Everfair (10 page)

After a time Loyiki had journeyed home again, intending to persuade his family to join him in Everfair. And now he had learned that this would never happen.

The sky stayed light, though in the forest around Ilebo's edges the shadows grew. Mwenda assigned Old Kanna to finish up the burial services with Loyiki's help and withdrew to a less conspicuous spot for the night. No fire, but he didn't need to consult the shine of his blade for his next move in this game of
sanza
his enemies were unaware they played. He knew what to do next and how, which weapon to deploy, and who would fetch to him that weapon: Josina.

 

Bolombo River, Everfair, August 1896

Rather than rush, then wait, Queen Josina planned to take her sweet time upon the king's mission. Whether those she had been sent after were to be regarded as weapons or as allies, the queen didn't like rising early to find them. She had better things to do than stay in a boat all day.

The river flowed against them, slowing them. Though her paddlers made steady progress toward the refugee-welcoming settlement at Mbuji-Mayi, she expected Loyiki to catch up easily.

As usual, she was right. On the fourth day of their journey a pair of small, swift-moving canoes came into sight, filled with strange, grey-skinned men. One hailed her: “Queen! Let us go before you, making sure the way is safe!”

They came closer. She had her paddlers hold the big boat still so she could look at them. She saw that, as she had thought, it was Loyiki who had hailed her. Loyiki's face was clean and dark, but some pale substance covered his chest, arms, legs, and back. The same with his companions, all men from his home, as he explained.

She motioned him to pass ahead. “But we're stopping soon to sleep,” she told him. “When Sifa calls out for you to come back, you must do so at once.”

“Aren't you worried shouting will attract the whites' attention?”

“They're nearby?” That was not what her scouts reported.

“We may have been followed. Also, in the collection camp there were rumors—a new outpost of Everfair is not much further up this river, and some people there are white. Though they haven't murdered anyone yet.”

They decided that as their signal Sifa would imitate the call of a long-tailed mountain cuckoo, which anyone but the whites would know didn't live around here.

The Sankuru River grew suddenly narrower, then wider again and more turbulent. Another river emptied into it. Sifa said its name was Lubishi; she counseled that they go up this tributary a little ways and land for the evening. Josina accepted her advice and gave the signal.

The men of dead Ilebo roasted a large monkey for her and she ate as much as she could of the meat. Then she let Sifa and Lembe do her hair, arranging it simply in two smooth mounds on either side of her face. Fan in hand, she summoned Loyiki and the others to sit on the ground in front of her mat and thanked them for the meal.

The grey they wore was hardened tears. Loyiki explained that this was how they transported the material to the whites' collection camps. But now, escaping, they had instead chosen to give the fruits of their labor to the people of Everfair.

The tears were ugly. Without saying so, Josina doubted anyone but ill-bred whites would want such stuff, though even they showed signs of taste: gold was pretty, at least. But the next day she received a shock.

The presence of an Everfair outpost not much past the confluence of the Sankuru and Lubishi rivers having been confirmed overnight, Josina spent the morning preparing herself carefully for meeting these potential allies: bathing, chewing fragrant barks to freshen her breath, arranging her hair again—a more elaborate style for this occasion, with five combs inserted. On her upper arms she used a little paint she had been saving.

Josina was not na
ï
ve. She knew that fashions varied in different places, among different peoples; after all, she was a foreigner, from Angola. And though she'd never been to Europe, her mother's father had been born there. Those she met with might find her appearance as uncouth as she found theirs. But her king and husband had given her the goal of cultivating this connection, winning the invaders to their side. This she knew well how to do.

The breeze coming down from the village stank oddly. At first Josina worried it might be caused by some sickness, though there was a burning quality to it. Though not like wood …

The paddlers pulled their canoes ashore. Lembe assisted her in stepping over the side and supported her so she didn't slip badly in the mud. A little path led higher. At the top everything looked normal—except that a house to one side appeared to be on fire. So much smoke—far more than cooking would produce—pouring out of … a hole in its roof? A window? She couldn't quite tell, and no one acted like it mattered.

Walking calmly toward her were women, men, young ones, old ones, representatives of many nations, to judge by their features and accessories. As they neared, she heard them talking, and recognized several languages. Of course they grouped themselves together with those they could understand.

More than half of them had some visible injury from which they were recovering. Mostly they were missing hands. Usually only one. Some wore sparkling metal hooks and other devices as replacements.

Josina and her followers stood front-to-front with the refugees. Silence fell. No court musicians had come with her. No horns or harps or bells, only Sifa's voice ringing out suddenly: “Behold your queen! Josina, favorite of Great King Mwenda, visits you here! Bow with joy and pleasure before her beauty!”

Josina smiled. She lifted her fan and waved it playfully, flirting with her eyes. Sifa had made her announcement in Lingala. In Kikongo, and then again in Tshiluba, Josina echoed her: “I, your queen, am here, and you can lay your burdens down! Sorrow is banished!” Like a king, she danced. No musicians played. Her women sang and stamped their feet. Her paddlers slapped their broad chests.

Feeling for the land's rhythm, she held out graceful arms and spun slowly. Turning, turning—holding one foot high and finding where to set it down. Then the other. The pulse was there. The blood. It had not all run out, run dry.

She laughed and beckoned to a little girl who watched her wistfully from the crowd's edge. She was shy. Josina took the child by her bright brass hand and dragged her forth. Surely such an embellishment showed she was beloved of the goddess.

An impromptu circle formed around the two of them. Bending to match her partner's height, Josina hunched her shoulders and dropped them, up and down, letting the movement travel to her fingertips, the feathers of her imaginary pinions. “Fly! Fly!” she told her tiny dancer. Soon all awkwardness was forgotten.

But despite the trance of movement Josina remembered the reason she had come here.

She mimicked a final glide downward and ended with a flourish of her figurative wings. She looked around to measure the effect of her dance and met wide eyes much like her own. A white woman—yet a sister? Possible …

Smiling, the white woman approached and held out her hand. Josina took it in hers, as she knew was generally these tribes' custom. The woman's palm was pink, her nails clean and trimmed. But no patterns decorated the pale skin, which smelled of sweat as well as sweetness. How to classify her? Josina assumed her longest, haughtiest, most direct gaze, testing her. The white woman didn't blink.

“Welcome to Bolombo.” The woman spoke French. Josina thanked her in the same language, which didn't seem to startle her. They exchanged names and Mademoiselle Lisette offered beer, as was proper. They drank seated in the shade.

“How long is your stay? You will of course share my quarters.”

“Not sure.” Josina had Sifa fetch and stow her belongings.

They emptied the gourd quickly. Mademoiselle Lisette stood and shook the creases from her too-heavy skirt. “Would you like to see our—” She used a word Josina had never heard. Nodding, the queen allowed the white woman to precede her.

As Josina had reasoned, there was a fire in the house from which so much smoke poured. Contained, of course—in a stone and metal oven! Astonishing heat rolled out when the oven's door was opened, and she understood why three of the house's walls had been removed.

Just beyond a row of posts sat a pile of black, stinking clods, source of that peculiar odor that had hit her as she arrived. Two men picked up several handfuls each, threw them into the oven, and shut its door. One, dressed in clothes like a white, talked English a short time with Mademoiselle Lisette, for which rudeness she apologized as they left. “Winthrop is much too eager for my advice. Soon, he says, he'll be ready to show us how his machine can make possible—”

A man screamed. Josina looked around. Only women escorted her. The paddlers would be guarding the boats. Another scream. Shouts of anger. Mademoiselle Lisette was running toward the disturbance. She scrambled to follow.

They entered another house. Loyiki lay on a mat. Shreds of hardened tears hung from the hands of women kneeling at his sides.

“It hurts, my queen,” he complained. “I had forgotten.”

Others crowded the doorway, obscuring the light. She could barely see that Loyiki's arms and legs were dark again. The tears had been ripped away.

On other mats lay his companions, glowing like ghosts in the dimness.

“We so much appreciate this gift,” said Mademoiselle Lisette. “It will help our machines to suck and hold the air—” Her sentence subsided into sobs. The poor woman, Josina suddenly understood, was feeling her people's pain. Again she took her hand. How to explain?

The connection always went both ways: people to sovereign, but sovereign to people, too. The solution was happiness.

There were no words. But there was another method of communicating what must be told. Tugging her new sister out to the central plaza, the queen set about teaching her to dance.

 

Bookerville, Everfair, October 1896

They were losing. No. They had lost. The church and hospital burned. The huts so painfully constructed—Thomas Jefferson Wilson batted at a large flaming leaf blown toward his face by the heat pouring out of the doorway he approached. Ducking under blots of smoke, he checked the interior. Empty, thank goodness. That was the last of the outlying structures. He turned to join the evacuation.

The crusader in him, the reverend portion of the reverend lieutenant's soul, simply didn't want to believe what was happening, though as an experienced military man he knew quite well. Those Morel had warned him about seven years ago had caught up with him at last, and exacted their revenge.

He set out to walk a tight circle around the eastern edge of the settlement. All he heard now was the soft roaring of the fires that had been started in their buildings and the shouted commands of Leopold's men. The refugees' and colonists' shrieking had stopped, which he chose to look on as a positive sign. The quick dusk of the Equator had no doubt helped most to escape.

Finding his way through the thick, dark vegetation by touch and memory, he cursed his refusal to accept the inevitability of this assault. He had been warned, but had thought Everfair too remote, too obscure, for Leopold's dependents to seek for its destruction. He had thought that because this land had been legitimately purchased they were safe. He had trusted to his enemy's basic humanity to preserve them. This was the cost of that folly.

He almost collided with a man—a hand caught him, and something hard dug through his clothing and snagged itself in his trousers' waistband. Thomas struggled briefly before he recognized who it was: a boy, in truth, and not a man. The metal hook gave his identity away, the curve of it smooth against Thomas's skin. The flaring of a roof some distance off confirmed that this was the young African named Yoka. Not one of Leopold's cowardly bullies, but a refugee, and a useful one, despite his handicap.

Thomas silently assented to letting Yoka guide him along the path to the foundry, and past it, to the agreed-upon rendezvous. The smell of the boy's perspiration reminded him of working in the hospital, and he choked back unmanly tears at the thought of the colony's new casualties.

The ruffians' shouts grew fainter, and the fitful light cast by their fires faded. In the gloom ahead Thomas saw a dim, grey shape he took to be the white garment of one of Mrs. Hunter's nursing recruits. Rustling foliage informed him of others' progress. No one dared whisper.

They must have been traveling parallel to the path, for here was the low rise immediately beyond the foundry, and here the entrance to the shallow cave the hillock sheltered. Yoka's hand pressed down upon his shoulder; he stooped under the vine-hung arch of the entrance and pushed his way through concealing boughs. A lamp guttered inside, one of the crude clay versions employed hereabouts. Thin white roots snaked against the black rocks overhead.

The little cave could have been no more than forty feet across. Yet even in such a confined setting, even after their common enemy's attack, the survivors segregated themselves. Nearest to him were those he had trained, however haphazardly, to defend the colony. They guarded the way in, clubs, knives, and rifles to the ready. Beyond them he saw the newest refugees, members of a tribe calling themselves the Bah-Sangah, who appeared to be engaged in an argument. Further off, Mrs. Hunter and her godsons formed the nucleus of a group of a few—only a few—Americans mixed with the more assimilated refugees; on its outskirts the white workers who'd come at Owen's request stood hunch-shouldered and shamefaced. He could not discern that any of their number were missing.

With Everfair's co-founder off seeking support for the colony in Europe, Thomas had taken it upon himself to reach out to these English and Irish. But though many were Christians, or at least had been raised as such, race proved a barrier to his ministry. Indeed, these men seemed to feel the majority of the Negroes blamed them, at least partially, for the crimes committed by Leopold's thugs. Perhaps because they shared the tyrant's papist—