Hervey 10 - Warrior (24 page)

Jaswant led them with his usual insistent formality to the state study.

Somervile, smoking a strong cheroot, rose to greet them. He shook hands in the way of men transacting business, and then took a chair in the circle of five beside the east window. 'Thank you, Hervey – and you, Fairbrother – for coming so promptly upon the summons. Sit you down, gentlemen; sit you down.'

Major Dundas, the military secretary, who was already in the room, took his seat at a table in the corner, where pen and paper lay ready for his minute-taking.

'I have asked Dundas to make a record of this meeting for the purposes of a despatch to Huskisson at the War and Colonies Office. You are at liberty, of course, to peruse the record before it is complete. I would have this adventure properly minuted to London in case, shall we say, of any mischance and subsequent misunderstanding.'

Hervey nodded. It was principally to him that Somervile appeared to be directing his remarks.

'And so, let me begin by telling you of what we have just lately learned respecting Shaka. Some weeks ago there arrived at Port Elizabeth emissaries, several Englishmen who trade from Port Natal, and some of Shaka's dignitaries. They were conveyed by an officer of the Royal Navy – or former officer: his status is yet wholly unclear to me – in a country-built and unseaworthy vessel. I regret to say that the mission does not appear to have been met with any great address. Indeed it was botched; but that is by the bye. As soon as I learned of their parlous condition yesterday evening, and of their wish to return to Natal forthwith, I despatched the Helicon to Algoa Bay with presents for Shaka, to convey the embassy back to Port Natal with the declaration of our intent to visit with him.'

'They bore messages as well as gifts, I imagine, this embassy?'

'Nothing in writing, of course, but an assurance that Shaka wishes to live in peace as long as we do not provoke him.'

Hervey thought this curious, and glanced at Colonels Smith and Bird, but they appeared to know of it already. 'Provocation is rather more a question of judgement than fact, is it not? Does he mean, I wonder, that the affair at Umtata was provoking? Is that why he sent the embassy?'

'Strange to relate,' said Somervile, blowing a great deal of smoke into the circle: 'Shaka denies there were Zulu at Umtata.'

Hervey's brow creased. 'Then Umtata was not a provocation. Unless, of course, he thinks we believed we were seeking to bring on a battle with him there.'

'Black men look very much the same when they're feathered and carrying spears,' said Fairbrother.

'A
little
droll, Captain Fairbrother,' suggested Somervile.

'I stand rebuked, Sir Eyre.'

'Not rebuked, sir. Not at all rebuked,' Somervile insisted, taking a particularly satisfying draw on his cheroot.

'May I ask a question?' continued Fairbrother, recrossing his legs and folding his arms.

'By all means.'

'The presence of Shaka's men in Algoa Bay will not have escaped the notice of the Xhosa. What do you propose to do to reassure their chief that our intentions are unchanged, that we have no design to make alliance with Shaka against them?'

Somervile nodded. 'I have instructed the officer commanding the frontier to send word to the Xhosa of Shaka's embassy, and of my intention to make an embassy in return. For the greater safety of the frontier and for the Xhosa.'

Fairbrother bowed.

'May I, Sir Eyre?' asked Colonel Smith, indicating that he wished to question Fairbrother.

'By all means.'

Colonel Smith turned, distinctly hawk-like. 'Captain Fairbrother, I would hear your view of the Xhosa unrest, its cause and so forth. You will know there are contrary opinions.'

Fairbrother shifted not at all in the chair, his legs remaining crossed, for all the world looking as if these matters were to him an open book. 'It does not follow that all these opinions must each be worthy of consideration, Colonel.'

Hervey winced: his friend had a most unfortunate predisposition to assume hostility on the part of others.

But Colonel Smith took no offence. Or, at least, he did not show it. 'I am proceeding on the supposition that yours is worthy, however. Continue, if you please.'

Fairbrother nodded. 'My opinion is very easily given.' (He spoke with just a trace of the emollient.) 'The late irruptions into the east of the colony by the Xhosa do not stem from any ambition on their part, but are occasioned by Shaka. His cohorts press in from the north-east of the Xhosa's territory, and they in their Archimedean turn are displaced towards the south-west and over the frontier. The reiving is to all intents and purposes, therefore, a Zulu peril.'

Colonel Smith asked upon what evidence he had formulated this opinion, to which Fairbrother replied that he had spoken with several Xhosa elders, who had also expressed their belief that Gaika, the paramount chief, and others could be persuaded to resist the Zulu if they were given military assistance – which had indeed been the case before Umtata. He expressed himself certain that, from all he knew of the Colony and beyond these past ten years, Shaka would not give up his predations. At best he would push the Xhosa from their land, and they in turn would cross the frontier and make war with the Colony. But at worst Shaka might subjugate them by battle, or otherwise coerce them, and then the Colony would be obliged to fight an alliance of both Xhosa
and
Zulu – and for that matter, every Kaffir tribe east of the Keiskama.

Colonel Smith remained thoughtfully silent for some moments.

'The implication of what you say is that, one way or another, Shaka is a menace to the peace of the Colony.'

'It would be folly to rely on a line on the map when Shaka does not read or write. Besides, the growth of such a power to rival ours could not but have an unsettling effect.'

'You are not persuaded, Colonel?' asked Somervile, taking the cheroot from his mouth and leaning forward in his chair.

'I have been at the Cape but a month, Sir Eyre; and while I have been aware of the conflicting opinion as to the native menace, I have not been able to form any view of the consequences of
inaction.
My instinct, I must confess, is to delay until matters are clearer, for although I would always urge the boldest strategy – and the swiftest – it must be directed towards an objective which is unequivocally defined.' He spoke in a measured way, seeming to weigh his words with great care, as if still trying to come to a conclusion. 'This mission from Shaka, poorly handled as it was, is encouraging; it implies that war is perhaps avoidable. Which is as well, for our military strength is not great. Even if the government in London were to agree its increase, it would be a year at least before there was the means to undertake a campaign. The Zulu – what do they number?'

Somervile raised his hands. 'We have no number. We have no clear notion, indeed, where Shaka's domain ends.'

Colonel Smith shook his head. 'You will know what is my duty in this, Sir Eyre. But I do say one thing: there can be no military objection to an
embassy
to Shaka. I am perfectly clear in my mind in that regard.'

Somervile was grateful. He was by no means certain that General Bourke would have come to that determination.

Colonel Smith had one more question, though the ease of his expression no longer boded ill. 'You spoke of extra intelligence.'

Somervile smiled, but grimly. He leaned back in his chair and drew long on his cheroot before laying it aside and clasping his hands together in a gesture of resolve. 'On the death of his mother, by the name of Nandi, in October of last year, Shaka slaughtered a good many of his own people for reasons that are unclear, which may indeed be some manifestation of insanity, and ordered a year's mourning in which there was to be no cultivation of the soil, nor milk taken, nor conjugal activity – on pain of death. Indeed, any woman found with child suffers death with her husband.' Somervile spoke in an entirely detached way. He had seen things as cruel and senseless in India, though not on such a scale as this, if the reports were to be believed. 'Shaka has most brutally enforced these prohibitions, say our intelligencers, to the point that there is now talk of plots against him. It is well, therefore, that we meet with Shaka as soon as may be.'

All was silent. Fairbrother spoke the first. 'It is said that Shaka has never impregnated any of his harem. Did your intelligencers make remark on who is the rightful heir?'

Somervile took up his cheroot again to re-light with a safety match. 'It is supposed that it is the elder brother – half-brother – Dingane.'

Fairbrother made no reply.

'There could arise at any time a claimant, of course, for it seems scarcely possible that Shaka has not fathered a child. And that would be the very devil of a business to become entangled in.'

They all nodded.

Having succeeded in getting his cheroot lit once more, Somervile brought their deliberations to a point by blowing a prodigious cloud of smoke towards the ceiling. 'So you see, gentlemen, in consequence of the intelligence of active plots against Shaka, I am resolved on this embassy by the very greatest necessity. It is no longer, to my mind, an expedition of discovery but a prelude to action. Perhaps, even, an armed reconnaissance, as you militaire call it. I am persuaded that – to use Colonel Smith's words – the consequences of inaction are now too perilous to leave until the arrival of Sir Lowry Cole. Put plainly, it is the very safeguard of the Colony on which we embark.'

PART THREE
U-SHAKA!

XII
THE PLACE OF KILLING

Port Natal, towards the end of September

Hervey folded the cotton sheet, and shook his head. It was without doubt the most featureless map he had ever taken to the field with, a mere sketch of the hills and ridges, the rivers and winter bournes of that part of the Zulus' country which the British traders at Port Natal had noted ('surveyed' would have been too exact a term for the exercise). He had had a dozen copies made, drawn in an indelible ink by the troop clerk, and he had been able to commit every detail to memory. He tucked the map into an inside pocket of his dolman, confident that when he next took it out it would be to add to it rather than to consult.

It was in refastening the black buttons of the dragoon-fashion coat that he became conscious of the occasion: the expedition was the last time he would wear the green of the Rifles. Next he would exchange the blue of the Sixth for the scarlet of the infantry. He would thereby leave behind the world of semi-independence that was the light dragoon's (and in large measure the mounted rifleman's too) for the close order and volleying of the Line. And he thought to savour it one last time. He certainly had no intention of trying to re-form the 81st Foot in the image of the Sixth, for he had seen for himself the effect of volleying often enough. He had begun to doubt the musket, thinking it a thing of antiquity, for the rifle was more accurate and had the greater range. Single, aimed shots were surely the future? But then at Umtata, even against a foe as active in using ground as any he had seen, Colonel Mill's double rank of red (six volleys in every minute) had been as solid a wall as on that day in 1815 when the cream of Bonaparte's Grande Armée had tried to break its way through to Brussels. The shock of so many muskets firing as one was ever great. 'They came on in the old way, and we saw them off in the old way!'

The Zulu selected their lines of advance with cunning, using the folds of the ground to conceal their approach (in the prelude to Umtata he had twice found himself all but surrounded), but they fought shoulder to shoulder. Fought with the utmost courage. Rarely had he seen an opponent persist in the face of such volleying as the Fifty-fifth's. Then again, it had been the first time they had even seen a wall of red, let alone felt its fire.

How intelligent were these Zulu? Shaka, by all reports, was a warrior whose instinct for battle had forged the entire Zulu nation. Hervey could not but imagine that he would be thinking even now how to recast his army, in light of the reports of Umtata. Whatever Somervile might gain from this expedition by way of a treaty, he himself had but one object beyond the lieutenant-governor's safety: to discover how Shaka meant to fight if it came to war.