The Horns of the Buffalo (26 page)

Simon shook his head. He was anxious to tell as few lies as possible. ‘His Majesty is gracious, but no British soldier is taught to fight with his hands. They have guns and cannon to do the fighting for them - although,' he gulped, ‘I have been forced to fight with the King's subjects this very day.'

Mapitha gave him a quick glance. As Simon's words were put to the King, his attitude and that of his inDunas changed immediately. The lounging ceased, the King sat up, picked up an assegai from his side and pointed it at the young man before him. He spoke one word.

‘Explain,' said Mapitha.

Taking a deep breath and speaking as clearly as he could, Simon told the story of the morning's ambush, emphasising that he had attempted to ride away from the patrol and had not fired until the spears had been thrown.

‘Did you kill any of the King's warriors?' asked Mapitha, putting the question himself. Simon did not like the way the question was posed.

‘I do not know if my bullets killed,' he said. ‘But I hit three men who were leading the attack, perhaps one more. I did not have a choice. If I had not fired my rifle, I would be dead now.' He turned to the King now and spoke to him directly. ‘Your Majesty, I was making my journey to see you. I was coming in peace. I did not expect to be attacked. I am sorry if I killed but I had no alternative. The young men were angry and wished to wash their spears in my blood. I did not antagonise them. I did not even speak to them before they attacked.'

Mapitha took his time to explain this and so gave Simon the opportunity to note the reactions carefully. Immediately, the King swung to the man on his right and asked a question, then repeated it to his left. A hum of conversation broke out in the group. Clearly, the King was angry, but at whom Simon could not be sure. Eventually Cetswayo addressed him again.

‘If what you say is true,' translated Mapitha, ‘then those who attacked you will be punished. We are not at war with the British people and it is not right that friendly travellers should be attacked. But if you do not speak the truth, then it will not go well for you.'

The King interrupted the old man almost before he had finished his sentence and Mapitha turned to Simon again. ‘The King wishes to know,' he said, ‘if you have come to Ulundi only to make this complaint or if you have some message for him from your people.'

‘I speak only for myself, sir,' said Simon. ‘I have lived in your country for several months now and I have grown to like and respect the Zulu people and particularly Jantoni and his family. I know that problems have arisen between your country and mine and I know that Jantoni is at this moment in Durban trying to understand what it is that the British want.'

After translation, one of the inDunas spoke angrily but the King gestured him to be silent and spoke quickly himself.

‘Do you know what the British want, then?'

‘No, Your Majesty. I am not a general or a politician. But I am sure that no one wants war.' He took another deep breath. ‘Our leaders can sometimes be slow to understand other races. There is a feeling in Natal, I believe, that Your Majesty is anxious that his warriors shall wash their spears, and this is causing these harsh words to be spoken. I hope that the Zulu nation does not want to go to war with the British.'

The King now lumbered to his feet, looking huge in the light from the fire, and began talking in a low and earnest voice, keeping his eyes on Simon's but being careful to pause so that Mapitha could interpret.

‘The King says that he does not know what power you have in the white man's land, for you seem very young, but he will talk to you as though you were Somtseu himself. For many years the white Englishman and the Zulu have lived happily side by side. There have been many problems with the Boer Afrikaaner men but very little - except, he says, fly bites - with the English. Now the Redcoats are hitting their shields with their spears and stamping their feet. They are making it difficult for him over this Sihayo business.

‘His people do not want war. It is true that there has been no washing of the spears for many years, but Zulus do not wish to wash their spears in English blood. If the spears are to be washed - and the King will judge that - then it can be done elsewhere. The King says that he has done everything to accommodate his English neighbours. The long dispute in the north over territory that is rightfully his - this dispute he has agreed can be settled by the English Commission that has been meeting for so long. He does not argue. He will accept the ruling when it comes.'

Mapitha was now having difficulty keeping up with the King's flow of words. ‘However, this King has power in his land just as the Great White English Queen has power in hers. He does not tell the English Queen how to rule her people. So the English should not tell him how to rule his. If the English put their Redcoats into his land, he will eat them up. He has many warriors eager to prove that they are men. There will be great wailing by the women in the English kraals.'

Cetswayo had not raised his voice in delivering this peroration, but his manner had become more agitated towards the end. The assegai was used to emphasise his points, and as he concluded, he stabbed the air with it. The inDunas grunted their approval.

Simon cleared his throat. He had one more card to play.

‘I understand all that His Majesty says and I will do all that I can to represent his point of view when I return to Natal and the Cape. But I beg him to restrain his young warriors. The British Army has modern weapons that give its soldiers far more power than their numbers. I have worked with this army and I have seen what it can do. In building their empire, these soldiers have defeated great nations all over the world. The Zulus—'

He got no further. Mapitha had been translating a phrase or two behind, of course, as Simon spoke, and as he began the warning, the King's demeanour changed again. His features contorted with anger, he pointed at Simon's face with the blade of his assegai and shouted a command. Immediately, two warriors seized Simon's arms and dragged him backwards to the door of the hut. Outside, he was turned and, assegais pricking his ribs, marched down several lanes and eventually pushed down into the interior of one of the beehive huts. No one followed him in, but the hide flap to the entrance was thrown down dismissively, and as he turned, he saw that the gut strings of the flap were being wound round the door post and tied. He was a prisoner.

Simon looked around him. There was little in the interior of the hut: a low, roughly hewn table on which rested two drinking gourds and a plate, an eating knife - short, blunt and useless as a weapon - and a stub of a candle. A couple of sleeping mats hung from the central pole, as did a long shawl made of dyed wool, obviously to be used as a night blanket. He draped it around him. It covered him almost completely and in the dark, maybe, he could be taken for a Zulu. Except for the boots. In darkness or not, they betrayed him as a European - and he could not walk a mile without them.

Throwing the shawl from him, Simon sat on the floor and tried to concentrate. Would Cetswayo kill him? His mouth dried again as he considered the possibilities. Surely he would have been taken away then and there and speared for offending the King, if death was an option. Or were they waiting for that patrol to return to check his story about the fight in the donga? Or would they keep him as some sort of hostage or bargaining tool if Dunn's intervention in Durban failed? He put his head in his hands. Either way, his gamble had clearly failed - and yet what else could he have done?

He beat the ground slowly in frustration. Then, on hands and knees, he crawled to the wall of the hut at the point furthest away from the entrance and tested its resilience. The young saplings had been interwoven with grass thatching and the wall yielded easily to a little pressure. With the knife, he experimented and found that, despite its lack of edge, it could be used perhaps to cut a low opening. But what then? Even if he escaped from Ulundi, his chances of walking across the country without being discovered were slim. His only viable option was to wait until John Dunn returned and intervened with the King. If he did not - and now Simon put his head back and clenched his fists - he would not go readily to the executioner. He would fight like hell!

The days settled into a pattern of boredom and discomfort. He was not allowed to leave the hut except for visits to the sanitation pit nearby. There appeared to be a guard permanently stationed outside the entrance, even at night. There was no fire and the nights were cold, so that he was glad of the shawl as well as his own blanket. He had been allowed his saddle pack but not, of course, his rifle. The days crawled by and the monotony was hard to bear. Twice he unthreaded the tent flap and demanded, ‘Jantoni,' and then, ‘Mapitha,' of the guard outside, but the only response was to have an assegai put to his throat. Thinking through his conversation with the King, Simon realised that he had caused offence by seeming to threaten Cetswayo with talk of the efficiency of the British Army. Damn! He had overplayed his hand and committed an act of
lèsemajesté
, and been thrown into captivity as a result. But for how long?

Simon carefully husbanded the little dried meat and remnants of fruit that Nandi had provided. For the first two days they helped to vary the diet of bread, mealies and milk that was brought to him three times a day, but they were soon consumed. After the third day, he began marking the passage of the days on to the central pole with the old knife he had been given. As the days passed the threat of execution began to recede. The patrol with whom he had clashed must have reported back to the King or his council by now, so his story must have been believed, but his solitude remained unbroken. His thoughts, however, were free and they soared beyond the beehive hut. He recalled his home in Brecon and his parents with a tenderness that, hitherto, had been alien to him. He attempted once again to conjure up Alice's features, but the vision that danced before him was of dark skin, not fair, of black eyes, not grey. Questions about Jenkins pressed in on him: had he been kept in Cape Town by Lamb, or - terrible thought - had he attempted to make his way back to Dunn's kraal and met one of those spear-happy patrols?

In the days and weeks that followed he was completely ignored. He had decided that flight was better than this soul-numbing captivity when there came a life-saving break.

Simon was kneeling on his sleeping mat practising his Zulu clicks and clucks - it was a link, however remote, with Nandi - when he heard the distinctive tread of boots outside the hut. Then came a voice as welcome as it was unmistakable. ‘What, in 'ere, then?' And crawling through the hole came a thick thatch of black hair followed by a moustache that was now badly in need of a trim.

‘Jenkins!' he cried.

‘Good God, is it you then, bach sir? Goodness, that beard don't suit you much.'

The two men embraced without reservation and then, somewhat shamefacedly, solemnly shook hands. They sat on the mat, grinning at each other.

‘Who's goin' to start, then?'

‘I think you should. You will have more to tell than I.'

‘Well, I don't know about that, but I suppose you 'ave bin a bit anxious like.'

Simon nodded. Jenkins settled back on the second mat and began his story. He and the boys had driven the cattle to the Lower Drift at the Tugela without incident and had ferried the beasts across, with the help of the naval brigade who were stationed there. Then they moved the cattle on to Durban where, eventually, Jenkins found a provisioning captain who took them.

‘Mind you,' he said, grinning at the memory, ‘ 'e wasn't anxious to. Oh, he wanted the best all right. They was good stock, I could tell that, an' this young captain, look you, was'avin' trouble f indin' meat for the army what was buildin' up out there - more about that in a minute. But 'e didn't 'ave no authority, see, to buy at that price. Oh, bach sir, 'e was a little man who was frightened of 'is own shadow.' Jenkins shook his head reflectively. ‘Anyway, I waved the letter you gave me, throwin' in Colonel Lamb's name all the time, an' 'e agreed to'old on to the cattle till I got to the Colonel in the Cape and 'e could telegraph authority, like.'

Jenkins's moustache twitched and he looked round the gloom of the hut. ‘No beer in 'ere, then, is there, sir?'

‘Sorry, no. We get a gourd of milk at midday - at least, I do. But do go on. Did you get to see Lamb?'

‘All in good time, bach sir. Well, I catches the packet to the Cape from Durban.' Jenkins's eyes rolled. ‘What a voyage that was! Them waves was as 'igh as—'

‘Oh, I don't want to know about the damned weather. Get on.'

‘Well, with respect, sir, you do, because I was so ill that they threw me off the boat at a little place called Port Elizabeth and I 'ad to wait another four days to pick up another boat.' Jenkins's face beamed. ‘But you'll be glad to 'ear that the weather was much better for the second bit and I eventually reports to headquarters in Cape Town. I'm treated with a great deal of suspicion - me, dressed like this, see, askin' to see the Colonel Chief of Staff. An' I wouldn't tell 'em who I was, except that I'ad come from Zululand and 'ad a special message for the Colonel. Anyway, I'm waitin' in a corridor, see, an' guess who walks up?'

‘Not Colour Sergeant Cole again?'

‘No. Not this time. It was our very own Colonel. Our CO, Mr Bloody Covington, excuse my disrespect, sir. Well, 'e's goin' to walk by me, but he stops, stares an' says, “Don't I know you?” Then, before I could say anythin', he says, “You're Fonthill's man.” I reckoned 'e wasn't askin', he was tellin', so I didn't say anythin', see. So 'e glares at me and shouts, “Speak, man, speak.” So I speaks and says, “The very same, sir.” '