Company Of Spears

‘Each might be apt,’ replied Fairbrother, his eyes still on the parade. ‘Depending on who was to deal the fatal blow, rifles or cavalry.’

Hervey turned to him, with the suggestion of a smile. ‘You should never have wasted a moment on half pay. That green suits you.’

‘Black buttons, black face?’

‘Do not begin on that again!’

‘It is a little difficult not to when Colonel Somerset appears to consider me but a native scout!’

‘Tush!’

Fairbrother returned his eyes to the parade. ‘ “Who is the happy Warrior? Who is he that every man in arms should wish to be?”‘

‘“It is the generous Spirit”. That is what the poet said, is it not? Be generous then!’

‘I am at your service.’

He was. Captain Edward Fairbrother – the rank now properly constituted – was appointed aidant to the Officer Commanding Mounted Detachments, Kaffraria Field Force. It was a fine title, he had observed; and, more sardonically, one that would look fine on a gravestone.

One of Colonel Somerset’s gallopers came bowling along the line in a growing cloud of dust.

‘Why do you suppose he thinks that necessary?’ said Hervey, shaking his head. ‘We have sat a good hour.’

Fairbrother shrugged. ‘Somerset will be impatient for the off. That, or he confounds celerity and celebrity.’

Hervey laughed, then returned the galloper’s salute. ‘Colonel Hervey, sir: the column’s to advance at ten o’clock.’

Hervey took out his watch. It was fifteen minutes before the hour. ‘Very well.’

He turned to the two gallopers from the Sixth and the Rifles, who had closed with him on seeing Somerset’s man approaching. He nodded to them; he need say nothing.

They relayed the order at the trot, the drill for muster parades. Hervey was pleased as he watched the lines form column of route with but a very few words of command. He glanced left and right. In the distance were the burghers. He need give them no orders. Their instructions were to guard the flanks during the march; they would conform by their own initiative. Hervey may have had his doubts, but in this sort of ranging the burghers were practised enough.

At ten o’clock Lieutenant-Colonel the Honourable Henry Somerset gave his bugler the order to sound the advance, and the Kaffraria Field Force began its march to the frontier. The fifes and drums of the 55th (Westmoreland) Regiment of Foot struck up ‘The Lass o’ Gowrie’, and the battalion stepped off at attention as one, arms sloped, heads high. Hervey watched them with admiration: these were the men – the infantry of the Line – who had prised the French out of Spain and stood astride Bonaparte’s arrogant march on Brussels. They could volley like no others, and they could charge with the bayonet. They could prise the French out of Spain again and out of Belgium if it came to it. But were these close-drilled ranks what was needed here? He did not know. Colonel Somerset was sure of it: breasts of red to affright the savage, and cavalry to terrify him! And perhaps it would be so, for who knew how these Zulu fought? Hervey simply inclined his head: in a month or so they would have their answer.

XXIII

THE HAPPY WARRIOR

Gaika’s kraal, ten days later

Hervey reckoned that Chief Gaika’s kraal covered the same area as what his father called the cursus of the Great Henge on Salisbury Plain. It lay on an east-facing slope in open country ninety miles beyond the Keiskama River, within sight of many smaller ones. This was Gaika’s principal kraal (the one nearer the frontier afforded better grazing for his iinkomo – his cattle – in winter). The outer perimeter was a stockade of thorn about seven feet high, with an inner palisade fifty yards beyond. Grass-made huts like beehives occupied the space between the two, in which lived the tribal chosen. Inside the palisade Gaika’s cattle were herded at night, and in the middle was the chief’s own hut encircled by a smaller thorn thicket. Hervey and Fairbrother had not been invited into the sanctum when they visited the winter kraal three months before, but now they stood in Gaika’s clay-floored courtyard with Colonel Somerset and his staff, welcome-mead in hand and with the unquestionable authority that a regiment of redcoats and several hundred horse conferred.

Gaika spoke freely and with animation. Colonel Somerset’s interpreters – one Dutch, the other Hottentot – struggled to keep up with him.

‘He’s not saying that,’ whispered Fairbrother. ‘That’s not what he means.’

Hervey leaned closer to him. ‘What is he saying?’

‘He speaks the conditional: they are translating as if he spoke an intention.’

Hervey was resolved not to stand on ceremony. He edged forward from the back of the party to where he might have Somerset’s ear.

‘A word, Colonel, if I may?’

Somerset heard but did not move a muscle. Hervey knew well enough the courtesies in front of a man such as Gaika; he would just have to wait.