They had danced at a coronation ball given for Edward VII when he announced to the world that the days of mourning that marked Victoria’s last years were over, to be replaced with a reign of gaiety and, some said, dissipation. But the musicians on that occasion were not as deft with their waltzes as the Grosvenor ones, now embarking on the ‘Emperor’ waltz. Lady Lucy’s eyes were half closed. ‘I wish I could dance until the morning, Francis,’ she whispered. ‘Do we have to go home at all?’
‘This waltz goes on for ever, my love,’ said Powerscourt, whirling her round into the very centre of the dance floor. For Lady Lucy, the music, the brilliant lights, the flowers on the walls, the beautiful people streaming round her had thrown her into a sort of trance. The faint perfume from the banks of roses seemed to her to come from the gods themselves. In front and beside her, the sashes of the men looked like pennants being carried into battle, and the sparkles from the diamonds and the rubies made the ballroom look like a treasure trove waiting to be discovered. The sprung floor made her think of standing on a perfect English lawn in the spring before it was hardened by the sun. Some rough fellow had backed into one of the baskets of roses against the wall. Petals of white and pink lay abandoned on the floor like confetti after a wedding. As she looked at the other couples, Lady Lucy thought that love was everywhere. It was all around her, in the smiles of the young women clinging tightly to their partner’s hand, in the arms of the young men pulling their girls ever closer, in the stolen embraces that took place from time to time at the edges of the ballroom. Lady Lucy looked across at the beautiful ladies from the Grosvenor past on the walls, who seemed to her to have left their places in their picture frames and joined the crowd on the dance floor, a countess painted underneath one of Gainsborough’s trees with the leaves shimmering in some invisible breeze, a duchess in pale green with feathers in her hat and long white gloves fastened at the wrist with glittering diamonds, the current Duchess painted by Whistler years before, a glittering pageant of blues and greens by the edge of a lake. Lady Lucy had risen above the ballroom glories of Grosvenor House and was floating over Mayfair, greeting three or four other Peter Pans as they drifted across the night skies of London. She never wanted to go home. She wanted this dance, this ‘Emperor’ waltz, to last for ever. Her very own one, Emperor Francis, bent down every now and to give her a gentle kiss on her neck. She wanted to stay in Francis’s arms until time itself ended, being whirled across the dance floor to the music of Johann Strauss.
The first hints of dawn were appearing across the gardens when the music finally stopped.
‘Francis,’ said Lady Lucy, coming back to earth with a smile and squeezing her husband’s hand, ‘that was a wonderful evening. Just wonderful. I think we’d better go home now.’
16
Powerscourt dropped his drawings in to the National Gallery at nine thirty on the Monday morning. The director’s office suggested he return at midday by which time, they told him, they would have had a preliminary search through whatever materials they thought relevant. On his return he was shown up to the director’s office where a very slim young man was sitting beside the director.
‘Good morning, Powerscourt,’ said Sir Charles Holroyd. ‘May I introduce one of my assistants, Orlando Thomas?’
As Powerscourt shook the young man’s hand, Sir Charles added, ‘Orlando is one of our foremost experts on paintings of battles, principally since eighteen hundred. You’d be surprised how many of those we have here. Military men often leave us their paintings in their wills. Young Orlando has been down in the basement where most of our holdings are stored.’
‘When I looked at those markings, Lord Powerscourt,’ Orlando Thomas began, ‘I wondered if they might have come from a weapon used in some forgotten war. I thought I’d seen something very like it before. I’ve brought you up a present.’
He rose from his chair and placed a small rectangular painting, about four feet by two, on an easel behind him. Powerscourt saw what looked like a mountain in the background, the upper sections rising up to a grey cliff on the right. All the action was taking place on the ground in front of it. British redcoats seemed to be conducting a desperate defence. On the attack were large numbers of black warriors who seemed to have the British surrounded. A number of redcoats were lying on the ground, the warriors stabbing them furiously. A lone British colour was still aloft inside a circle of defenders.
‘Do you know the painting, Lord Powerscourt? Do you know what’s going on?’
‘I don’t know the painting at all. I don’t think I’d like to have been there. It looks as if our men are going to be wiped out.’
‘I’m afraid they were,’ said Orlando Thomas. ‘It’s one of the worst defeats suffered by the British in the whole of the nineteenth century. Painting’s the work of a man called Fripp, C. E. Fripp. The battle and the picture took their name from the hill in the background, called Isandlwana, in Zululand in South Africa. The black warriors are Zulus who outnumbered our men by about ten to one.’
‘If you look closely, my friend,’ Sir Charles wasn’t going to let all the glory accrue to his colleague, ‘you will see that most of the Zulus have short stabbing spears called assegais. Their idea of battle was to close with their enemies and rip their guts out with these spears. But some of the others have a short stick with a kind of pimpled knot at the end. They are striking faster than their colleagues with the assegais because it is so much shorter. You can’t see any of the marks they leave in the painting but if you look at the end of the weapon through a glass you can see all the bits sticking out rather like a thistle.’
Powerscourt took the glass and peered at the weapon. Was this the answer to the riddle of the strange marks on the victims’ bodies? Did it end here? In this painting of a dreadful massacre?
‘It’s called a knobkerrie, Lord Powerscourt.’ Orlando Thomas seemed to have picked up a lot of military information on his travels round the gallery basement. ‘It was one of the Zulus’ favourite weapons.’
‘Why haven’t we heard more about this battle? How many men were killed, do we know?’
‘Over a thousand lost their lives.’ Orlando was now checking his facts in a little notebook. Very few got away.
‘There are a number of theories as to why we know so little about it, Lord Powerscourt,’ Orlando carried on. ‘The first is that it happened on the same day as Rorke’s Drift where a small band of British soldiers held off repeated attacks from an enormous band of Zulus many times their number. We must have ten or twelve large paintings of Rorke’s Drift compared with this one little chap of Isandlwana.’
‘Didn’t the general commanding the whole British force secure lots of Victoria Crosses for the Rorke’s Drift people? I seem to remember being told by some veteran that they were flying around like chocolate bars at a children’s party.’