Limbo Lodge (7 page)

Don’t I jist wish Tylo was here, Dido thought, pulling away to avoid the long eager blade which was wriggling its way towards her throat; why the plague did I ever leave the track? With a quick wriggle and twist she flung herself sideways out of the blind man’s grip and kicked the knife from his hand; it whirled away and fell into the pool.

The blind man made no attempt to go after it; he raised his voice in a high cracked yell that set the monkeys in the trees to screeching and gabbling.

“Ohé! Ohé!” As if in instant answer to his call, two Civil Guards came strolling out of the grove. They carried pistols and wore an irritated air, as if they objected to being disturbed. They looked disapprovingly at Dido. One was fat, one thin. They were Angrians, tall and flat-faced.

“Hola,” the fat one said, “what goes on here?” And at once the blind man broke into a torrent of explanation in the Dilendi language.

“Hey,” said Dido. “What’s he telling you? I was putting money into his bowl when he went for me with a knife—”

“You, girl, you come with us; come to our hut, wait for Capitan,” said the thin guard. “We see no knife.”

“Wait for Capitan hear what you say. Yes, you come now,” said the fat guard.

They marched Dido through the trees, prodding her with their pistols. The blind man, meanwhile, melted away into the shadows of the grove. Dido cursed herself in several different ways;
why
had she not followed Tylo’s instructions? Supposing the guards took her back to the town and found out that she was the girl who had helped Talisman with the operation? Then a whole lot of time would be wasted . . .

“Where are you taking me?” she said slowly and carefully.

“We put you in the hut, Shaki-girl; till our relief come and tell Capitan.”

The hut, when they reached it, was small and wooden; outside it, two stools and a bench with a jug and cups on it suggested that the guards had been enjoying a morning snack of palm wine. Dido wondered if they had a regular arrangement with the blind cut-throat who passed on to them any promising prey. He, Dido thought, was not Angrian, but not a Forest Person either; a mix, perhaps.

“I have no money,” she said loudly.

“We see. That we see.”

They turned out her pockets and appropriated the few coins they found. Dido was thankful that she had stuffed Talisman’s notebook inside her shirt.

“What’s this? What’s this, Shaki-girl?”

This
was a folded velvet cloth, embroidered over with lines, and decorated with beads and sequins. It had been bequeathed to Dido by Mr Brandywinde, the drunken steward of H.M.S.
Thrush
, who had died of too much grog earlier in the voyage.

“That? It’s a game – you can use it for chess or fighting Serpents—”

“No, no,” they contradicted. “The game you play on it is Senat.
We
know. You have game pieces, you got?”

“No, I don’t. You can use black and white stones.”

“We know. We know that.”

One of the guards fetched a handful of white pebbles. The other opened the hut door.

“You stop in there, Shaki-girl, till Capitan come.” Then he looked over Dido’s shoulder into the hut and giggled. Both men were more than a bit drunk, Dido reckoned. “Oho – we have a friend in here, Andu,” he hiccupped. “The Shaki-lady has a furry friend to keep her company.”

“So?” The other guard came and looked through the door.

“Ah, so. A friend, a furry friend.”

Dido did not care for the sound of this.

“Our furry friend will not trouble you if you stay quiet. Keep still, and he will not trouble you.”

“
She
, idiot! It is a female. We will give her a drink. Females like to drink!”

“Ah, they do! Indeed, indeed they do!”

Hiccupping with laughter, the two men sloppily filled a bowl with palm wine and set it on the hut floor.

“Now: just keep still, Shaki-miss, and no harm will come to you.”

“Remember poor Tonio?” the fat guard said in a thoughtful tone.

“Yes, the poor lad, and how he turned blue?”

“He swelled up and turned blue; he took a week screaming and dying.”

“How he did scream.”

“May he rest in peace,” both men said. “Into the hut, Shaki-girl; watch out for the furry friend.”

The door slammed behind Dido. Outside it she could hear one of the guards saying, “Now: you can be black and I shall be white.”

“
No
, caramba! We shall shake the dice for it.” They began to quarrel.

Dido stood quite still, looking hard about her. She let her eyes grow accustomed to the dusk inside the hut.

It was tiny, and completely bare: dirt floor, wooden walls, two slit windows, high up, which let in a red light filtered through the clove blossoms. The floor and the corners were in shadow. As Dido stood quietly, leaning against the door, she thought she heard a shuffling, scraping sound in one corner. Looking attentively in that direction, moving her eyes only, she began to interpret the huddled shadow, and saw a frill of white fur, a darker triangle of face, two pale eyes. It was a sting-monkey, flattening itself into the angle of the walls. It was terrified.

It’s as scared of me as I am of it, thought Dido. Jist so long as it don’t panic . . .

She stood as still as a post, trying to send mental messages to the creature. I’m harmless, I’m friendly. I won’t hurt you if you don’t hurt me.

It’s their tails, she remembered Captain Sanderson telling her. Docked of its tail, a sting-monkey would be as harmless as a kitten. But they are nervous. They flick the tail over their shoulder, like a scorpion – that’s why they are sometimes called scorpion monkeys – and, if the sting touches you, you’re done for. Dead as mutton.

Dido swallowed. She was still just as thirsty as she had been before. Thirstier.

So – it seemed – was the monkey. She could see its whiskers tremble, as it smelt the liquor in the bowl. By infinitesimal, creeping stages, it began to inch its way forwards towards the drink it craved.

What’s that liquor going to do to the beast? Dido wondered. A cold trickle of sweat began to creep down between her shoulder blades.

The monkey suddenly jumped forward, put its face down to the bowl, and began to drink in audible, splashing swallows.

If only I had something to bash it with, thought Dido. But there was nothing in the hut, nothing at all.

Outside, the voices of the two guards grew louder and louder, as they argued about the game.

The monkey had finished every drop in the bowl. It picked up the bowl in its two slender little black hands, tilting to pour out the last trickle. Then it dropped the bowl, which broke. Then it began to bounce up and down on all four feet.

As if it were dancing, Dido thought. Croopus! The beast’s as drunk as a fiddler.

The monkey began to whirl round and round. Its tail flew out like the sail of a windmill. Dido flattened herself against the wall.

The men outside could evidently hear something of the monkey’s actions. One of them called: “Are you well, Shaki-miss? Why don’t you lie down and go to sleep?
Hic
! Capitan won’t come along for some while yet—”

Dido had no wish at all to go to sleep. But perhaps the monkey will dance itself into a stupor, she thought.

Outside, the voices grew higher.

“Ah pig! That was the last of the wine you swallowed!”

Dido heard the thud of a blow, yells, and the crash of breaking pottery.

Now, inside the hut, another small noise was making itself audible – the very faintest dragging, as of a finger being stroked on polished wood. At first it was hard to locate, because of the row outside, but soon Dido realised that it was coming from her right-hand side. She slanted her eyes in that direction without moving her head.

She was not long in suspense about it. From the corner of her eye she saw it coming – the flat, gleaming diamond-shaped head, with its metallic grey shine, the lean, whiplike black body. It slid along the wall, not fast, not slow, making obliquely for Dido’s foot.

This hut, thought Dido, is like a perishing zoo. It’s a wonder those fellers out there don’t charge for admission.

It was not possible to stand any stiller, but she tried to do so. At the last minute the snake changed direction slightly so that only its final two-thirds, a quivering, tensely drawn-out spring, poured across her foot. Its motion was always indirect, on a diagonal, like an endless series of interlocking S’s, casual-seeming, but purposeful.

It was making for the monkey, whose antics were beginning to slow down.

Do snakes eat monkeys? Dido wondered. Do monkeys eat snakes? I’m getting hysterical, there’s too much action hereabouts, guards bashing each other with stools outside, and a special Benefit Performance in here, loser gets a shot of poison, winner gets the freedom of my ankle.

The snake was circling the monkey warily. There was a short tactical pause, then an involvement so quick and so complete that Dido could not decide which had been the aggressor: the snake’s metallic coils flicked to and fro, the monkey’s tail whipped, curled up, whipped again. If I weren’t a coward, Dido thought, this’d be the moment to jump on both of ’em, hard . . . and get a jab in each ankle. If I had a stick, anything but my bare hands . . .

Her hands were behind her. She had kept them there, gripping the doorpost, distrusting their steadiness. The wooden jamb moved slightly as her fingers drove against it. She gave it a push sideways, her heart suddenly leaping; a section of it came away. With a swift, resolute tug she had a three-foot joist in her hands, rotten at one end. Ignoring the cloud of ant-infested dust that fell on her ankles, she held her weapon coolly, watching until the deadly skirmish on the floor came within reach; then she beat down with all her strength, striking for the snake’s head, which gripped the monkey’s hind leg. The snake twisted away, writhing – she thought she had missed it, but it twisted back, coiled and re-coiled in agonised jerks—The monkey lay limp in death.

Now
– don’t wait – the door had given, moved behind her when she pulled out the length of doorpost. She gave it a cautious shove, another, more violent – and burst out, coming face to face with Tylo.

“What – wherever—?”

“Come away,
quick
!
Quick
, Shaki-miss! Not good here! Those men – imrit shash jailosh—” He fell into the Dilendi language, evidently expressing something too bad to be said in English.

“One of them hit the other on head, so I hit
him
with handle of gun—”

He nodded to where the guards lay collapsed among the wreckage of their jug and cups. The hot sun was drawing winy steam from the shards of earthenware.

“You look very sick, Shaki-miss – what in there with you?”

“Oh, just some wild-life,” said Dido, gulping. “I’m sorry I didn’t stop where you told me, Tylo. I was so thirsty – I went to drink from the brook. There’s a blind man somewhere – let’s get away from here!”

She snatched up her velvet game-cloth which lay among a scatter of cowrie-shells.

Tylo tugged her, at a run, back to where the horses were tethered. No blind man was to be seen. Perhaps he had gone back to his station by the waterfall.

“You still thirsty – here—”

From the ground, Tylo picked up a hard brown fruit the size of a turkey’s egg, which he expertly cracked on a stone, splitting it in two. Each half contained a mouthful of juice protected by a layer of white pith.

“Drink, quick—”

“That’s prime,” Dido said, gulping. “If I’d only known!”

The juice was sour, fresh, wonderfully thirst-quenching.

“Next stream we fill our water-bottles. That enough? Now we ride, gallop-quick!”

T
HEY RODE UNTIL DUSK THROUGH HOT, SLEEPY
forest. The island, Dido learned from her companion, was like a great wedge, tipped upwards towards the south. Mount Fura was the highest, southernmost point; and not far below the highest peak of that was John King’s royal residence, Limbo Lodge.

“Why’s it called that? That’s a funny name,” said Dido.

“Well I dunno, Shaki-missie. Old Sovran King would have it so. After he wifie die, that’s where he mostly stay. Would come to Regina town no more. Too sad, see? And throw his girl-child off Cliff of Death in clay pot.”

Dido’s blood ran chill.

“Why did he do
that
?” she demanded, when she got her breath back.

“Too much she make him remember wifie.”

“Seems bad luck on the girl-child.”

“Ah well, see, Shaki-miss, Outros people not want girl children. Not at all! No value.”

“Is that why gals have to wrap up their heads?”

He nodded. “In town, hate gal. Among us, Forest People,
most
different. For us, girl-child bring good luck. When she grow, she be Kanikke.”

“What’s that?”

From Tylo’s explanation, Dido learned that, among the Forest People, who did not live in settled villages, but kept moving around, the men were Hamahi, guides, or record-keepers, while the women became Kanikke, witches, and dealt with the practical affairs of life.

“How do the men keep records?”

“You see, you soon see, when you see my Sisingana.”

“So the town people, the Angrians, hate gals and the Forest People love them.”

“Is so, is so.”

“And the Civil Guards are town people.”

“Is so, golly-likely.”

Croopus, thought Dido, I just hope Doc Talisman keeps fooling those guards that she’s a boy.

But she didn’t fool Tylo. That’s rum . . .

“What happened at the jail, Tylo? Did you see Doctor Talisman? Did you give her my message?”

He laughed. “No, I not see. But she, Doc Talisman, top-high Kanikke! She soon be out of that place. They – those Guards – fright-scared of that Shaki-lady. She got mighty strong nooma.”