The Kraals of Ulundi, page 39
‘It is just possible,’ said Cornscope, ‘that this little trick might be repeatable.’
‘So long as we sell the sheep for the second time to a different Division,’ said McTeague, ‘the same flocks should be good for several transactions.’ Ndabuko slapped him on the back. ‘Trade will flow,’ McTeague said to him. ‘But I know that my Supreme Wife, your daughter, would give it all in exchange for her brother’s return home.’
‘He is lost to us,’ said Ndabuko. ‘He will not come back.’
‘I spent some time with him. Our escort to the white iNkosi.’
‘He should not have shamed us.’
‘You return to Hluhluwe, Lord?’
‘As soon as we have eaten. Shall you travel with us? Bring my daughter home?’
‘I wish it might be possible. But I am no longer in favour with the Great King or his chief advisors. I fear it would put your daughter’s life at risk.’
‘Great King?’ said Ndabuko. ‘The war is over now, KaMtigwe. Without the war, my foolish son could not have wagered away my daughter to this man.’ He pointed at Klaas. ‘I do not blame him. And my heart was not hurt when he decided to sell away his right to her. I was not unhappy that she took you for her husband. I believe you will help to make my clan strong. But without the war, we may have been strong in a different way. And the war was brought about by Cetshwayo kaMpande. He should not have been so quick to defend Sihayo when his sons went raiding across the border and provoked the Fat Queen’s army.’
Amahle clicked her tongue. ‘They would have come even without any cause, Baba,’ she said.
‘You blame him for starting the war, iNkosi?’ said McTeague.
‘I blame him for losing it!’ replied Ndabuko. ‘And many others share that view. When Cetshwayo is caught, and those who still support him, then you must bring my daughter home, KaMtigwe. Help to make our clan strong again. Meanwhile, we have sheep to trade, do we not?’
They shook hands again, but before his party returned to the camp McTeague took Klaas privately to one side.
‘There is something else that I would ask from you, Klaas my boy,’ he said.
‘Do you not already owe me enough, KaMtigwe?’ smiled the Zulu, running a hand through his wisp of beard.
‘Well, this may allow us to settle our accounts, dear friend. Though I hope that I may rely on your integrity?’ Klaas smiled. McTeague hated doing this. His trust had already been broken too many times. His own foolishness. But he could think of no other way to recover his fortune. So he shared with Klaas the precise location of his buried treasure, planned with him the means of its recovery.
*
Even the most base of God’s creatures may learn from its mistakes, thought McTeague as the horsemen stampeded through the camp, but only humankind is cursed with the propensity for repeating the same mistake so many times.
Dunn’s commando was a cosmopolitan assortment of mainly Zulu riders, with a few local farmers and soldiers of fortune. A hard bunch, dressed in the Dutch fashion, civilian clothes, broad-brimmed felt hats, cross-belts and bandoliers. But they were universally mounted on the tough little ponies known as the Cape boerperd. McTeague could just hold the tent flap aside from the narrow camp cot on which he was taking some afternoon rest, easing his aching back, while Cornscope instructed Amahle in the arcane arts of tea-making upon a borrowed portable kerosene stove.
‘The beggar!’ said McTeague. ‘The infernal beggar!’
‘William,’ cried Cornscope, waving the muggin teapot, ‘how can you expect me to instruct this admirable young lady in the fine arts when you persist in causing such a commotion.’
‘I do believe that benighted savage has betrayed me!’ He could see Klaas fawning upon Dunn, who was now dismounting. The Zulu pointed towards the tent and McTeague let the flap fall slightly, an inquisitive neighbour caught spying from the parlour window.
‘Which particular savage do you mean, sir?’ said Cornscope, though McTeague ignored him. Dunn stared towards the tent for a moment but was approached by an orderly from the direction of Wolseley’s headquarters. They exchanged a few words then Dunn shouted to his men to off-saddle and tend the horses. He patted Klaas on the shoulder and summoned five or six others to follow him.
‘Help me up, dammit,’ said McTeague, struggling to lift himself from the cot. ‘The cove is coming this way.’
Cornscope banged down the pot, gave an exasperated sigh and came to the tent flap, throwing it wide despite McTeague’s belated attempt to stop him.
‘Oh…’ he said.
‘Cornscope!’ Dunn exclaimed. ‘He hasn’t tried to kill you off like poor Twinge, then?’
Dunn was not a tall man, but he was powerfully built, in his mid-forties, grey eyes and a beard to match – a beard that concealed the whole lower half of his face so effectively that it was difficult to see his mouth even when he opened it to speak. He lifted his own wide-awake hat from his head and took a large kerchief from his trouser pocket, dabbed at the square forehead.
‘Theophilus was killed by the Zulus,’ said Cornscope, finally turning to help McTeague stand.
‘Only after Willie’s efforts failed, I think. And they almost finished you too, I understand?’ he said to McTeague. His accent was a rare mix of Scottish burr and IsiZulu inflection. ‘A shame they didn’t impale you, sure. Fitting end for a thief.’
‘A subject on which you would be well-versed, John,’ said McTeague. ‘I see you have even corrupted my young friend, Klaas.’
‘Klaas?’ Dunn replied, with a glance towards the Zulu. ‘His own man, I think. And you can hardly blame him for seeking some recompense at last. He tells me you have defaulted on your debts to him. But never mind that. You have now kindly provided the means by which he may, at last, be rewarded.’
He waited for a reaction.
‘Is it not enough,’ said McTeague, at last, ‘that you will take back Emoyeni itself? But my possessions…’
‘Your possessions, Willie?’ Dunn laughed. ‘The furniture? The clothes? The books? The carriages?’ McTeague thought about that wonderful zebra cart, the day of his wedding to Amahle. ‘Is there any of it left?’ Dunn continued, his laughter now sunk to angry embers.
‘I meant my own possessions, John,’ McTeague replied.
‘What? Your buried treasure beneath the hilltop, with Jago Jupe to guard it? Oh, that pained expression, Willie. Did you imagine Klaas would keep your secret? How very naive. But it will help to compensate me for any damage at Emoyeni, I expect. And then, when we bring in Cetshwayo…’
‘You?’ McTeague stammered.
‘Myself and Klaas,’ said Dunn. ‘Agreed with Chelmsford two months ago. I shall regret it, of course.’
‘Hypocrite!’ said Cornscope, supporting McTeague’s weight as he sagged a little.
‘Let me tell you about the first time I ever came here,’ Dunn said. ‘To Emangweni. More than twenty years ago. Just a wee shaver then. Old Mpande was still on the throne but his sons were at war with each other – Mbuyazi and Cetshwayo. I ended up on the wrong side, lucky not to be butchered like all those thousands of Mbuyazi’s folk. But Cetshwayo had taken all my livestock too. I had no choice except to come here and confront him.’
‘Oh, he must have been impressed by your valour,’ said McTeague.
‘Well,’ said Dunn, ‘you know him almost as closely as myself. He’s a magnanimous bugger, don’t you think? Made me his chief advisor. Of course, I shall regret his capture.’
‘I think I never saw a man more hurt by a betrayal,’ said McTeague, ‘than Cetshwayo by your own.’
‘Oh, the irony that spills from your lips, Willie. Why, it was Cetshwayo himself who told me to stand aside should push come to shove. Could you say as much, man?’
‘Does this qualify then?’ McTeague gestured towards Dunn’s followers, the men he had led in battle against the Zulus. ‘As standing aside?’
For the first time, Dunn seemed genuinely troubled.
‘There was no choice in the end,’ he said. ‘Not unless I’d decided to give up everything I’ve fought all my life to build. You have to protect your possessions, Willie. Something at which you singularly do not excel, I think. How many wives is it now? That you’ve lost. All of them? Including the dago woman?’
It cut McTeague, of course, flooded him with memories, some fond, some less so. But, oddly, the memory that surfaced most strongly was his recollection of being herded into the hut at EsiKlebheni by Ntshingwayo’s warriors, to find Cornscope there, in the act of molesting the two other wives who had accompanied Amahle to the iNkatha ceremony. He had never seen the women again, and he wondered what would have happened to the girl had he not arrived at that moment. He understood Simeon’s weaknesses, but he had never again left him alone in Amahle’s company – though she, dear thing, seemed to have no fear of him.
‘Not all of his wives, iNkosi,’ said Klaas, pushing Cornscope aside and holding the tent flap wide so that Dunn could see Amahle, hidden in the shadows.
‘Gracious,’ said Dunn. ‘How exquisite!’ He spoke to her in IsiZulu. ‘Come here, child.’
‘I am not yours to command, Jantoni,’ Amahle replied, and McTeague could taste the tension, feel the fear grow within himself, the clenching of his bowels.
The men at Dunn’s back were an ugly bunch, and the ugliest of them all was a fellow whose full face had more craters than that of the moon – or so said the astronomers – with cold eyes and a dirty grey walrus moustache. He was well-built and distinguished from the rest of the mob by his lack of rifle and bandoliers, wearing only a service-pattern holster around the outside of his two-buttoned sack jacket and matching waistcoat. He sported a bowler hat, a wing-collar shirt without a neck-tie, and his square-toed boots looked lethal. A personal hired thug, McTeague imagined.
‘All the same,’ shouted Dunn, ‘you will come. Else my men will come and get you. They can be rough.’
‘You have your property back,’ said McTeague, standing unaided now. ‘The promise of your own little kingdom too. And my personal nest egg in the bargain, it seems. You don’t need to trouble the girl, John.’
‘No trouble, Willie,’ Dunn smiled. ‘And you forgot to mention the sheep. Nice plan. I need to make one or two adjustments, of course. But you tried to emulate me, old man. Tried and failed. You can’t expect to lose the game and still keep any of the spoils. No, the girl, I’m afraid, comes with us.’
‘She is my wife, John. Married in the sight of the Almighty. Neither He nor I shall let you take her.’
He took a step forward, blocking the entrance entirely.
Fifteen years older than him, McTeague thought, and not in the best of shape. But I think I could still give the fellow a thrashing.
‘I fear you have little choice,’ said Dunn. ‘She was, after all, acquired legitimately by my friend Klaas here. It was only with Cetshwayo’s agreement that she then became available for marriage to you. And what has happened, William? You never paid Klaas the gold you promised him and Cetshwayo’s word is no longer law. A shame! Yet I fear she must now be added to your list of losses. Young Klaas wants her back and I’m certain that Sir Garnet would see such an arrangement as more closely resembling the natural order of things.’
All a matter of accountancy, McTeague recalled, this issue of how the tally of one’s wives might be reconciled. But this was one asset he would not transfer from his balance sheet. He turned briefly to admire Amahle then, too late, caught the serpentine blur of movement from the corner of his eye. Dunn’s fist slammed into his back, connected with the wound in a splintering spasm of flame that swept through lungs and heart. McTeague fell heavily to his knees, another bout of pain that raced up through his thighs and ignited the tortured torso afresh.
‘Now come, girl!’ shouted Dunn, and she stood, though seizing a small knife from the table, near the teapot.
McTeague saw her move forward, sweat glistening on her breasts and belly, while Dunn retreated a step. She rested her left hand on McTeague’s shoulder and held the short blade before her, waving it gently from Dunn to Klaas, then back again. She stands once more between me and my enemies, he thought, as she did at EsiKlebheni. But he doubted she could prevail here.
‘How sweet!’ said Dunn. Then in IsiZulu, ‘But why do you defend him, girl? Do you know what he’s done, this KaMtigwe?’
McTeague clasped her wrist.
‘My dear,’ he said, though the effort racked him again, ‘this man is with lies. Do not heed him.’
‘Oh, I think she will, my friend,’ said Dunn, in English once more, ‘when we tell her how you betrayed the iNkatha, the soul of her people, to His Lordship. But that can wait – for now!’ Dunn turned to his henchmen. ‘Bring her,’ he said, and McTeague saw the ugly fellow with the bowler hat step forward.
The man, considerably younger than Dunn, swung him easily around by his lapel, hit him with a short right jab that set him on his buttocks in the dirt and, in the same movement, drew the pistol from its holster.
‘Mister Behrens!’ said Dunn, mumbling through the fingers with which he cradled the bearded jaw.
‘I don’t work for you, Mister Dunn,’ drawled the fellow. An American, McTeague concluded, surprise and hope in equal measure overlaying the agony in his chest. ‘And it looks to me like we’re imposing on the hospitality of these folk.’
‘The woman is mine,’ cried Klaas, grabbing the American’s arm. The man swung around, prodded the barrel of his pistol in the Zulu’s stomach.
‘Seems to me the young lady’s happy where she is, son,’ said Behrens. ‘Now I suggest, Mister Dunn, that you take your boys here and get about that enterprise of yours.’
‘I take it,’ said Dunn, climbing to his feet and brushing the red dirt from his trousers, ‘that our partnership is now dissolved?’
‘I think I can safely find my commodities elsewhere, sir,’ Behrens replied.
‘I have a claim on that woman,’ Klaas protested again.
‘That’s for another day now, Klaas,’ said Dunn. ‘And you may find, Mister Behrens, that this is a more dangerous country than you’d imagined.’ Then he nodded to his men, picked up the hat and headed off towards Wolseley’s tent. But he turned back, briefly. ‘Oh, by the way, Willie,’ he shouted, ‘I forgot to thank you for one thing. Yourself and the dago woman – in one respect, at least, you’ve been more helpful to me than you can imagine!’
*
‘Partnership, Mister Behrens?’ winced McTeague, taking the blade carefully from Amahle’s fingers, while Cornscope helped him to his feet. The pain was fearsome.
‘I heard of you, Mister McTeague,’ said Behrens. ‘But our paths don’t seem to have crossed before.’
‘You’ve been here for a while, sir?’ said Cornscope.
‘Since May. I already sent one shipment. Just need one more group and I can get back to London.’
‘Who is this man, husband?’ said Amahle. ‘And what did Jantoni mean, about the things he says you have done?’
McTeague was more concerned with that parting shot. What had he meant? But he quickly set it aside.
‘I think he was speaking like a fool,’ McTeague replied, then turned to the American. ‘My wife wants to know who you are, Mister Behrens.’
‘You speak the Zulu language very well, sir,’ said Behrens.
‘I seem to have a flair for languages,’ said McTeague.
Behrens set the revolver back in its holster, removed the bowler hat.
‘Then if it’s not too much of an impertinence, Mister McTeague, perhaps you might tell your wife that I’m delighted to make her acquaintance. Perfectly delighted. She is, sir, the most enchanting creature.’
‘I think she will expect me to have an answer to her question, Mister Behrens.’
At least, thought McTeague, she may have an answer to half of it.
‘My apologies, sir. My name is Nathaniel Behrens.’
‘And your business, Mister Behrens?’
‘I expect,’ the American replied, ‘you might call me a circus man, Mister McTeague. And I guess you could say I’m in the business of mutual benefits.’
Chapter Nineteen
Thursday 7th – Friday 29th August 1879
‘They simply moved on?’ said Mandla kaSibusiso, induna of the uMxapho, the Mongrels, the Shower of Shot, kinsman to Zibhebhu – and the father of his beloved Zama. Shaba imagined her shade, wandering the slopes of Mthonjaneni, the way she must have ventured across the river to search for him among the carrion of oNdini, found him in his hour of need.
‘I could not bear to die there,’ he said, ‘for I sensed that I should never find the shade of your daughter so far from the Sacred Spring, iNkosi. But now I think she was there, after all, protecting me. That it was she who rose beside me, she who dazzled the sight of the Basuto rider. For I watched him cover his eyes, as though from a bright light. And when he looked again, it seemed he could no longer see me. Or perhaps he simply thought to come back and kill me after they had caught the ones who ran away.’
‘The horse soldiers had much more to make them smile that day,’ said Mandla. ‘We were lucky not to be with the Bender of Kings, nor the Sharp Points. Cut down like dogs.’
‘The fate of the defeated,’ said Shaba. He remembered the way they had pursued the fugitive red soldiers, the mbayimbayi riders, the flag carriers, after eSandlwana.
‘Of course,’ Mandla replied. ‘But it is a heavy thing, all the same.’
‘Less heavy,’ said Shaba, ‘than the sight of so many women and young ones clogging the roads north.’
‘And the crippled.’ Mandla shook his head. ‘I never thought that a man whose legs have been shattered could crawl so far. We found some later, a full day’s march from the field.’
