Mark of the Lion

by Suzanne Arruda

  Jade handed Gil’s letter to Beverly. “Read this. It will explain it. You stay here and guard them, Avery. Pili, you come with me.” Jade grabbed her Winchester. She checked the magazine, worked the lever to insert a round into the chamber, and slung the gun around her shoulders before heading back down the long slope to the cars.

  Pili and Jade retrieved the necessary cans of petrol from the Dodge and began removing the extra boxes of foodstuffs and blankets from the Ford. Jade threw herself into the task with a vengeance, letting the work release some of her rage. If they hacked out the wooden bench, there should be room for Harry and the others to crowd onto the wooden floorboard in back. She would drive and let Avery ride shotgun.

  She found a crowbar and handed a hammer to Pili, and together they began to rip up the bench from the wooden floorboard. They worked silently. All the while her stomach and mind alike churned over the latest revelation and the resulting questions. Had Harry actually killed Roger? Finding a hat and torn shirt was certainly a convenient explanation for his disappearance, especially when the cloudburst washed away any trace of blood. If Harry had killed him, then it would explain why he had had to kill Ruta, too. He was a witness. And Ruta had never called out, which suggested he was surprised by someone he knew, someone he trusted. Yet how, she wondered, could a man, no matter how strong, tear out another man’s throat? Were the witch stories really true? Could a man actually do more than train and control wild animals? Could he become one himself? Memba Sasa, the old witch, was dead. She was pretty sure of that now. But Harry knew the Maasai and their ways. Just how well did he know them?

  Then Jade heard a sound that made her blood run cold and her legs turn to jelly, the unmistakable cackle of demented laughter. With it came the dawning realization that the rainstorm had washed away the last of the protective ointment from her hat. Her hands trembled violently and the crowbar clattered to the ground.

  Louder and louder rang the undulating call. She clasped her hands over her ears and shut her eyes. In her mind she couldn’t drive fast enough. The laughter still followed her. She couldn’t escape the psychotic cries. Now they hit the back wall of the ambulance with their heads. She could feel the reverberation echo down the driver’s seat, down her back. They’re on my back. My God in heaven, where’s the damned hospital? Did I lose it in the moonless night? This is hell, and I’ll drive the damned forever.

  All sense, all reason, all sanity fled from the incessant giggles and guffaws. The world was mad. She was mad to be here. What the hell was she doing here? Protecting David? Doing her bit? Vomiting she could handle. Gaping wounds and moaning men she could handle. But not this. She wanted to stop the ambulance and jump out. She wanted to escape the laughter. They weren’t men. They were demons from the seventh pit of hell. Someone screamed. It wasn’t her.

  “Mistress Jade. Help me.”

  Jade opened her eyes and the horrors of the front vanished. Pili stood backed against the Dodge, holding a hammer upraised to strike. An enormous spotted hyena menaced him, jaws open. Dripping saliva slathered its teeth as it tensed its stiff, sloping hindquarters to spring for the young man’s throat.

  Find my brother. Jade heard the words in her head as clearly as if David stood beside her. She woke from the nightmare as if someone had slapped her.

  In a flash she slid the rifle off her back, slammed it against her shoulder, and aimed. “No, damn you to hell. You can’t have him, too!” Then she fired.

  The hyena leaped into the air and spun around to face her. It coughed, and blood dribbled from its gaping maw and a thin hole in its side. She sighted more carefully down the barrel and proceeded to work another round into the chamber. But her recent horror left her trembling, and her wet finger slipped from the trigger. Her next shot went wild. In that time the hyena turned and staggered into the brush.

  Avery and the others were too far away to help, so Jade ran off on her own after the injured animal. From the blood trail she could clearly see it was seriously, if not mortally, wounded. Probably dead already. Pili followed hot on her heels. In front of them loomed a brushy thicket of thorny Commiphora. The trail ended here, and they approached cautiously. From within the brush they could hear the animal’s labored, rattling wheeze as it choked on its own blood. Jade sidestepped, her rifle up and ready. She rounded the shrub and stopped dead in her tracks. Her olive face turned ghostly pale at the sight before her.

  CHAPTER 26

  “Africa. We speak the word as if it were one place with one people rather like we say England or America. But this incredible continent holds more than a diversity of wildlife and people; it also holds a diversity of time. Mysteries and cultures from the dawn of antiquity rub against modern culture and sometimes, just sometimes, there are sparks.”

  —The Traveler

  THERE WAS NO WOUNDED HYENA IN front of her. Lying in the thorns, blood running from his mouth and side, lay Roger Forster. His eyes jerked frantically from Pili to Jade. His hands clutched at his chest. Jade’s hands trembled, but she didn’t lower her rifle.

  “Pili, hold something to his chest to stanch the bleeding. I’m taking this son of a bitch back for trial.” Roger gasped, terror flooding his eyes, but whether it was fear of a trial or of death, Jade couldn’t tell. She didn’t care.

  “You killed Ruta, didn’t you? Godfrey Kenton, too?” Roger nodded weakly. Jade kept her eye on him along the Winchester’s barrel. “Then you read the letter in the packet. You found out that Gil’s mistress was a Somali woman named Dolie, and you suspected that Pili was the real son. You had to kill him.”

  “Needed . . . that . . . cross. Proof,” his voice croaked out as a ragged whisper.

  “You had Gil Worthy’s cuff links. You killed him. Why?”

  Roger’s weak voice rasped back at her. “Hired to . . . Needed money. First time to . . . kill a white man.”

  “Were the cuff links proof of that job?”

  Roger shook his head once, which set off a racking cough. Blood erupted from his mouth. “Souvenir. Wallet was . . . proof.” Despite his weakened state, he managed a thin smile as he met her eyes. Jade could read the hate within. “Stickpin was . . . souvenir . . . too.”

  Jade felt her stomach twist in revulsion. Even now the man felt no shame for his deeds, only a gloating joy in his kills. He’d been a witch too long to remember civilized emotions. “You registered as John Smith, didn’t you? Then you waited in Gil’s room for him to come back. You . . .” She searched for the word, still disbelieving the reality. “You had transformed yourself and killed him.”

  By now Avery, Beverly, and Madeline had run down to see what had happened. Madeline screamed when she saw Roger’s bloody form lying in the bushes. Pili still knelt beside him, pushing a new blood-sodden rag against his wound.

  “Jade, what have you done?” wailed Beverly.

  “He tried to kill Pili just now.” She turned back to Roger, whose blood flow, though held back by the canvas rags, still drained his life away.

  “Did Memba Sasa teach you?” Jade demanded.

  Roger nodded faintly. “Power,” he gasped.

  “Jade, stop it,” urged Avery. “Can’t you see he’s too weak to talk?” He stepped towards her and put a restraining hand on her shoulder. She shrugged it off.

  “He’s a witch and a murderer, and I’ll know everything before he dies,” she answered with so much force that no one contested her. They backed away, and she turned to Roger.

  “Who hired you?” Jade demanded. “Tell me!”

  Roger’s glazed eyes told her she’d never know, but she had her suspicions.

  CHAPTER 27

  FRANCE—August 1919

  “Visit Africa. Live there. Make her your home and court her like a lover, but she will never divulge all her secrets.”

  —The Traveler

  SUNLIGHT FILTERED THROUGH THE WINDOW INTO the private railcar. Avery had spared no expense on this train trip through the French countryside. Only the best would do and that include
d the education he had promised Pili. “It’s the least I can do for you, Jade, and for David.”

  For David. Jade stared out the window, looking for familiar landmarks. “That’s the spot over there,” she said. “That’s where the last evac hospital stood.” The fact that David’s plane had crashed a few hundred yards away was left understood. “Of course,” she added in an attempt to lighten her own mood, “the ‘smells’ are all gone.”

  Pili, in particular, looked on with keen interest. Poor Lord Colridge, Jade thought. He never could quite understand why Pili left his service. She had explained it to him several times, but the old aristocrat had still resisted understanding. For that matter, so had she. She closed her eyes and took her mind back to Colridge’s farm and their last meeting, which had also included the Thompsons and the Dunburys.

  “He needs to come to London with us to claim his inheritance,” she said.

  Colridge pointed to Pili. “So his father was Gil Worthy?”

  “Yes,” Jade replied. “And I should have thought of that myself after I visited the French fathers at the mission. They told me about the abandoned young Somali woman and her child. Her people disowned her because the child was not one of theirs. But, like everyone else, I made assumptions. The gold cross proved Pili’s parentage. Gil’s letter in the packet said that he had left the gold cross with the mother as a sign of promise. He described the beautiful Somali woman, Dolie, whom he met near Kilimanjaro, where she kept house for Mr. Kruger.”

  “But I thought you said Roger Forster was Gil’s bast—er, illegitimate son.”

  “No. He only claimed to be after Mr. Hascombe put the idea into his head to pose as Gil’s son. But Roger himself knew it wasn’t true. Roger’s mother had married Roger’s real father a year before he was born.”

  “Well, why the blazes would Forster or Hascombe do such a fool thing anyway?”

  “Harry knew Roger needed money. I think he honestly thought he was doing the man a good turn. And once Roger had money of his own, he might finally abandon his pride and consent to a ranching partnership with Harry rather than continue the risky business of running safaris. He never expected me to find the real son, anyway.”

  Jade took another swallow of coffee before she continued. “What Harry didn’t know was that Roger was trying even riskier methods. Apparently being dirt poor and losing his Leticia were more than he could handle. He desperately needed money and ran heroin from Mombasa to people like Cissy Estes. He also committed murder for hire and killed Gil. That’s how he got Gil’s cuff links. He said they were a souvenir.” She shuddered at the memory. “He needed land, so he used Memba Sasa, a Maasai witch, to frighten the neighboring Kikuyu into leaving. Memba Sasa taught him the art himself, but Roger became more powerful than his mentor. Roger had a dilemma, though,” she continued. “Once he read the letter in the packet, he suspected Pili was the real son. He had to kill him and get the gold cross to claim any inheritance. And he still wanted vengeance on me for killing his hyena earlier. So he turned hyena to do the job himself. He knew the sound of that crazed laughter would terrify me.”

  Colridge snorted and waved his hand. “Pish toffle,” he said. “People don’t turn into lions and hyenas. I can believe Forster went after you and Pili, but you just imagined the rest. Female hysteria and all that. You shot Forster in self-defense and that’s the end of that.”

  Jade didn’t press the issue. She knew what she’d seen, and she had one witness as well, Pili. But a Somali would not count in Nairobi courts as a credible witness. Everyone else had been with Harry up in the cave. And if Colridge didn’t believe it, he’d never believe Roger had controlled the jackal that startled his horse, the lions that stalked her at Harry’s and by the road, and whatever animal had killed Godfrey Kenton. Memba Sasa himself was the lion that had attacked Pili both times at Tsavo, under orders by Roger.

  Jade recalled the fresh scrape on Memba Sasa’s leg and knew it was where she had grazed him with her bullet. It explained why Roger had interfered each time when they tried to shoot the lion and also why Memba Sasa had deliberately led them to a wild lion. But the last time he didn’t escape so easily. A furious elephant meted out justice. That left Roger no other choice but to do the job of killing Pili and Jade himself, a choice that cost him his life and probably his soul. She was unsure about the snake that struck at Harry. It may have been a coincidence, but the jury was out on that one in her mind.

  “Sorry business, all of it,” Colridge said. “Forster was a good chap. Sorry to lose him.” The old man gazed at his feet for a moment. “At least Harry is all right. His leg is mending.”

  Madeline took the opportunity to ask Jade a question. “But Roger even told you his middle name was Abel. How did he know that was supposed to be the name of Gil’s son?”

  “Harry knew,” said Jade. “Remember when he went to my hotel room to help bring down my luggage? He rummaged through the bag and saw the envelope plus the names on Gil’s map.”

  “The irony is,” added Beverly, “that wasn’t the name of the son after all.”

  “No,” agreed Jade. “Gil may have told his mistress to use that name and assumed she did, or it may have just been a metaphor for a second son, since Abel was Adam and Eve’s second son. He even hinted as much on the map. When I heard that Pili meant ‘second son,’ it clicked. Pili’s mother simply chose a Swahili version of the same thing. Perhaps she thought it was more appropriate for her child. I’ve defied the lawyers and read everything in the packet. Gil explained his love affair with the Somali lady and the guilt he later felt at leaving her an unwed mother. He also enclosed a map to the gem vein and an explanation of the ring markings.”

  Avery roused himself. “So Gil found a vein of those green stones, whatever they are, did he? But that land won’t belong to Pili. What good will it do him?”

  “Probably none, unless he wants to risk everything trying to mine them. But I suspect there’s a strongbox full of them in London. That and a share of Gil Worthy’s estate.”

  “There’s just one more question,” said Beverly. “Who hired Roger to kill Gil?”

  Jade studied her friend for a moment. “Who gained the most by his death?”

  Beverly gasped as comprehension sank in.

  “But,” continued Jade, “even if David’s mother hired Roger, I’m not sure I can get proof. Still, we need to keep Pili’s whereabouts in England secret.”

  And, she thought, I’ll need to watch my back.

  “We’re here.” Beverly’s melodious voice brought Jade back from Africa to the French countryside and to the present. Both of the Dunburys knew how important this trip was to Jade, and she felt a surge of gratitude towards them for making it possible. The steam engine chugged to a stop.

  The walk from the station to the cemetery took them through the French village to a quaint stone churchyard. Jade marveled at how quickly the townspeople had repaired many of the buildings. Even the earth had healed itself and spread a lush carpet over the hillside as green as the rare green garnets that Pili now owned. Together, the four of them found the grave site and the simple marker.

  Lt. David R. Worthy, RFC

  May 1918

  Beverly and Avery placed a wreath of roses over the stone. Jade let a silent tear fall onto the grave. It was her gift, one from the heart.

  I found out what happened to your father, David. I found your brother, too, and brought him to you. She paused and conquered the tightness in her chest. He’s a fine man and truly worthy. She bowed her head. Thank you for entrusting me with the task. I think I know who hired Forster to kill your father, and someday, I’ll get the proof.

  Jade looked up at David’s brother and smiled. Her own green eyes sparkled like the mysterious stones. She remembered the ring she still wore under her blouse. Technically it, too, belonged to Pili. She took it from around her neck and held it out to him. “This is yours as well.”

  Pili gently closed her fingers over the ring with his slender hand. �
��My brother loved you. He wanted you to have it. Perhaps if you had married, you would be my sister, and I want my sister to have this ring.”

  Beverly came forward and hugged them both. “David can be very proud of his brother. You’ll have a good life ahead of you.” She turned to her husband. “Avery, tell them our news.”

  “We’ve decided to settle in British East Africa,” he said. “We bought Leticia Kenton’s farm from her. We’re going to raise horses, and once Pili has finished his veterinary courses, he’s going to be our partner. Neville and I are making plans to get an aeroplane and start that safari guide business we talked of.”

  “And, Jade, we want you to come stay with us,” added Beverly. “There’s plenty of room for you. Maddy can’t wait for you to be one of her neighbors. You know she’s started her first book, don’t you? It’s all about you. I think she needs you around for more material.” She took Jade’s hand in hers and pleaded. “Oh, please say you’ll stay with us.”

  “I’m very happy for all of you,” Jade said, “but, Bev, I can’t—” Her throat caught and the remaining words died before they came out. “I have no idea what I’m going to do right now, Bev,” she said finally. “The magazine wants me to write more articles on Africa, so I promised I would. After all, Africa’s gotten under my skin.” She fingered her lion-tooth tattoo. “But I don’t think I can stay in Nairobi.”

  As she said it, she wondered what sort of life lay ahead for her. She’d paid her debt to David, but she felt no release. Maybe it was the war. Maybe it would always haunt her. She did know this: she’d never feel settled anywhere. If anything, she’d use her new job as an excuse to travel, to wander, to search over that vast continent. It would be easier if she knew what she was searching for.