Cranky Ladies of History

by Tehani Wessely

  I kiss him deeply, tasting the herbs that burned at Radama’s bedside in the last hours of his wretched life. It was the ancestors that placed my young officer on duty this night, so that he could come to warn me that Radama’s closest confidants were keeping the king’s death a secret.

  That secret will work in my favour, not Rakotoba’s. They are all traitors. They would gift the Red Island to the foreigners. I will use the troops under the command of my faithful colonels to secure the palace. When the sun rises and the courtiers come, it will be to hear the declaration of my succession.

  As for the missionaries, let them carry the news back to London.

  There will be no fish at the table of Ranavalona Manjaka.

  ~V~

  The Royal Ombiasy was born on a Sunday.

  Sunday is the white day, the day of sacrifices and power, adoration and danger. All his life, the Royal Ombiasy has dreamed of horrors to come.

  Now, he wakes from a dream, the same gods-cursed dream, of fire consuming the sampy. It is just before dawn, the time when his oracular powers are most true; it is why they call him maker of the day.

  He refuses to believe that the vision of fire will come to pass. Even though Radama, poor, dead Radama, at the suggestion of the London missionaries, had all but agreed to destroy the great talismans that protect the Kingdom.

  “He is gone,” the Royal Ombiasy says hoarsely to himself in the darkness. Ranavalona is queen, she who has been like a daughter to him. Before her adoption, he visited her village. The child gazed at him with impudent black eyes from the doorway of the palm-frond hut.

  Sorcerer, she chirped. I wish to see him! I wish to see Ingahibe, the sampy who is second in power only to the great sampy Rakelimalaza.

  Go from here, piglet, he admonished her. The Old Gentleman is not a trinket for your eyes to see.

  She stamped her little foot.

  I order you to open the box. I am a princess, not a piglet!

  Her family apologetically dragged her away, terrified of the sampy guardian’s retribution, but he had smiled behind his hand when she was gone. She was swift, curious and full of fire, and when he first saw her in his dreams, he dared to hope that French ships, taking flight from her menacing red silhouette like frightened guinea-fowl, would be driven back in the waking world by her many sons.

  Ranavalona Manjaka has no sons, but perhaps, like no woman who has lived before, she can drive the foreigners away with her own dispersal of hasina, the divine quality that is granted by a monarch to the armies.

  The Royal Ombiasy crawls out of his bed as daylight creeps under the door. He dresses and performs a ritual over the sampy before leaving the shrine. Staying within the palace complex, he walks over beaten earth to the private stone hut provided for the manufacture of potions and cures.

  There, he arranges cooked rice and chicken skin on many small platters. The Royal Cook is dead, but had she lived, she could not have prepared these deadly meals for Ranavalona’s day of judgement. The ancestors showed their displeasure by killing the Cook soon after she fetched the fish for Radama, but Radama is gone, now. His mistakes are paid for.

  The Royal Ombiasy resolves that the sampy will not burn.

  His mouth flattens grimly as he opens the pottery jar where he keeps the palm-sized, oval-shaped fruit of the small and fragrant tanguena tree. Cutting the fruit and cracking the seed, he extracts the kernel and crushes a little of the poisonous oily seed over each meal. Those fasting men and women awaiting judgement will eat the meal. They will be forced to drink water, and more water, until they begin vomiting. Those who bring up all three pieces of chicken skin are innocent in the eyes of the ancestors.

  Those who bring up two or less pieces are guilty and will be put to death. The palace servants were tested yesterday. Officers are on trial today. So soon after the queen’s succession, all must prove their loyalty by tanguena trial if they are to continue to serve. Even if they have shown loyalty in the past, evil curses may have been placed on them by the queen’s enemies. This is the only way.

  The Royal Ombiasy must, of course, abide by the wishes of the ancestors, but there are ways to ensure that certain ordeal subjects survive. Especially Andrianmihaja; the queen must not be deprived of her lover.

  Only a small amount of poison, then, for some of these meals. And the Royal Ombiasy will add salt to the water that the queen’s lover will drink, to ensure that he vomits as quickly and violently as possible. Even then, the Royal Ombiasy will hide spare chicken skin on his person.

  Just in case. The queen needs her loyal colonels to survive, also.

  The second batch of meals, destined for the disloyal officers that the Queen wishes to purge, is prepared just as carefully. The Royal Ombiasy carries the meals in a basket across the courtyard himself. In one corner, silversmiths labour in the construction of the dead king’s casket. Quarried stone is carted past, toward the site where Radama’s mausoleum, foreign in style but with Malagasy mirrors and a west-facing door, is partly constructed.

  Inside the palace, the Royal Ombiasy steps over the threshold of the throne room with his right foot. Officers kneel in three long lines before the queen. She stands, hair braided, in a sumptuous gown, but this is no betrayal; the Royal Ombiasy admires her instinct for appropriating the status symbols of the aggressors while still wearing, in their red silk pouch, the carved-figure royal talismans Fataka and Manjakatsir, along with crocodile teeth, falcon feathers and inherited cloth-patterns of power.

  As he draws closer, he sees a drawing on the desk beside her, a crown she has ordered to be made in France of Malagasy-mined gold. It mingles the arches and glittering stones of foreign monarchs with the seven spearheads of the traditional Malagasy warrior. The falcon of Merina royalty will replace the Christian cross and the interior cap will be red velvet in place of purple.

  The Royal Ombiasy smiles to himself as he sets the basket beside the drawing. The daughter of his dreams will reign well.

  Andrianmihaja does not sweat or tremble like the soldiers kneeling to either side of him. It is not because the queen has guaranteed his safety. She has not. She is innocent of the Royal Ombiasy’s manipulations and must remain so, lest the ancestors choose to punish her. Andrianmihaja must be afraid. Many died yesterday. Many will die today.

  But not him. The ancestors cannot object to the Royal Ombiasy’s actions, otherwise they would have warned him in a dream.

  “Begin,” Ranavalona instructs tonelessly, and he wishes to carry out her order but is abruptly petrified by his last thought. What if the ancestors have warned him in a dream? What if the burning sampy is a consequence of his actions today?

  What if they are a consequence of his previous actions?

  For the tanguena fruit in the stone hut are not fresh from his most recent forest-wander. They have been there ever since the Royal Ombiasy poisoned Radama.

  Radama would not die, the Ombiasy had reasoned to himself, unless it was the will of the ancestors. But Radama had died, and now that his spirit had found its way to the twelve hills, and not to heaven as the King had come to believe, would he not now be pleased by the Ombiasy’s actions?

  “Manjaka, as you wish,” he says, dry-mouthed.

  He takes a poisoned meal to Andrianmihaja and looks directly into the young man’s calm, brown eyes. He whispers the ritual words to invoke the ancestors. They surround him. Radama’s spirit is here, with them.

  Are you not pleased? His silent question can only be answered by the rise or fall of the queen he would die to protect.

  ~VI. August, 1829~

  The pregnancy is difficult. I am forty-one years old.

  There are false labour pains. The feeling of boulders grinding my bones from the inside. On one occasion, a few months earlier, there was blood. Andrianmihaja, my Prime Minister, personal adviser and Commander in Chief of my army, swallowed it to keep it from the earth. Royal blood must never be spilled.

  Lately, I have sent Andrianmihaja away. Intercourse is pa
inful. My head pounds and my feet swell. Perhaps I will die in the birthing.

  What price, a son? asks the imagined voice of my dead first husband. By our laws, any child born to a widow after the husband’s death is the legitimate offspring of the dead man, with full rights of inheritance. The ancestors are pleased with my suspension of the treaty with the British and the profits that flow with the resumption of trade in slaves. That is why they have given me a child at last.

  “The ancestors,” I say, “will make sure you are born safe, my son.”

  I can hardly hear myself with the racket that Rainiharo and his two brothers are making beyond the ornate, three-sided screen that shields me from their eyes. My maids, jewelled, unclothed and obedient, entertain the three young men. Kitchen slaves bring a constant supply of food and drink.

  Rainiharo is a prince, but more importantly, he is the guardian of the most powerful royal sampy, Rakelimalaza, bringer of victories. His branch of the family must be brought closer. I must control the three brothers if I am to keep winning battles.

  Rainiharo’s face, startling through the steam, grins like a demon.

  “Great Glory, will you not drink with us?”

  He brandishes a bottle of rum.

  “How dare you approach me?”

  “Your women say you have been in pain. Try this. It will help.”

  “I am taking medicines prescribed by my Royal Ombiasy,” I snap, but my abdomen chooses that moment to ripple. Pain lances through my pelvis.

  “Manjaka, I beg you to believe me.”

  “That foul drink helped my husband into his tomb! I will not touch it!”

  “I have seen your death,” Rainiharo says drunkenly. “My sampy has shown it to me. You are an old woman. Much older than you are now.”

  I feel the blood drain from my face.

  “Why have you never told this to me before?”

  “The time was not right. All must be as the great talisman wills. Take the bottle, Manjaka.”

  I take it. The fire-throated drinking of it is too much, at first; I rise from the bath and stand, desperate for cooling, under the exquisite marquetry and painted ceilings of the main palace hall where my waist-deep, honey-smelling tun has been filled with water and scented oils.

  The pains continue. I bite my cheek to keep from crying out. I take another swallow of the liquor, and another.

  After a while, the pains stop. My head feels cotton-stuffed. I sink languidly back into the water. The frescoes are now blurred, bright colours, like spirits dancing at the turning of the dead, and the booming laughter of Rainiharo and his brothers, mingled with the giggles and groans of the fornicating women, seems the divine music of life, fit music for my son, who turns within me as if dancing with the spirits, too.

  “Are you well, Great Glory?” Rainiharo’s steam-wreathed face begs to know.

  “I am well, Rainiharo,” I say. “You are wise.”

  “You should make me your personal adviser.”

  “Andrianmihaja is my personal adviser.”

  “Is he, still? Forgive me, Great Glory, but I assumed that when he exchanged your bed for the bed of the girl-child, the young black princess, you must simply be taking your time deciding on the best way to have him killed.”

  I can’t think. I can’t breathe.

  “What did you say?” I shriek.

  Rainiharo repeats himself. He is too stupid to be afraid. No, not stupid. He knows I cannot kill him, for the sake of the sampy that his bloodline holds.

  Andrianmihaja. My beautiful, loyal, Andrianmihaja. I told him not to come to me.

  “Could he not wait?” I scream. “Could he not wait until the child was born? Not even so long as that? And why, why did it have to be the only child of Radama’s that I let live?”

  “He is repositioning.” Rainiharo answers promptly, though I had not been speaking to him. “Great Glory, you severed our ties with Britain. Commander Andrianmihaja realigns himself with the Christians.”

  “He is loyal to me.”

  “He is a traitor. Let him take the tanguena test again.”

  “No!” I sit up too suddenly. My head spins. Flashes of Andrianmihaja’s hunched body, wracked with regurgitation, the bile on his lips and the fear in his eyes, return to me. I cannot stand to watch that again. I grip the edges of the tub to keep from drowning. Rainiharo’s face is splashed with water but he does not blink. He stares at my breasts in the flickering light of low-burning torches. “Andrianmihaja went through the ordeal when I was raised, barely a year past.”

  And he is the father of my son, I do not say. Radama is the true, spiritual father of my unborn child. The giver of the seed is irrelevant.

  “If Commander Andrianmihaja is innocent,” Rainiharo insists, “he cannot be harmed by taking the test again. It need not be public. Send for the Royal Ombiasy right now. Send one of these slave girls for Andrianmihaja. I know where he is. He is in the girl-child’s quarters, spreading her legs as we speak.”

  Pain and rage bring me staggering to my feet.

  “He is not!”

  “If he is, Great Glory, will you put him on trial?”

  “Yes,” I say. “But he will not be there. He will be in his room, here in the palace. Send a slave there, first, to fetch him!”

  Maids rush behind the screen to dry my flushed, bulging body and wrap me in red silk. The screens are removed. Rainiharo nods to his brothers. One of the women is already leaving. Dimly, I wonder why they abruptly seem less drunk than before, but I am distracted by a whirlwind of maids picking up and replacing their discarded clothes, the clink of empty bottles and the whisking away of bone-covered trays.

  All too soon, the slave girl returns, flattening herself in obeisance.

  “The Commander is not in his room, Great Glory.”

  It cannot be. It cannot be. First one husband, then the next.

  “Leave the palace,” Rainiharo tells the slave. He gives her directions to Radama’s old harem, where the wives that were spared by my mercy still reside. “I will send two soldiers with you, as witnesses.”

  Everything happens so quickly. I gasp for air. I thrust women away from me. Their faces do not come into focus.

  When the slave girl and the soldiers return, they speak to Rainiharo and not to me.

  “My prince,” the kneeling soldier says, leaning on his serrated spear, his musket slung over his back and his feet bare beneath his lamba, “I have spoken with Commander Andrianmihaja. After sending the girl-child back to her mother, I informed the commander that the queen wished him to be subjected to the tanguena trial to prove his innocence of treason.”

  “And his reply?”

  “My prince, the commander bade me tell the Queen that he will not subject himself to the trial again. She must take his word that he is loyal to her, or she must condemn him to death.”

  My body sways as though Andrianmihaja has dealt me a physical blow. Who is he, to force my hand? Who is he, to say “must” to the Great Glory, the Queen of Madagascar, Ranavalona Manjaka?

  He is no better than Radama. A Christian-loving traitor. A man who used me to gain power but does not love me. Not any more.

  He will die while she still smells of his sweat and semen.

  ~VII. October 1830~

  The Royal Weaver was born on a Wednesday.

  It is the brown day, the eldest of all days. A day for women and a day for evil.

  Her voice joins the joyous voices of the others, singing the songs of homage by the river, under the sky, as they wrap the washed bones of Andrianmihaja in his new burial shroud. The polluting wet matter has leached away, leaving the sacred dry matter behind. It is over a year since he received a silver spear through his bravely bared throat.

  Though the famadihana is ordinarily raucous and unrestrained, the women are wary, owing to the circumstances surrounding the former army commander’s execution. Those that came in the morning, relatives of the deceased, danced with the shrouded remains, and passed them from hand
to hand, but only where the agents of the queen would not see.

  “Your son is well, Andrianmihaja,” murmurs the Royal Weaver, who was the commander’s great-aunt while he lived. “He is almost walking. He has a great and wondrous vintana. You know why he could not come today.”

  The queen and her son must not ever be polluted by the presence of death. They are not permitted to weep in public, to tear their hair or mourn in any way. They do not even look in the direction of Radama’s mausoleum when they cross the courtyard. The dead king in his silver coffin has not and will not be exhumed. Royalty is the exception to the annual turning of the dead.

  These bones, however, the pure and insoluble parts of Andrianmihaja which reflect his pure spirit, have been feted through villages during the day. They have enjoyed a tour of the new fields, new additions to the zebu herds, and new firearms produced by the queen’s White Slave. Warriors triumphantly told to them the tale of the French defeat at Foule Point, where the foreigners, crippled by chain shot from Merina cannons at the fort, tried to escape back to their ships but were overrun and cut down. French heads now rot on spears set into the sand along the beach.

  The cloud-screened sun sinks low in the sky. Now, it is time for the bones to be re-wrapped and returned to the family tomb at Namehana. The Royal Weaver has made for her great-nephew a great many fresh silk, weft-patterned burial shrouds, each with the prestigious family geometry repeated around the edges. For days, the heddle was lashed to the rafters of the royal weaving hut while the Royal Weaver bent her aching back over the loom, separating the two sets of warp elements with a wooden stick from a baobab tree selected for its auspicious qualities by the Royal Ombiasy.

  Rebelliously, the Royal Weaver incorporated royal red and silver thread in the innermost shroud. The others grow restless and uneasy when she produces it, but the Royal Weaver knows she can trust them to say nothing. Before the Merina came to dominate all the tribes of Madagascar, the Royal Weaver and all her family in the east had a right to these colours.