The General ordered the 2nd Battalion, 24th Regiment, the Mounted Infantry, and four guns, to be ready under arms at once to march.
Maj. Clery, Col. Glyn’s staff officer
Chambers had gone at least ten minutes ago, and Elizabeth felt confident he wasn’t coming back. She stood before the reserve ammunition wagon for the 2nds and looked around. With the excitement over, everyone was back in their tents and asleep.
She wondered if Jack was waiting for her, but couldn’t risk going to check. If he saw her, there would be no way she could come back, and now was her only chance alone with the wagon.
Climbing into it, she crawled to the back, out of sight under the canvas cover, and pulled the small screwdriver she needed to remove the wooden lids from her belt pouch.
It was pitch dark, with no moon at all, and she had to work mostly by feel, too afraid to light a lamp. But she’d been opening the boxes without thought for Chambers earlier, and her hands knew what to do.
It was her head that was reluctant. For every bullet she took out and damaged with the screwdriver, she thought of the person who might get it. The faces of men who had passed her with a friendly word, kind to a soldier they thought too young to be here.
She was killing them as surely as if she were running at them with an iwisa in one hand and an assegai in the other.
With only one box open, the bullets all around her on the rough, splintered wagon floor, she stopped, pulling her legs up and wrapping her arms around them. She closed her eyes and rested her head on her knees.
What to do? What to do?
Every bullet damaged meant one less warrior sacrificed to British Imperial games. One British soldier left on the battlefield with a jammed rifle.
If not for Jack, the scale would definitely weigh in the Zulus favour, but any chance he could be the one standing weaponless on the field was one too many.
Inaction was as powerful in this instance as action.
“What to do?”
She didn’t realize she’d said it aloud until light spilled over her and she jerked her head up.
Jack stood at the open end of the wagon, lamp in hand, his face lit from below, just like the first night he’d taken her into his tent.
Only this time she knew him, could read the expression on his face.
Horror.
“What are you doing?” He spoke carefully, because he wanted so very much to be mistaken.
Her face, so stricken a moment ago, went blank.
“What does it look like I’m doing?”
“Damaging bullets.” He hadn’t wanted to say it, and he knew if he were mistaken, she may never forgive him. But how could he be mistaken? The scout’s face, wide-eyed and shocked, came back to him.
“I could be checking them,” she answered, but there was no heat in her tone.
“Hiding at the back of the wagon in the dark?”
“No. You’re right.” She curled up even tighter on herself, as if she were in real pain.
“There is no brother, is there?” His voice was hoarse.
“Not in the sense I told you about, no. In my defense, I didn’t know you then, when I lied.”
He ignored that. “And your name?”
“My name is Elizabeth.” Her head rose up, and she looked indignant, as if accusing her of lying about her name was worse than finding her sabotaging bullets. “And Bird … well, Bird is my name too, although not the one I was christened with.”
“So who are you, then?” He was trying so hard to keep his voice even, but it was coming undone at the edges.
“Elizabeth Bird Jones.”
“And are you mad?” He leaned forward, losing the struggle to keep his temper, keep his voice down. “Your parents are dead, and you’ve decided to take on the British Empire in the name of your father’s philosophies?”
She looked genuinely taken aback at the suggestion, and Jack felt the world skew away from him, felt himself sliding down a hole. If this wasn’t it, what was it about, then?
“You still don’t have any idea, do you?” She spoke slowly, bemused. “I told Lindani the British wouldn’t believe me even if I confessed, and I was right.” She paused, and looked straight at him.
“I'm a Zulu spy.”
He was still reeling from her strange confession as he watched her fidget on her cot. He’d hauled her out of the wagon and she’d come quietly with him to the tent, saying nothing. Looking away from him.
He felt as if he’d swallowed glass. Felt his insides shred with every breath he took. He’d been harbouring a spy. Loving a spy.
Still loved her.
“Why would you spy for the Zulu?”
“Because I am a Zulu. Why wouldn’t I try to help my people any way I can?”
He looked at her, and honestly thought for a moment she must be addled. “A Zulu?”
She laughed, but bitterly. “You don’t believe me, do you?” She shook her head. “Even you, Jack, the most intelligent man in this camp, cannot conceive that I’d align myself with them. But I lost any loyalty to England long ago. I’d be mad to turn my back on the people who saved me from the sea, who took me in, over the people who have never done anything but kill those I love.”
“You’ve been living amongst the Zulu?” Something ugly reared its head within him, and he clenched his fists.
She nodded. “For the last six years.”
“Doing what?” His feelings, his jealously and his horror, were unworthy, and he fought them.
“Making beer in the beer hut, mainly, so I don’t have to go out in the sun, because of my skin. Teaching Lindani to read and speak English—”
“The scout!” He shouted it out, and saw her lift her head in horror. Look him in the eye for the first time, and the knife in his gut twisted deeper.
“You saw Lindani? When?”
He didn’t remember grabbing her, but suddenly she was hauled up against him, her eyes wide with shock.
“First tell me who the hell he is to you? Your lover? Did you go from my bed to his, carrying my secrets with you?”
She recoiled, and her eyes glistened with tears. “How could you ask that?”
She spoke as if he had betrayed her, not the other way around.
“Then what?” He let go of her coat, and she stumbled back, her arms crossed in front of her, as if she were afraid.
“He is my brother. He saved me from drowning and his mother and father took me in. He has been my protector since the moment he pulled me out of the sea.” She straightened up.
“You think I betrayed you, Jack, but that isn’t so. I’m being loyal to my own, and you should respect that. I have always respected your loyalty to your men, even though they want to kill my people.”
“And us?” He could barely get the words out.
“I treasure our time together.” She lifted her hands in front of her body, one palm cupped into the other, facing upward, like he’d seen some of the old Zulu women they’d come across do. A gesture of thanks.
“You were never going to love me: someone who would sleep with you without promises of marriage, someone who dressed as a man. I knew that, and I didn’t care. I loved every minute I spent with you, even though it has made everything I’ve done so much harder.”
He had no answer to that. He’d never told her he loved her.
“When did you see Lindani?” Her hands dropped to her sides, and she asked softly, almost pleading.
“A few hours ago. My company ran into him and a few others, running east, towards the Mangeni gorge.”
“He wasn’t harmed? You didn’t hurt him?”
Part of him, mauled by her betrayal, ripped up by the knowledge her loyalties lay elsewhere, wanted to punish her, hurt her with a lie, but he forced himself to shake his head, and watched as she drooped with relief.
“They went to Mangeni? The same direction as Dartnell says the main army is camped.” She spoke slowly, considering something.
“What do you know of it?”
He thought she would tell him to go to hell, but she shrugged.
“Lindani told me something else, but he also said things can change. If Dartnell can see the army, and you saw Lindani headed in that direction, perhaps things have changed.”
She was telling the truth, he’d bet his life on it.
“So what do we do now?”
He saw the moment she started weighing up her options. Saw her eyes dart from the tent entrance to him, and try to gauge whether she could dodge past him.
As if he would let her go.
Perhaps sensing his thoughts, she spun and bolted for the back of the tent, throwing herself on the ground to roll under the canvas, but he was bigger and quicker than she was.
He lifted her up, an arm around her waist, while she flayed and kicked out, as silent as he so as not to attract attention neither of them wanted. A bizarre struggle, with not a sound uttered.
He hauled her to his kit, struggling to hold her one-handed while he grabbed up some rope.
“You’re going to tie me up?” Her voice was a squeak of indignation and anger.
He was forced to wrestle her to the floor face down and use his knees to hold her there while he tied her hands. She fought him all the way.
By the time he had her secure and propped up against the centre tent pole, looping a final piece of rope around her waist to secure her to it, they were both panting.
“I’m sorry. I can’t let you go.” He lifted his hands up in apology as she shot daggers at him with her eyes.
“Yes, you can,” she hissed back.
“No, I can’t.” God knows how much havoc she could wreak before she left camp. She may have a right to her loyalties, but he had loyalties of his own. “I can’t let you go and I can’t bring myself to hand you over, either.”
He shook his head. “Elizabeth, my love, what the hell am I going to do with you?”