“Dost thou see mine eyes?” Mirambo asked.
“I do.”
“They have looked upon thee and they have judged.”
“And what did they find?”
Mirambo sneered. He checked that there was priming powder in the pan of his matchlock. He tested the sharpness of his spear with a fingertip. He examined his arrow points. He cast an eye over his warriors. “Mine eyes see that thou art muzungo mbáyá, and therefore bad.”
“My people are the enemy of those who destroyed this village. We found the women injured, and we helped them.”
“Did doing so darken thy skin?”
“No, it did not.”
“Then thou art still muzungo mbáyá.”
“That is true, but, nevertheless, we remain the enemy of those who did this deed.” Burton held his hands open, palms upward. “We have come to help thee.”
“I will not be friends with any muzungo mbáyá”
Burton sighed. “I have learned a proverb from thy people. It is this: By the time the fool has learned the game, the players have dispersed.”
Mirambo turned his head a little, chewed his lip, and regarded Burton from the corners of his eyes. He coughed and spat, then said, “I understand thy meaning. If I do not choose, I will have no say in the outcome.”
“That is probably correct.”
There was a sudden commotion among the gathered warriors and a small man pushed his way to the front of them. He was wearing a long white robe and a white skullcap, with a matchlock rifle slung over his shoulder and a machete affixed to his belt. At the sight of him, Burton felt a thrill of recognition.
“Wow! I know this scar-faced man, O Mirambo,” the newcomer announced. “I have travelled far and far with him. He is ugly and white, it is true, but he is not as those who passed before. He is fierce and loyal and good, though filled with crazy thoughts. I speak only the truth.”
The Wanyamwezi chief pondered this for a few moments, then said to the man: “Give me pombe, Sidi Bombay.”
The small man took a goatskin flask from one of his companions and handed it to the chief. Mirambo drank from it then passed it to Burton, who did the same.
“Now,” Mirambo said. “Tell me of our foe.”
The season of implacable heat arrived, and each morning they struck camp at 4 a.m., walked for seven hours, then stopped and did their best to shelter from it. It meant slow progress, but Burton knew Speke wouldn't be able to move any faster.
Their first three days from Tura saw them trekking over cultivated plains. The sky was so bright it hurt their eyes, despite that they wore keffiyehs wrapped around their faces.
The Daughters of Al-Manat, now supplemented by the vengeance-bent women of Tura and their children, rode and walked to the right of the porters.
Mirambo and his men marched on the other side of the column, keeping their distance, holding their matchlocks at the ready and their heads at an aloof angle. Sidi Bombay, though, walked along next to Burton's mule, for he knew the explorer of old, and they were firm friends.
A one-time slave who'd been taken to India then emancipated upon his owner's death, Bombay spoke English, Hindustani, and a great many African languages and dialects. He'd been Burton's guide during the explorer's first expedition to the Lake Regions in '57, and had then accompanied Speke on his subsequent trek in '60. Burton now learned that he'd also accompanied Henry Morton Stanley, last year.
As they pushed on across a seemingly unchanging landscape, Bombay cast light on some of the mysteries surrounding the latter two expeditions.
Burton already knew that, after discovering the location of the African Eye of Nāga in '57 but failing to recover the jewel, Speke had returned to Africa with a young Technologist named James Grant. They'd flown toward Kazeh in kites dragged behind giant swans, but, en route, had lost the birds to lions. He now learned that when they'd arrived at the town on foot, they'd hired Bombay to guide them north to the Ukerewe Lake, then west to the Mountains of the Moon.
“Mr. Speke, he led us into a narrow place of rocks. Wow! We were attacked by Chwezi warriors.”
“Impossible, Bombay!” Burton exclaimed. “The Chwezi people are spoken of all over East Africa and all agree that they are long extinct. Their legendary empire died out in the sixteenth century.”
“But perhaps no one has told them, for some have forgotten to die, and live in hidden places. They guard the Temple of the Eye.”
“A temple? Did you see it?”
“No, Mr. Burton. It is under the ground, and I chose not to go there, for I met my fourth wife in an ill-lit hut and I have never since forgotten that bad things happen in darkness. So I remained with the porters and we held back the Chwezi with our guns while Mr. Speke and Mr. Grant went on alone. Only Mr. Speke came back, and when he did—wow!—he was like a man taken by a witch, for he was very crazy, even for a white man, and we fled with him out of the mountains and all the way back to Zanzibar. On the way, he became a little like he was before, but he was not the same. I think what he saw under the ground must have been very bad.”
Stanley's expedition had also ended in disaster. The American newspaper reporter's team—five men from the Royal Geographical Society—had employed porters to carry rotorchairs from Zanzibar to Kazeh, then flew them north to locate the source of the Nile. They'd returned a few days later, on foot. Their flying machines had stopped working.
Bombay, who at that time was still living in Kazeh, was commissioned as a guide. He led Stanley to the Ukerewe, and the expedition started to circumnavigate it in a clockwise direction. But at the westernmost shore, Stanley became distracted by the sight of the far-off mountains and decided to explore them.
“I told him no, it is a bad place,” Bombay said, “but—wow!—he was like a lion that has the musk of a gazelle in its nostrils and can think of nothing else. I was frightened to go there again, so I ran away, and he and his people went without me. They have not been seen again. This proves that I am a very good guide.”
“How so?”
“Because I was right.”
The safari trudged on.
The cultivated lands had fallen behind them. Now there was nothing but shallow, dry, rippling hills that went on and on and on.
“The same!” Swinburne wailed, throwing his arms out to embrace the wide vista. “The same! The same! Won't it ever change? Are we not moving at all?”
During the nights, swarms of pismire ants crawled out of the ground and set upon the camp. They chewed through tent ropes, infested the food supplies, shredded clothes, and inflicted bites that felt like branding irons.
On the fourth day, the safari left the region behind with heartfelt expressions of relief and entered the Kigwa Forest, a wide strip of gum trees and mimosas spread over uneven, sloping land. The boles were widely spaced but the sparse canopy nevertheless provided a little shade and for the first time in many weeks they weren't bothered by mosquitoes or flies.
They camped among the trees, dappled by shafts of pollen-thick light, with butterflies flitting around them and birds whistling and gabbling overhead. The scent of herbs filled their nostrils.
“We've travelled almost six hundred miles,” Burton said. He was sitting on a stool in front of the main Rowtie, massaging his left calf, which felt bruised after his bout of cramps. Trounce was on a chair at a folding table.
The Scotland Yard man's beard reached halfway to his chest, and he'd had enough of it. He was attempting to crop it close to his chin with a pair of blunt scissors. “But how long has it taken us?” he asked.
“That's the question. It took me a hundred and thirty-four days to reach this spot during my previous expedition. I feel we've been considerably faster but I couldn't tell you by how much. It's very peculiar. All of us appear to have lost track of time. Do you want a hand with that, William? You appear to be struggling.”
“If you wouldn't mind,” the other man answered. “It's my bloody arm. The spear wound still hurts like blazes when I
move it. So are you suggesting that something is having an adverse influence on us?”
Trounce stuck out his chin. Burton stood, took the scissors, and attacked his friend's facial hair.
“Perhaps. But the Mountains of the Moon are still at least two hundred miles away, so if the Eye of Nāga is responsible, then its emanations are reaching a damned long way.”
“If it didn't affect your timekeeping back in fifty-seven,” Trounce said, “then why would it be doing so now?”
“The only explanation I can think of is that there's an intelligence directing it.”
“Which knows we're here? I don't like the sound of that.”
“Nor I.”
A few minutes later, Burton finished his hacking and held up a small round mirror so Trounce could examine the results.
“By Jove!” the detective exclaimed. “It's made no difference at all! I still look like a confounded Robinson Crusoe!”
Burton smiled, turned away, and watched as the Daughters of Al-Manat rolled out their prayer mats and began to praise Allah. He looked at Mirambo's warriors, sitting in a group on small portable stools, sharpening their weapons and cleaning their matchlocks. He observed Saíd redistributing the baggage among the remaining porters. He examined the horses and mules and saw that many were covered in tsetse bites. They wouldn't survive much longer.
A commotion over to his left attracted his attention. It was Swinburne, leaping around like a possessed forest sprite.
“Look! Look!” the poet cried, jabbing his finger in Herbert Spencer's direction.
Burton turned his eyes toward the robe-wrapped clockwork philosopher and saw that he was approaching with Isabella Mayson at his side. He had a colourful parakeet on each shoulder.
“Pox is back!” Swinburne cheered.
“Slippery sewer-sniffer!” Pox cawed.
“And he's been courting!”
“She's been courting,” Isabella corrected.
Swinburne gave a screech. “What? What? You mean Pox is—is—?”
“Is a girl, yes. She always has been. I believe I pointed that out when I first introduced you to her.”
Swinburne looked flummoxed. “I—I—I suppose the bad language caused me to assume the reverse.”
“Danglies-clutcher!” Pox added.
The other bird let loose a piercing squawk.
“Parakeets usually mate for life,” Isabella told Burton, “so perhaps you'd like to give a name to the new member of your family.”
The king's agent groaned. “You don't mean to say I'll have to accommodate two of the beastly things when we return to London?”
Spencer piped, “At least only one of 'em will insult you, Boss.”
“Sheep-squeezing degenerate!” Pox crowed.
“Monkey cuddler!” her mate added.
“Oh no!” Burton moaned.
“My mistake,” Spencer admitted.
“Hah!” Swinburne cried out. “Malady is learning!”
They all looked at him.
“It's the perfect name,” he said. “Don't you think Pox and Malady sound like they belong together?”
There was a pause, then William Trounce threw his head back and let loose a roar of laughter. “On the button, Algernon!” he guffawed. “On the blessed button! Oh my word! What more fitting remembrance of this endeavour could you have, Richard, than to leave Africa with a Pox and a Malady? Ha ha ha!”
Burton shook his head despairingly.
“Cheer up!” Swinburne grinned. “If I remember rightly, when you were a young soldier returning from India and its whorehouses, you brought back similar!”
Trounce doubled over and bellowed his mirth.
“Algy, there are ladies present,” Burton said, glowering at his assistant.
Isabella made a dismissive gesture. “I rather think Africa has stripped me of all the social niceties, Richard. Try as any of you might, you'll not induce a fit of moral outrage in me!”
“I say! Could we make an attempt anyway?” Swinburne enthused.
“Certainly not.”
Krishnamurthy came running over. “Shhh!” he urged. “Stop making such a confounded racket! Listen!”
They did so, and heard gunfire snapping and popping faintly in the far distance.
“Speke,” Swinburne whispered.
“How far?” Trounce asked.
“It's difficult to say,” Burton responded, “but we'd better stay on our toes.”
The next morning, they proceeded with caution and with four Wanyamwezi scouting a little way ahead. Gunfire continued to crackle faintly from the west. It sounded like a battle was being fought. Burton unpacked all the spare rifles and distributed them among Mirambo's warriors, replacing the ancient matchlocks. He and the rest of his expedition kept their own guns cleaned, oiled, and loaded.
The forest was fairly easy going, its canopy high and the undergrowth light. Nevertheless, it required two more marches to traverse. When they finally emerged from it, they found themselves in a long valley through which sweet water bubbled in a wide stream. The hills to either side were swathed in bright-yellow grain, blazing so brightly that the travellers were forced to walk through it with eyes slitted, and the heat was so ferocious that Herbert Spencer compared this part of their trek to “walkin' on the surface of the bloomin' sun itself!”
The terrain gradually opened onto a flat plain, empty but for stunted trees. On the horizon ahead, low forested hills could be seen, though they folded and jumped in the distorting atmosphere. From the other side of them, the noise of battle raged on. The sound was carrying a long way.
They walked and walked and yet felt as if they made no progress.
“I can't judge the distance,” Trounce muttered. “Those hills are like the mirages we saw back in Arabia. One minute they spring up right in front of us, the next they're not there at all.”
“They're fairly close,” Burton advised.
“And so is one heck of a scrap by the sound of it!”
“Wow! It is from Kazeh!” Sidi Bombay noted.
Burton walked back along the line of porters and mules to where Swinburne was striding along. The poet had a rifle slung across his shoulder and was holding an umbrella over his head.
“I'm going to gallop ahead to take a peek over those hills, Algy. Will you join me? Can you bear it during the hottest part of the day?”
“Rather! Anything to break the monotony of this flatland.”
They stopped and waited for Isabel Arundell, who was riding near the middle of the column, to catch them up.
“I need two of your fittest horses,” Burton said as she drew abreast of them. “Algy and I are going to reconnoitre.”
“Very well, but I'm coming with you. If we're joining a battle, I want to see for myself how best to deploy my women.”
“Very well.”
Mounts were selected, supplies were packed into saddlebags, and the threesome rode back to the head of the safari.
Burton took the field glasses from Trounce and informed him of their intentions. “You're in charge while we're gone. Keep going until the heat gets too much. You'll not make Kazeh in a single march, or even the base of the hills, so stop when you must but don't erect the tents. Get what rest you can.”
They kicked their heels into the sides of their mounts and raced away, leaving a cloud of dust rolling in their wake.
It took them an hour to catch up with one of Mirambo's scouts. They stopped to greet him and offer water but he ignored them, as if by doing so he could make the muzungo mbáyá cease to exist.
The entire afternoon was spent pushing the horses to their limits until, with the sun swelling and melting in front of their eyes, they arrived at the edge of the plain and threw themselves down beside a narrow stream. They drank deeply and washed the dust from their faces, splashed their steeds to cool them, then left them reined to trees but with enough slack to be able to reach the water.
Gunfire stammered and echoed around them.
“They've been fighting for three days, at least,” Isabel noted.
“We'll take a look at the combatants presently,” Burton said. “First, eat, rest, and attend to your weapons.”
This was duly done, and slightly under an hour later they climbed the hill, passing through the trees, descended the other side, scrambled up the next slope, and crawled onto its summit. They looked out over the twilit plain on the other side. The sun had just set and the western horizon was blood-red, the sky above it deep purple and flecked with bright stars.
The land beneath was considerably more verdant than the ground they'd just crossed; large tracts had obviously been irrigated; there were grain fields and many trees, the latter casting very long shadows.
A little to the north, a monolithic verdure-topped outcrop of rock dominated the otherwise flat landscape, and just to the south of it, right in front of them, there was a small town, little more than a wide scattering of wooden houses and shacks, with a few larger residences at its centre.
Lights flashed all along its eastern and northern borders and the noise of gunfire punctured the African night.
Burton whispered, “The Prussians have Kazeh under siege!”
“We do not see things as they are. We see them as we are.”
–THE TALMUD
The plant was roughly the shape of a boat. It moved on thick white roots that grew in tangled bunches beneath its squat, flattened, and elongated stem. From this, ten white flowers grew in pairs, aligned in a row. Their petals were curled around the men who sat in them, forming extremely comfortable seats. Sir Richard Francis Burton was in one of the middle blooms. Generalmajor Paul Emil von Lettow-Vorbeck was sitting beside him. Schutztruppen occupied the others. The driver's head was pierced just above the ears by thorny tendrils through which he controlled the conveyance. The soldier beside him was positioned behind a seedpod, which, to Burton, looked exactly like a mounted gun. From the rear of the vehicle, three long leaves curved upward and forward like a canopy, protecting the passengers from the sun.
It was a bizarre conveyance. It was also a very fast one.