XI

The heathen rampant – An interrogation – Hintsa – The kid’s ear – Clayton’s first misfortune – Columns of fire – Return to Fort Cox – A bath without wine – Procreation of the beast – Providence makes a purchase – Considering the Mfengu – Gibbering heads – Murder – A warning.

ON THE DAY FOLLOWING the Lieutenant Colonel rode for Gatestown to confer with the General and the irregulars remained in camp. The Captain set up his table in the enclosure in front of his tent and wrote in his book. Word came of a heathen victory in the bush on the Big Fat where a party of thirty-seven settler levies had been cut off and hunted down with dogs and slaughtered. Throughout the lowlands servants were deserting and joining the heathen. There were rumours of a force of five thousand warriors assembling to take Gatestown itself and word also that churches and chapels there had been set aside as places of refuge for women and children and then the scouts came in with a heathen woman and told the Captain that she had news of Hartung the piper.

The woman was brought before the Captain and Johnny Fingo and Providence stood by to translate. They told the Captain that the woman was a heathen of the N’pai clan. She had lived before the war with the sister of her father in the bottomlands between Fort Cox and the Kromme. When the prophet called them to slay and eat they slaughtered their dun cattle and moved up into the gorges. Her three sons had been blessed by the prophet and they went to fight with Jinqi and they had been living when the woman came away from the Kromme these three days hence.

What does she know about Hartung?

Johnny Fingo questioned the woman and the woman answered with many words and then Johnny Fingo turned to the Captain.

She says the Hottentots killed him.

Ask her how she knows.

She says she heard it.

She lie, said Providence. He lifted his arm and brought his open hand down in a short clubbing cuff on the woman’s face. The woman lifted her arms and wailed and Providence cuffed her with either hand like a bear. The Captain showed his palm and Providence stopped.

Ask her what happened.

Johnny Fingo did as told and once more the woman answered at length.

She says that he was taken to Jinqi. Jinqi sent for his son, Kona, and some Hottentots. They took the white man away and they took his clothes. She says she saw a man wear the white man’s coat. It was a dark coat, but she cannot say what colour. She says the Hottentots cut his arms and legs. The flesh was not all cut off. It was hanging to the body. She says they kept him two days in the sun. They cut off something. They put it in his mouth.

Cut off what?

Johnny Fingo conferred with the woman and with Providence and Providence reached for his groin and took his great dark parts in his hand.

Here, he said.

The Captain looked at the woman.

They put it in his mouth?

Him eat, said Providence.

There were doves calling and the dust was warm in the sun and the men looked at Providence and the woman looked at the dust. The Captain lifted his chin and made a constricted sound in his throat as though something itched there.

Ask her what happened then.

Johnny Fingo obeyed and the woman spoke to the dust.

She says they killed him after many days.

How?

By shooting. She did not see this, but she heard the men talk.

She see, said Providence.

She says she heard that the white man spoke and said they must not kill him. She heard that the women danced around him and they were happy. They beat him with knobbed sticks. She heard the men and women singing when they were dancing around him.

She heard them herself?

Yes.

She lie before, said Providence.

She says the man had his hands tied behind him. He was lying in the sun all day and he was in the hut at night. She was getting gum from the trees on the day the Hottentots first cut him. He was tied with cow skin. They tied him to a tree. She says she heard when they cut his arms and legs he was bleeding very much. He was lying on his side. He was screaming while he was cut. Every day they cut off a finger. One piece each day.

The story was finished and it was hot in the camp and most were sleeping and doves called in the bush and a horse snorted and blew air through its lips.

Ask her why she left the Kromme.

Johnny Fingo asked the question and the woman lifted her head and looked at the Captain and spoke simply and did not blink.

She leave because she is starving, said Johnny Fingo.

On the day following the kid sat in the dust with Evans and the joiner and the kid could smell them although he smelt similar himself. Waine came past them from the latrines and he was thin and he carried a tang from the faecal matter that remained on him. The kid put his hand to his head and scratched. The lobe of his ear was fat as a man’s thumb and red and throbbing.

You need that lanced, said the joiner.

The kid spat and looked at him. The joiner was as long and gaunt as a Spanish mystic and his cheek where the heathen’s firelock had landed was misshapen.

You hear what they did to Hartung?

Heard they roasted him, said Evans.

That’s not what the heathen woman said.

Heathen woman wasn’t even there. They staked him to the ground and put red hot rocks on him. They cooked him.

They’ll do worse than that, said the joiner. General should never have cut old Hintsa’s head off.

Who’s Hintsa, said the kid.

King of them all, said the joiner. Was. Jinqi’s lot and the Gaika and the Tsaleka as well.

Where they live?

Who?

The Tsaleka.

Other side the Big Fat.

The kid wiped a hand across his nose.

So how can these ones go live there?

Ask the General, said Evans.

The kid felt at the lobe of his ear and his fingers came away moist and sticky and there were granules adhering like crystals of sugar or salt.

Why’d he cut Hintsa’s head off?

He was trying to make a point. Stop scratching your ear.

The kid stood guard that night for four hours with an irregular named Clayton. He wrapped his blanket around him and paced his beat and sometimes when he stopped he could hear Clayton coughing. He listened carefully to distinguish the sound because there were antelope that coughed sometimes in the night but when he heard the hawking of phlegm he knew it was Clayton. There were clouds overhead and it was very dark and once the kid caught a wild powerful smell as though of an animal that devoured carrion but when he stopped to listen there was no sound and the smell did not come again.

He paced his beat to keep warm and after a time his feet learnt the way and he walked like a dreamer aware only of his breathing and the throbbing from his ear and down the side of his neck. A sound entered his dream and he stopped and listened and heard it again and it was Clayton calling, who’s there.

The kid lifted his rifle to his waist and thumbed back the hammer. Clayton called out again and the kid felt his way through the dark towards the sound.

Password?

The kid stayed very still and listened. Clayton asked the question again and still there was no answer and the kid saw a flash and heard a shot and ran towards the sound and the thorns tore at his face as he ran.

Where are you?

Here.

He found Clayton biting through a cartridge.

Who was it?

I don’t know, said Clayton.

He guided black powder into his bore.

They listened and after a time they heard a sound in the darkness where Clayton had fired. He’s groaning something awful, said Clayton. They waited and then the noise came again. That’s a horse, said the kid. The Captain came then with four irregulars to discover the meaning of the shot, and they found the God-struck Lieutenant’s horse, which had broken its tether, lying dead in the bush.

The irregulars remained three weeks at Reed Fountain and were joined by a reinforcement of one hundred and twenty Fingo levies from The Bay and with them came an order to return to Fort Cox. On the day following the tents were struck and the dry withered fences that had encircled the fires were piled on the coals. Flames rose then and roared into the air in great yellow columns. These columns were like the architecture of an inverse world where all is insubstantial except burning and from this roaring temple the irregulars and Fingos emerged like shimmering wraiths upon that ancient and flint-struck landscape.

The journey took two days and as they approached Fort Cox a band came out to meet them. Its tune was strange in the kid’s ear but he marched to its time and he noted the watching Hottentots and Fingos and he saw that the Hottentots did not sing or dance as they sometimes had before. The band led the irregulars through the long wide street and through the square with its vendors and traders. There were men gathered in a corner of the square and the kid saw that the disordered missionary stood there upon a wooden box and gesticulated. He saw that some of the watchers laughed but a few listened gravely. The irregulars followed the trumpets and the drums and marched out onto the further side of the town where they pitched their tents in symmetrical rows adjacent to those of the Cape Mounted Rifles.

The Captain called then for his vat and Herrid had men place it in the Captain’s quarters and fill it with containers of steaming water. The kid poured his bucket and looked about. The Captain’s chest was unpacked and a clean uniform waited hanging above polished boots from a spike in the wall. There were books bound in leather upon a shelf and paper and ink and there was a bottle of port wine and the kid’s eyes were drawn to it but Waine saw it first. A door opened and the Captain entered naked apart from a towel wrapped about his waist. The flesh of his torso glowed with whiteness but his neck and face and forearms and hands owned the hues of a dark and greasy mahogany. The Captain’s eyes were bright blue in his murky visage and his teeth were white.

Go away, he said.

The men obeyed and the Captain stood pensive for a moment in the empty room. He removed the towel and hung it over a chair. He put his hand in the water and jerked it out and shook it vigorously. He stood and looked at the great vat and his hand moved and grasped at the softness of his groin. He stared down, frowning. The strange weight of his organs, pink and soft in dark fingers. The Captain breathed in deeply and made a low sound in his chest and he looked about and saw that the port wine was missing. The Captain cried out and called for a batman and told him to tell Sergeant Major Herrid to inform the Provost Marshal.

After his bath the Captain put on his uniform and rode over to the mess of the Cape Mounted Rifles. He sat at a table with the God-struck Lieutenant and Captain Norris of the Rifles and Norris poured champagne for them and other officers in generous measure. The men talked and laughed and devoured savoury dishes and the Captain remarked to Norris that the surprise of finding a comrade alive added a certain zest to the ambience of a dinner table. This zest he said, and an accompanying heartiness, was happy compensation for hard days in the field. Norris agreed and clapped the Captain upon the back and poured more wine. The God-struck Lieutenant put a hand over his glass to signify that he wanted no more and Norris asked him what it was that he read. The God-struck Lieutenant placed a finger on the page and spoke the words.

Blessed is he that readeth, and they that hear the words of this prophecy, and keep those things which are written therein.

He looked up at Norris and allowed his pause to lengthen.

For the time is at hand.

There was a stillness at the table and glances were exchanged and then Captain Norris spoke.

The time for pudding is at hand.

The men looked about to gauge each other’s responses.

And port.

Some of the officers smiled. The God-struck Lieutenant did not answer but stared into some revelatory future and after a time the men lifted their glasses and continued their conversations. The Captain leaned across to Norris and whispered in his ear and Norris did not regard or question the God-struck Lieutenant again.

Among the tents of the irregulars there were fires burning and some men went to the grog shops but most ate their stew of gristle and millet and laid themselves on the bare ground of the tents and slept. Waine sat in the darkness with the Captain’s port wine and drank and the kid saw it. When the dome of the darkness was firmly held in place by the arch of the Milky Way and the camp was sleeping Waine took up the bottle and walked. He moved through the camp and he came to the outbuilding where the horses were stabled and with them a few cows which provided milk for the officers. Waine entered there and drank what remained of the Captain’s port wine and laid the bottle down upon the stone floor. He pushed open a low door and entered a cubicle. There was straw under foot and a young cow lowed in the darkness.

The Provost Marshal was a man whose face was hedged with whisker and whose mind was likewise demarcated by the received wisdom of his day. He was plagued by the report of the stolen port wine and unable to sleep. It puzzled the Provost Marshal that a man could steal an officer’s port wine when he knew that the theft was the start of a rocky road whose end was transportation to an island ruled by maggots and labour and the lash, a hell hole where those who survived the work were taken in the end by starvation. It seemed to the Provost Marshal that only the irregulars among the forces assembled could contain men wild enough to risk such outcomes. The Provost Marshal lay uneasy in the darkness of his billet and he heard a beast calling. He rose from his bed and lit a lantern and put on his trousers and shirt and boots and walked quietly towards the sound of the disturbance.

The Provost Marshal entered the stables and looked about. His lantern cast a dim light along the rows of cubicles on either side. A horse shifted in its hay and snickered and from the further end of the building the Provost Marshal heard a groan that could perhaps have issued from a human. He stood and listened but the sound did not come again. The Provost Marshal walked quietly up the alley with lantern held aloft. The groaning came again and the Provost Marshal heard wood grind against stone and then the groaning was replaced by a rhythmic knocking. The Provost Marshal walked on carefully and came to the area where the cows were kept. He looked into one cubicle and calm brown eyes stared back at him above a munching jaw. He looked into another that was empty and then he looked into a third. The Provost Marshal saw a pair of thrusting buttocks. These nates pumped assiduously at a cow which stood against the stone wall. They belonged to a man whose trousers hung at his ankles and who balanced on an upturned wooden bucket that rattled on the stone. The Provost Marshal stared like one transmuted to granite. The despoiler was hunched above the placid beast in an ecstasy and he cried out and fell back from the toppling bucket with member erect and spurting jism indiscriminately.

The Provost Marshal stepped back with a cry and lifted his free arm as though to ward off an evil.

Dear God, he said. Dear God.

The ravager rolled in the hay and secured his trousers and leapt the low stable door with unexpected agility. The Provost Marshal stepped back with arms aloft. He tripped over a raised stone and dropped the lantern and the flame died and the glass shattered. The Provost Marshal sat there in the darkness with those strange and awful images, which he surmised to represent the procreation of the beast, branded upon his retinas. After a time he felt weakly on the stone for leverage in order to rise and his hand fell upon the Captain’s plundered port wine bottle.

On the day following the forces of the encampment assembled on the plain before the tents and marched up and down for three hours in good order but to no purpose that the kid could ascertain. After this the men shed their uniforms and bathed in the river. The kid’s ear was still much swollen and the joiner’s cheek likewise and Evans sat earless between them in the shallows. They were like three silent and misshapen trolls who pondered weighty matters in the waters. The river flowed onward to the sea and the men watched it. A dragonfly hovered above the slick dark water and its wings flashed in the sunlight. The joiner lifted his hand and hit the back of his neck where a horse fly had landed. He looked at his hand and then dropped it to his knee beneath the water.

What kind of man …

He shook his head.

Would do that to a cow.

Same kind of man that took the Captain’s port wine, said Evans.

Anyone would do it, said the kid.

The joiner was much astonished.

To a cow?

Take the wine, said the kid.

True.

The joiner nodded and so did Evans and their eyes followed the dragon fly.

It was Waine.

Evans and the joiner looked at the kid.

Took the skipper’s wine.

Best not mention that, said Evans.

Why not?

Because he’ll kill you, said Evans.

Maybe I’ll kill him.

Stop scratching your ear, said the joiner.

The kid stared down at the warm muddy water and after a time they rose and lay to dry themselves in the sand and then they returned to the tents. As they approached, Providence the Fingo stepped out into their path and smiled.

Come.

Where to, said Evans.

Winkel.

What for?

Count.

Count what?

Money.

Money?

Evans frowned astutely, but he seemed hopeful.

What money?

Count, said Providence.

He hasn’t found treasure, said the joiner. He can’t count. He spoke to Providence in his own language and Providence smiled and answered with dignified gesticulation.

He bought some things. Wants to make sure they don’t cheat him.

Evans was scathing of this suggestion and only the kid followed Providence into the town. The day was hot and still and the kid’s ear throbbed and he felt the weight of the sun upon him. Providence strode purposefully and though he answered many greetings and enquiries on the way he did not slow his pace. They came to a shop and entered into a throng of Fingos beneath a ceiling hung with saddles and blankets and three-legged iron pots. These men and women conversed loudly with the two settlers behind the counter and among themselves. Providence pushed through them and the Fingos greeted him and questioned him about his young companion and offered remarks and advice about the swelling of his ear. Bantering thus in good nature they came to the counter and the man behind it saw Providence and lifted up from below a suit of clothing. Providence took it and examined it and displayed in turn a bright blue coat with brass buttons and a yellow schoolboy’s cap with blue and red velvet tassels and a pair of black military trousers with broad red stripes down their sides. He nodded his head slowly and the kid turned to the shopkeeper.

How much?

Three shillings and sixpence.

Providence reached into his daghasack and brought out a smaller bag formed from the scrotum of a bullock and placed it on the counter. He stood there naked apart from a ragged tartan shirt and towering above the company and his member hung like a fat python. He had an ashy smell on him like a forest glade that a company of infantry has camped in for three weeks. He opened the purse and counted out the coins exact and placed them on the table and looked at the kid. The kid counted the coins again and nodded and the man behind the counter took the money. Providence put on the trousers and the coat and the cap and began to sweat. He looked like an ill-conceived character in a pantomime performed by a preparatory school for giants. There were exclamations from the customers standing about and some stepped back in alarm as though Providence had become hazardous through his transformation.

In the days following Providence wore his new uniform about the camp, and many of his comrades sported their own ensembles. Some were armed with swords and spurs and some wore the uniforms of defunct regiments and some combined military wear with articles of fashion recently sold by settlers fallen on hard times.

The Captain observed this behaviour and smiled and then he became grave like one who remembers a duty and he returned to his quarters and set his writing table up in the shade of the veranda.

The Fingo levies, he wrote, are universally fine, athletic and well-made men and more perfect models it is impossible to imagine. This superiority arises from their simple diet and from their free and hardy life in the open air. It is said also that the Fingo, like the heathen, always destroy deaf, blind or deformed children. This is done at birth or as soon as their imperfection becomes manifest. True or not, it is certain that no cripples are seen among them.

The Captain paused, aware perhaps of the dangers of generalisation but eager nonetheless to consider the Fingo people as a whole, and then he wrote on. While he was thus engaged the Provost Marshal sat staring at the port wine bottle. There was a bottle of brandy beside it and from this the Provost Marshal drank. As the sun moved across the sky the Provost Marshal drank and it did not help for he saw manifest before him the terrible coupling in the stables. And then the Provost Marshal began to see the future. He saw how the cow travailed in birth and pained to be delivered. The Provost Marshal saw that the cow had issue. He saw something come forth in blood and fall upon the ground. The cow turned to lick it and the little monster stood nimbly in its gore. It was an ape with two small human heads and a member like a hose which it lifted and slung about its shoulders between its two twisting necks. It turned one head and then the next towards the Provost Marshal. And then these two heads looked at each other and gibbered.

The Provost Marshal’s hair stood vertical and he cried out and he rose and his chair clattered on the boards behind him. He took the Captain’s port wine bottle and he stumbled through the camp and across the parade ground and past the sentries and down to the river. He bathed himself in the waters and then he put on his trousers and took up his other clothes and went to a glen formed by bushes and the shade of an enormous Cape willow tree. The Provost Marshal knelt there in that arboreal cathedral and he commenced to pray.

Dear God, said the Provost Marshal, I am losing my faith. He looked about. In this place, I am losing my faith. I have dreams when I am awake. I see Satan’s imp clear as daylight before my eyes and he says his name is Tokolos. Dear God, please help me. Please give me a sign that there is a force for good that moves in the world.

He looked about and he listened and he noticed that the tree was humming as though it harboured a swarm of bees. He looked up into the branches and he saw how the light shimmered in the green leaves. The Provost Marshal felt himself lifted up in the humming into that living light. And then Waine came upon him from behind and struck him upon the head with a rock. The Provost Marshal lay groaning and bleeding on the mud and the leaves and Waine turned him on his stomach and sodomised him and then he cut his throat with a heathen stabbing spear.

The camp was much disturbed by the murder of the Provost Marshal and after official inquiry it was written that the heathen had done the deed in an attempt to inspire terror and the guards were doubled. The Captain had his doubts and he expressed them to the God-struck Lieutenant and there was much rumour among the men as to the facts of the death and as to the detail of what had occurred. As to why the Provost Marshal’s trousers were about his knees and why the Captain’s port wine bottle was found next to his corpse. The irregulars gathered in a group outside their tents and conferred.

Weren’t no heathen, said the joiner.

How do you know, said Smith.

Heathen don’t do that. Your heathen will cut you open, take your guts out. If they take your gear off it’s because they want your parts. Use them for medicine.

He spat.

But I never seen them do that.

The joiner looked at the kid, and the kid frowned and looked at Waine. Waine felt the look and turned his dark small head towards the kid and raised his hand to his throat and drew his fingers softly across it in an ambiguous gesture and the kid looked away.