by Robi, Carol
How unfortunate for us two, I think to myself when I see the shock register on his face. He might have chosen to ride home so as to avoid me as well, but here we are, meeting again in the most unlikely of circumstances.
“King of the Nyabasi,” I rush to acknowledge in chorus with those around us.
His father is momentarily surprised upon noticing me, for he’s probably wondering what a maiden is doing in a party of seasoned warriors.
“My daughter had a slight turn in health, so she rides with us so as to get home as soon as possible and rest,” father says in explanation to his peer.
“Oh, I see. Be well, princess.”
“Thank you, Maga Ribasi,” I mutter, bowing my head yet again.
“Do you know my son? Maybe you could ride in his company while I steal your father’s company for a while, as we are riding in the same direction and I wish to talk with him,” the Nyabasi king says so kindly, that I wouldn’t be able to hold it against him.
“Mage Ribasi,” is all I say quietly in agreement, before slowing down my beast so as to give the kings their privacy. Prince Makena steadies his beast beside mine, but I can see he is as much ill at ease as I am.
“Be well, princess,” he finally voices after a lengthy period of silence.
“Thank you, prince” I say quietly in answer, looking straight ahead, never turning his way.
“Your sister’s wedding was beautiful,” he attempts again at conversation.
“Thank you,” I reply yet again, not picking up to say anything in addition so as to feed the conversation.
“Were you two close?”
“Very much so,” is my clipped answer.
“You’ll miss her.”
“Very much,” I say yet again.
“I wish to apologise gravely yet again for what you witnessed..”
“Let’s never mention it again!” I whisper low but firmly.
“I’ll agree if only you promise that from this instance, you are never to hold it against me or judge me for it.” I remain silent, for I doubt I could ever do that.
“I’ll take your silence for a negation. So let me once again apologise..”
“Alright! Just- never mention it to me again.”
“Thank you,” he says with deep conviction that has me puzzled. I never suspected that my judgment could mean so much to him. I say nothing in answer though, willing to put in effect the promise of never mentioning the incident.
“Your father mentioned you were ill,” he states the question carefully, as though he’s trying to find his feet on what to discuss with me without being offensive or intrusive. I pity him, but I don’t intend on making it easier for him. I want him to know that I’m not like those other maidens that hang on his every word and are often more than willing to do everything to please him, even going as far as to cross that line called morality.
“He did,” I say, and fail to expound further, though I know that is what he wished me to do. He must think me very rude, I think to myself amused, biting down my lower lip so as to keep my smile away from my face.
That is when he turns my way and studies me for a while, those lingering gazes of his that have me shaking to my very core.
Why does he look at me like that?
He wishes to unnerve me, that is why he does it. He knows he has a commanding gaze, and he probably suspects that I have feelings for him, and is looking to use them against me. I steel my resolve, keep ignoring his gaze as best as I can and look forward, leading on my zorse in a trot in pace with the rest of the travellers.
“Why are you so rude to me? Nobody else thinks you rude, so you must only be showing that side of yourself to me.”
“I’m not rude. You just misread me like most do,” I tell him quietly. “I was thinking of what to say in answer,” I finish.
“What’s there to think about for so long. I clearly meant to ask what ails you. The answer ought to be simple.”
“For you maybe,” I tell him. “Did you stop to think that maybe I don’t want to reveal what is ailing me? If I were to ask another the same question and they took this long to answer, I’d assume they were uncomfortable with answering me, so I wouldn’t press them on,” I say calmly, my eyes still fixed at the figure of my father riding a distance ahead beside Maga Ribasi, Prince Makena’s father.
“I see your point,” he says after a while of pondering, chuckling nervously. Now that is something I’ll never get used it. His moments of uncertainty are so rare, and when they occur I almost want to bash myself for causing them.
“I didn’t think that you might not wish to answer for personal reasons or otherwise. My initial thought was that you weren’t answering me because you don’t like me.”
“Why would you think I don’t like you?” I ask puzzled, but never once turn his way.
“Because of what you saw last..”
“I thought we aren’t to mention that ever again!” I snap his way.
“Plus you’ve never really liked me, now thinking back on all the times we’ve found ourselves in each other’s company.”
“That’s not true..”
“Trust me, it is very true,” he says chuckling, giving me time to think of our past.
He is right, I realise. I have done a poor job of being cordial when in his company.
“We misunderstood each other,” I tell him. “I prefer not to talk to people I’m not comfortable with. With my sister Wei, my mother, father and brothers- it is so easy. I can be myself, and they will not judge me. With others though..”
“They judge you,” he simply states.
“They do,” I agree.
“I feel the same way too. Judged. But I don’t use it as an excuse to be rude.”
“There you go, misunderstanding me again,” I state, trying to edge away from having to ride in his company.
Then my eyes catch on something troubling. Father has been having a slightly hard time riding, because his chest has been acting up again. However I think I see him start to slip.
“Princess, I assure you I don’t mean to..”
“Chacha!” I call out loud, kicking my zorse and riding hard and fast towards my father’s side, getting to him right before he could fall off his beast and break his neck, his upper body crushing heavily into my much smaller and weaker one.
I’m screaming continuously, as my brothers and the other warriors around rush forward and lift my father’s heavy body off me. I then swiftly dismount, my heart drumming fast in my chest.
“What’s happening?” I scream aloud, but no one pays me any attention as my brothers lay my father’s body down on the road, and Chacha drapes a heavy coat around him.
It appears as though no one is about to answer me. I push against the hardened bodies of my brothers and the other warriors crouched around my father, ignoring Chacha’s restrictive calling, and place my ear against his chest.
Fathers heartbeat is low and fluttering, but it is his breathing that has me worried, as it’s heavily laboured.
“Prince Makena!” I call in an ordering voice I barely recognise. “You know these lands as it’s you kingdom. I need you to ride as fast as you can to the nearest healer and bring him here. Leave now!” I order in a near scream when he dares to hesitate, surprising all of us.
However after his initial shock, he jumps back onto his majestic stallion and rides off at a fast pace.
“Mura!” I call to a warrior I see next that has a cheetah tattoo on his chest, signifying that he too is a Nyabasi. “I need you to go to the nearest home and bring with you warm ginger tea in a gourd! Every home with young children cooks the tea every morning.” I tell him.
The warrior looks at me hesitant, as though unsure on whether he ought to take orders from me.
“This instant, mura!” The Nyabasi king orders, and the warrior rides off without any further hesitation.
“Prop his head higher, Chacha,” I tell my brother, who immediately moves to sit on his heels behind father’s head
, and places his head on his slanted knees.
I move yet closer and begin rubbing his chest, speaking to my father soothingly.
“Father remember,” I say to him quietly. “We’ve done this before, father. Breathe in through your nose, and out through your mouth slowly,” I tell him, guiding him by pinching his nose shut as he breathes out, and clamping his mouth as he breathes in.
“Slowly father, you’ve got this,” I tell him gently, biting back the tears threatening at the back of my eyes. I avoid looking at my brothers’ faces, for I know what I shall find there.
Fear, fear and more fear.
“He’ll be fine, Chacha!” I tell my eldest brother, as once again I lift my hand from fathers nose so that he may breathe in, and cup my hand over his mouth to ensure he uses his nose to inhale.
“There, that’s it father,” I coax him with a calmness I don’t possess inside, where a battle rages, threatening to force me to come undone.
“That’s it. See Mogesi,” I now say, turning to my other brothers. “See, Wandui. He’s breathing yet again much easier. Some ginger tea will open up his airway some more, and soon the healer will be here to make him much better,” I say again, trying to calm my brothers down.
They might wear impassive faces at this moment, be biting their lower lips and their jaws ground tight, but I know inside that they are panicking. That’s the thing with my brothers. They might be hardened warriors prepared to face anything, but father’s poor health and frequent attacks has left them very vulnerable on the matter. Each time he’s survived, has led them to only fear even more the next attack. They dread each attack, for each time the healers have pronounced that father may not have long to live. Father has proven the healers wrong so far, and I’m not about to let him succumb to his weak chest now.
I let out a ragged sigh of relief when I see the warrior approach in the distance, a propped gourd strapped around his shoulders. He jumps off his beast even before he stops it, which pleases me for haste is of utmost importance. Father may be breathing in, but barely any air is getting into his chest as his airway is still restricted. The ginger tea will help ease the swelling inside his airway, and reduce his pain until the healer arrives to attend to him.
I grab the gourd from the warrior’s stretched out hand impatiently and uncork it promptly with my teeth.
I move to hold father’s head, taking it from Chacha, tip the gourd gently over his lips, and help him take small sips slowly.
Chapter 21
I watch as the healer fusses about Maga Umbe, princess Nyangi’s father, placing strong smelling herbs on his chest that have my eyes smarting.
I’d ridden with him as fast as I could, but turns out the urgency hadn’t been necessary for the princess had seen to it that her father had begun breathing better yet again.
I’m yet in shock as all others are, at the almost seamless way with which she’d expertly tended to her father, handling the whole situation a hundred times better than her brothers, and us all, I must admit, would have handled it.
There had been no panic, no signs of the fearful girl that hides behind stacks of drinks at evening fetes, or the mousy princess that hides in the water at Pride Lake.
No, there was nothing mousy about her at all.
“You did a mighty fine job, princess,” the healer praises yet again as I catch sight of a healer’s carriage approaching slowly in the distance. The healer had instructed his apprentice to bring it, so that when the king was stabilised, he might be driven home in the warmth and comfort of the carriage.
“If you hadn’t acted so quickly.. a mighty fine job, princess,” the healer once again pronounces impressed, and I take the chance to look her way, though I don’t wish to make her even more uncomfortable as I know attention is her undoing.
“Thank you,” she mutters quietly, her gaze fixed firmly to the ground, her head turned so low that I don’t even catch sight of her forehead, while he brothers hold her close to themselves.
They love her, and dearly so, I now realize, taking in the scene before me. Not only love her, but respect her too. Here is one who at home is cherished, yet her peers treat her as though she were a ragged doll, even going as far as to forget that she’s a princess.
I admit there are times I often wondered how a princess could turn out to be such a nervous wreck, however I now see that under those layers of insecurity lies the true heart of an Umbe born. Underneath it all is the princess of the lions of the west, just simmering below the surface, waiting for a chance to break out.
The healer’s apprentice arrives, and we all help to lift Maga Umbe safely into the padded carriage. Prince Chacha, the Bagumbe crown prince, chooses to ride with his father, and his sister quickly lets him know that she wishes to do the same.
The rest of us are still in some form of shock, and wait until the carriage starts moving before we move to mount our beasts.
Unbidden, I hold the reins of the beast Nyangi had been riding once I mount my own stallion, and we trot off along the main trade road slowly, our caravan harshly silenced by the great scare we’d just experienced.
Our group of travellers arrive at my home just as dusk is setting, but the Umbe princes refuse to stay the night, citing that they wish to rush on home and find out how their father is.
I empathise with them, and their arises in me a great desire to accompany them, because there also arises an irrational feeling in me to be there for Princess Nyangi as she waits for her father to get better.
However, I do manage to think straight again, and realise that I’d be imposing on them, for I’d be considered a royal guest and would need to be waited on.
That evening father and I are quiet as we eat our last meal, mother expertly maneuvering away the incessant questions from my younger brothers and sisters about the wedding we attended. Mother didn’t attend, for she had to tend to the young ones here at home, and Gati is yet to come home, as she’s among the party trekking back from the bridal walk. She’ll arrive around noon tomorrow, if I’m not wrong, for they’ll be travelling faster this time, being that they are not dancing for the bride. However travelling by foot can only go so fast.
Father is quiet, unusually so, his face grim and his mouth set in a tight straight line. It doesn’t come as a shock, for father much likes the Bagumbe king. Of all the four brother kings, father gets along with him the most. Father often told me that he thinks him the cleverest man in all the four kingdoms, and that he holds his counsel in high regard.
I do not know the king personally as we speak only when exchanging niceties. However the little I know about the him is enough to reassure me that father is indeed right in his assessment.
I join father at the porch of his house much later in the evening, long after we are done with our last meal, and mother has taken in the children to sleep.
I occupy the low three legged chair beside him, and he hands me the gourd in his hand. I take it and sniff, and the scent of delicious millet mead assails my nose, before I take a healthy swig from it, while father moves to light his pipe and start smoking.
“It brings into perspective, just how short life is,” father says.
“Father, you forget Maga Umbe is about twice your age if not more, and he’s been ailing of a weak chest since he was a boy, if rumours are to be believed.”
“Yes, well.. Now don’t be too smart!” Father says with a bitter chuckle. “That maybe so, but it still does put things into perspective.”
“Yes it does,” I admit, accepting the pipe he gives me, while he takes the gourd of drink from my hands and takes a few swigs from it.
“And to think we were all bested by a maiden that looks as though she ought to still be suckling her mother’s breast,” father says, and my muscles tense up at the unassuming way with which he speaks of her.
“If she hadn’t been there..” he goes on to say, shaking his head when he’s unable to finish his sentence, and chooses to take another swig from the gourd.
I blow out a puff a few times expertly before saying, “But she was there, that’s all that matters.”
“Yeah, the gods were kind to that family today. A rare occurrence indeed.” I agree, for Bakoria gods are rarely kind unless they wish for something in exchange. The spirits of our forefathers are our only true friends.
“Spirits of our fathers interceded for them,” I say.
“Yai, yai!” Father says in agreement, choosing that moment to pour out some libation to the spirits.
“Spirits bless our own,” we say in synchrony as we watch the drink soak into the dry ground.
“It’d have been bad timing indeed, A cuss to the just concluded wedding of his daughter.”
“Their family has been lucky indeed,” I say, taking the gourd from father yet again, as he takes the pipe from me.
We remain like that in a comfortable silence, quietly drinking and smoking under the clear Bakoria skies, the spirits of our ancestors watching us, and the gods envying us, plotting on what next tragedy to send our way.
“Father, I wish to tell you something,” I say as I empty the gourd and then rise to my feet, ready to leave for my own house situated behind his.
“What is it, my son?” He questions, taking the gourd from my hands and throwing it to among the empty ones to the side that mother and my sisters will see to tomorrow morning.
“I wish you to visit the Bagumbe kingstead as soon as Maga Umbe is well again,” I say, catching the sharp gasp he lets out. “I’ve made up my mind to marry one of his daughters.”
Chapter 22
There’s anxiety, and then there’s true anxiety. Mother says the reason I get so tongue tied and my heart beats so fast when attention turns my way is because I suffer from anxiety attacks. However, in all my life nothing has ever hurt as much as it hurts to wait on father through this ailment.
He’s been ill before, but never this much. Not so much that he’s unable to eat, food unable to go down his throat because the back of his mouth is swollen from the irritation in his air canal. Father has never been so ill that he wheezes for days on end, and the onset of the short rains season only goes to worsen his condition.