When the Lion Feeds (13 page)

Then they were out of the town, and at last even the small boys and dogs that ran beside them fell back and the column trotted out along the road to Zululand.

The sun came up and dried the dew. The dust rose from under the hooves and drifted out at an angle from the road. The column lost its rigidity as men spurred ahead or dropped back to ride with their friends. They rode in groups and straggles, relaxed and cheerfully chatting, as informal as a party out for a day's shooting. Each man had taken to the field in clothing he considered most suitable. Steff Erasmus wore his church suit, but he was the most formally attired of the group. They had only one standard item of uniform among them: this was the green-and-yellow cockade. However, even here there was scope for individual taste: some wore them on their hats, some on their sleeves and others on their chests. They were farmers, not fighting men, but their rifle scabbards were battered with use, their bandoliers worn with easy familiarity and the wood of their gun butts was polished from the caress of their hands.

It was middle afternoon before they reached the Tugela. My God, look at that! whistled Sean. I've never seen so many people in one place in my life before. They say there are four thousand, said Karl. I know there are four thousand. Sean ran his eyes over the camp. I didn't know four thousand was that many!

The column was riding down the last slope to Rorke's Drift. The river was muddy brown and wide, rippling over the shallows of the crossing place. The banks were open and grassy with a cluster of stone-walled buildings on the near side. In a quarter-mile radius around the buildings Lord Chelmsford's army was encamped. The tents were laid out in meticulous lines, row upon row with the horses picketed between them.

The wagons were marshalled by the drift, five hundred at least, and the whole area swarmed with men.

The Lady-burg Mounted Rifles, in a solid bunch that overflowed the road behind their Colonel, came down to the perimeter of the camp and found their passage blocked by a sergeant in a dress coat and with a fixed bayonet. And who be you, may I ask? Colonel Courtney, and a detachment of the Lady-burg Mounted Rifles. What's that? Didn't catch it. Waite courtney stood in his stirrups and turned to face his men. Hold on there, gentlemen. We can't all talk at once. The hubbub of conversation and comment behind him faded and this time the sergeant heard him. Ho! Beg your pardon, sir. I'll call the orderly officer.

The orderly officer was an aristocrat and a gentleman.

He came and looked at them. Colonel Courtney? There was a note of disbelief in his voice. Hello, said Waite with a friendly smile. I hope we are not too late for the fun. No, I don't believe you are. The officer's eyes fastened on Steff Erasmus. Steff lifted his top hat politely. More, Meneer. The bandoliers of ammunition looked a little out of place slung across his black frockcoat.

The officer tore his eyes away from him. You have your own tents, Colonel? Yes, we've got everything we need. I'll get the sergeant here to show you where to make camp.

Thank you, said Waite.

The officer turned to the sergeant. So carried away was he that he took the man by the arm. Put them far away.

Put them on the other side of the Engineers - he whispered frantically.

If the General sees this lot. . . . . He shuddered, but in a genteel fashion.

Garrick first became conscious of the smell. Thinking about it served as a rallying point for his attention and he could start to creap out of the hiding-place in his mind.

For Garrick, these returns to reality were always eightaccompanied by a feeling of light-headednessand a hid ening of the senses. Colours were vivid, skin sensitive to the touch, tastes and smells sharp and clear.

He lay on a straw mattress. The sun was bright, but he was in shade. He lay on the veranda of the stone-walled hospital above Rorke's Drift. He thought about the smell that had brought him back. It was a blending of corruption and sweat and dung, the smell of ripped bowels and congeahng blood.

He recognized it as the smell of death. Then his vision came into focus and he saw the dead. They were piled along the wall of the yard where the cross-fire from the store and the hospital had caught them; they were scattered between the, buildings, and the burial squads were busy loading them onto the wagons. They were lying down the slope to the drift, they were in the water and on the far bank. Dead Zulus, with their weapons and shields strewn about them. Hundreds of them, Garrick thought with astonishment: no, thousands of them.

Then he was aware that there were two smells; but both of them were the smells of death. There was the stink of the black, balloon-bellied corpses swelling in the sun and there was the smell from his own body and the bodies of the men about him, the same smell of pain and putrefaction but mixed with the heaviness of disinfectant.

Death wearing antiseptic, the way an unclean girl tries to cover her menstrual odour.

Garrick looked at the men around him, They lay in a long row down the veranda, each on his own mattress.

Some were dying and many were not but on all of them the bandages were stained with blood and iodine. Garrick looked at his own body. His left arm was strapped across his bare chest and he felt the ache start beating within him, slow and steady as a funeral drum. There were bandages around his head. I'm wounded, again he was astonished. How?

But how? You've come back to us, Cocky, cheerful Cockney from beside him. We thought you'd gone clean bonkers Garrick turned his head and looked at the speaker; he was a small monkey-faced man in a pair of flannel underpants and a mummy suit of bandages.

el)ac said it was shock. He said you'd come out of it soon enough The little man raised his voice, Hey, Doc, the hero is completely mentos again. The doctor came quickly, tired-looking, dark under the eyes, old with overwork. You'll do, he said, having groped and prodded. Get some rest. They're sending you back home tomorrow. He moved away for there were many wounded, but then he stopped and looked back. He smiled briefly at Garrick, I doubt it will ease the pain at all but you've been recommended for the Victoria Cross. The General endorsed your citation yesterday. I think you'll get it. Garrick stared at the doctor as memory come back patchily, There was fighting Garrick said. You're bloody well tooting there was! the little man beside him guffawed. Sean! said Garrick. My, brother! What happened to my brother? There was silence then and Garrick saw the quick shadow of regret in the doctor's eyes. Garrick struggled into a sitting position. And my Pa. What happened to my father?

I'm sorry, said the doctor with simplicity, I'm afraid they were both killed. Garrick lay on his mattress and looked down at the Drift. They were clearing the corpses out of the shallows now, splashing as they dragged them to the bank. He remembered the splashing as Chelmsford's army had crossed. Sean and his father had been among the scouts who had led the column, three troops of the Lady-burg Mounted Rifles and sixty men of the Natal Police.

Chelmsford had used these men who knew the country over which the initial advance was to be made.

Garrick had watched them go with relief. He could hardly believe the good fortune that had granted him. a squirting dysentery the day before the ultimatum expired and the army crossed the Tugela. The lucky bastards, protested one of the other sick as they watched them go.

Garrick was without envy: he did not want to go to war, he was content to wait here with thirty other sick men and a garrison of sixty more to hold the Drift while Chelmsford took his army into Zululand.

Garrick had watched the scouts fan out from the Drift and disappear into the rolling grassland, and the main body of men and wagons follow them until they too had crawled like a python into the distance and left a wellwom road behind them through the grass.

He remembered the slow slide of days while they waited at the Drift. He remembered grumbling with the others when they were made to fortify the store and the hospital with bags and biscuit tins filled with sand. He remembered the boredom.

Then, his stomach tightening, he remembered the messenger. Horseman coming. Garrick had seen him first. Recovered from his dysentery he was doing sentry duty above the Drift. The General's left his toothbrush behind, sent someone back for it, said his companion. Neither of them stood up. They watched the speck coming across the plain towards the river. Coming fast, said Garrick. You'd better go and call the Captain. I suppose so, agreed the other sentry. He trotted up the slope to the store and Garrick stood up and walked down to the edge of the river. His peg sank deep into the mud. Captain says to send him up to the store when he gets here. Garrick's companion came back and stood beside him. Something funny about the way he's riding, said Garrick, he looks tired. He must be drunk. He's falling about in the saddle like it's Saturday night. Garrick gasped suddenly, He's bleeding, he's wounded The horse plunged into the Drift and the rider fen forward onto its neck; the side of his shirt was shiny black with blood, his face was pale with pain and dust. They caught his horse as it came out of the water and the rider tried to shout but his voice was a croak. In the name of God prepare yourselves. The Column's been surrounded and wiped out. They're coming, the whole black howling pack of them. They'll be here before nightfall. My brother, said Garrick. . What happened to my brother? Dead, said the min. Dead, they're all dead. He slid sideways off his horse.

They came, the impis of Zulu in the formation of the bull, the great black bull whose head and loins filled the plain and whose horns circled left and right across the river to surround them. The pull stamped with twenty thousand feet and sang with ten thousand throats until its voice was the sound of the sea on a stormy day. The sunlight reflected brightly from the spear blades as it came singing to the Tugela. Look!

Those in front are wearing the helmets of the Hussars, one of the watchers in the hospital exclaimed. They've been looting Chelmsford's dead. There's one wearing a dress coat and some are carrying carbines.

It was hot in the hospital for the roof was corrugatediron and the windows were blocked with sandbags. The rifle slits let in little air.

The men stood at the slits, some in pyjamas, some stripped to the waist and sweating in the heat. It's true then, the Column has been massacredThat's enough talking. Stand to your posts and keep your mouths shut. The impis of Zulu crossed the Tugela on a front five hundred yards wide. They churned the surface to white with their crossing. My God! Oh, my God! whispered Garrick as he watched them come. We haven't got a chance, there are so many of them. Shut up. Damn you, snapped the sergeant at the Gatling machine-gun beside him and garry covered his mouth with his hand.

Grabbed O'Riley by the neck Shoved his head in a pail of water Rammed that pistol up his sang one of the malaria cases in delirium and somebody else laughed, shrill hysteria in the sound. Here they come!

Load! The metallic clashing of rifle mechanism. Hold your fire, men.

Fire on command only. The voice of the bull changed from a deep sonorous chant to the shrill ululation of the charge, high-pitched T frenzy of the blood squeal. Steady, men. Steady. Hold it. Hold your fire. Oh, my God! whispered Garrick softly, watching them come black up the slope. Oh, my God! please don't let me die. Ready! The van had reached the wall of the hospital yard. Their plumed head-dresses were the frothy crest of a black wave as they came over the wall. Aim!

Sixty rifles lifted and held, aimed into the press of bodies. FireV Thunder, then the strike of bullets into flesh, a sound as though a handful of gravel had been flung into a puddle of mud. The ranks reeled from the blow. The clustered barrels of the Gatling machine-gun jump, jump, jumped as they swung, cutting them down so they fell upon each other, thick along the wall. The stench of burnt black powder was painful to breathe. Load! The bullet-ravaged ranks were re-forming as those from behind came forward into the gaps. AimV They were coming again, solid black and screaming halfway across the yard. Fire! Garrick sobbed in the shade of the veranda and pressed the fingers of his right hand into his eye sockets to squeeze out the memory.

What's the trouble, Cocky? The Cockney rolled painfully onto his side and looked at Garrick.

Nothing! said Garrick quickly. Nothing! Coming back to you, is it?

"What happened? I can only remember pieces of it. What happened! The man echoed his question, What didn't happen! The doctor said - Garrick looked up quickly, He said the General had endorsed my citation. That means Chelmsford's alive. My brother and my father, they must be alive as well! No such luck, Cocky. The Doc's taken a fancy to you you with one leg doing what you did, so he made inquiries about your folk. It's no use. Why? asked Garrick desperately. Surely if Chelmsford's alive they must be too? The little man shook his head. Chelmsford's made a base camp at a place called Isandhlwana. He left a garrison there with all the wagons and supplies. He took a flying column out to raid, but the Zulus circled around him and attacked the base camp, then they came on here to the Drift. As you know, we held them for two days until chelmsford's flying column came to help us, My folk, what happened to them? Your father was at the Isandhlwana camp. He didn't escape. Your brother was with Chelmsford's colhimn but he was cut off and killed in one of the skirmishes before the m-gin battle. Sean dead? Garrick shook his head. No, it's not possible. They couldn't have killed him.

You'd be surprised how easily they did it, said the Cockney. A few inches of blade in the right place is enough for the best of them. But not Sean, you didn't know him. You couldn't understand. He's dead, Cocky. Him and your Pa and seven hundred others. The wonder is we aren't too. The man wriggled into a more comfortable position on his mattress. The General made a speech about our defence here. Finest feat of arms in the annals of British courage, or something like that He winked at Garrick. Fifteen citations for the old V. C.