Heart of Light (26 page)

One thing that puzzled her and that she did ask was what the carriers should sleep in.

The manager had laughed at her, good-naturedly, as though she'd been a simple child.

“Sleep in, my lady? Why, they sleep wherever they chance. Very natural people these blacks, and no more needful of civilized comforts than an antelope. They lie down on a dirt mound just as happily as they would lie down on a lace bed. And more comfortably, since that's all they've known from birth.”

Yet Emily doubted this assertion. She knew enough—from listening to people's guesses on the life and motives of Indians—to know that Europeans seemed to attribute to every other breed of man a simplicity that was not human. Still, she could hardly invite the carriers into her tent, nor did she want to shock her husband by insisting the carriers be given tents, which would have greatly added to their loads. So she slept in solitary splendor in a little chamber made of white canvas.

Opening her eyes now, she looked at the peaked roof of cloth above her and realized she was truly in Africa. Yet it all seemed like a dream, till the lion roared again. And then she rose, shaking herself, and looked for her clothes, which she'd set at the foot of the bed. She slept in a long nightgown that she now removed and folded into its trunk, to be transported. Strange to live out of a trunk this way. She put her dress on—one of the many sturdy dresses she'd packed for what she'd thought would be a few honeymoon adventures.

Her feet had been much the worse for the wear in the beginning of this trip, the skin blistering from contact with the sensible, hard-leather boots she'd chosen for her honeymoon expeditions to mosques and pyramids. On the third day, she'd been quite miserable. But then the woman Nassira—who reminded Emily of the maid at the carpetdock—except, of course, she could not be the same woman, because what would an employee of the carpetship line be doing this far into Africa?—had anointed Emily's feet with a salve that smelled vile. Emily hadn't dared ask what the salve contained, preferring to think that it must be nothing but a paste of many plants. Still, the salve had worked, and now, days later, her feet were quite hardened to this effort.

When she returned to England—if she returned—she would be able to impress her stepmother and stepsisters by being a most serious walker, able to continue with any excursion long after all other ladies and most men had given up.

The boots, too, that she now slipped onto her feet and laced carefully—because a carefully laced boot reduced her chances of twisting her ankle—had accommodated to her feet, getting, in the process, unshapely and quite unsightly. But much more comfortable.

Fully dressed, in a plain serge dress with hardly any frills, and with her boots on, Emily tied up her long hair and pinned it up, then pinned a broad straw hat on top of it all. She'd found that though she didn't blister or burn to the painful pink that Nigel had displayed for days now, she had been out of the sun too long to take it comfortably, and she was quite glad for the protection afforded by her broad-brimmed hat.

Fully attired, she stepped out of her tent. And again heard the roar of the lion in the distance.

“Don't worry, lady,” the chief carrier, Kitwana, said. He still looked too tall, too broad-shouldered, too intimidatingly strong. He'd traded his English-style suit for shorts and a short-sleeved shirt, both of a dun color, which only seemed to make him look somehow larger. That he stood just outside Emily's tent startled her. Had he been spying on her? Then she noticed that he had in his hand the leather bucket that they used to gather water from lakes or streams, when near enough to their encampment. Though not too near, because, Kitwana said—and Peter agreed—if they parked near a water hole, they would be visited by all types of creatures.

He set the leather bucket near the single basin, which they had set upon a rock. “I thought you'd be waking soon and wanting to wash,” he said, and smiled.

“Why, thank you,” Emily said, and felt confused. Whatever she'd expected of native carriers, Kitwana did not behave like one. Instead, he acted like a prince in disguise, or perhaps a learned sorcerer of great power, consenting to associate with commoners and play their servant. He was unfailingly courteous and humble, but such behavior only seemed to emphasize his condescension.

From his straight bearing and the way he explained it, bringing the water somehow acquired the status of a royal favor, granted by a great personage, and Emily felt as though she should bob him a curtsy and apologize for putting him to the trouble.

And he carried trunks and guided, though more often he protected, and hunted for their supper—all with that same aplomb, as if he were doing them all a great favor.

If he were an Englishman in society, he would be insufferable, Emily thought, so full of himself and his own importance as to be impossible to get along with. Or perhaps he would be a person of some consequence. A duke or a prince, in whom such behavior was expected. She cast a furtive look at his profile and had to admit it had great nobility.

She washed her face and hands. The greater washing was done at nighttime, with water warmed over the fire. She rearranged her hat in front of the small round mirror that one of the men—she didn't know which—had the foresight to bring with him, and that both men shaved in front of.

Kitwana stood by. “As I said, I shouldn't worry about the lion. It's more likely to be a danger to the cattle hereabouts, but some Masai tribesman will dispatch it.”

Emily looked up. “Do they have powersticks?”

Kitwana chuckled and shook his head. “No, they confront lions armed only with a wooden spear.”

“But that is madness!”

Again he chuckled, this time more heartily. “You're not the first, nor the only one, to accuse the Masai of that. But the Masai use the lion's own weight against the beast, waiting for the creature to spring and positioning themselves so that it impales itself upon their lances. Nassira has seen it, no doubt.” He indicated the woman carrier, who squatted by the fire, presumably cooking something since a great cloud of black smoke could be seen rising from it. “She is a Masai.”

Emily sighed, less concerned with Nassira's tribal status than with the cloud of smoke that heralded a very charred breakfast.

“You hunted this morning,” she said.

Kitwana nodded once, a way he had of agreeing with something, which seemed to be as spare and self-contained as the man himself. The only exception to Kitwana's proud silence was when he thought he could impart fresh knowledge of Africa to Emily. He seemed to have memorized all the facts of all the lands they passed through—plants and birds and men—and to love nothing so much as to regale her with them. Why, she did not know. And he said the most startlingly inappropriate things. Just yesterday he'd told her that the Zulu, which apparently was a tribe with whom he had some connection, were
the blue sky people. That's what their name means
. And then with an oddly self-conscious look,
From the color of your eyes, it's as if you've captured a bit of their spirit.

Even he had looked puzzled at those words as they came out of his lips. But she had long observed that
every
man loved lecturing any woman fool enough to stand still for it. And this strange African was no different than every other man she knew.

The only difference was that she need neither follow the laws of polite society nor engage him as a potential suitor, and she could walk away from his elaborate explanations. So even as he said, “We found an antelope upon a thicket and we—” She was walking toward the fire, where Nassira was busy in burning slices of antelope, roughly speared through a much too thick branch.

“I believe you're holding them too close to the fire,” Emily said. “The bottom part will get quite charred and the top will remain raw.”

Nassira gave Emily a dirty look that seemed to say that was exactly the effect she'd been hoping to achieve, but as she turned the branch to expose the other part to the flame, she lifted it a little ways from the fire.

She wore another colorful caftan, from what seemed to be an endless collection, and she squatted barefoot upon the earth. It looked very comfortable and Emily wished she could follow her example.

Of course, the woman was a dreadful cook, and if they'd been in England, Emily would have long since given her notice. But she had the same kind of regal posture that Kitwana possessed, and between the two of them they made Emily feel thoroughly common and inferior.

She wondered where they slept, very much doubting that either of these people was happy to lay him- or herself upon a mound of dirt.

She also wondered
what
Nassira was. She'd denied being Kitwana's wife, and she didn't seem to be attached to any of the other men. It was Emily's understanding that in every civilization upon earth, the woman was to some extent subjugated to a man and did not exist freely without her partner. Yet the men here seemed to take Nassira as an equal. Emily had often watched Nassira intervene in disputes by giving her opinion or by standing between potential combatants and informing both sides of their lack of sense. What must it be like to be a woman like that? Lost in her thoughts, Emily accepted a tin plate with a very dubious slice of roast antelope upon it, and started eating it as best she could with the aid of a fork but no knife. Nassira, meanwhile, helped herself to another slice, and Kitwana to another. They did not observe the etiquette of waiting until their employers had eaten before they started, nor did Emily see why they should, since Nigel and Farewell were still in bed.

Kitwana told Nassira something in a fast-flowing language, and Nassira gave him the same sort of look she'd given Emily, as though she was considering roasting him over the fire. But he only chuckled and turned away, directing the other carriers to break down Emily's tent and stow it away so they could leave before the day got much hotter.

Nigel came out of his tent, fully dressed, and examined his pale blond stubble before the mirror. Apparently deciding that he didn't need to shave, he turned to Emily and the fire.

“I'll make tea,” he said.

This was a concession, and given as if he were being imposed upon by a group of hell-bent savages. But Nigel had found early on that left to her own devices, Nassira could and would find a way of burning boiling water. As for Emily, the voluminous cut of her skirt prohibited her getting near enough the campfire to perform such a rite. So Nigel did it, with the serene look of a martyr contemplating death upon the stake.

Emily finished her meat and accepted a tin cup of tea from Nigel. At that moment, Peter came out of the tent and nodded to her, his stubble looking like it needed a good deal more immediate attention than Nigel's. He shaved, employing his straight razor with a will, and while he did it, Emily took her cup of tea and walked about, prowling the corners of the encampment.

They were in a clearing, with scrub brush growing all around. In the middistance, some acacia trees grew—their shape like an open umbrella—providing sparse shade for a herd of antelopes and some creatures that looked like the ugliest buffalo on Earth.

From somewhere came the sound of singing in a language Emily did not understand. She noticed that Nassira looked up. But the landscape was so broken by a series of peaks and sudden valleys that often no person was visible. Until someone stood, suddenly, close by. A youth had appeared in this fashion. He was as tall as Kitwana, though more slender. Not that Kitwana could ever be considered fat, but this boy had that reed-thinness of the adolescent just on the verge of becoming a man—perhaps having entered the process but not yet having come to his full strength. He wore a tunic that Emily noted was draped much as the toga on a Roman statue. Only, this toga was a bright zigzag pattern of black upon yellow.

His hair was pulled back and pasted in place with an ocher mixture that made him look quite red from the neck up. He wore a profusion of bead necklaces around his neck, and a huge beaded earring distended and deformed his earlobe. He'd been singing something under his breath—a strangely moving melody—but he stopped and stared at Emily as though she'd come from an alien world.

Nigel was eating and Peter was shaving. There was no one nearby to defend Emily. She did not feel threatened, however, because this young man seemed so shocked by her.

Kitwana appeared, speaking rapidly to the young man, behind whom, now, two cows appeared, walking slowly like tame dogs.

“This is a Masai Moran,” Kitwana said, in his clean British accent. “A warrior of the Masai.”

Emily looked behind the youth. “With cows?”

“Cows are central to the Masai life. Warriors still look after their fathers' cattle. And they steal cattle for their fathers, too.”

“Steal?” Emily asked, looking at the young man's open face, his guileless smile. “You're telling me they're cattle robbers?”

“Not the way they see it,” Kitwana spoke softly, but just as though he were describing an oddity of nature, a plant or an animal. “You see, they believe God gave them all of the cattle on Earth. If any other people have some, it means that they must have stolen them from the Masai, and thus the Moran do nothing but get them back.”

“I'm glad you find the beliefs of my people so amusing,” a cold voice said behind them.

Emily turned around and was surprised to find that Nassira had spoken. She'd never before heard Nassira speak in such perfect English, with no accent. But she had no time to ask Nassira any questions, as the woman—Masai?—swept past Emily to speak to the youth.

The youth looked at Nassira with an expression that seemed to Emily to echo wounded disdain. He spoke in tripping sounds that poured from his tongue, bringing with it a strong expression of disgust or reproach. Emily thought they knew each other, that there was some history between them, though doubtless Nassira was much older than he was.

Again her thoughts were interrupted, this time by Nigel's approach. “Kitwana, see to the packing. Make sure it is all stowed properly and the men are ready to go in fifteen minutes.”