Company Of Spears

When, an hour later, they were stood down and attuning to the sounds of the night, just as their eyes had by degrees become accustomed to the black dark, Hervey and Fairbrother sat under the milkwood once more.

‘You did not say before, directly, if you thought the Xhosa would attack, only that they did not fear the night.’

Fairbrother replied extra softly, just as Hervey had spoken. ‘Be thankful they are not Zulu. They would now be bringing on reinforcements, scenting blood. The Xhosa are more likely to lie up, taking their ease. They chanced with us back at the Gwalana, and we beat them off. They still have their cattle, though; and we should not forget that it was cattle they came for. Neither do they guard their honour as jealously as the Zulu: they will not feel bound to avenge their defeat. In that they are most pragmatical.’

‘They’ll not feel bound to recover a fellow tribesman?’

‘Not obliged, no. Not unless he’s of some consequence; and I saw nothing about ours that marked him thus.’

The brandy was now filling their mess tins again, serving a therapeutic purpose as welcome as it would have been to the Xhosa had he woken. Hervey settled back against the gnarled trunk of the milkwood and pushed his legs out straight. ‘It occurs to me the Xhosa’s chief – Gaika – might ponder with advantage on the return of one of his tribesmen who has been tended well, especially one who has sought to steal cattle and shoot one of the King’s men. If he lives, it will only be because of your address.’

‘And your decision that he should not be abandoned, or summarily executed. You do intend that he stands trial for shooting a redcoat? That, surely, is the landdrost’s business.’

Hervey crossed his legs. ‘He must stand trial, well enough. But it were better that it were Gaika’s punishment and not ours. It would at least be the better seen to be done.’

‘You may be right, Hervey. But you know, the Xhosa call us omasiza mbulala: “the people who rescue, then kill”. It began when Somerset made demands on the Xhosa in return for our protection.’

Hervey had well understood the difference between Britain in India and Britain in the Cape Colony before leaving England; but perforce in the abstract. The purpose of the British in India, to be precise the ‘Honourable Company of Merchants of England trading to the East Indies’, was just that – trade. Its crab-like expansion from the coastal factories of Malabar, Coromandel and the mouth of the Ganges was not so much intentional as consequential. The directors of the company had no wish for the expense of campaigning and conquest, even where the territory acquired yielded riches more than enough to compensate: they had wanted the prosperity of what they understood best – commerce. They did not wish for war, but if native adventurists would challenge their right to their perfectly legal business, then the Court of Directors would not flinch from opposing them. They had not tried to settle India, however. On the contrary, outside the cantonments the Company had been strict in discouraging the activity of missionaries and others who would try to turn the native population from its own ways. Land was not given to white-faced immigrants; and those who had title to it, or even nomadic rights to range, were not displaced and forbidden to set foot on the land again. Not that Hervey had observed perfect peace in the one and nothing but war in the other; both places seemed to him just as hostile.

He would have to admit, however, just a certain unease here in Cape Colony. If the British – and before them the Dutch – had taken land from the native tribes in the belief that there was plenty of land for them to have instead, then where was the evil in that? If, however, they had taken the best land, and the tribes now suffered because of it, then that was an offence against the most fundamental instinct of right and wrong. In which case there would be no end of trouble on the frontier until the Xhosa, and any other of the aggrieved tribes, were comprehensively beaten into submission. That meant, quite simply, the slaughter of so many of them that those remaining feared extinction if they continued to resist. It was not a prospect that appealed to any part of him. But he had read, as was only expedient to a soldier of tender conscience, the doctors of the Church, Augustine and Aquinas. He could take some comfort from the knowledge that as a soldier he was not obliged to consider jus ad bellum. That was a matter for the lawful authorities of the nation. His concern must be jus in bello. And yet had he himself not said to Lord John Howard, ‘On becoming a soldier I have not ceased to be a citizen’? He smiled to himself. ‘Do not Cromwell me, Hervey!’, Lord John had replied, ever practical. The trouble was, Lord John Howard, far from the field, was so busy about the commander-in-chief’s business that thinking was an indulgence. He, Hervey, on the other hand, between bouts of intense action frequently had a great deal of time to think. It was a cruel sort of irony.

‘Do you consider the Xhosa might be pacified other than by military means?’ he asked, in an absent sort of way.

Fairbrother detected the change of tone. ‘Not as long as there are men in Cape-town like the Somersets.’

Hervey understood the response, but it was not enough. ‘I mean, are they susceptible to making peace at all?’

‘Ah, Colonel Hervey, you declare yourself not a poet, but you are evidently something of a philosopher! You really must read the Wordsworth.’

Hervey scowled. ‘Fairbrother, do not try me. There was never yet philosopher that could endure the toothache patiently.’

Fairbrother thought a while before answering. ‘The Xhosa are not a warlike people, for all that they may fight savagely. But they have begun to speak of a deliverer; they say kukuza kuka Nxele – the coming of Nxele. Makana Nxele was a warrior, and a fine one. Before Nxele, the Xhosa had been mere herdsmen, and Gaika a grey-haired old chief whom both tribesmen and Somerset treated kindly but otherwise ignored. Nxele was their leader in the frontier war. He led the attack on Graham’s-town, and believe me, Hervey – I saw it with my own eyes – it was not for want of courage that they failed. Afterwards, Colonel Willshire’s punitive raids on the kraals were – I speak my mind in this – brutal. Your Duke of Cumberland could have done no worse.’

‘Why do you say my Duke of Cumberland?’ demanded Hervey, a shade impatiently. ‘He was no more mine than yours.’

Fairbrother thought to leave explanation to another day. ‘A mere lapse of speech. But hear me continue. Nxele gave himself up to Willshire rather than have his people subjected to greater hardship, and Somerset dealt with him very ill. He put him on Robben Island, a damnable place, and he died the following year trying to escape. The Xhosa have begun speaking as if he’s immortal, which is a sign to beware. They are as a rule a level-headed people, for all their superstition.’

Hervey thought for a while. ‘I did not ask before: how did you come to speak their language?’

‘I took a fundisa, a munshi as you say in India, when the Corps first came here. It seemed a perfectly natural thing to do.’

‘Though not, I imagine, to everyone.’

‘Decidedly not. But you know, Hervey, it was far from an unpleasant labour. The Xhosa are not without their charms.’

Hervey frowned, unseen, though the tone of his voice betrayed it. ‘I confess I saw no charm today. That was a deuced near-run thing at the river. I shall ever be grateful to you.’

Hervey heard the smile in the reply: ‘My dear Hervey, think nothing of it.’

And there was just something, too, that convinced him of Fairbrother’s utter sincerity in the dismissal. His courage had been so matter of fact, his manner afterwards unassuming, retiring even. ‘Nevertheless, I would commend your valuable service when we return. I would have you meet Eyre Somervile; you and he will get on famously. And you should know that it was in Somerset’s papers that he found you recommended. Somerset may have had his faults in your regard, but on this occasion he had been keen to set the record straight.’

Fairbrother smiled again, part unbelieving. ‘As you wish.’ He finished the brandy.

They sat listening to the sounds of the night. The dusk’s chorus of cicadas had finished before they stood down (it would have been imprudent to rest arms with such a noise masking the tell-tale signals of approaching attack). An African night was eerily different from an Indian. No monkey could keep quiet in India, however black the darkness. And in forest or desert the jinnees in their temporary corporeal form – human or animal – rustled about their supernatural business. But here it was the deepest silence, and what occasional sounds there were came from a distance: yet a hunting leopard, half a mile off, might snarl at another and sound as if it were but an arm’s length away. This was the sound of emptiness, an empty land, empty even of spirits. Hervey did not believe in the jinnees, but he believed in the sounds they made, and that an Indian night was not empty but peopled by a