Fire Across the Veldt E-Book

John Wilcox

• Herausgeber: Allison & Busby
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Serie: Simon Fonthill
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 508

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Beschreibung

1900. South Africa. Simon Fonthill, along with his wife Alice, old friend Jenkins, and tracker Mzingeli, is travelling across the continent to Pretoria to meet with General Kitchener. When their train is derailed by hostile Boer forces the quartet are forced to continue their journey on horseback, but are quickly targeted and surrounded by Boer commando leader General de Wet and his soldiers. Fonthill must rejoin the British military and prove his ability as a commander, as he leads the battle to find and capture the elusive Boer leaders.

Leseprobe

FIRE ACROSS THE VELDT

JOHN WILCOX

Contents

Title Page

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Author’s Note

Acknowledgements

About the Author

By John Wilcox

Copyright

To the memory of Nigel Cole, lover of history, follower of the adventures of Simon Fonthill and great old friend, this book is fondly dedicated.

CHAPTER ONE

On the veldt in the Orange Free State, South Africa. September, 1900

‘Damn,’ Simon Fonthill swore softly and wrinkled his eyes against the glare from the veldt. ‘Damn again. I think they’re Boers. Hand me the field glasses.’

The British army-issue binoculars were thrust into his hand and he focused them on the kopje that stood out from the plain, perhaps a mile away – except that, as he knew well, distances were deceptive on the veldt and it was more likely to be some three or four miles distant. He focused the glasses and stood erect in the stirrups, the better to see.

Yes. Boers all right. They sprang into view as though moving just a few hundred yards away. Bearded men wearing loose civilian clothing, wide, broken-brimmed hats and bandoliers across their chests, mounted on small Basuto ponies, streaming down from the chiselled rocks of the kopje, spreading out across the undulating grass and moving towards them. Fast.

‘Do we fight ’em, bach sir?’ asked Jenkins, easing his Lee Enfield rifle from its saddle holster.

Fonthill, still squinting through the binoculars, shook his head. ‘No. There are about twenty-five of ’em. Far too many. We have no cover. These chaps are the best marksmen in the world and they’d pick us off easily from a mile away before we could get a shot off.’ He lowered the glasses. ‘We’d stand no chance. They will be after our horses and our rifles.’

He looked ruefully across at his wife, sitting less than comfortably in the small Cape cart that carried their provisions and tent. ‘Sorry, darling,’ he said. ‘Thank you for not saying I told you so.’

Alice Fonthill inclined her head. ‘Ah, how nice – and how unusual – to be acknowledged as having been in the right for once. So what do we do, then?’

‘We try and talk our way out of it. But I don’t want to lose the horses or the rifles and revolvers.’ He turned to their two companions. Jenkins, his former batman and fellow survivor of dozens of hostile encounters in Queen Victoria’s ‘little wars’ in the British Empire over two decades, sat, like him, on horseback alongside the cart. Mzingeli, once their black tracker in Matabeleland and now the manager of their farm there, sat quietly holding the mule reins on the driving seat of the cart, his rifle by his side.

‘Tuck the rifles under the tent in the cart.’ Fonthill spoke quickly now, the glasses at his eyes once more. ‘Try and do it unobtrusively. They will have glasses on us too. Put your revolvers into Alice’s bag, right at the bottom. Now, when they get here, let me do the talking.’

‘Umph.’ Jenkins’s snort was quite audible. But he said nothing more and his eyes were cold as he carefully buttoned up Alice’s bag and looked out towards the approaching horsemen, easing in its scabbard the long knife that hung from his belt.

Fonthill had, indeed, ignored his wife’s warning – and that of several British officers – in downloading their cart, mules and horses from the armoured train that had carried them all from the Cape Colony when it had been derailed some ten miles to the south. The Boers had made a thorough job of tearing up the rail track. ‘They’re getting good at it,’ confessed the sapper officer accompanying them. ‘We spend more time repairing these blasted lines than we do chasing their commandos.’

He had advised them to wait while camp was made for the night and work was begun on the bent and twisted tracks. Alice, too, had suggested that the Boers who had torn up the line might still be in the vicinity and it seemed unwise to put themselves in harm’s way when they were in no great rush to reach Pretoria, the headquarters of Field Marshal Roberts and General Kitchener. Fonthill, however, had insisted that they save time by riding on some forty miles to the north where a branch line joined the main one and another train was expected along it early the next morning. ‘The Boers won’t be interested in us,’ he said. ‘After all, we’re just civilians.’

Yet now, he reflected, as he looked around him, they were civilians carrying British rifles, an army-issue tent, binoculars and rations. The explanation would have to be good. Unless, of course, the approaching party was made up of simple burghers with no one of seniority in command. If that were so, they stood a chance.

The Boers were upon them quickly and they fanned out to surround the little party. They did, indeed, look like Dutch burghers – farmers, however, who had been living out on the veldt in all weathers with their sheep and cattle and who had not seen their homes for many a day. Their clothes were torn and threadbare and some had forsaken boots for native sandals. Their long beards were unkempt and spread out across their chests, making them look like biblical prophets. Only their oiled cartridge bandoliers and their long Mauser rifles, the stocks of which now rested on their thighs, hinted at their fame as fighting men who had at first humiliated and then taunted the British army for well over a year.

Fonthill knew of their reputation. The war was supposed to have been over months ago when, after the Boer successes at Colenso, Modder River and Spion Kop, the British army had been reinforced and, laboriously but surely, had marched north and crushed the Boer army in the field at Paardeberg, relieved Ladysmith and Mafeking and then occupied the Boer capitals of Bloemfontein and Pretoria. But that had been the easy part. The Boer army – this force of amateur mounted infantry – had melted away to re-form out in the veldt, behind the British lines, as fast-moving commandos, striking at the imperial lines of communications and making a laughing stock of Field Marshal Roberts’s claim that ‘the war was as good as over’. It was to help the army in fighting this new-style, elusive, guerrilla warfare that Simon had answered the call from General Kitchener, Roberts’s chief of staff, to come to South Africa.

Now Simon ran his eye along the stern ranks of the horsemen with interest. Would they have a leader of some sophistication? A man who would see the soldier behind Fonthill’s civilian garb and wife-companion?

His answer came as one man pushed forward to address him. He seemed to be just below medium height – maybe five foot seven inches – and he was dressed like the rest in a homespun and now well-worn suit, with dirty, wide-brimmed hat. But he wore long riding boots and a Prince Albert gold chain was looped across his waistcoat and, lugubriously, a battered briefcase was tied to his saddle pommel, his only sign of rank. His beard was neatly trimmed and his dark eyes were set well apart above high cheekbones in a face that seemed hard and unforgiving. He looked directly at Fonthill.

‘You are English?’ he asked, with the nasal intonation of an Afrikaner.

‘Yes. My name is Simon Fonthill.’ Fonthill turned courteously and indicated the others. ‘This is my wife Alice, my friend Mr Jenkins and my farm manager Mr Mzingeli.’

The horseman frowned at the appellation ‘Mister’ given to Mzingeli.

‘We don’t call Kaffirs “mister”,’ he said.

‘I know you don’t. But I do. And he is not a Kaffir.’

Mzingeli did not move but sat quite still, his black eyes staring far away at the horizon, his tightly curled white hair peeping out from under his wide-brimmed hat.

The Boer did not rise to the reply but paused for a moment before asking. ‘Where have you come from and what is your destination?’

‘We were travelling up from the Cape Colony on board the train which was derailed about ten miles or so south of here. I was anxious to get on to Pretoria and so chose to download our horses and cape cart and proceed that way in the hope that we could pick up another train tomorrow.’ He risked a smile. ‘We were warned that there were Boers in the area but, as we are civilians, I felt that we would come to no harm.’

The smile was not returned. ‘Nor shall you, but you must hand over the rifles,’ he nodded to the cart, ‘that you have hidden under that tent there and I will also take your horses. You may retain your cart, tent and mules.’ The Boer turned and gave a brief order. Immediately, the tent was thrown onto the ground and the rifles seized. One was handed to the leader.

He examined it with interest. ‘Hmm. A point 303 Lee Enfield. British army issue.’ He looked up. ‘What is a civilian doing with the most modern British army rifle?’

Fonthill shrugged his shoulders. ‘We had to have rifles. We had a long way to travel and war or no war the African veldt can be a dangerous place. The only rifles one can buy in Cape Town these days are old British issue. You will see that these are not exactly the latest thing. They are Lee Enfields Mark I. I believe the army now have either Lee Metfords or later Enfields. From what I hear of your shooting, I think I’d rather have Mausers, anyway.’

This time the Boer allowed himself a half smile. ‘Very well.’ Then he frowned. ‘Ah, but you have three rifles. One presumably for each man. That means that you have armed your Kaffir.’ A low murmur rose from the ring of horsemen. ‘It is against the rule of warfare for your people to arm the blacks and coloureds. This is a white man’s war. We shoot all Kaffirs we find who carry arms.’

Fonthill sighed. ‘Well,’ he said slowly, ‘if you shoot Mzingeli – Mister Mzingeli – then you must shoot all of us, because we shall all attack you. To repeat, Mr Mzingeli is not a Kaffir. He is not a servant. He is the son of a Matabele chieftain and he partly owns and manages my farm in Rhodesia. I asked him to travel here so that we could discuss farm matters. You will not, I repeat, not, shoot him.’

A silence fell on the little gathering. Mzingeli remained looking steadily ahead. Jenkins’s hand drifted slowly towards his knife.

The impasse was broken by Alice. She stepped down from the cart and moved towards the Boer leader. ‘Excuse me, sir,’ she said, ‘but if we are all going to die I would be so grateful to know your name.’ And she looked upwards into the man’s face with a sweet and ingratiating smile.

‘What? Oh. Ah. My name is Christiaan de Wet.’

‘Ah!’ Alice seemed jubilant and from somewhere had already produced a notebook and pencil. ‘I thought so. More like General de Wet I believe. How do you do.’ She held up her hand and grasped that handed reluctantly to her. ‘Perhaps you do not know it, sir, but you have earned widespread fame back in England as the most intrepid of the Boer commando leaders. Perhaps I should explain. I am Simon Fonthill’s wife but I am also known as Alice Griffith, my maiden name, and I have been a war correspondent for the London Morning Post for the last … ahem … nearly twenty years. In fact, we are on our way to Pretoria so that I can be registered with General Kitchener as part of the corps of correspondents assigned to his headquarters. Oh, I am so glad I have met you, General. Now, please, before you shoot us all would you be so kind as to answer just a few questions?’

‘What? Ach, madam. I am not going to shoot you all. But I cannot stay here to be interviewed.’ He looked around him. ‘It is getting dark and …’

‘Oh, just a couple of questions while we have you.’ Alice stood poised, pencil over notebook. ‘Surely, you cannot hope to win this war by conducting guerrilla operations, can you? Swooping down from out of the veldt like brigands and then riding off again. Now what is your objective, exactly?’

De Wet stiffened in the saddle. ‘We fight, madam, to free our country. We are an independent state and we fight to stay that way.’

‘But how long can you continue?’ She gestured with her pencil. ‘If I may say so, your command here looks a little,’ she smiled again, ‘shall we say lacklustre? Your troops look as though they could do with a good meal and a bath.’

Fonthill drew in his breath with a hiss, but his wife was continuing.

‘And, of course, you are severely outnumbered by the British. This is just a small band. To repeat, how long can you continue fighting in this way?’

De Wet scowled down at her. ‘We fight until the end, madam. We are Boers. We live in the saddle and we shall harry and attack the Khakis until they leave our country. And there are many of us fighting in the veldt across the Free State, in the Transvaal, and soon, in the Cape Colony.’ He swung his arm behind him. ‘This is not all of my commando. The rest of it is there behind that—’

He halted in mid flow, realising that he was talking far too much. ‘Enough of this.’ He turned back to Fonthill. ‘Dismount now and,’ he nodded to Jenkins, ‘you too. We take this horse also.’ And he untied the reins that linked Mzingeli’s mount to the cart. He issued an order and the rifles were swept up and the horses were taken in tow.

De Wet turned to go. ‘I am not sure,’ he said, addressing Fonthill, ‘that you really are a civilian. But we cannot take prisoners so you are free to continue your journey to Pretoria in your cart and we leave you your tent and provisions. But the next time we meet your Kaffir with a gun, we shoot him.’

He wheeled his horse round. Then a small smile returned to his face and he doffed his hat to Alice, bowing low in the saddle. ‘I did not wish to be interviewed, madam,’ he said, ‘but tell your readers in England that we fight on until the end. This will be the war that will not end. Mrs Fonthill, I wish you good—’

Once again he broke off. Then he looked back at Simon with a keen eye. ‘Fonthill,’ he murmured. ‘Fonthill.’ He urged his horse close to Fonthill and looked down on him. ‘It is an unusual name. There was an Englishman at Majuba nineteen years ago when we thrashed the Khakis for the first time in the Transvaal war. I think he was a Fonthill.’

Simon inclined his head. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I was there.’

De Wet removed his hat again and leaning down in the saddle extended his hand. ‘So was I. I remember. We were both much younger. You, in particular, fought well. To the end.’ He shook Fonthill’s hand and replaced his hat. ‘I think you are here to fight again.’ He grinned. ‘So Kitchener must be desperate. Go now, but I think we will meet again.’

Then with a shouted order he wheeled his mount around and the party of Boers cantered away in the lowering twilight, back towards the kopje, moving fast on their light ponies.

Simon’s little party was left standing by the cart exchanging glances. Jenkins broke the silence, his voice rising in Welsh indignation. ‘Bugger me,’ he said. ‘I was on that bloody Majuba ’ill fighting all them years ago just as ’ard as you, look you. Why didn’t ’e remember me?’

Fonthill grinned and looked at Jenkins, standing only five foot four inches tall but, menacingly, almost as broad as he was tall. ‘Because, my little giant,’ he said, ‘you’re so easily overlooked, look you.’ He turned to his wife. ‘Alice, if I may say so, you were bloody marvellous. I think you saved the day, there.’

Without looking up from where she was scribbling, Alice nodded. ‘Yes, you may indeed say so.’ She tossed her head. ‘Barbaric toad, threatening to kill Mzingeli. He wasn’t even holding the bloody rifle. I had forgotten how bad these Afrikaners are with natives.’ She looked across at Mzingeli, who stood listening to the exchange with a faint smile lingering on his very black, seamed face. ‘Sorry, Mzingeli,’ she said. ‘I hope all of that didn’t upset you.’

The tracker shook his head. ‘Ah no, Nkosana. Reminded me of the old days, when I was in the Transvaal. Not good, though. Not good.’

‘Certainly, not good.’ Then Alice looked across at Simon and gestured to her notes. ‘But I’ve got the first interview ever with this famous commando leader. Darling, it’s what you’ve always called a shovel and the Americans call a scoop. It’s an exclusive. He’s told me of their determination to go on until the bitter end and, what’s more,’ she waved her pencil in the air in triumph, ‘he revealed that they’re going to invade the Cape Colony and raise the rebels there. He didn’t mean to, but he did.’

Simon Fonthill gazed at his wife with affection. The sun was now setting quickly, peeping through a purple cloud and sending beams of light low across the plain. Alice stood smiling, her face illuminated, emphasising her high cheekbones and the bronzed skin – not for her the pale aversion to sunshine of the Indian memsahib. Her grey eyes were alight with delight at her achievement and Simon revelled once more at his good fortune in marrying such a blithe, unquenchable, free spirit. She stood there now, dressed in a white blouse, riding breeches, with an old green scarf tied around her fair hair, her legs thrust apart in a masculine fashion and yet looking delightfully, intriguingly feminine. Alice was now forty-five – his age – but only the rather intrusive squareness of her jaw prevented her from being classically beautiful. Their relationship had not been without its vicissitudes. She had married unhappily for the first time and, newly widowed, had rushed into his arms only to see their child stillborn, with no hope of a second pregnancy. Since then, fifteen years ago, they had farmed together and fought together, with Jenkins, in a series of adventures, she reporting for the Morning Post, he and the Welshman following their sporadic careers as freelance army scouts. Now they had landed once again in South Africa, where they had first served together in the Zulu War, she as a young, untried war correspondent and he as an equally young subaltern, with Jenkins as his servant.

Fonthill returned her smile. They made a handsome couple in their young, healthy, middle age. At five foot nine inches he was broad-shouldered, with only an incipient trace of corpulence now just beginning to break the slimness of a body hardened by years of farming and campaigning. His fair hair was still full, his cheeks as tanned as those of his wife and his brown eyes retained a slightly withdrawn gentleness unusual in a man of good birth who had spent so much time in remote corners of the British Empire. The only obvious evidence he carried of past hardship, however, lay with the nose which, years before, had been broken by a Pathan musket and had been left slightly hooked, giving him a predatory air, that of a hunter, slightly uncertain, perhaps, but one still seeking his prey.

Opposite the pair Jenkins stood loosely at ease, as befitted an ex-soldier of Her Majesty’s 24th Regiment of Foot. Lugubrious, perhaps, was the term that best described him. Known usually only as ‘352’, the last three figures of his army number to distinguish him from the other Jenkinses in this most Welsh of regiments, he had met Fonthill at the regimental hospital at Brecon and had become the young subaltern’s servant-batman, mentor and friend, crossing the divisions of class in this most hierarchical of periods in Britain’s cultural history. He was four years older than Simon but no grey strands had had the audacity to push through the thicket of black hair that stood up vertically on his head, nor in the great moustache that swept from ear to ear across his face. Five inches shorter than Fonthill, he was hugely broad, exuding great strength, a fighting machine at home in barrack room, bar and battlefield anywhere in the world.

The quartet was completed by Mzingeli, who now selected a blanket from the tangled tent on the ground and draped it round the shoulders of Alice, who was beginning to shiver as the sun slipped away. Of indeterminate age – although the white hair tightly curled to the scalp showed him to be by far the oldest of the four – he was also the tallest. Slim as a flagstaff, his name meant ‘The Hunter’ and he looked the part. He was dressed in old corduroy trousers, boots that had seen better days and a loose flannel shirt. His face, under its wide-brimmed Boer hat, was not without nobility, for his lips were thin and his nose long, with flared nostrils. Of the Malakala tribe, his black eyes seemed to carry all the sadness of his race. He had met the other three when they had hired him to track for them as they hunted in the far north of the Transvaal in the 1880s, then sharing in their adventures as they crossed into Matabeleland with Cecil G. Rhodes’s invading force, before agreeing to manage the Fonthills’ farm in the newly created colony of Rhodesia. Summoned by Simon’s telegraph, he had met the others after they had landed in Cape Town, for Fonthill knew that he would be needed in the tasks that lay ahead of them all.

Mzingeli’s draping of the blanket stung Jenkins into life. ‘Right, then,’ he said, rubbing his hands, ‘better get this bleedin’ tent up, then – ah, sorry Miss Alice. Language again. Sorry.’

Alice tugged the blanket tighter in frustration. ‘352, if you apologise for your disgraceful language again, I shall scream. How many more times have I to remind you that I am a brigadier’s daughter. As a reporter, I have covered the British army’s campaigns in Zululand, Afghanistan, East Africa, Egypt, the Sudan, the Transvaal and China, so I am well acquainted with army terminology. So do stop bleedin’ apologising. D’you hear?’

Jenkins had the grace to look crestfallen. ‘Ah, yes, miss – missus. Sorry. I’ll put the ordinary tent up, then.’

‘No, don’t do that.’ Fonthill extricated his compass and took a bearing on the horsemen who were fast disappearing in the twilight towards the kopje.

‘Blimey, bach sir.’ Jenkins looked woebegone. ‘It’s September, look you, which means the rainy season’s just round the corner. If we don’t freeze ’ere out in this veldt place, we’ll drown in one of them sudden storms. You remember ’em?’

‘Yes, of course, I do. And you have a point. But we’re not going to camp.’

‘What we goin’ to do, then?’

The others were now looking at Fonthill in some consternation. The wind that had made Alice shiver was not unusual in this early spring, for the veldt of the Orange Free State stood some five to six thousand feet above sea level.

Alice pulled the blanket tightly round her. ‘Yes, Simon,’ she repeated. ‘What are we going to do, then?’

‘We’re going to get our horses back – and our rifles, too, if we can.’

‘What?’ Jenkins’s jaw dropped for a moment and then his face gradually segued into a wide grin. ‘Of course we are,’ he said. ‘Of course we are. I should ’ave known.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous, Simon.’ Alice stamped her foot. ‘There are probably two hundred horsemen camping behind that kopje. There is no way you can drive this stupid mule cart up there and demand our horses back. This time we will all be shot.’

‘I’m not going to ask for them back. I’m going to take them. Now …’ He gazed around him. The sun had slipped down behind the purple cloud and the horizon that it hid and a soft, velvet light had fallen across the plain, deepening as he looked. Only a few other kopjes – black, flat-topped rocky hills that rose vertically – gave features to the plain and they were now slipping out of sight as the darkness grew. They were now quite alone again on this endless veldt.

His tone sharpened. ‘352, get the revolvers from Alice’s bag. Good thing we hid them. Mzingeli.’

‘Nkosi?’

‘I’ve got a compass bearing on the kopje so we can find it in the dark. But do you think you can track the horsemen and find where the commando is camped? They won’t be riding on in the dark.’

‘Better when moon comes up. But I find them, I think.’

‘Good man. But I hope the moon’s not too bright. We will wait until it is properly dark, then we’ll move across to the kopje.’

‘Simon!’ Alice looked like some chastising governess as she stood frowning, the blanket wrapped tightly around her. ‘Let us camp for the night and then get in the cart early in the morning and make for that hoped-for train and then get on to Pretoria where I can file my story. For God’s sake, you can’t take on a whole Boer commando with three men, three handguns and a feeble woman.’

He grinned at her. ‘I can’t see a feeble woman anywhere. And I don’t intend to take them on. We shall steal the horses. Now, put the tent back on the cart and let’s make for the kopje. Then Mzingeli will have to take over. Move now.’

Mzingeli urged the mules into life and the two men walked alongside Alice as she sat in the cart. There Simon outlined his plan such as it was.

‘The Boers,’ he said as they trudged along, ‘are magnificent horsemen, probably the best shots in the world and good soldiers, up to a point. What they lack, however, is discipline – the discipline of a trained soldier. They fight like tigers but I remember from the Transvaal War that on the simple bread-and-butter things of soldiering they fall down. And why shouldn’t they? They’re farmers who fight, that’s all. So I am gambling that they will not have set proper guards on the horses. They will have tethered or hobbled them so that they can’t stray but, hopefully, will have set only one or, at the most, two sentries. After all, they believe that we will be no threat to them and they know that the nearest British force is ten miles at least to the south, trying to fix the broken rails with the armoured train.’

‘So …?’ asked Jenkins.

‘So we leave Alice at the foot of the kopje with the cart and we three steal up on them, put the guard or guards out of action – although no shooting, mind – and lead the horses quietly away.’

‘Humph!’ The snort came from Alice. ‘Even if this works, they will find the horses gone, and come after us. And, slowed down by this damned cart, they will easily overtake us before we get to the railway line.’

Simon shook his head. ‘We won’t go north, towards Pretoria, because they will expect us to go that way. And we will leave the cart and set the mules free. We will go – on horseback, because we can make better time that way – to the south and rejoin the train. I hear that commandos rarely take black trackers with them so I am gambling that they won’t pick up our spoor until it is too late.’

Jenkins nodded. ‘Very good, bach sir. That sounds a good plan.’

‘Now that’s just fine,’ said Alice. ‘There are four of us and three horses. Tell me, pray. Do I walk?’

‘Only if you want to, darling. No, you share a horse with me. Uncomfortable, but we only have about ten miles to go.’

‘With respect, bach sir,’ said Jenkins, ‘I think Miss Alice should ride with me. That way she won’t fall off.’

‘When you say “with respect”, 352, you damn well don’t mean it. I’m a much better horseman than I used to be.’

‘Ummph! But she should still ride with me.’

‘Oh, very well.’

They proceeded in silence until eventually a wan moon rose, bringing the kopje suddenly into focus before them. It stood like a black, squat thumb rising from the plain but, as they neared, they could see that a track of sorts wound upwards between the fissured rocks. Mzingeli looked at it and at the ground and shook his head.

‘Not that way,’ he said. He led them around the base of the kopje until its verticality gave way to a more gentle incline and a much wider track threading its way upwards. ‘Here,’ he said. ‘Boers like to camp high so that they have view of plain. We keep very quiet now.’

‘Right,’ whispered Simon. He turned to his wife. ‘Stay here with the cart and take this.’ He gave her one of the Webley revolvers. ‘It is fully loaded. But I recommend you don’t fire at the Boers with it. It might annoy them. If we are not back by daylight, make your way back along the railway track the way we came until you meet the train.’

‘I’d rather come with you.’

‘No.’ He grinned. ‘Can’t have a feeble woman with us. If we are caught, then I doubt if the Boers will shoot us. They don’t like to be bogged down with prisoners, so they will probably slap our wrists and turn us loose again. In which case we shall be back where we started. But I intend to get those horses. Be careful, darling.’ He kissed her quickly and turned away. ‘Lead on, Mzingeli.’

Treading carefully in the semi-darkness, the three men began their climb. It was not arduous, for it seemed as though the Boers had not dismounted, although, in truth, Simon could see little sign of the party having come this way, for there was no soil or sand lining the track, only shreds of coarse grass struggling through the rocks. It betrayed no indentations. Mzingeli, however, showed no hesitation and continued to stride upwards.

After fifteen minutes, he held up his hand and waited for the others to join him. ‘Horses up just ahead,’ he whispered. ‘I smell them. I go alone now. Come back and tell you.’ And he was gone.

Jenkins crouched down next to Fonthill, his knife gleaming in his hand. ‘What’s the plan, then, bach sir?’

‘Put the knife away, 352. I don’t want any killing unless we absolutely have to. It depends how many guards there are. If there is only one, I want you to creep up behind him, put a revolver at his head and tell him to be quiet. Here’s a gag and some tent cord. We will bind him and take the horses – but quietly, oh so quietly.’

‘An’ if there’s more than one guard?’

‘I’ll have to think again.’

Mzingeli was back, it seemed, almost as soon as he had gone. He slipped down between the two. ‘Camp is on a plateau over the back,’ he whispered, gesturing with his hand. ‘Away from horses, which are nearer.’

‘Now there’s a stroke of luck,’ beamed Jenkins. ‘How many guards?’

‘Only one I see. He up on right there, on top of path. We must get round him. But I think he sleeps.’

‘Ah.’ Fonthill’s teeth flashed in the moonlight. ‘As I said. Bad soldiering. Good. Now, 352, crawl away to the right and get behind the guard. We will go to just below the top and wait until you’ve dealt with the Boer – I know you can do it. Very quietly. Now. Off you go.’

Jenkins wriggled away like an eel between the rocks and Fonthill followed Mzingeli as the tracker crawled upwards, placing hands and feet with care. As the hunched figure of the guard came into sight, silhouetted against a now star-strewn sky, they froze onto the grass. They kept their eyes fixed on the man, who remained immobile, crouched like some ancient shepherd guarding his flock. Then, as they watched, a figure suddenly rose behind him, putting one arm under his throat and presenting the stumpy barrel of the revolver to his ear. The man attempted to rise and shout but Jenkins clasped a hand to his mouth and whispered to him. Immediately, the guard froze, immobile.

Simon and Mzingeli were upon him in a flash. Fonthill forced open the man’s mouth and thrust a rolled handkerchief into it, tying it into place with a bandana knotted at the back of his neck. Then they rolled him over and bound his hands behind his back before tying his legs together. The Boer lay looking up at them, eyes bulging.

‘Can’t see any more guards, bach sir,’ whispered Jenkins. ‘The camp’s over there,’ he nodded with his head, ‘beyond the ’orses. They’ve ’obbled all the ’orses by binding one foreleg back. I call that bloody cruel. An’ them supposed to be marvellous ’orsemen, look you.’

Fonthill nodded. Jenkins had been brought up on a farm in the north of Wales and was a superb horseman. He was also a lover of horseflesh.

‘Mzingeli,’ he whispered. ‘You and Jenkins see if you can find our horses and bring them over here quietly. The Boers will have got back here in the darkness so there’s just a possibility that they’ve not unsaddled them. Go now. I’ll watch over this fellow.’

Within minutes the two were back, leading three horses, all fully saddled and bridled. ‘Look,’ said Jenkins, his face expressing disgust. ‘They’ve even put our rifles back in the saddle holsters, see. Lazy bastards. They know nothin’ about ’orses, absolutely.’

‘Splendid. Right. Let’s go. Quietly, now.’

They had retreated some five minutes down the path when Jenkins gave the reins of the horses he was leading to Mzingeli. ‘I’ll just be ’alf a mo’, bach sir,’ he said.

‘No,’ hissed Fonthill. ‘Where are you going? Come back. Now.’

But the little Welshman had disappeared back up the hill into the night.

Cursing, Simon indicated to the tracker that they should continue the descent but they had reached the bottom and were met by a relieved Alice before Jenkins rejoined them.

‘Where the hell did you go?’ demanded Fonthill.

‘I couldn’t let them beasts stay up there with one leg tied up,’ he said. ‘So I cut as many free as I could. Too many, o’course, to do ’em all. But enough to let ’em wander about a bit and stray, like. That’ll give them Boer buggers a bit to think about first thing in the mornin’, see. Oh.’ He held up his knife, the point of which was bloodstained. ‘I just poked this into the leg of that guard, see. Not far. Just a bit of a scratch. That’ll teach ’im to sleep on guard and serve ’im right for treatin’ ’orses that way, so it will.’

Fonthill blew out his cheeks. ‘For God’s sake get on your horse. Alice, you get in the saddle, 352 can ride behind you. Leave the cart and the mules. We must ride hard through the night so that we don’t have a horde of bloodthirsty Boers breathing down our necks. Right. Now ride!’

Heads down, with Jenkins clinging to Alice for dear life, they rode through the darkness as fast as the horses and the terrain would allow. Just before dawn they reached the armoured train. It was getting steam up, for the sappers had worked through the night to repair the rails. They were just in time to wolf down hot tea and bacon sandwiches before the train snorted into motion, on its journey to Pretoria, the newly captured capital of the Transvaal, carrying them aboard.

CHAPTER TWO

On the journey, which proved uneventful, Fonthill looked again at the cable that he had received only last month in the half-ruined British consulate in Peking, after the siege of the capital had been raised. He, Alice and Jenkins had been visiting his wife’s uncle, a missionary in China, when the Boxer Rebellion had burst around their ears. The three of them had played a role in the defence and final relief of the besieged consulates in the heart of the city – a role that had been well reported in the world’s press. As a result, General Kitchener, Roberts’s chief of staff in South Africa, had cabled him:

WE NEVER MET IN SUDAN BUT WARMEST CONGRATS ON YOUR WORK CHINA STOP WAR WITH BOERS HERE FAR FROM OVER STOP DESPERATELY NEED YOU HERE FOR URGENT TASK STOP CAN YOU SHIP TO CAPE TOWN SOONEST STOP LETTER FOLLOWS STOP

Kitchener had been only a major of intelligence when Fonthill and Jenkins had infiltrated the Dervish lines around Khartoum to reach the besieged General Gordon years before. But Simon knew, of course, of the meteoric nature of the man’s rise to become Sirdar of the Egyptian army and the eventual conqueror of the Mahdi’s forces at the Battle of Omdurman two years before. He was now Lord Kitchener of Khartoum – ‘K of K’ – and rumoured soon to take over from the elderly Roberts as commander-in-chief in South Africa.

Fonthill, having rather surprisingly received Alice’s approval, had cabled his acceptance but Kitchener’s explanatory letter had revealed little more when it had arrived just before they took ship for the Cape. It merely referred to a need to find ‘a new way of fighting the Boers’, for which Fonthill’s wide experience and ‘unconventional military methods’ would eminently suit him. Simon remembered ruefully that that very unconventionality had brought him into conflict several times years before with General Roberts in the second Anglo-Afghan war and that Kitchener would surely have conferred with his chief before sending the cable. So Roberts had approved of the choice. There could be no more validation of the need for ‘something new needed’. He was undeniably intrigued. Of one thing, however, he was certain – he would never return to the regular army.

They arrived in the pretty little Transvaal town of Pretoria, final destination of the Boer voetrekkers so long ago, and Fonthill booked them all into a small hotel in the centre – not without a disputatious argument before Mzingeli was accepted as a guest. Then he sent a message to Kitchener’s headquarters, announcing his arrival and requesting an interview. A reply came flatteringly quickly, asking Simon to call at four p.m. that day.

The army HQ was Melrose House, a two-storey, wooden dwelling near the centre of the town, fringed by a conventional African veranda or stoep and whose only clue to its militaristic role was the presence of a flagpole bearing a Union Jack, and the constant toing and froing of uniformed men at its entrance. Fonthill presented his card and was asked to wait in an anteroom.

The wait was short and Simon was ushered into a much larger room. He absorbed a quick impression of map-covered walls and tables holding what seemed to be objets d’art of an eclectic variety and he recalled reading somewhere that the soldier was a collector of such things. Then he was confronted by Kitchener himself, who strode towards him, hand extended, seeming to fill the room.

Fonthill regarded him intently. In a very short time, Kitchener had come to represent the imperial age in a manner that had even eluded such eminent military leaders as Wolseley and Roberts. Perhaps it was the great moustache, which thrust across the man’s upper lip, oiled, clipped yet luxurious and slightly tilted upwards at the end so confidently. He was tall but surprisingly narrow-shouldered, and quite slim. The face behind the moustache was bronzed with purple, heavy jowls and hair slicked back either side of a central parting. It was the eyes, however, which drew the gaze. They were set far apart and there was a curious cast in the right eye. And they were china blue, exuding a kind of intensity that was compelling.

‘Good of you to come so quickly, Fonthill,’ said the general. He grasped Simon’s hand in a firm grip. ‘Do sit down.’ Kitchener strode back to his chair but remained standing, holding his visitor’s card in his hand. He indicated it. ‘C.B. eh? Order of the Bath. That was for Khartoum, I seem to remember?’

‘Yes, General. Came up with the rations.’

‘I’m sure it didn’t. Getting through the Mahdi’s lines, being captured and then escaping was quite a feat. Didn’t your man get a DSM?’

‘Yes. Jenkins, the Distinguished Service Medal. That certainly didn’t come up with the rations. Couldn’t have done a thing without him.’

‘And is he still with you?’

‘Yes, he’s here now. We’ve been together, one way or another, for more than twenty years.’

‘Splendid. We can use him, too. Now then. You must be wondering what I have in mind, eh? Don’t suppose my letter helped much?’ Fonthill noted that Kitchener never seemed to smile. His face remained set, despite the modulations of his voice. It was as though it was that of an icon.

‘No, sir. But I am anxious to help.’

‘Good. The C-in-C assured me you would.’

Fonthill marvelled at this. The last time he had met the famous “Bobs”, the general had distinctly taken umbrage at Simon’s refusal to rejoin the army. He kept silent now. It was up to Kitchener to do the talking.

‘Yes. Quite. You must have been quite a bit out of touch in China with things here in South Africa? Yes?’

‘Very much so.’

‘Very well. A bit of background is necessary. Come over here.’

The two men approached the biggest of the maps, which almost covered one wall of the room. It was a large-scale ordnance of the whole of South Africa. It was studded with pins, red and blue.

‘Disregard the flags,’ said Kitchener. ‘Look here. This is where the war really started, here on the Natal border.’ He indicated the right-hand side of the Southern African continent. ‘This is where the Boers made their first thrust, while we were outnumbered and before Buller arrived with reinforcements. That bloody fool Sir George White …’ He looked up sharply. ‘Fonthill, I am treating you as a senior officer and speaking freely to you. I presume I can rely on your discretion?’

‘Absolutely, General.’

‘Good. Well, White got himself cooped up here in Ladysmith with a goodly portion of his Natal command and remained stuck there. Same thing happened to a smaller degree at Kimberley where your old friend Rhodes stayed with his mines, squealing to be rescued, and to an even smaller degree here in the north-west at Mafeking. Now, when General Buller arrived with his army he felt that his main priority had to be to relieve Ladysmith – not least because White had got a large unit of our cavalry stuck there doing nothing; and cavalry, I don’t need to tell you, Fonthill, is worth its weight in gold in this country.’

Simon nodded.

‘Trouble is that Buller got himself into an awful hole here on the Tugela and was savagely mauled by the Boers, firing from entrenched positions under the Boer general, Botha, at Colenso. Same thing had happened to the west on the Modder, where Methuen tried to get through to Kimberley and was soundly defeated. Shortly afterwards, Buller caught it again at Spion Kop, another bloodbath. It was a terrible time and that’s when it was realised back home that we were fighting a savagely determined foe, equipped with the latest weapons.’

Kitchener regarded Fonthill with his icy stare. ‘Not Afghans with muskets nor Dervishes with spears. But marksmen, with Mauser rifles that could outrange us and extremely modern Creusot and Krupps artillery from Europe. This had become a war where the range of the modern rifle had spread the battlefield over five or ten miles. Conventional scouting was made impossible over the flat ground of the veldt, where the best scouts in the world could be picked off by the enemy more than a mile away.

‘What’s more,’ Kitchener went on, speaking quietly, ‘our artillery turned out to be useless, as I expected. All our field guns were originally twelve-pounders, they were then bored out to make them fifteen-pounders, with the result that they could be used only with reduced charges.’ The general smoothed upwards the edges of his moustache and his voice took on a confidential air, as though breathing confidences to a friend. ‘Do yer know, Fonthill, we had become virtually the laughing stock of Europe. We had sent overseas the biggest British army in history to overcome one of the world’s smallest nations – although to be fair, most of the army had not yet arrived. Even so, we were ridiculed, with Germany leading the laughter. The Boers were saying that our command was so incompetent that they would court-martial any of their men who killed a British general.’

A silence hung in the air for a moment and then the general continued. ‘So Roberts was sent out to take command, with me as his chief of staff and with a vast number of reinforcements. You will remember, of course, from Afghanistan that the field marshal knows what he is doing and his grasp of the situation and the increased size of the army soon produced results. He outflanked the enemy and relieved Kimberley and then we cornered a large section of the Boer army here,’ he tapped the map, ‘at Paardeberg and Cronje was forced to surrender with some five thousand men.’

Simon nodded. ‘The turning point?’

‘In terms of conventional warfare, yes. I was able to throw out the Boer commandos who were trying to foment rebellion in the Cape Colony and in the north there were further successes when we beat Botha at Diamond Hill, here, near Pretoria, and even better when we were able to relieve Mafeking and then take Johannesburg, with its important mines, and the Transvaal capital here. Importantly, Buller – a falsely maligned general, in my view – was able, at last, to break through to relieve Ladysmith and the Boers were unrolled all across the map, with President Kruger fleeing through Mozambique in the east here to take ship to Holland.’

For the first time, a faint smile crept across Kitchener’s broad face. ‘War over, then, eh?’

Fonthill returned the smile. ‘Except that it wasn’t.’

‘Quite so, except that the chief, Field Marshal Roberts, is more or less convinced that it is. You may have heard that Wolseley is retiring as head of the army at the Horse Guards?’

‘Ah, no. I had not.’ A faint pang of regret shot through Fonthill at the news. He and Jenkins had served under the field marshal – guyed by W.S. Gilbert as ‘the very model of a modern major general’ on the London stage – in campaigns on the Mozambique border, in the conquest of Egypt and then in the abortive attempt to relieve Gordon, and he had great respect for the little man.

‘Yes. Bobs will return to England very shortly to take up the post and I will take over here. I think the chief believes that he will be leaving me with just a bit of clearing up to do. But I knew it wouldn’t be as easy as that and that is why I sent for you. Now, come and sit down and I will explain.’

The two strode back and Fonthill looked across at the tall soldier now with a growing regard. No one had greater respect for the Boers than Simon. He had seen, in the Transvaal War, how competent they had been in outmanoeuvring a conventional army in the field and then defeating it in a pitched battle at Majuba. But to hear a British general give an ‘amateur army’ credit was new to him. From Isandlwana (‘let the Zulus come – we’ll give them a bloody nose’) to the Sudan (‘the Dervishes are not disciplined, they will never break a British square’) he had heard British officers pour scorn on their opponents. The change was refreshing. He sat on the edge of his chair listening carefully to the tall man opposite.

Kitchener leant forward. ‘We were told that the Boers would run away. Well, they ran away very often, but they always came back again. We were told that they would never hold together in any cohesive formation but I fully believe that there is no one more self-confident of his own individual opinions than the Boer. They have subordinated themselves to their leaders and have worked together with discipline. We have seen them courageous in attack and in retreat. They have always shown an ability to give lessons to us all.’

Fonthill opened his mouth to speak but the general held up his hand. ‘There is another characteristic they have displayed which, if we are true descendants of our forefathers, we ought to be most capable of fully appreciating. I refer to that wonderful tenacity of purpose, that “don’t know when you are beaten” quality which they are prominently displaying in this war. There may be individuals among them whose characteristics and methods we do not like but, judged as a whole, I maintain that they are a virile race.

‘Now, this was underlined about six months ago, when we were rolling ’em back all along what we then thought was the front in the north, and the Boer leaders held a meeting – they call it a krijgsraad or council of war – about a hundred and thirty miles north of Bloemfontein just a few days after the fall of the Free State capital. They seemed to have lost the war. It was Christiian de Wet, the new commandant of the Free State army, who had a different idea. Guerilla warfare. Take to the veldt.’

The general was now almost animated and made a slashing motion with his arm. ‘Cut out the cumbersome wagon trains so beloved of the Boers from the Great Trek and which trapped Cronje. No more fighting “at the front”. Instead, adopt a raiding strategy behind the British lines, attacking our lines of communications, which, Fonthill, are damned long and vulnerable, swooping down on our flanks, hitting and riding off again, hitting us where it hurts. Riding swiftly and carrying little provisions—’

Fonthill interrupted. ‘Just a bag of flour, a parcel of tea and a few strips of biltong on the saddle bow.’

Kitchener frowned. ‘What? How do you know that?’

‘I saw it.’ And he explained his party’s brush with de Wet on the Free State veldt.

The general blew out his cheeks and leant back in his chair. ‘Well bless my soul, Fonthill. You’re not in this damned country five minutes and you meet one of the enemy’s leading generals, raid his camp and steal back your horses from him.’ The glare softened into a grin that seemed to sit ill at ease beneath the great moustache. ‘Well done, my dear fellow. And you say he betrayed his intention to invade the Cape Colony?’

‘So he let slip to my wife. She is here to write for the Morning Post, you know. She seized her opportunity to interview him.’

‘Ah yes. The formidable Miss Griffith.’ A brief look of embarrassment flashed across Kitchener’s face. ‘Yes, excuse me, Fonthill. Fact is, I don’t have much time for the Fleet Street scribblers who are out here. Neither does Roberts. He … ah … of course remembers your wife from the second Afghan War, you know.’

Fonthill stifled a smile. Alice had infuriated Roberts by reporting on and attacking in print his policy of destroying Afghan villages. To say that they had clashed would be an understatement.

Then that unfamiliar smile crept back across the general’s fierce countenance. ‘Still,’ he said, ‘if she’s writing for the Morning Post that should get that arrogant young pup Winston Churchill off my back. He can’t make up his mind whether he’s is out here as a politician, a serving officer or a journalist. Perhaps your wife will knock him off his perch.’

‘Perhaps so, sir. But you were saying …?’

‘Yes. The Cape Colony. I would be grateful if your wife could come in here as soon as possible and tell me exactly what de Wet said. If they are going south again, I need to be prepared. Milner – he’s the high commissioner in the Cape, don’t yer know – is in a constant funk about rebellion there.’

‘Of course, sir.’

‘Right. Now back to you. Apart from our long and vulnerable lines of communication, the army’s problem out here is that it is slow and ponderous. We are even worse than the Boers with their wagon trains and women and children. We can’t stray more than eight miles from the railway lines before we get into trouble. Enteric fever is growing and we are burdened with the need to look after this huge army and feed it. We can fight all right, but we can’t pin down these Boer commandos to oppose us. Very selfish of them. It’s not just de Wet in the Free Province. Botha has reorganised his fighting men to do the same thing in the Transvaal and there’s de la Rey there, too, another good man. Hit and run. It has only just started but it will get worse.’

Fonthill frowned. He thought he could see which way Kitchener’s mind was working. ‘So,’ he said, ‘fight them at their own game …?’

‘Exactly.’ The general had tilted his chair backwards but now it came thudding down to give emphasis to his words. ‘Two things.’ He held up one surprisingly slim finger and slammed it into his other palm. ‘Firstly, I aim to cut off these commandos’ source of supply. So destroy the farms that supply them …’

Simon had a momentary memory of Afghan villages burning high up in the Hindu Kush and his wife’s tears and fury at the sight. Here, he thought, trouble could lie.

But Kitchener was continuing. The second finger crashed into the palm. ‘Secondly, as you perceptively say, fight ’em at their own game.’ He leant back in his chair again. ‘The key to doing that, of course, is cavalry and horses. And both have been in short supply in this war. But now we are getting horses from all over the Empire and I am beginning to form flying columns that can move like the Boers do – live out on the veldt on horseback without a supply train, picking up information, tracking down the enemy and leading our men to them. Pinning them down before they can take flight again. I want you, Fonthill, to lead one of those columns. Not one of the heavier groups that will confront the Boers but an irregular unit – a scouting force with a bit of depth – that will catch ’em, perhaps pin ’em down until the larger column comes up. What do you say?’

Fonthill frowned. ‘What do you mean, General? Back in the army, formally, after all these years?’

‘Yes. Rank of colonel, a special service officer. Your man as senior warrant officer. At home, all sorts of chaps are rallying round to the colours and shipping out here. Which is fine. But, my dear fellow, I particularly need you. Someone who can think outside the framework of conventional soldiering. Someone not – what shall I say – bogged down by years of regimental command. I hear that it was you who laid out Wolseley’s plan of attack on the bPedi camp on the Mozambique border back in the eighties. Brilliant piece of thinking. Roberts warns me that you will never rejoin the regular ranks. But I think he is wrong. The point is, Fonthill, your country needs you.’

The china-blue eyes penetrated his own.

Fonthill shifted in his seat. ‘As I say,’ he said eventually, ‘I am anxious to help, but I do not wish to take up a commission again. I am – what shall I say – uneasy at the thought of conforming—’

But Kitchener interrupted. ‘That’s the whole point. You won’t conform. You will be out on your own, with your men, breaking the damned rules if you have to. Only reporting to John French, who commands my cavalry, when you have to, and getting provisions and that sort of thing. Very much your own command, Fonthill, after all these years.’

Simon seized on the point. ‘Ah, cavalry, General.’ His mind recalled stiff-backed Hussars and Lancers with their pennanted spears, the gallant arme blanche of the army, charging with raised swords to a bugle call and led by brave and quite stupid officers – all that was wrong with the regular army. ‘What you describe would not be a task for the cavalry,’ he said. ‘It must be mounted infantry. Good horsemen but no sabre rubbish. They must be excellent shots but able to dismount and deploy in a second and—’

He was interrupted again by what sounded like a chuckle from the general – except that his face hardly seemed to move. ‘Absolutely, my dear fellow. Couldn’t have described it better myself. So you will accept?’

Fonthill thought quickly. ‘How many men do you see in this command?’

Kitchener leant forward. ‘Not many. Not a conventional battalion or anything like that. Perhaps about a hundred men, maybe a few more. Suck it and see. Find out how many you need in practice. Not so many that you are strewn out across the veldt but enough to frighten a commando when you surprise them. I will get you some of the best horses newly arrived from home.’

‘No.’ Fonthill spoke quickly. ‘No cavalry mounts. They would be too big for this job – too difficult to feed and too large a target for the Mausers. We would need local mounts happy out on the veldt, used to feeding on what pasture there is, even in winter. Basuto ponies would be best. They are what the Boers use. What about men?’

‘You recruit them yourself. We have lists of chaps wanting to do their bit. Johannesburg is the best place. It’s full of uitlanders – they’re the locals, but adventurers and originally from all parts of the Empire, some of them miners, disenfranchised by the Boers and the cause of all this trouble in the first place and anxious to have a go at them. You will need a handful of good NCOs and, say, three commissioned squadron commanders to work with you, and we can supply these from our mounted infantry units – and I’ll get you the ponies you want. We’ve captured enough Boers to supply these.’ The wintry half smile reappeared. ‘Our cavalry chaps wouldn’t dream of using ’em. But you can have ’em. So …’ His voice tailed away for a moment and then came back strongly. ‘You are in, then, Fonthill, eh?’

Outside a wagon creaked and a distant voice barked a command. Simon sighed. ‘Very well, General. Very well. I shall take the Queen’s shilling again – words I never thought I would say.’

‘Good. Never doubted it, although the chief will be surprised. Now, you will need to be commissioned again, of course, and your man given warrant officer rank. Come back here tomorrow and see my ADC. He will set you up with the bureaucracy of the thing and also introduce you to the people you will need for provisioning, setting up your recruiting office and so on.’

The general stood up and held out his hand. ‘Delighted to have you back, Colonel. You should start your planning now. You will get your marching orders from French, when you are ready.’

Fonthill gripped the outstretched hand. ‘Thank you, sir. Ah. One more thing.’