Soldier of the Queen (35 page)

Buller, commanding the Frontier Light Horse, a body of volunteers raised at King William’s Town, was just to the north, a strange man with a terrible temper, tremendous enthusiasm, a courage verging on the insane and a curious ability to inspire his men. Tall, strong and wiry, he enjoyed his comfort and carried cases of wine with him on patrol. Evelyn Wood, in command of another column, was his complete antithesis, a short mournful man with a tendency to catch whatever ailment came within a mile of him. He had won the Victoria Cross in the Crimea with the Navy, but, far from being a committed sailor, had eventually transferred to the cavalry, and, no more committed to the cavalry than the Navy, had then exchanged into the infantry. His gift for hard work was legendary.

In command of a unit known as the North Cape Horse, Colby found himself having to adapt to the methods of a group of colonials noted for their independence and not given to taking orders. Inevitably known like the 19th as Goff’s Gamecocks, they wore brown corduroy uniforms with red stripes down their breeches and a red puggaree round a slouch hat. They were an unmilitary-looking lot made even more unmilitary by having accepted anybody who could ride and shoot and bring his own horse. Some of them wore no other uniform than a strip of red cloth attached to any headgear they happened to be wearing, whether it were a slouch hat, a top hat, a solar topee, or a forage cap scrounged from a member of the Imperial forces. They were excellent horsemen, however, and excellent shots, and seemed more than content to have Colby to tell them what to do, if only because he knew something about tactics while they relied entirely on their instincts as hunters. They were used for scouting, for covering the activities of the regulars, or for rounding up the Gcamenas as they were flushed out of their patches of scrub. At this work they were considerably better than the half-company of Imperial troops he had, most of whom were raw recruits.

It wasn’t difficult to lose all count of time and Colby rarely had the chance to think of Augusta and the children, established at Cape Town with Tyas Ackroyd and his wife, Annie, to look after them. Cape Town was beautiful, the climate was perfect, the house they had rented was large and safe, and there were beaches within reach to which Ackroyd could drive them in the hired carriage. Nevertheless, it seemed odd to be going to war with his wife and children somewhere in the background.

The fighting, in fact, spluttered and sparkled like a damp squib, with the Gcamena chief, Gendili, believed to be hidden in the bush at Kammansinga, an area of low flat-topped hills which had become the boundary between the Bantus pushing south and the advancing fringe of the Boer civilisation pushing north. With his column, Colby also had four brass seven-pounder muzzle-loaders commanded by a lieutenant of Royal Artillery and a few native soldiers who wore rags or even loin cloths and carried ancient Snider breechloaders, assegais or merely knobkerries. Fortunately, his North Cape Horse were experienced settlers who were skilled enough with rifles to be capable of drilling the eye out of a springbok without damaging the rest of the meat.

‘Gendili rides a white horse,’ Colby told them. ‘It’s a sign of his status. But he’s deformed, so, if you find an animal with the saddle propped up on one side, then Gendili’s near somewhere.’

As the Imperial troops were brought into line facing the patch of bush, he could see they were nervous. They were very young and their training had taught them to fight in line under the steadying hand of their officers. This new kind of fighting was unsettling work and they were uncertain, while their captain, a hesitant man called Edwards, was not the officer to help them much.

As he reported to Colby that all was ready, Colby gestured. ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘Off you go.’

As the soldiers in their high-crowned sun helmets began to move forward, their red coats made a splash of colour against the tawny veldt. In front of them their officers walked slowly, sword in one hand, revolver in the other. The fact that they chose to carry both showed their anxiety, and the men behind them were not hurrying.

The seven-pounders were standing in the open on either side of the bush, their barrels trained on the land between the far edge of the bush and the next patch. Behind each pair of guns waited a squadron of North Cape Horse, drab in their brown and red, waiting for the dash forward when the Gcamenas broke cover.

The sun was hot as the young soldiers entered the bush and were lost to sight. Colby knew exactly what they were thinking. In there, friends and comrades disappeared, and a man found himself alone in tangled vegetation through which he could barely make his way, while behind every bush there was the likelihood of a Gcamena with an assegai waiting to rip open his belly or blow off his head with an ancient weapon as likely as not loaded with old nails. There was an even chance, in fact, that the first he would know of his presence was when he trod on him, and the soldiers were understandably nervous.

Glancing at his watch, he saw that two hours had passed. It seemed to be taking a long time to flush out Gendili and, behind him, the mounted men were growing restless. There were one or two horses with thrush, one or two windsuckers you could hear half a mile away, and several weavers which couldn’t gallop straight enough to stay in a five-acre field, but their riders knew them and they were an enthusiastic lot itching to do something.

The sun was high now and it was bakingly hot, and he could see shimmers of heat rising from the barrels of the little seven-pounders. Cantering slowly to the group on the opposite side of the scrub, he still saw nothing and as the time went on he began to grow worried. Surely to God Gendili and his men weren’t clever enough to swallow up a whole half-company of Imperial troops! He was just turning to speak to the officer in command of the guns when a single shot rang out, echoing among the folds of the hills behind them.

‘Here we go!’

There was a sudden flurry of activity in the bush in front and he saw red coats moving, but, instead of advancing deeper into the bush, the soldiers seemed to be heading back. One of them, his sun helmet lost, emerged without his rifle, holding his hands to his face, the blood running between his fingers. As he staggered about, half-blinded by buckshot, the entire half-company burst out, all apparently trying to help him to safety.

Kicking at his horse’s flanks, Colby arrived in a fury. ‘Get that man to the rear!’ he roared. ‘
Two
of you! Not the whole damned half-company! Mr Edwards, get your men into line!’

As the wounded man was helped away, the soldiers formed an uncertain line. They kept glancing back at the bush, eyeing it uneasily.

‘Do you call that a line?’ Colby snapped. ‘Mr Edwards, tell your sergeants to make them look like soldiers! And then I’ll have you and your officers here. I want to talk to you.’

As the soldiers were bawled into better order, he glared furiously at the group of officers.

‘God damn it,’ he snarled. ‘You’re fighting uneducated, badly armed savages. What are you hesitating about? The only way to do the job is to show some sort of drive. You will go in again and this time I will lead. I shall expect you to remain close behind me.’

As the officers glanced uneasily at each other and went back to their men, Colby moved to his horsemen and informed them what was happening.

‘Half an hour from now,’ he announced, ‘you can expect Gendili and his men to appear at the other side.’

Turning his horse, he took up a position in front of the line of soldiers. ‘Let it be known,’ he said, ‘that I shall punish any man who drops back unless he has a very good excuse.’

There was no question of hesitation this time. As they pushed through the scrub, there were shouts, and black faces popped up to stare at them, then the Gcamenas turned and began to run. ‘Now!’ Colby yelled, and the line swept forward, caught by their own enthusiasm.

Only in front of Colby was there any attempt at resistance. A tall twisted black man with a leopard skin round his waist and the headring of a Zulu stood up and levelled an ancient musket. As the battered weapon exploded, Colby’s hat flew off and he felt the sting of a wound in his neck, then he hit the man over the head with Micah Love’s great gun. As he collapsed, Colby instructed two of the men following him to disarm him and drag him clear.

‘Alive,’ he pointed out. ‘It looks like Gendili.’

As the Gcamenas bolted like woodcock down the wind, from the far side of the bush, the seven-pounders loosed off a few shells. They did no harm but kicked up a lot of dust and smoke and scattered a last attempt to stand and fire, then the North Cape Horse swept down. The casualties on both sides were remarkably light: one Cape Horse poked across the ribs with an assegai, one of the Imperials shot in the face and Colby bleeding from a deep wound on the neck caused by a bent nail fired from Gendili’s rusty muzzle-loader.

‘That’s the second time I’ve been wounded by a bloody bent nail,’ he said bitterly.

With Gendili’s little revolt ended, Colby found himself in a rented house in East London, enjoying the warm dry weather and the free and easy life of the colony. Ackroyd had arrived post-haste by sea to look after him until Augusta and Annie Ackroyd could muster the trunks and join them. The only drawback was the number of women who were taking an interest in the wounded.

The owner of the house next door was the widow of a sugar planter called le Roux who had clearly taken a fancy to Colby and kept appearing with fruit and sweetmeats and made a point in the evening of opening her windows and singing to the piano. She looked remarkably like Georgina Cosgro, her face too plump, her mouth too soft and cherry-like, and she took to reading to him as he stretched out painfully in a cane chair. It was Ackroyd who sorted her out, appearing with a bottle and spoon and announcing to Colby that it was time for his medicine.

‘What bloody medicine?’ Colby snapped. ‘I’m not taking medicine.’

‘This is the one for your ’ysteria, sir.’

‘What hysteria?’

Ackroyd smiled. ‘Your family ’ave always suffered from it, sir,’ he said. ‘You know they ’ave. The number of times I’ve ’ad to tie the general down when ’e was foamin’ at the mouth! You know it runs in the family. It was the disease ’e picked up in India, wasn’t it? You know what them Indian women are like–’

As Mrs le Roux vanished, Colby stared up indignantly.

‘That was you at your brilliant best, Tyas,’ he said sarcastically.

‘Well, you told me to keep the women off you,’ Ackroyd said calmly. ‘And you often told me when we was boys that if you wanted to clear a railway carriage all you ’ad to do was cough and spit an’ pretend to ’ave consumption.’ Ackroyd sniffed. ‘Besides, Mrs G will be ’ere soon, and you’d ’ave looked fine entertainin’ that one when she walked in the door, wouldn’t you?’

By the time Augusta appeared, she had gained a great deal of experience and was beginning to see what being an army wife was really like. The children were already used to travelling by steam-train, ox-wagon, horse-drawn cart, carriage or even on horseback, and she had become an expert at packing clothes, goods and treasures.

By this time the whole army was back in East London and Thesiger was reporting the end of the war to Whitehall, but trusting there would be no objection if he retained his staff because there would probably be more work for them before long.

‘Against Cetzewayo,’ Colby explained as Augusta bent over him to dress the wound on his neck. ‘Thesiger’s just preparing for every eventuality.’

Augusta frowned. Will
you
have to go?’

‘If it comes to trouble.’

‘And do
they
shoot rusty nails, too? Because this one has turned bad. I expect you used a filthy handkerchief to dab at it. You ought to apply for sick leave in England.’

Turning to disagree, Colby got a dab of antiseptic in his eye, and as he jerked his head away, rubbing at the tears with a grubby handkerchief, Augusta stared at it scornfully.

‘I thought so,’ she said. ‘You’ll probably get mange now and go blind. What’s
wrong
with applying for leave? The war’s over.’

‘Evelyn Wood’s been in the saddle all day for weeks,’ Colby said. ‘With a temperature, swellings in his groins and armpits, and his skin peeling off.
He
hasn’t applied for leave.’

She studied him angrily. ‘Why do they have to go and fight another war when they’ve only just finished this one?’

‘Scarcity of land.’

‘In Africa, for God’s sake?’

‘Grazing land. Well-water and grassy flatlands. They’re essential to both black and white. The Boers are after Zululand, but the Zulus have had their herds ravaged by lung sickness and the tsetse fly, so they’re after the borderlands of the Transvaal.’

‘Can’t they live in peace?’

He shrugged. ‘It was hoped so when we annexed the Transvaal, but the Zulus are an independent nation with a standing army of forty thousand, run by a king who’s only a savage and willing to have a go at anybody. All the same, the political people have backed them over the disputed territory for fifteen years and the boundary commission says it belongs to them, so that should quieten things down.’

‘I think there
will
be a war.’

Colby lifted his head warily. Augusta had her own ways of coming to conclusions. He could never fathom how she arrived at them but she usually came up with the right answers, even if for the wrong reasons. ‘Why?’

‘I saw Aubrey Cosgro’s wife, Hetty, in Cape Town. She had a house near Wynberg.’

‘Why’s she here?’

‘Because Aubrey’s here, too! That surprises you, doesn’t it?’

It did. ‘Go on. I’m sure there’s more.’

‘He’s come to join Thesiger’s army.’

‘Aubrey Cosgro
?’ Colby gave a neigh of laughter, and she frowned.

‘It signifies something, all the same,’ she said. ‘She told me his father’s money and her father’s title had got him Wolseley’s ear and he was hoping for a staff appointment. She also let it drop that George Morrow was out here, too.’

She looked at him, remembering the vituperation she’d had to endure after the Ashanti War. He didn’t disappoint her.