The Horns of the Buffalo (42 page)

‘Yessir. You and that private soldier came to me just before the battle with a requisition for me to issue you with jackets an' rifles an' lungers.'

‘When you issued us with jackets, did you notice any wound on my body?'

‘Don't think so.'

‘Not on my shoulder? A spear wound?'

‘Can't rightly remember, sir.'

Bastard, thought Simon. He tried once more. ‘When I came into the wagon, wasn't it perfectly clear that I had run out of ammunition and had come to take cartridges back to the line?'

‘Dunno, sir.'

‘When Private Jenkins suggested that I should fix my bayonet because the Zulus had broken through the line, it wasn't an order, was it? He was advising me to do so for my own safety, wasn't he?'

‘Dunno, sir. Wasn't time to consider all that, what with the trouble gettin' the boxes open an' all.'

Simon sighed. ‘When we left the wagon, you say you saw no more of me or of Private Jenkins?'

‘That's right, sir. I just saw you runnin' up the 'ill, like.'

‘You did not see a spear take Jenkins in the back so that he fell? And you did not see me stand over him and try and protect him with my bayonet as the Zulus swarmed about us?'

A heavy, histrionic sigh came from the bench behind Bradshaw.

‘No, sir.'

Simon let the witness go and Covington strode forward to give evidence again. This time, Bradshaw merely asked the big man a preliminary question and then let him address the tribunal without interruption.

‘Colonel Covington,' said the prosecutor, ‘you have brought these two grave charges against this young officer. You know that a guilty verdict on either of them can mean death for him' - Simon flinched at this, for it was the first time that punishment had been mentioned - ‘so you must have a very good reason for doing so?'

‘Indeed I have.' Covington thrust out his moustaches and addressed the officers sitting before him. ‘The first charge needs little explanation. Without warning, this young man hit me and in so doing escaped arrest. He does not deny it and will not - he cannot - offer extenuating circumstances for his act. It is an open and shut case.

‘However, on the second charge, you, sir, and your colleagues may wonder why I, who was not present at the battle, should bring it. The facts of the matter are these. When Fonthill was arrested at Rorke's Drift on the first charge I was naturally interested to know what he had been up to at Isandlwana.' A shrug of the shoulders and the tone of Covington's voice invited the tribunal to agree that this was a perfectly normal thing for him to speculate upon - and, indeed, the expression on the officers' faces showed that they agreed.

‘So,' he went on, ‘I made enquiries and heard the QM's story. Now, I was not at all surprised by this because, as I have touched upon earlier, I have long believed Fonthill to be a malingerer and, indeed, a coward. You see, he came under my command some three years or more ago when he was transferred to the 2nd Battalion from the 1st under rather unusual circumstances. It seems that when the 1st was ordered abroad to take part in the Kaffir War in the Cape, Fonthill collapsed immediately and missed the draft. He lay in some sort of coma for a couple of days or so and then, conveniently, recovered just after his comrades in the battalion had shipped out.'

Covington raised his eyebrows in mock surprise. ‘You may wonder, gentlemen, what was the complaint that laid low this young officer just when the call came to go to war. I certainly did. But, as you will hear' (Simon pricked up his ears at this) ‘the doctors were not able to find anything wrong with him at all. I have to tell you that the general verdict among his contemporaries was that he had deliberately feigned illness to avoid being posted into danger.

‘Fonthill was transferred to my command and, to be frank, I told him of my feelings about him and gave him the chance of resigning then and there or staying with the 2nd Battalion, where I would test him to the extreme. Now,' Covington gave his idiosyncratic flick of the moustaches, for he was undoubtedly enjoying the telling of the story, ‘in fairness the man did not crack, but he was damned clever. Somehow-I know not how - he convinced the Horse Guards that he had a good knowledge of Zulu and other Bantu languages and that he could ride well - which he could not - and scraped a strange posting in Zululand to be away from me and arduous line duty. I do not know what he was up to in Zululand but I am perfectly certain that this story of his about bearding Cetswayo in his den, being imprisoned by him and then escaping from Ulundi in time to join poor Pulleine's column just before the battle is poppycock. It is typical Fonthill make-believe, and as I understand it, he has no evidence of any sort to substantiate it.'

Covington now addressed Glyn directly. ‘You will see, then, sir, that knowing what I know about Fonthill, and having been a victim of his sudden attack on me, I had no alternative but to bring both these charges.'

As Covington concluded, a silence fell on the court. Bradshaw indicated that he was finished with the witness and once again Simon thought quickly. He stood. ‘Gentlemen,' he addressed the tribunal, ‘I have many questions to put to Colonel Covington, but in view of what he has said about events three or more years ago and,' he took a deep breath here and looked at Glyn, ‘since this court has extended a minor concession to Colonel Covington in allowing him to stay to hear the QM's evidence, I wonder if a similar modest indulgence could be extended to me in hearing the third witness for the prosecution before I question both him and Colonel Covington.' He hurried on, his voice on edge: ‘As, from what I have heard, a death sentence could be imposed upon me in the event of guilty verdicts, I do believe this request to be not unreasonable.'

Covington was about to speak, but Glyn held up a restraining hand and shot a quick glance at the lawyer, who, almost imperceptibly, gave a nod.

‘Very well,' said Glyn. ‘Captain Bradshaw, call your last witness.'

Through the door guarded by the sergeant major came the unprepossessing figure of Surgeon Major Reynolds. His appearance caused a slight frisson in the little courtroom, not least because a long cut above his eyebrow (a Zulu throwing spear, a slip with the scalpel?) gave his already gloomy visage an even more threatening aspect. The doctor looked tired, irritable and ill at ease. With several men still on the danger list and demanding his care, attending a court martial obviously did not figure high on his list of priorities. To Simon he represented the joker in the pack-a witness who could either condemn or clear him. Which Simon would he portray to the tribunal: the suspected malingerer of three years ago, or the man who took his share in the defence of Rorke's Drift?

Bradshaw was soon on the attack.

‘When Lieutenant Fonthill collapsed all those months ago in Brecon, how long was he unconscious?'

‘About two and a half days.'

‘Just long enough for his battalion to leave, travel to Southampton and board the steamer for the Cape, then?'

‘I can't remember the exact timing, but something like that, I suppose, yes.' The Surgeon Major spoke without expression, neither his heavily bearded face nor his voice betraying emotion. But to Simon he evinced a weariness quite unlike his memory of the brusque little doctor with his staccato questions and sharp eyes. Working through the night sewing up assegai slashes and extracting bullets from torn flesh by the light of the burning hospital must have taken its toll, even on a constitution as iron-bound as Reynolds's.

‘Could you find anything wrong with your patient?' Bradshaw, on sure ground, was pressing for the kill.

‘No. Throughout the time he was in my care, I could find nothing organically wrong with him. There was no evidence of a wound, as with a bump on the head, nor trace of malaria, typhoid, typhus, diabetes or poisoning. Yet he seemed to be in a light coma, stirring and even taking spoonfuls of liquid nourishment occasionally, but not really conscious.'

Bradshaw leaned forward. The room was quite silent. ‘Could he have been malingering?'

‘Yes, it is quite possible.'

For a moment the prosecutor looked uncertain, as though a co-actor on stage had departed from the rehearsed script. ‘With respect, Major, all things are possible. Did you
believe
him to be malingering?'

Reynolds nodded his head slowly. ‘Yes, I did.'

‘Ah. And did you give that opinion to Lieutenant Colonel Covington?'

‘In the end, yes.' Reynolds lifted weary eyes to Simon and then to Glyn. ‘The Colonel was pressing me on the point, y'see.'

‘Thank you, Surgeon Major. That will be all.'

Reynolds looked about him in surprise. ‘Is that it?'

Glyn intervened quickly. ‘If the accused officer wishes to question you, Major, he may do so. But I feel that we have all heard enough for one day and I intend now to adjourn the court martial until eight a.m. tomorrow. I regret, then, that I must keep you from your patients a little longer and ask you to reappear at that time in the morning.'

Reynolds nodded gloomily, the sergeant major roared his stentorian ‘AttenSHUN!' and within three minutes Simon was back in his makeshift cell, pondering the twists and turns of the day. In fact, his analysis did nothing to lighten the gloom of the shack. It was clear that the case was going against him and that he would need to break Covington somehow under questioning - an improbable concept - or to extract some sort of indulgence from Reynolds about his breakdown at Brecon. Either that or he must produce strong testimonies from his three witnesses - two of whom could only submit written references. He had no means of knowing how pertinently Baxter and Lamb had responded to the court's request, or whether they knew the extent of his plight. Alice had offered to help, but where was she? Simon sighed, thought again of Jenkins and, fleetingly, of his parents, and slipped eventually into a light sleep.

 

If Colonel Glyn had seemed unhelpful on the first day, he was positively surly at the beginning of the second, as though he saw no reason for continuing to waste precious army time on a legal ritual that ought to be terminated immediately with a guilty verdict on both counts.

‘Now,' he addressed Simon over the top of his spectacles, ‘you have the right to question the two witnesses brought by the prosecution on the second charge, namely Colonel Covington and Surgeon Major Reynolds. We do not have all the time in the world, since the witnesses and the members of the tribunal here are all serving officers engaged in a savage war. Do you still wish to do so?'

Simon stood. ‘I do, sir,' he said, without a thought in his head of the best course to take with his questioning.

Glyn sighed. ‘Very well. But Surgeon Major Reynolds has patients depending upon his attention and I insist that you question him first.'

‘Of course, sir.' Simon eyed Reynolds as the surgeon re-entered the room, his face set in iron. The man had glimpsed Simon fighting at the drift so perhaps some concession might be wrung from him there . . . and yet a return to Brecon could be productive, if he took great care with the questions. He had nothing to lose, anyhow.

‘Doctor,' he began.

‘I'm a Surgeon Major, not a doctor,' rasped Reynolds.

‘I beg your pardon, sir. May I take you back to Brecon and the evidence you gave earlier? Were you
certain
that I was malingering, that I was fooling everyone? After all, you told me when I came out of my coma that you had been sticking needles in me.'

The hard blue eyes regarded Simon expressionlessly. ‘Oh yes, I was convinced all right,' he said. ‘I thought I should give you the benefit of the doubt so I called a specialist in diabetes down from London, since this seemed the likeliest cause of your coma. But he could find no trace. So I put it down to blue funk and good play-acting. I didn't think much of that, of course, so I allowed you to return to general duties in the 2nd Battalion.'

Reynolds now turned to the tribunal and began addressing them as though Simon was not present. ‘But I am glad that I have been asked this question because I was not allowed to develop my response on the same point yesterday.' He shot a quick, hard glance at Bradshaw. ‘The case bothered me, you see. I knew that the boy was of good stock - his father was a distinguished officer - and he seemed to behave himself well during the remainder of his time at Brecon. I had been told that he had been a sensitive child, and certainly he did not seem to display the normal characteristics of a coward - no bluster, nor the other extreme, undue diffidence. Anyway, he went out to the Cape. But I could not get the case out of my mind.'

For the first time his face softened a little as he looked along the seated line of officers. ‘I'm only an army doctor, not a mind doctor, y'know. So I consulted an old colleague in Geneva who had been working in the field of unconsciousness for some time. He outlined a possible source of the coma and directed me to see if the patient had suffered a blow to the head in the recent past before this so-called coma had materialised. The boy had not recalled any such blow, but I made some enquiries and found a groom in the battalion who told me that, a few weeks before his collapse, Fonthill had taken a fall from his horse while riding in the hills. He had hit his head and lost consciousness. It was only for a minute or so, I understand, and he had not reported sick. Nevertheless, it is quite likely that he had sustained concussion.

‘Now, gentlemen,' Reynolds continued as though he was addressing a theatre full of students, ‘my man in Geneva told me that it was not unlikely that Fonthill, a sensitive young man with a strong imagination, had experienced what was to him a severe shock when the news of the battalion's posting had been suddenly broken to him. This could well have produced what I understand is becoming known as hysterical fugue, whereby the patient suddenly reverts to a concussed state, a coma, for a while. He would have retained no lasting ill effects from it, but it remains a puzzling condition about which little is known.'