The Kraals of Ulundi, page 22
‘Yes, that is a problem. But let us suppose that this warrior was upon the road alone with his cattle. And near the umuzi of the woman that he hoped to wed. He would not be foolish enough to marry into a family that he did not trust. So, if he trusted this maiden’s family, he could speak to her father – or her grandfather should the father be away with his regiment. He could speak with her family and ask them to keep safe his fine cattle. Against the day when he might come to claim her. Or, alternatively, should the betrothal not happen as they might wish, he should simply come to reclaim the beasts.’
‘A warrior would certainly have to trust such a family. To know their history well. The father’s regiment. His name.’ The girls had filled their pots and were waiting beyond the pool.
‘It is reasonable,’ said the girl. ‘Then that warrior should know that the father’s name is Mandla kaSibusiso, induna of the uMxapho, the Mongrels, the Shower of Shot, kinsman to Zibhebhu kaMapitha.’
‘Zibhebhu is commander of the Swarms. There can be no greater honour than being his kinsman. And does the daughter of Mandla kaSibusiso have a name?’
‘Do you not know that he has many daughters? Which one do you mean?’
‘Let me see. This would be a maiden of sixteen summers, perhaps seventeen. She is tall, with the neck of a giraffe. She carries herself with all the grace that one might expect from the daughter of a great induna.’
‘I know the maiden you mean, warrior. That one is called Zama. The Trial. She is well-named. For when she was conceived her parents were trying to have a son. She has been a trial for them ever since, they say. And several suitors have already tried to win her. But she is waiting for the right man. A man that has means, honour too. If there was such a man, she would speak to her father about him. But she would look foolish if she did not have even a name for him.’
‘She could say that he is called Tshabanga kaNdabuko, with the honour name Giant Slayer. But the father’s regiment is far to the north. It may be a long time before this maiden might speak with her father.’
‘Ah,’ she said. ‘Those who are upon the road might often be without the latest news. They may not be aware that the Great King has decided that the symbol of our people, the iNkatha yeSizwe yaKwaZulu, shall be returned to eSiklebheni on the night of the next Full Moon. There will be a great muster there. The uMxapho regiment shall be in attendance. The Evil Omen too, I hear. All the izinduna. Every Swarm and Company.’
‘Ten days away.’
‘Ten days. I wonder whether that is sufficient time for a warrior of determination to rejoin his Swarm, to heap more glory upon his shoulders in such a short time.’
‘But first he must leave his cattle with a family he can trust.’
*
There were no gatekeepers on duty at Zama’s homestead, nobody to determine whether they should be admitted, none to sing the Siyakhuleka ekhaya and praise the honour names of her father. For the place was all in turmoil, the lookouts intent only on the assault taking place among the huts that fringed the cattle enclosure.
It seemed that a large colony of bees had taken up residence during the summer months inside the trunk of an ancient Mopani tree and, despite many warnings that honey should only be collected from hives well beyond the umuzi’s precincts, a group of enterprising but foolish children had determined that there would be little risk. For the winter had come and the colony was now much smaller, intent on keeping the nest warm and safe, eating voraciously within the hive and therefore seemingly inactive.
There was no shortage of honey within the homestead, naturally. But like Gingile the Hunter, the children had not yet learned the lesson about greed. So they had made fire sticks, climbed the Mopani to reach the cleft which sheltered the hive cells. Yet they had also failed to grasp another thing. That a hive in such a position was notoriously difficult to plunder, for bees always stored the honey in the upper section of a comb – in this case the part that was high up within the cleft and beyond both reach and sight – while the lower levels held, in turn, the pollen stores, the worker and drone cells with the pine nut-shaped queen chambers at the very bottom edge. And even the most foolish of creatures would know that you should never poke sticks into that portion of a bee nest, even when you might think that fire sticks and smoke had driven away the occupants. So while the hive may indeed have been smaller than usual at this time of year, there were still several thousands of its colonists prepared to swarm in protection of their queen.
Shaba could see the black mass of them from the gateway, a roaring cloud that rose and fell and flew between the huts, ardent in its pursuit of those who had breached its sanctity, hunting down the miscreants as they fled. Some of the children had been seized by their mothers, and the mothers knew there were only two ways to safety – either to keep running, as fast and as straight as they were able, or to take shelter inside a home, darkening the interior to disorientate any of the insects that might follow them inside. But for the infants without such maternal protection, without sanctuary, there were only the harsh lessons of the Earth Mother. That those who do not protect their faces from angry bees shall surely be stung in the eyes. That those who swat at the creatures will attract more and more simply by that highly visible activity itself. That those already stung will carry upon their skin the banana scent secreted by the bees and enticing still greater numbers to the target of attack. That those who do not run hard, spear-straight and into the wind will surely be caught. And that there is an undefined limit to the number of stings which one small body can tolerate.
*
The boy lay dead in the aftermath. A few dozen bees still circled wildly around the Mopani while the rest had returned to the task of repairing the damage done to their hive. It would be fruitless, of course, for the men of the village would now take steps to destroy the thing properly, to appease the shade of the lost child. But, for the time being, there was just the weeping, the keening, the wailing of grief-gutted family, the clustered matrons and maidens of the child’s clan, while mothers elsewhere, more fortunate than these, scraped away the stinging barbs from the skin of survivors.
‘It is a grievous thing when a child passes in this way,’ said Zama’s grandfather.
The old man squatted on a stool outside the entrance to his hut with five other veterans who had introduced him without excessive formality as Sibusiso kaBheka. The barest minimum of praise names, a nod towards his kinship with the renowned Zibhebhu.
‘Will you stay for the child’s funeral feast?’ said one of Sibusiso’s companions, scratching in the dirt with a stick.
‘The boy needs to rejoin his Swarm,’ said Zama’s grandfather.
Thirty-five summers and he still calls me a boy, thought Shaba. It made him smile. For the first time in many days.
‘It is true,’ he said. ‘If we may settle this matter of my cattle, Lord?’
‘I am loathe,’ said Sibusiso, ‘to interfere in the matter between a man and his son. But this marriage of your sister to the white trader, KaMtigwe, it is an abomination. What will happen to the People of Heaven if our blood is diluted in this way? Mixed with the thin spirit of the AmaNgisi. And what is he become, this KaMtigwe? Is he lord of Hluhluwe now?’
Shaba thought of his lands: the plentiful game that filled their plains; the richness of their soil; the bounty of the forests that filled the higher northern parts; the clean rivers that laced the valleys; the metallic ores that graced the rock faces.
‘A rich prize for the whites,’ he said. ‘It seems that the Great King has a fondness for establishing white izinduna. First Jantoni, that had eMoyeni first. Now this KaMtigwe.’
He saw Amahle once more in her wedding finery. ‘Oh, my brother’s pride knows no boundaries,’ he heard her say again. But he felt no pride today. Only shame for her, his self-respect flattened and battered by his banishment from the umuzi. He knew that all those close to him were bewitched. By that trickster Klaas. By the white devil KaMtigwe. By the isangoma Mutwa. And he knew that those he loved must be freed, though the manner of their release still eluded him. Still, there was also Zama kaMandla. Fate may not have been kind to him in other ways, but if it had not led him here…
Zama and her sisters emerged from a neighbouring hut bearing a water bowl for their hands, a jug of sorghum beer, and a plate of maize and bean that they passed between them. She was beautiful.
‘Well, we shall care for your cattle, warrior,’ said Sibusiso. ‘As best we might. But the herd boys bring word that the horse soldiers grow bolder every day. They draw closer. You have been on the road to the south. What did you see there?’
Shaba told them about the devastation, the burned-out settlements. Worse even than that which he had seen in the west.
‘But I saw none of the whites,’ he said.
‘When Cetshwayo brings the iNkatha home to eSiklebheni it will protect us from them. And let us hope that, this time, he may show the respect it deserves. That we should suffer no further misfortunes.’
Shaba had heard the whispered criticism elsewhere. For, when word had been carried to the Great King of the engagement at eSandlwana, Cetshwayo had immediately followed his duty and locked himself in private communion with the Sacred Coil, that wide hawser ring plaited by Shaka from all the smaller iziNkatha of the peoples forged together to form the AmaZulu nation. One ring now, an arm’s length across, a hand’s span deep, which bound all the lesser rings of their people. And Cetshwayo had sat upon this thing, channelling its energies to help the impi in its battle. He had held vigil with the iNkatha until the runners brought him news that victory was close. Then he had broken his link with the Sacred Coil, left his quarters. But the matrons had wailed at him, since the battle was not yet done so that, when they heard that some of the regiments had been driven off by the red soldiers at KwaJimu, the old mothers scolded him, continued to blame him for all subsequent set-backs.
‘The Great King’s wisdom cannot be open to our judgement, can it, Lord?’ he said. ‘And the whites may have stolen total victory from us at KwaJimu, yet it was hardly a defeat. After all, we wiped the soldiers again and again afterwards, whenever we followed the King’s words and avoided attacking them behind their walls and in their holes. For the cornered rat may wound even the most fierce of our hounds.’
‘Yet if we had followed the guidance of my kinsman, we may never have stirred up the AmaNgisi hornets’ nest in the first place.’
‘But Zibhebhu is not king and we cannot judge his wisdom, wide as it may be, above that of Cetshwayo kaMpande.’
‘Judgement? You lecture me on judgement, puppy? I have served this Kingdom since the days of the Mfecane, the Tempest Wars by which Shaka the Bull Elephant united our people. The rivers ran scarlet with the blood of those who opposed us. Great forests of the impaled sprang up at our passing. Widows wept whole oceans. But we became a nation. So I do not judge Cetshwayo. I sing his honour names, knowing that it is too easy, this game of challenging the wisdom of others, forgetting to recall their glories until after they are gone. The mothers may blame him for our defeats but they are women. What do they know? Did he not take us to victory at eSandlwana? At eHlobane? We may have fallen at eKhambule and kwaGingindlovu. But what do women know of these things? Did he not bring us two of the white soldiers’ big guns? The women may say that the guns are useless to us, but surely this was the act of a King favoured by the shades of our departed. How could any disagree? I had barely eighteen summers when I fought my first battle. At the Hill of Gqokli. Over yonder. I stood at Shaka’s side that day. Facing the traitor Zwide and an army twice our size. Twice our size, boy. But by cunning and strategy we beat them.’
‘And you doubt our ability to beat this enemy that is so much smaller than we are?’
‘You have fought it, this red thing of the Fat Queen’s.’ He used the form of speech that expressed the highest degree of contempt. ‘You have seen into its soul. What do you think, boy?’
‘I have stared into its face,’ said Shaba, ‘and I think that it can still be defeated – with leaders like Zibhebhu to command us in the field.’
‘And afterwards?’ said Sibusiso.
But Shaba’s imagination could not see the future, simply the past. And some strange past too. For he conjured visions of the red soldiers, though they were not fighting his people. They stood on a field of golden, waving grass and they faced another force. Soldiers like themselves, though dressed in blue. A force that transformed itself at will, with the art of the isangoma, into another cloud of angry bees.
‘Afterwards,’ he said, ‘we will see that which is left.’
The old man nodded.
‘Then, meanwhile,’ he said, ‘serve your own Swarm with distinction. Obey your induna. Keep faith with his lord, my cousin. For he will need loyal warriors even when the war is done. Particularly when the war is done. Warriors worthy of my son’s daughter.’
The future, however, was still not visible. Not in any real sense. Only an image of himself, a darkened enclosure, a dozen globes of fire at his feet that hid from his eyes an invisible multitude that split the blackness with a noise like thunder.
Chapter Eleven
Sunday 1st June 1879
The sabre that the Prince Imperial balanced so precociously across his knees was the very same blade – as he so frequently reminded them all – that his great-uncle had carried during the Ulm Campaign, subsequently gifted as a wedding present to Ney, the bravest of Bonaparte’s Marshals, and later again presented by Ney’s grandson, the Duc d’Elchingen, to Louis before the Prince went into exile in England.
‘Shall it bring me luck, Carey, do you think?’ he said. The Prince’s obsession with the sword was beginning to grate.
Carey saw the younger man’s tall silhouette in the tent’s opening as the sun rose above the veld. He smacked impatiently at a fly that had landed on his neck and before it had a chance to escape beneath the mohair-braid collar of his blue patrol jacket.
‘Luck, Your Highness?’ said Carey. ‘I’d rather have settled for those damned Basutos. Where the devil did they get to? Division’s already on the move and we’ve not even started. How shall we look? More ragging in the mess, I expect.’
He was irritable, had been so since his previous reconnaissance, when Chelmsford had poured scorn on Carey’s suggested route for the coming few days’ march.
‘Blame your superiors,’ said Louis. ‘They will insist on providing me with nursemaids. Everywhere I go. But a twelve-man escort would have been excessive, don’t you think? Simply so that we can draw a map? Don’t worry, Carey. We are enough.’
‘The orders were very clear, sir.’
The sort of orders, thought Carey, around which reputations are shaped or shattered. They spoke in French and English, transferring between the two languages according to the Prince’s imperial whim.
‘You think me impetuous also?’ said Louis. He rose from the borrowed chair, the portable writing desk, with some difficulty, pulling at the crotch of his breeches. ‘This damnable itch,’ he complained, setting the sabre back in its scabbard and looking around the tent that Carey shared with Paul Deléage, the Figaro’s correspondent. Carey imagined that he saw disdain in the Prince Imperial’s eye, despite his obvious discomfort, the surroundings distinctly less opulent than the brace of houses that the Prince himself enjoyed in company with the Commander-in-Chief. ‘Never mind, I shall be obedient today. You see…?’ He brandished the letter on which he had been working. ‘I have made it clear to Maman that the escort is under Captain Carey.’
‘Regrettably still a mere lieutenant, Your Highness.’ Carey studiously avoided any mention of the Dhobi itch. It did not seem proper, though he knew that Louis had been suffering with the ailment for at least a week. But the Prince Imperial waved aside Carey’s correction, sealing the note inside its envelope.
‘A detail, Carey. Nothing more. You still expect to be gazetted captain, do you not? It will seem so much more acceptable that I am under the protection of a senior officer. Anyway, by the time she receives my note, it will be true, yes?’ Louis signed the letter with a flourish. Napoléon. His regular affectation, Carey knew, as the Prince ripped the page from his note book and called for his valet. ‘Lomas! Lomas!’
The dapper orderly from the Royal Engineers appeared immediately, ducking below the flap.
‘Sir?’ he said, showing proper deference to the Prince Imperial’s status even though he held no military rank.
‘Make sure this letter goes out with the mail, would you? Mister Forbes is returning to Landman’s Drift this morning, I think. Perhaps he would be so good as to visit the camp post office. And is my horse ready?’
Lomas took the letter, tucked it inside his tunic.
‘I’ve saddled Fate, Your Highness. Beggin’ your pardon, sir, but the grey’s acting up even more than usual this morning.’
‘Show me,’ said Louis, and Carey followed them out of the tent, fastening the shoulder strap for his holster. It was a fine day, crisp and clear, though he was grateful for the dishevelled spread of his beard given the exceptional early morning chill, bitter even for South Africa’s June mid-winter.
‘He seems steady enough to me, Lomas,’ said Carey, surveying the breast-high pegs and air-rope of the picket line and settling his gaze on the largest beast – the grey for which Louis had apparently paid seventy guineas to Bennett in Durban. Bennett had named him Percy, though the Prince, unhappy with his pronunciation, had re-christened him Tommy.
‘Thank you for your observation, Lieutenant,’ said Louis, ‘but I will take the advice of my groom. Tommy will rest here today, Lomas. I will take the bay, as you suggest.’
*
Carey began to regret volunteering for the patrol. The command should have been Bettington’s. But the Captain had been called to duty elsewhere. So the command fell to Carey. And there was just the possibility that the thing might provide him with an opportunity to vindicate his proposed route – the route that Lord Chelmsford had so readily dismissed. Yet command of the heir to the now vacant French Imperial Crown had its own double-edge. And the Prince had barely set hand to Fate’s harness than Bettington’s men returned, leading their own mounts. Six troopers in total. Wide-brimmed hats and buff corduroy in contrast to the blue jackets of Carey and the Prince Imperial. Mostly weather-worn local farmers, generally retired veterans of British service in the Crimea or across the Empire. And they had company. A scampering white fox terrier they had adopted. A friendly Zulu too, almost indistinguishable from the enemy apart from the thin line of red cloth tied around his head.
