The Loyalists E-Book

Vivian Stuart

• Herausgeber: Skinnbok
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Serie: The Australians
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Seitenzahl: 411

Beschreibung

The twenty-second book in the dramatic and intriguing story about the colonisation of Australia: a country made of blood, passion, and dreams.   Australia is back to fighting with the British against the Boers in South Africa.   Sloan Shannon are amongst those fighting against the Boers. He is wounded and captured, but finds himself saved by a Boar nurse. Suddenly, he must flee with her to her people – those people that he thought was his enemies.

Leseprobe

The Loyalists

The Australians 22 – The Loyalists

© Vivian Stuart, 1989

© eBook in English: Jentas ehf. 2023

Series: The Australians

Title: The Loyalists

Title number: 22

ISBN: 978-9979-64-247-3

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchase.

All contracts and agreements regarding the work, editing, and layout are owned by Jentas ehf.

The Australians

The ExilesThe PrisonersThe SettlersThe NewcomersThe TraitorsThe RebelsThe ExplorersThe TravellersThe AdventurersThe WarriorsThe ColonistsThe PioneersThe Gold SeekersThe OpportunistsThe PatriotsThe PartisansThe Empire BuildersThe Road BuildersThe SeafarersThe MarinersThe NationalistsThe LoyalistsThe ImperialistsThe Expansionists

I

1900

Chapter I

The Aborigines, having no calendar, regarded the first day of a new year and even the first day of a new century as just another day. Their ceremonies for newness had to do with season, not a printed number on a paper hanging on the wall. Tolo Mason spent the morning of January i, 1900, helping the stockmen move a small drove of cattle to better grass. With the cattle in the new pasturage he rode back to the house.

His first personal experience with death had come to him at the station. He had never forgotten the sight of the Aboriginal girl Daringa lying on the straw-littered floor of a barn; he carried in his mind a permanent picture of her in death, her neck broken and her features twisted. Soon afterward, he had watched the painful, wasting demise of his tutor, Dane de Lausenette, another type of death and one that aroused in him questions that continued to this day.

The loss of his father had at first been more of an abstraction than either of the two deaths he had witnessed previously. He had not been able to believe the news of the cablegram, the cold words printed on paper. He had experienced no feeling of loss, only a numbness, which was denial. It could not be, he had felt. Jon Mason was too real, too vital, too much a part of his life to be dead. Jon was there, somewhere, in England or on the sea, alive, and coming back to his wife and his son and the land that he had come to love.

When Jon did come home, in a sealed coffin, the fact became a bit more real for Tolo, but it was only at the funeral itself that his tears came, the ceremony bringing to the surface all the pain and rage of his loss.

Reaching the house, he dismounted and gave over his horse to an Abo boy, beat the dust from his trousers with his floppybrimmed bush hat, and entered. The front rooms were insulated against the day’s heat by closed draperies; thus they retained a residual of the night’s coolness. He heard the clatter of pans from the kitchen, pressed on to see that the door to his father’s office was open. Misa was at the desk, her dark hair drawn into a loose bun, dressed in black for mourning, as convention required, but in a frock so well tailored that it seemed almost as if she had chosen it expressly for Jon, who had always enjoyed seeing her well and expensively dressed.

“Ah,” she said as her son appeared at the door, “you’ve come at a good time. I was going to send for you.”

Tolo sat down, crossing his long legs. He knew that she had been spending many hours in the office in the past few days.

“I gave you a copy of your father’s will the other day,” she said. “Did you read it?”

He made a face. He had not read the document.

Misa laughed. “Your lack of greed is commendable. Your lack of interest is not. Don’t you care what we own, what will someday be all yours?”

“Here I can ride the land, move the cattle, and watch the water supply rise and fall with the season. I can’t ride the lands of a station in northern Queensland.”

“As you know,” she said, “in the last letter your father wrote to me, he told us how he had decided to sell off the stations and sugarcane plantations in Queensland. I intend to carry out his wishes.”

Tolo shrugged.

“I must go up to Sydney again.”

The tone of her voice put him on guard. He was perfectly content to stay on the station, at least until the time was right for him to travel to Western Australia to begin his field study of the Aborigines of the Great Sandy Desert and the outback. She was, he knew, going to ask him to go to Sydney with her. Tolo immediately felt a push and a pull. Here, on the station and in the saddle, while working with the stockmen, he had no worries. It was a life he loved. In Sydney he might see Java Gordon again, and he wondered about the magnetism he sensed drawing them together.

“I’d like you to go to Queensland,” she said.

He looked up, frowning.

“Through the estate agents, I have received estimates of the worth of the Mason-Fisher holdings in Queensland,” she said. “I’ve never even seen the properties themselves.” She paused and felt the tears sting in her eyes as she remembered that she had in fact seen one of the Fisher stations, the one where she had first met Jon. “Well, at least I’ve not seen all of them,” she said. “I’d like your opinion as to the asking prices.”

“How would I know?” he asked.

“You have eyes. You can see the condition of the buildings and whether there is water. You can observe and describe the places to me. We can travel to Sydney together, and you can go on from there.”

Tolo sighed. He did not like the idea of leaving her, not with the loss of his father so recent and so raw, and this venture into Queensland would take months. However, perhaps it was all for the best. Her newly acquired bank in Sydney seemed to be occupying her interest, taking her mind off her grief. He himself was most content when he was working, and it was most probably the same with her.

“Mother, we won’t sell this place, will we?”

“No,” she said, smiling. “I know how you feel about it. It can be yours now if you like. We can have the deed transferred into your name, although I’d be your legal guardian until you’re twenty-one.”

He laughed. “I’m happy with the way things are. If I allowed you to put the station in my name, next thing is you’d be trying to push off your shipping firms and banks on me,” he said. “You’re the business head in this family.”

“I’ll be looking for a house in Sydney,” she said. “Before you leave for Queensland, I’d like your help in choosing one.”

He felt a sadness begin then, for he suspected that their lives would be forever changed by her decision to buy a house in Sydney. That sadness grew until, as he stood beside the carriage that would take them into Melbourne, a carriage towing a loaded wagon with all of Misa’s books and papers, all of her clothing, and many personal things that she did not want to leave behind, he felt again the full weight of the loss of his father. Jon Mason and the station where Tolo had grown up were linked in the young man’s memories with a poignancy that made his eyes sting as he stepped up into the driver’s seat and clucked to the horses.

He had taken only a few things of his own. He had his books, those dealing with Australian history and the Aborigines, his riding boots and bush clothes. He had left behind such things as the boomerang fashioned for him by old Colbee, the telescope that had been a Christmas gift from his father, his rock collection, all the toys and distractions of his youth, for he considered the station his permanent home. He would be coming back.

As he drove away from the station, everything overwhelmed him: the death, the loss, the change. He drove with his head held high, but tears were streaming down his cheeks. If Misa saw, she made no comment, gave no sign that she was aware that her big, strong son was weeping.

“Someday,” Misa said, as she and Tolo strolled the deck of the Mason Company steamer that had left the rough waters of the Bass Strait behind and was rounding the southwestern tip of Australia into the Tasman Sea, “the Australian states will work out their differences about railway gauges, and there’ll be easier train service between Melbourne and Sydney.”

“The blood of your fathers is in me,” Tolo said. “I rather enjoy the sea, the smell of it, and the movement under foot.”

“Until the storms come,” she said.

He laughed. She seemed to have left behind her mourning, although she still wore black. “When I come back from Queensland, Mother, I want to prepare for my trip to Western Australia.”

She nodded. “I’ve been thinking of that,” she said. “Wouldn’t you be better prepared for what you want to do by spending a year or two in university?”

“To study what?” he asked. “The learned men in the colleges are still arguing about Darwin’s theories. Their primary concern with the study of man and his cultures, for the moment at least, seems to be what to call it. The French are arguing over whether it should be called anthropologie or ethnologie. I don’t care for that sort of academic debate. I simply want to search out and record the beliefs of the Aborigines wherever I can find them, getting the stories of the people and their past before they’re irreversibly altered by contact with the white man.”

Misa Mason was very proud of her son. In Sydney she enjoyed the looks they got when they walked together through the lobby of the hotel. She knew they cut a striking picture: the neat, pretty Samoan woman and tall, broad-shouldered, bronzed young man dressed in a suit of the latest cut.

With an estate agent, they walked through half a dozen houses, none of them at all suitable. Misa was grateful for Tolo’s patience in looking at each one. Almost eighteen years old now, he was a young man with a dream of his own, and she was proud and pleased that he loved her enough to postpone his dream and help her as she had asked.

True to his background, Tolo asked the agent about the availability of a country house near Sydney.

“No, Tolo,” Misa objected gently. “You won’t be here much. I’m the one who’d have to make the daily drive into the city if we bought a place in the country.” And in the end Misa selected a town house, a semiattached building not far from the Broome Gordon house.

When Tolo made his good-byes and boarded ship for Townsville in Queensland, Misa was still living in the hotel, making daily excursions to the bank and to the house to check on the decorators, also visiting art galleries and buying pictures by Australian artists to hang in the new house.

Although Misa had the comfort of a few of her personal items in the hotel room, most of her things were in storage until the house was ready. The hotel was clean and new, the rooms ever so still and a bit barren and sterile, all too conducive to periodic waves of sheer loneliness that took her by surprise and drove her nearly to panic. She tried to bury herself in her work. The days went rapidly by as she delved into every aspect of the workings of the Merchantman’s and Marine Bank.

One morning she held a long discussion with the bank’s new manager and its board of directors, considering a shift in direction of the bank’s business.

“Australia is changing,” she told them. “Whether we like it or not, there is going to be a definite change in the pattern of land ownership in the coming years. We lend money to squatters; I see this in the books. But we hold very few small mortgages.”

“The large landowners, the squatters, are the ones with a solid financial history,” commented Daniel Moore. He was the young man whom Sam Gordon had recommended to Misa for the position of manager of her bank. In his early thirties, Daniel had dark hair that he combed straight back, and he was clean-shaven, perhaps to display his strong chin and pleasant mouth. He had a solid look about him, dressing well and quite conservatively, and Misa had already developed confidence in him as an excellent choice for her bank.

“But how does a man acquire a financial history and build some standing unless some bank makes that first loan to him?” Misa asked.

Dan Moore smiled and spread his hands. “Mrs. Mason, if a smallholder applies for a loan at this bank, his application is, of course, considered. I haven’t been with the bank very long, but I’ve seen a few such applications. I’m sorry to say that it’s usually the opinion of the loan committee that the applicant hasn’t a prayer of paying off such a loan.”

“I want this bank to operate on sound business principles,” Misa said, “but to humour me, Mr. Moore, will you please appoint someone to make a study of land sales and purchases in that part of New South Wales that could be served by our bank? I may be dead wrong, but I have an intuition that we are missing out on a good source of business. Perhaps I’m just being idealistic, and if so, then it is up to you gentlemen to haul in the reins if I tend to run in that direction, but I think that I’d like to have a part in this change that’s coming. I think I’d like to be able to look back from my old age and say that this bank and I had helped in the formation of a new segment of society in New South Wales, a new and growing group of small, prosperous landowners.”

She was still thinking about the day’s discussion when she finished changing into a smart, dark gown designed for evening wear and stood before a mirror in the hotel suite to examine herself. She saw a woman who was still young and vital, dark and comely, with a thick, black mass of hair piled atop her head in the deliberately sensuous style that had swept the world of female fashion from America and the pen of Charles Dana Gibson, creator of the Gibson Girl.

She chose a rose from a vase of the fresh flowers that she had ordered delivered to her room daily, and trimming the stem to the right length to be stuck into her hair at the side, she smiled. For years she had done everything possible to divert attention from her brown skin. Oddly enough, since Jon’s death, she had undergone a change of attitude. Admittedly, the fortune that had been created by Marcus Fisher, Jon’s stepfather, and increased by Jon was enough to give any woman a certain confidence. Yet it was not only the fact that she had enough money to live anywhere in the world, to buy anything she wanted, to be totally independent of people and their prejudices that caused her to start wearing a flower in her hair day after day. Though the words remained unspoken, Misa made the declaration again and again: Look at me, I am Samoan. A gesture of defiance and of personal pride it was, and with the rose in her hair she walked regally into the dining room.

“Your table is ready, madam,” the head waiter said with a bow. Generous tips bought the overt respect of that sort of man, even if they did not entirely erase his covert presumption of superiority and his resentment at having to show deference to anyone with dark skin.

Misa nodded and started to follow the head waiter’s lead, but their path was blocked by a small, pretty, black-haired woman in a gown that was the height of fashion.

“Here, here!” the woman burst out, “I’ve been waiting for half an hour and you’re seating this lady immediately?”

“Madam Mason has a permanent table booked,” the head waiter said. “I’m so sorry. You shouldn’t have to wait much longer. Now, if you please?” He stared at the woman, but she made no move to get out of his way.

Misa was smiling, admiring the woman’s spunk, but wondering if it came from the fact that a woman of brown skin had been given priority over a lady of very white, very creamy, very British skin. She decided to find out. “I think I might have a solution to this problem,” she said. She fastened her large brown eyes directly on the eyes of the other woman. “My table is quite large enough for two, and I would enjoy having company. Would you care to join me?”

“I’d love to,” the woman said without hesitation, just a trace of bush in her accent. “If I don’t eat soon, I’ll perish flat away.”

Misa held out her hand. “I’m Misa Mason.”

“Bless you, luv,” the other said, taking Misa’s hand. “I’m Bina Tyrell.”

Neither woman could help but notice that numerous male heads turned as they walked behind the waiter to Misa’s table in a quiet corner. Bina looked at Misa and winked, smiling wryly. The gesture made Misa smile spontaneously. Right away she felt a surprising warmth for this woman with whom she had exchanged fewer than a dozen words. She took her usual chair, and Bina sat across from her, perusing her with frank curiosity.

“You’re Samoan?” Bina asked.

“Yes.”

“Lovely. Very lovely indeed.”

“Thank you,” Misa said, smiling with genuine pleasure, “but I think it was you that they were admiring.”

Bina laughed. “It’s all in knowing how to dress, how to use makeup, and how to swing your hips when you walk, isn’t it?”

A laugh burst out from Misa. “Are you so frank and honest about everything?”

“Everything except my age and my bank balance,” Bina said. “And speaking of the latter, yours must be impressive. I priced material like that in the dress you’re wearing just last week.” She wrung her hands to express the asking price of the material. “Not that I’m being nosy, mind you.”

“I detect a bit of Ireland, a lot of London, and a bit of the bush in your speech,” Misa said, changing the subject.

“Right on all counts,” Bina said.

“My son and I have lived on a station in Victoria until quite recently,” Misa said.

“I’m down from Cloncurry,” Bina said. “But before that my husband and I had a small station in central Queensland.”

“Really,” Misa said. “It happens that I’m interested in learning about smallholders and how they operate.”

“Whatever for?” Bina asked quizzically. “It’s a losing game. If the floods don’t get you, the drought will. Or you’ll be gobbled up by some squatter who sits on all of the good grass and the only water that’s available during the drought.”

“Did that happen to you?”

Misa listened as Bina, who had warmed to Misa as much as Misa had warmed to her, told about losing her husband and then her land. Misa felt even more drawn to the pretty, lively little black-haired woman, for they had the loss of a spouse in common.

“If you had been able to borrow money at a good rate of interest from a bank, would you have been able to hold out?” Misa asked.

“Perhaps, if the rains had come,” Bina said. “But I’ve talked to a lot of people since then. Many of them borrowed money from a squatter; then, when it was time to pay, the only way out was to have their land taken. A bank? They’d do the same thing, wouldn’t they?”

“Well, a bank must operate in a businesslike manner. If a loan is made with land as the security and the loan is defaulted, the bank must take the land. You see it isn’t the bank’s money that is at risk. The money belongs to depositors and investors.”

“You sound as if you know something about banks,” Bina said.

“Not as much as I’d like to know,” Misa said.

Bina laughed. “I need to learn a bit about banks myself,” she said. “I came to Sydney with the proceeds from the sale of my business in Cloncurry to open a fine restaurant and take Sydney by storm with my fabulous talent. The only problem is that my estimates of the money needed were based on life in the bush and in Cloncurry. Sydney real estate doesn’t come cheaply.”

“I know,” Misa said. “You had a restaurant in Cloncurry?”

“Actually, it was more like a boardinghouse,” Bina said guardedly. “You might say a boardinghouse and nightclub combined, perhaps.”

Their conversation rambled elsewhere amiably before and during the meal, and into a time of relaxed ease afterward, as each of them sipped a glass of white wine. Then Misa returned to the subject of real estate. “You say you are having trouble finding a suitable building in Sydney?”

“I’ve found one that’s perfect,” Bina said. “It’s large enough to have an orchestra stand and a dance floor, and it’s in a respectable location. But I simply can’t swing it with my available funds.”

“In the meantime?” Misa asked.

“In the meantime, I’m going to work,” Bina said. “I do hope that you don’t feel brought down when you find that you’ve been dining with an entertainer.”

“We brown-skinned folk have few prejudices,” Misa replied.

“If you’re interested, you can see me at the Sydney Palace, starting tomorrow night, as a matter of fact. I’ll be on before the trained dogs and after the comedy team.”

“Well, I’ll just have to come to see you,” Misa said.

“Sorry, I don’t have any passes yet. If you want to wait a couple of nights I can get you one.”

“No, I’ll come tomorrow,” Misa said.

“Don’t sit in the front row,” Bina cautioned. “Too close. You hear the dancers’ feet pounding on the boards, and you smell the sweat of the acrobats.”

When they parted, Misa had a strong hunch she had made a friend. She looking forward to seeing Bina’s performance, and the next day seemed long and her table quite empty when she went down for an early dinner.

Liking Bina as she did, Misa was curious about her. She had discovered quickly that the bank had certain ways of getting information about people, so while waiting for the evening’s entertainment, she asked Daniel Moore to find out what he could. He sent a telegram to a bank in Cloncurry, addressed to a man he knew there. By the time Misa had taken a hansom cab to the theatre that night, she knew a lot more about Bina Tyrell than she had expected.

Misa, suspecting that the Sydney Palace would not be exactly the meeting place of the elite, had dressed plainly, and once inside the theatre, the composition of the audience showed her that she had assessed the situation correctly. The audience was mainly middle- and working-class folk, and the program was a mixed bill of typical vaudeville acts, beginning with dancers and singers. When at last the curtain went up on what the barker said was the most sensational new act to hit Sydney in years, Misa leaned forward to see her friend sweep from the wings dressed in a flamboyant silver gown.

Bina turned when she reached the piano and bowed. She was, as she arranged her gown and seated herself, the epitome of the lady, her face stiff, brows raised, eyes narrowed and looking down her nose pensively.

“I have been told,” she said in a haughty voice with an exaggerated Pommy accent, “that the fair city of Sydney lacks culture, and so I have come from that seat of culture, Cloncurry, to enlighten this benighted town with certain classical selections.”

She poised, lowered her hands, and began to play Chopin’s “Minute Waltz.” The audience stirred restlessly. Misa held her breath, knowing that agony of embarrassment one feels when a friend or a member of the family is making a fool of himself.

“This,” Bina said in that haughty tone, still playing softly, “is called ‘The Minute Waltz.’ ” Then she grinned and rolled her eyes. “In Cloncurry, however”—suddenly now she was talking bush—“we are so advanced that we play it in thirty seconds.” She began to put a ragtime rhythm to the piece, and her audience chuckled appreciatively. Then, without a pause, she moved into a slightly bawdy, fast-moving London dance-hall piece, about a young lady well along in an old and lucrative profession who decides to become a virgin once again. The audience roared. Bina’s voice was at times growling, rowdy, but always a very feminine and very musical contralto. She knew how to use it to best advantage. When she had finished the song, she began to play Bach and spoke again of the high culture of Cloncurry until, without warning, she once again launched into a rollicking number. When the curtain closed, it had to be opened five times for Bina to acknowledge the applause, and she had to perform two encores before the audience was finally satisfied.

Misa decided against trying to visit Bina in her dressing room. She had ordered flowers to be delivered there during Bina’s performance. It was also a simple matter, with the help of a pound note, to have one of the ushers deliver a note to Bina. She wrote: “Wonderful! I am so impressed. Must talk with you. Meet me at” —she gave only the address of the bank—“one o’clock tomorrow afternoon. Ask for me by name.”

Bina arrived a few minutes early at Misa’s office the next day. When a secretary announced that Miss Tyrell was waiting, Misa leapt from her chair and opened the door herself.

“ ’Ere,” Bina said, looking puzzled and affecting a strong Cockney accent, “wot’s this, then? ’Ave they pinched you for writing bum checks?”

“Come in, come in,” Misa said, taking Bina’s hand. “Oh, you were so good last night. So very good.”

“You work here, is that it?” Bina asked. “That’s why you were asking questions about bank loans to smallholders and all?”

“I work here,” Misa admitted. “Come, sit down and we’ll have some tea. And then I want you to tell me about this place you’ve found that you think would be suitable for your restaurant.”

Bina sat, looking around at the rich wood of the furnishings. The panelling on the walls had originated somewhere in the Indian subcontinent and had made the long trip to England to be handcrafted, then back across the oceans to Sydney. She began to describe the building she had found, and before she realized what was happening, she was in a cab with Misa, and then they were going through the building with an estate agent. He was appropriately polite to the white woman and not so polite to the brown-skinned one until, with a flush of his face, he realized that the brown-skinned one was the one who was helping to finance the enterprise.

“These rooms would be kitchen and service areas,” Bina said.

“How much to equip the kitchen?” Misa inquired.

“Expensive. Perhaps a thousand pounds.”

“The main dining room would have to be decorated,” Misa added.

“And a dance floor installed. Hardwood. Expensive,” Bina commented.

“How much would you need to do it all, with what you have already?”

“Fifteen thousand pounds.”

Misa turned to the estate agent. “Will you accept a check on the Merchantman’s and Marine Bank to bind purchase?”

“That would depend, madam,” he said, “on the signature on the check.”

“Would the signature of the owner do?” Misa asked coldly, reaching into her purse for a chequebook.

Bina began to smile. She was still smiling when they were in the cab going back to the bank. “I thought you just worked there, that maybe you were on the loan committee. And you own it, all of it?”

“I married well,” Misa said modestly.

“Goodonyer,” Bina said. “And you’re going to lend me the money to buy the building and open my place?”

“I’ll make you two offers,” Misa said. “I’ll lend you the fifteen thousand at the current rate or I’ll invest fifteen thousand and be half owner.”

“But you don’t even know me,” Bina said.

“I know more than you might suspect,” Misa said.

“For example?”

“I know that you’re a very solid businesswoman, that you ran a very profitable establishment in Cloncurry.”

“Do you know what kind of establishment?”

“I do,” Misa said, avoiding eye contact.

“Perhaps Henry Lawson was right,” Bina said.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Nothing,” Bina said. “I’ll tell you someday. You know what sort of business I’ve been in and you still want to be a partner with me?”

“I feel that those of us who are slightly outside the pale, out of the mainstream of respectability, should stick together,” Misa said. “You came from hunger, from poverty, and you did what you believed had to be done to overcome it. Long ago, I was brought to Queensland as an indentured worker, a Kanaka. The man who became my husband helped me and my people, and I, too, did what had to be done to overcome the limitations of my background.” She did not explain to Bina that she had given herself sexually to Jon in payment for his help, which had enabled her father to lead his group of Samoans to freedom. “We have much in common, Bina, and I’d like very much to be in business with you. I won’t interfere. The running of the place will be left to you.”

“Goodonus,” Bina said, holding out her hand. “Partner.”

Bina had signed a two-week contract with the Sydney Palace. She fulfilled it, and before the end of the period her name was well-known in Sydney. Her seductive wardrobe, her flirty, husky, musical voice, the way she had of looking through her long, black eyelashes at the males in her audiences started men talking all over town. Soon the new girl who sang and played the piano at the Sydney Palace was acclaimed as the freshest, rowdiest thing to hit Sydney since the original convict had come ashore.

Chapter II

In South Africa the arrival of a new century was greeted from a wide variety of viewpoints. Boer manoeuvres and minor victories had exposed the eastern part of the British Cape Colony all the way to the seaboard, and in Cape Town itself the New Year’s Eve parties were subdued by rumours of a general uprising by the majority, the Boers.

Kit Streeter did not attend a party to see out the old year but stayed at home with her mother. The ominous thing that was growing in Evelyn Streeter’s head brought on excruciating headaches. At times it seemed to Kit that her mother’s left eye would burst from its socket, and when the pressure from inside was at its greatest, Evelyn’s mind wandered. On New Year’s Eve she came out of her bedroom, a bit dazed by the laudanum that Kit had given her for the pain, to ask imperiously just who was the strange woman in her home—that was Kit—and where was her little girl, meaning Kit at some early age. Kit took her mother by the arm and gently led her back to the bed, sitting with her and talking soothingly until Evelyn looked up suddenly and said, “Kit, where have you been?”

Kit had had only two letters from Slone since she had seen him last. They had been good letters, but not as warm as the ones she had received in Cairo. She sensed an unspoken reserve in his written words, and at times she would let tears drop onto the letters as she read and reread them. Each night she prayed for his safety, that he would come back to her, and she vowed silently to do whatever he asked when next he came to her. If he wanted to take out a license and get married as quickly as possible, then so be it.

And yet there was her duty to her mother and to her father. Her mother’s desperate illness was beginning to tell on Roland Streeter. The lines on his face were deeper. He was noticeably less energetic, less interested in life, wanting only to be with his family. On Sundays, when off duty, he would sit for hours, holding Evelyn’s hand, talking to her in a low, soft voice. Kit was not included in those largely one-way conversations, but now and then she would overhear and would feel his pain, for her father was going over old memories, reliving the days of his courtship of Evelyn, going into great detail about their honeymoon trip to India. When he talked of such things, Evelyn’s discomfort seemed less severe. She lay with her eyes closed, her hand clutching Roland’s, apparently drinking in every word, for she smiled when she was especially moved.

Under such circumstances it was understandable that Kit did not put Slone’s solitaire ring on the third finger of her left hand, that she did not defy the wishes of her mother and father and formally announce her engagement to the young Australian. She could only wait and pray, and live with her conflicted feelings. Repeatedly Kit wondered whether it would not be easier if her mother died, freeing herself from her pain and, not too incidentally, freeing Kit to write to Slone saying, “My darling, we will be married the very next time you are able to return to Cape Town.”

Sianna De Hartog spent New Year’s Eve with the man she knew as her father. Dirk was alone, since the men of his commando unit had gone home to their farms near Pietermaritzburg. He had found Dr. Van Reenen’s hospital unit on the approaches to the besieged town of Ladysmith, where it had been for some weeks, and his reunion with Sianna was a warm and joyful one. He was pleased to see that during her short time at war she had come to no harm; on the contrary, the experience had, it seemed, benefited her, matured her into confidence. She had lost the tentativeness that had once been the natural way of a teenage girl. It pleased him that his niece was evidently a bit more shapely, more womanly, but it pleased him even more when Dr. Van Reenen praised her work.

While waiting for his commandos to return, Dirk spent time with the Boer units, who lazed on the heights overlooking Ladysmith, rather enjoying the long, hot summer days. Supplies had been requisitioned from nearby Boer farms, so there was plenty to eat. During the holidays wives and families came in ox wagons to visit their men. To entertain the visitors, the Boers fired their good German cannon into the town. The obliging British in Ladysmith returned the barrage in a halfhearted way and thrilled the visitors, who were hurriedly led to shelter while the Brit artillery riddled a couple of tents and injured a horse.

“How long will we be encamped here?” Sianna asked Dirk one evening as they sat in front of the hospital tent and watched a spectacular sunset. “You said, Father, that we had to capture the ports. But there’s no effort toward that. It was said that thousands of Boers would rise up to revolt in the Cape Colony, that Cape Town would be a Boer port.”

The news was indeed discouraging. During what the British were already calling Black Week, in December 1899, the Boers had defeated the British on all fronts, inflicting three huge defeats against the best British generals and leaving the roads open to the coast. But only Koos De La Rey had moved to take advantage of these victories, and now he, too, was stalled—up against a vastly superior force in the south. And still the Boer leadership continued to squander Boer strength in the ongoing sieges of the three towns—Mafeking, Kimberley, and Ladysmith.

“Things will change soon, and perhaps quickly,” Dirk said. “The British have new commanders now. Lord Roberts will soon be in Cape Town and in command. Kitchener is to be his second-in-command. We’ll see a change in strategy, but I suspect that if Kitchener is placed in command in the field, it may seem slow. He’s known as a careful man. In the Sudan they say he never made a move until everything was in his favour.”

“I have heard officers here say that there will be a strong effort to relieve Ladysmith soon,” Sianna said.

“Yes, I expect that. That’s why I’m here instead of with De La Rey. The British will move northward. This is my country, after all, and I want to be here to help defend it.”

Sianna shuddered. It was more than the evening’s chill that caused the shivery feeling. She had seen only small engagements, but she knew now how terrible war could be. Modern weapons could make horrors of a man’s flesh. To think of her father, who was quite dear to her, being involved in battle frightened her. There was, however, one consolation. She had not fallen in love. She did not have a young man that she loved to worry about. Dirk was such a capable man, such an experienced man, that she felt he could take care of himself.

The new year found Matt Van Buren and Kelvin Broome back in the war zone. Having made their way easily through the lines around Mafeking, they had made a quick trip by rail from Bulawayo through Portuguese East Africa to the coast. There they had the luck to catch a coastal ship immediately and land in Durban in time to join the New Year’s Eve party in the officers’ mess at headquarters.

On New Year’s Day Matt began to sound out the officers who worked in army headquarters in Durban, to get a picture of what was going on. The imminent change of British command was the most popular topic of conversation, but there was also word that Buller, the man who was to be relieved as commander in chief but left in charge in Natal, was waiting not for specific orders from Roberts and Kitchener, but was actively moving on his own to relieve Ladysmith.

Buller had assembled an army of thirty thousand men south of the besieged town. The 5th Division, General Sir Charles Warren commanding, was at Chieveley. It took little skill on Matt’s part to have himself assigned to the 5th, as a platoon commander in one of its regiments, the Middlesex. He told Kelvin Broome of the new developments, and the newsman decided that a front where thirty thousand British troops were concentrated just might produce a newsworthy story or two.

Slone Shannon did not have to wait for Kitchener to reply to plea to be assigned to a fighting unit. He found a local personnel officer who cut orders for him to join General Warren’s 5th Division near Chieveley, and he travelled north with a supply train to join his new unit. Rain had come to the African veld. Wagons were mired down in the mud, and the efforts of huge teams of oxen and mules merely succeeded in tangling harness and half drowning some of the animals. Slone left the train strung out for miles, the wagons hopelessly stuck, men wet and out of sorts, and rode into the main encampment of the 5th Division.

The first thing he heard when he reported to his assigned unit —a mounted brigade under the Earl of Dundonald—was that Winston Churchill was back at the front. Following his escape, Churchill had, with assistance, made his way safely through enemy territory to the coast and sailed to Durban, where he had been received as a hero. Slone smiled and shook his head, half in astonishment, half in admiration for the arrogant, plucky, and exceedingly fortunate young man.

Slone’s unit was on the move the next morning. As the sun rose, Dundonald’s mounted brigade rode ahead of the army to climb a hill on the south side of the Tugela River. At the top Slone dismounted and looked around. He could look north across the Tugela to a ridge of higher hills, the highest being a peak called Spion Kop. Beyond the hills a flat open plain reached all the way to Ladysmith.

At this moment General Buller himself rode up the slope to confer with his subordinates. Curious, Slone sidled quietly to within eavesdropping distance of the generals. “General Warren,” he heard Buller say, “there is a road on that hill to the left of Spion Kop. It traverses the right shoulder of the hill and passes to the back of Spion Kop. You will take that road, General, and then advance with all haste across the open plain to Ladysmith.”

Like all military orders, it sounded quite simple.

Kelvin Broome had been unable to find a horse with which to ride with Slone and Dundonald’s mounted brigade. He found himself moving with a unit of foot soldiers reinforced with field guns and Maxims. The unit was proceeding quickly toward the river when scouts reported mounted Boers ahead. Soon Kelvin could see the Boers riding slowly away from a rocky, tree-covered kopje and traversing the column’s line of march. British gunners set up their cannon, and a cannonball was sent winging toward the Boers, who were fully three thousand yards away. Cheers went up.

“Give ’em another,” a man shouted.

A second gun roared.

Kelvin was composing a lead line for a story, something about the high sport of potshotting at human game with cannon over three thousand yards of rugged African countryside. The British were moving forward again, keeping an eye on the mounted Boers, who seemed to be in no hurry to get out of sight.

Suddenly Kelvin heard a bullet whine past his ear. The sound was a thin, shrill whistle, like that of a strong wind blowing through a small crack.

“Take cover, take cover,” an officer was yelling.

A foot soldier near Kelvin said, “Gor, the Poms have done it again.”

“Return fire,” came the order. “Horses to the rear. Keep the cannon firing.”

While concentrating on the mounted Boers, the unit had marched within range of Mauser rifles manned by Boers concealed on the kopje. The bullets were coming thick and fast now. A man near Kelvin grunted as if in surprise and sank helplessly to the ground, blood spurting from his throat.

“Artillery!” an officer was shouting. “Artillery!”

The men at the British guns worked with robotic precision, and shells began to fall onto the kopje, but the Boer rifles continued to return the fire, taking a heavy toll. British stretcher-bearers were kept busy, carrying their bloody burdens to the rear.

The British officers had led their men into a nearly perfect ambush. Kelvin, taking cover behind a friendly rock, heard a heavy-caliber slug zing off the stone less than a foot from his head. He had to agree with a soldier who sought cover behind the same boulder.

“Bloody officers,” the man said. “Don’t know what they’re doing. It’s going to be a bloody long war, mate.”

Chapter III

A young messenger found Dirk De Hartog having breakfast with Sianna. Sianna had set up a small table outside her tent, and on it steamed a fresh pot of tea and bowls of hot porridge enriched with fresh milk from a cow that had wandered near the hospital area. Dirk accepted the message, read it, and sighed.

“Something important?” Sianna asked.

“I’m to report to Louis Botha,” he replied.

“Pray God that means the army is going to move at last,” Sianna said.

Dirk finished his porridge, gulped down the last of his tea, and rose. “I’ll get word to you,” he said. He bent and kissed her on the cheek.

General Louis Botha met Dirk outside his tent and returned his salute. “The war brings us together, my friend,” Botha said. “May God bless that which we must do together.” He indicated a map table set up in the open and stood before it with his hands behind his back while Dirk leaned and examined the fresh markings on the map. Nearby a pair of tomtits twittered in a bush. A large, colourful butterfly flew low over the map table, so near that Dirk’s attention was drawn away from the map for a moment.

“The Natal Army left their camps around Frere on January tenth,” Botha said. “Twenty-four thousand men. It appears that Buller intends a crossing of the Tugela at Potgieter’s Drift.” Potgieter’s Drift, a ford of the river, was fifteen miles upstream from the Boer headquarters at Colenso, just below Ladysmith. “Oom Paul has telegraphed me, asking me to take command of our forces on the Tugela.”

Dirk nodded, encouraged. Botha, at least, was a general who was willing to move.

“I’d like you to take your commando unit here,” Botha said, stabbing the map. He was pointing to the hills north of the Tugela. Dirk knew the area.

“I have only twenty-five men,” Dirk said, “and only nineteen of those are experienced. The others are new and must be trained in the field.”

“I understand,” Botha replied. “You will be my eyes, as you were with Koos De La Rey. Avoid contact with the enemy as much as possible. He moves ponderously and carefully, this General Buller, so it should be easy enough to keep track of his position and to keep me informed.”

It was not difficult to find the enemy. The British were arrayed along the south side of the Tugela, their forces stretched out between Potgieter’s Drift and another ford, Trickhardt’s Drift, three miles upstream. Dirk relayed word back to Botha that in his opinion the British would probably try to advance soon.

He was right. On January 16 and 17 Buller crossed to the north side of the Tugela, using both fords, and prepared to march on the hills to the north. Botha ordered his troops to begin their offensive movements.

Slone Shannon, attached to the Earl of Dundonald’s mounted brigade, had been riding hard. Dundonald, after crossing the river with Warren’s forces, had been ordered to try to outflank the Boers by moving his men to the west, around the hills north of the Tugela.

Slone was impressed, for the earl had been moving his brigade as if they were Boer commandos, fully mobile, living off the land. Slone was not privy to the councils of the high brass, but he was enough of a student of warfare to know that if Dundonald could get his men around the hills, he could, with proper reinforcements, be in Ladysmith in a matter of two to three days.

When, on a lovely morning, with the sun glowing red over the kopjes, Slone heard the bugle sounding officer’s call, he fully expected to hear news of the reinforcements and fresh orders to take his squad of men as quickly as possible and make for Ladysmith.

After Slone and all the other officers had gathered, the Earl of Dundonald addressed them. “Gentlemen,” he said, “here is a message from General Warren. I read it to you as received.” He cleared his throat. “ ‘The general officer commanding as far as he can see finds that there are no cavalry whatever round the camp and nothing to prevent the oxen from being swept away. You are to send five hundred mounted men at once to be placed round the camp.’ ”

A groan went up from the assembled officers. Each man held his breath as a staff officer began to call names and units for the necessary but unexciting assignment of moving to the rear, to guard the fifteen thousand oxen of the army’s baggage train.

Slone’s name was not called, so later that morning he rode ahead with the remaining force of one thousand men. They ambushed a small Boer patrol as Dundonald seized a hill at the western edge of the ridge and moved his troops into position, ready to move across the plain to Ladysmith. From this point, Dundonald sent back request after request for additional men and weapons and permission to advance. Permission was denied. “I want you close to me,” Warren replied.