No sign of Zulus or cattle could be discovered. We mounted up onto the Malakatha range which is fairly level and open, and from the distant spurs we could see a long distance into the main valley. A few kraals were visible and from some we saw a few women running away with bundles on their heads, but otherwise the country was deserted. Some natives say that the inhabitants have gone to the King, others say they are in the Indeni bush . . .
Letter from Lord Chelmsford to Sir Bartle Frere
“Knock, knock,” Elizabeth called softly, hesitating at the tent flap.
“Come.” Jack’s voice sounded raw. He cleared his throat as she stepped in to the warm glow of lamplight. “You don’t need to announce yourself, we’re beyond that.”
She nodded. Yes, they were way beyond that.
“You’re soaking wet. It isn’t raining again is it?” He stood, reaching out to brush damp hair from her face. “Your skin is cold.”
“I went for a dip in the stream at the back of the camp.” She spoke lightly, as if it were quite normal to jump, clothes and all, into a stream late at night.
“Why on earth did you do that?” Jack unbuttoned her jacket and set it to dry on the back of her chair. Water dripped from it in a steady rhythm. Like the ticking of a clock.
“I wanted to be clean.” She felt no cleaner, though.
“You need warming up.” His voice deepened, his hand slid beneath her clinging, wet shirt, and she shivered.
So many secrets. So much at stake.
She stepped back. “You know you once wished for a week and a hotel room? Please, let us do that. As soon as possible.”
“Oh, we will.” He grinned.
“I mean, tomorrow. Or the next day, at the very latest.”
“We can’t do that. Or, I can’t. I think it’s a very good idea for you. I’ve been thinking how to get you to Pietermaritzburg.”
“No.” She shook her head. “I won’t go. Not unless you come too.”
His eyebrows lifted. “It’s not safe here. I want you away.”
Elizabeth choked back a laugh. “I agree. It 's not safe. And I’ll only leave with you.”
She saw a considering look in his eyes, could almost see his thoughts at work.
“Don’t even think about playing the superior officer card, Jack. You could force me to go, but if you do, I swear, you’ll never see me again.” She held his gaze.
“Why would you do that?”
She slumped onto her chair, leant back against the wet coat, and shook her head.
He breathed out, an explosive sigh. “All right, I won’t force you. But why won’t you go?”
The second man to ask her that tonight.
“Why won’t you? What if I told you I knew something was going to happen? Something terrible. That if you stayed, you’d die.”
“I can’t go because I am part of a battalion that is counting on me to stay and do my duty.” He braced his legs apart, bafflement and anger in the lines on his face.
“Something terrible, as you put it, could happen at any moment, I agree. We’re at war. I very much hope that if we see action, it won’t result in my death, but there is always that chance. That’s why I want you as far from this column as I can get you.”
Despite his words, she saw he’d been lulled into the same dangerous complacency she’d found throughout the camp. He thought there was a strong chance the Zulus wouldn’t attack. No matter what he thought about the potential danger to her, he had almost no fear for himself.
Elizabeth gritted her teeth in frustration. “I won’t leave unless you do. Sitting around somewhere worrying is not how I choose to pass my time.”
They stared at each other for a long moment, at an impasse. Then Jack raised an eyebrow.
“I know how I choose to pass mine.” His leer was designed to soften her, and it worked. The anger she’d felt a minute ago dissolved.
She let him pull her up from the chair into his arms, only holding back when he tried to kiss her.
“Under what circumstances would you leave with me?” she whispered against his mouth.
“If they call off the war, or once we’ve reached oNdini and taken over the country.”
His tone was so casual.
Elizabeth dropped her head, resting her forehead against his chest.
Never, then.
There was nothing like marching in the pitch dark to shake loose your thoughts.
Leading his men through the black night, with its chirps and rustles, its warm breezes, Jack let his mind run free. Except it wasn’t free. It was chained to a slender private who was not what she seemed.
The thought of her, dressed in her soldier’s uniform, so quiet and hardworking, made him smile. He’d caught himself a rare and curious bird.
Why hadn’t he declared himself yesterday?
Jack did not think he was a coward, but he knew if he’d asked Elizabeth to marry him last night, she would not have said yes. Or she would have only said yes if he agreed to leave camp with her.
He wanted a condition-free, joyous acceptance.
Something was worrying her. There had been shadows in her eyes last night, and for once, she had not looked at him as they rocked together on the cot, but instead tucked her head under his chin, pressing as close to him as she could.
“Bloody hell– Sir!”
Jolted to the present, Jack was just in time to glimpse the white-and-brown flash of a cow-hide shield up ahead.
“Weapons ready,” he called softly.
What were they up against? A single straggler? A group of scouts?
They were near the top of the Inyoni Heights, on a routine sweep of the ground to the north east of the camp. The chances of it being anything more than a scout or scouting party were slim.
Shouts erupted to their right, the Zulus were heading east, and they were calling to each other in the dark, their cries foreign and unnerving. It brought home how far from England he truly was.
He led his company in the direction of the noise, running as fast as possible over the rough ground on a hill in the dark. He heard swearing behind him as some of the men fell foul of the rocks that seemed ever-present in this landscape.
They were gaining, though. Perhaps the scouts had not thought their pursuers could make much progress in the dark, but he and his men were used to the rough ground by now, and Jack could see movement just up ahead.
Suddenly, they found themselves among the enemy, as surprised as the Zulu warriors to have caught up so quickly.
There was a crack of a shot and the ground exploded at Jack’s feet, forcing him to leap back. He fell amongst the rocks as the night suddenly crackled around them, wild shots flying everywhere.
A Zulu ran past him, and Jack grabbed his ankle, bringing him down next him and lifting his rifle in one smooth move.
He froze, his mouth open, as he stared into a familiar face illuminated by the gunfire all around them. The cowherd from the river. The one who'd spoken to Elizabeth.
And suddenly, from a far corner of his mind, he recalled the servant who’d been with Elizabeth when she’d first come into the camp as a trader.
He'd never asked her about that. About who her servant had been, where she'd gotten that cart, horse and those two cows to sell.
The warrior stared straight back at him, the shock no less evident on his face. Shock and worry.
With a cry, he rolled away from Jack and scrambled to his feet, and Jack could do nothing but watch him go.
Then one of the Zulus called out an order, and like a well-oiled machine, the warriors ceased fire and ran east, disappearing in seconds in the dark.
“We follow them, sir?” A private asked eagerly as Jack pulled himself up.
“Anyone hurt?” Jack called out.
There was silence, and Jack could barely believe their luck.
“Then we follow them.” He needed to find that scout, now that he was thinking, moving again.
Jack started forward, his rifle at chest height, ready.
They kept going in silence for another minute until the ridge ended abruptly. Jack peered down the hill, then left and right.
Nothing.
The Zulus were gone.
Lindani patted the barrel of the gun, feeling the heat of it from the recent firing. It was the first time he’d ever used one, and he’d had to admit the noise and the flash of gunpowder in the dark was impressive.
It had done the job of drawing the picket away, stopping them from cresting the hill and stumbling upon the Valley of Shields, as they had started calling it.
The Ngwebeni valley, just over the lip of the escarpment, was packed with nearly 25,000 Zulu warriors.
Malusi joined him. “I know that group,” he murmured. “They are a dangerous lot. They like scouting in the bush; not like some of the whitemen. We're lucky we saw them before they reached the top of the Heights.”
Lindani remembered the hand on his ankle, the smooth movement of a gun being leveled at him. They were more dangerous than Malusi realized. The man who had him on the ground was Inyoni’s officer. And Lindani knew he’d been recognized.
“We’d better follow them, make sure they go back to camp.” Malusi beckoned two other scouts, and they started back the way they’d come, taking a path higher up the hill than the whitemen had returned by.
Lindani looked after them as they disappeared into the darkness, furiously thinking through his options, of the wisdom of telling Malusi what had just happened. Still unsure, he jogged forward until he caught them.
“ . . .just like the Xhosa,” the voice of a redcoat drifted up. “Quick attack and then run. Bush warfare.”
“Those scouts were headed due east, going back to their main camp most likely.”
Malusi elbowed him to get a translation, but Lindani shook his head, needing to hear everything. To hear if the officer said anything about Inyoni.
Her time as a spy was over now.
“We need to have scouts here at all times, especially if the inyangas don’t want us to attack for a few days. This won’t be the only group they send this way.” Malusi spoke quietly.
They’d reached the lip of the escarpment, and Malusi lay on his stomach and leopard-crawled forward. Lindani did the same, and they lay, looking down on the British camp, lit by lanterns and small fires.
Somewhere, an owl called.
They exchanged uneasy glances.
“Does the owl call their name, or ours?” Malusi asked in the dark silence and Lindani couldn’t answer. The call of the owl meant death to someone, and they were poised for battle, after all. Perhaps it called all their names.
“The one officer in that picket, he recognized me from the river. He is the one who came to find Inyoni the day she was bathing.”
Malusi sucked in his breath. “You are sure?”
“There is no doubt.”
“Then Inyoni is finished. She should have come away with us yesterday.” Malusi spoke as if she were already dead.
“No. I will get her out of the camp tonight.”
“You will have to seek permission first. Even the sight of one warrior might alert the whitemen to the army that sits directly above them.”
Lindani knew it was true. He owed it to his family, to his unborn child, to follow the protocol in this matter. He was in the general’s power as much as Inyoni.
“Then let me get permission.”
They scrambled up and ran, bent low, away from the winking lights of the Isandlwana camp and headed back up the hill, following the plateau and then stopping as the ground fell steeply away into the valley.
To keep from discovery there were no camp fires lit, and it was a strange sight, so many warriors talking quietly among themselves in the dark.
Lindani knew that fires were being lit to the east to confuse the large scouting party the whitemen had sent out this morning, to make them think they were looking at the main Zulu army in the distance.
If the small group of scouts they’d just chased off had come over the Heights and stumbled upon them . . . he shivered. Everything would have been for nothing.
Malusi disappeared into the darkness, but returned almost immediately. “I have spoken to someone.” He rested a friendly hand on Lindani’s shoulder. “The general is officiating at the war ceremony for one of the ibutho under his command. Down through the valley.”
“I’ll go find him.”
“Wait. There is someone here who wishes to speak with you. Your father’s brother.”
Lindani frowned and peered into the darkness. Bangizwe swaggered out of the gloom in full battle dress, his accolades and tokens of bravery from the King and his indunas hanging from him.
“My nephew.”
They embraced, but always with his uncle, Lindani sensed the anger and hostility just below the surface. It wasn’t just since Lindani had taken his father’s place as chief. He remembered it had always been so.
Bangizwe was only a few months younger than Lindani's father, the first son of Lindani’s grandfather’s second wife. Whereas Lindani’s father had been the first son of his first wife. So fell the difference between chief and not.
“I hear it whispered you have impressed the general. That the little white girl is spying for us below.”
Lindani recoiled at the poison in his uncle’s words, even though they were spoken evenly. Why would this make Bangizwe so angry? It brought honour to their family name and village.
“We have done our duty.” He stepped away from his uncle, and a prickle of awareness made him shiver. The same prickle he got when hunting and suddenly knew somewhere in the darkness, a lion was watching him.
“Just as I have always done my duty,” Banizwe said, but his voice was low and only Lindani could hear him. “I have done my duty and spent my whole life in my ibutho, working for the King. And never in all that time have I been given permission to marry, or given cattle to compensate me for my services.
So you must tell me, my nephew, the secret of doing duty the way you do it. For I would very much like to understand how a faithful, experienced warrior such as myself can be so much less fortunate than you. Who has done nothing.” Spittle flew as Bangizwe hissed out the last sentence, and Lindani felt the slow beat of fear within that any sensible man felt when looking at a rabid animal.
“There is no secret. Perhaps my success is due to my honest dealings, uncle. For I have always dealt openly and fairly, like my father before me, and my people respect me for it.”
“I will be chief yet, you insolent child.” Bangizwe stared at him, and the fear in Lindani intensified. His uncle’s eyes were like those of a warrior who has taken muti and danced around the fire for many hours. Wild and dangerous. Unfocused.
Before Lindani could respond, his uncle whirled around and in a moment was lost in the dark.
“Not a happy family meeting?”
Malusi must have been waiting to one side for him, and Lindani started towards him, happy to see a friendly face. He tried to shake off the feeling of cold fear Bangizwe had inspired in him.
“My uncle’s poison looks are nothing to me.” He did not need to talk about his family’s problems now, he needed to get to the general, get the permission he needed for a rescue mission. The two of them started down the hill, to where the battle initiation ceremonies were being held.
“Beware jealous uncles.” Malusi shook his head. “They have to sit by and watch their family home go to their young nephews, while they have nothing. And for a loyal warrior like your uncle, who thinks the King has cheated him because the cattle sickness means he cannot pay his men their due . . .” Malusi shrugged. “Watch your back, my friend.”
A shiver ran down Lindani’s spine. “I will.”
And from above them on the escarpment, they heard the owl call again.