A Spear of Summer Grass

by DEANNA RAYBOURN

  He pressed the bag into my hands.

  “What is it? Some sort of jewellery?” I turned it over in my palm and felt knobbly bits inside—a few pebbles, something that rustled like leaves, and another something that felt suspiciously long and hard in its slenderness. A bit of bone?

  “It is a charm of protection, Bibi. My babu is very good friends with the most powerful laibon in our tribe,” he added with a measure of pride.

  “Laibon? What is that? Some sort of witch doctor?”

  “A laibon is a man with powerful magic. My babu asked and he has made this for you.”

  I nodded toward his neck. “I see you have one, too.”

  “As does Moses. My babu says this thing is necessary.”

  I shrugged and tied the thing to my belt loop and tucked it into a pocket. “Is that good enough?”

  The babu peered closely through his spectacles, giving a grudging nod. He wasn’t entirely pleased but he finally told Gideon it was good enough, and I was glad. I had no intention of wearing the smelly thing so close to my nose. It could live in my pocket and I only hoped Dora wouldn’t complain about the odour when it was time to do the laundry.

  “I’ll keep it, but only to make the babu happy. Gates is a bully. Once you show them what you’re made of, they turn tail and run.” I bowed my head to thank the babu.

  He lifted his hand to my head, pressing it for a long moment in a priestly gesture. He turned back to Gideon.

  “Babu says that the gentleman in the uniform still follows you, but he walks with Death, Bibi. Death is his friend.”

  I said nothing and drank more of the vile tea. I wasn’t surprised Death was his friend, considering the fact that I had buried him a decade before.

  The babu went on, his voice rusty, like an old accordion.

  “Babu says this man watches you, but Death waits for another man to join him.”

  Still I said nothing, but my hand shook as I lifted the gourd.

  “Babu says you are strong, like a Masai woman, and this is good.”

  “Why? Does he need someone to build him a house?” I said brightly.

  He repeated the joke and to my astonishment, the babu wrapped his arms about his slender body, wheezing.

  “Babu laughs. He does not wish for a house, Bibi. He says you are strong in spirit, and this is a good thing. You will have sorrow to bear. It is good to have a strong back for this.”

  I rose then and paid my respects to the babu. He laid his blessings upon us and we left, turning our steps towards the path back to Fairlight. Every step I thought of Johnny and the man Death was waiting for. And I thought of Ryder, out in the bush, where a broken leg or a snakebite or a fever could kill a man between breakfast and lunch.

  * * *

  A few days after Helen’s party, Rex appeared. He looked a little haggard after his trip to Nairobi, but he refused all offers of food or drink. Dodo, who was still nursing a snit, disappeared discreetly, leaving us alone in the drawing room. He sat next to me on the sofa and draped his arm casually near my shoulders as he closed his eyes.

  “You look exhausted. Are you sure you won’t have something?”

  He opened his eyes then shook his head as if to clear it. “No. Being here helps.”

  “What happened in Nairobi?”

  “Disaster,” he said, clipping each syllable sharply. “The governor is planning his return from England. He’s giving up.”

  “You mean no independence for Kenya?”

  “That’s precisely what I mean.” His lips thinned. “Everything I have worked for in the past fifteen years, and he is willing to let it slip through our fingers. It’s his health. He isn’t strong enough to keep up the fight.”

  He looked shattered, and I put a hand to his. “I’m sorry.”

  He clasped it a moment then released it.

  “I’m sorry. I know I haven’t a right to burden you with my troubles. I ought to go directly home, but Helen—” He broke off, then cleared his throat. “She was different when we met, you know. Wild of course, just like you.” His lips curved softly. “I thought Africa would settle her down. Instead it seemed to make her worse. Every time I suggested leaving, she would threaten to kill herself. I couldn’t bear to see her suffer anymore. I do still love her, you see. I love her so very, very much,” he added with an apologetic smile. “So we struck a bargain. We would stay and she would try to make herself a proper wife when I needed her to. When I was off on business in Nairobi, she would be free to do as she pleased. I had no idea how bad she’d got until a few years ago when I came home early and found—”

  He broke off again, and I gave him an innocent smile. “I can imagine.”

  “Can you? I don’t know. Poor Helen. She always manages to choose badly. I came home that time to find her injecting herself with Bianca’s syringe and holding up a sheet with holes cut into it so the gentlemen of the neighbourhood could expose themselves for the ladies to compare.”

  So that was the sheet game I had missed. I wasn’t sorry.

  “She apologised, of course, and sent everyone away. She even tried to behave after that. But discretion is a bit too much of a stretch even for someone as limber as Helen. It’s only a matter of time before she slips up again, drinks too much or takes those foul drugs, or starts an affair with a neighbour. It’s so damnably lurid.”

  He closed his eyes again, his hand very still on the sofa between us. He wore no wedding ring, not even a pale strip of unmarked skin broke the tan of his finger. He gave a long sigh and opened his eyes. They were blue, and yet so unlike Ryder’s. Ryder’s were the sea, unpredictable and changeable. Rex’s were a steady, cool northern sky.

  “She’s not long for this world, you know,” he said suddenly. “She can’t keep on at this pace. Her heart or her liver will give out. She’s already on medication for both. No one here knows, but the doctor in Nairobi is keeping her alive.”

  “Rex, I’m so sorry.”

  “I’ve had a long time to come to terms with it. She’s like a child, you know. A spoiled, lovely child, a glorious, magical creature I can’t quite believe has ever been mine. I don’t know what I shall do with myself when she is gone.”

  Again, I covered his hand with my other one, and this time he didn’t pull away.

  “You’re a sweet child,” he said, touching my hand to his cheek. A sudden glimmer of life came back into his eyes. “You should stay with us. I think you would be happy in a new, free Kenya.”

  I chose my words carefully. “I thought you were giving up on that dream.”

  He smiled, and something stirred behind his eyes as he dropped my hand. “I do have one card left to play. It hasn’t been formally announced yet, but I have it on good authority that the Duke and Duchess of York will be paying us a visit next year.”

  “Will they? And will that really help your cause?”

  “It’s early days yet, my dear, too early to say,” he said dismissively. “But the king’s second son could be a powerful ally, and I have hopes the duke may be persuaded to see reason where others have failed. If we are successful, well, the future could be a dazzling one for us.”

  I opened my mouth, but he shook his head. “I shouldn’t have said anything. But yours is remarkably soothing company, Delilah. You have been a wonderful comfort, my dear,” he finished lightly. He rose. “I must go, but if at any time you need me, you have only to say.”

  He didn’t say another word, just gave me a sad, meaningful smile and went on his way, closing the door softly behind him.

  * * *

  That night I awoke suddenly, although I couldn’t say why. The crickets were singing in the garden, but the nightjars had gone quiet. I waited for a sound, but there was nothing—no crashing in the bushes that meant a hippo was wandering through, no shrill laugh from the hyenas
. Nothing but the high, insistent chirp of the insects and a feeling that something was wrong. I lit a cigarette and waited. The full moon was veiled in cloud and the only light was the glow from the tip of my cigarette, winking like a firefly. Still I waited, but nothing happened and after a while I stubbed out the cigarette and rolled over in the dark.

  It was the shouts that awakened me the second time. Omar the cook raised the alarm, shouting for Pierre, who shouted for me. I threw on my clothes and shoved my feet into my boots without stopping to fasten anything properly. I ran outside and found them, lying in the complete stillness that only death can bring. Their throats had been torn and their feathers were scattered around the little chicken run.

  “What did it?” I demanded. “An animal? Une animale?”

  Pierre pointed to the locked run, replying in unsteady French. “An animal cannot walk through fences, madame.”

  He was right. I inspected the perimeter of the run and there wasn’t a single hole or bent section of wire. It was solid as the day it had been constructed. I dusted off my hands and instructed the cook to pluck them and salvage what he could to feed the farmhands.

  He backed away, holding his hands in front of himself as if to push me away.

  “What is the trouble?”

  Pierre looked from the cook to me. “No one will eat the chickens, madame. They have been touched by bad magic.” The words in French had a chilling grace. Mauvaise magie.

  “Bad magic? Don’t be daft. The damage was done by a human with a key and a grudge and I think we all know who that is.”

  Pierre shrugged. “A man can command bad spirits to do his bidding.”

  “No spirit did this. It was a man,” I insisted. But Pierre and Omar would not be budged. They refused even to touch the chickens, and I had to find one of the hardier Kikuyu to remove the carcasses and burn them. It was the only way to cleanse the bad magic, Pierre insisted, although he added that the services of one of the local witches would not go amiss.

  I cursed under my breath, but suddenly I realised that it was fully dawn. The sun had finished rising, a great ball of blood just over the horizon. And there was no noise from the cattle, no persistent demands to be milked, no encouragement to Moses to turn them out to pasture.

  “No!” I shouted, setting off at a dead run.

  I smelled the blood before I opened the door to the barn. The floor was awash with it, and I slipped as I ran inside. The cows were silent lumps of flesh, already rotting, but something in that barn still lived, I realised. I threw myself down on the floor next to Moses and felt his throat for a pulse. It was there, thin and thready as a bird’s. Uneven, but it was there. I checked him for broken bones and injuries and found a vicious wound to his head. His blood had mingled with that of the cows, and I gathered him up and moved him out of that dark place that smelled of death. I carried him out into the open, collapsing just as Gideon walked up. He had brought firewood, and the smile faded from his face as he opened his arms and dropped the load of it to the ground. He ran, hurdling over the pasture fence as if it were no more than a bush. He took his little brother into his arms.

  “He needs a doctor, Gideon. A proper doctor. I can’t fix this. I don’t have enough experience with head wounds.”

  Gideon’s expression hardened. “No, Bibi. There has been enough of white men in this. I will take him to our babu.”

  He rose with Moses, limp in his arms. “Gideon, this isn’t a matter of magic. No incantations can fix this. He needs proper medicine.”

  Gideon gave me a sorrowful look, as one might to a child who cannot learn its lessons.

  “No, this was not magic, Bibi. But it was evil. And no one knows more about evil than our babu.”

  I didn’t argue with him. He carried his brother down the dusty track and I ran after them, carrying Gideon’s spear and watching his back for lions. It was the least I could do.

  I spent the day with the Masai, watching closely as the elders worked to save Moses’ life. The babu had summoned the laibon, the tribal witch, the local healer and caster out of demons. He treated the head wound, packing it with their native remedies, and prepared a series of potions to spoon into the boy’s mouth. He explained the herbs and how each would help, one to keep down the swelling, one to halt the bleeding, another to give peaceful rest. I heard little of what he said. I spent most of my time thinking of Gates and how stupid I had been not to confiscate his keys when I kicked him off the property. And I thought of what I would do when I got my hands on him.

  After a few hours, one of the women presented me with a tin cup of corn porridge and a gourd of hot smoky milk. I hadn’t thought I was hungry, but I finished them both and felt a little better. Gideon and I sat outside the hut and talked for hours. He told me stories of Moses and how smart the boy was, what expectations he had for his brother. We talked of his bravery and his winsome ways, his bright smile and his curiosity. And then I talked, telling him stories of my Granny Miette—how she scandalised the other white women by the dark things she sometimes did with Angele and Teenie. I told him of the chaudron, the sugaring cauldron big enough to hold a man, a great cast-iron beast that squatted at the edge of the cane fields waiting for the alchemy of fire and the syrup. It was a crucible, boiling down the thick syrup and filling the air with smoked sweetness.

  But there were other times—times when the fire was kindled for other reasons, and the chaudron did darker work. It might be to visit retribution on a man who had ruined a girl or forfeited a debt of honour. It might have been to still a gossiping tongue or pay back a piece of malice in kind. Granny Miette always sent me to bed early on those nights, nights when the moon had turned its dark face to the earth, away from the things that happened in the hour after midnight. But sometimes I crept out of bed and stood in the shadows of the tea olives, as Mossy had done before me, and I saw the same rituals she had seen and I shivered even though there was no wind. I never stayed to the end. I always hurried back to my bed and burrowed under the covers, the smell of tea olives and sweet smoke clinging to my skin. And on those nights, I dreamed things that came true, grisly red things that I didn’t want to know. I wanted to know them now. I wanted every one of those things visited upon Gates until he cried a river of tears so deep it would drown him. I told that to Gideon, too, and he smiled.

  “Moses will be fine, Bibi,” he told me.

  “How can you be so sure? Sometimes people aren’t, you know.” It was wrong to say it, but there was bitterness on my tongue.

  “Babu has told his future, and it is not his time to leave us.”

  I laughed rudely, but Gideon’s level gaze didn’t waver. “I’m sorry,” I told him. I turned away. My throat was too tight to say more.

  One of the women brought me another calabash of milk and I held it to give my hands something to do. Just then the babu emerged from his little mud house. He moved slowly and Gideon hurried to lend him a strong arm, settling him next to me on the ground. The babu spoke and Gideon translated.

  “He says there is nothing to do but wait.”

  “But Moses—” I began.

  To my astonishment, the babu’s leathery old face split into a smile.

  “He says that there is nothing to do but wait, although he sees that this is a difficult thing for you. You are a woman who runs.”

  “A woman who runs?”

  The babu opened the leather pouch at his neck and took out a pinch of tobacco. He worked it into a plug and began to chew, spitting expertly. Then he took off his spectacles and cleaned them on the edge of his toga. The cloth smeared them a little, so I sighed and pulled out a handkerchief. I motioned for the spectacles and he handed them over, watching intently as I polished them. When I gave them back he peered through them, then grunted his satisfaction. I gave him the handkerchief and he tucked it away with a gracious nod.

  “What does he
mean, a woman who runs?”

  Gideon repeated the question and the babu launched into a lengthy recitation. Gideon listened intently then turned to me.

  “He says that you learned long ago to run, to hide from the dark thing that is like the dog who is half a man.”

  “The rougarou,” I whispered.

  “I do not know this word, Bibi,” Gideon told me. “What is a rougarou?”

  “It’s a bogeyman, a story used to frighten children where I come from. It doesn’t exist.”

  But even as I said the words, I tasted the lie in them. The rougarou was real. I had seen him often enough. The only lie was that he looked like a wolf-man. Granny Miette was the first to tell me the story of the rougarou. Some Creoles called him the loup garou; some said he punished bad Catholics. Some even said one could become a rougarou by being a bad Catholic. Seven years of broken Lents could earn you a wolf’s head, it was whispered. But Granny Miette had said those were just silly superstitions. She said everyone knew the rougarou came by night to steal away children who were bad, who caused mischief and made their mothers cry. The rougarou would roam the swamps looking for naughty children, sniffing out the tender flesh and the cindery smell of wickedness with his long wolf’s nose, until he found them tucked in their beds. If you were a lucky child, the rougarou would eat you whole, leaving nothing but the bony feet behind. But if you were very bad indeed, if your black deeds had turned your heart to the colour of night, the rougarou wouldn’t carry you off. He would devour only your blood, turning you into a rougarou yourself.

  “The rougarou has a sense for wickedness, Delilah Belle,” she murmured, her pansy-blue eyes piercing in her papery face. “He can smell it out, same as you can smell new bread or the mud in the Mississippi. You can fool your grandpapa and you can even fool old Granny Miette,” she would tell me, leaning so close I could smell the odour of singed violets on her skin. “But you cannot fool the rougarou. His nose follows pain, same as a hound follows blood. And when he sniffs you out, you can’t outrun him. You can try, chou-chou, you can run hard and you can run fast. But no one outruns the rougarou forever.”