The Last Horseman (19 page)

It was a horse sent from the devil as surely as the sun came up each morning. Veins bulged, muscles rippled beneath taut skin, bowstring-tight sinews extended its mighty stride. Pierce shed forty years, gripped the handrail, swung out into the slipstream, hat raised, whooping like a nine-year-old child as he waved on horse and rider as they passed the boxcar. Radcliffe was being taken for the ride of his life on a horse whose strength and pace few men could tolerate.

As Radcliffe rode clear, Pierce fell silent. It was seldom a man witnessed such a sight. He was wrong. This horse was no demon. It was one of the most beautiful creatures in God’s kingdom: an effortless, mysterious power. A thing of poetry.

*

Three miles south of the point where the British had crossed the Tugela to assault the killing hills the railway junction teemed with activity. Hat-rack beef cattle were herded in pens, and horses were corralled in makeshift stalls in old sheds. The area had once been a large Boer farm settlement; now it suited the British as a rear echelon field HQ. The area was a staging post where wagons brought in the wounded from the battlefield. Native levies unloaded sacks of supplies and tended fires beneath metal urns boiling bloodstained dressings for reuse. Field hospital orderlies laid aside the dead, carried in the wounded, and shuffled men into the tents and half-ruined buildings that served as makeshift operating theatres.

Radcliffe sat astride the horse, its flanks heaving from the gallop, as five hundred yards behind him the train slowed. Dismounting, he walked the horse towards the tableau of misery, the carnage from a battle still being fought less than a dozen miles away. When the train halted Pierce grabbed their saddlebags and came to his side.

‘Jesus, they’ve taken a shellacking,’ he said. Muted gunfire crackled beyond the horizon. ‘And still are by the sound of it.’

‘I hope to God Edward isn’t a part of this,’ Radcliffe said, and led the horse towards what looked to be the house used as the field headquarters.

As the two men made their way through the bustle of activity he searched out the patch denoting regimental colours on the men’s helmets. Some of the puggarees were still hidden by khaki covers; others were not of the Royal Irish. Leaning in the shade of a cob wall one of the bedraggled men raised his head as they passed by.

‘Mr Radcliffe, sir,’ the man said.

Radcliffe stared at the bareheaded grimy face and tried to place it. As on all soldiers, the helmet’s peak had kept the sun from the top of the man’s face, a white half-moon, and the sunburn lay below the eyes. But the gaunt face and blackened hand raised in greeting teased his memory. ‘Soldier,’ he said uncertainly.

‘It’s Mulraney, sir. Royal Irish. D’ya not remember me, Mr Radcliffe? At the garrison?’

The memory flooded back, and Radcliffe clasped the man’s hand. ‘Of course. Mulraney. How are you, man? Are you hurt?’

‘No, sir, just catching m’breath. I brought in a few of the lads for the surgeon. You wouldn’t have a drop of water in that canteen on your saddle, would you, sir? Most here is kept for them that needs it until they boil down the filth in the river.’

Pierce took the canteen and handed it to Mulraney, who took an appreciative swig and then handed it to a couple of the other men who sheltered with him, and who eagerly shared the precious liquid.

‘That’s rightly appreciated. Lot of lads are down with enteric fever as well as the
boojers
’ bullets. Jesus, if the Dutchies don’t get you your guts will, that’s right enough. You’ve a few miles behind you to get here,’ he said.

Radcliffe nodded. ‘Where are your officers?’

‘Ah, dead or out there being potted by the Dutchies.’

‘Is Colonel Baxter here?’

‘At the front with the lads. My God, Mr Radcliffe, our colonel’s got more guts than any other, I swear it.’

Before Radcliffe could question the exhausted soldier any further, Regimental Sergeant Major Thornton strode towards them. Bloodstains darkened his khaki and it was obvious to Radcliffe and Pierce that his rank had not restrained him from helping with the wounded.

‘Major Radcliffe. You’re a long way from home, sir. And Captain Pierce with you. Whatever are you gentlemen doing here?’

‘I was asking the major that myself, seeing as how it’s not the sort of place you’d want to be bringing yourself for an excursion unless it was at Her Majesty’s pleasure,’ Mulraney said.

RSM Thornton looked at the grimy bloodstained soldier as if seeing him for the first time. ‘Mulraney, get yourself back up the line. No malingering, lad. Your mates need you,’ he said not unkindly.

‘Nice to be wanted, sergeant major.’

‘No sarcasm now, son. Off with you.’

Mulraney picked up his rifle and pushed the helmet back on to his head, then clambered aboard a blood-slicked flatbed wagon that was returning to the front line to pick up more casualties.

‘It looks desperate here, Mr Thornton,’ Radcliffe said as more wounded were brought in.

‘More than five hundred dead, sir. Third of our men and two-thirds of our officers have been killed. We’re barely managing to hold the line.’

‘Mr Thornton, I’m here looking for my son. We think he may have enlisted under a false name. Lieutenant Baxter is his friend.’

The RSM looked across the crowded area, as if searching among the boys and men who lay suffering. ‘I’m sorry, sir, I know nothing about your boy. It’s bloody chaos out there. That’s what I do know.’

Radcliffe followed his gaze, a sight no different than he had seen in other conflicts. Badly wounded and mutilated men lying out under a merciless sun. ‘Why are these men out in this heat?’ he asked.

‘Why, sir? Because they’re deemed to be less important than horses.’ Thornton barely kept the criticism from his voice

‘Show me,’ Radcliffe said.

*

The RSM led them through sheds where hundreds of horses were corralled in the shade. There were water troughs and straw. At the far end of the larger shed a bearded, heavy-set horse-trader was checking a manifest with another man.

‘I’ve seen carpetbaggers and horse-traders who’d take the boots off a dying man to make a dollar,’ said Pierce. ‘And those two look as though they’ve done their fair share of boot stealing.’

‘They’re using more horses than bullets,’ said Thornton. ‘There’s near enough a thousand dead in this area alone. But the Dutchies have tough mountain ponies; we have nothing like them. This war’s gobbling up horses. The fighting, the weather, the terrain... They’re even sending horses from India and South America.’

‘Would you mind, sergeant major?’ Radcliffe said, handing the reins to Thornton in an act intended to keep the career soldier out of any argument with the civilians. Then, with Pierce at his side, he walked through the cool, high-roofed shed towards the horse-trader. The broad belt holding in his belly exposed a pistol butt close to his hardened hands. There was no doubt that he was a horse-breaker, and would whip a man as soon as a horse. The man was engrossed in the manifest but suddenly became aware that the stranger who accompanied the sergeant major was walking straight up to him as the black man with him started pulling down the makeshift stall poles that held the horses. The moment of dumbfounded surprise quickly gave way to spittle-flecked anger.

‘Hey! Kaffir! Get the hell out of there! These are my horses!’

Without need of command the horse-trader’s henchman ignored the white man who was a few paces away and ran towards Pierce. Much good it would do him, Radcliffe thought as he pointed a finger directly at the beefy man’s face. ‘Your man had better learn some respect, mule-skinner. My friend’s a decorated war hero.’

Radcliffe heard the blow, fist on bone, and the sound of the henchman drop to the floor, He didn’t look back; what had happened was written in shock on the horse-trader’s face. Black men did not assault white men. That was a hanging offence.

Flustered by the assault, the horse-trader reached for the pistol, but Radcliffe poked a finger in his eye and grabbed the pistol. As the man’s hand reached up to his injured face, Radcliffe swiped the barrel across his head. The man’s hat would take the impact, but the pain would still penetrate the numbskull. The trader fell and was then forced to quickly roll clear as a hundred or more horses surged past him.

‘They won’t run. They know who’s feeding them,’ Radcliffe said, seeing the confused horses reach the cattle kraals where they slowed and jostled together nervously now that they were boxed in by the other buildings each side. A quickly erected corral would be enough to restrain them. Spilling the pistol’s cartridges into the dirt Radcliffe kicked the man’s legs, forcing him to stagger upright. ‘And my friend here needs a horse. He’ll choose it – send the bill of sale to the general. Any general will do.’ Radcliffe threw the pistol at the man, who flinched, recovered the weapon and, having suffered enough humiliation, staggered away.

‘Did you kill him?’ Radcliffe asked, looking at the fallen henchman.

‘God, no. What the hell do you take me for?’

‘I’ll think on that.’ He turned to where the RSM had tied up Radcliffe’s horse. ‘Mr Thornton, wounded men need shade and water. Be good enough to attend to that while I go and explain things to whoever’s in charge here.’

‘That would be General Laleham, sir,’ Thornton said.

*

Major General Harold Laleham, veteran of India and Afghanistan, sat behind a makeshift desk, his aide-de-camp hovering at his shoulder, while in the background HQ staff flitted between map tables and ringing field telephones. The general read the document that Radcliffe had presented. In the far distance the rumble of artillery was a constant reminder of a major battle being fought.

‘You have friends in high places. Lord Mayberry is an influential Liberal peer. But I can’t help you find your son. I’m lucky if I know where half my own troops are,’ he said, handing back the letter that asked those reading it to extend all courtesies and help to its bearer, Joseph Radcliffe.

An orderly delivered a tray of tea and placed it in front of Laleham. Hospitality was not extended to Radcliffe, who stood, dust-caked, in front of the man who might be able to help find Edward.

‘I think he may have lied about his age and enlisted. Can you give me a pass to move through your lines?’

Laleham sampled the tea. News of the upset with the horses had already reached him: it was apparent that, as well as being a man who wielded some influence with those back in England, Radcliffe felt sufficiently confident to cause a fuss. ‘We are fighting an enemy who, in some respects, is better armed than us, and who knows the ground. We are taking heavy losses. Liberal politicians were responsible for stripping the army to the bone: I don’t care for any of them. Nor their friends.’

‘You don’t need to be a liberal to care about men lying on groundsheets, some of them in mud scrapes, others racked with fever, huddled together with only a blanket between them.’

Laleham’s blood rose above his collar, his face slowly flushing with anger as he attempted to control his impatience with the critical American. ‘This is a field hospital. We have no beds. We have no doctors or surgeons. Six hundred miles of railway line, parts of which are being continually destroyed by our enemy’s commandos, halt our supplies, Radcliffe. What we have is a damned battle to win.’

‘And every wounded man needs shelter and care if he’s to return to the line. A couple of hundred wounded men were baking out there while horses were under shelter.’

Laleham was clearly in no mood to be lectured. ‘I have six cavalry regiments and five thousand mounted infantry fifty miles from here and they are desperate for new horses – replacement horses that are poor quality at best! Those men are soldiers. Suffering is what they must endure.’ He slammed the palm of his hand on the table. ‘My advance is bogged down across those hills because there are regiments who can’t find the backbone for a fight.’ The teacup had rattled in its saucer and the aide-de-camp barely restrained himself from reaching forward to save the bone-china cup from destruction.

Laleham dipped a pen into the inkwell and scribbled on official notepaper. He slid it to one side and now the aide-de-camp had a task to perform: he blotted the wet ink. The paper was folded and handed to Radcliffe. Perhaps granting the American’s request might stop him from sending disparaging reports home to his friends in high places. ‘The military cannot be responsible for your safety. Here’s your pass. Get yourself killed on your own terms, Mr Radcliffe.’

*

Pierce moved the horses aside, clearing more space for stretchers as an African levy steadied the horse Pierce had chosen for himself and which was now saddled and tethered next to Radcliffe’s mount. The horse became skittish as it smelled the blood from the stretchers and the levy quickly took control of it and eased it to a hitching rail further away from the stench. He glanced uncertainly at the man who stood head and shoulders above him. Such a man would be honoured or feared were he a Zulu. The flecks of grey in his hair and the beard that covered the area below his lips down on to his chin denoted a man of age and wisdom and he looked as strong as a bull. He would be a respected warrior wherever he came from.

‘You are African?’ asked the levy.

‘Well, I’m surely not a fully paid-up member of the Ku Klux Klan.’ The comment obviously meant nothing to the levy. Pierce nodded. ‘Yeah. I guess I am.’

‘You do not sound African,’ said the levy.

‘Can’t help you there. But I’m not from around here.’

‘Your
baas
is a good man?’

Pierce wondered how to explain that although the word
baas
carried the same meaning as the term
master
he had once been obliged to use as a boy on the cotton plantation, it had no place between him and the white man who rode at his side.

‘He’s my friend,’ he said simply.

The African considered the answer for a moment. ‘And you come to this place and you fight?’

‘We’re looking for my friend’s son. I hope we don’t have to fight. Your people don’t fight in this war?’

‘
Cha
,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘We are not allowed to fight. It is not our war. We work. That is what we do.’