Empire of Ivory (37 page)

merely clung, and were borne away along the gorge, back to

the more settled area.

Still no-one had come. They had among their pockets some

biscuit, a little dried fruit, which would not have made a

meal for even one man; it was pressed on Catherine, who at

first disdained it scornfully, until Dorset insisted upon

it as a medical matter.

The workmen did not return, but several dragons appeared in

a party upon the plain on the far side of the gorge, each

carrying a goodly sized bundle of wood, and laid down a

large bonfire; then one among them bent its head and

breathed out a flame, igniting the whole. It was not

perhaps a great stream of fire; but then none was called

for by the circumstances. "Oh, that is a pity," Chenery

said, rather low; understating the case.

They grew only sorrier when another pair arrived, carrying

what looked to be the component parts of three or four

elephants among them, butchered and neatly skewered on long

iron stakes, to roast over the bonfire. The wind was in

their quarter, carrying towards the caves. Laurence had to

wipe his mouth with his handkerchief, twice; even the very

back of the cavern offered no shelter from the torment of

the delicious smell. It was very disheartening to observe

the dragons cast away the scorched and cracked bones, when

they had done, into the massive thicket of jungle which

lined the floor of the gorge below; still more regrettable

were the satisfied growls and yelping which presently rose

up in reply, lions, perhaps, or wild dogs: a fresh obstacle

to any escape.

Two hours more passed, or nearly, by the cracked glass

which Turner had managed to salvage from the wreck of their

capture; it began to grow dark. Dragons came flying to many

of the plain cave-mouths near-by, carrying netting full of

men, whom they let down inside the caves just as the

aviators had been deposited: the dragons had a sort of

trick of setting their hind legs upon the lip of each

cavern, and setting their foreclaws into some ridges carved

above the mouth, while their riders unhooked the netting,

so they did not have to squeeze into some of these smaller

caverns. It bore some resemblance to the passenger-dragons,

which Laurence had seen in China, save for the perfect

disregard for the comfort of the passengers in the nets.

When these deliveries had finished, a small dragon flew

down the gorge towards them, with many baskets slung over

its shoulders. It halted in sequence at the cave-mouths,

leaving behind a few of the bundles every time, until at

last it reached their own. There was a single man upon its

back, who looked their number over with a critical eye,

then untied some three of the baskets before taking wing

again.

Each held a cold and thickened mass of sorghum-porridge

cooked in milk: filling if not savory, and the portions not

quite so large as desirable. "One basket for every ten

men," Harcourt said, counting cave-mouths, "so as many as

fifty men, in that large one: they must have near a

thousand prisoners here, spread out."

"A regular Newgate," Chenery said, "but less damp, for

which be thanked; do you suppose they mean to sell us? A

charming solution, if we could get ourselves shipped to

Cape Coast and not a French port; and if they were not

unpleasant about it."

"Maybe they will eat us," Dyer said thoughtfully, his

piping voice quite clear; all the other men were engaged

deeply with their dinners.

There was a general pause. "A thoroughly morbid suggestion,

Mr. Dyer; let me hear no more of this sort of speculation,"

Laurence said, taken aback.

"Oh, yes, sir," Dyer said, surprised, and went directly

back to his dinner, with no particular sign of dismay; some

of the younger ensigns looked greenly, and it required

perhaps a full minute before hunger once again overcame

their temporary qualms.

The line of sunlight crept up the far wall and slid away

over the edge; dusk came early into the narrow gorge. For

lack of anything else to do, they slept, while the sky

above was still a daylit blue, and the next morning roused

from an uneasy night into darkness, with the dreadful

buzzing of the drill suddenly muffled; Dyer's breathless,

"Sir, sir-" in Laurence's ear.

Kefentse was there; he had thrust as much of his head as

would fit into the opening of their cavern, blocking both

light and noise from outside. Mrs. Erasmus was with him,

difficult to recognize in the native dress which she had

been given, and weighted down as if she were in danger of

floating away: earrings, armbands like coiled snakes on

upper arms and lower, a great neck-collar of gold pieces

strung on wire, interspersed with pieces of ivory, dark

green jade, and ruby, certainly worth fifty thousand pounds

at least, and a great emerald like an egg, set in gold,

pinning a turban of silk upon her head.

Most of the native women which they had seen, from their

vantage point, had been carrying water, or hanging washing

to dry upon the steps, and wore only a kind of leather

skirt, reaching to the knees but leaving their breasts

quite bare: much to the covert interest of the younger

officers. Perhaps formal garments were of different style,

or she had prevailed upon them to give her others; she wore

instead a long skirt of plain white cotton, and over it

another length of cotton cloth woven of bright colors,

wrapped and folded elaborately about her shoulders.

She required the assistance of a hand on her elbow to climb

down from Kefentse's back. "They would have me wear more if

it would not make it impossible for me to walk: it is the

tribal property," she said. It was evasion; her expression

was uneasy, and after a moment's pause she said, low, "I am

sorry: Kefentse is here to take our leader, to go and speak

with the king."

Harcourt was pale but composed. "I am senior, ma'am; he may

take me."

"He may sooner go to the Devil," Chenery said. "Laurence,

shall we have lots for it?" Taking up a small twig from the

rushes he snapped it in two and held them out with the top

ends even, the lower concealed.

It was at least a good deal more comfortable to be carried

in Kefentse's talons, than in the former netting; and

Laurence did not feel his appearance wholly disgraceful:

the idleness and heat of the day had left them nothing but

time, and thanks to the convenience of the water-pool, he

had sponged his coat as best he could, and thoroughly

washed his breeches and his linen. He had not shaved, but

that could not be helped.

The roar of the falls increased steadily, and the tangle of

jungle below, until they were brought at last to a curve of

the gorge very near the falls; here a great hall stood

open, three times the width of the other archways, the

entryway pillared for support. Kefentse dived low and

swiftly within, and coming to a stop rolled him

unceremoniously out of his talons onto the damp floor,

before more carefully setting Mrs. Erasmus onto her feet.

Laurence had already come to expect these indignities, and

picked himself up without more than irritation, an emotion

promptly vanquished in favor of concern. A makeshift

workshop had been established recently, it seemed, along

the right side of the chamber, and besides the rifles which

the aviators themselves had lost, some sixty or seventy

muskets more were laid out upon the floor on woven mats, in

various states of disassembly and repair; and worse, far

worse: a six-pound gun, its housing cracked but not gone,

and a barrel of gunpowder besides. A small group of men

were working upon the collection, taking apart a musket and

pressing low harsh questions on a man sitting dejectedly on

a stool before them; his back, turned to Laurence, was

marked with half-a-dozen bloody weals, and flies crawled

upon it.

A young man was overseeing their work with great attention;

he left off, as Kefentse landed, and came over towards

them: tall, with a long face infused with a certain quality

of sorrow, not by emotion but only the angle of his

cheekbones, like a hound; the nose sculpted and a narrow

black beard around the full mouth. He had a small escort of

warriors, all of them bare-chested and armed with short

spears, leather-skirted; he was distinguished from the rest

of them by a thick neck-collar of gold with a fringe of

what looked to be the claws of some great cat, and a

leopard-skin cape draped over the shoulders: physically

powerful, and his eyes were shrewd.

Laurence bowed; the young man ignored him, looking to the

other side of the great hall, and from a chamber within

came a great creature of golden-bronze hide, the underside

of her wings lined in purple like royalty. She was in

battle-array formidable as a Crusader, great heavy plates

of iron slung across the vulnerable expanse of her breast,

with a fine mesh of chain beneath to protect the belly, and

the spikes bristling down her spine were sheathed in caps

of iron, as were her talons, and these were yet discolored

a little with blood; Mrs. Erasmus gave him to understand

that this was the king, Mokhachane, and his eldest son

Moshueshue.

She-or he?-Laurence was at a loss; he was standing scarcely

half-a-length away, and the king was quite certainly, quite

visibly a female dragon-seated herself sphinx-like on the

floor, her tail curling along her flanks, and regarded

Laurence with a cold and amber eye. The young man,

Moshueshue, seated himself on a wooden throne, which was

brought to him and set by her side, and several older women

trailing after settled themselves on wooden stools behind

him: these identified as the king's wives.

Kefentse lowered his head respectfully, and began to speak,

evidently giving his account of their capture and journey,

which Mrs. Erasmus with great courage dared to dispute, at

several points, on their behalf; while trying to help

Laurence understand the accusations which had been made.

That they had stolen medicines, cultivated for the use of

the king's own subjects, was only the least offense; the

foremost, that they had offered a territorial challenge, by

invading in the company of their own ancestors, as Kefentse

considered the dragons of the formation to be; and in

league with enemy tribes had been stealing their children,

for which he offered as one portion of evidence that they

had been traveling with a man of the Lunda, notorious

kidnappers-

Mrs. Erasmus paused and said unevenly, "-he means my

husband."

She did not continue her translation at once, but pressed a

fold of her gown briefly to her face, while Kefentse bent

low and anxiously over her, crooning, and snapping at

Laurence with a hiss, when he would have offered his arm

for her support.

"The medicine we took only for necessity, because our own

dragons were ill; and without knowing the mushroom

cultivated," Laurence said, but he did not know how else to

defend himself. He could not very well deny they had

brought dragons; they had, and in any case, this seemed

rather to stand in for making a territorial claim, which he

could certainly not as a serving-officer deny. The British

and the Dutch would alike have been surprised to know their

colony had been thought unworthy of notice, and casually to

be violated, until the arrival of the formation.

And he was in no fair way armed to justify the practice of

slavery, or to deny that it was carried on at the behest of

white men, if he might refute some few of the particulars

which were leveled against them-"No, good God, of course we

do not eat them," he said, but beyond this could make very

little more argument. The dreadful incident of the Zong,

where more than a hundred slaves had been deliberately

flung overboard, for the sake of insurance-money, chose the

moment to come uncomfortably to his mind, with a blush for

the guilt and shame of his nation; made him look a liar, if

they had not already thought him so.

He could only repeat, that he was not himself a slaver, and

was not surprised to find this excuse hold no water with

them, nor even when Mrs. Erasmus had explained to them her

husband's perfect innocence; the objection plainly was

wider than such personal acts. There was no sympathy

offered, for the illness which had driven them to seek the

medicine; Laurence rather received the impression that they

thought it little more than just deserts, drawing as they

did no particular distinction between the British and their

dragons, and their temper grew rather more fixed, than

less, for all Laurence's attempts to explain.

The king turned, and, in response to a beckoning flick of

her tail, Laurence was led farther back into the chamber,