He swiveled in his seat to stare at her with concern, even anxiety. “I hope you do mean a friend, and not yourself? And even if it is merely a friend, please do not involve your own finances in any way at all; not yet.”
She saw the gentleness in his eyes and was a little abashed to recognize an affection she had once dismissed.
“I have no money whatever in Africa, nor shall I, I promise you,” she said with a slight smile. “But I appreciate your warning.”
“I have no right to tell you not to rescue anyone …” he began, then drew in his breath and let it out in a sigh, “but don’t, please.”
Should she tell him the truth? It was unpleasantly deceitful to cause him completely unnecessary anxiety, and yet the rape of Catherine Quixwood seemed to be so far from the escapades of Leander Jameson that she could hardly expect Hector Manning to believe her. She did not have any explanation to make sense of it.
“It is a matter of proving someone innocent of a terrible act,” she said, choosing her words carefully. “So far as I know, no one I am acquainted with needs financial assistance, I promise you.”
He relaxed fractionally. “This whole venture was an appalling mess, you know. Is this friend of yours involved in it?”
“I don’t know yet,” she said frankly. “I am not being deliberately evasive, Hector. I really don’t know. If I can understand the raid better, it may answer a few very delicate questions.”
“You’re not going to tell me any other details, are you?” he concluded.
She smiled at him. “Not unless I have to. It would be indiscreet.”
Before they could discuss it any further the court was called to order and the trial commenced.
Vespasia listened with total attention. She already had a certain amount of information with which to catch up. She had never personally met Dr. Jameson, and now studied him with interest while the totally predictable formalities were conducted.
He entered the courtroom and walked toward his chair, taking his seat with care to arrange his dark frock coat so as not to crease it.
Every single person in the room was watching him, a fact of which he could not have been unaware. There was a dull flush visible over his complexion, even darkened by sun as it was. If he recognized anyone, he gave no sign of it.
Vespasia watched him with a growing interest. He was a physician by training, not a soldier, and looking at him now she wondered what course of events had led him to this situation. She could very easily imagine him listening with attention to the symptoms of an injury or illness, then gravely prescribing a treatment. He sat with his large head a little to one side, as if weighing some deep consideration. He had fine, dark eyes-half concealed by drooping lids-a prominent nose and a full-lipped mouth. His hair was receding a trifle, his mustache neatly trimmed. It seemed the face of a city man, a doctor, a professor, or even a clergyman, not a soldier leading adventurers across an African border, armed with Maxim guns and Lee Metford rifles.
As the witnesses testified one by one, Jameson seemed unconcerned, even uninterested.
“Does he not care?” Vespasia whispered to Hector Manning. “Is he expecting a dramatic rescue of some sort?”
“Looking at him, one would think so,” Hector murmured back to her.
“By whom?” she asked. “What am I not understanding? Mr. Chamberlain? Lord Salisbury?”
“I doubt it,” he said so quietly she had to strain to hear him. “Poor old Joe Chamberlain is in a hell of a mess himself with this, and it’ll get worse before it’s over. He’ll be lucky if Salisbury doesn’t ask for his resignation.”
As the evidence and arguments continued, she remembered what she’d heard earlier of the entire matter.
In November of the previous year, 1895, a piece of territory known as the Pitsani Strip, a part of Bechuanaland bordering on the Transvaal, had been ceded by the Colonial Office to the British South Africa Company. The reason given at the time had been for the safeguarding of a proposed railway to run through it. The Prime Minister of the Cape Colony, Cecil Rhodes, had been very keen indeed to bring the whole of South Africa into British dominion. To that end he was willing to encourage the disenfranchised outsiders of the Boer republics into the fold, and thus out of the dominion of the Boer Afrikaners.
This was the spark that lit the fiasco of what came to be known as the Jameson Raid. It was in effect a British South African Company private army of about five hundred men, armed to the teeth. Their purpose was to rouse the workers on the Pitsani Strip, and with them to march across the border into the Transvaal, and overthrow the Boer government there, and then annex the territory, with its fortune in diamonds and gold.
They got within twenty miles of Johannesburg before the Boer forces captured them, forcing them to surrender.
Sir Hercules Robinson, the Governor-General of the Cape Colony, had been ordered by Chamberlain to repudiate the actions of Jameson. The Company’s charter was in jeopardy if he did not.
Jameson was shipped home to England for trial. There could be no other action taken if the Company was to survive. Even so, there would be massive reparations to pay to the Boers of the Transvaal. Fortunes would be lost.
Was Jameson a hero betrayed? Or an adventurer who had jeopardized British interests for his own foolhardy ends?
At the end of the day Vespasia was still uncertain. As she walked away from the courtroom with Hector Manning she felt an urgent need to ask him for much more information. She already knew that there was too little time left to wait for a verdict on Jameson. Alban Hythe was also on trial, and his jury might return far sooner. There was hardly any evidence for Peter Symington to use in a defense. She needed more knowledge of the financial side of the venture before she could form any judgment at all as to whether Catherine Quixwood had really asked Hythe for advice.
Vespasia was walking beside Hector Manning, holding his arm, when she glanced to her left and caught sight of Pelham Forsbrook. He looked very pale, and his long face was clenched in an expression of extreme tension. She was afraid he would see her and realize that she was staring at him, until the fixedness of his eyes and the way he moved through the crowd, bumping people without care, made her realize he was oblivious of anyone else.
“Pelham Forsbrook looks distressed,” she observed to Hector, as soon as they were on the steps and clear of being jostled. “Could he be financially involved in this, do you suppose?”
“Almost certainly, poor devil,” Manning replied. “He’s pretty thick with Cecil Rhodes, and everybody knows Rhodes was behind this bloody silly adventure. Pardon my-”
“For heaven’s sake, Hector, I’ve heard the word before,” Vespasia said impatiently. “Jameson was administrator general for Matabeleland, so of course he was tied up with Rhodes too. This idiotic escapade must have pulled troops out of Matabeleland and left it vulnerable.”
“Naturally,” he agreed, going down the steps, matching his pace to hers. “That is almost certainly why the Matabele revolted in March. Don’t know the casualties yet, but it’ll be into the hundreds.”
“I can’t imagine it will stop there,” she said quietly. “What a tragedy. But I need to know if many people will have taken serious financial loss. Do you know?”
“There can be no question about it at all,” he answered. “Only I don’t know who, or how much.”
“To judge from his face, Pelham Forsbrook will be one of them.”
They reached the bottom of the steps and turned left along the footpath, now clear of the crowd. “Do you think he believed the raid would succeed? If it had, would there have been a profit? I mean, one worth the risk?”
He smiled. “Not as it turns out, but could there have been? Yes, of course. If they’d taken the Transvaal, with its diamonds and gold? Unimaginable wealth.”
“Do you know Rawdon Quixwood?” There was no time to be wasted in approaching the subject obliquely. She must have something to tell Narraway before it was too late.
“Slightly,” Hector replied. “Poor devil’s rather out of things at the moment. What a nightmare.” His face was creased with pity. “Can’t even imagine it. I hear the wretched man who did it is being tried right now. I hope they hang him.” He said it with a sudden surge of feeling.
“Providing, of course, that he is guilty.” Vespasia could not help putting that in, even though it was irrelevant. It surprised her. She was usually able to hold back her emotions more effectively.
