Mark of the Lion (9 page)

The older man warmed to the subject immediately and spoke at length about his land and especially his horses. “Sent my finest filly as a gift to His Majesty last year,” he proclaimed proudly. “Do you ride?” he asked Jade.

She swallowed some of the delicious cake. “Yes, but more of a Western style, sir, and on a more rugged type of horse. Most of my father’s horses are bred from the wild mustangs left by the Spanish Conquistadors, but he’s thinking of breeding Andalusians if he can get a good stud.”

“Perhaps those mustangs came from ancient Arab stock,” suggested Neville, who wished to enter the conversation.

“Perhaps, perhaps,” muttered Colridge. “Well,” he exclaimed loudly and slapped his gnarled hands on his legs. “You must come and see mine. Thompson, Mrs. Thompson, come along, all of you. There’s a good lad.” He shooed them out the door like one of her father’s working dogs patiently running livestock, and as the dogs did, occasionally snapped at them to speed them along.

Jade, resigned to not seeing the coffeepot, stepped onto the veranda. Their host led them at a brisk pace to the stables and to his pride and joy, a magnificent bay stallion.

“This,” he said proudly, “is Bakari.”

Jade reached out and stroked the soft, sensitive nose. “He’s beautiful.”

“His name means noble promise in Swahili, and he has kept that promise. Sired four champions already.” Colridge led them two by two down the rows of the stable and outside to a paddock that housed two young zebra. “Raising these from foals,” he explained. “Going to train them to pull a carriage. Can’t break the grown ones. Too temperamental.”

Jade took another stab at changing the subject. “Lord Colridge, you’ve done very well, but my editors are interested in the early beginnings of the colony as well as its present state. Can you tell me about any of the other people who began settling here along with you and some of the things they tried? Perhaps some who didn’t make it or died trying?”

He fluttered his mustache. “Don’t like to dwell on failures, young lady. Not good for the colony, you know.”

“I agree,” she countered, “but understanding the hardships at the start certainly does enhance the present success of yourself and others like you.”

“Hmm,” he mumbled and stroked his white mustache.

Jade sensed his rising impatience and thought of a strategy to occupy his mind. “May I take some likenesses while we talk? Perhaps your photograph with Bakari?” Maybe posing him with his prize horse would relax him enough to speak freely.

Colridge nodded, and Jade hurried back to the Thompsons’ car to retrieve her handheld 4 × 5 Graflex and a box of film sheets. His Lordship consented to a photograph of himself, then insisted on calling out Pili to handle the horses while he directed the remaining shots. Jade went along with him and only pretended to take most of the remaining pictures. She didn’t have the film or developer to spare. She did take one of the Somali steward with a mare. Pili made a perfect model, quiet and serene, and she wished she had more plates to devote to his striking, youthful features with his bronzed skin and soft hazel eyes. The Somali were, indeed, a handsome people. She remembered Corporal Gideon and wondered if he had survived the war.

Colridge led the trio around his grounds and showed them his sawmill powered by an old steam locomotive, the various outbuildings, and the house garden fenced against hungry wildlife. An old hound with long floppy ears and sagging jowls joined them, and Jade stroked his head. While they walked, the Thompsons exclaimed and admired, His Lordship puffed out with pride, and Jade tried to steer the conversation when it began to wander too far away from the struggles of early colonists and too much into the merits of various root crops. It wasn’t easy. Once the man got going, angels announcing the second coming couldn’t get a word in edgewise.

“I would say most failures fall into two categories,” Colridge concluded. “Bad planning and lack of perseverance. Some of those chaps just wouldn’t stick it.” He looked over at Neville for confirmation. “Take you, for example, Thompson.”

Neville stood ramrod straight at attention. “Sir?”

“It hasn’t been all easy going for you and your wife, has it? No, I didn’t think so,” he said without waiting for an answer. “But you stuck it out. And you’ve been here seven years.”

“Eight, sir.”

“Eight years, that’s what I said. Can’t expect the crops to come in right away. Coffee trees take two years to produce at least.”

“Three at the earliest, sir.”

“Three years, just as I said. Then later you might expect five pounds per tree.”

“Three pounds per tree, sir.”

“Yes, of course. As I was saying, Miss del Cameron, a planter such as Thompson here has to stick it out, isn’t that right, Thompson?”

Neville answered like any acolyte around his idol. “I couldn’t agree with you more, Lord Colridge.”

“What sort of endeavors made poor choices then?” asked Jade.

“Geraniums! Some fool decided geraniums would be an instant cash crop, put thousands of acres into geranium cuttings before some blasted disease wiped them out.” He waggled a finger at her. “That, my dear young lady, is poor planning. Putting all your eggs in one basket, as they say. That young Forster is another example.”

“Roger?” asked Madeline. “Didn’t he have an ostrich farm?”

“Exactly. Put everything into raising those vicious brutes for their feather plumes for ladies’ hats,” exclaimed Lord Colridge with a contemptuous snort. “Failed to take into consideration the fickleness of women and their fool fashions. Motorcars are putting an end to his dreams of fortune.”

“Motorcars?” echoed Jade. She jotted snippets of the conversation into her notebook.

“The feathers are badly beaten up in the wind,” explained Madeline. “Certainly not practical for a driving hat.”

“Rog is a resilient sort of chap, though,” stated Neville. “Born in Africa. Doing more safari work nowadays, I believe. And he has a few cattle.”

His Lordship snorted again, and from behind him, Bakari gave an answering snort from his stall. “Fool’s gotten himself badly into debt. Overborrowed. Always scampering about, too. He needs to stay put and make that cattle ranch work, not go running off to Mombasa at every whim.” Colridge waved a walking stick in the air to emphasize his point. “Then there’s malaria. Mosquito netting, quinine, good air,” rumbled Lord Colridge. “Poor planning again.”

Jade knew that Gil Worthy left Africa the first time sick with malaria and once again tried to direct the topic to him. “Your Lordship,” she began, “did you know—” She got no farther. A native runner raced towards them, panting from exertion.

“Bwana Pua Nywele,” the man said, addressing Lord Colridge rapidly in Swahili, and Jade struggled to catch some of the conversation. She did manage to make out the words
toto
or child, and
fisi
or hyena. She also thought she heard the word
laibon
. She wondered if this man spoke of the same
laibon
that Jelani had mentioned yesterday. She looked to Madeline and Neville for help, but they were too intent on the story to observe her quizzical expression. Finally, Colridge held up his hand for the native to stop and briefly answered him. The man seemed satisfied and ran back in the direction from which he’d come.

“What happened?” asked Jade. “Is there trouble?”

“Bloody damned nuisance,” exclaimed Colridge. “Oh, not you, Miss del Cameron. This business. Yes, seems a hyena has killed an elder’s son, a small boy. The creatures have been a regular pestilence recently.”

“What was that bit about the witch?” asked Neville before Jade had a chance to ask.

“Superstitious bunk,” said Colridge. “Can’t have a normal hyena attack. Must involve witches somehow.”

“But why would a hyena attack a village? Aren’t they primarily scavengers?” asked Jade.

“That’s not entirely true,” replied Neville. “Most any predator will take ready meat if it’s there for them. Lions, too. It is true the hyenas do a nasty bit of undertaking for us, though.”

“It’s the Kikuyu’s fault,” exclaimed Colridge. “They don’t bury their dead.”

“Well, sir, in defense of the Kikuyu, it wouldn’t make much difference if they did,” said Neville. “Unless they bury someone very deeply, as we do, the hyena will dig it up. And we’ve certainly done our own bit to feed the brutes around Nairobi.”

“How is that?” asked Jade.

“The slaughterhouse did a brisk business feeding the troops during the Great War,” explained Neville, “and simply discarded the refuse of the cattle outside the town. Then there were all those influenza victims, including thousands of natives, all of which fed a growing population of hyenas. The troops and influenza are gone now, and the hyenas were left starving. I’ve seen them chewing on cooking pots.”

“Quite right, Thompson. Quite right,” agreed Colridge. “Dreadful situation. We’ve created a pestilence. That’s why I’ll go shoot this hyena for the Kikuyu. But we must convince them that there is no witchcraft involved.”

“I still don’t understand about the witch though,” said Jade. Madeline looked equally perplexed, so Lord Colridge obliged them with the barest of explanations.

“Some of the natives believe that a witch controls the hyena or some other creature for revenge killings. Still others believe the animal is the witch’s shadow soul roaming abroad. If he’s very strong, he can change himself into a hyena or other night creature. Either way, they’re afraid to kill the animal themselves for fear of angering the witch further.”

“Like the man-eating lions at Tsavo,” added Madeline. “I remember reading that a pair of lions attacked the railroad crews during the construction of the Tsavo bridge. All the natives thought they were spirits until the engineer, Colonel Patterson, killed them.”

“Yes,” agreed Colridge. “Said they were ghosts of chieftains or some such nonsense.”

“Where is this hyena problem, Lord Colridge?” asked Neville.

“Near the southeastern edge of my land. Got so bad the natives left for a while.” The older man sized Neville up. “Care to join me, Thompson? I’ll have Pili organize the tents and equipment. We’ll leave from here tomorrow at dawn.”

“I’d be honored, sir,” replied Neville. He looked like a little boy being asked to accompany his father on a first hunting trip.

“I’d like to see this myself,” said Jade. “Be a good addition to the story I’m working on.”

Miles Colridge sputtered several times. Snippets of sentences such as “no place,” “young woman,” and “frightening,” found their way out from under his bristly white mustache, and Jade waited patiently before she replied.

“You forget, sir, I was raised out west. I’m accustomed to hunting.”

“We’re not going after rabbits, Miss del Cameron,” he exclaimed with a snort.

“When I was sixteen, a mountain lion took some of our stock. We lost several lambs.”

“And I suppose your father took you along on the hunt, did he?”

Jade looked directly at the aristocrat until he felt the weight of those emerald eyes boring into him. She kept the tone of her voice very factual, careful to omit any trace of bragging. “No, sir. My father was gone at the time. I took out that cat myself.”

THEY CAME BACK. THE FOOLS CAME back to their old village and brought their stinking beasts with them. Did they think he would not know? That he would not smell their stench? True, they kept their goat herds away from his cattle and his streams, but it was only a matter of time before they would be back like an infestation of ants.

He was too busy himself to bother with them; his teacher too proud to attend to them. “They are bugs,” his mentor said. “Why should I risk myself for bugs?” So he picked one of his own beasts, a young male hyena, to remind these fools that he would not tolerate them. He took a stone knife and shaved his mark into its fur. Then he chose a bone bead, carved from a human finger, and tied it into the animal’s short neck ruff. The bone would guide the killer to its chosen prey.

He turned the animal, and squatting in front of it, stared into its face. They locked eyes for several minutes as the man murmured and chanted before it. At first, the beast shifted and tried to scratch his neck. Its hind foot paused halfway there and hung in the air. Then it slowly dropped back down as the animal tensed and stood catatonic. The man’s will passed from gaze to gaze and into the animal’s brain. The beast quivered and whimpered. Then, with one rapid movement, the man stood and released the animal. The hyena trotted away towards the village, and the man knew his messenger would not return hungry.

 

Jade’s stomach rumbled as she squatted on Colridge’s veranda. An answering rumble rolled from deep in the house’s interior as the brusque voice of Lord Miles Colridge issued orders. Jade held her suede wide-brimmed hat in her hands and fiddled with the frayed brim. Just enough moonlight shone in the yard to see without tripping, but very little penetrated under the veranda’s roof. Neville’s and Madeline’s forms next to her were barely discernible in the dark.