Hart of Empire (2 page)

'Yes. And I'm here to see you pay.'

George looked down at the man's hands, expecting to see a weapon. They were bunched into fists. 'Now just a minute. I can understand your anger, but your brother drew a sword on me. I had to defend myself.'

'That's not what you told the police. They said they were about to arrest you when a lady gave you an alibi. And yet you've just admitted to me that you did kill my brother.'

A voice in George's head was screaming at him to stop incriminating himself and say no more, but perhaps because of the drink, or the shock, or perhaps because in truth he was haunted every day by his distress at having killed a man and run from the fact, he spoke again: 'It was self-defence, I swear.'

'Then why not swear to the police, and let a jury decide?'

'Because I cannot believe I'll receive a fair trial. I fought your brother because he was trying to apprehend a young girl I was travelling with. She had just left the employment of my former commanding officer, Colonel Harris, who wanted her back. But she feared he would ravish her - he had tried once before, which was why she left.'

A shadow passed over the big man's face. 'So my brother was acting on Harris's orders?'

'Exactly.'

'And you say he drew a sword on you?'

'A sword-stick, to be exact.'

Thompson swore. 'John always were a bully, quick to use his fists. But he never killed no one, not to my knowledge.'

'Well, he almost killed me. As I say, he left me no alternative.'

'I don't believe you,' said Thompson, shaking his head. 'I reckon you were taking a beating and you pulled a pistol.'

'That was not how it was. He drew his weapon first. I tried to reason with him, but he wouldn't let us go. So I told the girl to run, which was when your brother tried to stab me. I shot him in self-defence.'

'So you keep saying, but old Bob can't speak for himself, can he?'

'No.'

'Which is why I'm asking you nicely,
Captain
Hart, to hand yourself in. Our poor old mother won't rest until she knows justice has been done.'

'I'm sorry for her, I truly am. But no jury influenced by Harris will believe I was justified in using a pistol against a sword-stick, though I know I was. If I admit to killing your brother I'll swing, and I don't deserve that.'

'And that's your final answer?'

'It is.'

'You bloody coward.' Thompson lurched forward, swinging a left-handed haymaker at the side of George's head.

But George, though drunk, was the nimbler of the two, easily slipping the punch and countering with one of his own, a straight right that caught Thompson flush on the jaw with a crack that echoed down the empty street. It was a blow made all the more potent by the humiliation he had already suffered at the gambling den, and Thompson reaped the consequences. He staggered and fell backwards into a sitting position, his eyes glazed.

'Like your brother, you left me no choice,' said George. Suddenly sober, he walked briskly away.

Chapter 2

George's heart was still pounding as he entered the lobby of his small, discreet hotel at the bottom of Queen's Gate. It had been an evening to forget and he wished he was already on the ship to South Africa.

'Room thirty-two. Any messages?' he asked, more out of habit than expectation.

'Yes, sir,' said the tail-coated concierge, handing over his key and a thick white envelope. 'This came for you an hour ago.'

Recognizing at once the crest of the Commander-in-Chief, George tore open the letter and read:

The Horse Guards

Pall Mall

My dear Captain Hart

There is a matter of some urgency I would like to discuss with you this evening at my private residence, 6 Queen Street, Mayfair. Would you be so good as to arrive no later than half past nine? I look forward to renewing our acquaintance then.

I am, etc.

George Cambridge, Field Marshal

George pulled out his pocket-watch and cursed. It was ten minutes past the hour, which gave him just twenty minutes to change his clothes, hail a cab and get to the Commander-in-Chief's house in Mayfair. He grabbed his room key and ran for the stairs, taking them two at a time.

A quarter of an hour later George's cab was snarled in traffic on Piccadilly, a swearing, tangled mass of horse-riders, private carriages and hansoms jostling for position. The evening was going from bad to worse. 'How much longer?' he asked the driver, perched high above him.

'Don't worry, sir,' shouted the cabbie, as he steered his horse left off Piccadilly into Half Moon Street. 'Almost there.'

A couple of minutes later the cab drew up outside a substantial but far from palatial Georgian townhouse, the home of HRH the Duke of Cambridge and his morganatic wife, the former actress Mrs FitzGeorge. George had not heard from the duke since their interview two months earlier, and could only assume there were some last-minute instructions or messages the War Office wanted him to convey to South Africa. But why not summon him to Pall Mall, as before? Why ask a lowly captain to his private residence? George was intrigued and not a little flattered.

He was also hoping to meet Mrs FitzGeorge, who was, like his mother, a famous beauty of the stage; she was said to have secretly - and illegally - married the duke
after
she had had three illegitimate sons by him. They had since had another and all four were serving officers, known by the royal suffix 'Fitz', signifying bastard. Because of her humble origins as the daughter of a Bow Street printer, Mrs FitzGeorge had neither been accepted by society nor acknowledged by the Queen, the duke's first cousin.

George Hart himself occupied an ambivalent position in the British class system: dark-skinned and illegitimate, he had been sent to Harrow and Sandhurst and was now masquerading as an officer and a gentleman. He assumed they would have much in common.

The door was opened by a florid-faced butler who, having taken George's hat and coat, led him upstairs to the first-floor drawing room. 'Captain George Hart,' he announced.

'At last,' said a voice George recognised as the duke's. 'Show him in.'

The room contained three men in evening dress. The duke was standing by the empty fireplace, a portly figure with bald pate and white mutton-chop whiskers. Seated on a sofa to his left was a younger man George did not know, also bald but with a full beard and pince-nez hanging from his neck. Opposite him, on a second sofa, he saw the unmistakable figure of Lord Beaconsfield, the Prime Minister, with his thin, pinched face, prominent nose and goatee beard.

'You look as if you've seen a ghost, Captain,' said the duke, with a chuckle. 'I can assure you, Lord Beaconsfield is flesh and blood. As is Lord Salisbury,' he added, gesturing towards the second man. 'Come over and all will be explained.'

George was taken aback - the Prime Minister
and
the Foreign Secretary - but he did as he was bidden, bowing slightly as he shook the duke's hand. Salisbury rose to greet him, but Beaconsfield remained sitting. 'Forgive my
impolitesse
, Captain,' he said, 'but I've been unwell and my doctor advises rest - as if that were possible in these troubled times.'

'I quite understand, Prime Minister.'

'Now, before we start,' said the duke, 'would you care for a drink?'

George knew it was unwise to accept, but felt it might calm his nerves. 'Whisky, please.'

'What you're about to hear is a matter of national security and must not be repeated without our authority. Secrecy is paramount. Do you understand?'

George nodded as he took his drink from the butler, who then left the room, closing the double doors behind him.

'First may I congratulate you, Captain Hart,' began Beaconsfield, 'on surviving the catastrophe at Isandlwana. I don't mind telling you that receiving the news of that defeat was one of the darkest moments of my life. The government might have fallen there and then without the glimmer of sunshine provided by the heroic defence of Rorke's Drift. I gather you fought there too?'

Unwelcome memories of the vicious fighting, particularly the death of his friend Jake, swirled into George's head. 'I did, my lord,' said George, as if in a trance, 'until I was wounded.'

'Of course,' said Beaconsfield, nodding, 'and I trust you're fully recovered.'

'I am. Thank you.'

'From what His Royal Highness tells me, you have performed a double service for your country - first, by your acts of valour during the fighting, and second, by exposing the inadequacies of the military command in South Africa. My instinct on hearing the news of Isandlwana was at once to relieve Lord Chelmsford of his command. But the duke argued against this, as did Her Majesty the Queen, on the grounds that it would be unfair to condemn the man before the full details of the battle were known. Well, now they are, thanks to you, and a few days ago Her Majesty finally sanctioned the Cabinet's recommendation to replace Lord Chelmsford with Sir Garnet Wolseley, who will leave on the SS
Edinburgh Castle
tomorrow. I hear you are booked on the same passage.'

'Indeed I am,' said George, barely able to conceal his delight that Chelmsford had finally received his comeuppance. He was eager to return to South Africa - to take revenge on his Zulu cousin Mehlokazulu for killing Jake at Isandlwana, to settle scores with Sir Jocelyn Harris, his former CO, for drumming him out of the 1st Dragoon Guards and to avoid retribution for killing Thompson - but he had dreaded serving again under Chelmsford and his deputy Crealock. Now that threat had been lifted.

'I can see from your expression that you approve of the Cabinet's decision,' said Beaconsfield, leaning forward. 'Quite right. But you may not have the opportunity to make Sir Garnet's acquaintance. We have in mind for you a quite different form of military service in another country that should suit your unique talents. Lord Salisbury will explain.'

Nonplussed, and not a little irked that his return to South Africa was in doubt, George swung round to face the Foreign Secretary. 'Have you ever heard of the Prophet's Cloak?' asked Salisbury, in a deep, gravelly voice.

'No,' replied George, 'but I imagine it has something to do with the Muhammadan religion.'

'Exactly so. The Mussulmans believe it was once owned by the Prophet Muhammad himself and as such is one of their most sacred relics. How it found its way to Afghanistan has never been properly explained. Some say it was given as a present to an Afghan chief called Kais who fought on behalf of the Prophet in the seventh century, others that it was brought to the country from Bokhara in the late eighteenth century by Ahmad Shah Durrani, the founder of the ruling dynasty. Today it resides in a locked silver box, itself protected by two outer wooden chests, in the shrine of Kharka Sharif in Kandahar in the south of the country. If we could be sure it would stay there, and never see the light of day, we would not be having this conversation. But experience tells us it can and will be brought out in times of national emergency. It was last donned by Dost Mahomed, the late Amir of Kabul. Does that name sound familiar?'

'Of course, my lord. Every schoolboy knows of Dost, and of how Britain was forced to restore him as ruler after the disasters of the first Afghan war in the forties.'

'Quite right. Dost understood the symbolic power of the cloak as a means of rallying the faithful against the foreign invader, which brings me to the point. While you were battling the Zulu, a quite separate war was being fought in Afghanistan. And, like your war, it was launched by a pro-consul who exceeded his brief. When Lord Lytton took up his post as Viceroy of India in seventy-six he was instructed by the Cabinet to prevent the ruler of Afghanistan, Sher Ali, falling under Russian influence. One by one the khanates of Central Asia have fallen to the Russians, who now stand on Afghanistan's northern border. Our greatest fear is that they will continue their march south and use Afghanistan to invade India. Lord Lytton's task was to encourage Sher Ali to accept a British resident in Kabul who could keep an eye on the Russians.

'What he was not authorized to do was send a mission up the Khyber Pass without Sher's permission, which was what happened last autumn. Inevitably the mission was turned back by the Afghans and war was the result. It might have been avoided, but only if Sher had apologized and agreed to accept a resident. It was vital to our prestige that he agreed to some form of reparation. He refused. These Orientals are very proud.'