Black Mischief (28 page)

The
aeroplane dipped suddenly, recalling her to the affairs of the moment. The pilot
shouted back to her something which was lost on the wind. They were the
extremity of one of the arms of the V. A goggled face from the machine in front
looked back and down at them as they dropped below him, but her pilot signalled
him on. Green undergrowth swam up towards them; the machine tilted a little and
circled about, looking for a place to land.

‘Hold
tight and don’t worry,’ was borne back to her on the wind. An open space
appeared among the trees and bush. They circled again and dropped precisely
into place, lurched for a moment as though about to overturn, righted themselves
and stopped dead within a few feet of danger.

‘Wizard
show that,’ remarked the pilot.

‘Has
anything awful happened?’

‘Nothing
to worry about. Engine trouble. I can put it right in two shakes. Stay where
you are. We’ll catch them up before they reach Aden.’

Rain broke late that
afternoon with torrential tropic force. The smouldering warehouses of the city
sizzled and steamed and the fire ended in thin black mud. Great pools collected
in the streets; water eddied in the gutters, clogging the few drains with its
burden of refuse. The tin roofs rang with the falling drops. Sodden rioters
waded down the lanes to shelter; troops left their posts and returned to
barracks huddled under cover in a stench of wet cloth. The surviving decorations
from the pageant of birth control clung limply round the posts or, grown
suddenly too heavy, snapped their strings and splashed into the mud below.
Darkness descended upon a subdued city.

For six confused days
Basil floundered on towards the lowlands. For nine hours out of the
twenty-four the rain fell regularly and unremittingly so that it usurped the
sun’s place as the measure of time and the caravan drove on through the
darkness, striving hopelessly to recover the hours wasted under cover during
the daylight..

On
their second day’s journey Basil’s boys brought a runner to him, who was
carrying a sodden letter in the end of a cleft staff.

‘A
great chief will not suffer his messengers to be robbed.’

‘There
is a time,’ said Basil, ‘when all things must be suffered.’

They
took the message. It read:

From
Viscount Boaz, Minister of the Interior of the Azanian Empire, to the Earl of Ngumo,
Greeting. May this reach you. Peace be upon your house. Salute, in my name and
in the name of my family, Achon whom some style Emperor of Azania, Chief of the
Chiefs of Sakuyu, Lord of Wanda and Tyrant of the Seas. May his days be many
and his progeny uncounted. I, Boaz, no mean man in the Empire, am now at Gulu
on the Wanda marches; with me is Seth whom some style Emperor. I tell you this
so that Achon may know me for what I am, a loyal subject of the crown. I fear
for Seth’s health and await word from your Lordship as to how best he may be
relieved of what troubles him. Boaz.

‘Go on
in front of us, ‘ Basil ordered the man, ‘and tell Lord Boaz that Achon is
dead.’

‘How
can I return to my Lord, having lost the letter he gave me? Is my life a small
thing?’

‘Go
back to your Lord. Your life is a small thing beside the life of the Emperor.’

Later
two beasts lost their footing in the bed of a swollen water-course and were
washed down and tumbled among the boulders; during the third night march five
of the hindermost deserted their leaders. The boys mutinied, first for more
money; later they refused every inducement to proceed. For two days Basil rode
on alone, swaying and slipping towards his rendezvous.

Confusion
dominated the soggy lanes of Matodi. Major Walsh, the French secretaries and Mr
Schonbaum daily dispatched conflicting messages by wireless and cable. First
that Seth was dead and that Achon was Emperor, then that Achon was dead and
Seth was Emperor.

‘Doubtless
Mine Ballon could tell us where General Connolly is to be found.’

‘Alas,
M. Jean, she will not speak.’

‘Do
you suspect she knows more?’

‘M. Ballon’s
wife should be above suspicion.’

The
officials and soldiers loafed in the dry intervals about barracks and offices;
they had no instructions and no money; no news from the capital. Destroyers of four
nations lurked in the bay standing by to defend their nationals. The town
governor made secret preparations for an early escape to the mainland. Mr
Youkoumian, behind the bar at the Amurath Hotel, nervously decocted his fierce
spirits.

‘There ain’t
no sense in ‘aving bust-ups.’

‘Ere we
are, no Emperor, no railway, and those low niggers making ‘ell with my property
at Debra Dowa. And just you see, in less than no time the civilized nations
will start a bombardment.
Gosh.’

In the
dingy calm of the Arab club the six senior members munched their khat in peace
and spoke gravely of a very old error of litigation.’

Amidst
mud and liquid ash at Debra Dowa a leaderless people abandoned their normal
avocations and squatted at home, occupying themselves with domestic bickerings;
some of the rural immigrants drifted back to their villages, others found
temporary accommodation in the saloons of the deserted palace, expecting
something to happen.

Among
the dry clinkers of Aden, Sir Samson and Lady Courteney waited for news of the
missing aeroplane. They were staying at the Residency, where everything was
done that hospitality and tact could do to relieve the strain of their anxiety;
newspaper agents and sympathetic compatriots were kept from them. Dame Mildred
and Miss Tin were shipped to Southampton by the first P. & 0. Mr Jagger
made preparations to leave a settlement he had little reason to like. Sir
Samson and Lady Courteney walked alone on the cliff paths, waiting for news.
Air patrols crossed to Azania, flying low over the impenetrable country where
Prudence’s machine was last observed, returned to refuel, set out again and at
the end of the week had seen nothing to report. The military authorities
discussed and despaired of the practicability of landing a search party.

In the dry spell between
noon and sunset, Basil reached Seth’s encampment at Gulu. His men had taken
possession of a small village. A dozen or so of them, in ragged uniforms, sat
on their haunches in the clearing, silently polishing their teeth with pieces
of stick.

His
camel lurched down on to its knees and Basil dismounted. None of the Guardsmen
rose to salute him; no sign of greeting from inside the mud huts. The squatting
men looked into the steaming forest beyond him.

He
asked: ‘Where is the Emperor?’ But no one answered.

‘Where
is Boaz?’

‘In the
great house. He is resting.’

They
indicated the headman’s hut which stood on the far side of the compound,
distinguished from the others by its superior size and a narrow verandah,
floored with beaten mud and shaded by thatch.

‘Why is
the Emperor not in the great house?’

They
did not answer. Instead, they scoured their teeth and gazed abstractedly into
the forest, where a few monkeys swung in the steaming air, shaking the water
from bough to bough.

Basil
crossed through them to the headman’s ‘hut. It was windowless and for a short
time his eyes could distinguish nothing in the gloom. Only his ears were aware
of a heavily breathing figure somewhere not far distant in the dark interior.
Then he gradually descried a jumble of household furniture, camp equipment and
the remains of a meal; and Boaz asleep. The great dandy lay on his back in a
heap of rugs and sacking; his head pitched forward into his blue-black curly
beard. There was a rifle across his middle. He wore a pair of mud-splashed
riding breeches, too tight to button to the top, which Basil recognized as the
Emperor’s. A Wanda girl sat at his head. She explained: ‘The Lord has been
asleep for some time. For the last days it has been like this. He wakes only to
drink from the square bottle. Then he is asleep again.’

‘Bring
me word when he wakes.’

Basil
approached the oafish fellows in the clearing.

‘Show
me a house where I can sleep.’

They
pointed one out to him without rising to accompany him to its door. Water still
dripped through its leaky thatch, there was a large puddle of thin mud made
during the rain. Basil lay down on the dry side and waited for Boaz to wake.

They
called him an hour after sunset. The men had lit a fire, but only a small one,
because they knew that at midnight the rain would begin again and dowse it.
There was a light in the headman’s hut — a fine brass lamp with wick and
chimney. Boaz had put out two glasses and two bottles of whisky. Basil’s first
words were, ‘Where is Seth?’

‘He is
not here. He has gone away.’

‘Where?’

‘How
shall I know? Look, I have filled your glass.’

‘I sent
a messenger to him, with the news that Achon was dead.’

‘Seth
had already gone when the messenger came.’

‘And
where is the messenger?’

‘He
brought bad tidings. He is dead. Turn the light higher. It is bad to sit in the
dark.’

He
gulped down a glass of spirit and refilled his glass. They sat in silence.

Presently
Boaz said, ‘Seth is dead.’

‘I
knew. How?’

‘The
sickness of the jungle. His legs and his arms swelled. He turned up his eyes
and died. I have seen others die in just that way.’

Later
he said, ‘So now there is no Emperor. It is a pity that your messenger did not
come a day sooner. I hanged him because he was late.’

‘Boaz,
the sickness of the jungle does not wait on good or bad news.’

‘That
is true. Seth died in another way. By his own hand. With a gun raised to his
mouth and his great toe crooked round the trigger. That is how Seth died.’

‘It is
not what I should have expected.’

‘Men
die that way. I have heard of it often. His body lies outside. The men will not
bury it. They say it must be taken down to Moshu to the Wanda people to be
burned in their own fashion. Seth was their chief.’

‘We
will do that tomorrow.’

Outside
round the fire, inevitably, they had started singing. The drums pulsed. In the
sodden depths of the forest the wild beasts hunted, shunning the light.

‘I will
go and see Seth’s body.’

‘The
women are sewing him up. They made a bag for him out of pieces of skin. It is
the custom when the chief dies. They put grain in with him and several spices.
Only the women know what. If they can get it they put a lion’s paw, I have been
told.’

‘We
will go and look at him.’

‘It is
not the custom of the people.’

‘I will
carry the lamp.’

‘You
must not leave me in the dark. I will come with you.’ Past the camp fire and
the singing Guardsmen to another hut: here by the light of a little lamp four
or five women were at work stitching. Seth’s body hay on the floor half covered
by a blanket. Boaz leant tipsily in the doorway while Basil went forward, lamp
in hand. The eldest of the women tried to bar his entrance, but he pushed her
aside and approached the dead Emperor.

His
head lay inclined to one side, the lips agape, the eyes open and dull. He wore
his Guards tunic, buttoned tight at the throat, the epaulettes awry and
bedraggled. There was no wound visible. Basil drew the blanket higher and rejoined
the Minister..

‘The
Emperor did not shoot himself.’

‘No.’

‘There
is no wound to be seen.’

‘Did I
say he was shot? That is a mistake. He took poison. That is how it happened …
it has happened before in that way to other great men. It was a draught given
him by a wise man in these parts. W hen he despaired he took some of it … a
large cupful and drank it … there in the hut. I was with him. He made a wry
face and said that the draught was bitter. Then he stood still a little until
his knees gave. On the floor he rolled up and down several times. He could not
breathe. Then his legs shot straight out and he arched his back. That is how he
lay until yesterday when the body became limp again. That was how he died …
The messenger was late in coming.’