“The trial and the scandal could have ruined us, but the timing and the distance killed off opprobrium. I told you, no one was interested in that distant war. We’d relieved Mafeking, hadn’t we? The mineral wealth was flowing again, and we were at peace. Celebrate. Move on. Meantime, I acquired a veneer of sophistication with some wonderful officers in India. Abel Hardy came home and thrived. He has quite a business empire in London. Make what you like of that! Herbert Sexton left his village and bought a house for his mother in London. He has a job that he loves because it enables him to wear a uniform. Security, I’d guess, is all he was ever seeking. Astute, undervalued old Ratty Merriman owns a betting business up in the north, and Corporal Ernest Jessup, before his untimely death here in Cambridge, was doing what he loved—he’d become an accountant and was doing well for himself with a big London firm. So a year’s stone-breaking doesn’t seem to have held anybody back in the long run. They put it behind them.”

“And you?”

“I never could. There were other matters more important than a few gems that broke my heart and my spirit, but—God!—it’s the thought that they may still be there out in the veldt that rankles. That and the need to know which one of us it was who could do that to his fellows drives me crazy.”

Redfyre sighed. “Tell me how you got the gold bars back safely to base.”

“We used the original pouches sewn into the saddle of the black horse. We didn’t want any marauding Boers to intercept them, and we weren’t handing them over to anyone of lower rank than a major accompanied by at least four witnesses! In fact, two days after we were relieved by the engineers unit, we set off back east and found the Ninth again. Under new management. Aiming high, I rather peremptorily demanded an audience with Lord Roberts himself, and to our surprise, he granted it.”

A look of pure affection passed briefly over the strained features.

“This was ‘Bobs of Kandahar’?”

“Right! Field Marshal Earl Roberts, VC. Hero of the wars in Afghanistan. At that time, in retirement in his home in Ireland. While we were away in the wilderness, the army had suffered some terrible defeats. The high command couldn’t cope. Someone had the bright idea of shaking the mothballs out of the uniform of our greatest living hero, and he was ordered south to sort it all out. He arrived in the Transvaal just before Christmas. He was sixty-eight at the time, but still a fire-eater and a good tactician. The troops adored him.”

“I remember Kipling’s verse!” Redfyre announced, and the captain smiled to see the sudden transformation from world-wise copper to eager schoolboy as he prepared himself for recitation.

There’s a little red-faced man,