Expedition to the Mountains of the Moon (Burton & Swinburne) (40 page)

“Something under two hundred miles.”

“Then go. Forget about resupplying in the town. You and your people take two horses each and the bare essentials in supplies. No porters. Nothing but what you can carry. Travel as fast as you can. It's a race, remember? I have no doubt that John Speke is already on his way.”

“And you?” Burton asked.

“Mirambo and I will lead our forces against the Prussians.”

William Trounce interjected: “But why, Isabel? If we're going to bypass the town, why risk yourselves in battle at all?”

Isabel stepped back and pulled the
keffiyeh
from her head. The sickle moon had just risen over the horizon and its pale light illuminated her long blonde hair.

“Because despite these robes, I'm British, William. If what we saw at Mzizima, and what we are witnessing here at Kazeh, are the first skirmishes in a clash of empires, then it's my duty to defend that to which I belong—besides which, if we don't keep the Prussians occupied here, they'll be able to rapidly establish outposts all the way to the Mountains of the Moon, making it almost impossible for you to get there.”

For a long moment, no one spoke.

Isabella Mayson cleared her throat. “Richard,” she said, “if you don't mind, I think I would like to stay and join the Daughters of Al-Manat.”

“And I,” added Sister Raghavendra. “Besides, you'll probably travel more quickly as a smaller group.”

The explorer looked from one woman to the other, then his gaze went past Isabel and his eyes locked with Swinburne's, and even in the dim light, the poet could see in them a great depth of despair.

“I'm afraid Isabel is right,” the poet said quietly. “We can't allow Speke to reach the Eye of Nāga before us. Equally, we can't let Kazeh fall to the Prussians. The only option is to split the expedition.”

Burton leaned his head back and considered the stars. Then he closed his eyes and said, “And you, William?”

Trounce stepped forward and spoke in a low, gruff voice: “Am I supposed to run off and leave women to fight?”

Isabella Mayson whirled around to face him. “Sir! The fact that I wrote a book about cookery and household management doesn't mean I'm incapable of putting a bullet through a man's head! Have you forgotten this—” She pulled back her hair to reveal the notch in her right ear. “I fought by your side at Dut'humi. Was I any less effective than you? Did I scream? Did I faint? Did I start knitting a shawl?”

“No, of course not! You're as brave as they come. But—”

“No buts! No medieval nonsense about honour and chivalry! There isn't time for such indulgence! We have a job to do! Yours is to accompany Sir Richard and to retrieve that diamond!”

“Well said!” Isabel Arundell put in.

They all looked at Burton, who was standing stock-still.

Gunfire rattled from the town.

The cough of a lion sounded from afar.

Pox, on Herbert Spencer's head, muttered something unintelligible, and Malady responded with a click of his beak.

“All right! Enough!” Burton snapped, opening his eyes. “Sadhvi, will you prepare for us a pack of remedies and treatments?”

“Yes, certainly.”

“Take Algy with you and instruct him in their use. Maneesh—”

Krishnamurthy moved closer. “Yes?”

“I'm sorry, but I have to give you a very difficult mission. Sidi Bombay says an aggressive tribe called the Chwezi live among the Mountains of the Moon, so there's every chance that we won't make it out. It's imperative that the government learns what is happening here. For that reason, I'm going to entrust you with my journals and reports. I want you and Saíd and his men to trek all the way back to Zanzibar. I'm going to pay our remaining porters to accompany you as far as Ugogi. There, you can hire more. Once you reach the island, catch the first ship home and report to Palmerston.”

Krishnamurthy straightened his back and squared his shoulders. “You can rely on me, sir.”

“I don't doubt it, my friend.”

Burton next addressed Trounce and Bombay: “You two, Algy, Herbert, and I will depart at sun-up. Work with Isabella to get everything prepared. I'll join you presently. First though—” he took Isabel Arundell by the arm and steered her away, “—you and I need to talk.”

They walked a short distance, then stopped and stood, listening to the battle and watching dark shapes moving across the plain near the horizon.

“Elephants,” Isabel murmured.

“Yes.”

“You don't have to say anything, Dick. I'm familiar with your hopelessness when it comes to goodbyes.”

He took her hand. “Did you know that, had history never changed, this is the year we'd be celebrating our honeymoon?”

“How do you know that?”

“Countess Sabina. Palmerston's medium.”

“I ought to slap your face for reminding me that you broke our engagement.”

“I'm sorry.”

“I know. Do you think we'd have been happily married?”

“Yes.”

He was silent a moment, then: “Isabel, I—I—”

She waited patiently while he struggled to express himself.

“I'm filled with such regret I can barely stand it,” he said, his voice breaking. “I've done everything wrong. Everything! I should never have accepted the king's commission. I panicked. Speke had ruined my career and reputation. Then he put a bullet into his head and people said it was my fault!”

“Which is when Palmerston threw you a lifeline.”

“He did, but even with the situation as it was, I'm not certain I'd have accepted his offer had Spring Heeled Jack not assaulted me the night before.”

“There you have it, Dick. You regret a decision you made, but how much can you blame yourself when you were under the influence of such extraordinary circumstances? We all like to fool ourselves that we are independent and that our minds are our own, but the truth is we're always swayed by events.”

Burton smacked his right fist into his left palm. “Yes! That's exactly it! My decisions were made according to context. But have I ever properly understood it? Since the advent of Spring Heeled Jack, I feel like I've not had a firm grip on events at all. It's all slipped away from me. It feels to me as though things that should have occurred over a long stretch of history are all piling up at once—and it's too much! It's too confusing! Bismillah! I can sense time swirling through and around me like some sort of discordant noise. But—”

Burton paused and raised his hands to his head, pushing his fingertips into his scalp and massaging it through the hair, as if to somehow loosen blocked thoughts.

“What is it?”

“I have this feeling that time is—is—like a language! Damn it, Isabel! I have mastered more than thirty tongues. Why does this one elude me? Why can't I make any sense of it?”

Burton's eyes momentarily reflected the moonlight and Isabel saw in them the same torment Swinburne had spotted minutes ago.

He continued: “Tom Bendyshe, Shyamji Bhatti, Thomas Honesty—all dead; and we—we have pushed through pain and fever and discomfort to the point of utter exhaustion. That is the context in which I have to now judge my decisions, but I don't comprehend the significance of it! Surely there has to be one! Why can't I translate the language of these events?”

“I have never before known a man with your depth of intellect, Dick, but you're demanding too much of yourself. You haven't slept. You're overwrought. You're trying to do what no man—or woman—can do. The workings of time are obscure to us all. Your Countess Sabina, who has insight into so much more than the rest of us—does she understand it?”

“No. If anything, the more of it she observes, the more confused she gets.”

“Perhaps, then, it cannot be deciphered by the living, which is why meaning is assigned retrospectively, by those who inhabit the future. By historians.”

“Who weren't even a part of the events! Are future historians better placed to interpret the life of Al-Manat than you are? Of course not! But will their reading of your life make more sense than anything you can tell me now—or at any other point while you're alive? Yes, almost certainly.”

“Are you afraid of how history will judge you?”

“No. I'm afraid of how I'm judging history!”

Isabel gave a throaty chuckle.

Burton looked at her in surprise and asked, “What's so funny about that?”

“Oh, nothing, Dick—except I imagined that perhaps you took me aside to tell me that you love me. How silly of me! Why on earth didn't I realise it was for nothing more than a philosophical discussion!”

Burton looked at her, then looked down and directed a derisive snort at himself.

“I'm an idiot! Of course I love you, Isabel. From the moment I first laid eyes on you. And it gives me a strange kind of comfort to know that there's another history, and in it we are together, and not parted by—” He gestured around them. “This.”

“I always thought that if anything was going to come between us it would be Africa,” she said.

“But it wasn't,” Burton replied. “It was the Spring Heeled Jack business.”

“Yes.” Isabel sighed. “But I suspect that, somehow, those events, just like the River Nile, have their source here.”

The freshly risen sun turned the plain the colour of blood. From the summit of a hill, Burton, Swinburne, Trounce, Spencer, and Sidi Bombay looked down upon it and watched as the expedition divided into three. One group, led by Maneesh Krishnamurthy, was heading back in the direction they'd all come; another—the Daughters of Al-Manat—was riding away, along the base of the hills, intending to set up camp among the trees to the southeast of Kazeh; while the third—Mirambo and his men—was moving into the forest directly east of the town.

Burton, with a savage scowl on his face, muttered, “Come on,” pulled his horse around, and started along a trail that led northward. There were two horses, lightly loaded with baggage, roped behind his mount. Trounce had two more behind his. Swinburne's horse led the eighth animal, upon which Herbert Spencer was rather awkwardly propped, and the ninth horse was tethered behind that. The clockwork man wasn't heavy—his mount could easily carry him—but he'd only thus far ridden a mule sidesaddle, and wasn't used to the bigger beast.

Sidi Bombay's horse led no others, for the African frequently rode ahead to scout the route.

Traversing a long valley, they moved through the trees and, thanks to the scarcity of undergrowth and the canopy sheltering them from the sun, made rapid progress. They didn't stop to rest—nor did they speak—until they reached the edge of a savannah midway through the afternoon; and when they sat and shared unleavened bread and plantains, the conversation was desultory. Each man was preoccupied, listening to the distant gunfire, dwelling on those from whom they'd parted. Even the three screechers, Pox, Malady, and Swinburne, were subdued.

“We'll endure the heat and keep going,” Burton muttered.

They resumed their journey, shading themselves beneath umbrellas, guiding their horses over hard, dusty ground, watching as herds of impala and zebra scattered at their approach.

The rest of the day passed sluggishly, with the interminable landscape hardly changing. The climate had all four men so stupefied that they frequently slipped into a light sleep, only to be awakened by Spencer shouting: “The bloomin' horses are stoppin' again, Boss!”

Shortly before sunset, they erected their one small tent beside a stony outcrop, ate, then crawled under the canvas to sleep. Sidi Bombay wrapped himself in a blanket and slumbered under the stars. Spencer, having had his key inserted and wound, kept guard.

In the few seconds before exhaustion took him, Swinburne remembered the clockwork philosopher's book, and the phrase:
Only equivalence can lead to destruction or a final transcendence.

He wondered how he'd come to forget about it; why he hadn't mentioned it to anyone; then he forgot about it again and went to sleep.

Sir Richard Francis Burton dreamt that he was slumbering alone, in the open, with unfamiliar stars wheeling above him. There was a slight scuffing to his left. He opened his eyes and turned his head and saw a tiny man, less than twelve inches high, with delicate lace-like wings growing from his shoulder blades. His forehead was decorated with an Indian
bindi.

“I don't believe in fairies,” the explorer said, “and I've already looked upon your true form, K'k'thyima.”

He sat up, and blinked, and suddenly the fairy was much larger, and reptilian, and it had one or five or seven heads.

“Thou art possessed of a remarkable mind, O human. It perceives truth. It is adaptable. That is why we chose thee.”

Burton was suddenly shaken by a horribly familiar sensation: an awareness that his identity was divided, that there were two of him, ever at odds with each other. For the first time, though, he also sensed that some sort of physical truth lay between these opposing forces.

“Good!” the Nāga hissed. “Still we sing, but soon it will end, and already thou hears the echo of our song.”

“What are you suggesting? That I'm sensing the future?”

The priest didn't answer. His head was singular. His head was multiple.

Burton tried to focus on the strange presence, but couldn't.