Black Dove, White Raven

by Elizabeth E. Wein

  ‘I have two conditions for you,’ Momma said. ‘The first is that Teodros Gedeyon is not going to take this plane anywhere unless you paint me a couple of giant red crosses on the wings and the tail. Ethiopia has its own Red Cross unit now – they got their League approval in July. So you have to make the plane look like an ambulance – neutral. We were fired on by the Italians on our way here.’

  Amde Worku relayed this to the priests, and they argued and argued and argued. Finally Momma got out the first-aid kit and gave a medical demonstration until they finally figured it out and nodded in agreement. Everybody ended up exhausted with relief when this argument was over.

  See, we can be reasonable when we try.

  ‘The second condition?’ Amde Worku asked at last.

  ‘You play fair and tell us what’s going on.’

  I couldn’t stand it any more. I had to butt in. ‘Let me plan his route!’ I begged, and everybody frowned at me. Even Augustus shook his head gravely, as though he understood Tigrinya and was best friends with the priests.

  The churchmen talked quietly to each other for another endless amount of time. It was like waiting to be eaten alive by bugs. Ras Amde Worku listened, and finally he turned to us and said, ‘Woyzaro Rhoda: though we understand and agree to your request to paint the aircraft for its onward journey, neither you nor any of this party may place conditions on Teodros’s service.’

  Momma sat down on the ground and pulled me and Teo down beside her.

  ‘What are we delivering and where?’ she demanded.

  ‘You may not know either.’

  ‘The plane’s not going then. Teo’s not going.’

  Very slowly, Amde Worku repeated to the others what Momma had said. You could see his reluctance in his whole body as he talked.

  The old man said something. Ras Amde Worku answered him. Then he said something to one of the soldiers. It was a quiet command, made grimly. The soldier shifted his grip on his spear so that it was aimed at Teo. He moved fast, but Momma was faster.

  ‘Hey!’ she shrieked, and launched herself straight off the ground at the spearman.

  She was fearless. You know what she was like? She was exactly like a leopard mother. She grabbed the staff of the soldier’s spear with both hands. She couldn’t wrestle it out of his grip, but she wrestled him away from us, and he couldn’t get her to let go. Horatio Augustus himself, and I have to give him credit for this, grabbed the guy Momma was struggling with in a bear hug from behind. Another soldier dropped his own spear so he could grab Momma’s arms. But what really froze everybody in their tracks was a sharp command from Amde Worku – and one of the other soldiers, I guess following orders, jammed his rifle against Teo’s head.

  Momma went limp. She couldn’t fight them all at once. There aren’t enough words in the world to tell how much I hate that man.

  They didn’t pay any attention to me. I inched toward the spear that the other guard had dropped.

  ‘Emilia!’ Momma roared at me in a whisper.

  So then we all just froze where we were for a few seconds.

  Momma let go. She held up her hands.

  ‘Don’t hurt the boy,’ she gasped. ‘You won’t get anywhere without the boy –’

  Ras Amde Worku quoted the mobilisation announcement we’d already heard the emperor read, more than once, over the radio.

  ‘“All boys old enough to carry a spear. Anyone found at home after receipt of this order will be hanged.” Teodros is in my service, but the order comes from above me and is out of my reach.’ That snake was just trying to pin the blame on someone else. ‘He serves or he dies. He has no choice.’

  ‘You’re not asking him to carry a spear!’ Momma cried. ‘Another boy can choose whom he’ll serve!’

  At this point Teo fell flat on his face.

  I thought about producing Mrs Sinclair’s revolver, which was tucked inside the waistband of my skirt, and decided that one more gun was not something that was going to improve the situation. So I fell flat on my face next to Teo. I didn’t care who saw. I leaned my head against his shoulder. If they really were going to shoot him, they could shoot me with him.

  The ancient man said one word in Amharic.

  ‘Peace.’

  He was talking to Momma. He was apologising.

  I felt Momma’s hand on my shoulder. She knelt in front of us.

  ‘Selam,’ I heard her repeat in a whisper. ‘Peace. Oh, God, Teo.’

  ‘I’ll do it,’ he muttered into the ground, in English.

  Then he lifted up his head.

  ‘I’ll do it,’ he said in Amharic, his voice quivering with defeat. ‘Please tell them to take the guns and spears away.’

  We heard them giving the orders. We heard the soldiers moving away from us. Momma was still kneeling over us with a hand on each of our shoulders. She was crying now.

  ‘Some lousy Friend I make,’ she gasped in English. ‘My grandma ran a station on the Underground Railroad and here I am selling my best friend’s boy down the river. I’m sorry. I’m sorry! But I can’t – can’t let –’

  ‘I’m going to come back, Momma,’ Teo said gruffly. ‘Cut it out.’

  Oh boy, what do you do when you realise your mother can’t save you or help you or anything? That she can’t even give you a rousing battle speech to make you brave because she’s just so darn scared herself?

  ‘Coffee,’ I interrupted rebelliously. ‘Let’s make peace with coffee. We have to remind them they don’t completely rule the roost. Only girls can make coffee.’

  We didn’t have any things for a coffee ceremony. All we had was camping equipment. But me and Teo are good at this kind of magic. Teo cleared a spot in the grass and I set up the buddy burner, in one of Mrs Sinclair’s pilfered cans, and Momma got out the coffee pot. We’d brought coffee that was already roasted and ground, like the terrible Americans we are, for camping with. While the water was boiling, I picked an armful of Meskal daisies, summery gold everywhere, and spread them all around the burner and the edges of the ancient monk’s rug. Then – I thought this was really good – I took all the little things out of Momma’s flight bag. I got her set of screwdrivers and her rulers and china pencils and all our compasses and watches, and I arranged them in a gleaming circle of shining science around the edge of the burner. And then we shared out tiny sips of coffee to everybody, in our blue enamelled cups from Momma’s camp kit.

  Things became more civilised all of a sudden. Coffee does that. Or maybe it is women who do that.

  Ras Amde Worku squatted on his heels, looking untouchably, medievally majestic in his lion fur. In his apologetic, steamrollery way that gets me so het up, he gave us this much explanation: ‘The Italians are a day’s march away. They will take this city for its holy and symbolic significance. We have evacuated our own force from Aksum and they will find no resistance here; the bishop and other important holy men who can travel on foot have gone with them. But one of these remaining churchmen needs to hide. There is a place we want him to go, and we believe the fastest and most secret way will be to take him by air. It will be as if God had sent angels to fly him to safety.’

  ‘Well, it will be fast,’ Momma admitted, her face still looking kind of grey. ‘But for sure you know we’re not angels. A human hand needs to chart the path as well as fly the plane. We need to know the destination ahead of time so we can figure out how to get there. You flew yourself, once or twice, Ras Amde Worku. You know. We have to know where they want Teo to go.’

  ‘They will only tell the pilot.’

  After a bit more wrangling, Momma convinced them to take Teo aside and spend a sensible amount of time planning the route with him. So when we’d emptied the coffee pot, the ancient person stood up, still with the younger boy holding the silk umbrella over his head, and beckoned to Teo.

  Teo got slowly to his feet as if he had great big sacks of coffee tied to his joints. Momma handed him both the maps, and her notebook, and all his previous flight plans. He turned
and bent down, full of ceremony, to select a collection of rulers and pencils. He picked up his glass compass that Papà Menotti had given him. I watched him drop it in his shirt pocket. He looked at me.

  ‘Hey. You were going to plan my route.’

  I felt like my heart was being torn out of my chest.

  ‘The route back to Tazma Meda is marked on that map,’ I told him urgently. ‘You did all the calculations for this trip yourself and it worked. Just check everything against what’s there on the charts. Use it as a guide. Follow the heading and check your compass every five minutes. You’ll get it right.’

  We couldn’t hug each other. We couldn’t even hold each other’s hands any more, not a grown boy and girl in front of priests.

  I linked my thumbs together to make wings, White Raven’s secret greeting to Black Dove.

  He gave me a pained, quick grin. Then he turned and followed the soldiers and the old man across the airfield and into the shed.

  I sat down on the grass and covered my head with my arms. I wanted to wail the way the Tazma Meda women do at a funeral, except I didn’t want to upset Teo. So I just ground my teeth together and sobbed quietly to myself.

  Momma started cussing. She had the sense to do it in English, so nobody could understand her, but it was still obvious what she was doing.

  ‘Rhoda.’ Amde Worku said it calmly, with certainty. ‘This is important.’

  ‘What is it? Why won’t they tell me? Why Teo?’

  ‘He is a pilot. He is my servant. And he is a man.’

  ‘A man!?’

  ‘And you are not,’ Amde Worku pointed out.

  Momma killed the flames in the buddy burner by upending her cup over the tin. Defeatedly, like she didn’t care who was watching her or what they thought, she gathered up the rest of our equipment. Ras Amde Worku started giving Horatio Augustus instructions about their next move.

  ‘I want the same soldiers to escort the holy men back the way they came. Let no one see them from the road. Two must carry old Kasa so it can be done quickly. The deacons will keep pace with the rest. Your other men must make this place secure for Woyzaro Rhoda and her daughter, and you must be ready to evacuate this field if the Italian force arrives –’

  ‘Retreat?’ trumpeted the Ebony Eagle. ‘Run away? Never –’

  ‘Evacuate,’ said Ras Amde Worku calmly. ‘Yours is the only fighting force left in this city and you are not here for defence. You have forty men and one cannon under your command, and that is enough to protect an American woman and her daughter. When you have made sure they are safe, you are to follow my force south. We will not fight the Italians so close to their supplies in Eritrea. We will lure them into the mountains and exhaust them there.’

  After a couple of minutes I got up and just walked away.

  Nobody ever stops me.

  I didn’t go anywhere. I just wandered around the edge of the landing field. There wasn’t any fence; it wasn’t a real airfield yet, but it was turning into one. There were soldiers along the road, who didn’t seem to have anything more to do than I did, and they were just standing around gabbing, with their rifles across the backs of their shoulders and their arms hanging over the rifles like shepherd boys do with their sticks. The sun was high and there was a faint breeze ruffling the gold Meskal daisies. It was absolutely unbelievable there was supposed to be a war going on, or that we could possibly be near the front lines.

  Momma came to get me after a while.

  ‘How’s Teo supposed to find his way to their mysterious location?’ I wailed. ‘And what’ll we do, just sit here and wait for him to get back?’

  ‘I guess we’ll have to.’

  I felt my lip wobbling again. We just kept sliding deeper into this pit of nightmare, the ground crumbling beneath us. What would White Raven do? I needed a quiet place to think about it.

  ‘Come on, Em. You and me have got to make sure the Romeo is ready when Teo is.’

  There was no quiet place.

  We refuelled the same way we do at Beehive Hill Farm, making forty-two trips back and forth from a couple of barrels left by the road, carrying cans of fuel on our heads. Somebody turned up with brick-red paint so they could get big red crosses slapped up on the Romeo’s wings and tail. Momma bandaged up the torn wing and the jagged windshield in the back seat with surgical tape from the first-aid kit, and crawled over every inch of the plane yet again. After she’d done it herself she made me double- check everything too.

  ‘Em, your hands are smaller than mine. Reach in there and tell me if you feel anything wet. Reach down there and tell me if you can find anything that moves. Stick your finger down this tube –’

  The plane was fine. I heard Ras Amde Worku’s men laughing about painting red crosses on the aircraft and saw one of the churchmen giving them thunderingly dirty looks. A red cross on a house here kind of means something else (it means the same as ‘red-light district’ does in the USA), so now that there is an actual Ethiopian Red Cross Society it makes some people confused. At any rate it will disguise the plane.

  Then I had to sit in the cockpit for twenty minutes with my feet on the brakes while Momma got Horatio Augustus to prove he knew how to swing the propeller so he could start the engine for Teo.

  Momma didn’t seem scared when Italian fighter planes were shooting at us – at least, she hadn’t acted like she was. She’d taken the controls and got us out of a tight spot. She is fine as long as she’s flying. But now she can’t take the controls. That’s when she gets scared – when she can’t do anything to fix things herself.

  I wish I didn’t know how scared she is.

  We did all the tinkering she could possibly think of and then we had to leave. They made us get out of the field. We had to stand in a dip on the other side of the road and we couldn’t see Teo when he crossed the field with the mysterious priest who’d been in the shed the whole time. It felt like waiting while your house burns down. We heard the Romeo’s engine start. We heard the rise and fall of its familiar hum as the plane taxied away from us, heading downwind. There was a pause. I imagined Teo down there by himself, checking at the last minute to make sure he was heading in the right direction for take-off, that the oil pressure looked normal, noting what time it was.

  He had four and a half hours before it got dark. He couldn’t fly without refuelling for much longer than that anyway though, so whatever happened he had to land before it got dark.

  Suddenly we could see the Romeo again. It rose from the airfield like a moth. The new wet paint seemed to gleam in the sun. The arms of the crosses belled out wider at the tips than in the middle, like the crosses carved in the window holes of St Kristos Samra. There wasn’t anybody sitting in the windy rear cockpit with its smashed windshield because that was where they’d put the cargo, whatever it was. You could see the top of a shapeless bundle that was wrapped up and strapped down, the thing the churchmen had been carrying in the litter over their shoulders. A little tail of the cloth that covered it flapped wildly in the wind. The plane was waving goodbye to us.

  ‘Oh . . .’ Momma breathed. I locked my arms around her neck and we watched the Romeo with its weird cargo bumbling slowly but steadily away from us to the south.

  We watched until we couldn’t see anything.

  After a little while I said, ‘Where are we going to stay?’

  ‘We can stay here. Ras Amde Worku’s trying really hard to make us happy. It’s half killing him that we’re not staying in his house, but he understands how much I want to be here when Teo gets back. They’ll let us use the shed to camp in. Augustus’s soldiers are about half a mile away, on the edge of the city. They’ll send a patrol to guard us, and water and carpets and a cook. Oh, Emmy –’ She gave a bitter bark of laughter. ‘Bet you can’t imagine the American Legation giving us cooks and an honour guard! And that dang Horatio Augustus has given me a couple of gas masks he brought over from the States – tells me he can sell them for twenty-five dollars apiece in any market in Ad
dis Ababa, so he’s paid off what he owes us with interest.’

  ‘No one can afford that!’

  ‘Yeah, it makes you wonder. But a second-hand rifle costs two hundred dollars. Someone’s paying.’

  I couldn’t believe it. ‘What’re we going to do sitting around in Aksum with gas masks?’ I asked.

  ‘Well –’

  Momma was awful serious.

  ‘I told you about gas. I would not be alive today and you wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for my boss Dr Mackenzie making us all wear gas masks and rubber raincoats when I was in Belgium during the war before I met Papà Menotti.’

  She is always very serious about the Great War.

  ‘Listen, Emmy,’ she went on, ‘you know they bombed Adwa last week. Well, Augustus heard something about burning yellow smoke pouring out of Italian planes over troops in the south, near Wal Wal, about the same time last week when the fighting started. I don’t trust him farther than I can push him, but I won’t say no to a couple of gas masks.’

  Ras Amde Worku came to get us when the coast was clear and the priests had all left. Momma and I had already divvied up the camping equipment so that Teo would have the best of it, which meant we were low on things like matches and water, and now we had no coffee pot or groundsheet. We went to take what was left into the shed and get ready to play house there.

  Gosh, it was bleak when Ras Amde Worku first showed us inside. Augustus had his men build it to be an operations centre for the airfield, hopefully expecting some aircraft to turn up there and need an operations centre, but there was nothing in it but a rickety handmade wooden table for modern airmen to spread their charts on. There wasn’t anything on it now. It felt like nothing had ever happened there or would again. The floor was packed dirt, still a little bit damp, but not muddy. Whoever built the place had cleared the undergrowth, but there wasn’t a rug or a mat. There weren’t any windows either, just the light coming in through the chinks between the sticks that the walls were made of.