Everfair (46 page)

“What are they saying?” Outside the house one had to shout over the noise.

“That we have had enough. That we need not fight each other to get what we all want.” Mademoiselle tucked the Poet's arm in her own. Yes, they had made their peace with one another, as rumor said.

“They sing too fast! It makes them sound—”

“Hopeful?”

“Frivolous!” The Poet descended several stairs, but stopped at the bottom. “Why are they becoming quieter?”

“They march to the palace, to serenade the king and queen. Let them, ch
é
rie—let them go.”

“No!” Nothing would do but for them to walk up Vuba—the roadway clear of traffic and dry enough—to Fina, and from there to follow in the protestors' wake.

They caught up with the demonstrators at a shrine to the genius loci of the falls, a fish figure of some sort. There was a lull in the singing as the crowd, mostly women, refreshed themselves with coconut juice and pipes full of burning dagga. They wore only loincloths, not the tunics and skirts popular in recent years. Ashes smeared their faces. Leafy wreaths crowned their heads, and many held leafy staffs.

Matty looked for Fwendi and found her, despite the ashes. Atop her loincloth, she'd donned a traditional barkcloth shawl. Her brass hand flashed brightly, even in the shrine's shadow. Did she see him? She did! And once, when she turned his way, she nodded and smiled.

Why the pause here? What were they waiting for? Ah, this must be it, a shrill calliope rolling up Fina under its own power, louder and louder, drowning out their half-voiced singing. Beneath the plants circling the calliope driver's head, Matty recognized the face of Albert—so he, too, was a protestor?

A brief clasp of hands between Fwendi and Albert, and the demonstrators gathered together and continued on their way. Matty did his best to urge the Poet to return to his house—it wouldn't do the demonstrators any good for her to be closely associated with them. Either the music of the calliope made hearing him too difficult, or she was stubbornly pretending not to understand.

The avenue ended at the church. An impressive brick building with white stone columns, it was soon encircled by women and men shaking short leafy sticks at it, chanting what sounded very much like threats.

Fwendi met his eyes again, seeming this time to notice the Poet's presence. She frowned and made shooing gestures, shaking her head.

Suddenly the chants skirled high and the demonstrators moved in. Climbing one another's shoulders, they scaled the church walls. Tiles began to rain down from the roof, tossed to shatter on the surrounding plaza.

This would never do. Taking the Poet's shoulders firmly in his grasp, Matty turned her in the opposite direction and compelled her to leave. He didn't worry about Mademoiselle Toutournier, assuming she'd take care of herself. She always did.

And Fwendi had not yet agreed to let him take care of her. Still, he couldn't resist a last glimpse. His heart stilled, then beat again more strongly. She was walking away, too, in the midst of a small contingent of demonstrators. Walking away from the scene of that trouble.

Although she was walking toward the palace, where she would probably create another scene.

 

Mbuji-Mayi, Everfair, February 1919

Thomas tried, but without much hope for success. He had never truly known how to calm her down.

“They destroyed a consecrated church!” Vibrating like an angry wasp, Martha sat with both arms stretched out flat on her desk.

A “consecrated church”—was there any other kind? “That was over a month ago,” he said.

She made to rise, seeming to find his words a provocation. “Just so!”

With a resigned sigh, Thomas rose also from his extremely comfortable seat. He had no desk on which to prop himself.

Perhaps reminding her of time's passage had been a mistake. Martha missed her young husband, the king's prisoner. It was natural. Though they might be together again very soon, if she'd accept his advice. He tried another tack: honesty.

“This is, after all, King Mwenda's country.”

“Is that a fact? Was he not an invader himself but a few years before we arrived?”

“That's true, but—”

“We
won
! You overcame him in battle, destroying one aircanoe and capturing the other—”

“And letting him capture George.”

For an awful moment, Thomas thought Martha would cry. She crumpled into her chair—he resumed his own quickly—but when she raised her face to the green light filtering through her office's open windows, it was free of tears. Her jaw was as decidedly firm as it could be for a woman of her age.

“He would hate for me to surrender.”

“How do you know that, Martha?”

She raised a sheaf of papers from a basket on her desk. “His letters.”

“The king never allowed him to say so!”

“Of course not. But he hasn't said anything to the contrary. We won't quit.”

Thomas shut his eyes. Was there nothing else he could say? He opened them. “It isn't quitting. It isn't surrender. It isn't giving up. The Conciliation wasn't even written by the king.”

“Oh yes! I know who the author is well enough.” Her whole manner came in line with that firm jaw. Straight-backed now, rigid contempt filling her voice, Martha continued. “That French hussy Toutournier. Her interfering fingerprints are everywhere, on every page. Don't defend her! She's a scheming, lying, bold-faced cheat! I've known so for years!”

Thomas had no intention of defending Mademoiselle Toutournier. But to protect the Conciliation, he denied her authorship of it and said that honor was Daisy's.

“Poor Daisy.” Martha's contempt for the Poet was a milder sort. “I suppose she wishes not to abandon Lily's grave. Can't she find some way to stay?”

“She has! A way for her to stay and for us all—” He stopped. Shouting would win him no victories. His hands hurt, the skin cracking at his knuckles and wrists, peeling as if they healed from a burn. That was often the case when he fought in Loango's service, whether handling dream bolts or not. This morning he'd neglected to rub them with the oil Yoka provided. The pain irritated him, led him to speak rashly and without heed for consequences. He prayed silently and without words for relief. The act itself brought him peace. He would be answered.

Without making the question an accusation, as slowly and soothingly as he could, Thomas asked Martha what it would take for her to accept the Conciliation.

Her reply was prompt and unthinking. “Guidance from God.”

He didn't have to ask which God. For Martha there would always be only one.

A glance out the window showed him Yoka coming up the path. He held the familiar horn of oil: Loango's answer.

“And how will God grant this guidance?”

Martha clasped the wooden cross she wore as a pendant. “I'm not so prideful as to suppose I know that.”

Yoka's knock saved Thomas from responding. Accepting the oil and the flimsy explanation for bringing it, Thomas asked his hostess if Yoka could fetch them some tea or chocolate from the commissary. After the acolyte left, Martha complimented Thomas on the gentility of his servant.

“Yoka is much more than that.” He wouldn't be angry; it wasn't Martha's fault she was ignorant. Not entirely.

The oil felt good. He continued his efforts at softening her mood. “Let us see if by praying together we two may obtain a share of divine wisdom.” Guessing the purpose of the cushions below the portrait of Jesus on the far wall, he helped Martha to them and joined her in kneeling there. He remembered how to bow his head and fold his hands. But in the act of closing his eyes, he surprised a look of suspicion on his companion's face.

“‘God is not mocked,'” she quoted. “You follow a heathen path. You can't deny it.”

He leaned back on his heels, a little shocked. “But you accepted my help!”

“I accepted your help fighting King Mwenda. This isn't at all the same. I find I'd much prefer to pray without you.”

“Then I'll leave.”

He intercepted Yoka with the tea and carried it to the guesthouse where Uwimana and Fatou waited. Nenzima had left his side to captain one of the king's aircanoes. He did his best not to grieve over her abandonment, which he hoped would be temporary. If not, well, he would cultivate gratitude for the wives he still had, more than most men.

Was this, perhaps, the root of Martha's issue with his presence? Jealousy? No. She was obviously dedicated to her husband, heart and soul.

The guesthouse, intended for the families of wounded fighters, rested in the shade of a teak grove. A pair of planks bridged its encircling ditch, the water beneath them low. In a month or so, Uwimana said, the rains would fall more frequently here and fill it higher.

He had barely gotten under the long verandah's thatch when the afternoon's drizzling shower began. “Thomas! Come see!” shouted Fatoumata from the kitchen area. Through the ground floor, a shallow width hung with bundled hammocks, out into the courtyard and up the short flight of steps to where his wives faced each other over their new treasure: a microscope. It had been assembled for the hospital by Chester two seasons—a year—ago.

Nimbly, Uwimana jumped up to offer him her stool. Fatoumata, the eldest, now that Nenzima had left, pushed hers back so he could more easily reach the little table where the shining brass implement stood. An uncovered lamp had been placed beside it.

“What have you found?” he asked as he took his seat.

“We made slides of the ditchwater—so many animals! The hungry worms eat down all the bad ones—those who would grow up to bite us.”

“I can't quite—”

“You turn this to make the image clear.” Uwimana set Thomas's fingers on a pattern-etched knob. He turned it and the golden circle before his eye suddenly swam with fantastic creatures—tiny dragons with delicate legs and round, swollen heads. As he watched, a relatively larger monster attacked and swallowed a smaller one. “Ah! Yes! It's just as you say!”

“Just as Queen Josina says.”

“The queen has a microscope?” He shouldn't have been surprised; her interests were legendarily diverse.

“She sees many mysteries.” Fatoumata's breath brushed Thomas's ear. Tearing himself away from the miniature spectacle, he relinquished his seat to her.

“Have we heard any news?”

“No, my dear one. The drums say traders from Mbandaka will come upriver along the Sankuru soon. Perhaps they'll bring word.” A circuitous route from Kisangani, but the queen was cautious, and, after all, Thomas was her husband's enemy. Unfortunately. Till the king could be persuaded otherwise.

As the day advanced, the guesthouse's other occupants returned, visits to their ill and wounded relatives coming to an end. Despite the current conflict, the house held only a quarter of the people it was designed for, leaving the entire first story for Thomas and his entourage. When Yoka had returned from his errand to the local clergy, they retreated up the steep staircase. Talk drifting up to Thomas from below sounded less restrained then.

The smells of roasting yams and rich sauces soon drifted up as well. Uwi and Fatou climbed the stairs several times, carrying gifts from the reverent, dishes the people staying here had prepared for them. As his wives served him and ate out of their own bowl, discussing the microscope's revelations and comparing them to what they'd expected, Thomas reflected on what
he
had expected.

The life he lived was wildly unlike his dreams. The country he called home, despite Martha's good intentions and his own, was no Canaan. This was their third war.

But he ate the crisp fried fish and listened to the rumble of contented conversation below, the lilting voices of his wives disputing their discoveries, and thought that all would soon be as it should.

 

Kisangani to Manono, Everfair, June 1919

Tink made his way slowly among fresh ruins. Most of the palace had been destroyed by demonstrators. Not the cellars, and not the gardens, which flourished, unconfined now by walls on all but one side. Not the royal hives lined against that lone wall. The royal bees seemed unperturbed by the surrounding destruction. One lighted momentarily on Tink's blossom-embroidered sleeve, then flew away in search of less figurative nectar.

Seated on a throne resting under a pavilion roofed in flowering vines, the king was accepting the oaths of his new subjects. George Albin stood on his left, surrounded by fighters. To Tink, he looked ashamed of his capture and defiant in compensation for it.

On Mwenda's right, his favorite, Queen Josina, cradled in her arms a copy of the Conciliation, painted on a folded length of barkcloth. Tink could see everything he needed to from the vantage he claimed at the crowd's front. He watched the principals closely. Three hours into the ceremony, near its end, Martha Albin made obeisance, kneeling quite gracefully for her size and age. The king gestured for her husband to go to her and help her to her feet. Rising, the couple faced the king, who dismissed them.

Soon after, he was the only foreigner left. Dusk was spilling quietly along the ground. The bees slept. Only dampness filled the emptied air. Wordlessly, King Mwenda indicated that the queen should depart, and the fighters and counselors should follow her. Tink and Mwenda were alone.

“Sit down.” There was Josina's stool, lower than the king's, and also a cushion at the king's feet. “I don't expect you to salute me properly, since you didn't vow your allegiance.”

Tink chose the cushion. “You weren't fooled by the clause about allowing no foreigners to remain.”

“I know how
sanza
is played as well as anyone. The words were almost exactly those of my spirit father, in fact.” His eyes stared into Tink's. “He is a master of this game.