Empire of Ivory (35 page)

farther bank, whose green eye was wide open and fixed upon

them; its flesh was evidently not a temptation to the

dragons, for it showed not the least sign of fear.

The dragons lay drowsing in the sun, their tails flicking

idly at the enormous clouds of flies which gathered round

them, their heads pillowed on their forelegs. Mrs. Erasmus

was speaking into Kefentse's ear; mid-sentence, he reared

abruptly up and began to make questions of her,

demandingly; she flinched back, and only shook her head,

refusing. At last he left off, and cast his eyes southward,

sitting up on his haunches like a coat of arms: a dragon

sejant erect, gules; then slowly he settled himself back

down; he spoke to her once more, and pointedly shut his

eyes.

"Well, I don't suppose we need ask what he thinks of

letting you go," Chenery said, when she had crept around to

them.

"No," she said, speaking low to keep from rousing the

dragons up again, "and matters are only worse: I spoke of

my daughters, and now Kefentse wants nothing more than to

go back for them also."

Laurence was ashamed to feel an eager leap of hope, at a

situation which naturally could cause her only the greatest

anxiety; but such an attempt would at least reveal to the

rest of the formation the identity of their captors. "And I

assure you, ma'am," he said, "that any such demand would be

received with the utmost scorn: I am confident that our

fellow officers and General Grey will consider your

children their own charge."

"Captain, you do not understand," she said. "I think he

would be ready to attack all the colony to get at them. He

thinks there may be more of their stolen kindred there,

too, among the slaves."

"I am sure I wish them much luck, if they like to try it,"

Chenery said. "Pray don't be worried for the girls: even if

these fellows have another few beauties like this

grandfather of yours at home, it would take a little more

than that to crack a nut like the castle. There are twentyfour-pounders there; not to speak of pepper guns, and a

full formation. I don't suppose he would like to come back

with us, instead; to England, I mean?" he added, with a

flash of cheerful optimism. "If he has taken to you so

strong, you ought to be able to persuade him."

But it was very soon clear that Kefentse, whatever else he

meant by calling himself her great-grandfather, certainly

considered himself in the light of her elder; even though

she thought now, that she vaguely recalled his hatching.

"Not well, but I am almost sure of it," she said. "I was

very young, but there were many days of feasting, and

presents; and I remember him often in the village, after,"

which Laurence supposed answered for her lack of fear of

dragons; she had been taken as a girl of some nine-years'

age, old enough to have lost the instinctive terror.

Remembering her only as a child, Kefentse, far from being

inclined to obey, had instead concluded from her efforts to

secure their freedom that she was their dupe, either

frightened or tricked into lying for their sake, and he was

grown all the angrier for it. "I beg you do not risk any

further attempts at persuasion," Laurence said. "We must be

grateful for his protection of you; I would have you make

no more fruitless attempts, which might cause him to

reconsider his sentiments."

"He would do nothing to hurt me," she said, a strange

certainty; perhaps the restoration of some childhood

confidence.

Having breakfasted on roasted hippo, they flew on some

hours more and landed again only a little while before

dark, beside what seemed to be a small farming village. The

clearing where they descended was full of children at play,

who shrieked with delight at their arrival, and ran eagerly

around the dragons, chattering away at them without the

slightest evidence of fear; although they peered very

nervously at the prisoners. A broad spreading mimosa tree

stood at the far end of the clearing, giving pleasant

shade, and beneath it stood an odd little shed with no

front, raised several feet from the ground and housing

within it a dragon egg of substantial size. Around it a

circle of women sat with mortar and pestle, pounding grain;

they put aside their tools and patted the dragon egg, as if

speaking to it, and rose to greet the visitors as they

leapt down from the smaller dragons' backs, and to stare

with curiosity.

Several men came in from the village, to clasp arms with

the handlers and greet the dragons. An elaborately carved

elephant's tooth hung from a tree, the narrow end cut open

to make a horn, and one of the villagers took this down and

blew on it, several long hollow ringing blasts. Shortly

another dragon landed in the clearing, a middle-weight of

perhaps ten tons, a delicate dusty shade of green with

yellow markings and sprays of red spots upon his breast and

shoulders, and two sets of long foreteeth which protruded

over his jaw above and below. The children were even less

shy of this newcomer, clustering close about his forelegs,

even climbing upon his tail and pulling on his wings, a

treatment which he bore with perfect patience while he

talked with the visiting dragons.

The four of them settled around the enshrined dragon egg,

in company with their handlers and the men of the village;

and one older woman also sat with them, her dress marking

her apart: a skirt of animal-skins and strings of long

beads like reed-joints, and many heaped necklaces of animal

claws and colored beads also. The rest of the women brought

a large steaming pot of porridge, the grain boiled up in

milk rather than broth, for their dinner; with fresh greens

cooked with garlic, and dried meat preserved in salt: a

little tough, but flavorful, vinegary and spiced.

Bowls were brought for the prisoners, and their hands were

untied to allow them to eat for themselves for once, their

captors less wary with so large a company around them; and

in the celebratory bustle, Mrs. Erasmus was able to slip

away from Kefentse to join them once again: he had been

given pride of place beside the dragon egg, and presented a

large cow to eat; and they seemed to hold the evening's

entertainment until he had finished. At least when the

remnants of the carcass on which he feasted had been

carried away, and fresh dirt scattered over the ground

before him to soak up the blood, only then did the old

woman stand up, the one oddly dressed, and coming to stand

before the dragon egg began to sing and clap.

The audience took up the rhythm, with clapping and with

drums, and their voices joined with her on the refrains;

each verse was different, without rhyme or pattern that

Laurence could see. "She is saying, she is telling the

egg," Mrs. Erasmus said, staring at the ground, unseeing;

intent upon following the words. "She is telling him of his

life. She is saying, he was a founder of the village; he

brought them to a good safe country, past the desert, where

the kidnappers do not come. He was a great hunter, and

killed the lion with his own hands, when it would have

raided among the cattle; they miss his wisdom, in the

council, and he must hurry up and come back to them: it is

his duty-"

Laurence stared, entirely baffled. The old priestess had

finished her own verses, and began to lead one after

another some of the men of the village to stand in front of

the egg and recite, with a little prompting assistance from

her. "They say they are his sons," Mrs. Erasmus said,

"telling him they long to hear his voice again; that is his

grandson, born since his death," when one of them carried

an infant in swaddling to the egg, to pat its small hand

against the shell. "It is only some heathen superstition,

of course," Mrs. Erasmus added, but uneasily.

The dragons joined their own voices to the ceremony: the

local beast addressing the egg as his old friend, whose

return was eagerly awaited; the smaller dragons of the

distant border spoke of the general pleasures of the hunt,

of taking wing, of seeing their descendants prosper.

Kefentse was silent, until the priestess chided him, and

coaxed; then at last in his deep voice he gave warning

rather than encouragement, and spoke of grief at failing in

his duty: of coming back to the deserted village, the smoke

of dying fires, all the houses empty; his children lying in

the dust, still and not answering his calls, and the hyena

slinking through the herds. "He searched, and searched,

until he came to the shore, and at the ocean he knew-he

knew he would not find us," Mrs. Erasmus said, and Kefentse

put his head down and moaned, very low; abruptly she rose

and crossed the clearing to him, and put her hands upon his

lowered muzzle.

There was a certain sluggishness to the next morning's

preparations for departure, the dragons and men both having

indulged in some brewed liquor, late in the evening's

festivities, which now rendered them all dragging; the

small green dragon yawned and yawned, as if he would

unhinge his jaw.

Woven baskets were being brought out to the clearing, so

large they required two men each to carry, and full of

foodstuffs: small pale yellow kidney beans spotted black,

hard and dried; red-brown grains of sorghum; small onions

of yellow and purple-red; more strips of the pungent dried

meat. The men of their party nodded over the tribute, and

the baskets were covered with woven lids, tied securely on

with strips of tough thin rope braided of bark. The baskets

in pairs were slung over the necks of the smaller dragons,

who bent their heads to receive them.

There was at all times a watchful guard upon them, however;

and also upon the perimeters of the village: younger boys,

with a large cow-bell sort of contraption, which they could

have rung out in an instant. It was a shameful consequence

of the rapacity of the slave trade, that having exhausted

the natural supply of prisoners of war among the kingdoms

of the coast, the native suppliers of the trade had turned

to kidnapping and raiding, without even the thin excuse of

a quarrel over territory, solely to acquire more human

chattel. These efforts were extending further into the

interior with every year, and had evidently made the

villagers begin to be wary.

It was not a condition of long standing, for the village

was not designed upon defensible lines, being only a

collection of handsome but small, low houses made of clay

and stones and roofed in straw. These were circular, with

nearly a quarter of the circumference open to the elements

to let the smoke of their cooking-fires out, and would have

offered little shelter against a marauding band intent on

capture or slaughter. Indeed there was no great wealth

here, which they should have studied to protect: only a

small herd of cattle and goats, browsing idly beyond the

village boundaries under the attention of a few older

children; respectable fields, adequate for subsistence and

a little more; a few of the women and older men wore

handsome trinkets of ivory and gold and brightly woven

cloth. But nothing which would have tempted the rapacity of

an ordinary robber, save the inhabitants themselves, for

their being peaceful, healthy, and well-fleshed; and the

caution sat new and uneasily upon their shoulders.

"They have had no-one stolen here, yet," Mrs. Erasmus said.

"But three children were snatched from a village a day's

flight from here. One was hiding near-by, and slipped away

to give the warning; so the ancestors-the dragons-caught

them." She paused and said, oddly calm, "That is why the

slave-takers killed all my family, I think; the ones too

old or too young to sell. So they could not tell Kefentse

where we had gone."

She stood up and went to go stand watching the village,

while the packing went forward: the smallest children at

play before their grandmothers, the other women working

together, pounding flour out of sorghum, and singing. Her

dark, high-collared dress was dusty and torn, incongruous

among their bright if immodest garments, and Kefentse

lifted his head to watch her with anxious, jealous

attention.

"He must have gone half-mad," Chenery said to Laurence in

an undertone, "as though his captain and all his crew were

gone in an instant." He shook his head. "This is a kettle

and no mistake: he will never let her go."

"Perhaps she may find an opportunity to slip away,"

Laurence said grimly; he reproached himself bitterly that

they had ever involved her and Erasmus at all.

For another day and night they did not stop again, except

very briefly for water, and Laurence's heart sank at the

vast expanse of hard, dry desert which rolled away below