To the spectators on the stand the re-enactment of history appeared at first to be entirely convincing. The valiant charge of the British and their subsequent retreat had an air of authenticity about them which the previous tableaux had lacked.
'Amazing realism,' said the Mayor, who had just seen a Guardsman run through with a spear.
'I think the music helps too,' said the Superintendent.
The Mayor had to agree. 'People seem to be screaming rather a lot,' he said.
'I'm sure this sort of thing helps the patients,' Dr Herzog continued. 'Tends to take their minds off their problems.'
'I suppose it must,' said the Mayor. 'Certainly takes other things off. There's a fellow over there who seems to have lost a leg.'
On the square in front of them glimpses of a terrible reality were beginning to appear through the pageant of history. Increasingly it was becoming difficult to tell what was illusion from what was fact. History and present tragedy mingled inextricably. In some places, death was being mimed with a series of violent contortions whose realism far surpassed the agonies of those whose deaths were in no way rehearsed. To the strains of Tchaikovsky a number of patients in the Black Watch found themselves being raped by Zulu warriors while a detachment of frogmen who had never been anywhere near Isandhlwana threw themselves into the fray with all the vigour their flippers would allow.
From the shelter of the tent into which he had crawled the Kommandant watched as the crew of a field gun aimed the weapon into the crowd of struggling combatants and was horrified to see Miss Hazelstone, minus her pith helmet and stained with blood, superintending the operation.
'More chlorate and less sugar,' he heard her say to a man who was filling what appeared to be a pillowcase with powder. The Kommandant waited no longer. He knew too well Miss Hazelstone's remarkable skill with large-calibre weapons to risk being in the line of fire. Disentangling himself from the canvas and refusing the passionate overtures of a private of the Black Watch who had crawled in beside him, the Kommandant dashed for shelter towards the saluting base. He had covered some twenty yards when he heard Miss Hazelstone give the order to fire, and a moment later a sheet of flame enveloped the British camp. As an enormous explosion threw him to the ground and the blast slid him across the tarmac the Kommandant shut his eyes and prayed. Above his head portions of field gun mingled with combatants interrupted in their struggles. Miss Hazelstone had not merely fired the gun, she had exploded it. As he slid to a halt under the saluting base, Kommandant van Heerden raised his head and looked around at the subsiding chaos. The actors in the tableau had assumed a new and altogether convincing stillness and it was clear that nobody had won the Battle of Isandhlwana.
The parade ground was littered with black and white bodies while what survivors there were had lost all interest in history. With all the marks of an entirely sane instinct for self-preservation, they crawled towards the sick bay.
Only the staff seemed to have taken leave of their senses. On the stand above him the Kommandant could hear Dr Herzog still trying to reassure the late Mayor that the spears were made of rubber. To Kommandant van Heerden the assurance seemed quite unnecessary. Whatever had hit the Mayor had been made of something much more lethal.
The Kommandant waited until Dr Herzog had been taken away before crawling from his hiding-place. He stood up and looked around. History had not merely been portrayed, he thought, it had been made. Not only the past but the present and future of South Africa was to be seen in the devastation that greeted his eyes. Picking his way over the bodies, the Kommandant made his way towards a large crater which had been blown in the middle of the parade ground. Beside it, there lay the remains of a plumed pith helmet and the Star Miss Hazelstone had been wearing.
'A last memento,' he murmured, and picked them up. Then still dazed and shaken he turned and made his way back to the car.
Chapter 19
On the morning of his execution Jonathan Hazelstone was denied the usual privilege of choosing a hearty breakfast on the grounds that before all major operations patients had to do with light refreshment. Instead of the bacon and eggs he had ordered, he was allowed a cup of coffee and a visit from an Anglican chaplain. Jonathan found it difficult to decide which was the more unpleasant. On the whole he thought he preferred the coffee.
His ties with the Church had been severed at the time of his trial and the Bishop had reached the conclusion that the refusal of the Church authorities to testify on his behalf had been due to the jealousy he knew to exist among his colleagues at the rapidity of his promotion to a bishopric. He had no idea that parts of his confession, particularly those chosen by Konstabel Els, had been shown to the Archbishop.
'I knew the fellow was progressive,' the Archbishop muttered as he read the extraordinary document, 'but really this time he has gone too far,' and he recalled Jonathan's admission that he had used every possible method to attract people into the Church. 'High Church in ritual, Low Church in approach, that's my way,' Jonathan had said and the Archbishop could see that he had meant it. To combine sodomy with genuflection was to be High Church and Low with a vengeance and it was hardly surprising his congregations had grown so quickly.
'I think the least said the soonest mended,' the Archbishop had decided, and in short the Church had disowned him.
The Chaplain who came to visit him in his last hours was not a South African. It had been impossible to persuade any self-respecting parson to minister to the needs of a man who had brought disgrace on his cloth and even the Bishop of Piemburg had declined the invitation.
'There are moments when a man needs to be alone,' he explained to Governor Schnapps over the telephone, 'and this is surely one of them,' and had gone back to compose a sermon on the Brotherhood of Man.
In the end it was the Chaplain of a Cambridge college who was visiting Piemburg during the long vacation who was inveigled into Piemburg Prison to attend to the prisoner's spiritual needs.
'I understand there is a particularly fine display of prickly pears in the prison garden,' the Vicar of Piemburg explained to the Chaplain who was far more interested in the physical needs of rock plants than in the spiritual ones of his fellow men and the Chaplain had jumped at the opportunity afforded by the hanging to see a riot of prickly pears.
Standing in the cell, the Chaplain found it difficult to know what to say.
'You weren't by any chance in the Navy?' he asked finally.
Jonathan shook his head.
'I just wondered,' the Chaplain continued. 'There was a middy on HMS _Clodius_ in '43 I think it was, or it might have been '44. His name was Hazelnut.'
'Mine's Hazelstone,' said the Bishop.
'So it is. How forgetful of me. One meets so many people in my profession.'