Fire on the Horizon, page 26
In the days since the battle of Canon Kopjé, Amber had noticed that Captain Stuttaford seemed to be spending more and more of his time at Dixon’s. He didn’t join their crowd, but would remain at the bar, occasionally talking to one man or another from the town, drinking steadily from the bottle of whisky that was always at his elbow. Sometimes Amber thought he was watching her, but whenever she turned towards him, he was staring into his glass again.
• • •
I
t was the end of November when Penrod told Amber, as they sat together over their modest supper, that General Cronjé had left Mafeking and taken most of his men with him.
Amber looked hopeful. ‘Will you attack the men that are left, then?’
Penrod shook his head and pushed away his empty plate. ‘No. They still have two thousand men and all their artillery. We cannot defeat them in the field. And we cannot break out. To do so would be to sacrifice the town to them.’
‘So we are stuck here. But the British reinforcements have all arrived in South Africa now, haven’t they? The war and the siege cannot last much longer.’
‘I hope not,’ Penrod said. ‘But until the relief forces reach us, we must put up with the shelling and the snipers.’
‘And the rain, and the heat. Though it is wonderful to see the land green.’ Amber paused. ‘We should do something for morale,’ she added. ‘Something to take people’s minds off their situation. Is Cronjé’s replacement going to keep the Sunday truce?’
‘That is what we are told,’ he replied, watching the soft lines of her face, his eye catching on the scrap of blue ribbon round her wrist. It was a strange quirk of the siege that the Boers believed strongly that no non-religious activity should take place on a Sunday and it was therefore a great sin to shell or shoot the inhabitants on this day.
‘Good. I shall see what can be arranged.’ She plucked at a loose thread on the tablecloth. ‘And Penrod, so you know Captain Stuttaford?’
‘I do.’
‘Can you get him off the frontline? I’m not sure he’s well.’
‘Stuttaford must do his duty like the rest of us.’
‘But it is not wise to drive men beyond their limits, surely.’
‘How else are we to know what a man’s limits are?’ He spoke lightly, but Amber could hear a warning note in his voice.
He had continued to keep her at a distance since her reappearance in Mafeking, treating her, in the day at least, with a careful formality. She responded by treating him in the same way. She looked at him now with longing, but dared say no more about Stuttaford.
• • •
A
mber began planning a Sunday entertainment, and recruited Trooper Cressy to help her. He was eager to do so and proved useful. She arranged a talent show with the nurses while Cressy organised cricket and soccer matches, pitching the Town against the Regiment. The editor of The Mafeking Mail, a news-sheet for the town now published daily, shelling allowing, refereed the sporting events. He did so with rough good humour, and the parade ground echoed with the cheers and groans of the populace.
The Masonic Lodge was chosen as a venue for the evening’s entertainment, and as it filled with cigar smoke and laughter, Susan and Barbara, two of the civilian nurses, performed half a dozen music-hall numbers to ecstatic applause. Amber persuaded each squadron of the Protectorate Regiment to put on skits or musical numbers of their own, and as the men fumbled and blushed and played up to the enthusiastic crowd, she awarded prizes based on the volume of the cheers.
The evening was chaotic, ridiculous and a great success. It was also perfectly timed – the news from the frontline was bad, and the mood of the town had taken a downward turn in the previous week. As Amber looked around the hall she noticed Baden-Powell leaning against the back wall with Penrod at his side.
When Amber finally escaped the stage to laughter and applause and ushered on Susan and Barbara for the evening’s finale, she circled towards the back of the room and joined the men. Baden-Powell nodded to her with a warm smile, then after a final word to Penrod, he left them.
Penrod slipped his arm around her waist and pulled her towards him with the affection of loving husband. ‘Baden-Powell told me that he thinks you are worth a squadron to this town,’ he whispered into her ear. His moustache tickled her skin, making her squirm deliciously against his side. ‘And you are requested to put on something along these lines every week. I think he is almost as glad as I am that you made it back.’ Out of sight of the cheering crowd he ran his hand over the curve of her hip. ‘Almost.’
‘Are you really glad I am here, Penrod?’ she asked.
‘Amber . . .?’ He said it with a stern frown, moving his hands away from her waist and stepping back. ‘Everyone is glad you are here. News about David and Greta in Mosita is received with as much pleasure as news from the front.’
Her triumph turned to bitter bile in her mouth.
Ned Cecil struck up the National Anthem on the battered piano in front of the stage. Civilians and soldiers jumped to their feet and sang the familiar words with such force and fervour that the walls of the hall seemed to shake and the corrugated iron roof lift into the evening sky.
Amber tried to smile and join in. When she turned around, Penrod had gone.
• • •
P
enrod slipped out of the hall and made his way towards the Barolong Stadt. The people who lived there remained crucial to the defence of Mafeking and Penrod had taken the role of an informal liaison between Chief Wessels and Baden-Powell, though he spent most of his time with Sol and Silas, or with Jabu’s family. These social visits were part of that role – they did not always have formal business to conduct, but Penrod traded hunting stories on the veranda of the chief’s home or discussed literature with Sol several times each week, and he could almost always be found with one or other of them in the Stadt on a Sunday evening.
The moon was full and high. Taking advantage of the relative peace, Penrod decided to walk along the Molopo River before returning home. It was a mercurial stretch of water. Further out of the town it poured through wide, shallow pools, but as it neared the Stadt it cut itself a deeper, narrower channel and switched in sharp turns north and south. Mud and shingle collected in the lee of low riverbanks, thick with thorn bushes and tangled greenery.
Penrod exchanged a few words with the men at the pickets which overlooked this section of the defensive perimeter, then continued along the edge of the river. He moved easily through the moonshade, sure-footed over the rocky shore, enjoying being unseen and alone in the cool of the night, listening to the movement of the water and breathing in the scent of the dew-damp earth.
Penrod had never suffered the full strain of a siege before. While Saffron and Amber were trapped in Khartoum, he had continually slipped through the lines, trekking over the desert and carrying news between the besieged and the relief column or his masters in Cairo. He had not understood how being confined in this way was like a slow pressure, a strangulation. No wonder the nerves of some of the men were strained.
In that moment, he heard the sudden click of the hammer of a revolver being drawn back.
‘I do not think I believed it until now,’ a voice said. ‘Even after talking with your wife.’
Penrod turned, hands raised, his boots shifting the pebbles under his feet in a soft series of clicks, as the shape of a man emerged from the low trees which lined the banks. For a moment the only sound was the running water and the rippling sigh of the foliage in the faint breeze.
‘Gerrit Vintner. How did you find me?’
Vintner kept his distance, but held his revolver steady, aiming it at Penrod’s belly. ‘When you were my guest, you enjoyed walking by the river on my property. I have watched you coming and going from the Stadt many times. This time, I decided to risk crossing the lines to meet you.’
Penrod lowered his hands. Vintner was clear of the shadows now, disgust transfiguring his face. Amber had told Penrod of Vintner’s rage at discovering how he had been deceived and it would seem that his feelings hadn’t mellowed in the intervening weeks.
‘I did my job,’ Penrod said calmly. ‘It is not the first time such things have happened, it will not be the last and I feel no need to apologise or explain myself to you.’
‘My friend John Quinn is a liar. Worse, he is a lie.’ Vintner stared at him. ‘You have no right to live. None of you. I told Cronjé you were liars, that we could take Mafeking with one assault.’
‘We beat you back,’ Penrod replied.
‘Luck! Sheer chance! Cronjé is too careful with his men. If we had launched an attack from the north, you would have crumbled in on yourselves! But he sees a dozen men killed by your seven-pounders and his faith fails. He had six thousand fighters!’
Penrod said nothing. Vintner was right, but Penrod saw no reason to tell him that. Vintner appeared to want to talk rather than try to kill him at once. Penrod took a cheroot from the pocket of his tunic and lit it.
‘And now,’ Vintner said, his voice shaking, ‘your treachery has murdered my family.’
‘Nonsense,’ Penrod replied, flicking his match into the twisting waters of the river.
Vintner took a step forward, lifting his revolver. He was still too far away for Penrod to reach him, but only just.
‘Truth! Mrs Ballantyne’s account of her capture and the assault on Mafeking was published in London and illustrated with your wedding photograph.’
Penrod raised an eyebrow. ‘Indeed. I understand it was a popular story. The British love a heroine, and when that heroine is as beautiful as my wife, naturally they print her portrait. But she wrote of the Boer fighters with grace and restraint.’
Another step forward. Vintner’s rage was his weakness. That dark, all-embracing anger had once been Penrod’s Achilles heel. He recognised it well.
‘You think my friends in Pretoria did not recognise you?’
The thought had not crossed Penrod’s mind. ‘An embarrassment for you, I am sure.’
‘My wife was a proud woman,’ Vintner said in a bitter, choked voice. ‘She did not write to me herself but the day after news of this story reached Pretoria she took to her bed with a fever and died three days later.’
‘Coincidence,’ Penrod said shortly. ‘People only ever die of shame in novels. Your wife was ill. My condolences for your loss, but the idea that I am in some way responsible is ridiculous.’
Vintner inched forward. ‘They have taken my farms,’ he said. ‘I told you I owed my brother-in-law money, but when I had standing among my people, he could not touch me. The day my enemies saw your photograph that protection disappeared. I received word last night from some lemon-sucking lawyer in Pretoria: my brother-in-law has thrown my daughter out of the house, to live with my oldest sister, fired my workers and now he is sleeping under the sheets my wife sewed in her final days of health.’
His voice trembled and broke and at the same moment the muzzle of his revolver wavered. Springing forward, Penrod drove his shoulder into Vintner’s chest, forcing him to fire blindly. Penrod felt the bullet explode the air as the force of his attack brought Vintner down heavily on the rocky ground. Seizing Vintner’s wrist, he smashed the hand that held the gun – once, twice, three times – into the rocks, while the larger man was still dazed. Vintner yelled, the bones of his fingers snapping, and the gun fell from his grip.
Vintner struck back with his left hand, a closed fist with the power of madness behind it, knocking Penrod sideways and onto his back. Vintner rolled on top of him and his left hand closed around Penrod’s throat.
The force of his hold was so powerful, so immediate, that black spots formed in front of Penrod’s eyes. He gasped and writhed, the rocks pressing into his back, his fingers searching for anything he could use to break Vintner’s grip. He touched the end of his smouldering cheroot, knocked from his fingers in the first moments of the fight. Clutching it, he drove it into Vintner’s cheek and heard the hiss of the Boer’s flesh burning. Vintner screamed and bucked away, but he kept his grip on Penrod’s throat.
Penrod struck up with his knee into Vintner’s groin, pushing all the air out of the man’s lungs, reaching for the knife he knew that Vintner always carried on his belt. As his fingers seized the leather-wrapped handle, he struck his elbow up and into the man’s jaw, prising away his weakening grip on his throat and throwing his weight sideways. They rolled over. Now Penrod was on top of him, but Vintner blocked his knife hand with his forearm. The blade hovered above Vintner’s throat.
‘Yield, Vintner! For your daughter’s sake!’ Penrod hissed between his teeth.
‘Never! I will kill you or haunt you, John Quinn.’ He scrabbled with the fingers of his damaged right hand, closed them round a rock and slammed it into the side of Penrod’s head.
Penrod felt a starburst of pain and was thrown sideways by the force of the blow. He could not breathe, could not see Vintner, but he knew that he would be trying to stand, so he could raise the rock again and beat out Penrod’s brains. And if he couldn’t stand, he would try and pin him where he lay and do the same. Penrod tensed every muscle in his body and rolled himself over onto his back, bringing his arm up across his chest, jabbing upwards with the last of his strength with Vintner’s own blade. The Boer’s knife did the rest, slipping between Vintner’s ribs and into his heart as he lunged forward, his weight crashing down on Penrod’s spine.
Penrod saw Vintner’s face change. Rage, realisation, then, as the blood began to flow from his mouth, his expression became blank, and he collapsed finally on Penrod’s body like an exhausted lover.
The blood from Gerrit Vintner’s wound flowed between the stones on the shore and joined the waters of the Molopo, making its way on into the heart of Africa.
Eventually, Penrod rolled Vintner’s corpse away and got unsteadily to his feet, leaving the body where it lay. He made his way back along the river towards HQ. High clouds were stretched across the moon and Penrod was grateful for the shadow that they provided – he did not want any of his fellow officers to see him, battered and bruised, his uniform soaked in blood.
Back at HQ, Penrod greeted the night watch perfunctorily – saluting and pushing past the man before he could ask any questions. He went inside and found his way to the bathroom. He was still bleeding from where Vintner had hit him with the stone, the blood had clotted thick and black in his hair.
After washing as best he could, Penrod changed his uniform and left for home.
• • •
A
mber was on her way to Dixon’s when Penrod arrived back at their cottage. She was wondering if two of the British South African Police in her care would survive their wounds. Most of the men shot with the high velocity Mauser bullets recovered with remarkable speed if no vital organ was damaged, but these two boys had been hit by ricochets and sepsis had set in. The doctor had confessed that he was not hopeful that they would make it through the night.
The food at the hospital was nourishing – the vegetables came from the market garden on the island in the river and the meat from the Barolong herds – but Amber thought those recuperating would do better with milk fresh from the cow. She would speak to Ned about buying a milk cow or two from the Barolong and a boy to look after them. The boy would be able to take a few pennies home to his mother, and the men recovering would have the benefits of the milk straight from the animal. Occupied with her plan, Amber strayed into the light coming from one of the hotel’s windows and at once she heard a rip in the air and the dull crack of a Mauser bullet splintering the planking of the wall next to her. She recoiled into the darkness, her heart racing, cursing her carelessness, then moved slowly round the back of the building and into the long bar which stretched across the front of the hotel.
Barbara and Susan, were waiting for her and Barbara immediately saw the terrified look in her eyes.
‘Lively out there this evening, isn’t it, Amber, dearie?’ she said, pouring tea as she spoke.
‘They are trying to catch runners crossing the lines,’ Susan said. ‘But if they can’t find any they start taking potshots at the townsfolk.’
Amber sat down and took a sip of tea. She was ashamed to see her cup rattle in the saucer as she put it down. ‘The worst thing is,’ she said, ‘that if that bullet had hit me, my last thought on earth would have been about a milk cow.’
For some reason her statement struck them all as very funny, and when Angus Hamilton, correspondent of The Times, arrived in the bar, he found them wiping tears of laughter from their eyes. They told him the story and he found it amusing, too. In fact, he insisted that they share a bottle of champagne to celebrate Amber’s avoidance of such an ignominious end. He summoned Mrs Peters, the manager of the bar, and when she’d also had a laugh at the story, he sent her to the cellars to fetch the best vintage Dixon’s had to offer. Stuttaford watched them from his stool, but shook his head in refusal when Hamilton invited him to join them.
After a few minutes Mrs Peters returned and was carrying the celebratory bottle across the front of the bar when suddenly it shattered and the room filled with the yeasty, toasted smell of champagne. Mrs Peters stared, amazed, at the broken neck in her hand while the vintage fizzed in a pool at her feet.
‘Mrs Peters, move away from the door!’ Amber shouted, but it was already too late.
Mrs Peters was still looking at her, uncomprehending, when the sniper’s second bullet struck her in the neck just below the jaw and she crumpled to the floor among the broken glass. Hamilton reached her first, catching her under the arms and dragging her back towards their table. Amber snatched up linen napkins and as Hamilton half-fell into his chair, tried desperately to staunch the bleeding. Barbara ran to fetch the doctor while Susan held Mrs Peters steady.
Mrs Peters had lived in Mafeking for her entire life and had worked at Dixon’s for ten years. She knew every customer by name and had welcomed the arrival of Colonel Baden-Powell and his men. For her, it was as if the town had finally been put on the map. She was proud of Dixon’s and what it offered these well-travelled men from around the Empire, men who had grown up in Calcutta and Perth and Christchurch. She had taken the siege itself in her stride. As long as she was busy, she was happy. And there was always work to do at Dixon’s. Amber knew that her husband worked on the railways and that she had a son apprenticed in Cape Town. She was a good woman from an honest, hard-working family.
