Authors: John Wilcox

The Shangani Patrol (11 page)

BOOK: The Shangani Patrol

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‘They’re goin’! They’ve ’ad enough.’ Jenkins’s cry came from the driver’s seat, where he was standing, waving his rifle.

Fonthill wiped the sweat from his eyes and looked around. It was true. The remnants of the attacking force - now reduced to a dozen men - were running back towards the kopje, one of them limping. Behind them, in a ring surrounding the wagon and stretching back towards the kopje, lay the inert figures of those who had fallen.

‘Alice, are you all right?’ whispered Simon as he knelt by her side, putting his arm across her shoulder.

‘Yes thank you,’ she replied. ‘But I am afraid Sando is not. I think he has gone. Oh Simon . . .’ and she turned and buried her face in his chest, her shoulders shaking in sudden reaction. He swayed with her, gently patting her back and kissing her hair. Then the soldier in him reasserted itself. ‘Any more casualties?’ he called.

‘No, sir,’ said Jenkins. ‘All present and accounted for. I can’t understand why they didn’t spear the oxen or the horses. Why d’you think that was?’

‘They too valuable.’ Mzingeli was now squatting on the floor of the wagon, wiping his brow with the tail of his shirt. ‘Take them back to Mozambique and sell them. Make money.’ He looked sadly at Sando and shook his head. ‘He good boy. Bad thing, this.’

Simon felt suddenly shamefaced. Still holding Alice, he said, ‘I am so sorry, Mzingeli. This was not your fight. I don’t know . . . I am so sorry.’

The tracker looked up. ‘Ah, it was our fight. If we don’t kill them, they kill us. But why this man attack us?’

‘It’s a long story. Here.’ Tenderly Simon put Alice away from him. ‘Are you all right now, my love?’

She nodded.

‘Good. Jenkins?’

‘Sir.’

‘You stay here just in case there is another attack, although I don’t think for a moment there will be. They have clearly had enough.’

‘Where are you goin’ then?’

‘Yes, Simon.’ Alice’s eyes were wide. ‘Where
are
you going?’

‘Mzingeli, break out our two horses and come with me. I may need your tracking skills. I am not going to let that Portuguese bastard get away with this. If I catch him, I will bring him back here and we will hang him. A bullet’s too good for him.’

‘I’ll come with you, bach sir.’

‘No. Do as you are told. Stay here.’

Fonthill dipped into the ammunition box, filled his pockets with cartridges once more, scrambled over the side of the wagon and mounted his horse. Waiting only for Mzingeli to join him, he set off at a gallop for the kopje. The remaining tribesmen had long since disappeared, but he paid no heed, setting his horse towards the side of the rock opposite to that from which the attack had been launched, in the hope that he could cut off the Portuguese if he was retreating.

They found nothing except a few empty cartridge cases at the base of the rock on the other side of the kopje.

Fonthill grunted. ‘The man’s a coward as well as a murderous swine. He set his men to attack but wouldn’t join them. Now, which way have they gone?’

The tracker pointed to the north. Together they galloped to a rise and then stood in their stirrups peering ahead. The retreating group could clearly be seen, the warriors on foot gathered around a solitary horseman, who was setting a fast pace.

Mzingeli shook his head. ‘I think, Nkosi, we do not follow. Still too many for us two. Kill him another day.’

Fonthill shot a sharp glance at the tracker. Then he relaxed. ‘I suppose you are right. I think they have had a lesson and will not attack again. Anyway,’ he shook his head, ‘we should not leave the wagon. Even if he gets reinforcements from Bulawayo, I doubt if he can overtake us before we reach the border. And he would not dare to follow us into the Transvaal.’

He looked to where the trail wound around the kopje. ‘Mzingeli,’ he said, ‘we all owe you a debt. If you had not seen them on the kopje we would have been unprepared and they would have swung round here and overwhelmed us before we could bring our guns to bear. It was quite a clever ambush, actually. Thank you.’

He held out his hand and the tracker shook it, a little self-consciously.

‘Why this man hate you?’ he asked.

‘He thinks I am in the pay of Rhodes, in the Cape, and that I will stop him from signing a treaty with Lobengula to overturn the agreement the king has already made with Rhodes. Well. . .’ he shifted in the saddle and looked again for the retreating figures, now almost out of sight, ‘that’s exactly what I now intend to do. After his two attacks on us, I intend to stop that man being involved in the development of Matabeleland. Come on. Let’s go back.’

Back at the wagon - to Alice’s great relief - Fonthill allowed his wife to fix a dressing on his grazed thigh,and he then joined the others in digging one shallow grave, into which they tipped the bodies of the attackers. Mzingeli gathered up all their assegais and looked at them carefully.

‘They dress like Matabele,’ he said, ‘but they come from Mozambique border. Look.’ He pointed at the spear heads. ‘These from Portuguese land. They want us to think them Matabele. Strange.’ Then he shrugged his shoulders. ‘But they just as dead.’

Tenderly Sando’s body was wrapped in a blanket and placed in the back of the wagon. ‘Where does he come from, Mzingeli?’ asked Alice.

‘My father’s village. My village. I know his mother, father. Sad.’

It was indeed a sad little group that set off to the south, Ntini cracking his long whip over his oxen and the three other men ranging out on horseback to the rear, right and left to ensure against another surprise attack. They camped that night without incident, and continued for another two and a half days along a track that had become a miserable mixture of rough stones and deep spruits with precipitous banks until eventually they entered Mzingeli’s village. At first they were greeted with happy cries, for the carcasses of the lions had been found, of course, and their killings confirmed by the Matabele who had arrived from Bulawayo to collect the horses, wagon and oxen. Then, however, as Sando’s body was lowered to the ground, a wailing began, soft at first and then growing in grief and intensity.

The party spent only two nights in the village, for Fonthill felt uncomfortable there: guilty, of course, for being responsible for Sando’s death, however indirectly, and frustrated that he could not explain it to anyone’s satisfaction, least of all his own. He was glad then when they said a muted goodbye to the
inDuna
and made for the river crossing into the Transvaal. Once across, the open veldt helped to restore a touch of tranquillity to them all, and they made good progress under the snowy-white balls of cloud that chased each other across the sky.

‘What now, then?’ asked Alice, as she rode companionably with her husband, Jenkins following alongside Mzingeli and Ntini at the rear.

Fonthill eased his buttocks in the saddle. ‘Back to Cape Town, I think. I should pay my respects to Lamb.’ Major General George Lamb, CB, the recently appointed army commander-in-chief at the Cape, had been the man who, as a colonel and chief of staff in Cape Town, had sent Simon on his first mission, to the camp of the Zulu king, ten years ago. He had then become his mentor in the second Afghan War on the North-West Frontier. Lamb had been away, up country in Natal, when Simon had called on their arrival in the colony.

Alice nodded. ‘Of course. But then what do we do?’

‘I must see Rhodes.’

‘Do you have to? He’s a strange character, as you know. He can ensnare people.’

‘Oh come along, Alice. I’m no bloody rabbit.’

‘I know that, darling. But, well . . .’

‘I gave my word to Lobengula. Besides which,’ he frowned and screwed up his eyes to focus on a distant kopje, ‘I have a debt to settle. I want to do everything I can to make sure that the Portuguese and that blasted man de Sousa do not talk the king into giving them his country.’ He turned in the saddle and looked directly at his wife. ‘You know, Alice, once Matabeleland is settled, I wouldn’t mind at all buying a tract of land there, up in the north, perhaps, where they say the country is magnificent for farming.’

Alice remained silent, so Fonthill hurried on.

‘We would keep Norfolk, of course, but that almost farms itself these days. It would be good to come out here in our winter, get some sun, sport and so on. We could well afford it, you know . . .’ His voice trailed away as Alice’s frown deepened, and then it became more plaintive. ‘It would, well, make life more interesting, don’t you think?’

She gave him a quick, rather forced smile. ‘If that’s what you want, then of course.’ Slowly the smile faded. ‘But I can see a lot more trouble developing before Lobengula gives away his land to us, the Portuguese or anyone else for that matter. He’s no fool, you know.’

‘That’s true. But Rhodes does have an agreement with him, so that must be a head start. Anyway, it will be interesting to see what Lamb says about it all. He’s no fool either.’

The five of them rode on in silence, some thinking of the sadness left behind in the village; others steeling themselves for the challenge that lay ahead.

Chapter 5

A little over three weeks later, Simon found himself waiting in a small anteroom outside the impressive office of Major General Lamb in Cape Town. He and Alice had dropped off Mzingeli and Ntini at their huts in the Boer farm in the southern Transvaal where they had first employed them. The parting had been unemotional, as befitted the bearing of the dignified tracker, but Mzingeli had gripped Fonthill’s hand and said in farewell, ‘You call, whenever. I come.’

The door into the inner office was suddenly thrown open and Lamb exploded through it. Fonthill grinned and stood. Nothing had changed. Energy seemed to fizz and spark from the general’s every movement, and now he bounced rather than walked towards Simon, his hand outstretched.

‘Damned glad to see you, Fonthill. Knew you would call. Sorry to have missed you last time. How are you? Tell me, how are you?’

‘Fit as a fiddler’s fox, thank you, General. And you?’

‘Couldn’t be better. Come through. Sorry to have kept you waiting.’ Then, over his shoulder, ‘How’s old 473?’

‘Three five two, sir.’

‘Dammit. Never could remember his number. Sit down. Sit down. Cigar?’

Fonthill regarded Lamb with interest. The general was diminutive - hardly more than five feet two inches - and his complexion, a ruddy nut brown, gave testimony to his years spent in India. They had last met outside the gates of Kandahar, after General Roberts’s comprehensive victory over the Afghan army. Simon and Jenkins had played a not insignificant part in that victory but Fonthill’s refusal to rejoin the army at Roberts’s request had soured his relationship with the general. Lamb, then a brigadier, had tried to be ameliorative, but Simon had left the Frontier under a cloud. His relationship with Lamb, however, had remained one of mutual admiration.

The general walked from behind his desk to light Simon’s cigar. ‘Delighted to see you awarded a CB after the Sudan. Joined the club, eh?’ Fonthill nodded behind the cloud of blue smoke. ‘My God, for a young chap you’ve moved around since we last met - Sekukuniland, that terrible Majuba business, then Egypt and the Sudan.’ The general’s bright blue eyes twinkled. ‘For a feller who didn’t want to rejoin the army, you’ve done a fair bit of soldiering, I’d say.’

Fonthill shifted uneasily. ‘On my own terms, though, sir. But I should congratulate you on your promotion and appointment here.’

Lamb puffed at his cigar and shrugged. ‘Not bad for an old India hand, I suppose. Lucky to get it under Wolseley, I have to confess.’

Simon grinned. The rivalry between the two best generals in Queen Victoria’s army, Roberts and Wolseley, was well known. Lamb had always been a Roberts man, which meant that with Wolseley at the Horse Guards in London as adjutant general, he should have been doomed to spend the rest of his career in India, where Roberts was commander-in-chief. Somehow he had slipped through the net.

‘Now.’ Lamb leaned across his desk. ‘You’ve been in Lobengula’s kraal, I hear.’

Fonthill lifted his eyebrows. ‘How did you know that? We only returned yesterday.’

BOOK: The Shangani Patrol

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