Ralph had nowhere to go, no escape route. The crocodile-infested river was on his left and a wide escarpment to his right. If he tried to flee over the open ground, the hippo would overtake him within seconds.

  The hippo lowered its head. Its small, puffed-up eyes watched Ralph with black menace.

  Ralph brandished the gun like a club, jabbing it towards the animal, trying to buy some time by intimidating the beast, wondering if he could somehow jam his rifle in the hippo’s mouth.

  ‘Imvubu!’

  A chilling cry rang out. Before Ralph could see where the sound had come from, a spear hissed through the air and struck the hippo on its flank. The beast growled with pain and turned to face the new threat. Ralph followed its gaze.

  A figure stood at the top of the embankment, silhouetted against the morning sky. Ralph could not see him clearly from where he was standing, however, he was sure that the man was neither of his companions. A skirt flapped from his waist and he seemed to be wearing some kind of crown or helmet. He waved his arms and shouted unintelligible words: whether at Ralph or the animal, Ralph couldn’t tell.

  Blood gushed from the hippo’s side where the spear had lodged in its flesh. The weight of the wooden shaft levered the wound open so that every movement the hippo made triggered another flash of pain. The old bull roared in agony. It lumbered across to a large rock and began rubbing its side against the stone to try to dislodge the spear.

  This gave Ralph a chance to reload. He reached into the ammunition pouch and extracted two cartridges, bit off the ends and tipped both of them down the barrel of the rifle.

  The spear clattered to the ground as the hippo knocked it free and turned back towards Ralph.

  Normally, Ralph would have wrapped the bullet in a leather patch to help it grip the rifled grooves inside the barrel. But there was no time for that. Grabbing two bullets, he forced them into the barrel and rammed them home as quickly as he could. The hippo flared its nostrils, bared its teeth and let out a roar that Ralph felt like a punch to his stomach. There was no question that it was about to charge.

  Ralph primed the rifle with his powder horn and immediately pulled the trigger – he didn’t even aim as by now the beast was so close that accuracy did not matter. Two bullets exploded forward and struck the hippo between the eyes. Still it carried on, like a runaway wagon careering downhill, knocking Ralph aside and ploughing into the mud of the riverbank.

  But even two bullets had not killed the hippo. It struggled to get up, tottering on its legs. It was dying, but it could still lash out in its death throes. Picking himself up, Ralph ran to the spear that the animal had dislodged on the boulder. It had a short handle, about three feet long, and a slim leaf-shaped blade that tapered to a sharp point. Ralph grabbed it, making his way to the riverbank and plunging it into the hippo’s flank where he guessed the heart might be. Blood poured from the wound.

  With a grunt, the hippo’s head sank to the ground and its mouth fell open, revealing its giant pink tongue and the enormous teeth that had struck terror into Ralph. Its eyes closed and it kicked out at the mud one last time. Then it was still.

  Ralph slumped to his knees. Now that the fight was over, the energy that had fuelled him suddenly drained away; he felt empty. His face was black with powder, his hands and shirt covered in the hippo’s blood.

  A whoop of triumph made him look up. Marius and Jobe were running down the riverbank – they had surely heard the gunshots.

  ‘Look at you,’ cried Marius, picking up the rifle that Ralph had discarded after his first shot had found its mark. There was a wild light in his eyes as he examined the dead beast. ‘Mighty hunter, hey?’

  Jobe was more pragmatic. ‘Lucky you are not dead.’ He had plucked the spear out of the hippo’s side and was studying it. ‘Where did this come from?’ he asked.

  ‘There was a man . . .’ Ralph stumbled to his feet and looked back to the top of the escarpment where he had seen the figure. ‘He saved my life.’

  Now the skyline was bare. The man had vanished.

  Ralph’s mind was filled with questions. Was he the same man who had crept up to their camp the night before? Was he an enemy? If so, why had he saved him from the hippopotamus?

  Ralph had to know.

  ‘Hey?’ Marius said as Ralph set off at a run. ‘Hey? Where are you going?’

  Exhausted from his battle with the hippo, it wasn’t long before Ralph was dragging himself up the escarpment on his hands and knees, his rifle slung awkwardly over his shoulder. Jobe and Marius caught up with him, but the broken ground soon slowed them down too. The three men scrambled over the lip of the gorge, panting and sweating – and came to a halt.

  The man Ralph had seen from a distance was still there – but he was no longer alone.

  Ralph, Marius and Jobe stared, open-mouthed. Ralph did not know what he had expected – a lone hunter, maybe, or a ragtag raiding party. The multitude in front of him was neither.

  There were over a thousand men, Ralph guessed. They were naked, except for kilts of furs around their waists, and barefoot, but every man carried a long shield of matching cowhide, and a short stabbing spear like the one he had used to kill the hippo. Though they could not have looked more different from British soldiers in their red coats and polished boots, their drill was as precise and disciplined as a guards regiment.

  This was not a rabble. It was an army.

  Ralph laid down his rifle, grinning like an idiot to try and look unthreatening.

  ‘Put down your gun,’ he said to Marius.

  Marius’s cheeks were flushed; sweat ran down his face as he took in the regiments in front of him. His eyes were wide with disbelief. ‘Maybe we should give them a taste of our lead first. Teach them to fear us, hey?’

  ‘We would be dead before you even began to reload,’ said Jobe.

  Ralph nodded in agreement. Shielding his eyes, he saw faces turning in their direction, countenances hardening as they took in the three figures on the ridge above them. ‘And anyway,’ he said, pointing to the man who stood at the front of the soldiers, most certainly their general. ‘That man there saved my life.’

  The general wore a square of fur, braided together from monkey tails, that hung from a belt around his loins. A circlet of rolled leopard-skin crowned his head, with two stiff pieces of cowhide sticking up from it like horns. Bushy ostrich feathers fanned out from this headdress, while around his upper arms and calves he wore thick puffs of white hair that looked as if it had been taken from a cow’s tail. He carried a long oval shield in one hand, made from the same hide as those his men carried, and a short-handled spear in the other.

  In Ralph’s short life he had haggled with Parsi factors in the bazaars of Calcutta, exhausted the infinite patience of the Hong merchants in Canton, and bartered for his life with Chinese pirates. He had never faced odds like this, but he knew some things were universal, regardless of the colour of your adversary’s skin or how he dressed.

  Do not let them see you are afraid, Ralph told himself.

  As casually as if he was walking through Garden Reach in Calcutta, Ralph strode forward to meet the men – arms wide, palms open, smile fixed, and his buttocks clenched tight.

  He expected to hear one of those spears – or a hundred of them – whistle through the air and sink into his ribcage. When that did not happen, he kept walking. A thousand pairs of eyes watched him, but not one muscle moved. Their discipline was awe-inspiring.

  When Ralph was ten paces from the general, he stopped and tapped his chest. ‘English.’ He gestured at the assembled soldiers. ‘You?’

  The general said something loud and defiant. The warriors behind him repeated it, bellowing out the words. Though none of them moved, the effect was like staring down a ship’s broadside.

  Ralph stayed motionless. He forced himself to remain calm, as if this was a sight he encountered every day, as if indeed he had grown rather bored of it.

  The man opposite him had the natural air of a commander, the confidence that came from having your orders obeyed. Ralph thought of the king that Marsden had told him about back in Nativity Bay. A black Bonaparte, the Portuguese trader had said. Surely it would take a man like that to command this kind of professional army.

  ‘Are you the mighty Shaka?’

  The name had a dramatic effect. At once, the general and all his warriors banged their spears on their shields with a thunderous sound and bellowed the name like a battle cry.

  ‘Shaka!’

  Looking at the faces around him, Ralph could see the pride and the strength they took from the name; but also something more akin to fear. They shouted the name with a desperate edge, as if they were conjuring a god who might give them their hearts’ desire but equally might cast them into a hell from which they would never be freed.

  Ralph deduced that the general himself was not Shaka. But it was obvious that he and the army in front of them were somehow under his authority.

  ‘Shaka,’ Ralph repeated. ‘Take me to Shaka.’

  Ralph turned to see that Marius and Jobe were making their way towards him. The warriors lowered their spears as they passed. The general had obviously decided to humour his unexpected guests. Ralph felt like a condemned prisoner reprieved from the scaffold; his insides turned to water, but he did not let his relief show.

  ‘Who are you?’ he asked again, gesturing to the warriors standing before him.

  Ralph was still puzzled. He knew the name of the king, but who were the people he ruled over: this kingdom that could put fearsome armies in the field, who could raze villages and strike terror far beyond their own borders.

  ‘Who are you?’ Ralph asked again.

  Jobe repeated the question in Xhosa. By the way the general screwed up his face, Ralph guessed that he spoke a different language from Jobe, but that the two tongues were close enough to each other that the general understood Jobe’s question.

  The general gestured to his troops, then to himself, then spoke a name.

  Ralph had expected the answer would be something long and intricate. Instead, the general said a single short word in which all the power and pride of a mighty kingdom seemed bound up.

  ‘Zulus.’

  NATIVITY BAY

  A

  fter Ralph’s party had set out into the bush, the camp at Nativity Bay sank into idleness. The Farewell’s broken hulk sat in the lagoon, blackening in the sun, and no one made any attempt to salvage timbers for a new boat. The men lazed in the stockade, sleeping in the sun or gambling with a pair of dice they had carved. Occasionally, they dipped into the rum barrel, or took potshots at monkeys with the rifle, but even Marsden seemed content to limit his activity to catching a couple of fish or listlessly constructing snares for the bushpigs they sometimes saw at the treeline.

  For Ann, being inside the stockade was like being trapped in a cage. Every minute of the day, she was aware of being the only woman. The sailors seemed friendly enough, and treated her courteously, but she knew how they looked at her when they thought her back was turned. What if the time came when looking would no longer satisfy them? She could feel the constraints of civilisation rotting inside them, like meat left in the sun. They were violent men, used to a hard life and women who would sell themselves for a few coins. She and Harry were not safe.

  But avoiding the sailors meant leaving the stockade – and that frightened her, too. As well as lions and hyenas, the rivers were full of crocodiles and hippopotamuses. She could see them from the stockade walls, low humps gliding through the water, and occasionally the flash of an enormous pair of jaws. What else might be out there, in the dark water and dense bush, that she could not see?

  And yet, when it came to it, she would rather take those risks with Harry than stay cooped up in the fort. Every morning, before the men were properly awake, when they were still sleeping off the rum of the night before, she and Harry slipped out and went down to the beach. Over several days, they explored almost the entire perimeter of the lagoon, often finding more wreckage from the Farewell. If it looked useful, or valuable, they would drag it up the beach and leave it for the men to fetch later.

  One day, while they were out walking at the far end of the lagoon, they saw something glinting in the sand. It was a piece of glass.

  ‘Careful,’ Ann warned Harry as he tried to pick it up, worried he would cut himself. But when she dug it out, she saw that it was not broken. It was a crystal goblet, clouded by years of abrasion but still, miraculously, intact. Even the design that had been etched into the side was legible. A long-barrelled cannon on a wheeled carriage, with a ribbon below sporting the initials C.B.T.C.

  Ann was stunned to see such an object so far from the civilised world. She was certain that she had never seen anything like it aboard the Farewell. And anyway, how would it have made its way so far down the lagoon – they could barely make out the wreck from where they stood. The edges are so smooth that it must have been here for years, Ann thought to herself. Maybe it washed ashore from another shipwreck, was buried under the sand for decades until the lapping waves revealed it again?

  She turned the goblet over in her hands. The fact that it had survived so long seemed significant, as if it had been waiting for her to find it. Maybe it was some sort of message. But that was just her imagination running away with her.

  When she looked up from her little treasure, she found that Harry had run off. She saw the flash of antlers in the distance – the corkscrew horns of an impala – and Harry plunging into the long grass after it.

  ‘Harry!’

  She ran after him, following the narrow trail the buck had made. Her dress caught on twigs and tore on thorns while Harry, nimble and determined, disappeared into the thick bush.

  Ann was terrified; her breath sawed in her throat as images of all the terrible things that could happen to her boy flashed before her eyes. How could he have gone so far? How was it possible? The grass grew high here. What if there were predators? A three-year-old boy couldn’t fight a lion.

  ‘Harry?’ She called his name again and again, feeling the tears start to flow. ‘Harry?’

  Running full pelt, her foot caught on something firm sticking out of the earth. She pitched forward and hit the ground, her hands coming up too late to break her fall. The impact knocked the breath out of her chest and she tasted blood where she had bitten her lip.

  ‘Mummy?’

  The sound of Harry’s voice made her forget the pain in her chest. Harry stood over her, his face screwed up with deep concern.

  ‘Are you hurt?’ he asked, squatting next to her.

  Sobbing with relief, Ann scrambled to her knees and pulled Harry close. He knew that he had scared her and would be punished for running off after the impala, but he also knew that his mother would forgive him anything if he was kind and gentle.

  But he could not keep still for long. He pulled back – though she kept a firm grip on his hand – and pointed down.

  ‘What is that?’ Harry asked.

  Ann rose slowly to her feet. The object she had tripped on was not rock, or wood. It was a lump of hard black iron, rising in a low mound out of the ground. It had been almost buried, protruding just enough to catch her foot and trip her.

  She knelt and dug away the compacted soil with her hands. Harry joined her. By the time they had finished, they had revealed an iron cylinder fully nine feet long, tapering to a flared muzzle at one end.

  ‘It’s a cannon,’ Harry announced in awe.

  Ann was confused. How could a cannon have come to be buried here? How long it had lain undisturbed? It looked as if it had just come from the foundry.

  ‘Mummy, was there a castle here?’ Harry asked.

  ‘I doubt it, my boy.’ How could there have been?

  ‘What about that?’

  Harry was looking into the bush. Ann followed his gaze. At first, she could see nothing but the thick undergrowth. Then, like a morning mist suddenly lifting, she saw what Harry was pointing at. Patterns in the bush, straight lines under the twisting vegetation. Fragments of stone walls rising up like the bones of a carcass that had rotted away. Many were blackened by mould, or maybe by fire.

  ‘Uncle Ralph said that no one ever lived here before,’ said Harry.

  ‘Well, that just shows you that even Uncle Ralph can be mistaken,’ she said.

  Ann knew she should go back, yet something about the ruins drew her to them. She knew that Harry wouldn’t leave without exploring their find, but it spoke to her too. Termite mounds rose high around her like funeral monuments; the dust of floorboards and furniture long since devoured. Sometimes she caught the glint of metal: a brass hinge, a pewter bowl. In one place, she saw a full row of ivory keys from a harpsichord. The instrument had rotted away, but the keys remained laid in a row on the ground, so neat she almost felt they would make music again if she touched them.

  Who was here? Where did they go?

  They had walked so far that they had come out on the far side of what had once been a well-tended homestead. The bush had reclaimed the buildings, but she could still see how the estate had been laid out. Low scrub covered a flat area that must once have been cleared for a garden or crops, while further back stood taller trees, where the edge of the property must have been.

  Ann gasped. Where the forest began, at the edge of the property, the undergrowth thinned out around five long mounds of rocks. There was no doubt as to what they were: the row was too even to be natural, each mound about the length and width of a man. Four were intact, but one had been pulled apart by an animal, and where the soil beneath the stones was scratched out, a white bone protruded from the earth.

  It was a human bone. These were graves. At the head of each one, flat stones had been set upright as markers. Most had fallen down, but one remained standing, the traces of the letter ‘G’ still visible, scratched into it.

  If she had found the graves by themselves, she would have guessed they contained mariners buried by a passing ship. But the cemetery belonged to the ruined house. This had been somebody’s home. People who had cannons, and played the harpsichord. White people.