would at least have Ngomane's protection, a man they could trust.

Except he was not certain he
could
trust this chief minister. That Pampata did was reassuring, but it was not definitive. It was only natural that she should be seeking someone of her own tribe in whom to trust, for it was not enough for the white man alone to be her protector. And what would be the outcome if they were to go to Nonoti, finding that Somervile had left already? They would not know the success or otherwise of his embassy until it was too late. And so, reluctantly, like Pampata he concluded that the safest course was that which was most arduous – Ngwadi's kraal.

'How do you know the way?' he tried.

In truth, Pampata had no difficulty with his Xhosa, for what they had to speak of was so elementary that the words were almost the same as her Zulu. And her Zulu, once he had accustomed his ear to the pronunciation, was not so very difficult to follow – especially since she seemed to have infinite patience in making herself understood.

She replied that she knew every hill and stream, that she could take him there by night, even.

He studied her for a moment; a considerable moment. A hundred miles was a prodigious distance. But it was not such an impossible thing to believe, perhaps, for did he not know the Great Plain in Wiltshire as well? It was not a hundred miles – not even fifty – but its folds and ridges, which might look the same to a stranger's eye, were to him as the churches and statues of London were to a native of that place. Yes, he would trust her to lead him to Ngwadi's kraal. And if there were a moon as good as last night's, he might even trust her to lead him when it was dark.What perils an African night might bring, he had better not imagine.

XIX
DADEWETHU

Later

Not only did Pampata know the way – (she hesitated not once in their first dozen miles) – she knew how to cross ground. She avoided skylines, keeping lower than would a warrior crossing the same country, for she expected they would be followed, or even intercepted. She told Hervey not to worry on this account, however, for she would detect Mbopa's men long before they detected them.

He believed her. She possessed something that compelled belief. He made her show him their new line when they reached a landmark on which they had just marched, but beyond that he found himself following her – and quite literally, for no matter how much he quickened his pace, Pampata remained at least an arm's length in front of him. They had no conversation: Hervey scarce had breath to keep up (and he could not claim the extra weight of sabre and pistol, for Pampata marched – half ran – with nothing on her feet). When they rested, just after midday, the sun hot, it was by a spring in a hollow on the side of a dry valley, and he marvelled at her hale condition.

She said they paused only for water, but Hervey insisted they remain longer. Three hours at a pace between walk and trot – he would certainly rest his troop horses after such a stretch. And he wanted to spy out the land lest they were being followed, or about to be intercepted. He wished he had his telescope.

But there was neither heat-haze nor mist to penetrate, and he was able to see as far as the lie of the land would allow – see the beasts of the field (there were surprisingly few), but no sign of Mbopa's men. No sign of human movement at all. Either they rested or else followed the same method of traversing the country, unseen. But why would they take any but the direct route? They had no need to follow their trail, for they surely knew the destination. No, he felt sure that if they were being followed they remained undetected still, their pursuers a comfortable distance behind them.

He felt hungry suddenly. How
would
they eat? They would be well enough today, but it would go hard with them tonight, an empty belly. It could be borne, but a second day and they would begin to feel fatigue. They might find ripe fruit, although it was not the season, except that here the seasons were not as they were in England. Fruit, however unseasonal, would be better than nothing, for it would stop the colic (so long as they did not eat too much), but no amount of fruit was substitute for meat when it came to wind and limb, and he could not risk a shot to bring down game. But he had gone hungry before. It was a commonplace of the service: no commissary, however diligent, could keep an army in constant supply of fresh rations. And even the standby, biscuit, ran short from time to time. Before Waterloo he had had nothing in his belly for the best part of two days.

With few words, they resumed the trek in the direction of the sun, and slightly north. The veld before them was spring-green, less broken and scrub-covered than that which the party had first traversed on their march to Shaka's kraal, and spotted with brilliant patches of yellow, a flower he did not know, without distinction but its pleasing colour. Here and there was a splash of orange-red, the solitary fire lily, and he marked that there were now deer – antelope – grazing at some distance. But there were none of the
nyamakaza,
the wild beasts, that Johnson had been so keen to see.

Johnson
. . . He felt sick in his gut at what had befallen him. They had been together so long. They had been friends; so many happy hours shared. He could not imagine being without his stoic cheeriness, which had so often prompted him to second, and useful, thoughts. He forced the picture from his mind.

Pampata's gait was unlike any Hervey had seen before. She had discarded the overalls (concealed them in a thorn bush), but she kept the cloak about her, though the day was warm. It was her high step that intrigued him: the warriors of both the Xhosa and the Zulu, in their loping march, kept the foot low, daisy-cutting, expending as little effort as possible, their weight alone seeming to carry them forward. And the exertion in Pampata's lower body was matched by inactivity in the upper part, for she neither swung her arms nor flexed her shoulders. Yet this curious action neither impeded nor fatigued her.

For much of the time he was able to observe the action clearly, for she kept her distance very decidedly. But then, after an hour's march ('march' was unquestionably the pace she maintained; indeed, what any regiment of the Line would admit was a
forced
march), she allowed him to close with her.

Could she maintain the pace for a hundred miles? Pampata led a life of some luxury in the
isigodlo,
at least in terms of what most Zulu enjoyed. She had not been reduced, as others he had seen, by frequent childbirth – by
any
childbirth, according to Isaacs (and who but Shaka would have dared to father a child by Pampata?). She was the superior in physique of any of the serving-girls, which was, he supposed, why Shaka had first singled her out. She was not in the least run to fat, and her legs were of good length and shape, permitting a long, even stride in spite of her high-stepping action. She had, indeed, impressed all of them at that first meeting by her form as well as her air of authority. But a hundred miles . . .

'Do you have a wife and children?'

Her breaking silence, thus, took him by surprise. He asked her to repeat her question.

'I ask if you have a wife. And children.' She spoke the words slower, and louder, exactly as Hervey had when he was obliged to repeat a question of some
ryot
who had neither English nor Hindoostani.

He thought he understood:
inkosikazi, umntwana
– wife, child – were the same in Xhosa. '
Yebo, Nkosazana
. . . I have a wife and daughter.'

He would have been able to add, with a little effort, that he had
had
a wife, who had died, and that his new wife, of but a few months, was the widow of his late commanding officer, but he saw no cause. Instead he waited to see what line of enquiry she would now take.

She took none, however. It was as if she had learned all that there was to know of him. Perhaps she intended only to be civil, as might a fellow traveller in England? And perhaps his unwillingness to say more than was strictly required in answer disposed her to think that he wished no association?

They continued a full half-hour in silence, making two more miles as the crow flies, before Pampata stopped suddenly and dropped to her haunches.

Hervey peered hard to see what had arrested her, shielding his eyes against the lowering sun.

'
Intshe,
' she said, quietly.

'
Intshe?
' He did not recognize the word.

But Pampata did not look fearful. On the contrary.

'
Intshe
. . . It is not the best of time, but there may be
amaqanda.
'

He now saw. How had he
not
seen so large a bird? And he understood:
intshe
– ostrich;
amaqanda
– eggs? Was it the breeding season?

For the next twenty minutes they stalked it: crouching, watching, crawling, dashing, just as he had done as a boy on the Great Plain, the thrill of finding the lark's nest . . . Until at last Pampata was sure, when she rose to her feet and strode purposefully towards a scraping in the earth, perhaps six feet across, in which were eight or nine eggs, some broken, some half buried.

Pampata evidently sensed his puzzlement. 'Many ostriches share the one nest,' she explained.

They rifled the giant clutch as rudely as any wild predator. Pampata discarded several without breaking them; Hervey took one, despite her protest.

He reeled at the stench when he broke it, and threw it as far as he could. Pampata laughed – the first time he had seen her do so.

She handed him another, nodding encouragingly. He drew his sword, wanting to make a better break than the other he had managed. He cracked it cleanly, opened it in two equal halves and gave it back to her. She handed him another, and he broke it the same way.

She let the white trickle away, so that the yolk occupied almost the whole of one half-shell. Despite his hunger, he saw it was no true waste: although there was less yolk than white compared with a hen's egg, he reckoned it was at least the equal of two dozen he would have found in the henhouse in Wiltshire.

They ate their fill.

By the time the shadows were lengthening – longer now than the umbrella thorns which cast them – and the birds of the veld, large and small, were beginning to roost, Hervey calculated they had made not far short of twenty miles. He could feel it in his bones. He had but an elementary knowledge of the human skeleton and its muscles, but he knew where and how a ride across country made its demands, and likewise how that distance on foot told. Pampata showed no sign of the exertion. She seemed, indeed, to be in some sort of trance – not of the kind the witch doctor induced with his potions and spells, as if the body were possessed by some spirit of another place, but instead the product of the most singular concentration of mind (such was her determined intent to reach the kraal of Shaka's beloved). She refused rest. She said they could walk for another two hours before all light was gone, and that in a further three there would be a good moon, and that as long as there were stars to see by, they could continue their march.