Tales from the Archives Page 3

  I took a seat and poured a cup. Just the aroma calmed my nerves and the sip went a long way toward restoring my equilibrium. “Morrison, I need to get into the bush as soon as possible. Tomorrow morning if possible.”

  “Not done, old man. Simply not.” He shook his head even as he dipped into his gin again.

  “Why not?”

  “Logistics, man, logistics. We’ll need porters, supplies, ammunition, at the very least.” He turned bleary eyes in my direction.

  “Where we heading?”

  “We?” I asked, somewhat taken aback by the notion that I’d be saddled with this unfortunate before me.

  He snorted a short laugh. “Unless you’ve taken up Swahili since I saw you last, old man, you’re going to need me to deal with the locals.”

  I looked over to where the barman stacked glasses on the back bar.

  Morrison saw me and gave a high-pitched titter. “Hardly the locals you’ll be dealing with.” He took another pull from his glass and looked a trifle less inebriated than he had moments before. “You still haven’t answered. Where we heading?”

  “Rorke’s Drift first. After that, it depends on where the trail leads.”

  “Zululand, then, eh?” He drained his glass and snapped it back onto the bar. “Not a good place to be these days, is it?”

  I sipped my tea and thought about how much I could tell him. “My brief mentioned some difficulties, but we shouldn’t be too close to those.”

  “If you’re going across the Buffalo, you’re going too close, old man.” He turned his head and looked out of the tall windows into Smith Street. “Too close by half, I say,” he said without looking back at me. “Two days. Day after tomorrow. Dawn.”

  “I’ll be ready.” I finished the tea and placed the cup back onto the saucer.

  He sighed and turned to face me once more. “What are looking for? Animal? Vegetable? Mineral?” He regarded me from under his eyebrows.

  “Animal,” I said. “A man, actually.”

  “And you think this fella is lurking about Rorke’s Drift?” He sat up.

  “No, but he was last seen near there. We need to find him. The Director is concerned that he may be here to cause trouble with the natives.”

  Morrison snorted. “I think that trouble with the natives, as you so blithely call it, is inevitable.”

  “Be that as it may, Morrison, I need to get out there and find him.”

  “Who is this fella? Some rogue gone native from the garrison? What can possibly entertain the M—err—Director’s attention, eh?”

  “A native. Somebody named InDuna Lumbwi.”

  A crash from the back of the bar startled me. When I jerked to look, the bartender stooped down and started sweeping the loose shards of glass into a pile. “Sorry to disturb you, sir. It slipped...”

  I turned back to Morrison, and he no longer appeared inebriated at all. His look had turned dark and his brow furrowed. His eyes darted to the barman and back in small, furtive blinks. When he spoke his voice was barely louder than a whisper. “InDuna is a title, not a name, and if I were you, I’d not mention the other until we’re well out in the bush.”

  “What the devil?” I started.

  He shot me a look that quelled my voice, if not my curiosity. “Day after tomorrow. Dawn. You’ve got money for bearers?”

  I nodded once.

  “Good. I’ll find us the bearers and a guide or two.” He shot me another dark look. “Get some sleep. You’re going to need it.”

  ******

  Three days out of Durban found us deep in the bush on the trail to Rorke’s Drift, a ford on the Buffalo River in north-eastern Natal Province.

  “I say, Durham,” Morrison said as we settled into camp for the night. “What’s so important about this blasted amulet anyway? This amulet of whozy-whatis?”

  “Amulet of Amenartas,” I said. I shrugged and gazed into the fire. “You know what the Ministry’s briefs are like. Long on the what and lacking on the why, eh?”

  He barked a bitter sounding laugh. “Oh, too true, that. And often short on the real what, what?” He laughed at his own joke. “Do you know anythin’ about it, old boy? What it looks like? How will we know it if we manage to find it?”

  “According to the Ministry’s Archivist it’s a linked collection of blue stones. The earliest reports come from some inscriptions found in the sandstone in the Kalahari.”

  “Deuced little to go on. Are we to chase every will-o-the-wisp then?” He took a pull from his drink. “Something must have happened to send us dancing into the bush on the Director’s strings, eh? Any idea what it was?”

  “It’s the Zulus. Cetshwayo’s been acting up and Her Majesty is concerned.”

  He snorted most disrespectfully.

  I ignored his rudeness toward the crown. “In February, the Ministry received a report that a hunter spotted this InDuna Lumbwi at Rorke’s Drift, and he was wearing a necklace of glowing blue stones.”

  “Hunters,” Morrison scoffed. “They get out in the bush and see all sorts of things. What makes this one so special?”

  “He died shortly after making the report.” I paused. “Along with all fifty-two of his bearers and guides.”

  Morrison turned a sour look in my direction. “How is this related to Lumbwi?”

  “Apparently Lumbwi and a pair of natives killed them all.”

  He blinked in confusion. “A pair? How in the blazes?”

  I toasted him with my cup. “That’s what the Ministry would like to know. And there is one more thing...” I hesitated for a moment, wondering how to phrase it.

  Morrison waited for me to go on.

  “This Lumbwi has been popping up all over Southern Africa and where ever he shows, there’s trouble.”

  “The same could be said for us, old boy.”

  “The first reports on record are from a London Missionary Society mission to Lunda Province. They reported a brute of a native who came in out of the Kalahari one day wearing a necklace of blue stones. He even sat for a portrait.”

  Morrison snickered. “A portrait? What? Bonington travelling with missionaries now, is he? Come to sketch the landscape and dashed off a quick sketch, did he?”

  Reaching into an inner pocket I pulled out a small square of paper and handed it to him.

  Morrison scowled in consternation but took the paper. He tilted it toward the fire to get a good look at the face of our quarry.

  “That’s a magento-static copy of the missionary’s original sketch from the Ministry’s archives.”

  He studied it for a few moments and then glanced back at me. “Supposed to be our man, is he?”

  I shrugged. “Supposed to be.”

  “That’s quite a scar?” Morrison said, looking at a distinctive pucker of flesh along the man’s jaw line. “That should help if we need to pick him out of a crowd.”

  “That necklace he’s wearing?” I pointed to the distinctive pattern of stone and thong the artist had rendered. “That’s the Amulet of Amenartas and it’s supposed to have glowed, even in the light of day.”

  Morrison offered the sketch back, and I slipped it carefully back into my inner pocket. “So? I still don’t get it. Why’s this blighter so interestin’ to the Ministry. What’s the interest in a big-boned brute with some glowin’ trinkets?”

  “Shortly after this missionary left the village, Lumbwi slaughtered every living inhabitant down to the livestock.”

  “Alone?” Morrison seemed impressed.

  “Three warriors helped him.”

  Morrison sat back in his seat. “Well, with three warriors against an unarmed village? That seems hardly note worthy, old boy?”

  “In the winter of ‘98,” I said.

  Startled, Morrison held up his hand and counted on his fingers before looking over at me, astonishment on his face. “But that’s...”

  I nodded.

  “Are they sure it’s the same man?”

  “Of course not. How could it be?”
I gazed into the fire for a long moment. “Still, if it is and this Lumbwi and his amulet were to join forces with Cetshwayo and his Zulus now? What deviltry could they concoct?”

  Morrison’s lips pressed together in a thin line and I could see him contemplating the catalogue of catastrophes such an alliance might produce.

  Six weeks later, I was ready to pack it in. We followed rumours and stories from Rorke’s Drift deep into the Transvaal almost to the headwaters of the Limpopo, across into Swaziland and back, crisscrossing the bush from settlement to kraal, village to fort, and back again. I could not dislodge the suspicion that our bearers laughed behind their fires in the night at our endless meandering.

  I had even been forced to abandon my steamer trunk. The ubiquitous mud and dirt clogged the delicate machinery of the articulated legs. Filthy water fouled the boiler’s tubes until it could barely eke out enough steam to support itself. In the end I ran out of coal pellets and was reduced to distributing my goods to native bearers while Morrison, damn his eyes, snickered at me. I left it beside the trail somewhere in the Transvaal like a blown mount. It was simply too heavy to carry.

  I found it embarrassing.

  “How long will you keep this up, old boy?” Morrison asked as we settled in after another long and fruitless day’s tramp through the scorch and the dust.

  I eyed the diminished level of stores. We had reduced what had seemed like a vast pile requiring the services of thirty-five bearers to a state where I worried that we might soon be reduced to eating only game and drinking a foul decoction of the local redbush. We had paid off twenty of the bearers at Ngwenya and the fifteen remaining were sufficient and more.

  When I did not respond, he spat into the fire. “It’s a big country. What did you think? You’d come out here and knock on a few doors? ‘Excuse me, sir or madam? Have you seen this man?’ It’s a needle in a haystack I tell you.”

  Out in the bush, the scratching call of a hunting cat echoed in the night.

  Still, I had no answer. Morrison had the right of it and, while I feared that his motive for pressing me on the subject had more to do with his dwindling supply of gin than the futility of the search, I had to admit to myself that his argument had merit.

  “How far to the next kraal?” I asked.

  Morrison sat up straight and called something across the camp to our guide.

  “Kesho, mbwana, kesho mchana,” he said.

  “Tomorrow afternoon,” Morrison said, looking back at me. “Then what?”

  I sighed and threw a small stick onto the fire. “If there’s nothing there, we’ll head back to Durban and send a wire for further instructions.”

  “Buck up, old man,” Morrison said. “You can’t follow a trail that doesn’t exist.”

  A hyena laughed in the distance but the sound cut off at the barking cough of a lion.

  There seemed nothing else to say, and I took to my cot to try to sleep. Failure felt bitter in my mouth and I wondered if the tang of the gin kept Morrison from tasting it.

  The following afternoon, our luck changed.

  Our guide, M’Polo, led the way across a brush-studded plain. I kept the Enfield-Monser in my hands, ready to fire should the need arise. The heavy loads would stop anything up to and including a bull elephant but with the limited visibility in the bush, I feared we might stumble on trouble without much warning. Morrison eyed me with some amusement and kept his ancient four-bore on the sling. As the day wore on and the sun beat down, the rifle grew heavier.

  “I say, Morrison, why do you bother with that ancient stick?” I asked, making conversation to help pass the time.

  “What, then? This?” he asked, placing his hand on the barrel. “You think I should be tugging about one of those?” He jerked his chin at my Enfield-Monser.

  “You’re authorised, aren’t you?” I asked. I patted the stock. “Latest thing out of Sheffield, don’t you know.”

  “Bah!” he spat. “I’ll take my Birmingham iron over those fancy doo-dads out here in the bush.”

  “What? Enfield-Monser? Finest British steel? Compressed air powered gyro slugs to spin the shell?” I shook my head in dismay. “This throws almost twice the weight as that four-bore and has only half the recoil, old boy!”

  He sniffed. “And what do you do if the shell punctures, eh? Answer me that? And where do you get your bloody fancy gyro-slugs out here in the bush, that’s what I wanna know. Can you answer me that?” He shook his head and patted the barrel of his gun again. “No, I’ll take simple over some clankerton’s toy. At least I know this will work.

  I scoffed. “That’s nothing more than a shoulder mounted cannon.”

  “Indeed, it is and you’ll be grateful for it one of these days, mark my words.”

  He turned away from me and marched ahead, effectively cutting off further conversation. I frowned and sighed. Morrison was one of ours, but it seemed to me that he had a lot to learn about the proper respect for crown, country, and fine, modern weapons.

  We were still some distance out when I heard the bearers behind us muttering. Usually they said little while on the march, hoisting their burdens in the morning and moving almost silently through the bush all day. I looked back to see what caused the commotion and saw several of them looking ahead, up into the shocking blue firmament.

  “Vultures,” Morrison said. “Something’s dead.”

  I did not see them at first, the brilliant sun dazzle my eyes but, adjusting the magnification on my tele-monocle, I caught the movements of hundreds of broad wings against the sky.

  “A lot of somethings by the look,” Morrison added.

  The smell hit us from half a league away. The noise of feeding scavengers squabbling over the remains cut off sharply as we approached the kraal’s outer fence and Morrison fired a few rounds from his ancient Tranter through the gate into the nearest flock of vultures. Those too heavy to fly scuttled off between the huts while those that could left streaky, gray souvenirs as they took wing.

  Scattered among the wattle and daub domes, the bodies of the inhabitants lay dismembered and scattered about. I could see dead cattle in the inner kraal, bodies already bloating in the heat.

  Being a good Englishman, I did my best not to retch. I had been on the battlefield and seen the gory results of grapeshot. The torn body of a child was nearly my undoing.

  Morrison spat onto the red dust. “They won’t be telling much,” he said.

  He turned to the guide. Morrison spoke earnestly and at some length while the guide merely shook his head, the whites of his eyes prominent in his distress. He kept repeating, “Namba, namba, mbwana.” and “Ulamali, ulamali.”

  Finally, Morrison stopped badgering the man and blew out a breath before saying something else and waving his hand around to encompass the village.

  The guide frowned but nodded. “Ndiyo, mbwana,” he said before turning away and shouting for one of the other bearers to join him. Together they disappeared around the outer perimeter of the krall, their eyes scanning the rust coloured ground.

  “I say, what was that about, Morrison?”

  “M’Polo there is unhappy about the bodies. Black magic, he says. He won’t go into the village.”

  “What do you think?” I asked, turning back to look at the braver vultures peeking around the edge of a nearby hut. I heard the squawking from the far side of the village where the birds had already returned to their horrid feast out of view.

  “I don’t know what to think.” Morrison looked at me, his bloodshot eyes looking suddenly a decade older. “I’m afraid you may have found your inDuna.”

  “That’s mad! Why would—”

  “Mbwana! Mbwana!” The shout carried over the rising din of feasting vultures. “Mtu maisha!”

  Surprise flashed across Morrison’s face. “Somebody’s alive!” He turned and jogged off toward the shout.

  We found a youth half under a thorn-bush. M’Polo held him while the bearer waved a stick to keep the buzzards at bay.

/>   Morrison knelt beside the boy and they had a quiet conversation. I looked away scanning the bush for movement. When I looked back, Morrison was closing the boy’s eyes with two fingers.

  I looked again and realized that the youth was not half under the bush after all. Part of his lower body was missing, and the dark shadows under the bush had nothing to do with the sun.

  Morrison stood and blew out a great breath. “Alright, then.” He looked at me as if it were somehow my fault before turning to M’Polo. After a short conversation, the two natives continued their circuit around the rude compound and we headed back to the gate.

  “Did he tell you what happened?” I asked as we approached the waiting bearers.

  “Yes.” His garrulous manner gone, his stride took on purpose as we closed on the bearers. He pointed and shouted. After a few minutes the porters stacked our goods under an acacia and began pulling shovels and picks from the kit.

  It took us the rest of the afternoon to bury them all—or at least the pieces we could find.

  The grisly chore completed, we moved upwind half a league or so to camp for the night. Filthy, tired, and smelling of death, none of us had much appetite but built roaring fires against the dark anyway. I went through the motions as the sun set, making a pot of tea and cursing as I emptied the next to last tin of Assam’s finest. Much longer and I’d be reduced to the native redbush—or cadging Morrison’s gin. I tossed the empty tin aside.

  “What’d he say?” I asked, settling into the camp chair to wait for the pot to finish steeping. “The boy.”

  Morrison splashed some gin into a tin cup and swallowed a dollop before answering. “Yesterday a small band of travellers visited the village; three warriors and a great man—an inDuna with a scar along his jaw. The elder son welcomed them, gave them sorghum beer, and after a visit with the chief, they moved on. The inDuna wore a necklace of blue stones that shone, even in the light of day, he said. Last night they came back. He was out looking for a lost calf. He came back when he heard the screaming.” Morrison paused and took another swig from his cup. “They caught him. The inDuna ripped his leg off and the four of them took it with them off into the bush.”