Vengeance, page 39
‘I almost lost two of my wagons coming down that precipice,’ Hennie complained. ‘One of my cows went over a cliff, and three more lamed themselves. Who will pay me compensation, I want to know?’
‘Look at this country,’ Andries told him. ‘In a year, you will have so many calves that you will forget the cattle you lost.’
When all the wagons had safely descended, the Boers held another council. There were more hymns and more prayers – they could not do anything without bending God’s ear, it seemed – and the priest read from Exodus. I have delivered my people from bondage, and brought them to a land flowing with milk and honey.
The subject of leadership was raised again, and this time there was no argument. Andries was named captain, and given a bright red sash to wear in honour of his office. The trekkers took an oath of loyalty. Hennie mouthed the words like a man who was doing it because he had lost a bet.
Then they inspanned the oxen, and set off on the final leg of their journey.
MGUNGUNDLOVU
T
he enclosure was in uproar. Every warrior and youth pressed forward, while Harry stood defiantly, shield in one hand and spear in the other. Some of the men looked outraged by what he had done, but others he was certain were shouting his praise. The sound roared in his ears.
This is where I belong. Harry was sure of it. For the first time in his life, he felt that he was with his own people.
The noise died down. To his horror, Harry saw Andrew and Ann were pushing their way through the crowd. Go away! he wanted to yell. You are not welcome here! This was his world now, not theirs.
Andrew shot Harry a grim look. ‘I have come for the boy,’ he said to Dingane.
Harry was about to respond, but a gesture from the king kept him silent. Dingane looked at Andrew, pinning him with a commanding stare.
‘He has drunk the milk. He has taken the oath,’ Ndlela translated.
‘He is not a Zulu. He has no right to do that. You cannot allow it.’
Dingane tilted his head back, eyes narrowed. ‘Do you tell a king what he can allow?’
‘No,’ Andrew said hastily, seeing his error. ‘No, indeed not. But he is my son.’
‘I am not,’ Harry hissed.
Dingane said nothing, though his eyes flickered to show that the words had not escaped him.
‘Where does a son’s loyalty lie?’ Dingane asked rhetorically. ‘To his father, or his king?’
‘The King of England is Harry’s king. A man cannot serve two kings, as a servant cannot serve two masters. That is what Jesus says in the Bible.’
‘There is only one king in this country,’ Dingane reminded Andrew.
‘And why does no one care what I want?’ Harry demanded. ‘I want to serve the king. I want to fight. Like my . . .’ He had been about to say ‘like my father’, but the words would not come.
‘I want to fight,’ he said again.
Dingane looked at Harry directly, making him shudder. ‘Is that what you truly want? To serve the king in battle?’
Harry swallowed hard. ‘I have drunk the milk. I will do whatever you ask of me.’
Again, Dingane’s eyes flitted from Harry to Andrew, to the indunas assembled around him.
He tried to kill your father, a small voice said in Harry’s mind. Why would you want to serve him?
Ralph was not your father. Ralph Courtney killed your father.
Dingane sat back on his throne. He lifted his hand to his throat and stroked the leopard claws that formed the necklace that hung around his neck.
‘A man cannot join the ibutho if he has not grown up in the ibandhlana.’
The ibutho was the regiment, and the ibandhlana were the groups that young Zulu boys formed amongst themselves. Harry felt as if he’d been punched in the stomach, but he tried not to let his disappointment show, for the king’s eyes were fixed on him now like a snake’s.
Dingane lifted his hand benevolently. ‘But a man who wishes to serve his king should not be turned away like a stray dog. I will take you as my inceku. You will serve in my household, and translate for me when the white men come.’
‘That is not a fitting role for him,’ Andrew objected.
‘He is a Christian, is he not? He can tell me about your god.’
Andrew looked as if he might explode at the thought of Harry taking on the role of spiritual adviser. Ann held his arm tightly.
Harry desperately wanted to fight, to be a real warrior. But he would not stay one more night under Andrew’s roof.
‘I will do what the king commands.’
ZULULAND
R
alph had been dreaming of Ann when a sound woke him. He recognised it immediately: the Boers hung their iron pots and kettles from hooks under the wagon frame, and they clanked together as the carts moved. The grumble of wheels and the squeak of the axle, the bass bellow of the oxen and the crack of the driver’s stockwhip completed the symphony.
But who is moving? And where are they going?
Ralph threw off his blanket and stuck his head out of his tent. Morning sun streamed through the dust that danced in the air. It had been kicked up by four wagons. At the head of the party, Ralph recognised a black ox that belonged to a man named Nicholas Sweelinck.
Pulling on his trousers, Ralph ran after the wagons. As he caught up, he saw that Sweelinck was riding alongside on a bay gelding. The Boer reined in and pushed back his straw hat.
‘Where are you going?’ Ralph had come in such a hurry that he wore nothing but his trousers. He pointed east. ‘We are headed that way.’
Sweelinck sucked in his ruddy cheeks. ‘We don’t go with you.’
‘But we must stick together.’
‘Where is the danger?’ Sweelinck swept his arm from one empty horizon to the other. ‘There is no one here. The land is empty.’
‘Empty does not mean that it is free for the taking. It belongs to the king of the Zulus.’
‘There is land enough for all of us, hey? And my cattle need pasturing. You tell us there is a paradise on the way down these mountains, and now you say we cannot make our homes here?’ He shook his head, as if baffled by the ways of Englishmen.
Sweelinck kicked his horse and trotted away.
‘We must stick together,’ Ralph told Andries later that morning when the main column had inspanned and moved off. ‘If Dingane’s men find any of your people isolated . . .’
‘We will set Dingane straight.’ Andries said. He was riding beside Ralph, Adam just ahead of them. ‘And we cannot keep the party together, whatever you say.’ Andries pointed to the ground, where the hooves of Adam’s horse had turned over the earth. The soil beneath was black and loamy. ‘They are farmers. This land is crying out for the plough to tame it. They will go their own way.’
Ahead of them, Adam shook his head and spat contemptuously.
‘What is wrong with that one?’ Andries asked.
Ralph shrugged. ‘He has a temper.’
Andries nodded. ‘It is the mixing of the bloods. It gives a man a volatile nature.’
Ever since Andries had learned that Adam’s mother was black, his attitude to him had changed. The night after the meeting at Mahikeng, he had called Ralph aside.
‘I cannot let Adam share my fire.’ If Andries felt guilty at suddenly shunning a man he had travelled two hundred miles with, he gave no sign of it. Behind his glasses, his eyes were entirely unapologetic. ‘My wife will not have a coloured man in our camp – not with our daughters around, you understand.’
Ralph had felt his skin prickle. ‘Adam is my kin. He spoke for you in front of the others, and without us both you would never have found your way over the mountains.’
‘You are still welcome in my camp.’
Ralph shook his head. ‘I will stay with my cousin.’
When Ralph told Adam what Andries had said, he had simply shrugged.
Adam spurred his horse past the front of the column, and on through the thorn bushes and aloes until he was out on his own.
For half his life, he had thought he was the same as any other man. If people looked at him at all differently, it was because he was the son of Admiral Sir Robert Courtney, and surely people ought to look at him differently. On the decks of a ship at war, what mattered was whether a man could keep his shipmates alive, not the colour of his skin. And the crews were so mixed that no two men looked the same anyway: Africans from Dahomey or the Cape; lascars from the Malabar coast of India; Pacific Islanders with their fearsome tattoos. Adam’s light brown skin, only a shade darker than his father’s, caused no comment.
On land, things were different. In London’s drawing rooms and gentlemen’s clubs, people whispered about Sir Robert Courtney’s wife Phoebe. Strikingly beautiful, she had been born in Africa, enslaved and taken to Jamaica, before escaping and making her way to England. From behind their fans and brandy glasses, the bon ton made arch comments about Sir Robert’s Ethiopian bride, and used words like ‘mongrel’ and ‘half-breed’ for his son. But England was at war, and Sir Robert’s fleet kept them safe from the Bonapartist menace, so they did not talk too loudly. And Rob and Adam and Phoebe were barely ashore one week in twelve months anyway. Rob was forever harrying the French and raiding their shipping: no voyage was too long, no project too daring. It was only afterwards, when peace came, that Adam wondered if his father had had other motives for keeping them at sea so long.
It was in the Americas that men had tried the hardest to make him ashamed of his race. They talked of ‘mulattoes’, ‘quadroons’ and ‘octaroons’ – as if the blood that flowed in Adam’s veins could somehow be divided, like oil from water.
But now he was back in Africa, walking in the footsteps of his mother’s people. He would not be made to feel like an inferior being. Who are these Dutchmen, who have only just set foot in this land, to say that I am not welcome? When Andries talked of the soil crying out for the plough, Adam knew that what he really wanted was to yoke its people.
Adam considered what he knew of the Zulu nation. He did not think – from what Ralph had told him – that they would submit to the Boers so easily. But he also knew that whatever kinship he felt with Dingane’s people would be washed away by his father’s blood. He would not be able to warn them about Andries – they would not believe him. When we find the Zulus, all they will see when they look at me is a white man.
There was only one person in the world with whom he truly belonged. One person who shared his blood. In the depths of his heart, Adam clung to the thought that finding his son would give him a peace he had not had for almost twenty years.
A foam of sweat had appeared on his horse’s withers. Adam had been riding too fast, far out in front of the wagons. He slowed the beast to a walk, horse and rider breathing heavily as they came to the crest of a low ridge. He reined in and surveyed the landscape ahead.
Away from the mountains, the land had become more thickly wooded: not just thorn trees, but towering hard timber with soaring trunks.
A sharp sound echoed from the trees. Adam’s horse reared up, almost throwing him, but even as he clutched the reins and fought for balance, his mind told him: gunshot.
A tawny shape bolted from the trees and disappeared into the long grass on the edge of the forest. A leopard. A moment later, five men came after it. All were on horseback, and all carried rifles. Their broad-brimmed hats shielded their faces, but there could be no doubting their race. They were white.
Up on the ridge, clear blue sky behind him, Adam was completely exposed. As soon as the riders saw him, they forgot their quarry and spurred their horses quickly up the slope. Adam stayed where he was. If he ran, it would only invite them to put a bullet between his shoulder blades.
The men who drew up in front of him were dressed in the most extraordinary confusion of clothes: leather and buckskin trousers; a leopard-skin shawl; a skirt of monkey tails; strings of beads and copper bracelets; wide-brimmed hats, some made of felt and some of straw. Their faces and arms were tanned a deep, leathery red.
One – with a strap beard and an ivory amulet in the shape of a lion around his neck – rode forward and looked Adam up and down.
‘Who are you? Where have you come from?’ he said in English.
‘I came from over the mountains.’
The man’s eyes flickered in disbelief. ‘This is our land.’
‘Then you need to have words with my friends.’ Adam pointed back to the dust cloud behind him. ‘As for me, I am simply passing through.’
The men glanced suspiciously over Adam’s shoulder, suspecting a trick. But the rumble of cartwheels was already unmistakeable. They could see the lead wagon coming up the slope behind Adam, the Boer outriders spurring their horses forward.
‘Who are these?’ Andries gave the horsemen a distasteful look as he scrutinised their outlandish dress.
‘John Henlow,’ said the man with the lion amulet.
To Andries and the Boers, they must have looked like savages. To Ralph’s eye, the African clothes and ornaments the men wore spoke volumes. They were of Zulu make, and high quality. Henlow’s leopard-skin cape was fit for a prince.
‘I am guessing that you are not missionaries,’ Ralph said.
The men snorted with laughter.
‘Merchants,’ Henlow said.
There was only one port within five hundred miles. Ralph leaned forward in his saddle. ‘From Nativity Bay?’ No recognition. ‘Some call it Port Natal.’
‘We call it D’Urban,’ said one of Henlow’s companions. ‘After the governor.’
We? ‘How many settlers are there now?’
The men looked at each other. Clearly they did not want to admit that they were outnumbered by the Boers. ‘Enough,’ Henlow said. ‘We have a proper settlement. The governor has appointed me as magistrate.’
‘Have you dredged the bar across the harbour, or is it still as treacherous as ever?’ Ralph enjoyed the surprise on their faces. ‘I have been there. Have you ever heard of Ralph Courtney?’
‘Or Jim or George or Robert Courtney?’ Adam broke in.
Henlow shook his head. ‘Never heard of any of them.’
We are becoming history, Ralph thought. New men had made Nativity Bay their own, and the Courtney name meant nothing.
Andries had listened to the exchange in silence. Now he walked his horse forward. ‘Are you a British colony?’
Henlow stiffened. ‘We are a free settlement. The queen has no jurisdiction over us.’
Queen? The last Ralph had heard, King William had been on the throne of England. ‘What queen?’
‘Queen Victoria. The King died earlier this year.’
‘King or queen, it does not matter. We have no quarrel with you,’ Andries said. ‘We have come to live here in freedom.’
‘Dingane is king here,’ Henlow warned, ‘and we have a treaty with him that recognises our sovereignty.’
‘We will speak to Dingane.’
‘He is not like the chiefs you are used to dealing with,’ Henlow cautioned.
Andries flicked a fly off his lapel. Even in the heat, he still wore his corduroy suit. ‘Englishmen do not know how to deal with Kaffirs, the way we Boers do.’
‘Where is Dingane?’ Ralph put in. ‘Is his capital still by the Thukela, at KwaDukuza?’
Henlow gave him another piercing look. ‘KwaDukuza was burned long ago. Dingane is at Mgungundlovu.’
Suddenly Ralph had a strange feeling of recognition, as if he had glanced at a picture and found himself painted into it. These adventurers, with their rough manners and outlandish mix of clothing: they are who I was ten years ago. Men bent on making their fortune.
Was I so frightening to behold?
Henlow glanced back at his men. Ralph saw the hesitation in their eyes. He knew what they would be thinking now: What did the Boers’ arrival mean for them? Would the newcomers take their land? Hunt their ivory? Turn Dingane against them?
Or could they be used to their advantage?
Ralph gestured to Andries’ men. ‘These people have come to farm. They will need a port to supply their wants.’
Henlow nodded. He could see the sense of that.
‘You are in an awkward position, caught between two kings. Or, rather, a king and a queen,’ Ralph corrected himself, ‘and both of them jealous of their empires. Perhaps together we can keep them both at bay.’
The look on Henlow’s face said that he would not be swayed by bluff appeals to shared interests: he would share nothing, if he could help it. But he could also see the sense in what Ralph said, and there was the small matter that the Boers had more men and guns than his party.
‘There is a trail that goes to the capital, not far from here. I will show you.’ A crooked smile. ‘I am sure Dingane will give you a warm welcome.’
MGUNGUNDLOVU
W
hen the dancing had finished, and the regiments had dispersed, Ann and Andrew went back to their hilltop. Throughout the ceremony, Ann had cast long, troubled glances at Harry, but he kept looking resolutely forward. Eventually, Andrew had tugged her away in tears.
Dingane went back into his great hut. Long minutes passed as Harry waited outside. The taste of the milk grew sour in his mouth; he picked at the blisters on his palms. But the fire inside him did not cool. He had done the right thing. He was where he belonged.
A guard opened the wicker door and gestured for Harry to come forward. He had never been in the great hut before, and quickly saw that it was magnificent. The roof was so wide that it needed two dozen posts to hold it up, each one sheathed in an intricate web of coloured glass beads that sparkled in the firelight. The ground had been smoothed with cow dung and polished with fat until it was as bright and reflective as obsidian.
Harry crawled across the floor, approaching the king as one of his subjects.
‘I see you.’ The king’s voice reverberated off the glass beads. ‘You are the child of uRalph.’
Harry’s head snapped up. How did Dingane know? Had someone recognised him, maybe one of the other boys who had played with him as a child?
