The Tropic of Serpents: A Memoir by Lady Trent (A Natural History of Dragons) (14 page)

Galinke had been shaking her head as I spoke, but the way in which she stopped told me a thought had come to her. She cast a surreptitious glance around and then, seeing no one, still took the precaution of drawing me down onto a bench, where we would be half-concealed by a stand of flowering reeds.

“It would be very strange,” she said. “But—to your people, children belong to their father’s lineage. Here, it is the mother’s.
Your
people would expect Okweme’s sons to inherit from
him.
”

I began to see what she aimed at. “Is there something of value he has, that he cannot pass down to his own children?”

Galinke nodded. “Certain honours and property from his uncle, yes. And Okweme has no full sisters; all of Denyu’s other children have died, so his heirs are more distant—cousins he does not like. He has two daughters from his wife, but that means nothing. They belong to her lineage, not his. But your children would belong to
your
lineage—and he could try to argue that, by the customs of your people, what is his should become theirs. To do otherwise would be to leave them with nothing.”

It was almost enough to make me laugh. Okweme n Kpama Waleyim wanted me for my country’s inheritance laws—or at least that was our speculation, though we had no proof as yet. But putting even a possible explanation on his behaviour renewed my incentive to escape it. “I shall have to contrive to be in the field more often,” I said. “
Without
him, this time. Tell me, what happens if a woman becomes, ah, impure, while out in the bush?”

I will not say it was my desire to avoid Okweme and the
agban
that led to our second excursion, but they were among the relevant factors. He was not so shameless as to contrive a reason to join us again—not when there would be no hunting on our trip—and Galinke assured me that rural people were more flexible in matters of impurity, so long as we had ourselves cleansed appropriately.

Other factors included our first preservation attempt, which, while not a failure, had been less than perfectly successful. Mr. Wilker (who was exceedingly stiff with me, on account of our as-yet-unfinished confrontation) said the acidity of savannah snake blood differed from that of rock-wyrms, but thought he might adjust the process and achieve better results. And apart from the anatomical study of dragons, we had a great deal to learn about their behaviour and movement, which would require observation under conditions that did not involve Velloin shooting everything that moved.

We spent more time in the bush over the following two months than we did enjoying the comforts of Atuyem, which was exactly as I preferred. Mind you, I cannot pretend the environment of Bayembe is entirely pleasant: as in the previous volume of my memoirs, there is a great deal I am omitting regarding the heat, the dust, and the ever-present flies, whose buzzing I learned to hate beyond all reason. (One night a fly became trapped in our tent, and its aimless wandering in search of an exit brought me to the very end of my tether; only Natalie’s intervention kept me from turning up the oil lamp and lighting the canvas on fire.) But on the whole, I find the hardships I suffer in warm climes vastly preferable to those of the cold—flies being the exception.

What pleased me was the understanding, for the first time in my life, that I was indeed a
naturalist
. Not the wife of a naturalist, brought along for her artistic and secretarial skills; not a hobbyist, collecting sparklings in her garden shed; but a scholar in my own right, engaging fully in my work. The tasks we set ourselves—to document the prey of savannah snakes, their breeding habits, their sexual differentiation, and so on—gave myself and Mr. Wilker sufficient distraction to pretend our unfortunate conversation had never occurred, and we fell into a rapport (at least for the purposes of our work) that was deeply and satisfyingly professional. I will not bore you with the minutiae of that work; anyone interested may refer to
Dragon Breeds of the Bayembe Region, Draconic Taxonomy Reconsidered,
or the articles eventually published in
Proceedings of the Philosophers’ Colloquium
over the years following our expedition. As the second of those titles indicates, however, it was during my time in Eriga that I began to consider the question of what, precisely, constitutes a dragon.

At the time, of course, we were all still operating on Sir Richard Edgeworth’s criteria, which were six in number:

1) Quadrupedalism

2) Wings capable of flight

3) A ruff or fan behind the skull

4) Bones frangible
post-mortem

5) Egg laying

6) Extraordinary breath

Our voyage to Eriga had reminded me of the disputes over the great sea-snakes, which at the time constituted the main challenge to Edgeworth’s model; I also thought about “draconic cousins” such as wolf-drakes, wyverns, and even my old sparklings. Furthermore, there were various theories regarding dragons in the Bayembe region, with some arguing for three breeds—savannah snakes, arboreal snakes, and swamp-wyrms—and others for as many as seven. (The latter came closer to the mark, though as it later turned out, for entirely the wrong reasons.) We could not see the swamp-wyrms without permission to visit Mouleen, but we applied ourselves to examining the distinctions between the grass-dwelling savannah snakes and tree-dwelling arboreal snakes, and found them to be entirely opportunistic: there is no meaningful difference between the two, beyond the simple matter of what territory each beast takes for its own.

Dry work to tell of, but it pleased me deeply—all the more so because it took me away from the strict and unfamiliar customs of Atuyem (of which the
agban
was only one), as it had previously taken me away from the strict and familiar customs of my own land. It was therefore a grave disappointment, as well as a cause for alarm, when Natalie fell ill.

I cannot say it was a
surprise.
Tropical diseases are legion, and we Scirlings are terribly susceptible to them. We all drank our gin and tonics as advised (I grew to like them, which of course made me a scandal when I drank them for pleasure back home), but one cannot haunt the bug-infested environs of watering holes without risking malaria.

We knew the signs to watch for. For Natalie to develop a headache was nothing of significance—we all suffered them, from the brutal strength of the sun and our appalling excuses for field pillows—but when she began to shiver, on a day when I was having to exercise care lest the sweat dripping from my face mar the page on which I sketched, there was no question as to the cause. And Natalie, to her credit, did
not
attempt the foolishness I have seen from others (men and women alike), which is to insist that it was nothing, she could go on working, it would pass. Malaria is nothing to trifle with, and we all knew it.

As soon as the porters we had hired could pack our camp, our guide (a chatty Mebenye fellow named Welolo n Akpari Memu, who knew the bush as well as I know my own library) led us to the nearest village, where Natalie could rest in greater comfort. That much, at least, went smoothly.

We ran into difficulty, however, when it came time to treat her illness. I cannot fault the medical assistance she received; they gave her water and herbs for the fever and the pain, which is all we could expect from a small cattle-raising village in the Bayembe bush. Erigans may be less vulnerable to such afflictions than Scirlings and other foreigners, but their people still suffer malaria often enough for it to be a familiar foe.

The assistance they offered, however, did not end at the medical.

Natalie’s treatment was being overseen by an old woman—the oldest in the village, I think—whose name I never did get; they only called her Grandmother. Between her rural accent and missing teeth, I had difficulty understanding her speech, but I soon picked a repeated word out of her explanation:
witchcraft
.

You will hear more of this later. For now, it will suffice to say that there is a view common across Eriga which attributes most or all trouble to the malevolent action of witches. These are not necessarily the figures of intentional and blasphemous evil my Anthiopean readers associate with the word; witchcraft can, as I understand it, be accidental, the result of ill will or unresolved conflict in someone’s heart. Nor would Grandmother or her neighbours have claimed Natalie’s problem consisted
solely
of witchcraft, and had nothing to do with our bizarre fondness for spending time in fever-ridden areas. But what sent us to such places, or weakened Natalie so that she fell ill? Witchcraft, clearly. And Grandmother, it transpired, wanted to bring a man from another village to treat Natalie’s spiritual ills.

“Nonsense,” Mr. Wilker said when I told him. “It won’t do Miss Oscott one bit of good, and may upset her.”

We were outside the house in which she rested, so she would not overhear our conversation. Beyond the edges of the small village, which hunkered down as if hoping the sun would cease beating on it so fiercely, the tree-spotted grass stretched forever. I felt very small and very insignificant: any one of us could cease breathing and this place would not care. “Grandmother believes she has one of the worse forms of malaria,” I told him. “The sort that most frequently kills.”

“Then we must get her back to Atuyem, if she can be moved. Sir Adam’s doctor can treat her best.”

This required us to time our journey very carefully. Most forms of malaria afflict the subject with periodic fevers (the interval of which is the primary means of distinguishing them), and during the respite the patient may be more capable of activity. That is not, however, the same thing as being well. Natalie suffered terrible joint pain, and this she
did
endure with admirable stoicism; she knew as well as we did that there would be no relief for her out in the bush. When her fever returned, we stopped until she could ride again. And so, by agonizing stages, we made our way back to Atuyem.

I expected our quarters there to have been given to another during our absence. (Those of you with good memories may recall we had been invited into the royal palace itself by the oba, supposedly because of his great interest in us; the man had ignored us completely since our arrival. There was every reason to think his interest had vanished.) To my surprise, they had not, and furthermore his own royal physician came with Dr. Garrett to examine Natalie and treat her. I was, in the meanwhile, given my own room, so that I might not have to share a bed with a sick woman.

Sir Adam, however, did not even do me the courtesy of allowing me a chance to sleep in that bed before he sent a message demanding my immediate presence at Point Miriam. I defied him long enough to bathe; you could have grown strawberries in the dirt caked on my skin. Then, wearing one of my non-bush dresses—which is to say, one of the only clean items of clothing I had left—I rode wearily down to Nsebu in answer to his summons.

Our resident ambassador had a fine office set up in one of the rooms, with heavy oak furniture totally at odds with their Yembe surroundings. The tired and therefore cynical part of me wondered if he had imported it so that he might plant his fists on the desk and loom at me across its polished surface in proper Scirling fashion.

“I have received,” he said, biting each word off, “a letter from Lord Denbow.”

My head was full of malaria and draconic taxonomy; it took longer than it should have to place the name. “Natalie’s father.”

“Yes. Miss Oscott’s father. He is demanding I send his daughter home at once. Mrs. Camherst, what the devil have you done?”

“Nothing like you are thinking,” I said, wishing desperately that I had ignored his summons until the following morning. A night of sleep would have been more precious than dragonbone, right then. “Unless you are thinking that I did as Miss Oscott wished, in which case you are correct.”

Sir Adam slapped his hand atop his desk. “This is no subject for jokes, Mrs. Camherst. Lord Denbow is very angry.”

I wondered how long ago his letter had arrived. Not that it mattered; Sir Adam would hardly be persuaded by the argument that leaving a baron to stew for a few more months would improve his temper. “Lord Denbow may be angry, but I will lay pebbles to iron that Lord Hilford is not. Or have you forgotten that the earl is our patron? He knows his granddaughter is here, and does not mind.”

Acknowledging my sponsor’s complicity may not have been my wisest move; I apologized to him for it later. It did no good in either case. Sir Adam launched into a diatribe about Lord Denbow, not Lord Hilford, being the legal guardian of Natalie Oscott, and furthermore the girl’s own wishes not being of the slightest relevance. I suffered this in silence, but when he expanded his theme and brought up Natalie’s illness, I lost my temper utterly.

“So you will blame me for her malaria? As others blame me for my husband’s death—how very familiar. I cannot be permitted to make my own choices, as Natalie cannot either, but I am somehow to blame for the choices of others. What tremendous power I seem to have! But certain things are out of my hands, Sir Adam, and one of them is whether Natalie will even live to be
sent
home. I suggest you search your heart and find the decency to leave the matter of her disposition until
after
we know the answer to that question.”

I had risen from my chair during this tirade, and by the look on Sir Adam’s face, the last thing he had anticipated was for me to shout right back at him. (I think he expected me to break down crying—which only goes to show how little he understood this entire situation.) What he thought of the rest of my words I cannot say, but one part at least had clearly penetrated his mind, for he said, “Yes, well, everything of course depends on whether the girl recovers.”

“Indeed,” I said, mimicking the biting manner in which he had begun our meeting. “And if you should breathe even one word of this where she can hear, you and I will speak again.” Whereupon I pivoted sharply and walked out of his office.