The Sun Is God (2 page)

“Yes, sir!” the young man said, relieved to be getting out of here with his life.

Will addressed the nervous men. “Now lads, this is nothing to be alarmed about. We are British soldiers and they are unarmed African civilians who should pose no threat to the likes of us. We shall fire a warning volley in the air and then we'll advance by squads and drive these people back into their tents. Sergeant Black will cover us with the Maxim at the gates, and I think I can safely say that—”

A heavy stone struck Will on the head, knocking off his pith helmet.

He was only unconscious for a few moments, but when he came to he saw that the gates had been opened and half his command had deserted and were running for it. The mob was racing toward what was left of his men with their improvised weapons and corrugated iron shields.

A spear hit the Scottish corporal next to him and a private took a half brick in the head. Then Sergeant Black opened up with the Maxim gun. It didn't sound like much. Like water coming out of a drain or a fast pair of workmen hammering metal plate. It was not an unpleasant noise at all. Its effect, however, was devastating. Flame spat from the barrel and row upon row of Africans began falling to the ground. Will watched in awe and stupefaction. He had never been in a battle. He had never seen anything like this. Still they kept coming and Sergeant Black kept mowing them down like barley under the scythe, until, finally, the mob began to understand what kind of a machine the Maxim gun was.

“Cease fire!” Will commanded.

Only one minute had passed since Sergeant Black had begun to shoot. One minute and all was changed. Africans were dead and dying in row upon row. Sergeant Black had undoubtedly saved the lives of the remaining soldiers, but at what cost?

Will walked back to the military policemen who had gathered round the Maxim gun in amazement. Its brass was searingly hot and the holy words “Deutsche Waffen und Munitionsfabriken, Berlin, 1898” glowed in the darkness.

All around them the air smelled of blood and gunpowder and death.

Presently a detachment of Australian troopers showed up with a group of MFP's from the Vaalkop. No one could believe the slaughter. When Lieutenant Douglas appeared and attempted to examine Will's head wound, Will pushed him angrily away. “Not me, you fool! Them! Treat them!”

Nineteen had been killed outright. A further sixty-five were wounded. The incident at Camp Z did not merit a mention in the
Manchester Guardian
or the
Times
or even in the fervently anti-British Dutch and German papers. The dead, after all, were only kaffirs. Will was not criticized by anyone. Quite the reverse. His actions were widely praised. He was mentioned in dispatches to General Kitchener and a month later he was informed that he was going to be awarded a DSO. They normally didn't give the Distinguished Service Order to anyone under the rank of Major, but since Will had been the acting commanding officer at Camp Z it had been deemed appropriate. The citation said: “For gallantly leading his men in the face of the enemy.”

He didn't react when he heard the news from Colonel Wilson but when he saw his name in the
Gazette
a month later he was physically sick.

2

THE DUEL

T
he nightmares began a week after the
Gazetting
and two days after Will's company had been transferred to the Lime Kiln barracks in Cape Town. The war was won, of course, and the prisoners had all been set free, but Will's troop of Military Foot Police weren't going home. Their orders were to wait at the Cape for their new destination. There were fires all over the Empire that needed dampening and where the British soldiers went to put out the flames, the MFP went to dampen their ardor for plunder and rapine.

Will's nightmares were so vivid and terrifying that the young captain he had been billeted with moved out after the second day.

Often the nightmares were a simple replay of the incident at Camp Z, but frequently they involved Will's own violent death. They had a vividness which he had never experienced in a dream before, and when he awoke sweating or sometimes crying in his cot he had trouble convincing himself of the veracity of the comparatively tranquil waking world.

Initially, the one sure method of staving off the night terrors was to get blind drunk, and fortunately in Cape Town there were many places where that could be accomplished cheaply on a soldier's pay. But eventually even the local brandy lost its power to charm the demons.

Of course, he could tell no one of these dreams. It would be out of the question to write to his father or mother, and apart from Adam, who was a junior doctor in his father's practice, his other brothers were all military men who would scoff at his weakness. May was another matter. They had been close in age—the two youngest of the family—but May's proud, happy letter to him on learning of the DSO had, he felt, removed her too as a potential source of consolation.

The syphilitic mollies and whores on Waal Street could not be relied upon either. They would listen to him but they did not understand, and after a few incidents of night terror in the more respectable brothels, Will felt it best to keep himself away from such places.

He feared to sleep but he could not keep himself awake.

His days were long and brimming with misery and his nights were worse.

As the weeks dragged without an onward destination for the regiment, Will began to see the inklings of a solution. He must leave the army. He must leave the army at once and in as ignominious a way as possible so that his conscience would be placated and so there could be no possibility of ever rejoining in the event of some national emergency or other contingency.

A court martial would be the quickest and easiest route and to Will's troubled mind, the most honorable one. But courts martial were tricky. You had to grade your offense in such a manner that you would be dismissed from the service but not imprisoned or subject to capital punishment.

Fortunately, as a military policeman, he knew the Army Acts and Kings Regulations backward, but he also knew that military courts were harder on MPs than on other officers. Firing-squad crimes included: delivering up a garrison to the enemy; casting away arms in the presence of the enemy; misbehaving before the enemy in such a manner as to show cowardice; sleeping when acting as a sentinel on active service; causing a mutiny in the forces; disobeying in such a manner as to show a willful defiance of a superior officer; striking a superior officer; deserting HM service.

Offenses that led to cashiering included: the negligent discharging of firearms; occasioning false alarms in camp; fraudulent enlistment; assisting a desertion.

There was some overlap between the crimes and misdemeanors, and the more Will thought about it, the more he saw that striking an officer of the same rank as himself could be the answer. If Will provoked the quarrel it would almost certainly lead to a penalty of cashiering but, because he was a DSO, probably not penal servitude or imprisonment.

He was still very much in the planning stage when an opportunity presented itself at the Kings Arms on Victoria Street. Albright, a tall blonde mustachioed officer from the Horse Guards was abusing a small dark Welsh lieutenant from the engineers. Will knew Albright. He was from Somerset, the third son of an Earl, but not a bad fellow at all. Will and he had played billiards together on several occasions and even in defeat Albright had displayed humility and a measured temper.

Will had no idea what the dispute with the engineer could have been about but he knew that this was an excellent chance. Albright had the little Welshman around the throat and was muttering something about “Nancy.” Nancy could have been a horse, a girl, or even one of the boy mollies for all Will knew or cared.

He got up from his table, strode across the room, and interposed himself between Albright and the quaking lieutenant. “Steady on, Albright, do you always have to be such a confounded bully!” Will said and shoved Albright backward into the long bar.

Albright was amazed but unsure how to proceed next. Was Will on duty? Was he acting in his capacity as a member of the Military Foot Police?

“Get up man! Get up and face me! You've always been a coward and a bloody cheat!” Will snarled.

Albright was propelled forward by one of his friends.

Everyone in the saloon bar had stopped to watch the action now. There would be plenty of witnesses: Lieutenants, Captains, and even a Major or two. Will took the measure of Albright's startled face and threw a punch at it. Albright easily dodged Will's punch and had hit Will twice in response before Will knew what was happening.

“Get him, Ally!” someone yelled and Albright punched Will again: a gut strike that doubled Will over. When Will recovered and saw Albright waiting for him in a boxer's stance he understood the nature of his mistake. He'd probably learned to box at school. Will wiped the blood from his lip.

“What's the matter, Prior? Don't like a fight with a white man, eh?” Albright said.

Will understood the implication only too well. He was seething now. He hated Albright. He hated the army and he hated South Africa and every bastard in it. Most of all, of course, he hated himself.

He took a step away from Albright and straightened his uniform. “My friends shall contact your friends. I trust that you are a man of honor, sir!” Will declared.

Albright's pale, furious face lost its color at once. “You cannot be serious, Prior,” he said.

“I am serious, sir, but if your Lordship does not wish to fight then I shall accept a full and complete apology in the presence of these witnesses,” Will said.

All heads in the saloon were now turned upon the hapless Albright. The sensible little Welshman, Will noted, had long since gone. The establishment was so quiet that they could hear the call of the fishmongers on the wharves a half a mile away.

“So be it, madman! My seconds will call upon you this afternoon,” Albright said, his voice trembling with rage and confusion.

Will's second, Lieutenant Blakely, a Scot and something of a damned fool, arranged the whole thing. They were to meet at Scarborough on Table Mountain at dawn, which meant that they would all have to get up at four in the morning.

Word of the duel, of course, had spread throughout the colony. No one had been called out in Cape Town in ten years. Dueling was both illegal and, worse, unfashionable. And so, despite the hour, when Blakely and Will arrived at Scarborough they found a small crowd waiting for them.

Albright's second was Lord Donnybrook, a Captain in the Grenadiers, an excitable young man who thought the duel “a fine wheeze.”

Donnybrook and Blakely consulted for a moment and Will was surprised to find himself looking at a box of antique single-shot dueling pistols.

Will examined the grey sky and the pale, milky sun rising over False Bay. It was almost like the heathland of the East Riding. Not a bad place to die at all. Yes, this was the way to go. To finish it one way or the other. Will smiled at Blakely. “Let's get on with it and if he kills me, please tell Albright that there were no hard feelings and that the whole thing was my fault,” Will said and marched to a position on the moor that was well away from the chattering crowd of officers, civilians, and, scandalously, one or two ladies.

Donnybrook marked out twenty-five paces from where Will was standing and Albright assumed his position on the ground. He had taken off his hat and jacket and was holding both pistols, cocked and ready.

The seconds retreated and a hush went over the small crowd of spectators. Albright's shirt billowed in the light breeze and his golden hair flowed freely behind his head. Without further ado Albright immediately raised both his pistols and before Will quite knew what was happening he saw a cloud of pistol smoke and heard two reports. One of the balls whisked so close to his left ear that he felt its hum in passing, but the other came nowhere near him.

When the smoke cleared he saw Albright's pale, amazed face. Will displayed both his arms Christ fashion to demonstrate that he was unhurt. Albright nodded, began to tremble, and after a quarter-minute pulled himself together and stood to attention, facing his potential assassin. Will could see that the poor man was terrified. Even third sons of Earls loved life and hated death.

Will grinned and discharged both his pistols into the earth. When the smoke cleared Albright looked at him with wonder. The seconds reloaded the pistols and the men were moved five paces closer. Albright cocked his dueling pistols and pointed them at Will.

A hawk was rising on a thermal. The sea was turning a deeper shade of blue.

Yes
, Will thought, c
ome on, man, do it!

Albright saw the gleam of acceptance in Will's eye, held the pistols horizontal for a moment and then shook his head.

“He wants to die, Donnybrook, he wants me to kill him, to save himself the trouble. I will not give the damned fool what he wants!”

Albright began walking back to his horse. “Come back, you coward!” Will yelled.

Albright ignored him.

“Stand your ground or I'll shoot you in the bloody back!”

Albright kept walking.

Will pulled the trigger on one of the pistols and shot Albright in the thigh. He went down with a strange animal-like shriek. Donnybrook ran to attend him and a booing noise arose from the small crowd.

They rode back to Cape Town and it wasn't until the next afternoon that Will was arrested. Albright survived the gunshot but the wound suppurated and a fever nearly did away with him. Popular sentiment was against Will from the start and the verdict of the rapidly constituted court martial was a foregone conclusion. He had no connections of any kind and, but for the DSO, he would have been reduced to the ranks and sent to a penal station on some godforsaken rock thousands of miles from anywhere.

As it was he was simply lectured by the Judge Advocate, cashiered without pay or remittances, and quietly drummed out of the army. He was blackballed in every club and pub in town and formally told to quit Cape Town. He found his way to Durban and it was there, among the disaffected Boers and angry Dutch immigrants, that he saw the pamphlets offering loans and passage to the German regions of Africa and elsewhere.