Vengeance, page 12
‘And on the other side, the country there? Is it good land for cattle?’
Ralph thought of the rolling hills of Zululand, the herds of cattle thousands strong grazing on the lush grass after the rains. ‘It is good land,’ he said, ‘but it is already taken. And the owners do not welcome uninvited guests.’
The juror put his glasses back on. ‘It was an extraordinary story you gave us in court. But I think perhaps the part you told was the least of it.’
Ralph said nothing. The manacles weighed heavily on his wrists: all he wanted was to be out of the courtroom.
‘I have sometimes thought of trekking north myself,’ the man went on, ignoring Ralph’s silence. ‘I would like to hear more of your tales.’
‘I am not staying here.’ The crowd was spilling outside, and the bailiff had managed to reach Ralph at last. He held up his wrists while the man fumbled with the large ring of keys on his belt.
‘Wait!’
A martial voice rang through the courthouse. A man stood on the threshold. He looked as if he had arrived that very moment, but beneath the thick dust that caked his clothes you could see the scarlet and gold of an army uniform.
The men and women still in the courtroom shrank back as he marched towards the magistrate, his spurs striking sparks from the stone floor.
‘I wish to give evidence,’ the officer said loudly.
The magistrate frowned at the irregularity. ‘The trial is over. The defendant has been acquitted.’
The officer stamped his boot on the floor, shaking a cloud of dust from his clothes. ‘I have ridden all the way from Cape Town. I demand to be heard.’
The magistrate’s frown deepened, his pale eyes hardening. He did not care to be told what to do in his own courtroom. ‘Mr Waite has been found not guilty by a jury of his peers. He is a free man.’
‘And I would be obliged if you would therefore take these chains off me,’ Ralph added angrily. He could smell the fury on the officer – almost as pungent as the reek of horse sweat. Ralph had to get his hands free.
The bailiff put his hand on Ralph’s wrist, offering up the key to the lock. The officer pulled him away. ‘If you set him free, it will be the last thing you do.’
‘Who are you?’ the magistrate demanded.
‘I am Captain Alexander Preston of the First Lincolnshire Regiment. And that man’ – his hand shot out, pointing at Ralph – ‘is not Frank Waite. His name is Ralph Courtney.’
Ralph’s heart clenched. How does he know?
The judge peered at Ralph. ‘Is this true?’
‘Look at the scars on his face. Do you think there are two men answering to his description in the Cape Colony?’
Ralph studied the officer, searching for his face in the long list of men he had given cause to hate him through the years. None of them looked like this man. Later, he might ponder the cruel fate that had brought this vengeful stranger to him just as he was about to walk free. At that moment, he only had one thought.
He clasped his manacled hands together, so that the chain hung slack from his wrists. Then he raised his hands above his right shoulder and pivoted to his left. The dangling chain whipped around and struck the officer across the face. A gash opened across his cheek and blood gushed from his nose. He stumbled back.
Before anyone could grab him, Ralph sprang past the officer and raced away. Through the open door, he saw a horse tethered to a post. It was saddled, and the stock of a carbine protruded from a holster. He ran for it.
Just as he was about to burst out into the sunlight, a sentry stepped out into his path. Ralph dropped his shoulder to barge him out of the way and drove on . . .
A rifle butt slammed into Ralph’s solar plexus, punching the breath from his lungs and knocking him flat on his backside. He tried to stand, but the sentry had been joined by another. Together, they sprang forward, grabbing him by the arms and holding him fast. Ralph kicked and screamed. Freedom was inches away. He was so close that he could feel the heat of the sun through the open door.
Ralph felt a sharp point against his ribs. ‘You’ll have my bayonet in your guts if you don’t stop,’ a voice hissed in his ear.
The sentries dragged Ralph to the front of the courtroom and stood him before the magistrate. Behind him, he could hear the clatter of chairs as the spectators rushed back to witness this dramatic new turn of events. He stared at Captain Preston. How do I know you?
There was no way the magistrate could silence the courtroom, but he banged his gavel until it was tolerably quiet. He turned to Captain Preston.
‘Explain yourself, sir.’
Whether by design or coincidence, the officer had ended up on the dais next to the magistrate. He glared at Ralph, blood from his broken nose dripping onto the floor.
‘Whatever names that man has given you, his true name is Ralph Courtney.’
He is mistaken! Ralph wanted to say. I am not that man! But the words would not come. He looked for William, hoping that the lawyer might intercede for him with some clever legal objection, but he had vanished.
He knows when he has a losing hand, he thought bitterly.
‘Ten years ago, he was sentenced to penal servitude on Robben Island. He escaped, and has been a fugitive ever since.’
Excited chattering broke out around the room. The judge banged his gavel again. ‘Silence!’ he shouted. ‘I will have silence in my court!’
‘There has only ever been one successful escape from Robben Island,’ Captain Preston continued when the noise had receded to a low murmuring. ‘And Ralph Courtney instigated it.’ The captain leaned forward, so that he looked like a hunting dog with the scent of game in its nostrils. ‘I was officer of the watch at the Cape Castle that night. I took my men to the beach at Blaauwberg and intercepted him.’ He gritted his teeth. Even now, it seemed that the memory was so bitter that he could barely give voice to it. ‘He knocked me off my horse and threatened to kill me.’
As I recall it, I persuaded my companions not to kill you, Ralph thought. But at least he now knew who this man was. Memories of that night flashed through his mind: the smell of rancid seal blubber from the animals they had skinned for their makeshift canoe, horsemen galloping down a moonlit beach, a young cavalry officer who let his men be ambushed, Ralph knocking him off his mount onto the sand. Ralph had never thought of him again.
But clearly Captain Preston had not forgotten Ralph. His eyes bored into him. ‘I swore that night that I would hunt you down, even if I had to search to the ends of Africa,’ he said. ‘When I read in the Advertiser that a man answering your description was on trial for murder in Graaff-Reinet, I knew it could only be you. I rode here from Cape Town on the instant, in order to see justice done.’
The magistrate stood up, looking at Ralph with hatred. ‘I see no reason to doubt the truth of these charges. The escape from Robben Island was an outrage.’
Ralph felt numb. Two names pounded in his head like a pair of hammers. Ann and Harry. Ann and Harry. He had been so close to walking out of the courtroom as a free man. Now, he might never see them again.
‘What would be the punishment for such a crime?’ the magistrate mused aloud. The crowd in the courtroom leaned forward. ‘Escaping from a justly ordered sentence is a crime against justice itself. No man would argue that an even more severe punishment should not follow.’
He is going to hang me. The sudden realisation hit Ralph like a blow from a cudgel. Just when he thought he had cheated the rope and landed on his feet, the ground had opened up beneath him.
‘But . . .’ The magistrate raised his finger. ‘While I am sure that the prosecution would argue for the hangman’s noose, the law condemned you to imprisonment. That sentence remains to be served, and the Crown will not be denied its recompense for your previous crimes. Any new punishment must be additional to this original judgment.’
Ralph barely heard the judge. In his mind, all he saw was the gallows tree; the coarse rope pressing against his neck; the squeak of hinges as the trapdoor opened, and then—
Ann and Harry.
‘This man is a notorious gaol-breaker,’ Captain Preston objected. ‘It would be folly to put him back where he came from.’
‘Indeed. In fact, I doubt there is a single prison in the Cape Colony that could constrain the remarkable Mr Courtney.’ A thin smile spread across the magistrate’s lips. ‘For that reason, Ralph Courtney, I do not sentence you to prison in the Cape Colony.’
In Ralph’s despair, he almost missed the magistrate’s next words.
‘There is a place for men like you, a place where the worst offenders against British justice are locked away.’
The magistrate extended his gavel, like a priest bestowing a blessing.
‘I sentence you to be transported to the penal colony of Van Diemen’s Land.’
The crowd in the courtroom gasped. It was a reprieve, but no mercy at all. Even amongst hardened prisoners, the very name Van Diemen’s Land made people tremble. It was the worst prison on earth.
‘That is the other side of the world,’ Ralph gasped.
The judge’s gavel rapped down with a sound like thunder.
‘Take him away. There will be no escape from that place.’
MISSION STATION, MAHIKENG
F
rom the top of the kopje, Harry scanned the scrubby highveld that stretched to the horizon in every direction. It was nearly dusk: when he looked west, the low sun shone straight in his face, hurting his eyes, but he did not blink or look away. He knew his father was coming.
He rubbed his right knee. It had been three weeks now since the bandages had been cut away and the stitches taken out, but it still hurt, and the skin on his leg was pale from being wrapped up for so long. It gave his legs a funny, mismatched appearance, which Clara’s brother Louis found hilarious. ‘You look like a zebra,’ he crowed, which made Harry want to hit him. But at least he was free.
As soon as Andrew had removed the bandages, Harry had made straight for the kopje. Every day of his convalescence he had sat by the compound gate, waiting for Ralph, bursting with impatience. If only he could reach the summit of the kopje, he thought, he would be able to see far enough, he would see his father coming home.
On the first attempt, he did not even reach the foot of the hill before his leg gave out; he had not realised how much the muscles had weakened. On the second attempt, he slipped on a rock and turned his ankle. The waves of pain had brought him near to tears. ‘You will break that bone again if you are not careful,’ Andrew cautioned him when he had returned to the house.
Harry ignored the warning, that day and every other. He learned to use his arms to haul himself up, and meanwhile his leg grew stronger. Each time, he climbed higher, until the glorious moment when he scrambled over the final ridge and stood on the summit. The effort left him so giddy that he could barely stand upright, but he ignored the pain in his leg and clambered onto the biggest boulder he could find. Like a hawk hovering high above the veld, he peered down on the world spread out beneath him.
Closer to the mission station, he could see the local Rolong people herding their cattle and hoeing their fields in the wide valley. Beyond them, groups of impala and wildebeest moved across the plain, a pride of lions watching them from an outcrop. In the far distance, the line of a river creased the landscape. Harry didn’t really understand why, but Ann had told him that Ralph must not cross the river. But whether the river she spoke of was the one Harry could see from the kopje, he didn’t know. Still, when he grew tired of watching the red road that ran away into the west, he would turn his eyes in the direction of the river.
There was no sign of Ralph. Even from the top of the kopje, Harry was sure he would recognise his father. And he would be returning with a wagon and a team of oxen, which would be easy to spot.
‘What a view,’ Clara said.
Harry almost toppled from the boulder in surprise at the sound of her voice.
‘What are you doing up here?’
‘I followed you. In case you broke your leg again.’
‘You’ll be in trouble.’
Clara ignored him. Instead of replying, she held out her hand expectantly, and Harry pulled her up onto the boulder. They squeezed together, knocking knees and hips.
In the weeks Harry had been at the mission, they had become almost inseparable. For Harry, raised in the segregated world of the Zulus, the strangeness of spending time with a girl had quickly given way to delight in her company. True, she was not quite like a boy: she would not fight or wrestle, or shy stones at birds, but she was quick-witted and full of energy, always chattering on about animals and plants and adventures.
Best of all were her stories. Andrew had brought a great library of books with him from England – as well as Daniel Defoe, he had Jonathan Swift, Shakespeare, Ann Radcliffe and many others. Clara read to Harry while he was recovering, but when she had no book to hand she made up her own stories: pirates, shipwrecks, mountains and jungles; brave heroes who fought lions, and rescued damsels from castles. For those precious hours, Harry was freed from the prison of his injury.
And he could almost forget that he was waiting for Ralph to return.
Since his bandages had come off, Harry and Clara had spent hours playing games that Clara devised. They stole Elspeth’s bedsheets and tied them to a brittlewood as sails on their frigate, they raided the kitchen for provisions for their expeditions and dug holes all around the mission yard, looking for buried treasure.
‘When we are grown up, we will explore all of Africa and find new cities and peoples and gold,’ Clara declared, in the empty Rolong hut that served alternately as their fortress, campsite and brigands’ cave. And Harry knew it was true.
But nothing could happen until his father returned. That was why he climbed the kopje, convinced that if only he could see far enough, he would glimpse him.
‘He isn’t coming yet.’ Harry tried to sound brave, but his voice wavered.
Clara squeezed his hand. ‘Maybe he’ll come tomorrow.’
Days stretched into weeks. Harry climbed the kopje every day. Sometimes Clara came too, when she could escape her mother’s notice; sometimes he went alone. But every time he climbed the hill, he still felt the same certainty. He knew his father would come back.
Down in the mission yard, Ann felt a sadness tugging at her heart. The same feeling came every time she caught sight of Harry’s silhouette atop the kopje. He was like a dog that had lost its master. She wished she could say something to distract him, even if only for a short time, but she knew that Harry was just trying to answer the same question that never left her own mind: When will Ralph come back? How could she comfort Harry, when she had no comfort herself?
Ralph had been gone thirty-nine days now. He said he would be back in three weeks. Although there were many reasons why a man might be delayed crossing the wilderness, there were other, more dreadful possibilities that Ann found it harder and harder to ignore as the empty days accumulated into weeks. Ralph had already been away for more than a month. What if it became two? What if it became six? How long could she wait before she lost all hope? The questions multiplied in her mind.
The evening breeze rustled the laundry hanging on the line in front of her. Ann reached up and unpegged a sheet, folded it carefully and put it in the basket at her feet. Elspeth had told her more than once that this was work for the servants, that they needed to be taught industrious habits, but Ann had quietly insisted on doing it herself. If she had nothing to occupy her, she knew that she would lose her mind with worry.
Ann glanced up at the kopje again, looking for Harry. It would be dusk soon, and she did not want him coming back down in the dark. If something were to happen to him . . . Every day, her stomach churned with uncertainty until he returned. But she could not stop him – she knew that he would only find a way to disobey her.
Ann continued along the washing line, to a white petticoat fluttering in the breeze. When we are in England, it will be perfectly normal to wear clothes like this, she told herself, though the thought gave her no joy. Thinking of England brought her thoughts back to Ralph.
The petticoat was one of the garments that Elspeth had given her. Ann wore it reluctantly. She had no choice, but it had taken her time to get used once again to the impractical European clothing that the Ryders insisted on.
Out of habit, she ran her eye over the white fabric to check for any stains her monthly courses might have left. The petticoat was unmarked: one less thing for Elspeth to raise her eyebrows at.
A thought tugged at the back of Ann’s mind. She tried to ignore it, but it would not go away. Actually, the petticoat was too pristine. No woman could keep her underskirts quite so immaculate, month after month.
When was the last time I bled?
Ann thought back. Not since they had arrived at the mission station, certainly. But before that? She would remember if it had happened on their march across the mountains and the highveld. How many weeks had it been?
The petticoat slipped from her fingers and fell into the red dust at her feet. Her hand darted to her belly. She knew that she had been gaining weight, but she had thought it was due to eating three good meals a day at the Ryders’ table.
Outside the compound, Harry had reached the foot of the hill and was coming across the open ground to the gate. Forgetting the laundry, Ann ran to the fence. Let this be the day, she prayed. Let him have seen Ralph, and we can be a family once more. We can start anew. She watched Harry eagerly, looking for signs of hope. But he was trudging towards her, head bowed.
Again, Ann’s hand strayed to her belly. She tried to make herself feel something – if not joy then at least shock, surprise, fear, anything. But she was numb.
All my life I have been waiting on the plans men make, she thought bitterly. Waiting for Frank’s crops that would not grow. Waiting in Zululand for a chance to leave. Waiting for Ralph to take me to England. Always waiting for a future that she had not asked for, and that never came.
