I do not like to deal with the Portuguese, because they are more interested in buying black slaves than the goods in which we deal, no matter that slave-keeping is unlawful throughout the Imperium. Because we do not deal in slaves the Oba of Benin sends such goods west to Ikorodu, but that is a much more troubled coast, where the Uruba empire wages war against the Ashanti and the Dahomi peoples. On the other hand, the fact that Ikorodu has become the port of slaves means that we obtain the better part of ivory, pepper, palm-oil and other goods. Benin is by no means as rich in gold as the Ashanti kingdom, but the inland tribes now demand gold for the slaves which they transport to the coast, and much of that gold works its way round to us by way of the Uruba, who rule over the Edau, the Ibau, and other tribes in the interior.
The Uruba have taught their skills of metal-working to the Edau, who are greedy for good English iron – especially guns. No doubt the guns are employed in fighting against the Mohammedans, and also against those tribes which do not pay tribute to the Uruba. When the tribes of this strange empire go to war against one another – as they frequently do, despite their apparent common cause – they use only spears, and though men are often killed or taken as slaves the conflicts seem to be bound by rules which forbid wholesale slaughter.
The part which Q and I have taken in developing this station has made us moderately wealthy. When first we came here there was little more than a group of wooden cabins built by the survivors of the wreck of the Alectryon and deserted by them when they were rescued in 1629. They built on a sandbank in order to be able to defend themselves against the tribesmen, of whom they were much afraid. In fact, though, the Oba was sorry to see them go when they were rescued, for he is folly aware of the importance of trading with Gaul. Now we have built, with the help of native labourers, great storehouses and wooden wharves, and a workshop. There I have made a turning-machine like the one which my father built, in order to make screw-threads.
The two dozen blacks who live on the station with us have virtually established a village here, with vegetable patches and guinea-fowl, though their wives and children still live inland. Q now speaks two local languages fluently, including the Uruba lingua franca. He has some crude knowledge of a few more, but there is such a profusion of tongues in this region that one might take it for the site of Babel. The Oba of Benin has twice visited Burutu, and once sent us workmen to demonstrate for me the techniques of casting bronze in which his people are expert. Our relations with him are not entirely harmonious, though, because of our attempts to be equally friendly with the Ibau who live to the east. They can supply us with many valuable goods because they dominate the banks of the River Kwarra for a hundred miles or more above the delta. Most of our workers are Ibaus, though we have seven Edaus and an orphaned Uruba boy named Ntikima, who has proved to be an especially apt pupil.
It is by river that by far the greater portion of goods like ivory and animal- skins are brought from the grasslands of the north. Ntikima has assured us that our fame has spread into the northlands, though we have not yet ventured more than fifteen or twenty miles inland. The boy assures us that they must know of us in the Hausa cities, and the legendary lands of Bomu and Kwararafa, but there is no way he could know this, and tribesmen are much given to hyperbole, especially when they want to pay a compliment. I doubt whether the boy has ever seen a Hausa trader, and I suspect that Bomu and Kwararafa are as much the stuff of legend to him as they are to us.
Sometimes I fear that our success will be our undoing, and Q has said that it can only be a matter of time before one of the imperial ships brings vampires here. He is anxious that the vampires might decide that there is much to be gained by seeking to establish common cause with the vampires of Africa. Despite all the differences which there are between Gaul and Africa (and none know those contrasts better than we!), both face the hostility of the Mohammedans. It may occur to the lords of the Imperium that if only white men and black could combine forces they might crush the Mohammedans between them, and consolidate their power over their own commoners in the process.
I am not sure that any such alliance could actually be forged. There is no Imperium here, though we speak of a Uruba ‘empire’. There are no vampire lords to whom the princes of Europe could send their emissaries. If rumour is to be trusted, the Alafin of the Uruba has a court as grand, in its fashion, as many a court in Europe, but the Alafin and all his chiefs and administrators are common men. Many of the priests and magicians who belong to the Ogbone – the secret society which is the instrument of the black vampires’ power – are also common men. Attila’s kin might find it less easy to understand a realm where vampires are, yet do not openly rule, than a nation where men still rule because they ruthlessly destroy any vampire who comes among them. I do not find the state of affairs here easy of comprehension, though I have lived here for many years.
I have only thrice set eyes on a black vampire – such persons do not interest themselves in trade. Most of the natives are dark brown in colour, but the vampires have skins like polished jet, sometimes decorated with the faded colour of old tattoos. They are without exception very ancient in appearance, because no common man becomes a vampire until he has proved his worth in a long career as a priest-magician. The Uruba call vampires elemi, which means ‘ones who breathe life’. The name also signifies a direct connection with the gods; the sky-god Olorun is often called Olorun Elemi.
The elemi are said to be wise men, yet we are told quite emphatically they have no interest in metal or machinery, or in new things. Their wisdom is an incurious kind, it seems, and is mainly concerned with magic and the properties of medicines. We hear many rumours about the vampires’ powers of healing, their ability to mix potions to give men courage or make women fertile. They kill men with curses, too, if we can believe what we are told. The local tribes have no elemi, having lost the few which they had in the great plague twenty years ago. This is a matter of regret and lamentation. If only they had wise men who could live forever, they say, they would be better and more powerful people.
The elemi are to common tribesmen an intimate connection with the distant past, when their ancestors lived. The tribesmen in this region have a great reverence for their ancestors, and seem to believe that although they are dead, their fathers and grandfathers still inhabit their villages, taking an intimate interest in the affairs and fortunes of their descendants. We have been told that in the Uruba heartland, in the great city of Oyo, new monarchs must eat the hearts of their dead predecessors, in order to personify their forebears. The spirits of ancestors are held to have the power to reward and punish, being responsible for much that happens which we would attribute to the will of God or to chance. Their presence is usually unseen, but on certain special days villages are visited by Egungun, the risen dead, who comes to identify those who must be punished for taboo-breaking. Neither Q nor I has seen such a visitation, but the invaluable Ntikima has described it in graphic detail. The part of Egungun is presumably played by a priest dressed in a costume with a great ugly mask, but to the Uruba and their subject tribes such artifacts are sacred, and he who puts them on is the supernatural power which he represents. Egungun’s task, it seems, is to judge those whose actions have brought misfortune by offending the ancestors. Mercifully, the blame for misfortunes is not often heaped on innocent people in this way; much evil and mischance is laid at the door of witches, who are said to be the implacable enemies of the Ogbone – that society to which the elemi and common priest-magicians all belong.
The plague which raged here twenty years ago is still remembered as a most horrible tragedy. If our black labourers were told that my father had deliberately infected a vampire with that plague, they would think that he had been horribly mad – not evil, because they could not imagine that anyone would contemplate a crime so bizarre, but certainly deranged. But they would be unable to make sense of the claim that he had loved a vampire lady, because elemi are always male. Ogbone is an exclusively male concern, and tho
ugh the women may have private societies of their own, such organizations are only concerned with midwifery and with the rituals of female circumcision.
I find it hard to reconcile the state of affairs here with my father’s theories about the nature and creation of vampires. Ntikima, who is a fount of information despite his tender years – I think he is about seventeen – assures us that common men who are to become elemi must be taken to Adamawara, which is a fabulous country in the interior. There they partake of the heart of the gods in a ceremony which sounds very like certain rituals of human sacrifice which have been mentioned to us. White men are not normally allowed to witness even an ordinary rite of that kind, though Ntikima has described the ikeyika rite which was his own initiation into adulthood. This is a kind of circumcision, carried out with a stone knife, often in such brutal fashion that it permanently impairs the functioning of the sexual organ. In his effusive fashion, Ntikima says that the Ogbone will surely one day come for the babalawo from the sea, to bring him to Adamawara in order that he might eat the heart of the gods and be given the breath of life, but no such summons has come yet.
Most of what we know about the elemi comes from travellers’ tales, and it is hard to know how much to believe. The further away a region is, the more extravagant are the tales told about its tribes, and about the power of its elemi. There is no way to be sure that such a place as Adamawara exists. Much of what is said about it is reminiscent of the story in the scriptures of the Garden of Eden, where God exhaled the breath of life into Adam. So closely do the Ogbone guard their secrets that the creation of vampires is as much a mystery to the common men of Africa as it is to the common men of Gaul. We have the Gregorian accounts of devil-led sabbats; they have stories of their sky-gods descending to earth in Adamawara. My inclination is to treat both with the severest scepticism.
The elemi must take blood from common men, as our vampires do, but this has not the same meaning for the donors as it has in Gaul. That which makes the Gaulish vampire seem perverse and monstrous fits much more easily into the African way of thinking. The tribesman is always making sacrifices to his gods, and ritual offerings of all kinds. Whenever flour is ground or palm-oil extracted, a little will be spilled on the earth as an offering to the gods. Whenever a meal is eaten, a little food will be left, likewise as an offering. These things are done unthinkingly, much as a Christian would make the sign of the cross. All such things are called sacrifice, like the sacrifices of animals – and sometimes men – which are offered on holy days. The blood which common men offer gladly to vampires is a sacrifice too, offered as if to Olorun Elemi himself. This, to the African, is easy to understand, though he would be unable to comprehend the communion, where a Christian partakes of the body and blood of Christ.
The tribesmen do not consider themselves to be ruled by the elemi, but there seems little doubt that the real power in this land lies with the Ogbone. The Ogbone supervise all rites, especially the ikeyika, and all trials by ordeal. The Ogbone are the voice of the ancestors, the custodians of oracles and the practitioners of medicine. All chiefs or kings must answer to them, and though the chiefs preside in the courts of law, it is the babalawos who determine guilt or innocence. The chiefs administer punishment, but it is the witchfinders and the ‘risen dead’ who decide where punishment is to fall. Chiefs declare war, and lead their armies into battle, but their magicians tell them when the time is propitious for them to fight, and against whom.
Q would dearly love to discover what truth there is in the many tales which we are told about the lands of the interior. He has made calculations regarding the provisioning of a journey up-river. I am sure that the year will soon come when he will insist that the time is ripe, and bid me follow him. I have less curiosity about such mythical places as Adamawara, but I would go with him if he decided on a journey of exploration. It would be foolhardy, I know, but I am not by nature or temperament a trader, and I am growing tired of the routines of our life here.
Does L’s piratical legend still flourish in Grand Normandy? He still visits us every year. He is no longer as handsome as he was, and has been weakened by disease. Nor is he any longer a pirate, though he proudly wears the glamour of the buccaneer, and swears that there is no greater joy to him than the sound of cannon-fire. The cannon on the station were all his at one time, and he has twice helped to save us from Maroc marauders. His gypsy princess still sails with him, and so does the noseless Turk. It may be the woman’s urging which brings him back here again and again. L has no considerable love for me, nor I for him, but the gypsy still carries an affection for me, and I am happy to be her friend. She has grown into a strong and handsome woman, and seems to thrive in the tropics while men of paler hue wither and decay. Jespersen once told me that the only thing which brings her back so frequently is the anguish caused by my celibacy, and that if only I would take her to my bed I might release her from an awful bondage, but I am used to my monkishness. If ever Q dies, I believe I will inherit his robe, and will play the warrior angel myself.
L pretends not to mind that his mistress likes me, but will accuse me, when drunk, of the crime of falling in love with a vampire lady in a cell in wild Wales, and suggests maliciously that I can never love again for thought of her. Though he says it mainly to annoy his mistress, I sometimes wonder in my secret thoughts whether he might be right. Certainly, I find little lustful attraction in the sight of the gypsy, still less in the naked black women of the shore tribes, or the wives of the settlement. I sometimes wonder if there is something in the blood which I inherited from my father which is irredeemably tainted by virtue of the gifts he made to his own true love. To have the microscope beside me now brings back to my mind all the things which happened during those last days in London. I cannot say that I am comfortable with those memories, even now.
I have sometimes wondered whether my father overestimated both the potential of the thing that he had made and the vampires’ fear of it; perhaps his suicide was all for nothing, and Richard never intended to have us killed. But now I have your gift beside me, I cannot help remembering that my father thought this a weapon more powerful than any great cannon. I dreamed last night that I was looking down the barrel of the instrument, desperate to see something that my father was urging me to notice, but try as I might I could not do it. Perhaps the tribesmen are right after all, and our ancestors do remain with us, angrily imposing duties that we never quite fulfil. Now that I have the microscope which you have sent me, though, I hope that I might come a little closer to that fulfilment.
I hope that one day I will return to Britain. I feel that it is both my duty and my destiny so to do. It is my most earnest hope that I might strike a blow against the Gaulish regiment of vampires before I die, so that my name might be added to the list of that mortal legion whose endeavours will finally prevail even against the host of the undying. Despite that I languish here, I tell you that I have not deserted that College which you serve, or its cause, and I hope that the day will come when I will take my allotted place on the battlefield which is the land of my birth. On that day, God willing, I will see my friend again, and clasp your hand in testimony to all that our friendship has meant.
I will give this letter to the captain of the Tudor Rose, who is the most trustworthy English seaman I know, and hope for its eventual safe delivery into your hands. I beg you to pray for me; if you can bring yourself to ask God’s mercy for an unbeliever.
Fare well.
N
ONE
It was ajo awo, the day of the secret, which was sacred to Ifa. Ntikima knew no more of the day than its name, for the Uruba did not number the days of the month as the white men did.
The white man called Noell Cordery was on the verandah of the large house which lay at the centre of the main stockade. He was peering, as he often did, down the barrel of the brass instrument which had been brought to him by a master of one of the ships which came to trade. He was sketching with his right hand, using a stick of char
coal with quick, delicate strokes. His work had taken on an odd kind of rhythm; he would periodically take his eye away from the instrument, blink to clear his vision, look critically at his work, and add a few more strokes, then apply his eye to the lens yet again. Every now and again he would lay down the charcoal, and nudge the small mirror which caught the sun’s light and threw it upwards through the lenses of the microscope, and then he would rock the focusing-wheel gently back and forth, to make sure that he had the best possible sight of whatever was on his slide. Ntikima knew what the device did, because Noell had allowed him to look into it.
The other black men who were watching Noell at work thought of what he was doing as a kind of ritual, so painstakingly were the movements repeated, but Ntikima knew better. Ntikima understood the white men, though the Edaus and the Ibaus could not. Ntikima was Uruba. More than that, he was Ogbone, though of course he was not allowed to admit it. Even the Ibau Ngadze, who had lived here for many years, thought that this strange tall white man was searching for gods inside the creature of brass which lived in a wooden box with an elaborate retinue of tiny iron blades and rectangles of glass. The Ibaus often told their brothers from upriver about the magical devices which the white men had, and about the spirits of awesome power which animated them. Ntikima never joined in with such talk; he was Ogbone, and kept his secrets.
The black men were wary of interrupting the ritual, and so it was not until Noell paused, and turned his gaze their way - though he seemed not to see them, so entranced was he by his vision of the world inside things - that Ntikima called out that a ship was in the channel.
Is it the Phoenix?’ asked the white man. The Phoenix was expected, and would be welcome. But Ntikima shook his head, and made a sign to say that he did not know.
Noell sighed, and began to pack up the microscope. He did not hurry; he was prepared to take infinite pains to store the instrument correctly, broken down into its component parts. It was very precious to him – far more precious than the telescope which he subsequently took with him to the look-out post atop the seaward wall. Ntikima followed him, dutifully.
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