“No! That’s the point,” Matthew said urgently. “Cecil Rhodes is equipping his own force. They are well on their way even now. He put up the finance himself.”
“One man?” Pitt was incredulous. He could not conceive of such wealth.
Matthew smiled. “You don’t understand Africa, Thomas. No, actually he’s not putting up all of it, but a great deal. There are banks involved, some in Scotland, and particularly Francis Standish. Now perhaps you begin to see the sort of treasures we are speaking of: more diamonds than anywhere else in the world, more gold, and a continent of land owned by people who live in the dark ages as far as weapons are concerned.”
Pitt stared at him, ideas uncertain in his mind, cloudy images, remembered words of Sir Arthur’s about exploitation, and the Inner Circle.
“When men like Livingstone went in, it was completely different,” Matthew continued, his face bleak. “They wanted to take medicine and Christianity, get rid of ignorance, disease and slavery. They may have gained a certain immortality out of it, but they didn’t look for anything for themselves. Even Stanley wanted glory more than any kind of material reward.
“But Cecil Rhodes wants land, money, power, and more power. We need men like him for this stage in the development of Africa.”
His face shadowed over even more. “At least I think we do. Father and I argued about it. He thought the government should have taken a larger part in it and sent over our own men, openly, and to the devil with what the Kaiser or King Leopold thought. But of course Lord Salisbury never really wanted anything to do with it right from the beginning. He would have left Africa alone, if he could, but circumstances and history would not allow.”
“You mean Britain is doing it through Cecil Rhodes?” Pitt still could not believe what Matthew seemed to be saying.
“More or less,” Matthew agreed. “Of course there is quite a lot of other money as well, from London and Edinburgh. It is that information which has reached the German Embassy, at least some of it.”
They heard footsteps in the corridor outside, but whoever it was did not stop.
“I see.”
“Only part of it, Thomas. There are a lot of other factors as well: alliances, quarrels, old wars and new ones. There are the Boers to consider. Paul Kruger is not a man ever to overlook with impunity. There is all the heritage of the Zulu Wars. There is Emin Pasha in Equatoria, and the Belgians in the Congo, the Sultan of Zanzibar in the east, and most of all there is Carl Peters and the German East Africa Company.” He touched the pile of papers at his elbow again. “Read these, Thomas. I cannot allow you to take them with you, but it will show you what you are looking for.”
“Thank you.” Pitt reached his hand for them, but Matthew did not pass them across.
“Thomas …”
“Yes.”
“What about Father? You said you would look into the accident.” He was embarrassed, as if he were criticizing, and hated it, but was compelled by conviction to do it. “The longer you leave it, the harder it will be. People forget, they become afraid when they have time to realize that there are those who …” He took a deep breath and his eyes met Pitt’s. They were bright hazel, full of pain and confusion.
“I have already started,” Pitt said quietly. “I spoke to Sturges when I was in Brackley. He is convinced the business with the pups was Danforth’s mistake. Danforth sent a letter saying he didn’t want them, he’d changed his mind. At least it purported to come from Danforth, whether it did or not, but Sturges saw it, it was addressed to him. It had nothing to do with Sir Arthur.”
“That’s something.” Matthew grasped onto it, but the anxiety did not leave his face. “But the accident? Was it deliberate? It was a warning, wasn’t it?”
“I don’t know. No one else saw it, as far as Sturges knows, though both the smith and the wheelwright saw the horseman careering up the street at a breakneck gallop, apparently completely out of control. But even a bolting horse won’t usually charge into another it can clearly see, or go close enough for the rider to catch someone else with his whip. I think it was deliberate, but I don’t know any way of proving it. The man was a stranger. No one knows who he was.”
Matthew’s face tightened. “And I suppose the same will be true of the underground railway. We’ll never prove that either. From everything we can learn, no one he knew was with him.” He looked down. “Clever. They know how to do it so if you say anything, tell anyone, it sounds absurd, like the ramblings of someone who has been eating opium, or lives permanently in his cups.” He looked up suddenly, panic in his eyes. “It begins to make me feel helpless. I’m not consumed with hatred anymore. It has turned into something a lot more like fear, and a terrible weariness, as if it is all pointless. If it was anyone but Father, I might not even try.”
Pitt understood the fear. He had felt it himself in the past, and now its cause was real. He also understood the enveloping exhaustion, now that the first shock of grief was over. Anger is a very depleting emotion; it burns up all the strength of the mind and the body. Matthew was tired, but in a while he would be renewed, and the anger would return, the sense of outrage, the passionate desire to protect, to prove the lie and restore some semblance of justice. He hoped profoundly that Harriet Soames was wise enough and generous enough to be gentle with him, to wait with patience for him to work his way through the tiredness and the confusion of feelings, that she would not just at that moment seek anything from him for herself beyond trust and the knowledge that he was willing to share all he was able to.
“Don’t do anything alone,” Pitt said very seriously.
Matthew’s eyes widened a fraction, surprise and question in them, then after a moment, even a shadow of humor.
“Do you think I’m incompetent, Thomas? I’ve been fifteen years in the Foreign Office since we knew each other. I do know how to be diplomatic.”
It had been a clumsiness of words rather than thought, and a desire to protect him which still lingered from youth.
“I’m sorry,” Pitt apologized. “I meant that we could duplicate our efforts, and not only waste time but cause suspicion by it.”
Matthew’s face relaxed into a smile. “Sorry, Thomas. I am oversensitive. This has hit me harder than I could have foreseen.” He gave Pitt the papers at last. “Look at these in the room next door, then give them back to me when you have finished.”
Pitt rose and took them. “Thank you.”
The room provided him was high ceilinged and full of sun from the long window, also facing the park. He sat in one of the three chairs and began. He made no notes but committed to memory the essence of what he needed. It took him to the middle of the day to be certain he knew precisely where to look to trace the information he could be quite certain had reached the German Embassy. Then he rose and returned the papers to Matthew.
“Is that all you require?” Matthew asked, looking up from his desk.
“For the moment.”
Matthew smiled. “How about luncheon? There is an excellent public house just ’round the corner, and an even better one a couple of hundred yards along the street.”
“Let’s go to the even better one,” Pitt agreed with an attempt at enthusiasm.
Matthew followed him to the door and along the corridor to the wide stairs down and into the bright busy street.
They walked side by side, occasionally jostled by passersby, men in frock coats with top hats, now and then a woman, highly fashionable, carrying a parasol and smiling and nodding to acquaintances. The street itself was teeming with traffic. Coaches, carriages, hansoms, broughams and open landaus passed by every few minutes, moving at a brisk trot, horses’ hooves rapping smartly, harnesses jingling.
“I love the city on a fine day,” Matthew said almost apologetically. “There is such life here, such a sense of purpose and excitement.” He glanced sideways at Pitt. “I need Brackley for its peace, and the feel of permanence it has. I find I always remember it so clearly, as if I had only just closed my eyes from seeing it, smelling the sharp coldness of winter air, the snow on the fields, or the crackle of frost under my feet. I can breathe in and re-create the perfume of the summer wind from the hay, the dazzle of sunlight and the sting of heat on my skin, the taste of apple cider.”
A handsome woman in pink and gray passed by and smiled at him, not as an acquaintance, but out of interest, but he barely noticed her.
