Mark of the Lion (21 page)

“It is true,” agreed Father Jacquinet. “And the empire likes to keep records of its subjects, does it not? Surely there will be a record somewhere of his birth.”

Jade shook her head to indicate none so far. “But you have not met someone such as that yourselves?” Jade asked without expecting an affirmative answer.

The three priests shook their heads again, and Father Duflot rose to get more coffee. “The English do not associate with us,” said Father Jacquinet with a smile. “We are French, for one,” he added with a wink. “But that is the way of the world. What is different is shunned. Even here, families reject those who do not fit, even if it is their own child. A young woman who marries into a different tribe, or has a child outside of their own wedlock, is just as likely to be cast out as in our own countries. Luckily, the missions are havens for those who find them.”

They mused on such tragedies in mutual silence while the younger priest poured more of the rich, dark coffee and placed a fresh pot of cream on the table. They visited for a while longer, and Jade asked permission to photograph the mission.

Father Jacquinet took her to the coffee plantation with its tidy rows of coffee trees. He showed her the best views of the church and waited patiently while she took a picture. They passed a small cemetery, and Jade remarked on the scarcity of markers. “Does no one die here?” she asked.

The little priest chuckled. “Of course, mademoiselle, but very few wish burial. It is not the Kikuyu manner. Those interred are either very devout in their new faith or not Kikuyu. For instance,” he said, pointing into the cemetery, “a Sudanese trader left his ailing son behind one time, and
many
years ago, a French Somali woman and her little child came. She had been cast away from her family and traveled all this way back to Nairobi. She came to us very ill, succumbed within a few weeks, and is buried here as well. An old Boer who drove oxen fell ill with the influenza and died recently.”

“A Boer? What was his name?”

Father Jacquinet pointed to a newer stone. “Von Tonden.”

Jade didn’t know whether to feel sorry that Kruger had again eluded her or relief that he might still be alive somewhere.

Father Jacquinet sensed her anxiety, turned to her, and gently took her hands in his. “There are many like that,” he said. “Wounded souls that are wandering, searching, much as you are now.”

Jade flinched. Involuntarily, she grabbled hold of the ring under her shirtwaist. An idea flashed in her mind.

“Father, have you ever seen a stone like this?” She took the cord holding the ring from around her neck and handed it to the priest. He held the ring and examined it, carefully taking in every detail. The lush green of the stone came to life under the bright sun and sparkled from within with a cool, flashing glow.

“Never,” he remarked softly. “It is most interesting and beautiful.” He peered deeply into the gem. “It is not an emerald,” he remarked finally. “At least, I have never seen one that clear and with that command of light.” His work-hardened fingers traced the etched patterns on the ring’s side. “This is of all most curious. Only lines and curves. Do you know what it means?”

Jade shook her head. “No, Father, I don’t. If it’s a family crest, it is one that no one connected to the family knew about. I thought perhaps it might be some form of writing, but it doesn’t look like any hieroglyphs I’ve ever seen before.”

“No,” he agreed. “It does not. Perhaps the written variety, though? What is it called? The hieratic form?” He handed the ring back to Jade, and she slipped the cord over her head. “I am not perhaps the most educated man to ask,” he said. “To me it looks more like a child’s scribbles, such as the children here make with a stick in the dirt.”

“I’m beginning to be afraid that is all it is,” said Jade with a sigh. “A favorite scribbling of a lost child.”

The little man put a friendly hand on Jade’s shoulder. “Do not fear, mademoiselle. We will pray for your success.” He blessed her, and Jade thanked him.

She found Juma pleasantly engaged with an elderly man who just happened to have a pretty young daughter. The girl waited on them while they ate, and Jade found it difficult to tear him away from such attractions. She succeeded, finally, and they walked to the Ford.

Jade eyed the gently sloping hillside and decided the car would do just as well in forward as in reverse. She drove off with mixed feelings. It hardly surprised her that Gil Worthy and the French mission had never crossed paths. After all, he wasn’t Catholic. But a part of her had still hoped for a bit of enlightenment. Perhaps tomorrow she would have better luck when she spoke to the doctor who had examined Gil’s body. She decided to quit focusing on her problem and asked Juma how he had enjoyed his morning.

“Very fine,” he said. He added that the food, a traditional millet porridge, was plentiful and tasty. Jade asked about the pretty girl. Juma said she would cost too high a bride-price in order to keep her in that area. Her father had moved there to escape threats from the Wakamba tribe and felt protected by the white God. Juma scoffed at that notion. “The white God lives in a fine house, but he did not protect his people from the big war. Why would he protect the Kikuyu at the mission?”

Jade tried to explain that God loved all people. He was their father. But children fought among themselves and disobeyed. Their disobedience started the war.

“When a child in his village disobeys his father or the elders, they take him in hand,” Juma said, “to correct him. Why did not your God do that to the white men?”

“Perhaps,” she said sadly, “that is just what he did.”

 

The witch huddled beneath the hyena skin and felt it mold to his body, or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that his body fitted itself to the hide. An hour had come and gone since he had performed the ritual and by now there wasn’t much manlike about him except for his human mind. Even that, he knew, became more sharply honed, like a well-crafted weapon. More remarkably, some of that mental crafting lingered even when his man-form returned.

He flexed his powerful jaw muscles and felt their strength. They could crush a man’s skull or rip out his throat. Years ago his teacher told him to use a lion skin, like he did, but he chose the hyena instead, a true night predator. What little he lost in size, he gained in sharper night vision. To his delight, he found that the hyena had tremendous strength for its size.

Power! That was what drove him, the search for power. At first he wanted power only to control his destiny. Then he made his first kill for money and discovered a new kind of pleasure. He enjoyed toying with other lives such as the one he watched now. While the first kill was for money, now he killed for revenge and the sheer joy of killing.

The man called Godfrey Kenton paced back and forth not ten yards away from him, hugging himself against the cool early morning air in what Kenton would probably call “an ungodly hour.” How suitable. The witch chuckled, but the sound came out as a low, gurgling laugh.

Kenton jerked around, fear showing in the beads of sweat that popped out on his forehead. The witch man smelled the sweat before he ever saw the beads. As he watched, Kenton fidgeted with the stickpin at his throat. His throat, thought the witch, and felt saliva form on his tongue and hate rise in his chest.

Kenton spoke aloud to himself. “That blasted note said sunrise. Now where the hell is he? To think I came all the way out here to listen to that idiot’s deal on a Sunday morning when I could still be warm in Cissy’s bed.”

The witch saw the man handle something in his pocket and knew he had brought some puny little pistol along for protection. Time to finish him. He called Kenton’s name, his voice a husky shadow of a human’s but clear enough for Kenton to recognize it. He watched as Kenton turned towards his place of concealment and heard him say, “Well, come on. I haven’t got all day.”

He certainly doesn’t,
thought the witch as he gathered his muscular hind limbs and sprang for Kenton’s throat.

THE COFFEE CHERRIES ON THE THOMPSONS’ remaining trees started their yearly transformation from camouflaged green to flamboyant red. Neville’s hands were literally full now, and two consequences clung to this bounty. First, Neville needed to stay behind from the upcoming safari to supervise the coffee bean pulping and fermenting. The second grew out of the first. Neville didn’t like the idea of his wife going on safari without him, especially as he considered Hascombe to be a bit of a rounder.

“Neville, you’re being childish,” Madeline protested on Monday morning. “There is no reason for me to stay behind. You are so busy with the coffee, you won’t even know I’m gone.”

Mr. Thompson’s eyes opened wide in shock. “Madeline!” he gasped. “How can you say such a thing. Of course, if you find running off with other men so much more attractive than being with me, well …” He hung his head and shoved his hands in his trouser pockets like a pitiful schoolboy. The effect was not wasted on his wife.

“Oh, darling, you mustn’t think that. I’m not one of those flighty women who engage in wife-swapping games in Happy Valley.” She tugged playfully at his sleeve, pulled his hand out of his pocket, and held it.

“Perhaps I should just wander off,” suggested Jade. “I do need to drive into town today.”

“No,” they said in unison, and Madeline added, “This concerns you, too, Jade. Neville, you can hardly expect Jade to go alone on safari with Harry and Roger. How would that look?”

“Lord Colridge will be there,” he protested. “He’ll look after her.”

“Another man,” scoffed Madeline. “You didn’t approve of that for me.”

“Please don’t argue on my account,” said Jade. “Madeline, you know I can hold my own against rowdy males. As for propriety, I don’t really care if the good folk of Nairobi look askance at me. I’m just passing through.” Seeing Madeline’s hurt look, Jade added, “I’d love to have you with me, but I’m not going to be held responsible for ruining your marriage. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I really do have to drive into town to post some letters.” She didn’t add that she planned to call on Dr. Montgomery, whose name she had gotten from the Norfolk clerk.

She hopped into the Model T with her rifle, camera, and a canvas bag with several packets. Besides her hyena hunt article for the magazine, she had an incomplete letter to Mr. Jacobs, which she planned to finish after interviewing the doctor, and two personal letters to send. One went to her parents and the other to Beverly, who, if plans had gone through, should be Lady Dunbury by now. Madeline gave her an envelope to mail as well, an order to a seed catalog.

Jade had had another dream last night about glowing eyes stalking her in the tall grass, which left her feeling edgy, so she turned her mind from it and focused instead on the safari as she drove along the pitted dirt track to Nairobi. Harry had arranged for departure the middle of next week, but coffee harvesting would continue for weeks. Jade didn’t mind losing Neville from the party, but she found herself hoping Madeline would still come. In many ways she was like Beverly: frank, brave, and certainly not flighty. Jade missed Beverly, her former “comrade in axles,” as they’d termed themselves.

Until recently, oxcarts had been the main vehicles that traveled the track to and from Nairobi. The heavy wagons had plowed deep ruts in the pasty mud during the rainy season, which later baked into treacherous pits. The car jolted over one. Jade bounced a few inches off the seat. The car slid left, and Jade gripped the wheel and steadied it. The jolt reminded her about other rutted roads, and she half expected to see a caisson along the track. Instead, she saw red murram soil, clumps of grass with long, thin leaves like wire, and warped thorn trees. An
Erythrina
tree practicing to be a contortionist held blazing red flowers at the end of its twisted branches. To her left, in the distance rose the rounded back of Kea-Njahe, the mountain near the Kikuyu village where she had killed the witch’s hyena and earned her new name. So far, no new reports of terror had come in from the village, so maybe that problem was solved after all. She slipped off her hat and sniffed the brim. Yep, she thought, memories may fade but that odor lingered. So had the tattoo on her wrist.

The sun felt good on her head after the morning chill, so she tossed the hat atop the letter packets and enjoyed the warmth as it soaked into her black curls. On her right was a small
shamba
, where hardworking Kikuyu women decked out in shaven heads and copper bracelets hoed the rows with hand-fashioned bone and wood tools. Two younger women, each with a circle of hair on her head that marked her as unmarried, carried water in the ubiquitous four-gallon
debes
to some sorry-looking sweet potatoes. Jade wondered what everyone had used before empty fuel tins became available. Probably gourds.