The Poison Oracle (21 page)

By now it was almost dark. The girl did two circuits and stopped near the orchestra. The stiffness went out of her. She dropped the empty pot with a crash and at the same moment looked down at her left hand and started to wail, a real child in real pain. Two women ran out of the shadows and pulled her down beside a larger bowl, where they sponged at the paint on her arm, using bits of cloth on the end of reeds; the arm itself seemed to be twisting about as if there were no bones in it, but they were careful not to touch it with anything except their cloths. The wailing diminished, but Morris in his daze of fear, though he shut his eyes, seemed to see the arm grow monstrous, a snake with fingers at the end, or the leafless limb of a dead tree. He realised that once the old woman with the withered side might have been just such a girl, tossing out poisoned seed at a witch-finding, wailing as the poison penetrated the thick paint and began to bite like fire into the young flesh, starting the process that would one day wither the whole side . . .

But when he looked up he saw that two men were standing over the inert form of the old woman, prodding her with the butt end of their spears. A mild hum of talk had broken out, such as civilised people produce between items at a concert. He shifted Dinah to his other hip and as he did so let her see that the white leaping things that had given her the horrors had vanished from the arena. She chattered a little and blew in his ear, then wriggled to be put down; so he settled her at his feet, fixed her leash and stood on it, so that she could only move a couple of feet; contentedly she began to fasten and unfasten the buckle of his sandals.

One of the painted women came back into the arena wearing on her feet two thick little reed mats which prevented her soles from touching the poison-seed; she carried half a dozen flat dishes which she placed at various points in the arena; then she fetched a big gourd and poured water out of it into the bowls—all this without any ceremony, as though she were preparing a meal in her own hut. Then she went back to the shadows.

At last the old woman stirred, groaning. The men who had been prodding her stood back and watched as she rolled on to her stomach and pushed herself with her good hand into a sitting posture. She called out, quite strongly, in the secret language, and a cry answered from the dark. A woman brought a closed wicker basket and put it in front of her. She shuddered again and sang a short, fierce invocation in the secret language, waving her good hand to and fro over the basket. The woman with the mats on her feet then carried it to the exact centre of the arena, where she lowered a flap in its side and retreated. Total silence fell again. The night was now dark, and the mists beginning to clear from the dull moon; the seven torches burnt yellowish-orange, with sudden spurts of green; the ring of jet-black bodies seemed to absorb most of the little light they gave. Morris peered at the meaningless basket.

Something moved at the opening and immediately the orchestra struck up a series of quavering hoots and whistles, backed by a dull pattering on the drums. Hesitantly the duck stepped out into the open.

It was quite a presentable creature, something like a female mallard but larger. Its wing, as far as Morris could see, was not broken but lashed to its side. Once out in the wavering torchlight it lost its shyness, cocked its head a little sideways and peered about, then darted forward and scooped up a few seeds from the rock. The marshmen sighed. The old woman craned forward, her little eyes glistening in the flames. The duck, with absurd confidence, began to follow one of the spiralling trails of seed, but suddenly darted aside for a drink of water from the nearest dish. When it had drunk, raising its head to the moon to swallow each sip, it wandered about until it hit on another trail of seed, which it again began to follow round the spiral. Morris had another of his attacks of sick fear. Dry-mouthed and gulping he tried to work out where the girl had thrown the seed from her pot. In his mind’s eye he could see her white, ghastly figure, with its drab aureole, strutting round the arena. He could envisage the jerky arc of her sowing-arm. But he couldn’t calculate where the seeds might have fallen—more towards the outside than the inside, he thought.

Slowly the watchers became more intent. The bird, after various meanderings, was now pecking among the seeds which had fallen over to Morris’s right, not quite where the three mommets sat, but uncomfortably close to them—supposing the oracle was worked by mere proximity—part of the terror was the meaninglessness of the whole procedure—if he had known what the duck’s movements meant, and how they could be read, he’d have had fixed points to pin his fears on, to reduce them to rational order, to master them, even. But . . . why, I haven’t even been accused of anything, he thought. Let alone given a chance to answer. The hell with them!

For the moment resentment overcame his fear, and he peered with hot eyes at the duck filling its crop with gusto, pausing only for sips at the water-dishes. The savages followed its progress with a sort of aware concentration which also infuriated him. They knew what was happening, goddammit.

“Oh, get on with it,” he whispered. “For Christ’s sake get on with it!”

Almost as his lips moved the bird’s actions altered. It darted towards a bowl of water, missed and performed its gulp and swallow in dry air. The whole crowd hissed with indrawn breath. The old woman cried aloud. The orchestra began to make as much noise as its instruments would permit, but this was immediately drowned by the shouts of the audience, everybody bellowing at the top of their lungs. He felt a movement at his side and glanced down to see Peggy skipping with excitement and whooping too. The bird was now straight in front of the mommets, staggering around, gulping and swallowing at nothing. It almost fell but recovered, and with a wild flapping of its free wing darted in an arc towards Morris himself, collided with one of the water-dishes, swung away and crashed headlong into the side of the basket in the centre of the arena. The basket fell on its side and rolled away. The bird also fell, on to its back. Its feet paddled at air for a moment and its free wing flapped twice. And then it was dead, as stiff as if it had dropped frozen out of the sky.

The shouting died only slowly. Two women with brooms of reed swept a path to the duck’s body, and two others picked the old woman up and carried her there. One of the painted women brought dry reeds, and the other a flaming rush-light to light them. The old woman pulled some feathers out of the duck and threw them on the flames, watching intently as they curled and stank and became ash. One of the painted women knelt beside her and with a sliver of flint slit open the duck’s belly by the vent and teased the entrails out. While the old women smelt and fingered them the crowd talked, in a relaxed but expert way, about the trial. Morris caught fragments from the two nearer clans . . . Wah, that was a brave duck . . . the spirits are strong . . . Tchinai finds the trail hard to read . . . do you remember that she-witch from the garfish clan . . . in my father’s day they caught fierce witches . . . the duck found death close by the House of Spirits . . . No, by the centre . . . it is a hard trail . . . but wah, it was a brave duck . . .

Soon he was yawning. The tension that should have been there was gone out of him, replaced by a dreary sense of uselessness and moral exhaustion. Apathetically he squatted down and teased Dinah’s fur for a while, and then played which-hand with her. Peggy sat and watched the game, but kept glancing at the arena, where the two women with brooms were now meticulously sweeping the whole surface, scooping up the little heaps of seed they made on to flat leaves and throwing them on to the fire, where they stank with a new and strangely chemical smell. Three of the torches had burnt out and were not re-lit. Time passed.

At last there was a fresh stirring of interest. Morris stood and saw the old woman being lifted to her feet. The clans surged forward to surround her, a jostling mob of which Morris wanted no part, so he stayed where he was. Not long now, he told himself. Soon be over. Probably won’t hurt at all.

Suddenly a roar of angry voices broke out round the old woman. A thin man disentangled himself and rushed at Morris with his spear raised and its poison-tip unsheathed; but he was slowed by some deformity of his leg and as Morris cringed another man caught up with him and snatched the spear from behind; it was the second man who actually threw the weapon, not at Morris but out into the dark, over the cliff; he was Fau.

“Nearly thou art dead, Morch,” he shouted cheerfully and swung round to face the rush, his own spear raised. The crowd surged down towards them, but not in any kind of organised charge—far more like a mass of bellicose drinkers being thrown out of a pub on Saturday night, each man intent on his argument with his neighbour—but as far as Morris could see in the swaying light of the remaining torches none of the poisoned spear-heads were unsheathed.

Dinah leaped to his arms. He hefted her round and snatched up Peggy with his free arm, thus leaving himself quite unable to ward off from the three of them any shaft or blow. Yelling, the marshmen flowed about him absorbed in their impenetrable quarrel, shouting ancient insults from clan to clan and from age-set to age-set while Dinah and Peggy sobbed with fear against his shoulders. It seemed to him that amid the human mess there were people actually trying to defend him, or at least to argue his case, while there were others attempting to get at him. The presence of his defenders was more useful than anything they actually did, because nobody could aim with any accuracy in the melee, and a weapon that missed him was certain to hit a marshman and start one of those complicated feuds that run from generation to generation and end in an epic when everybody is dead.

So the battle raged in Homeric confusion around the bizarre standard of the hand of Na!ar. There seemed to be no conceivable resolution. But suddenly out of the dark came a sinister rescue.

It began to his left, but he didn’t notice it until the quality of the shouting to that side changed, and by then the wedge of ninth-clan warriors had almost reached him; the new cries came from the men whom Gaur and his brothers were simply picking up and tossing to either side. A black hand reached out and grasped the elbow that held Dinah. He almost let go of Peggy as he was snatched out of the scrum, like a handbag from a bargain-counter, and carried bodily across the top of the rock, wives and all.

They put him down at the cliff edge, and thankfully he lowered Dinah and Peggy, though he expected that he himself would be instantly tossed into the dark waters.

“Flee,” said Gaur. “Friend of my brother, show my brothers thy boat. Go.”

One of the huge men picked Peggy up. Another took Morris by the arm. They went down the rock face like falling stones. The boats bounced and wallowed as they jumped in, but before Morris had settled they were cutting out across the glistening water towards the single long canoe.

“Wai,” wailed Peggy, “I am stolen. I am stolen.”

“Yes, and I will roast thee for my supper,” said one of the big men. Another bellowed with laughter.

Behind them Gal-Gal was tumult still, filling the night with screams of vengeance and shouts of triumph and, on a different register, what sounded like the hysterical laughter of the women of the duck clan. The canoe bumped alongside the larger boat.

“Oh, Christ,” said Anne in a dismal voice. “I’ve been eaten alive by mosquitoes.”

She didn’t sound as though she expected anyone to understand, and gasped when Morris answered.

“I’ve got some Camoquin somewhere,” he said.

Before they had finished transferring his stores Gaur and the last three warriors slid alongside.

“Wah!” said one of them, “that was a brave duck!”

For all their size they barely rocked the long canoe as they took their places. Someone gave an order that was no more than a grunt. The paddles dug in, all together. The grunt came again, marking the stroke, and again and again as they shot down the main reach, leaving clamorous Gal-Gal behind so rapidly that before Morris had recovered from his first shivering-fit of relaxing terror it had diminished from looming cliffs to a vague hull-like blackness beneath the moon, a stone ark, stranded in the floods with its cargo of the alternative future.

“Where are we going, sons of Na!ar?” he whispered.

“Gaur has an island,” said someone.

“Protect us from the things of the moon-world, witch, until we get there,” said someone else.

“What the bloody hell’s been going on?” said Anne.

“Am I not then stolen?” said Peggy, with a ridiculous hint of disappointment in her voice.

“God knows,” said Morris in English.

The rhythm of the grunts altered. The stroke side paddles lifted all together, poised, dripped silver driplets, lunged backwards against the water. With a gurgle and rustle the canoe swung through a sharp are and up a narrow little channel between two bare mudbanks. Well rowed Balliol, thought Morris. Well rowed Balliol.

3

“I’ve been a bloody fool,” said Anne.

“I could lend you my spare shirt and trousers,” said Morris.

“Oh, I’ve got a pile of perfectly good clothes, but Mr Muscles won’t let me wear them. For God’s sake, I’m not even allowed to sit on one of those bloody stupid mats. I have to kneel here, like this.”

“I’m sorry,” said Morris.

He meant it in more ways than one. He would have preferred to see her clothed. To a man with a low sex-drive the Q’Kuti culture had been a curious release from vague guilts. Even in respectable Bristol Morris had been continually nudged by little reminders that he was some distance off from the admired male norm of modern British life, though that was obviously no more a real norm than the stringy girls in the glossies are, in the true sense, models of British womanhood—still, in England Morris had felt
got at,
whereas in Q’Kut the sex-obsessed Arabs actually seemed to admire his capacity for continence. Now, with this girl kneeling naked in the dust beside him, however unbecomingly mottled with mosquito bites, he was being got at again. He knew quite well what she expected him to be thinking, and if she’d known how wrong she was she would have thought even less of him.

But he was actually sorry for her too. She was not merely physically naked. Further down the slope of Gaur’s island Dinah and Peggy were playing peep-bo round a hut. They were naked too, in the sense of being without clothes; but they were not stripped down to the bare soul, as Anne was, the thing itself, unaccommodated woman. She had even lost all her roles so far that she had allowed the flat diphthongs of some northern city to reappear in the voice that had once told him that Mummy would have thought vets were beneath them. She had become like a creature in a cage in an old-fashioned zoo, something totally uncivilised.

“Have you learnt any of the language?” he said.

“You know what I’m like. I can’t even begin. Can you make him let me go? Where the hell is he, anyway?”

“Gaur? He went back to Gal-Gal to try and buy something I saw one of the men wearing.”

“You never told me what the hell was happening up there, while I was being eaten.”

“I didn’t really understand it all myself. I was being tried for being a witch. They give a poison to a duck and watch how it dies, and one of the women of the duck clan reads the signs. That went on most of the day—the preparations and the actual trial, I mean—and then right at the end there was a row over what the witch-finder’s verdict was. You see, a lot of people had come to Gal-Gal with various diseases. The theory seems to be that when you send a witch back to the moon-world with luck he drags along with him some of the moon-world creatures that have been causing people’s limbs to swell up or drop off or go septic, so there were a crowd of people there who wanted to see me die—in fact to stand as close as possible to me while I was dying . . .”