Read Online A Medal For Murder by Frances Brody - Free Book Online

sergeant turned his dusty face to the African heavens and ran his tongue over his lips to catch rain drops.
    In his tent, the captain wrote his diary.
Men keen to get on with the show.
Through the walls of the tent floated the disembodied voices of the men who’d been first in the queue for food and now had time on their hands. They were singing filthy ditties, arguing the toss as they played dice. A wisp of blue smoke from the camp fire wafted through the tent flap. They were burning acacia bushes and eucalyptus.
    A loud argument had blown up, over nothing as usual. A private from Blackburn wanted to lasso the ostrich and bring it along as a mascot. His mate disagreed. The ostrich was definitely a Boer spy, he said.
    Sergeant Lampton put his head around the tent flap. ‘Everything all right, sir?’
    ‘Shut them up,’ the captain ordered. ‘Make an example of them.’
    The sergeant hesitated.
    ‘Just do it. And then look into what I asked you.’
    ‘Yes, Captain.’
    The sergeant took a deep breath, let the tent flap fall behind him. He shut up one private with a punch to his jaw and his mate with a blow to the ribs. ‘You’re disturbing our captain.’
    The men fell silent.
    A thin young African lad, wide-eyed and anxious, approached the sergeant. ‘Message for Sergeant Lam.’
    The sergeant drew him to one side, out of hearing of the men. ‘What’s the message?’
    ‘For Captain Wolf, a room.’
    When the lad did not move, Sergeant Lampton gave him a coin. ‘Go!’
    ‘Thank you, baas.’
    Sergeant Lampton went back to the captain. ‘It’s fixed up, sir.’
    The captain nodded. He pulled on his jacket.
    Sergeant Lampton watched him go, marching towards what passed for a hotel where a Kaffir woman would be waiting. It had always been the same. Gin. The most comfortable room. A woman. In that order.
    Mule carts would transport bell tents, blankets, big guns and cooking pots. Each African mule driver carried a concertina. Sergeant Lampton listened to them at night, playing and singing. He imitated their tunes on his mouth organ. It gave him the odd notion that the mules had an ear for music and would serve willingly.
    At four o’clock on a muggy, misty morning, undermarching orders, men stoked the fire with acacia brush. Smoke would mislead enemy scouts into thinking that the camp stayed solid, stayed put. A scouting party gave the all-clear. Men would march alongside the railway line carrying rifles, food and ammunition. The train would come back with reinforcements, heavy guns, and engineers who would hop on and off, repairing the line. They would repair the dynamited bridge.
    Long before Lord Methuen gave his pep talk – British pluck, British surprise, British Empire – word had passed through the lines that they would be heading for Kimberley.
    The colonel told the major. The lieutenant told Captain Wolfendale. Captain Wolfendale told Sergeant Lampton. Sergeant Lampton told Corporal Milner.
    ‘I knew it,’ Milner said.
    Kimberley had the deepest diamond mine in the world. Its owners scoffed toast and marmalade from gold plates and supped ale from gold tankards. But the Boers had Kimberley under siege.
    Captain Wolfendale was ready for the off.
    The stationmaster had said that a few Boers were burrowed into the river mud like water rats. Soon see them off.
A scout said six thousand? Six hundred more like
.
    Sergeant Lampton despaired of his captain. ‘You’ll be a sitting duck, Captain, all that gleam and polish. Let me . . .’
    The sergeant scooped mud from the river, to take the shine off his captain’s buttons, the sparkle from his stars and buckles. The captain frowned. He liked to be pristine.
    Soon only the steady, monotonous tramp of thousands of boots could be heard, scudding through stubblygrass and over small rocks. The thickhead bird that started out with them,
hui hui
, had taken flight.
    It must have been a tale, about the enemy digging in the mud. What fool would hide in a muddy