by Robi, Carol
“But.. she could find out either way, from someone else.”
“Yes, such secrets never remain buried for long. However by then she’d safely be your wife. You would be with the woman you dearly love, and we would be debtless.”
“She’ll think I never loved her. That I only married her for.. she’d think I don’t love her,” I say defeated, dropping my head to my hands. For though I dislike this plan with my every being, it is what is best for my kingdom and my people, and I have a responsibility to them.
“Blame it on me,” Gati says. “Or father. Say we pushed you..”
“She wouldn’t believe that I could be forced into doing anything I don’t want to. Everyone that knows me knows that about me,” I state gruffly.
“That is true..” Gati says.
“I say we cross the river when we get there,” father says. “Maybe she’ll never find out, and you two could have a long happy life together..”
“Lying to her? You wish me to start my life with her with a lie?”
“It is not a lie! These are kingly matters, you could tell her. It is a Bakoria law that only kings should worry about kingly matters. State that to her!” Father says with impatience, now that he’s seen the potentiality of Gati’s idea, and all the possibilities it holds for him and his reign.
“Yes, state that these are kingly matters. No Bakoria can argue with such a reason,” Gati says, speaking much softer than father had.
“So you want me to pull rank on her?” I ask.
“Call it whatever you may. This is a sacrifice you must make for your people. At least you get something you desire from it. You get her too.”
“I didn’t want it like this,” I say as a last thought, defeated for I now know I have no choice in the matter, as Gati’s suggestion is ingenious and ought to be tried.
“We never get what we want, son,” father now says kindly, handing me his pipe. “The gods are too cruel for that. We take what we can, however, and keep pushing on.”
“All you have to do is love her..” Gati starts.
“I do love her,” I interrupt to say, grinding out the words.
“Then love her so much that she’ll never question your reasons for marrying her.”
Chapter 25
The long rains season is upon us once again, and with it comes my task of cooking meals with the help of my sister and other young females in the family, while the married women and all muras in our kingstead head off to the farms for the great planting season.
Father’s ailment, as depressing a time as it had been, had kept me too preoccupied to feel the loss of my newly married sister, Weigesa. However right now, with all of us back to our daily routine apart from father, who despite being back on his feet has been warned against going to work on the fields, I now have the opportunity to feel the very large gaping hole that Wei’s departure has left in my life.
It was often Wei that’d meet me so early in the morning and we’d start on the porridge, and she always let me slice the cassava while she scraped them clean of their skins. Matinde always woke up much later and helped with the serving of the first meal and washing up.
Now it is often I alone in the kitchens, for Matinde does not have the heart to wake up so early in the morning, not especially when it’s pouring outside. The tasks have grown too many for me to handle alone, but I fear her too much to confront her. Instead, I’ve resorted to waking up even much earlier than I did before, and I was always an unusually early riser before.
Mother does find out about Matinde’s unreliability in the mornings soon enough, when she one day rouses early too because my youngest brother Noki had a cold that tortured him all night, and she needed some fresh ginger tea. Upon finding me labouring alone in the kitchens so early in the morning, she’d drawn the full story out of me, as reluctant as I’d been, and had promptly gone to wake Matinde with a scolding.
Now my relationship with Matinde isn’t at its best, for she thinks I ratted her out to mother. Try as I may to make her see that the situation was out of my mind, I fail.
At times my situation at home is as dark and stormy as it is outside the kitchen at this moment. My brothers and parents that are my only constant source of joy are busy labouring in the farms, while father has taken this time to balance the books on our family’s expenditure and the kingdom’s as well. I spend most of the day with Matinde, tending to the young ones of our brothers and of my mother as all the grownups are in the farms, making meals for the farmers and trudging through knee deep mud to feed the farmers as they work.
The planting does soon come to an end, and soon preparations begin for the Mbura festival. We girls help with costume making for our younger siblings and our nephews and nieces, while the women deal with the cooking and firewood fetching for the banquet we are to host for the whole kingdom, while father and all my brothers work on building the infrastructure of the festival, that involves sitting areas and bonfires as well as tents over the sitting areas as this is the long rains season, meaning it is a period when it is almost always raining.
It is also a period when we Bagumbes are cut off from the Nyabasi and the Bairege brother kingdoms, as the River Mara between our borders tends to flood and subsequently cover up all the bridges for up to forty days at a time.
That fact has never held any meaning to me, until now. Father may not be fully recovered, but his closest brother king won’t be visiting to see how father is doing, as he is cut off from us by the flooded river. That also directly means that his son shall not be coming over anytime soon. That realisation does dampen my spirits a great deal. A foolish notion that his visits should mean so great a deal to me, I know. Especially considering my peers seem to think that he’s very much taken by my sister, Matinde, and that they intend to marry. Why else would he and his family have visited so often when father was ill? Surely only a couple visits would have been enough, as the other brother kings had done.
The Mbura festival does a great deal to lift my spirits. It is refreshing to see my peers yet again. I fear I’ve missed them dearly, a feeling I never thought I’d ever have towards them. Even Nyangi, my namesake, it doesn’t pain me so much to behold her anymore. I pity her now, that’s the reality, and I now have more opened eyes to see the true deploration of morals some of my peers suffer from.
Nyangi is one of those that seems to be lost. Paying more attention now, I always catch how young warriors pretend to accidentally brush or bump into her, and in the process they run their hands over her bosom or slip them into her thighs. She lets them do it, even though she risks being ruined. She does this in private though, and assumes that they don’t know that she does this with many of them. However unknown to her is that they do discuss her, and how easily she gives. They discuss this with none too respectful terms, that I know she’s ruined her chances of getting married without knowing it. None of them will ever ask her hand in marriage, for they know just how many have already been with her, and that she’s no longer pure. They flirt with her though, and I pity her because she thinks they do it because they hold her in high regard. On the contrary.
The Mbura festival is a success, and after the dismantling of all the makeshift furniture and the rearrangement of our royal courtyard to it’s old self, our family spends the rainy days crouched around the warm fire of our otherwise rarely used dining hall before large warm fires that I tend to, listening to narrations from father and my brothers.
The long rains season is abnormally long this time, and father is awfully worried that crops may rot in the farms. It is for this reason that he calls for a major council meeting, despite the horrid weather, and the council members remain locked up all day in the royal gooti discussing these matters.
As father’s most trusted child, I spend most of the day in the royal hall rekindling the fires and refilling the drinks as they discuss among themselves.
“..It’s good we just replenished our stocks in the Irege Mountain caves,” an elder, a member of the twelve
council of elders of our kingdom says.
“I do not like us to use those if we can avoid it. What if a war is to knock on our doors?”
“The advantage of too heavy rains, is that we still have our animals fat and fed, and we can live off them until the next harvest,” a warrior says, one of the ten heads of individual warrior units titled a musacha. There are ten wasacha in each Bakoria brother kingdom.
“I want you to visit all homesteads in the kingdom. Talk to the heads of families and alert them of this rotting of crops that we predict. Remind them to preserve their grains or use sparingly, as hard grain times are soon to be upon us.”
“Yai, Maga!”
“I will make a journey to the Holy Woods and make a sacrifice to the gods to stop the rains. I wish that you’d all attend with me.”
No father, I scream in my head, but keep silent for I oughtn’t to be heard or appear to be listening in to whatever they are discussing. I’m worried because he’s yet weak. He hasn’t fully recovered and I shudder to think what such a great distance spent riding under the continuous rain to the eastern part of our kingdom will do to his health.
“Of course, Maga!” They all chorus, and then they go on to discuss when best to do it.
“As soon as possible,” an elder proposes, to which all seem to be in agreement with. I chance to send Chacha a communicative glare as I refill an elder’s calabash with drink.
Chacha catches my gaze, and narrows his eyes as warning. He knows that I’m listening, and forming an opinion, yet it’s a rule among my people that none should concern themselves with kingly matters apart from kings, and their counselling bodies.
I look away, and break contact with Chacha’s gaze, forcing myself to keep my displeasure with the idea of father travelling when he’s yet ill to myself.
The gods are kinder this time though, for father does make the journey and performs the sacrifices in the company of Chacha and the rest of the high council members, and makes it back home not too bad for wear.
The rains proceed on for a while longer, but do eventually stop.
The days begin to slowly get warmer, and the soggy ground to dry up. The council’s assumptions were right, most of our kingdom’s seeds are rotten in the ground. It appears that we are the most adversely affected. The Bakira had a much bountiful planting season, and promise to trade their surplus food crops with us, I gather from listening in to yet another council meeting. However they do demand a much higher trading rate than usual, and father is not too happy about that.
“We can afford it,” father says, rubbing his greying warrior braids. “However it is very unbrotherly of them to increase the prices so steeply, knowing that we are desperate enough to accept.”
“They are becoming as shrewd businessmen as we are,” an elder says, equally as troubled.
“They owe us, however. So much do they owe us that we’ll take all that they can offer and not have to pay back, and their debt will still be large.”
“It is why they’ve raised the rates of their food crops so high. They wish to upset their debts to us,” Chacha says.
“Then we must be equally as shrewd in our trading. They’ll come to us for spearheads and knife blades, because we have the most skilled blacksmiths in the kingdom.”
“You are suggesting we raise our rates too?” An elder says, rubbing his grey beard. Beards are unheard of among Bakoria warriors, however the elderly generation wear them like a crown, and most in our kingdom’s council of elders spot long beards.
“Yes. I do not need to emphasise on the importance of ensuring that our brother kingdoms remain knee deep in debt to us. It is a most favourable circumstance for us.”
“But won’t that just start a continuous cycle of raised rates..?” A warrior starts. All the men in the royal assembly hall laugh at this.
“Thank the gods you are only expected to worry about matters of war and security and not economy,” father states, and I have to stifle my threatening chuckle in time as the rest of the council members develop into rich laughter in the musacha’s expense. He looks most mortified, unsure of what he could have said that the others would deem so foolish.
“What..?” He starts to ask confused.
“Let me educate you, musacha,” an elder picks up to say, as father isn’t done laughing at the warrior. “Since when have we ever desperately needed anything from our brothers the Bakira? What do they have that we want so dearly that we’d pay high rates, apart from this unfortunate time of our gods over blessing us with rain that drowned our crops? The Bakira have never been blessed with ample enough rain to produce enough crop that we should even trade with them. This is a very rare occurrence. Often, any extra cereal or food crops needed, are bought from the Nyabasi. We get our pottery, mats, timber, glue and wines from our Bairege brothers. The only thing we get from the Bakira is sisal which we don’t need in high quantity, and the toll we pay them each time we cross their lands to go hunt in the Northern Plainlands. Other than this fluke, it shall be a very long time before they shall hold so great a trade advantage over us. This was their chance to make good with us, however they decided to drive a hard bargain. Now we shall drive a hard bargain to teach them a lesson. Any future desert horses they may need to breed zorses, or jewellery, loomed cotton wraps and silken cloths, they will have to buy from us because we control all trade with our northern neighbours in the region, the Moreno and the Maigi. Any iron or steel they’ll need, we control all trades with our western neighbours, the Migo. If they do not wish to buy from us, they will have to come to the main trade market which we control and exert levy, to trade. And when they do so, they must cross our lands, and in so doing, we’ll exert yet another toll on their traders. You see, whether they like it or not, they will remain in our debt. And the fact that they dared use our desperation for food against us this time will see to it that we exert our vengeance on them without mercy.”
“But, they are our brothers, after all! Aren’t we the four brother kingdoms of the Bakoria?”
Thank you, I think, for the young musacha of the fifteenth cycle has asked the very same question I wished answered. I choose then to walk over with another tray of warm freshly baked cassava, sliced, with jam from forest berries smeared on them. Delicious!
“We are not attacking them, are we? All we are doing is keeping them in debt. We love them, we’ll come to their aid should they ever need it. We don’t need them to ever pay us, as we are sufficiently wealthy to sustain our own economy. In fact, we are happiest if they never pay us back. We want them to remain in debt to us, and subsequently owe us their allegiance.”
“Their king, you mean?”
“Not just their king, their whole kingship. Every generation of kings that comes to power inherits the debt, and will only get into deeper debt with us in the course of their reign. We’ll never ask them to pay by force, but we’ll kindly remind them whenever the opportunity rises that they owe us a great deal. Like when we want something, and they are against it. All future kings of the Bakira will be subordinate to all future kings of the Bagumbe, as is the case with the other brother kingdoms. Their debt to us ensures that our kings..”
“Are the kings of kings in Bakoria,” the musacha now says enlightened.
“Exactly. And it is why we’ll never forgive a debt, even though we might never need them to pay us back,” my father completes.
Chapter 26
The days are warm again, warm enough that we once again resume our youthful activities. There’s excitement in the air this season, as the new cycle of maidens is to be recruited, and my peers and I are no longer to be the youngest maidens. We are now on our fifteenth cycle.
However, my excitement stems from a whole other matter. I’m to see him again. I don’t care that he might never be mine, all I want is to see him.
His eyes are what I miss most, but to be honest my sleep this past rainy nights has been tortured with images and thoughts of my body pressed against his. Memories of his lean to
ned body and the webbed network of veins running across his exposed skin as he swings himself onto zorseback, or runs across a cliffed rock along the shores of Pride Lake, right before he jumps into the air and dives into the water, have me tortured and restless.
But finally the day is here. He mightn’t even come! I remind myself in scolding. However just the idea, the possibility that I might be able to see him, is enough to fill me with so much anticipation that I fear my chest will burst.
I’ll not remain under water! I chant to myself all the way, as I ride one of my brother’s youngest zorse, a stallion he’d gifted me.
“For being such a great sister,” he’d said, though I suspect he’d done it so as to lift my spirits after Wei’s departure.
He is a delightful beast, powerful, his muscles under my thighs remind me just how much constantly. Infact, his shaking muscles, tensed up in anticipation to take off in a gallop do greatly remind me of the Nyabasi prince. He has a certain restraint about him, almost as though a constant need, or urgency for something.
You are hopeless! I tell myself as I slide off my riding beast when we get to our destination. I start taking off my richly jewelled necklaces and slip them around the neck of my zorse. He’s not particularly happy about this however, fretting and fidgeting as I slip one necklace after the next over his head.
“Poor boy is begging the gods to help him from being dressed up like a woman,” are the words heard from a most desired voice coming from behind me.
I remain frozen, unable to continue placing more necklaces around the zorse because my heart is beating so fast, my thoughts are disheveled, and my muscles just won’t act as instructed.
“Princess,” he says in greeting upon stopping by my side. I fight, a loosing battle I must say, against looking up to him. I keep my gaze firmly fixed to my feet, and try concentrate for the moment in breathing is.