Conquest

Elefantes, the wind fair for their goal.

Lourenco Marques lay ten miles further, and Kydd had kept quiet about his fear that, if this was the only port worth the name on the coast to find safe haven, would not the French head for it as well?

It was too late now: they were within the bay and the wind that made it fair for entry would at the same time make a hasty exit impossible. They went on, the coast to starboard rising in dark-green cliffs. Here and there palm- tree clumps rose above the vegetation, and as they closed with the land, the fetid fragrance of Africa reached out to them.

Then at the sharp turn into the river there it was: a decaying fortress set about with palm trees and scrub, a scatter of humble dwellings and fishing boats. Lourenco Marques, the most southerly outpost of the ancient Portuguese Empire.

And not a Frenchman to be seen.

Chapter 8

It was a masterly stroke, Renzi conceded, and one that could never have been contemplated in any modern state. The grain shortage was the biggest single problem facing them and Baird, in a direct, soldierly manner, had found a way to solve it.

Recognising that it was a matter of survival until the ships he had sent out returned, he had set about looking for an interim local supply and reasoned that there had to be those who would hide supplies with a view to cashing in at famine rates and farmers who were withholding their grain in the hope of higher returns.

By a simple device he had trumped both. A regulation was introduced that repealed duties but specified that sales of cereal crops would henceforth be at a fixed price, which would be rigorously enforced. In fairness, the government would also be bound by this and in fact was opening its grain stores for immediate purchases.

Before long creaking lines of ox-wagons materialised as hoarded stocks were brought in and government stores swelled. The crisis had been averted.

The question of currency had not been so easy. As most English specie had been lost in the Brazilian wreck what was to be the common coinage? There had been only two options: print banknotes against the Treasury in faraway London or continue to use the current system.

Baird had chosen to avoid the risks of runaway inflation in printing their own, which left no option but to persevere with what existed. The trouble was that ships touching at the Cape for centuries had left the colony awash with the most exotic forms of coinage, each one of which had to have its English equivalent.

The official medium of exchange was the rijksdaalder or, as it was more commonly known, the rixdollar, and it was Renzi’s task to draw up a table of equivalence: the rixdollar of forty-eight stuivers against each coin of foreign origin and that against English sterling.

It was a far from trivial undertaking, for there were those who stood to make a tidy sum if the conversion was struck in their favour. It was no longer to be the sentiment of the market that decided rates, and opinions were sharply and loudly divided.

With Ryneveld’s canny assistance Renzi completed the wording of the grand proclamation. It allowed that, for the better regulation of trade and the prevention of disputes, the values of money in circulation in Cape Town should be fixed in accordance with the table shown.

Only the more common were listed: the doubloon, Spanish dollar, rupee and ducat, the pagoda, johanna and Venetian sequin, and each with its value in stuivers and sterling. It had been a long task but diverting, complexity to be discovered in even the seemingly simplest economic activity of man.

Baird read it carefully then frowned. ‘And you’d let us be ruined, Renzi, old chap?’

Puzzled, Renzi took it back. ‘Er, you’re in dispute at the rates, sir?’

‘No, not at all.’

‘The wording?’

‘Splendid, as far as it goes.’

‘But?’

‘My dear fellow, you’re too honest for this world. What if our fixed rate for the gold mohur is less than what some rupee wallah offers in Bombay? Why, next thing every merchant worth the name will be sending ’em over by the sackful for the premium, leaving us bare.’

‘Um, quite,’ Renzi said uncomfortably.

‘Don’t worry about it, old chap – I’ll add a bit about export o’ specie in use in the settlement being forbidden under pain of confiscation. Do get that in and posted up quickly. Oh, and one more thing. I’m supposing it’s your first public appearance, so to speak?’

‘Er?’

Baird chuckled. ‘On the proclamation, under where it says all that about “Given under my hand and seal this day” and so forth, surely we’ll see “By Order of His Excellency, N. Renzi, Colonial Secretary,” shall we not?

‘But now – some disturbing news. This was found in a waterfront taphuis by one of our redcoats.’

He handed across a handbill roughly printed in Dutch.

‘It’s Janssens’s work, urging all patriot Boers to rally to his colours in the mountains. I have to deal with it – there’s too many of these fellows up-country he can call upon. I’m without delay sending General Beresford with a column to invest his redoubt.’

‘These are military operations, sir.’

‘They do concern you, Renzi. The only effective move is to send an overwhelming force to smoke him out and persuade him of the hopelessness of his position.’