Faj Rawango kept his words simple, because of our Moulish audience. “You made a promise,” he said. “You have not yet carried it out. If you are set on keeping your word, then I do not believe witchcraft will come on you—but if you are reluctant in your heart, it will.”
My promise to the oba. Was I set on keeping my word? I honestly did not know. I should not have made that promise so blindly; I had sworn to give Ankumata something that belonged to another people, without understanding its value to them. I still hoped that, when I learned more, a solution would reveal itself—but what if it did not? Which obligation would I honour: my promise, or the debt I owed to the people around us now?
When it came time for Natalie to speak, she hesitated and looked around the fire. “I—I don’t think I can say this in your language. Not easily.”
Daboumen flapped one hand at her. “Your words are for your sister and for the spirits. They will understand you.”
I confess I felt relief at that. The Moulish might be watching, but what we Scirlings had to say, we would say only to one another. Natalie looked equally glad. In our language she said, “The truth is that I’m not sure what to say. I think you were an idiot not to admit you were unwell, but apart from that, there’s very little I resent you for, and far more to make me grateful.”
“Your father would not agree,” I said ironically. “If there is anyone minded to curse me, I think it may be him.”
Natalie shrugged. “Apologize to him if you will, but not to me. While I do not think this is the life for me—I miss my bed too much—it has given me the courage, and I think the freedom, to pursue the life I do want.”
“What is that?” I asked, curious.
She blushed and glanced sidelong at Mr. Wilker. “I—do you remember what I said to you before we left Scirland? About things I was not interested in?”
Her reddened cheeks directed my memory. She did not want the touch of a man. “Yes, I remember.”
“While we were in Atuyem, I found out that sometimes co-wives will … provide one another with affection. I have wondered, from time to time, whether that is what I want. But I—well. Suffice it to say that I have tested my theory, and proved it false. I enjoy the company of women a great deal, but I honestly do not think I want anything, ah, more.”
By now her blush was fierce, despite her oblique phrasing, and Mr. Wilker’s expression far too stiff to pretend he had not caught her meaning. Sometimes a widow’s companion provided her with more than just a friend, though such arrangements were not spoken of in polite society. I wondered with resignation whether those rumours had begun making the rounds as well.
“I understand, Natalie,” I said. “And you are welcome to stay with me for as long as you please. If you do not want to join me on expeditions—”
“I honestly think I would like to work,” she said. “At a proper career, I mean. But that is something we can talk of later.”
Given a choice, I would have preferred to go on talking about whatever career she had in mind, rather than continuing with this ceremony. But the Moulish were waiting, and Mr. Wilker had not yet had his turn. Natalie and I clapped; the others followed suit; and now I had nothing left with which to delay.
He sighed. “Where to start.”
“Oh dear,” I said involuntarily, glad all over again that we were speaking Scirling. “That bad, is it?”
Mr. Wilker scrubbed one hand across his face. “No, not that bad. But we have never been very good at saying things to one another, have we?”
I had to grant the point. “We resented one another in Vystrana, for certain. I thought you low-class—which was entirely arrogant of me, and I’m sorry for that. But I also resented you for being a man, and not having to justify your presence on the expedition. You were skilled, and that was enough. I had to ride my husband’s coat-tails.”
“No coat-tail could have brought you in if Lord Hilford did not think you qualified,” Mr. Wilker said. “Which I did not see at first. But even once you had proved yourself … I mean no slight against the earl, who has been exceedingly generous to me. But my position is far from secure. I feel the necessity, every day, of proving myself to him and to the world, and I have spent far too much time worrying that…” He trailed off, and I could tell he had gone further into the truth than he meant to. But having gone that far, he could not retreat, and so he finished what he had begun. “Worrying that I would lose my place to you.”
Startled, I said, “But you have so much knowledge I lack!”
“Yes—but you amuse him. I don’t mean to belittle you by saying that, either. Lord Hilford likes to shock people, and he likes other people who do the same. Getting as far as I have, though, has depended on caution, on never offending those whose toleration and aid I need. I may be a good assistant for him, but I am not what he looks for in a protégé.”
We were indeed headed for territory through which our command of the Moulish language could not have borne us. I said, “I have wondered from time to time which of us faces the more difficult obstacles. A lady can be taken as an exception to the rules, if her breeding is good enough; mine will carry me this far, at least. You cannot escape your own breeding as easily. But I think that, in time, the quality of your work will win you a place in the Philosophers’ Colloquium; they have taken men of your class before, if not often. They have never taken a woman. So there are doors that will open for you, which remain firmly nailed shut for me.”
For the first time, I saw Thomas Wilker unbend enough to grin at me. “Shall we storm them together?”
“That sounds like a splendid plan,” I said, and extended my hand. He took it in a firm grip, the way he might have taken a man’s hand, not a lady’s. The very frankness of the gesture made me say, “You—do not have an interest in marrying me, do you?”
A laugh exploded out of him. “For God’s sake, no. No insult intended—”
“None taken. To be perfectly honest, I have little interest in remarrying.” I sighed and released his hand, returning my own to my lap and studying it as if it were of great interest. “I would give a great deal for Jacob to still be alive. But with him gone … a widow has freedoms a wife does not. I could wish for greater financial security, but apart from that, what would I gain from having another husband?”
“It would provide a father for your son,” he said.
That swiftly, the scab was torn off. Little Jacob: he did not deserve to be thought of as a wound, but there it was, and with my defenses lowered by illness and this ritual, I could no longer pretend otherwise. A sudden jolt rattled my shoulders, as if something—a laugh, a sob, a shout—wanted to burst free. “My son. Oh, God. What am I to do with him?”
“What do you mean?”
The words came forth, slowly at first, then increasing until they formed a flood. “How could I risk coming here, when I have a son? Of course, few people ask that question of men who leave their sons behind to go abroad—because those sons have mothers to care for them. But even if the man is a widower, he does not face a tenth the censure I have received. Should his child be orphaned, everyone will pat the boy on the head and praise his father’s courage. Should I die, Jacob will grow up knowing his mother was an unfeeling madwoman who got what she deserved.”
I could not bear to look at anyone, whether they spoke my language or not. I fixed my gaze on the fire, as if its flames could burn this tangle out of me, and leave me free of such conflicts. “I resent my son. There—I have said it. I resent him because he shackles me; I cannot live the life I want, not without feeling guilty for devoting my heart to the thing that makes me happy. Surely it is selfish of me to care so much about the contributions I could make with my intellect; surely the greatest contribution to society a woman can hope to make lies in raising her children. No sacrifice she might make is too small, in service to that great cause.
“And all the while I have people telling me, at least you still have something of your husband. Do they mean the book chroniclin
g our work in Vystrana? No, of course not—never mind that we undertook that work together, with intent. That cannot possibly be as valuable as the accidental consequence of biology.”
Very quietly, Tom said, “Is not a child worth more than a book?”
“Yes,” I said violently. “But then for God’s sake let us value my son for himself, and not as some relic of his father. When he is grown enough to read, I will be delighted to share his father’s legacy with him; it is my legacy as well, and I hope he has inherited our curiosity enough to appreciate it. I would not mind a motherhood where that was my purpose—to foster my son’s mind and teach him the intellectual values of his parents. But no; society tells me my role is to change his napkins and coo over the faces he makes, and in so doing abandon the things I want him to treasure when he is grown.”
At long last I brought my gaze away from the fire. Akinimanbi sat with one hand on her belly; she was bearing, and seemed glad of it. I was happy for her—but I had never particularly wanted that for myself, and at least half of my disinterest in remarrying stemmed from that fact.
“‘Would that I were a man,’” I said, quoting Sarpalyce’s legend. “Except that I do not wish I were a man. I only wish that being a woman did not limit me so.”
The fire crackled quietly. Then, nodding—in understanding or acceptance, perhaps both—Tom Wilker brought his hands together in a clap.
The others followed suit. I did not cry; I have rarely been prone to tears. But I felt purified. There is a word I learned later, a term from Nichaean drama: catharsis. I had, at long last, said what was bottled up tight in my heart, and while I still did not believe in evil spirits, I felt infinitely more free for having spoken.
Of course, others believed in evil spirits. Daboumen gestured me out of the way. I obeyed and watched, mystified, as he dug in the soil beneath where I had been sitting. I had chosen the spot of my own free will—no one directed me there—but a few inches below the surface, he found a twisted, ugly piece of wood. (Cynic that I am, I believe he placed it there by sleight of hand, though I am uncertain how he managed that when his only garment was a loincloth.)
“The witch put this there,” he said, and gave it to me. I did not need his gesture to guess my part in the script: I threw the twisted thing into the fire.
“Now,” Akinimanbi said, “you are free.”
PART FOUR
In which I make several discoveries, not all of them related to dragons
SEVENTEEN
Improved fortune—A newcomer in camp—The “pure”—The Great Cataract—Yeyuama’s challenge
When I have related an abbreviated version of this tale to others, every last one of them has asked the same question: did the ritual work?
I am not sure how to answer that. Did we suffer no more mishaps in our research? Of course not; we were still in the Green Hell, which had not transformed itself into the Garden of Paradise simply because my companions and I voiced our woes. Furthermore, I doubt there is a single person reading this account who is not aware of the even larger problems I was to encounter before long.
But it is true that I no longer felt myself jinxed. In part, I attribute this to the improvement of my mood and my concentration; I no longer made the sorts of careless errors that had caused me trouble before. The rapport between myself and my companions improved, and so did the coordination of our efforts, with concomitant good effects. And since human minds are very good at finding patterns, and ours had recently shifted from looking for bad luck to looking for good, we wrote off setbacks as expected, rather than proof of misfortune. This is how I explain it, at any rate; our Moulish hosts, of course, viewed the matter differently.
What mattered was that both groups were in better spirits, and as a result my companions and I soon found ourselves offered the very opportunity we had been looking for.
* * *
It began with the arrival of a newcomer into camp, a man I had never met before. Mekeesawa introduced the man as his brother Yeyuama, and I soon realized he was an actual brother: related by blood, not merely by age, as the Moulish measure such things.
Yeyuama was not like the other Moulish men we had known, in any age group. “Did he go out hunting with you yesterday?” I asked one morning, about three weeks after I had purged myself of the witchcraft taint.
The intimacy of the ritual had changed matters between Thomas Wilker and myself; he was Tom to me now, and I was Isabella. (Natalie remained “Miss Oscott” to him, I think because of his situation with her grandfather. I found myself much more aware now of his little deferences, the ways in which he acknowledged his lower-class origins and made certain no one would think him trying to rise above them.) Tom said, “Not that I saw. Was he here in camp?”
“Not that we saw,” Natalie said. And that was peculiar indeed, for it did not fit any of the patterns we knew for Moulish responsibilities.
Yeyuama did not keep us wondering for long. He came over to the fire we had built in front of our much-bedraggled tents and squatted on his haunches with the ease of a man who has sat thus his entire life. “You follow the dragons, Reguamin,” he said.
Followed, and stared at. “With caution, yes,” I said, hoping my humourous tone would come through. Yeyuama had an air about him that intrigued me: both gentle and watchful, as if he could spring into action at a moment’s notice. He was extremely fit; the Moulish are not a fat people, as a consequence of diet, behaviour, and natural physique, but Yeyuama had the compact musculature of a man who both eats well and exercises often.
He cocked his head at me. “Have you killed?”
“A dragon? No, of course not. I know the story.”
Yeyuama waved that away. “Not only dragons. Anything.”
My thoughts raced back to the savannah snakes we had hunted, the rock-wyrm in Vystrana, the wolf-drake I had shot (but not killed) when I was fourteen. “With my own hands?” He nodded. I was about to say no—I wanted to say no, as it was clear which answer Yeyuama was looking for—when I remembered the Great Sparkling Inquiry.
Both ethics and pragmatism prevented me from lying to him, the latter because my face fell before I could stop it. “Yes. In my homeland, there are these creatures…” I held out my fingers to indicate the size of a sparkling. “Like insects.”
(Lest anyone accuse me of dishonesty, I must assure you that my taxonomic speculations had not yet gone so far as to change my thinking about sparklings. Would I have admitted it to Yeyuama, had I begun to think of them as members of the draconic lineage? I do not know. The honourable answer, of course, is yes—but I am not certain my ethics would have carried me that far.)
Yeyuama brushed this off as being of no consequence. Everyone in Moulish society killed things like insects, but only grown men were hunters. He looked next at Natalie, who denied killing anything, and Tom, who confessed it. Yeyuama nodded, as if he had expected that. “What I have to say is not for you,” he told Tom. “Only the pure may hear it.”
The pure: those who had never hunted and killed. Yeyuama was pure; he never went with the other men. He was, I realized, the closest thing to a priest one might find in Moulish society. This must be what Yves de Maucheret had meant.
With our recent conversation so fresh in my mind, I could easily read Tom’s expression. Here, where there was no stratification of wealth or birth, he had expected to be able to participate in full; to be refused, as the Colloquium refused him, cut deeply. On impulse, I said to him in Scirling, “You’ve shot animals with a gun. Perhaps that doesn’t count as ‘with your own hands’?”
That provoked a rueful, bitter laugh. “No, I imagine it counts. And besides, when I was fifteen I cut the throat of my family’s carthorse after he broke his leg. Don’t offer,” he said, forestalling the next words out of my mouth. “It may upset them if you share what he says afterward. If this is a research opportunity, then you two should make the best of it.” He got up and left.
As it transpired, the core of what Yeyuama told u
s was not so secret that I feel obliged to leave it out of this narrative. (There would be a great gaping hole if I did, as if you walked in at the tail end of some tremendous anecdote being told over drinks. Everyone in the room would be goggling and laughing and you would wonder where the elephant came from.) I may elide some details, but the bulk of it should be clear to you.
“There is a test,” Yeyuama said, once Tom was gone. “Before you can touch the dragons. This test is dangerous; sometimes it kills those who try.”
A Moulish man—a lifelong resident of the Green Hell—was telling me something was dangerous. I said before that the Moulish do not fear their home, because they know how to survive it; this does not mean, however, that they fail to respect its perils. I asked, “Do we have to say now whether we will try? Or may we decide after we know what the test is?”
Yeyuama laughed, breaking the atmosphere of hushed secrecy. “Only a fool would agree without knowing. I will show you. There is no shame in refusing; most boys do.”
For there to be men like Yeyuama, who have abstained from killing in order to remain pure, this test must be offered while they are still young—before they, as youths, join the men on the hunt. I use male terms; virtually all of those who “touch the dragons” (a phrase whose meaning will become apparent later on) are men, though the Moulish denied any prohibition against women when I asked. It is simply that the challenge is a strenuous one, and few women choose to undertake it. But there was no resistance to Natalie and I trying. Merely a great deal of curiosity, to see how the Scirling women would do.
This challenge required us to go with Yeyuama on a lengthy journey. He would not name our destination, but we knew it lay west, toward the cliff from which the three rivers fall. It would take us the better part of a month to get there and return, he estimated, and no one could go with us who was not also pure.
Which meant leaving behind both Tom and Faj Rawango. The latter said, “After this, you will get eggs for the oba.”
The Tropic of Serpents: A Memoir by Lady Trent (A Natural History of Dragons) Page 18