It was impossible to carry the dead maid any distance and we did not have the tools to bury her. Instead we had to make do with covering her body with cut down branches. The guide chopped most of it with his machete, but I hacked at some large leaf fronds with the knife I normally kept in my bundle of clothing. This time, though, when I had finished, I pushed the blade up the arm of my gown, tucking the hilt into the remaining cuff of my shirt that I wore underneath. Malala reappeared while we worked, but made no effort to help. She could not have failed to notice the hostile atmosphere in the little clearing as Jasmina pointedly ignored her.
“Jasmina has decided to stay in the next village,” I said cheerily in an effort to lighten the mood. My reward was a stony glare from both women. Once more the mistress said a few words in her religion over the grave of a maid and then we set off. As usual Malala strode on ahead with the guide while Jasmina and I followed on behind. My companion was muttering darkly about what revenge she would wreak on the translator, but I was not listening. Instead I was lost in my own thoughts.
I liked Jasmina; she was pretty, brave and passionate in her feelings. She had been dealt a raw hand with her forced marriage, but she had leapt at the chance to get away. Her only reservation had been Malala’s involvement and she had been proved right there. I realised that I had feelings for the girl, but for once they were not driven by lust. She greatly reminded me of her namesake who I had known years ago in London. There had been lust then all right and more besides. But despite those feelings, the poor girl had come to an awful end. Now I felt that history was about to repeat itself. Jasmina might be brave, but she was up against a ruthless predator who would not hesitate to kill anyone she viewed as a threat. I was only safe as long as I could give Malala something she really wanted, although as we walked, I started to wonder if I would outlive my usefulness once we were in London. Perhaps she would worry that I would reveal her part in guiding McCarthy into an Ashanti trap and decide to tidy up a loose end.
Malala thought I was tied to her for fear of my reputation being damaged, but she could not have been more wrong. I had enough ill-deserved credit in the bank not to worry about a rumour from darkest Africa. Anyway, as possibly the only survivor from the entire British force, few would blame me for trying to hide when everything was clearly lost. I wanted to protect Jasmina, but I was damned if I could see how with five days still to travel. I could feel the weight of the knife in my sleeve, but it was obvious that Malala had hidden weapons of her own. She would be on her guard even now. Even if I got close enough to use the blade, I feared that I would be struck with some lethally poisoned point in return. If I sided openly with Jasmina then neither of us were likely to survive the next night.
The precarious nature of my plight was brought home to me an hour later when we reached a wide stretch of brown water. The guide babbled something to us and then announced “Pra,” as though this was something that even I should comprehend. It took a moment, but then I realised that this must be the Pra River, the one that we fought alongside at Nsamankow. Suddenly Cape Coast Castle was a lot closer. We followed a path along the river bank until we came to a huge fallen tree. It must have been blown down in a storm as it had been taller than the other trees nearby. It had certainly not been felled by a man as the splintered break in the massive trunk was some twenty feet in the air. It spanned the river at the same height, its canopy having brought down several trees on the far side. Thick creepers grew up the side of the trunk to help us climb up the still standing part, but we would still need both hands for the climb. We put down our bundles of clothes and food and surveyed this new obstacle.
“We cross here,” announced Malala as she put down her satchel and leaned her gold-tipped staff against the trunk. Then she turned to me, “Thomas, we will climb first to see how easy it is to get across. Then we will come back and help the others.” Jasmina looked as if she was about to object at being left behind, but then changed her mind. She probably did not relish the thought of standing on a precarious tree trunk with Malala over a crocodile-infested river. I knew exactly how she felt. I was none too keen on the prospect myself, but could not think of a good enough excuse to refuse without increasing the animosity between us.
Malala sprang up the tree trunk with the agility of a cat, while I followed more steadily behind her. She waited for me at the top and then, with a little smile, gestured that I should go first along the trunk over the river. “I think I would rather have you in front of me,” she said.
“What, don’t you trust me any more?” I asked as I gingerly stepped out onto the log. This end was quite wide, but it got decidedly narrow near the far bank.
“Should I trust you?” she asked, following me. “You seem to be getting very friendly with that girl.”
“Of course you can trust me,” I insisted. I felt a trickle of sweat run down my back that I was sure was not due to the heat. I did not like having her behind me, especially as it was impossible to look round at her while I had to watch my footing on the log. “I am a British gentleman, a man of his word. I said I would take you to Britain and if you get me safely on a ship, so I shall.”
“And what of the girl?” she asked. We were halfway across the log now and my foot slipped for a moment on a strand of loose creeper. As I steadied myself I noticed the flick of a scaly tail in the brown water beneath me.
“What of her?” I repeated.
“How will we deal with her?” Malala persisted with a note of anger in her voice.
“Well, she says that she will stay at the next village,” I replied. I tried to sound as casual as I could but the hair on the back of my neck was starting to prickle in alarm.
“And do you believe her?” Malala spoke softly but there was undeniable menace in her voice now.
I took two more careful paces forward before I answered. The tree trunk was now little more than eighteen inches wide and sprang slightly as I moved. It was all I could do to keep upright on it – I would have felt much safer sitting astride. I was still over the water and whatever beasts it contained, twenty feet below. I could not run, I did not even want to turn, but I sensed that a lot was riding on my next answer. “No,” I whispered back.
“Look at me,” Malala spoke sharply. I put out my hands to help keep my balance and slowly started to turn around. I had almost made it when a branch snapped in the foliage behind me and the trunk lurched slightly to the left. With a wail of despair, I felt myself start to fall to one side and threw myself forwards, wrapping my arms and legs around the trunk like some desperate lover. I had half expected to hear a cry of alarm from Malala too, but when I was able to look up, she was still standing, regarding me impassively, with what looked like a conductor’s baton in her hand. Seeing I was safe, she held it up and continued, “If you had lied to me just then, the venom in this dart would have killed you. Not instantly, but it paralyses muscles and the crocodiles would have done the rest.”
“I didn’t lie to you,” I gasped as I adjusted my grip amongst the network of creepers growing over the log.
“But you thought about it,” she said quietly taking a couple more paces towards me. “If you even think of lying to me again, you will die,” she said. As if to emphasise her point, she raised the little wand to her lips and with a slight ‘pfft’ noise, a small dart with a yellow feathery head appeared embedded in the log a foot in front of me. She sneered at the look of horror on my face and continued, “I do not think that you are the brave soldier you pretend to be. If you were, you would not have hidden in the bush during the battle and by now you would have tried to attack me with that knife you have hidden. Or have you given it to the girl?” She gave a little humourless laugh and went on, “It does not matter. When we make camp tonight you will go for a walk by yourself in the jungle. By the time you come back, the girl will be dead. Do you understand?”
I nodded, unsure what else to say. I did not care that she implied I was a coward – it was true and if anything, I was proud of the
fact. What was the point of being one of all the brave men who had died at Nsamankow? No, she could insult me all she liked. Staying alive was my first priority; getting even was the second. The tricky thing was, I was now sure that when we got to London, I would become an inconvenient witness to her past and suffer the same fate as she had planned for the unfortunate Jasmina. But sprawled on the log in front of her gave me a new perspective on the situation, and an opportunity to achieve both my priorities.
Malala gave a slight grunt of contempt at my apparent abject submission and then said quietly, “Let’s go back and get the others.” She started to turn on the log. Where she was standing it was closer to two feet wide and she moved with casual ease. What she could not see that I could, however, was that one of the vines that had been between her feet was in fact loose in my hand and not entangled with any others until some distance beyond her. I saw at once the opportunity and knew that with Malala there would be precious few others to grasp at. I eased my knees forward as though preparing to stand again. As Malala stepped around so that both her feet were briefly on the same side of the loose creeper, I struck. I yanked the vine high into the air as she tried to step over it. Then as she was unbalanced on one leg, I swung the creeper as far as I could to the left to push her off the log.
She moved fast, I will say that for her. Even as her foot was sliding off into the void she somehow managed to throw herself in the opposite direction. She landed with her chest over the top of the log but with her waist and legs dangling over the muddy brown water below. Her hands scrabbled out to clutch at the vines to stop herself sliding off the trunk.
“Help me,” she shouted as she grasped a new creeper with one hand and held the other out to me as I edged on my hands and knees towards her.
She had been facing away from me when I moved the creeper. I wondered if she realised that I had yanked on it or if she was just too desperate to survive to think. “I am coming,” I shouted and shuffled forward another three feet until I could reach out and grab her hand.
She clutched at me with a vice-like grip and then gave a small grimace of triumph as she tugged again with her other arm to move further onto the log. “Pull me up,” she demanded, “If I fall I am taking you with me.”
“I would not be so sure about that,” I replied gesturing to the back of her hand that gripped mine. She followed my gaze and I saw her eyes widen in horror as she noticed the yellow tuft at the end of the poisoned dart.
“Pull it out, please,” she gasped. “I will let the girl live, I will do whatever you want but please get it out of me.”
Already I could feel the grip on my hand loosen, but I held on tight to hers to let the poison do its work. It felt good to give the evil bitch a taste of her own medicine. I thought back to all those men who had died not far away on the shore of this same river, not to mention the two maids and countless others I did not know about. I have felt pity for many of the people I have killed, but as Malala wailed and begged for her life, I did not feel a shred of remorse. For I knew one thing: if she lived after this, I would be a dead man. Eventually as her arm began to shake I released it. The trembling was now spreading to the rest of her body. The venom had done its work and we both knew it. Her left hand, though, still remained clenched around the first vine that she had grasped and showed no sign of slackening. I sat up and pulled the knife from my sleeve. Her mouth opened and shut and a rasping croak came from her lips, but she said no more as the steel began to cut through the plant stem. It was time to bring this to a close. The last strands parted and with a gurgling cry Malala disappeared from view. I expected to hear a splash as she hit the water but there was nothing. Instead I heard creaking from the vine further along the trunk and realised that Malala had somehow managed to hang on with her good hand. I did not dare lean out to look, but now I also heard shouting from Jasmina, who had seen her enemy dangling over the water.
The dart must have lost some of its venom when it was fired into the log. I was surprised that she had been able to maintain her grip and began to wonder if the poison would wear off. The thought of a murderous Malala climbing back up the vine filled me with horror. I began to edge further along, back to the thicker end of the log, where the other end of the vine she was clinging to twitched and moved with the strain of her weight. I could not see Malala, which perhaps made things easier as I started to cut the strands again with my knife.
“I don’t want to keep you hanging around,” I muttered as I kept a wary eye out for a clawing hand climbing back up. Then, with a twang, the creeper parted. This time there was a splash. Taking a grip on other firmly anchored vines, I risked leaning out a little to look into the river below. Malala was flailing around in the brown flowing water, but she was not alone. A scaly snout surfaced, its jaws opening like a giant trap but before it could get a good grip, something unseen pulled her violently below the surface. A second later the only sign of Malala’s existence was a slowly widening circle of ripples.
Chapter 20
My limbs were shaking almost as much as Malala’s had been as I climbed back down the tree stump to where Jasmina was waiting. It was probably delayed shock from yet another close shave with death.
“I am getting too old for this,” I said as I dropped the last two feet onto the soft earth.
“You were wonderful fighting her like that,” gushed Jasmina as she threw her arms about me. “I knew you would not let her kill me.”
“Did you now, well that is youthful optimism over experience if ever I heard it. I say, where is the guide?”
“He ran off when he saw her hanging from the creeper. Did you see her fall? There were two crocodiles fighting over the body; they will have torn her to pieces.”
Even though she would probably have killed me in the end given the chance, I could not quite share Jasmina’s delight at Malala’s death – if it had not been for the interpreter I would still be in prison – but then it was not my maids who had been poisoned. Perhaps I was also mindful that we still had to cross the log bridge, over those same hungry reptiles. I looked around but could see no sign of the guide fleeing through the trees. I wondered if he had taken Malala’s bag with him, but then saw it was still resting near the bottom of the tree. I peered inside and gave a low whistle. It was full of gold ornaments, bracelets, a cup and, wrapped in a leather pouch, was a large gold-mounted sapphire, almost as big as the ones worn by the king. It was a handsome haul. Leaning against the trunk was the translator’s staff of office with its ornate gold top. I picked it up wondering if I could pull off the metal. After a couple of tugs, I found that it twisted off easily. I was on the verge of dropping the staff when I saw that it was hollow and there was something inside.
“Look at this,” I said tipping the contents onto the muddy bank. There were two glass phials, one empty and the other half full of a cloudy liquid. Glinting in the mud was also a silver needle. I picked it up carefully and saw that it was hollow with a widened top like a funnel. “This is how she poisoned your maids,” I said. I broke the phials with the staff and pushed the pieces and the needle deep into the mud. “We had better get going. Without the guide, we will head south and find out where we are when we reach the coast.”
With the heavy satchel around my neck, I felt even more vulnerable as I edged out over the log bridge again. I only walked for the first few paces and then dropped to my hands and knees before finishing the crossing shuffling forward astride the log. Jasmina followed on behind with a bundle of provisions around her neck. I helped her down and we swiftly found a trail on the other side of the river, which headed off in roughly the right direction. The guide had taken the machete and it would have taken too long to hack a new path through the thick jungle with the small knife I now had stuck in my belt. We had no choice but to follow the existing trails and hope that they did not lead us into an Ashanti patrol, for as we drew closer to the coast and the castle, we also ran a greater risk of coming across our enemies.
For two days we trudged
through an endless jungle. For much of that time we endured torrential rain. I could not help but notice that when soaked through, Jasmina’s robes stuck to her in all the right places. She had not been bedded by the king and I wondered idly if she had ever been with a man. Perhaps because I was still feeling protective of her, I did not try to remedy that situation. It might also have been because we were close to exhaustion. We were now having to ration out the last of the boiled yam and the constant showers turned the paths to thick, sucking mud that made every step an effort. We had previously tried to light a fire at night during our journey, not for the heat, but for the light and to keep animals at bay. I spent half an hour that first evening we were alone with a steel and flint trying to start a fire from some shavings I had scored from the middle of an old log. Despite trying to shield the kindling, raindrops soaked my effort. I gave up and we slept huddled together in the dark.
Towards the end of the second day the trail started to widen and then in the distance we heard the unmistakable sound of voices. I had taken to keeping my robe and veil stuffed into the satchel, but now I hauled them out and put them on. Earlier in our journey, one of the maids had sewn a strip to the bottom of mine so that at least now my boots were hidden. We had come so far and were now so close to our goal, that it was unthinkable that we would be stopped. Cautiously we moved slowly forward until our path emerged onto a much wider track, almost a road, and from the muddy footprints in both directions, it was a well-travelled one. It ran almost exactly north to south and so we turned south, towards the sea. We had only been walking an hour when we caught up with the voices we had heard earlier. It was a trading caravan, a mixture of Arab and African traders, along with a dozen slaves carrying bundles of goods for sale. We held back, walking a quarter of a mile behind them and they took no notice of us. At dusk they pulled up at the side of the road to make a camp and we had to decide whether to stop too or press on. We were both light-headed from hunger and had already eaten the last of the yam so when I saw that they had managed to light a fire, my mind was made up.
lashman and the Golden Sword Page 18
