Hervey 10 - Warrior (26 page)

Fairbrother smiled, ironically. 'Just so. Happy colonists. And have you thought: Shaka may come to that same conclusion?'

XIII
METTLE ENOUGH

Next morning

The surgeon came onto
Reliant
's quarterdeck a little after six, and with a weary look. 'I regret to inform you, Sir Eyre, that Lieutenant King is dead.'

Somervile sighed heavily.

Hervey put his coffee cup aside. 'Not of any contagion, I trust, doctor?'

The surgeon shook his head. 'I cannot be certain, but I believe it to be poisoning of the liver. Not any contagion, however. Nothing that need dismay.'

Somervile huffed. 'Except that King was to be our interlocutor with Shaka!'

'Isaacs speaks his language as well as did King, so I understand,' said Hervey, encouragingly.

'Isaacs? A rough sort by the look of him. Not the man I would choose to engage for diplomacy.'

Hervey bridled, rather, at the harsh judgement. His old friend had invested a great deal in this venture, his reputation, indeed; but all the same . . . 'Rough
and
ready, Somervile.'

'If I might add, Sir Eyre,' tried Fairbrother, who had likewise laid aside his breakfast cup: 'Isaacs may yet be a more faithful interpreter, for he does not enjoy Shaka's confidence in the way King did, and therefore will be obliged to render the translation without, shall we say, his own estimation.'

Hervey said nothing, but he agreed with him. And besides, the principal means of gathering the intelligence that he required would be from observation.

Somervile began nodding, slowly. 'Thank you, Fairbrother. I'm obliged.' He thought for a moment or two more. 'We have, in any case, no option but to proceed.'

Lieutenant King's body was sewn into a hammock. Somervile instructed that it be transferred to the brig, HMS
Severus,
and thence taken for burial at sea, beyond the bar, following the traditions of the service. At the last minute, however, the lieutenant's native servant had sought out Fairbrother and told him of his master's most particular request, that if he were to die in this place he should be buried on the bluff overlooking the anchorage. And so, a little after seven, a party of seamen took the body ashore, and Hottentot bearers dug the grave.

In the absence of a chaplain, Hervey read the service.

Afterwards, he and Fairbrother walked down from the bluff together.

'It marks well what we spoke of last night, does it not?' said his friend, the sun now strong enough to oblige them both to replace their hats. 'This is a country in which a man might happily put down roots.'

It was just that, Hervey conceded. And he was happy to acknowledge its bounties. But he confessed that his thoughts were with the more practical details of the days ahead. He had urged Somervile to discount too great a setback in losing King's good offices with Shaka, but there was first the question of seeking Shaka out. Isaacs had assured them that he knew the way to Dukuza: it was but a
trek,
as the Cape Dutch had it, north for a day and a half, perhaps two, following the coast. But without King, Hervey was uncertain how they would make their entry. Would Shaka receive them, indeed? But Isaacs had been confident in proposing himself, albeit in some dejection at the loss of his friend. Shaka, said Isaacs, had told them that he had moved his kraal to Dukuza from Bulawayo to be nearer his English friends –
friends
, not merely Lieutenant King. And although Isaacs did not have King's rank, and therefore quite Shaka's esteem, he assured Hervey he would be received as an honest man of trade.

A little after nine o'clock, the embassy to the Court of Shaka left Port Natal for Dukuza. Welsh, the Rifles' captain, had enlisted half a dozen
voerlopers
from the settlement, native and part-native men of whom Isaacs spoke well, to range ahead and read the country.

The military scouting proper was given to a section of eight dragoons under the command of Lance-Serjeant Hardy, Isaacs riding with them, and the section of mounted riflemen following as advance guard.

Somervile, at the head of the main body (the half troop of light dragoons and the thirty bat-horses), was animated to an unusual degree. Africa was not India, as he had been at pains to point out on every occasion they had been drawn to make comparison, but something of India evidently stirred within, the same impulse of many a gallop across the plains of Madras or of Bengal. '
Ex Africa semper aliquid novi!
' he declared at length, shaking his head slowly in wonder.

Hervey smiled. His friend was a considerable classical scholar, if a repetitious one. 'Pliny again? Most apt. I have always thought of you as formed in Pliny's mould.'

Somervile nodded gravely. 'The comparison is favourable. Pliny was an assiduous observer.'

Hervey smiled the more. He was not given to flattering to advantage, but if ever he had the inclination . . .

'But perhaps I should add "
novi omnes dies
", for certainly Pliny never saw such sights as these.'

Hervey frowned at his old friend's proposal to gild the lily. 'Recollect, Sir Eyre, that assiduous observation was in the end the death of him.'

Somervile scowled. 'Not only do you tempt the Fates, you betray a want of comprehension. Recollect that it was not the volcano that killed Pliny; he was found with not a mark upon him. He was by that time a corpulent man, and almost certainly placed a strain upon his heart wholly in excess of its capacity.'

Hervey smiled wryly, and raised an eyebrow, glancing at the spread (if undoubtedly diminished of late) that was the lieutenantgovernor's waist. 'Just so.'

Somervile appeared not to notice, intent as he was on a greenbacked heron that flapped low and awkwardly between them and the scouts. 'It was a heron that crossed our path the first time you and I rode together,' he replied absently.

Hervey did not recall it. 'At Cape-town?'

Somervile looked at him, puzzled. 'At Guntoor. A pair of them, indeed. The day we rode to see what ill the Pindarees had done.'

Hervey shook his head: Madras was an age ago. 'You astound me, Somervile. I remember the Pindaree depredations, but . . .'

'Do you not recall my quarters at Guntoor? I have a clear recollection of your being greatly discomfited by the house snakes.'

'I have no recollection of them, no, although I do remember your quarters,' he replied warily, for he was invariably discomfited by snakes, despite his years in India.

'They were night herons at Guntoor, however. I wonder if the species is to be found in these parts . . .'

A big black bird the size of a turkey, with a huge curved bill and vivid red face, scuttled out of the scrub a dozen yards ahead of them and made for the haven of a nearby thorn bush. Somervile's horse protested at the effrontery, resisting its rider's attempts to close with the bush for a better look, until shortened reins, and spurs, did the trick.

Hervey did not feel inclined to follow so eagerly; he had never been as keen an observer of the bird kingdom as Somervile (except birds of prey). They would surely see more if they stood off a little?

Johnson took the opportunity to come up alongside him. 'What were Mr Somervile sayin – liquid an' Africa? An' thee abaht dyin, sir? Ah couldn't catch it right.'

Hervey was long past protesting that being overheard was one thing, but having to repeat himself quite another. 'Latin, a saying by a general called Pliny: "There is always something new out of Africa." And
I
said that Sir Eyre should remember that Pliny's curiosity was the death of him, because, when the volcano erupted, he went to take a closer look, and was killed.'

'But there aren't no volcanoes 'ere, are there?'

'None that I can see. I meant in the general sense, that care killed the cat.'

'What?'

Hervey turned in the saddle, and thrust his hand out. ' "What, courage man! What though care killed a cat." '

Johnson looked at him strangely. 'Tha's chirrupy this mornin', sir.'

'Shakespeare, Johnson! "What though care killed a cat, thou hast mettle enough in thee to kill care." '

'What? Shakespeare talked like that?'

'Like what?'

'Like me.'

Hervey looked at him quizzically. 'Now that you mention it—'

But Somervile had closed with him again, and so Johnson fell respectfully back a length.

'Some sort of hornbill, as I never saw before. What was that you were saying?'

'About Guntoor?'

'No; Private Johnson.' He looked over his shoulder and nodded, to Johnson's satisfaction. '
Much Ado About Nothing,
was it not?'

Hervey had to think for a moment. 'It was.'

' "Thou hast mettle enough in thee to kill care." And thou dost indeed, Hervey. And I am depending on it.'

Hervey scowled back. 'It is for that dependability that His Majesty pays me, Sir Eyre.'

Somervile affected no notice. 'You know, Hervey, this infantry command you are to take up . . . I am not so certain it is second best. There may perhaps be the greater opportunity for distinction.'

Hervey looked at his old friend, curious. 'What makes you say that? What greater distinction might there be than to make history with the lieutenant-governor of the Cape Colony?'

The sun's increasing warmth had brought out the horseflies – bigger even than those in Bengal. Somervile's charger was beginning to object to their attentions, and Hervey's Molly the same. 'Before I address that, I propose we trot a while to see if we can shake these beggars off.'

Hervey signalled to the column, though he doubted they would leave the flies behind at a mere trot; and he did not consider it wise to allow a canter just yet in country he did not know (bare country that it was, as poor grassland as the great plain in Wiltshire).

'And so:
distinction
?' he prompted, raising his voice a little as they bumped along.

Somervile looked pleased. 'There's much to be done in Canada. Not an affair of arms, of course – or rather, I trust not – but of consolidation, with the Americans, the border, the native Indians and the like.'

They had spoken only a little of Canada since Emma had told Hervey the good news. Both were of the view that contemplating the next posting was the besetting sin of the too-ambitious man.

The prospect was appealing, though; it did not do to be forever taking up arms. 'And when is it, you say, that you go?'

'To be decided. Indeed, I ought to repeat that the appointment is yet to be approved, but if Huskisson manages to stay at the Colonies Office the position will be mine. I did not mention, too, that it is upon the most agreeable terms.'

Hervey checked his mare, for she was beginning to force the pace. 'I am excessively pleased. When I was last—'

But the sudden activity of the scouts half a mile ahead stayed his recollections. Hervey's hand was raised even before Somervile noticed.

The column fell back to a walk, and then halted. Out came the telescopes.

'What do they signal, Hervey?'

One scout was circling around a second, anti-clockwise, in a twenty-yard radius, his horse on a long rein.

The movement contained all the information Hervey needed. 'Zulu, on foot, between one and two dozen, stationary.'

'Scouts, perhaps?' suggested Somervile, trying to keep his horse still enough to train his telescope.

'I would think so,' said Hervey, searching the ground to left and right. 'We expected them, did we not?' They had been marching for two hours and more – long enough for Shaka's standing patrols to have learned of the column's approach.

All Serjeant Hardy's scouts were now observing the Zulu from the crest of the hill.

Hervey was keen to close with them to make his own reconnaissance. 'Hardy's orders are to halt on first contact. Shall we take a look?'

Somervile was already so active in the saddle that Hervey was certain what his answer would be. 'Why do we wait?'

'Proprieties,' replied Hervey – and a shade impatiently, turning in the saddle to look behind. 'The scouts are under Brereton's command.'

He strained to see what the officer in acting command of E Troop did.

But Brereton appeared to be doing nothing other than observe.

Hervey saw Serjeant-Major Collins come up from the rear, halting beside his troop leader, and the brief conference which followed.

Cornet Kemmis now left the column and cantered forward, saluting as he passed the head of the column.

Hervey sighed.

'Is something amiss?' enquired Somervile.

'If Brereton had wanted an officer's patrol instead of scouts then he ought to have arranged it so at the beginning. There's scarce point in sending a cornet back and forth like a fly shuttle.'