Traitors Gate - Anne Perry [66]
5
“WHAT IT AFFECTS MOSTLY is treaties,” Matthew said with a frown, regarding Pitt over his desk at the Foreign Office. He looked a little less harrowed than at the funeral in Brackley, but the shadow was still there at the back of his eyes and in the pallor of his skin. There was a tension in his body which Pitt knew too well to ignore or misread. The past was still intimate, for all that had happened since, and the experiences which separated them.
If anyone had asked him for dates, he could not have given them, nor even the events that one might have considered important. But the memories of emotion were as powerful as if they had happened yesterday: surprise, understanding, the desire to protect, the confusion and the learning of pain. He could recall vividly the death of a beloved animal, the first magic and surprise of love, the first disillusionment, the fear of change in people and places that framed one’s life. These things he and Matthew had faced together, in some things at least, he a year the sooner, so when Matthew’s turn came, he had already experienced them, and shared his emotions with an acuteness no one else could.
He knew now that Matthew was still just as deeply hurt over his father’s death; only his outward command of himself was better, as the sense of shock wore away. They were sitting in his wide office with its polished oak furniture, pale green carpet, and deep windows overlooking St. James’s Park.
“You mentioned the treaty with the Germans,” he answered. “What I really need is to know what the information is, as far as you can tell me. That is the only way I am going to have a chance to trace where it came from, and through whose hands it passed.”
Matthew’s frown deepened. “It isn’t quite as cut and dried as that. But I’ll do what I can.”
Pitt waited. Outside somewhere in the street a horse whinnied and a man shouted. The sun made bright patterns through the window and onto the floor.
“One of the things that stands out most is the agreement made with King Lobengula, late in the year before last,” Matthew began thoughtfully. “’eighty-eight. In September Rhodes’s delegation, led by a man called Charles Rudd, rode into the king’s camp in Bulowayo—that’s in Zambezia. They are the Ndebele tribe.” His fingers drummed on the desk softly as he spoke. “Rudd was an expert in mining claims, and apparently quite ignorant about African rulers and their customs. For that purpose he had along a fellow called Thompson, who spoke some language understood by the king. The third member of the party was called Rochfort Maguire, a legal man from All Souls’ College in Oxford.”
Pitt listened patiently. So far this was of no help to him at all. He tried to imagine the heat of the African plains, the courage of these men and the greed that drew them.
“Of course there were other people seeking mineral concessions as well,” Matthew went on. “We very nearly lost them.”
“We?” Pitt interrupted.
Matthew grimaced. “As far as one can call Cecil Rhodes ‘we.’ He was—is—acting with the blessing of Her Majesty’s government. We had a standing agreement, the Moffatt Treaty, made with Lobengula in February of the same year, that he would not give away any of his territories, I quote, ‘without the previous knowledge and sanction’ of the British government.”
“You say we nearly lost them,” Pitt brought the conversation back to the point. “Because of information going to the Germans?”
Matthew’s eyes widened very slightly. “That’s curious. The German Embassy certainly, but it began to look as if the Belgians might have known about it too. All of Central and East Africa is swarming with adventurers, hunters, mining prospectors and people hoping to be middlemen in all sorts of ventures.” He leaned a little further forward across the desk. “Rudd was successful because of the advent of Sir Sidney Shippard, deputy commissioner for Bechuanaland. He is a great supporter of Cecil Rhodes, and believes in