Mark of the Lion (10 page)

“That Kikuyu man,” Jade began in a hushed voice. “He addressed our host as Bwana Pua Nywele, didn’t he? What does that mean?”

Madeline snickered, and Neville answered in a whisper. “That is the Kikuyu’s name for him. It literally translates as Nose Hair in Swahili. His mustache is rather famous.”

“Does everyone out here get a name?”

“Most generally, yes,” Madeline said. “At least the men do.”

“What is yours, Neville?” Jade asked. “If I may inquire.”

Madeline answered before Neville had a chance. “He is called Bwana Mbuni. Mbuni means ostrich. You have to picture the setting. We’d just arrived in Nairobi and had never seen our land before. The oxcart ride was hot and dusty, but Neville found an ostrich plume along the track and stuck it in his hat like a musketeer. When we finally arrived at our land, he leaped off the cart, whipped off his hat, and made a rather dashing bow to me. Trying to act the part of a courtier,” she added with a giggle. “Naturally,
I
was very impressed. Of course, some of the locals saw him and the name stuck.”

Jade smiled. “I can think of several worse scenarios in which to be caught and named,” she said. She wondered if Gil Worthy had managed to acquire a name in his four years here.

Her hand went to the small lump under her shirt where David’s ring hung from a leather cord. She had donned it early that morning in her hotel room along with her corps trousers, boots, and a new bush shirt purchased in town. The ring became a tangible reminder of what her mind still struggled to accept: the proof that David once existed and the hard, cold actuality of his death. Now, as she sat in the dark quiet of the African night and waited for dawn, both the war and David seemed unreal. Someone once told her that denial was an initial reaction after a loss. She couldn’t deny the ring around her neck or the second ring securely stored in one of her bags.

Lord Colridge’s voice boomed again from within. “Perhaps we should lend a hand?” suggested Madeline.

“Absolutely not!” exclaimed Neville. “Lord Colridge expressly ordered us to wait here.” His finger jabbed at the veranda steps. Neville got up and paced back and forth several steps before he leaned against the railing, arms folded across his chest. “The last thing we want to do is antagonize him. His favor in the colony could be very helpful to us. He knows people, Madeline. Important people.” He sliced the air for emphasis. “People who might pay more for coffee, or loan us money in a bad year.”

“You’re right, of course, Neville,” replied Madeline. “Only I do feel like so much excess baggage waiting to be loaded up.” She sighed. “I do wish he would have at least let us bring our own horses.”

Jade thought of young Jelani at the Norfolk. The boy hadn’t been the least bit happy about being told to stay behind. She wondered if it was his village that was being harassed. Perhaps he knew the child who had been killed.

“I suspect Lord Colridge has horses in excess,” Jade mused aloud. “Possibly a matter of pride to be able to outfit us all.” She caressed the walnut stock of her Winchester.

A great deal of noise from the stables interrupted their conversation, and Pili approached leading two chestnut-colored mares saddled for riding. “Horses for the memsahibs,” he said softly as though not to disturb the sun during its rest. A boy walked beside him carrying a lantern. In its glow, they glimpsed two sturdy, dependable animals bred for strength and hardiness from northern Abyssinian stock.

“Mount up!” bellowed Lord Colridge. He led his own mount, a white Abyssinian stallion. Behind him walked another lad leading a third mare, black with a left white stocking. “There’s your horse, Thompson. Step lively. Dawn’s breaking. Time to move out.” As if it waited for his direct order, the sun pierced the dark gray horizon. Light spilled across the ground as though thrown from a bucket and bathed the landscape in golden rays.

“When Lord Colridge commands, everything obeys,” whispered Jade behind her hand to Madeline. She slid her Winchester into a saddle holster and her camera and film sheets into the saddlebags. Six native Africans came around the side of the house carrying large bundles on their heads. Colridge barked a few curt orders, and the men departed in a brisk trot.

“They’ll head towards the village and set up a camp for us,” Colridge explained. “Only a morning’s walk for them. We’ll take a more roundabout way. I want to show you my land.”

Pili reappeared with a small basket containing four cloth bags, and Jade detected the spicy scent of cinnamon. Her stomach growled again in response to the fragrant aroma.

“Almost forgot breakfast,” groused Colridge. “Scones, if I’m not mistaken. Take a bag then. No time to dawdle with fancies.” He took a sack for himself and issued a few orders to Pili concerning the horses. Pili inclined his head slightly and disappeared into the house.

“He’s not coming with us?” asked Jade as she mounted her horse.

“Whatever for?” answered Colridge in genuine surprise at the idea.

“I suppose I thought he was your manservant and perhaps acted as your gun bearer or oversaw the camp.” Jade found the silent young man interesting and had hoped to talk with him.

Lord Colridge made a deprecating noise, and his white mustache fluttered in the outburst. “Pish tosh!” he exclaimed. “For a
safari
, yes. But for this little excursion?” He snorted. “Should take care of this business tonight and be home tomorrow early.” He urged his horse forward and ended the discussion.

Neville fell in immediately beside Lord Colridge, and Madeline aligned herself with Jade. For some time, they rode past the fields and native workers and munched on the delicious scones while Colridge pointed out various features of his farm. Later, after leaving the cultivated areas behind, Jade dropped back a few more paces from the men. She wanted to ask Colridge about Gil Worthy, but Neville monopolized the conversation with questions. Madeline fell back with her.

“Is this what you expected?” asked Madeline.

Jade looked at Madeline and arched one brow in confusion. “I’m not sure what you mean. The expedition?”

Madeline made a quarter sweep of the landscape with her right hand. “This,” she said. “Nairobi, the protectorate, Africa. Is it what you expected?”

Jade rode along silently and breathed in the clean, heady scent of wild grasses and the horse under her. Her perceptive eyes drank in the expansive horizon as they left the farm’s buildings and fields behind them. The Athi Plains spread out in the distant foreground as a sea of tall brown grass punctuated by an occasional umbrella-shaped acacia tree. Dark spots shifted position, and Jade knew they would eventually resolve themselves into entire herds of wildebeest, zebra, or perhaps giraffe. To her left, the shadowy summit of Mount Kenya loomed blue-gray like a colossal whale breaching the sea of blue around it, the ever present clouds like foaming waves. Like the sea, Africa and the sky continued to roll and swell on beyond her vision. Perhaps if she listened carefully, she would hear the earth’s heartbeat, which she knew would match her own.

She nodded. “Yes. I expected grandeur and beauty, and there’s certainly an abundance of both.”

“I’m coming to love it, too,” admitted Madeline. “It took some getting used to, though.”

Jade nodded and waited for more of Madeline’s story.

“I grew up very close to London. There were always carriages on the roads going to and from the towns. If you traveled longer than a day, you ran out of country and fell into another village. Here, you never run out of country, and there aren’t all that many roads, much less towns.” She sighed. “It’s a lonely place.”

“The Easterners back in the States have that same problem when they travel west of the Mississippi,” said Jade. “The land just keeps unrolling itself, and the sky goes with it. You aim for a mountain range”—she nodded her head towards Mount Kenya—“and it never gets any closer no matter how long you ride. One day, you actually reach the mountain and stand on its summit, thinking you finally made it to the end. Then you look down on the other side, and the land’s still rolling on.” She smiled at Madeline. “What you have to understand is that we outlanders feel boxed in if we aren’t surrounded by land and sky. This doesn’t feel any different from home.”

Madeline nodded. “Neville sent me home for nearly three years towards the middle of the war. I stayed in London with my sister. Do you know, I actually missed this openness then? All my neighbors seemed too close. Have you any idea what I missed the most?”

Jade shook her head.

“I missed the sounds,” she said softly. “All of them. You can hear them out here, you know. You can’t hear sounds in London, only noise. Why do people like all that noise?”

Jade thought about it for a moment. “Have you ever noticed that little children are afraid of a strange or loud noise? But you rarely hear of a child being afraid of the quiet. That’s a grown-up fear. Noise keeps us from feeling alone with our thoughts. Maybe we’re actually just afraid of ourselves, so we surround ourselves with noise to drown out our thoughts.”

“We whistle in the dark, so to speak?” suggested Madeline. “That’s an interesting idea.” She glanced sideways at Jade. “Somehow, I don’t imagine you’re afraid of very much.” When Jade arched her brows in surprise, Madeline quickly apologized. “I don’t mean to sound impertinent. You have to forgive me. Living out here has apparently made me tactless. What I mean is, I saw how you reacted to Harry’s shooting the other evening. Everyone else held back, but you … well, you rushed in there and took the gun right out of his hand. Wherever did you learn to do that?”

Jade shrugged. “A person learns a lot of things growing up near Cimarron, New Mexico.”

“I don’t believe anyone can teach you to respond the way you did. That’s instinctive. You must not be afraid of any thing.”

Jade noticed the graceful arch of the Athi River in the valley before them and the play of long black shadows stretching out beneath the spindly thorn trees across the undulating brown and tawny-colored hills. Tributary channels cut deeply into the red soil and converged like bloody claw marks into the Athi. Beyond the river, the land rose into a gracefully rounded hill topped with a thick hardwood forest. The shadows shrank from view even as she watched. “You’re wrong. I’m
afraid
I’ll miss photographing this gorgeous play of light and shadow,” she said.

She urged her horse into a canter and caught up with Lord Colridge, who was busily lecturing Neville on the merits of the chestnut-vented sandgrouse for sport. Neville, for his part, acted as though he’d never before heard of the bird and hung on every word.

“Lord Colridge,” Jade called as she rode up to him. “Pardon me, but I’d like to stop and photograph that view.” Seeing the old aristocrat’s irritation, she added, “I promise you, sir, it will only be the matter of a moment. My camera has a fast lens. I don’t need a long exposure.”

“Very well, Miss del Cameron. I suppose you must.” He shifted in his saddle. “Er, I’ll just wander over to those trees to the left and, er, scout around a bit.” He turned abruptly to Mr. Thompson before leaving. “I depend on you, Thompson, to keep an eye out. Never know what comes out of those ravines there: buffalo, lion.”

Neville gripped his rifle firmly and nodded. Jade, in the meantime, dismounted and took her Graflex out of the saddlebag. She inserted a film sheet, pulled up the collapsible viewing hood, took a wider stance for stability, and shot. She inserted another sheet and took a second shot a little to the west of the first, making certain to overlap a portion of the two pictures. With careful cropping, she’d have a splendid panoramic view. Next she pulled a small leather-bound notebook and a pencil from the camera bag and jotted down a few notes as Colridge returned.

“You’re finished?” he stated in a tone that expected an affirmative answer.

“Yes, sir. May I ask, what is that hill across the river?”

“That’s what the Kikuyu call Kea-Njahe. It means the Mountain of the Big Rain. They believe it’s one of the homes of their supreme being, Ngai.”

Jade jotted the name into her notebook. “It’s beautiful,” she said. “Do Kikuyu live there?”

“Only on this near side of it, though they graze goats farther up the slope. Harry Hascombe’s ranch abuts their land, and Roger Forster has his ranch on the southernmost base.”

“So these Kikuyu that you’re helping, they live on your land?”

“No. Mostly on Forster’s and Hascombe’s, but so many of those villagers have worked for me that they come to me to settle problems. I’ve often wondered why they don’t bother Forster or Hascombe instead, but Hascombe employs more Maasai than Kikuyu. Forster’s probably off on safari again.”

Jade remounted and fell in line behind Lord Colridge and Madeline. Neville had been directed to bring up the rear and keep a watch out for any danger from the brush. Jade checked her own rifle to be certain of its ready availability. Experience had taught her never to count on someone else, but only a bushbuck, startled by their approach, leaped from one of the brushier ravines. His coat flashed rusty brown in the sunlight, but whether that was his natural coloring or if the reddish dust from a wallow aided in the tint, Jade couldn’t tell. It was a male, and Jade admired his long, nearly straight horns with their one tight spiraling twist. The animal reminded her of the pronghorn in size and markings.

They descended to the Athi River and let their horses pick their footing through the slope’s tall grass. The long rains had ended two weeks ago with the close of May, but even when the tributaries turned to dry gulches, the Athi itself maintained a steady if somewhat lower flow. Jade’s sensitive hearing detected a persistent churning rumble characteristic of rapids or falls.

“We’ll cross below the falls,” Colridge shouted back, verifying her guess. “Safer there. Crocs don’t care for a fast current, and it’s too shallow for hippos. Miss del Cameron will probably insist on taking a photograph, so, Thompson, you be at the ready for trouble behind her.”