Julian Stockwin - Conquest

Chapter 13

‘What are you waiting for? Kill him now!’

Renzi steeled himself but stood outwardly calm as the men made to seize him, hesitating for a moment in bafflement at his confidence. He smiled cynically. ‘A rising of the tribes? I rather think not. You’ve overlooked the one thing that makes it quite impossible.’

Thérèse held up her hand. The men clamped his arms with an iron grip and waited with a growl. ‘What do you mean?’ she bit.

‘Shall I remind you that I’m colonial secretary and few things are hidden from me? And what I know tells me your plan’s worthless. You’ve utterly ignored one vital matter.’

‘What’s that?’ she demanded.

‘You can’t see it? Then all I may conclude is that as a band of plotters you’re both incompetent and amateur.’

‘What are you talking about?’ she flared. ‘You’re bluffing, aren’t you?’

Renzi said nothing, his smile still in place.

‘Tell me!’

He remained mute.

‘Tell me, I said! Or I’ll have you crushed!’

‘I could say anything, which you must believe, and in the circumstances your threats are meaningless, Mam’selle.’

She bit her lip in frustration. ‘Don’t think you can be allowed to live!’

‘Oh? You’re going now to your leader to confess you destroyed the only one who can point out the fatal flaw in time to halt this misguided rising? I do pity you, dear lady.’

She stepped close and slapped his face twice, hard. ‘I’ll make you pay for this, Renzi. But not now. You’ve won yourself some time. You’re coming with us and then we’ll see what you’ve got to say before the patron .

‘Bind him.’

Renzi’s hands were tied behind him with rawhide thongs. Thérèse went to the string of horses and familiarly mounted one of them. ‘He goes first,’ she commanded, and Renzi was thrust ahead roughly to walk on the end of a rope lead, while Thérèse and the three men followed on horseback, the pack train strung out behind.

‘Move!’ she snapped. Renzi trudged forward, but after rounding another bend she ordered the party to stop and nodded to one of the men. ‘Here!’

He dismounted and took a trussed chicken from a wicker cage, crudely cut its throat and splattered the side of the road with blood.

‘Where you were taken by a leopard,’ she said acidly.

Renzi glanced at her for a moment, before returning his gaze to the dark, rust-coloured mountain scene. The little convoy got under way again, Renzi’s plodding progress setting the pace. After an hour she called a halt again. ‘You’re worse than useless, Renzi,’ she said harshly. ‘We’ll never make it at this rate. You two – get the mule for this fool.’

The animal was relieved of half its load and Renzi was hoisted on its back, a rope at the bridle leading to one of the men’s horses. It was bony and uncomfortable without a saddle and his arms restrained behind him made it near impossible to stay upright. After two tumbles Thérèse ordered his thumbs to be cut free and he was able to ride by holding on to the pack-straps.

They moved off at a brisker pace and, despite his discomfort, Renzi could not help but take in the grand panorama – the narrow trail rimming the spectacle of a great mountain range on one side and the trackless aridity of the legendary Great Karoo to the other. They had left the last farms and now were trekking into the unknown.

All Renzi could deduce was that by keeping the mountains to the south they were curving around to enter the wild Zuurveld well away from the habitations of white men. Thérèse kept up a punishing pace; with little idea where they were, there could be no estimate of how far they’d come, but it must be a considerable distance through the lonely, near silent landscape. There was no sign of Africa’s fabled wild beasts other than an occasional wheeling eagle – or was it a vulture? – and unknown scuttling as they passed along.

At one point there was the click and tapping of dislodged stones above them. Thérèse stopped the party, dismounted soundlessly and drew out a long Austrian rifle, swiftly circling the base of the scree slope to disappear ahead. The men sat quietly, expressionless, until there was the sound of a distant shot when one dropped to the ground and loped off in that direction.

They returned, a baby antelope over the man’s shoulders and Thérèse in the lead, cradling her rifle professionally. Then without pause the little group set off once more.

A small valley stippled with the green of some spiky plant provided welcome relief from the gunmetal greys, the ancient reds and orange, and a rivulet tinkled down its slopes. A halt was called to water the horses.

‘You,’ Thérèse threw at Renzi, who looked up wearily. ‘Since we’ve allowed no rations for useless mouths, you’ll find your own supper.

‘Show him some veldkos ,’ she told one of her men, who got to his feet and beckoned Renzi.

Aching in every muscle, Renzi followed the man into the stony expanse. He searched about, kicking at a patch of vine with leaves like a bay-tree. ‘ Camaru ,’ he grunted, and pointed at the base.

Renzi scrabbled with his fingers and found a large tuber. He hacked at it with a jagged pebble until it was free, surprised by its weight, at least ten pounds. He found another, even bigger.

‘Very good,’ Thérèse said sarcastically, when they got back to her. ‘Then perhaps you will eat tonight, Mr Secretary.’

They remounted and pressed on relentlessly. Clearly she knew where she was going, moving from one water-source to another until, as evening drew in, they ended at a small fold in the ground overhung by several trees of outlandish size and shape.

The men began setting up a pair of tents while Renzi was put to gathering firewood. As the evening came, the surrounding mountains grew darker and more daunting, and all attention focused on the fire over which a well-used cooking pot hung from a tripod. The darkness quickly became complete and by the light of the fire Thérèse doled out portions of stew.

Aching and sore, Renzi tried to make himself comfortable on the stony ground as he hungrily fingered hot gobbets of meat and the tasteless camaru tuber into his mouth, a knife denied him. They ate quietly, finishing with rooibos tea. Stars were coming out in a profusion he had only seen before at sea, hanging close above in a spell-binding silence.

Thérèse’s face took on a demoniac cast as she stared moodily at the fire.

‘Mam’selle, should your rising be successful, even to the recapture of Cape Town, it will be to no account so long as we rule the seas,’ Renzi said, breaking the silence.

‘What should you care? You’ll be dead in three days.’ Was this how much of the journey remained?

She tossed her head. ‘Anyway, that’s a matter for the patron .’

‘Ah, yes. Is he a great man at all, learned in the military arts and—’

‘He’s my father,’ she said flatly.

‘The baron! Surely he—’

‘He will know how to deal with vermin like you, Renzi.’

An expatriate royalist, plotting with the regicides? Incredible, but it had to be true – unless it was a double-bluff of some extraordinary complexity that he couldn’t fathom.

‘I look forward to the meeting,’ he replied.

He sipped his rooibos and then ventured, ‘Thomas Kydd – may I ask what he is to you?’

‘Kydd? That’s no business of yours.’

‘I was simply curious.’

‘Well, since you ask it – not as useful as I’d thought. A simple matelot who kept his mouth tight shut on anything to do with his precious navy.’ Her face softened for a moment. ‘But as a man he was . . . diverting.’