The Last Horseman (25 page)

‘Yes, captain.’

Trooper Marlowe eased his horse from the blind side of the building as Belmont hauled himself into the saddle. The captain thumbed open his timepiece. Somewhere in the distance he thought he heard a train’s stream whistle carry across the still air. In his mind’s eye he saw the old puffer ease away from its siding; a dozen or more boxcars full of Boer women, guarded by a handful of soldiers front and back.

He snapped the inscribed silver watch closed and then looked at the hard-bitten men who rode with him. There were none better for the relentless war he was asked to fight. ‘All right, let’s kill some Boers.’

*

Bergfontein was a tin-roofed town of three hundred citizens who benefited from the rail-line junction that pushed north towards the distant mountains and into the Transvaal, the largest of the Boer republics, and then east into the Portuguese colony of Portuguese East Africa. Bergfontein was strategically placed as a refuelling stopover that also allowed wounded British troops to be taken by hospital trains south through the colony of Natal to Durban where the hospital ship
Maine
, financed by generous Americans, was anchored. In this dry wasteland, beyond the battle lines, a thousand large bell tents were laid out in neat formation, the whole area surrounded with barbed wire. The Bergfontein Internee Camp held more than three thousand displaced Boer women and children, guarded by a handful of soldiers who could be easily reinforced by those at Verensberg, thirty-odd miles away, should the need arise. But the rock-strewn plain – a vast expanse that would entrap any attacking force – was no fighting ground for the Boer commandos. Leaving the safety of the mountain ranges and daring to attack would be little more than a futile gesture. How could a mobile army seize and care for thousands of women and children?

At the edge of town a colonial bungalow’s wide, shady stoep wrapped itself protectively around the rotting windows and pine front door that had long yielded its resin to the moisture-sucking heat. A subaltern, from the Lancashire Regiment’s detachment whose duty it was to guard the camp, knocked decisively on the door.

‘Mrs Charteris?’ he called.

Two soldiers stood with him. ‘Want us to kick it in, sir?’

The lieutenant’s hand was on the doorknob. It turned; the door opened. ‘I think we can dispense with your boot breaking down the lady’s door,’ he said and stepped inside the cool, high-ceilinged house. ‘All right, she’s not here. Get to it.’

The soldiers slung their rifles and followed the subaltern, who reappeared moments later once his orders had been issued, and joined the half-dozen soldiers waiting for him in the red dust street.

‘With me,’ he commanded the lance corporal in charge of the section, who brought the men to attention, right-turned them, and followed the nineteen-year-old lieutenant whose orders were to find the troublesome Evelyn Charteris and bring her before the Officer Commanding Bergfontein Internee Camp.

The woman they sought was a well-bred middle-class doctor’s daughter, calm and considered in her arguments for social justice but inflamed with moral indignation at the camps. She would never grace the social pages of the better-quality magazines back in England, but she was considered by many to be a handsome woman. Widowed by the time she was twenty-three, childless, she had dedicated herself to works of charity on a meagre stipend left in her late husband’s will. Vanity, what little she’d had, had been pushed aside when she reached Africa. She had taken scissors to her long auburn hair and wore it unfashionably short at the nape of her neck. It was rumoured this forthright thirty-five-year-old woman had had lovers, but no further knowledge of these relationships had ever come to light, so no smear of scandal remained.

In an effort to help feed some of the more vulnerable children in the camp hospital she had planted vegetables in the depleted soil of her garden, but the yield was poor and disproportionate to her efforts – almost as poor as the responses to her constant letters to anyone in authority who might ease the plight of the women and children being forced from their farms and removed to Bergfontein. There were a few who supported her locally – a handful of women and a couple of Quakers – and whenever a train halted she would attempt to rally support. The young subaltern had no trouble finding her.

A small crowd of onlookers had gathered on the train station platform. Evelyn Charteris, flanked by a couple of women supporters, stood on a makeshift dais and harangued the bemused passengers, who waited as the engine took on water.

‘This war was instigated by British business interests to secure the goldmines of South Africa and force the Transvaal Republic to give the vote to outsiders. And once that vote had been secured the Afrikaners could be dislodged from power.’

One of the men in the crowd interrupted: ‘Nothing wrong with having a piece of gold in your pocket! God knows I could do with a bit myself.’

The crowd cheered.

‘It is not unpatriotic to be compassionate to the women and children caught up in this conflict –’ she said, raising her voice, but was interrupted.

‘You take them in then!’ another in the crowd called, causing more ribaldry and a surge towards the dais.

‘They’re the enemy!’ someone shouted.

Evelyn pointed beyond the train towards the internment camp. ‘
They
are not our enemy. It is imperative we help them. Do you have no conscience about others’ suffering?’

The antagonism was picked up by another: ‘You people are nothing but a bunch of bleeding-heart suffragettes with those conscientious objectors, those conchies, hanging on your skirts!’

‘Or up ’em!’ cried one of the men.

‘Conchies and whores!’ a woman shouted from the back of the crowd.

Evelyn tried to shout over the belligerent heckling. ‘We are doing whatever we can to help these homeless women and children. Are we so uncivilized we cannot offer them consolation?’

The crowd were having none of it and pushed forward, elbowing aside the two women who tried to shield her. Had it not been for the subaltern and his men forcing their way forward, she would have been thrown to the ground. The civilians soon yielded, beginning to filter away once the soldiers had reached her. The young officer was unfailingly polite, but equally determined to do his duty.

‘Mrs Charteris, I have orders for you to accompany me to the camp commandant.’ For a moment she was flustered and backed away, as if intending to resist. But he stepped quickly in front of her, blocking any chance she had of escaping. ‘By any means necessary,’ he said quietly.

There was no point in chastising a young officer doing his duty, so she nodded and fell into step as he accompanied her off the platform and along the street. They walked in silence until she reached her house, where she saw a bonfire was burning in the small picket-fenced garden. The two soldiers who had been left behind came out with armfuls of her books and papers and tossed them on to the fire.

‘Am I that much of a danger, lieutenant?’

‘Apparently more than you realize, ma’am.’

*

The thousand white dust-blown tents shimmered in the glaring sunlight. The women and children incarcerated in the sprawling internment camp huddled beneath the flapping canvas scoured by mountain winds that could bring heat, cold and wet in an unforgiving punishment. They were a hardy breed, the Boers, and their womenfolk were used to the harshness of the veld. It was God’s country but there were times it felt as if the devil himself bore down on them. And God tested his people, said the church leaders of the Dutch Reformed Church, their Calvinistic stoicism entrenching their belief that the Almighty had predestined their journey through this vale of tears. Well and good, the women said among themselves, but their men were riding commando, their farms had been destroyed and their children were dying of disease and malnutrition. God’s calloused hand struck them hard. A woman’s bitterness would be ploughed deep and watered with her tears; the crop would yield a hatred for the English that would never be appeased.

Radcliffe and Pierce sat astride their horses gazing at the tent city in the distance. Radcliffe traced his finger across the map case.

‘This is Bergfontein,’ he said, flapping the case closed. The dust cloud had swept from the far valley and across the plain, leaving the rail link and the scattered houses stark against the harsh landscape.

‘You think that Charteris woman is still here?’ said Pierce as they eased their horses from their vantage point and down the gentle slope.

‘Maybe,’ said Radcliffe. ‘She wrote enough letters to me in Dublin and someone that determined isn’t going to give up easily.’

Pierce scanned the inhospitable vista. ‘The British found the perfect place to dump people. The Spanish set up camps like this to deal with the Cuban guerrillas. They kept some of the toughest bastards around in them, called them
reconcentrados
. But I never thought I’d see the day when women and children were fenced in such places.’

Radcliffe swirled his mouth from his canteen of water and spat. ‘They call them concentration camps here.’

*

They urged their horses across the tracks where the stationary train hissed an occasional gasp of steam. The flatbed railcars behind it were empty and African levies sat idly by, backs against the wheels, seeking shade from the sun’s glare. Radcliffe and Pierce rode along the dusty main street with its scattered houses. The barbed-wire encampment on the edge of town needed only a few soldiers to guard its perimeter, and were it not for the tents, Bergfontein would be no different to any other South African
dorp
, clinging to the lifeline of its rail link.

It was barely a hundred paces from the tracks to the first house, where an African woman swept the front stoep of a house. She squinted up at them as they rode by, lowered her eyes as Radcliffe glanced her way, and then looked up again at the black man riding at his side. He was no servant. Not with saddle and clothes that matched the white man. And he was armed. Her mouth gaped in disbelief. The woman had heard that the British had given rifles to some of the Africans who scouted for them, but to her eyes it was plain to see that this man was no scout. And now he had reined in his horse and was looking at her.

‘Mrs Charteris. You know where she is?’ asked the black rider.

The woman stared, uncertainty making her dumb.

‘You speak English?’ the man said.

She nodded. But still no words came.

The rider’s eyes widened in expectation of an answer. ‘Mrs Charteris?’ he said again.

The woman pointed and finally found her voice. ‘The second street. Her house is there. You will see it.’

Pierce watched the woman quickly bend to her task again, shoulders hunched, as a white woman stepped on to the street with a disparaging look towards her servant and the man on horseback. She was about to say something to Pierce, an admonishment perhaps, but Pierce held her gaze until discomfort made her turn back into the house. He tongue-clicked a command for his horse to walk on.

‘Thank you,’ he said to the servant.

But she kept her gaze lowered.

*

Radcliffe and Pierce tethered their horses to a bungalow’s picket fence.

‘You think this is it?’ asked Pierce. There were four other tin-roofed dwellings along the dusty street.

Radcliffe nodded towards the charred bonfire where a few singed documents and book pages had survived. ‘Who else would have their books burned?’

A woman appeared from the side garden carrying a basket of vegetables, a broad-brimmed hat shielding her face from the sun. She stopped when she saw the two rough-looking riders walking towards her front door.

‘Yes?’ she demanded.

They stopped and looked at her. The woman glared at them. But then: ‘I know you,’ she said quickly, her challenge softened as her sharp memory recalled a photograph in an English newspaper.

‘We’ve never met, Mrs Charteris. I’m –’

‘Joseph Radcliffe,’ she whispered, hand to her mouth. ‘Oh. Thank God,’ she muttered. Her eyes closed as if she might faint.

Radcliffe’s concern for her made him step towards her, but then she recovered and smiled, extending her hand in greeting.

‘Mr Radcliffe from Dublin. And you must be Mr Pierce.’

Pierce had already removed his hat and took her hand in his own. She gripped it firmly.

‘Benjamin Pierce, yes ma’am.’

‘Of course you are. Of course. I remember your name so clearly from all the letters. Please forgive me, you took me completely by surprise. I had absolutely no idea that you would actually come. Come inside, come inside at once.’

The two men looked at each other. From what she’d said it seemed they had been expected. Perplexed, they followed her up the steps to her front door and into the cool, high-ceilinged room.

‘We seem to have arrived at an inopportune moment, Mrs Charteris. You’re moving house?’ Radcliffe asked when he saw the sparsely furnished, untidy room. Books were stacked on the floor in front of half-empty shelves, an old leather-topped mahogany desk was laden with untidy piles of letters. A broken chair, one leg torn from its seat, was propped in a corner.

Evelyn Charteris put the basket down on the kitchen table, draping her hat on a chair. ‘No, no. The authorities searched the house. It will take me an age to put it back together. Food, as scarce as it is, is more important than a tidy house. So it’s all something of a mess,’ she said, and cleared an armful of books and piano sheet music from a couch. ‘They burned a lot of my papers and books. The soldiers have their orders, so one can’t blame them, though they attend to their duties with zealousness.’ She paused, pulling a hand through her short auburn hair. ‘Please sit. You must be weary after your journey and I’m talking too much. Forgive me. I’m being ungracious. One forgets how to treat guests.’

They shuffled awkwardly further into the room and seated themselves on the edge of the small couch. There was barely any other furniture in the room, other than the broken chair which, Radcliffe guessed, would have seated Evelyn Charteris when it was whole.