Serving Shaka

By Gareth Williams

Serving Shaka’ is a dramatic evocation of Zulu nation-building, immersing the reader in vivid battle scenes, poignant relationships and tense political machinations.



Having masterminded Napoleon Bonaparte’s escape from St Helena with his friend Emile Béraud in Needing Napoleon, history teacher Richard Davey now finds himself stranded on the African coast. Richard and Emile encounter Shaka Zulu, a leader even more ruthless and ambitious than the former French emperor. Richard’s secret, that he is from the future, is revealed; Bonaparte seeks to outmanoeuvre Shaka; and Emile joins the nascent Zulu army. Buffeted by the birth pangs of nation-building, Richard tries to exert his influence and retain his sense of self, relying on half-remembered lectures from two hundred years in the future.

• Language: English
• Publisher: The Conrad Press
• Release date: May 1, 2022
• ISBN: 9781839784705

Book preview

Preface

This is the second book in The Richard Davey Chronicles. The first book is Needing Napoleon in which schoolteacher Richard Davey discovers the secret of travelling into the past. He takes that one-way trip in the hope of helping Napoleon Bonaparte win the Battle of Waterloo. Having tried and failed to change the course of history, he follows Bonaparte into exile on St Helena.

Once there Richard embarks on a passionate affair with a French general’s wife before convincing Napoleon he can escape. He and his friend Emile escort the former emperor, disguised as a serving-maid, on board an East India ship. During their voyage to Africa, the ship is attacked and boarded by pirates. Although they manage to defeat their attackers, rescuing three Guernsey fishermen in the process, the ship is badly damaged by cannon fire.

Bonaparte’s identity is revealed during the fight with the pirates and the captain of the East Indiaman senses an opportunity, taking him into custody. The damage to the vessel renders it vulnerable to a violent storm that blows up soon afterwards and it is reduced to little more than a wreck.

Richard and Emile manage to turn the tables on the ship’s captain and compel him to set them ashore on the coast of Natal.

Gareth Williams, February 2022

Chapter One

June 1816

Winter on the Natal coast is benign. With a blanket over his shoulders and the nimbus of a crackling fire embracing him, Richard nestles his hip into a mattress of fine sand. He is snug and comfortable. But he cannot sleep.

He watches Bonaparte talking with the Guernsey fishermen dressed in their dark blue, knitted sweaters and loose-fitting, three-quarter-length canvas trousers. French cadences are interrupted by shrugs and frowns, followed by bursts of laughter.

Napoleon’s Corsican French and the islanders’ patois collide in unlikely companionship. Richard wonders how often he spoke so informally and willingly with ordinary people when ruler of France?

There are just six of them cast ashore on the African coast. That makes everyone worthy of attention, even to a former emperor. Richard cannot tell what they are discussing but he soon hears a cork pulled from a bottle. Laughter grows as the reach of the firelight shrinks.

Emile rolls over and shrugs off the sack he is using as a covering. He adds brushwood to the fire, squatting close to the flames as they lick hungrily at the fresh fuel. He looks across the dancing orange light as if he senses Richard watching him and grins. His teeth are white and even and his green eyes sparkle with gold.

‘What are you thinking, my friend?’ he asks in a fine baritone as warm as the fire.

‘Captain Simpson, when he left us in the skiff. You didn’t shoot when Bonaparte ordered you to.’ Richard leaves the question unspoken.

Emile stirs the fire with a stick, edging back as the fire bites more deeply into the wood.

‘No, I did not shoot.’ His English is improving quickly because he insists on using it all the time. ‘The captain is a dangerous man and I hope we never see him again. Even so, I will not shoot a man in the back. I have my honour. Not even my emperor may subvert that.’

Richard does not point out the irony of referring to the castaway Napoleon, dressed in Emile’s cavalry uniform, as an emperor.

‘I am glad,’ he replies over the snap and crackle of the fire. ‘When I prevented him from shooting, the look on his face, he was astonished, but there was something else…’ Again, Richard lets his words run dry.

Emile shuffles around to face his friend. The flames conjure shadows behind him, casting his proud nose and lithe body in grotesque parody.

‘The emperor is a man of contained violence. For a long time, his Grande Armée was the repository for it. Now, he is only one man, but his appetite is grown so large, he needs followers to command, to dissipate his savagery.’

Richard frowns and sits up. ‘But you love him. You have followed him the length of the world. Why do that if you see what he is?’

The lieutenant sits back on the sand, his arms stretched back in support. His fingers dig into the fine particles.

‘Am I the first man to fall in love without knowing everything about the object of my affection? Am I the first to idolise an idea, embrace a vision, worship an image?’

The Guernseymen are growing raucous on ship’s brandy. Napoleon slaps their backs and shares their jokes but his turns with the bottle see little liquid reach his pursed lips, despite the pain Richard knows torments him.

‘Of course not, Emile. I understand. But now that you see him for what he is?’

‘I loved him when he was fat and feeble. I followed him when he was cast aside. I remained loyal in exile. Now we have reached a new land. You and I brought him here. It is our duty to see to it we did not act in vain. He may be a cracked vessel filled with gunpowder but he is also the greatest general of his age. A brilliant man who acts on such a scale that even the mighty British empire acknowledges his prowess!’ Passion thickens Emile’s voice.

Richard nods. He bites his lip as he lies back on the cool sand and pulls his blanket across his body. ‘Forgive me, Emile. You are right. He is our responsibility now.’

Emile returns to his spot on the other side of the fire. Richard lies still. He hears his friend sigh as he shuffles the sack covering into place.

The three fishermen are quiet now, rolled together head to toe at the fringes of the firelight, like sardines in a can. Richard hears one of them snoring.

Only Bonaparte is beyond the reach of the flickering radiance. Richard can just make out his outline, darker than the shadows, standing with his hands clasped behind his back, staring away from the beach.

Richard tries to imagine what he is thinking. Is he frightened? Is he inquisitive? Is he sensing new opportunities?

As the fire dies down, the former emperor turns back to the light, adds wood to the fire and turns in. He lies facing the fire, dark, blue eyes watching the flames as if divining his fate.

‘Good night, my American friend.’

Richard twitches but replies quickly before rolling over. Scant months ago, having Napoleon Bonaparte call him friend would have been the highpoint of his life. Now, it makes him uncomfortable and not just because he is no American.

Was there a hint of annoyance in Bonaparte’s tone? Has he really forgiven Richard so quickly for frustrating his efforts to kill the East Indiaman’s captain?

All is quiet in their rudimentary camp but Richard remains awake. The rhythmic swish of the sea on sand, and the deeper pulses of waves disintegrating against the reef, sweep into the space vacated by human voices.

There is a pattern to the sounds of the sea that draws Richard in, washing away his tension. He closes his eyes. The scent of salt water and the faint fishiness of beaches everywhere tickles his nostrils. The sand that seemed so dusty now smells damp.

He is drawn into a memory of his Aunt Patricia, trim in a one-piece swimsuit, emerging from the sea, her dark, dyed bob flattened to her head, her habitually cold eyes sparkling. She raises her hand awkwardly and waves at him, a smile almost crossing her lips. The sea is grey, to match the sky, and eddies of wind toss sand about unpredictably.

It is the only proper holiday they ever spent together, corralled behind a rainbow windbreak on the beaches of the Norfolk coast. Remembrance is blurring into dreaming when a deep grunt intrudes.

Richard sits upright, head swivelling around, scanning the figures around the dull glow of the fading fire. The sustained sound comes again, echoing from the interior.

He jumps up to find only one flimsy bundle of brushy twigs unburned. He pushes them into the embers, holding his breath until orange fingers reach out and claim his offering.

He hears the grunt a third time, off to his left, a straining noise from deep in the belly of a big animal. It appears to be stationary.

‘What on earth is that?’ asks Emile crouched beside Richard, grasping his scabbard in his left hand, fingering the sword hilt with his right.

‘Something big and close by, if you ask me,’ replies Richard nervously, eyeing the guttering fire.

The two friends scour the fringe of scrub closest to their camp for flammable material. The deep, anguished noises continue at intervals. The bushes are mostly green-stemmed, and even in winter, sappy and resistant. They gather an armful of the drier twigs and sticks which they feed parsimoniously into the blackened circle of the fire. The grunts are punctuated by a bellowing roar. It sounds closer.

‘This lot won’t last us more than an hour,’ observes Richard reluctantly.

‘We could try to scare it off with a musket shot?’ suggests Emile.

Richard agrees and they both pull weapons from a canvas sack close to Napoleon’s bed. They load deliberately. The three fishermen stir, huddling together and whispering nervously about the source of the visceral cry.

Emile aims a musket into the undergrowth perpendicular to the shoreline and pulls the trigger. The discharge is loud but its aftershock is swallowed by the suffocating night.

Napoleon sits up rubbing his face. ‘I know what makes such a noise. Josephine’s zoo at Malmaison was death to my peace. Always some creature caterwauling.’

Emile and Richard look inquisitively at Bonaparte and the Guernseymen also gather around.

‘That is a lion,’ the deposed emperor asserts. ‘The roar carries for kilometres. You can imagine trying to sleep with that outside the window! In the end, I ordered the beast removed. I presented it to Tsar Alexander when we signed the Treaty of Tilsit. Perhaps that is why he broke the terms so readily!’ Napoleon laughs loudly and the lion roars back.

‘Will it attack?’ asks the youngest fisherman in a squeaky tenor. His spot-pocked face is an angry colour in the firelight and his sun-blond hair shines like the sand beneath his fidgeting feet.

‘Josephine was forever regaling me with natural history. The males are lazy, only stirring to protect their females from rivals. These grunts and roars declare their territory and warn off other males.’

Emile lowers the musket, resting the stock on his booted foot. ‘So, we are in no danger?’ he enquires.

Another grunt and then a roar. The latter sounds much closer.

‘Unless there is a female. They are the hunters.’ Napoleon seems unperturbed.

‘How many are out there?’ asks the tallest Guernsey sailor through his thick beard.

‘There are several females in a pride.’ Napoleon looks surprised he remembers so much of his late wife’s lectures.

‘I can hear two voices,’ Richard offers.

‘Could be a single male, they have quite a range. The roar is certainly a male. Lionesses’ calls do not carry far unless they are in season.’

The one fisherman who has remained silent, a squat bear of a man with bandy legs, spits into the fire. The hiss is drowned by a series of grunts from the right, far from the noises that pin them to the fire’s circle.

‘How many lionesses in a pack?’ asks the adolescent Guernsey lad.

‘At least three in a pride, could be double that,’ cautions Bonaparte. ‘The fire should keep them back. How long until dawn?’

‘Too long,’ replies Richard. ‘Sunrise should be around seven. It can’t be much past midnight.’

‘Then we have to find a more defensible position than this beach.’ Bonaparte sounds every inch the commander.

‘I agree but moving beneath the trees, we will sound like a herd of cattle, my emperor,’ Emile observes tactfully.

‘Not to mention the risk of ambush. At least on the sand we can see what’s coming,’ the tall, erstwhile pirate offers, his voice rich with experience.

‘Only so long as the fire lasts. Then what?’ his barrel-chested friend asks.

‘I don’t think lions like water. Couldn’t we just take to the shallows until dawn?’ Richard suggests tentatively. He is glad the dancing shadows hide his face.

‘And if their hunger overcomes their fear of the sea?’ Emile’s scepticism spills over, ‘or our powder gets damp or the crash of the surf disguises their approach?’

Richard shrugs.

‘Inland it is, then. Let’s fashion some torches. They might not last but they’ll give us a chance to reconnoitre the terrain.’ Bonaparte’s voice brooks no dissent. More than that, Richard realizes, they all want a leader to obey. It makes them feel safer.

The three fishermen prove adept at fashioning firebrands to light their way. Richard and Emile pack up their weapons and bedding. As each man shoulders a sack, roars and grunts pierce the night to left and right.

The tall sailor leads the way, holding his sputtering torch ahead of him with Napoleon at his shoulder. They stumble over ground cover fixing shallow dunes to the beach’s fringe and then press on into the dune forest. Many of the trees are no more than leggy bushes, in some places gathered in impenetrable clumps but elsewhere scattered sparsely amid patches of grassland.

As the sound of the sea diminishes, Richard becomes acutely aware of the noise six men make on unfamiliar ground. Just as he finishes that thought, the young fisherman trips and sprawls into a low-lying bush. His cursing turns to yelps as he struggles to get free from pairs of long, white thorns.

His older companions hand off their torches and take hold of his arms. They try to pull him free, ripping his clothes and skin without dislodging him. The boy is swearing like an old sea dog, spouting all he has learned in the company of pirates. Every time he ends a curse, he gasps and screams.

‘He sounds like prey staked out for predators. Shut him up before he draws every carnivore in Africa down on our heads!’ Richard insists.

The muscular pair step back shaking their heads. ‘He’s proper stuck,’ they mutter in unison.

Emile steps forward, sword drawn. The boy winces and turns his head away, a thorn the length of his little finger scoring a deep trough across his cheek. Dripping blood, eyes squeezed shut, his body trembles.

Emile begins to hack at the bush, his tempered steel slicing through the maze of slender branches. The young lad squawks and yells. The lieutenant is soon panting but the bush is trimmed to a narrow bed of nails, supported on a few gnarled stems. Bending his back further, he aims his sword lower and in a few well-aimed strokes, he cuts through.

The clump of thorny tentacles drops to the ground with the lad on top. Despite his protestations and whimpers, his two companions roll him onto his side and begin to pull away the thorny spurs.

‘The devil spawned this plant, damn his eyes!’ exclaims the tall pirate, sucking pricked fingers. A lion roars repeatedly to their right.

‘Look at my hand! That’s a two-inch cut and deep too,’ complains the bass voice of the shortest Guernseyman. At last, they work their mate free and peer down at him in the light of a guttering torch. Richard looks between their shoulders, inspecting the damage.

The boy’s clothes are shredded and he is scratched all over his face, hands, and feet. Blood soaks through his rags in a dozen places and his bare feet are raw. He sits up and reaches a shaky hand to his shoulder. Tentatively, he grasps a protruding spike between thumb and forefinger and pulls. He croaks as an inch of white thorn slides from the puncture point.

Richard spots another barb stuck in the sole of his left foot and yanks it free before the lad can object. His eyes swim and he blinks rapidly. Richard feels sorry for him.

‘What’s your name, boy?’ he asks gently.

‘P-Pierre Bisson,’ the youth mumbles. ‘That’s my older brother, Jean,’ he indicates the tallest of the three. Grunts echo from their right.

‘I’m Daniel Langlois,’ offers the third to complete the exchange.

Napoleon interrupts the introductions by hauling Pierre to his feet. ‘No time for niceties. You are covered in blood and I doubt a hungry lioness will turn her nose up at your scrawny carcass!’

Pierre tries to wipe away thin trails of blood with his punctured hands but only succeeds in smearing himself more thoroughly.

Richard registers what is going on with a corner of his mind but stares intently at the butchered remains of the vicious shrub. He prods it with a boot.

More grunts sound directly ahead of them. The plant is dense and springy but its thorns claw at his foot. He manoeuvres the severed sections of the shrub into a line with his feet. Where two sections touch, they cling together as if desperate to reverse Emile’s cuts.

Richard looks around. He can see several large specimens of the same species. He thinks they are some kind of acacia.

‘We could construct a boma,’ he suggests to Emile who stares at him blankly. ‘A palisade, like an infantry square, with thorns instead of bayonets.’

Emile grins and heads for the nearest spiky shrub, waving his sword. The moon is a reluctant sliver in the ebony sky but the steel glints, even as it moves outside the reach of the fading torches. Richard stares upwards, waiting for his sight to adjust. Stars punctuate the black curtain.

He sighs and retrieves the canvas bag he has been carrying. He opens the drawstring and rummages inside. Close to the bottom, his hand feels rough hessian. It is a sack containing hard tack and other provisions. Richard empties everything into the bottom of the holdall.

He interrupts Emile, who is making rapid progress, and borrows his knife. He cuts the sacking into strips and begins wrapping his palms. Napoleon watches with an unreadable expression before extending his hands. Richard offers him the remaining strips of thick cloth.

Soon the two of them are bent double, hauling offcuts of the shrub, and arranging them in a ring.

‘This stuff is like barbed wire,’ Richard exclaims as another thorn pierces his makeshift protection.

‘I am not sure you have that phrase right, in French at least,’ replies Bonaparte, flexing his hands uncomfortably.

Richard shakes his head. Barbed wire was invented in the United States just after their Civil War, fifty-odd years in the future. ‘Forgive me. I simply meant it is as sharp and treacherous as shrapnel.’

Emile and Napoleon both nod as they continue fashioning the spiked wall. The noises of lions echo all around.

By the time Emile has cut up four shrubs, they have enough material to forge a double ring, large enough for the six of them to lie within. They have piled the thorny barrier to neck height. One section is loose to allow access.

The three fishermen return with a good supply of dry fuel and freshly blazing brands. They busy themselves building a fire at the centre of the protective circle. When all is ready, Richard, Emile and Napoleon join the others inside the defences, hauling the loose section in until it locks tightly with the rest of the structure.

‘Five hours or so,’ suggests Richard. He strains his ears but hears nothing but the breathing of his companions and the crackle of the fire.

‘Could they have lost interest or scented more usual prey?’ asks Emile.

‘Or are they silent because they begin the hunt?’ counters Bonaparte levelly.

Tall Jean dabs brandy sparingly onto a piece of rag torn from a trouser hem and wipes assiduously at his brother’s wounds.

Daniel nods approval. ‘Doubt the smell of cheap brandy is as tempting as blood to a lion.’

They all smile but no one maintains the expression for long. Silence is worse than intermittent roars. It isn’t really silence at all. The surf’s susurration still sighs, albeit muffled by the intervening forest. The birds of the African night coo and whistle, chirp, and trill.

The six of them huddle as close to the fire as they can bear. No one tries to sleep. They sit watching the flames. Richard’s ears strain for any sound that might signal an approaching lion. He imagines the other five are doing the same because no one speaks, no one moves, and every face looks grim. Each time the bird calls cease, he sees Pierre hold his breath.

Richard winds his watch nervously and for a while the slow-moving hands provide comfort. They are man-made and reliable. They divide existence into tiny increments, giving it shape. Behind the dial is a machine of delicate precision, the closest mankind has come to forging a time machine. As he follows the sweep of the second hand, Richard sees his watch for what it is. A tracking device.

He glances up at the little group sheltering fearfully inside the boma, uncertain whether they will reach dawn. Four hours to go, his watch tells him. He returns his gaze to the circle of safety it provides, hypnotized. You are precisely here, it says, indicating the moment they occupy.

Beyond the reach of his watch, outside their jury-rigged fortification, time also passes, but the minds that comprehend it are wired differently. They do not need a human construct to measure the earth’s rotation. They rely on their senses. Day and night are entirely susceptible to sight. Seasons are foreshadowed by changes in the winds, temperature, and vegetation.

Deep in their subconscious, animals temper their behaviour to these signals. Birds migrate, court, mate, nest, and fledge their young. Call it instinct, hard wiring or nurture. Every stage has its time and every generation repeats the cycle. The world is their clock; they turn as it turns. They do not need an alarm to tell them it is time to eat; they do it when they are hungry.

Richard jerks away from his mesmerising watch face at the sound of movement in the undergrowth. He hears it again, somewhere to his right, and glances at Emile who is also alert, eyes wide, nostrils flaring.

Richard inhales hard and the hair on the back of his neck stands on end. A musky, nutty aroma with undertones of iron crowds out the tangy body odour of his party. He isolates the spicy, herb perfume of the scrub forest. He savours the sweet smoke from their well-stoked fire. But there it is again, the scent of an animal close by.

Another ripple in the air whispers to him and he imagines muscular flanks brushing a bush, hunched low, legs prowling in long, slow strides.

He hears a similar noise to his left. Heavy breathing, blood pounding in his ears, it is his own body reacting as prey.

‘Should we remain quiet or try to scare them off?’ whispers Emile urgently.

Napoleon shuffles closer to his lieutenant. ‘If they are here, it is no coincidence. They smell us. They see how we have disturbed this corner of their territory. They are deciding if we are worth the effort of an attack.’

Richard marvels at how easily Bonaparte puts himself in the mind of Africa’s alpha predator. Then he smiles to himself despite his fear. Napoleon thinks like a hunter.

‘Then, making noise might discourage them?’ Emile persists.

‘Or attract them,’ comes a voice from the far side of the fire, a high-pitched voice, surprised at its own audacity.

Everyone turns to look at Pierre, who mumbles for a moment before raising his eyes. ‘I mean, if they are used to people, they know how easily they can kill us.’

It is a fair point, Richard thinks.

‘Guns! They are unlikely to be familiar with gunpowder.’ Emile reaches for a rifle.

‘Your last shot didn’t discourage them. Shouldn’t we save our ammunition for when we really need it?’ Richard sounds apologetic but Emile releases his grip on the long barrel, nodding.

A section of the boma facing away from the beach quivers as something powerful tests its strength. A second impact is followed by a snarling yowl of protest and the sound of tongue rasping on pad. Just like Aunt Patricia’s cat, cleaning her paws after a night outside, only ten times louder.

Five pairs of eyes look from the boma walls to Richard, conveying thanks. He puffs with pleasure briefly before two collisions on either side of the thorny ring confirm the presence of several big cats.

‘Are all the guns loaded?’ Richard asks.

Bonaparte nods and begins handing out the firearms. Emile retains the rifle. That leaves two long muskets and three pistols. Richard shakes his head when Napoleon offers him a musket.

‘I’d be safer with a handgun.’

The third long-barrelled musket goes to Jean Bisson who indicates he is familiar with the weapon. Pierre and Daniel accept pistols without complaint. Clicks sound around the boma as everyone cocks their firearm.

Snarls, low moans, and fast breathing surround them. The stench of carnivores fills Richard’s nose. Fierce teeth, set in vice-like jaws, snap. Richard wrinkles his nose. Decomposing snags of meat taint feline breath. Growls punch the air from powerful lungs set in deep chests.

A more insistent scrabbling commences close to the three Guernseymen. They back so close to the fire that Daniel pats frantically as smoke purls along the hem of his trousers. Richard wonders if the big cats will try to dig beneath the barricade.

Bonaparte steps in front of the fishermen, tilts his musket barrel so that its mouth points a foot from the base of the enclosure, directly above the spot where Richard imagines giant paws, with extended claws, scooping friable earth.

The musket fizzes and flares, ignites, projects and smokes, filling the air with a new musk; charcoal and sulphur, acrid and heavy. It overwhelms the smell of big cats.

A scream, a moan, and