by Wilbur Smith
She was still unable to speak, but words were unnecessary and inadequate. Her eyes, close to his, expressed all her gratitude and gave him a glimpse of her other emotions, still too complex and confused for her to express.
Jim set her carefully on the ground. “Where are you hurt?” he asked. His voice was choked with concern for her. The toll that their brush with death had exacted was clear to see on his face, and this rallied her. She clung to him still as he knelt over her.
“My ankle, but ’tis almost nothing,” she whispered.
“Let me see it,” he said, and she let her arms slip away from his neck. “Which one?” he asked, and she showed him. He eased the boot from her foot and tested her leg gently. “It’s not broken,” he said.
“No.” She sat up. “And ’tis only a little sore.” She brushed the golden hair off her dusty face and he saw that a thorn was stuck into her cheek. He plucked it out, and she winced but held his gaze. “Jim!” she whispered.
“Yes, my little hedgehog?”
“No, ’tis nothing, except—” She broke off, unable to finish, then went on lamely, “I like it well enough when you call me that.”
“I’m glad to have you back,” Jim said. “For a moment I thought you had taken leave of us.”
“I must be a sight to give children nightmares.” She could look no longer into his eyes, and tried to wipe the dust from her face.
Only a woman could consider her appearance at such a time, Jim thought, but he did not say it. “You are such a sight as I have dreamed on,” he said instead, and she blushed under the dirt.
Then Bakkat rode up on Frost with both the great guns loaded and primed. “The bull will escape us yet, if you let him, Somoya.”
Jim roused himself to what was happening around them. He saw the old bull walking away slowly downhill, dragging one front leg and shaking its huge head as the agony of the burst eyeball raged through its skull.
“Oh, Jim,” Louisa whispered. “The poor beast is in terrible extremes. You must not let him suffer so.”
“It will not take long,” he promised her. He stepped up into Drumfire’s saddle and took the gun Bakkat handed up to him. Then he rode down the slope, circled out ahead of the maimed animal and stopped Drumfire squarely in its path. He cocked the hammer and waited.
The bull seemed not to notice them and came on slowly, painfully. At ten paces Jim fired into the front of its chest. As the ball socked heavily into the wrinkled hide, he spun Drumfire away like a dancer. The bull made no move to follow them. It stood still as a monument, and the heart blood pumped from the fresh bullet hole, bright as a fountain in the sunlight.
Jim changed guns with Bakkat, then brought Drumfire back towards where the bull still stood. He came in on its blind side at a steady walk. The bull began to rock gently on its feet, once again making a soft rumbling sound deep in its chest. Jim felt all his warlike passions abating, to be replaced by a feeling of sadness and aching remorse. With this most noble of all quarry, he felt more intensely than ever the eternal tragedy of the kill. It was an effort to raise the gun and fire again. The bull shuddered when it received the ball, and began to back away, but its movements were slow and unsteady. Then, at last, it sighed, a laboured, gusty sound.
It fell the way a great tree goes down before the axe and cross-saw, slowly at first, then faster until it hit the earth with a crash that echoed from the hills across the valley.
Bakkat slipped off Frost’s back, and went forward. The elephant’s good eye was wide open, and Bakkat ran his finger lightly along the fringe of its lashes. It did not blink. “It is over, Somoya. He belongs to you for ever.”
Despite her protests that her injuries were of no consequence, Jim would not let Louisa ride back to the wagons. He and Bakkat cut two long, supple poles and with a framework of lighter sticks fastened between them, the whole covered by the canvas ground sheets from their blanket rolls, they contrived a travois for Trueheart to drag behind her. Jim laid Louisa tenderly on it and picked the smoothest path to lead Trueheart back to the wagons.
Although Louisa laughed from this comfortable bed, and declared it the easiest journey she had ever made, by the time they reached the wagons her injuries had stiffened. When she rose from the travois she hobbled to her wagon like a very old lady.
Jim hovered around her anxiously, aware that any uninvited help he might offer would be rejected. He was surprised and delighted when she placed a hand on his shoulder as she climbed the wagon steps. He left her to take off her torn, soiled clothing while he supervised the heating of the water cauldron and the preparation of the copper hipbath. Zama and the other servants removed the afterchest from her wagon and set up the bath in its place. Then they filled it with steaming water. When all was ready, Jim retired and listened through the canvas tent to her splashes, and winced in sympathy to her small cries and exclamations of pain as the water stung her abrasions and thorn pricks. When at last he judged that she had finished he asked permission to enter her wagon tent. “Yes, you may come in, for I am as chastely attired as a nun.”
She was wearing the dressing-robe Sarah Courtney had given her. It reached from her chin to her ankles, and down to her wrists.
“Is there aught I can do to ease your discomfort?” he asked.
“I have rubbed your aunt Yasmini’s sovereign balm and ointment upon my ankle and on most of my other afflictions.” She lifted the hem of the robe a few inches to show her ankle tightly wrapped in bandages. Dorian Courtney’s wife was an adept of Arabian and Oriental medicine. Her famous ointment was the family cure-all. Sarah had packed a dozen large jars of it into the medical chest she had given them. There was an open jar beside Louisa’s cardell bed, and the strong but pleasant herbal smell permeated the interior of the tent.
Jim was not sure where these remarks were leading, but he nodded wisely. Then she blushed again, and, without looking at him, murmured, “However, I have thorns in places that I cannot reach. And bruises sufficient for two persons to share.”
It did not occur to him that she was asking for his help, and she had to make it more apparent. She reached over one shoulder and touched her back as far down as she could reach. “It feels as though I have an entire forest of thorns embedded down there.” Still he stared at her, and she had to eschew all attempts at subtlety and modesty.
“In the chest you will find a pair of tweezers and a selection of needles you can use,” she said, turned her back to him and slipped the robe off her shoulder. “There is one particular thorn here, just below my shoulder-blade.” She touched the spot. “It feels like a crucifixion nail.”
He gulped as he grasped her meaning, and reached for the tweezers. “I shall try not to hurt you, but cry out if I do,” he said, but he was well practised in caring for sick and wounded animals, and his touch was firm but gentle.
She stretched out face down upon the sheepskin mattress, and gave herself over to his ministrations. Although her back was scratched and punctured in many places, and pale lymph and watery blood wept from the injuries, her skin was marble smooth and lustrously pale where it was undamaged. Although when he had first met her she had been a skinny waif, since then an abundance of good food and months of riding and walking had firmed and shaped her muscles. Even in her present straits, her body was the loveliest thing he had ever laid eyes on. He worked in silence, not trusting his voice, and except for the occasional gasp or small whimper Louisa said nothing.
When he folded back the hem of her robe to reach another hidden thorn, she moved slightly to make it easier for him. When he peeled back the silk a little further it revealed the beginning of the delicate cleft that separated her buttocks and down so fine and pale that it was invisible until the light fell upon it from a certain angle. Jim stood back and averted his eyes, although the effort required to do so was almost beyond him. “I cannot go further,” he blurted.
“Pray, why not?” she asked, without lifting her face from the pillow. “I can feel there are thorns that st
ill demand your attention.”
“Modesty forbids it.”
“So you will not care if my injuries mortify, and I die of blood poisoning to save your precious modesty?”
“Do not jest so,” he exclaimed. The thought of her death struck deep into his soul. She had come so close to it this very morning.
“I jest not, James Archibald.” She raised her head from the pillow and regarded him frostily. “I have no one else to whom I may turn. Think of yourself as a surgeon, and me as your patient.”
The lines of her naked bottom were pure and symmetrical beyond any geometrical or navigational diagram he had studied. Under his fingers her skin was warm and silken. When he had removed the thorns and anointed her various wounds with the balm, he measured a dose of laudanum to ease her discomfort. Then, at last, he was free to leave her wagon tent. But his legs seemed almost too weak to carry him.
Jim ate dinner alone at the campfire. Zama had roasted a large slice of the elephant’s trunk, considered by his father and other connoisseurs to be one of the great delicacies of the African bush. But Jim’s jaw ached from the effort of chewing it and it had all the flavour of boiled woodchips. When the flames of the campfire died down, exhaustion overtook him. He had just sufficient energy to peep through the chink in the afterclap of Louisa’s wagon tent. She was stretched out, face down under the kaross, and sleeping so soundly that he had to listen intently for the faint sound of her breathing. Then he left her and tottered to his own bed. He stripped off his clothing and dropped it on the floor, then collapsed on the sheepskin.
He woke in confusion not sure if what he was hearing was a dream or reality. It was Louisa’s voice, shrill with terror: “Jim, Jim! Help me!”
He sprang from his bed to go to her, then remembered he was naked. While he groped for his breeches she cried out again. He did not have time to don his breeches, but holding them before him, he went to her rescue. He skinned his knee on the tailboard of the wagon as he jumped down, then ran to hers and dived through the curtains of the afterclap. “Louisa! Are you safe? What troubles you?”
“Ride! Oh, ride with all haste! Don’t let it catch me!” she screamed. He realized that she was locked in a nightmare. This time it was difficult to wake her. He had to seize both of her shoulders and shake her.
“Jim, is it you?” At last she came back from the land of shadows. “Oh, I had such a terrible dream. It was the elephant again.”
She clung to him, and he waited for her to calm. She was hot and flushed, but after a while he laid her back and pulled the fur kaross over her. “Sleep now, little hedgehog,” he whispered. “I will not be far away.”
“Don’t leave me, Jim. Stay with me for a while.”
“Until you sleep,” he agreed.
But he fell asleep before she did. She felt him topple over slowly and lie full length beside her. Then his breathing became slow and even. He was not touching her, but his presence was reassuring and she let herself slip back into sleep. This time there were no dark fantasies to haunt her rest.
When she awoke in the dawn to the sounds of the camp stirring around her she reached out to touch him, but he was gone. She felt a sharp sense of loss.
She dressed and climbed painfully down from the wagon. Jim and Bakkat were busy at the horselines, washing the scratches and small injuries that Drumfire and Trueheart had received in yesterday’s battle with the elephant, and feeding them a little of the precious oats and bran moistened with black molasses as a reward for their courage. When he looked up and saw Louisa struggling down from her wagon, Jim exclaimed with alarm and ran to her. “You should keep to your bed. What are you doing here?”
“I am going to see to breakfast.”
“What madness is this? Zama can do without your instruction for a day. You must rest.”
“Do not treat me like a child,” she told him, but the reprimand lacked fire and she smiled at him as she limped to the cooking fire. He did not argue. It was a gorgeous morning, bright and cool, and this put them both in a sunny mood. They ate under the trees to the sound of birdsong from the branches above them, and the meal became a small celebration of the previous day’s events. With animation they discussed every detail of the hunt and relived all the excitement and terror, but neither mentioned the events of the night, although they were uppermost in their minds.
“Now I must go back to the carcass to remove the tusks. It is not a task I can leave to others. A careless slip of the axe will damage the ivory irrevocably,” he told her, as he mopped his plate with a piece of unleavened pot bread. “I will rest Drumfire today, he worked hard yesterday, and I will take Crow. Trueheart will stay in camp, for she is as lame as you are.”
“Then I shall ride Stag,” she said. “It will not take me long to don my boots.” Stag was a strong but gentle gelding they had taken from Colonel Keyser.
“You should stay in camp to recuperate fully.”
“I must go with you to retrieve my rifle, which I dropped in the thorn thickets.”
“That is a feeble pretext. I can do that for you.”
“You do not truly believe that I shall not attend the removal of the tusks for which we risked our very lives?”
He opened his mouth to protest, but saw from her expression that it would be wasted effort. “I shall tell Bakkat to saddle Stag.”
There were two traditional methods of withdrawing the tusks. The carcass could be left to decompose, and when the cartilage that held the tusks in their sockets had softened and disintegrated they could be pulled forcibly from the skull. This was a lengthy and malodorous business, and Jim was impatient to see his trophies revealed in all their magnificence. So was Louisa.
When they rode back they found a canopy of circling carrion birds darkening the sky above the body of the dead bull. In this vast assembly there was every species of vulture and eagle, as well as the undertaker storks with their monstrous beaks and bald pink heads, which seemed to have been parboiled. The branches of the trees around the dead bull groaned under the weight of this feathered horde. As Jim and Louisa rode up to the carcass, packs of hyena slunk away, and little red jackals peered at them from the cover of the thornbushes with pricked ears and bright eyes. These scavengers had picked out the eyes of the bull and burrowed in through his anus, but they had not been able to tear open the tough grey hide to reach the flesh. Where the vultures had perched upon the carcass their excrement had left white stains down its sides. Jim felt a sense of outrage at this desecration of such a noble beast. Angrily he drew his rifle from its sheath and fired at one of the black vultures on the top branches of the nearest tree. Struck squarely by the leaden ball, the hideous bird came tumbling down in a welter of feathers and flapping wings. The rest of the roosting flock rose and climbed to join their peers in the sky above.
When Louisa retrieved her rifle, she found that the woodwork was only lightly scratched. She came back and selected a vantage-point in the shade. Seated on a saddle blanket she sketched the proceedings, and made notes in the margins of the page.
Jim’s first task was to sever the bull’s immense head from the neck. This had to be done to make it easier to handle—it would have taken fifty men or more to roll the massive carcass from one side to the other. As it was, the decapitation took half the morning. Stripped to the waist the men were sweating in the noonday sun before it was accomplished.
Then came the painstaking work of removing the skin and chipping away the bone from around the roots of the tusks, with meticulous axe strokes. Jim, Bakkat and Zama took turns, not trusting the clumsy touch of the wagon drivers and servants on the precious ivory. First one and then the other tusk was lifted out of its bony canal and laid upon a mattress of cut grass. With quick strokes of her brush Louisa recorded the moment when Jim stooped over the tusks and, with the point of his knife, freed the long coneshaped nerve from the hollow butt end of each one. They slithered out, white and glutinous as jelly.
They wrapped the tusks in cushions of cut grass, l
oaded them on to the backs of the pack-horses and bore them back to the wagons in triumph. Jim unpacked the scale his father had given him for this purpose and suspended it from the branch of a tree. Then, surrounded by everyone, he weighed the tusks one at a time. The right-hand shaft of ivory, the bull’s working tusk, was more worn and weighed 143 pounds. The larger tusk weighed 150 pounds precisely. Both were stained brown by vegetable juices where they had been exposed, but the butts were a lovely cream colour, glossy as precious porcelain where they had been protected in the sheath of bone and cartilage. “In all the hundreds of traded tusks I have seen pass through the godown at High Weald I have never seen one larger,” he told Louisa proudly.
They sat late beside the campfire that night for there seemed so much still to say. Bakkat, Zama and the other servants had all rolled themselves in their blankets and were sleeping beside their fires when Jim walked Louisa back to her wagon.
Afterwards he lay on his own bed, naked in the balmy night. As he drifted off he listened to the weird sobbing and laughter of the hyena patrolling the outskirts of the camp, attracted by the scent of the raw elephant meat curing on the smoking racks. His last thought was to wonder if Smallboy and the other drivers had placed the leather ropes and tackle of the wagon harness out of reach of those scavengers. With their formidable jaws the hyena could chew and swallow the toughest tanned leather as easily as he could devour a luscious oyster. But he knew that the safety and condition of the wagon harness was always Smallboy’s first concern, and let himself drop into a sound sleep.