Mark of the Lion

by Suzanne Arruda

  “I’d be delighted,” Jade replied. “As long as you’re sure I won’t be any bother.”

  They both poohed the idea, exclaimed their own delight at her agreement, and pressed her for information about America.

  “Ah, here we are,” exclaimed Neville just as Jade began to tire of repeated inquiries concerning wild Indians and desperadoes.

  They’d driven about fifteen miles out of Nairobi to Ruiru, a small river crossing that boasted a hut or two. Papyrus waving plumed tufts in the air like a Persian cat’s tail announced the welcome presence of water.

  “There’s a dam here,” Madeline explained as she straightened her hat, “and a flume carries the water down to Nairobi’s generator.”

  Several Africans in rust brown robes and carrying spears stood next to the flume, staring down into it and shouting, “Kiboko.”

  “Kiboko,” echoed Jade. “Doesn’t that mean hippopotamus?”

  Neville hopped out and reached in back for a double rifle, the ever popular Enfield. “Correct, Miss del Cameron. Perhaps you and Maddy should stay here. Hippos are a nasty lot when they’re angry, and they always seem to be angry.”

  Mrs. Thompson frowned at her husband’s back and looked at Jade to see what she would do. Jade watched the growing number of people and decided, no matter how dangerous the hippo, the greater danger sat more with high-spirited and heavily armed hunters shooting each other in the cross fire. In that case, she’d be no safer from a stray bullet by sitting in the car than standing at the flume.

  “I’m going to take a look,” Jade said. The two women joined the growing ranks of spectators at flumeside. Out of that crowd, three men argued over resolving the situation.

  “Well, are we going to shoot it or not?” demanded an old man dressed in black-tie evening attire. He carried a Mauser rifle and looked as if he thought this was a formal safari. His drooping white walrus mustache jiggled as he spoke.

  “It’s not full grown,” answered a slender young man. He wore jodhpurs and riding boots, and his smooth baby-face features made him look more like a teenaged boy who should be under adult supervision than a hunter. Jade recognized him as the young man at the Norfolk who preferred the hyenas eat natives rather than his cattle, and felt her right fist tighten again.

  “What bloody difference does that make?” retorted a third man, whose khaki trousers and bush jacket showed signs of heavy wear. Impatience marked his voice, and his broad shoulders strained his shirt. Not a man to make angry, thought Jade.

  “Well, it hardly seems sporting to just shoot a young hippo stuck in the flume, Harry,” retorted the young man. “Besides which, we’ll have to haul out a deadweight.”

  “Better a deadweight than being gored by the blighter,” argued Harry, the man in the bush jacket. He took a wider stance and flexed his powerful arms.

  Mr. Thompson joined in the debate. “Now see here, chaps,” he said. “Roger has a point. If this were a full-grown bull or even a cow, we’d have no choice but to shoot it in the ditch. But this bloke’s too young to be territorial over some harem. I’ve got rope. I say we haul him out. Let the natives send him packing with a spear point in the rump.”

  A loud crack ended the argument when the walrus-mustached man in evening attire shot the beast. “Can’t trust a hippo at any age,” he said as he lowered his weapon, “especially a frightened one. Get your rope, Thompson. Let the natives pull it out. I daresay they’ll appreciate the meat. If not, it will give the hyenas something to chew on besides my goats for a change.”

  Harry pulled his wide-brimmed hat tighter on his head and scowled. He muttered a few curses that encompassed everything from hippos to meddlesome old coots, then stomped over to his horse, a beautiful black creature, and galloped back to town.

  Jade looked questioningly at Madeline, who leaned towards her conspiratorially. “Never mind Harry Hascombe. He’s been here long enough that he fancies himself the best shot in Nairobi. Probably didn’t like being robbed of his chance to show off in front of a new lady.”

  Jade looked around and spotted no other women besides herself and Mrs. Thompson. “Me?” she asked. “I doubt he even saw me.”

  “Oh, Harry noticed you all right. Harry’s a hunter in more ways than one, Miss del Cameron. He’s just gone back to Nairobi to sulk a bit. He’ll be all right in the morning.”

  Jade noticed that the young man in jodhpurs, Roger, also rode off in disgust. Jade took notes as the remaining men supervised the “hauling of the behemoth,” as the event quickly became named. She imagined in the truest sense of hunters everywhere, that the animal would rapidly become bigger and fiercer with each telling. After much struggling and heaving, the men towed the carcass out of the flume and the water resumed its course to the power generator. Jade wondered if there’d be cheers and backslapping all around in Nairobi as the lights came back on.

  On the return trip, Madeline insisted on riding in back with Jade so she wouldn’t have to turn around in the seat to talk. Neville received instructions to drive to town more slowly so they could have a longer visit and enjoy the cool night air and the rising moon. Madeline questioned Jade about her reporting job and hoped their farm might be mentioned in an article.

  “Why not,” Jade answered. “I’m also supposed to write a second feature about safaris. Perhaps you could give me some advice. I plan to go to Tsavo.”

  “A safari!” squealed Madeline. “We’d dearly love to go along. And, of course, we could help you arrange one.”

  “That means me, of course,” said Neville with a chuckle. “But it sounds splendid. Haven’t been on safari for years.”

  Jade spent most of the remaining ride fielding politely nosy questions about America in general and Westerners in particular. She answered them patiently if evasively and succeeded in turning a few questions back around on them. They weren’t the only ones wanting information.

  She learned the Thompsons had been in the colony for eight years. That made them relative newcomers who probably wouldn’t know anything about Gil Worthy’s original visit. But perhaps she could meet some older residents through them. British East Africa covered a lot of land, and the chances that Gil had spent time in this area were slim. Still, she had to try. Deep inside, she believed her coolness had driven David to the recklessness that had killed him.

  “Now, we must have breakfast tomorrow and arrange for you to come back with us to the farm,” Madeline said. “Are you an early riser, Miss del Cameron?”

  “Please, call me Jade, and yes, I am,” she answered, wondering what early meant here. On the ranch it meant predawn.

  “What a lovely name,” said Madeline. “And doesn’t it suit her, Neville, with those delicious green eyes. I always thought—”

  Bang! Whatever Madeline thought never came to light as a gunshot echoed from the hotel’s interior.

  Jade vaulted over the car’s door and raced for the hotel. “Someone’s been shot,” she shouted. In an instant Nairobi vanished from her mind and, once again, in its place poured the sounds and smells of the front lines. Her gut wrenched into a tense knot, and her pulse quickened as she tore into the lobby. At any moment she expected a canister to explode near her, but she couldn’t hesitate. Seconds meant a life.

  Jade skidded and stopped dead in her tracks mere inches before colliding with a beautiful black horse, the one Harry Hascombe had ridden to Ruiru. And there, astride the animal cutting circles in the lobby and firing his sidearm in the air, sat Hascombe himself. For a moment, she couldn’t reconcile the animal with her reflexive reaction to the gunshots. When she did, her five-foot, seven-inch stature felt very short compared to this massive British centaur in front of her.

  Harry spotted Jade, pulled his horse to a stop, and bowed low from the saddle. His face rested a few inches from hers. She saw the gray creeping into his day’s growth of whiskers and the heavy lines creasing his broad brow.

  “Welcome to Nairobi, miss,” he said with a trace of a slurred voice. Jade smelled the a
lcohol on his breath. “A pretty lady needs a proper introduction to our town.”

  As he bowed, he let his gun hand drift down within reach. Jade struck his wrist with catlike speed, using the side of her hand. The gun clattered to the floor, and the hotel clerk hastened forward from behind his desk.

  “Mr. Hascombe, I protest this intrusion in my hotel. Now you ride Whiskey out of here this instant. Save that nonsense for the Muthaiga, where it belongs.”

  Harry Hascombe turned his horse’s head towards the door. He reared once, waved his hat in salute, and raced outside and down the steps. Jade heard the cheers and general laughter that marked his progress down the street. Then she picked up the fallen gun and handed it handle first to the hotel manager.

  “He’ll probably want that later,” she said. He stared at her, mouth agape.

  “Thank you, Miss del Cameron,” he murmured at last and mopped his sweating forehead.

  The Thompsons stood in the door and gazed at her with something bordering on respectful awe. Jade smiled and nodded to them. “Breakfast at seven?” she asked. They nodded dumbly and went up the stairs to their own room.

  Jelani appeared beside her, beaming with pride. “Would memsabu wish more coffee?” he asked.

  “Yes,” Jade answered without hesitation. “Bring a pot to my room please, Jelani.” She started to turn towards the stairs when the manager spoke to her in a whisper and stopped her in her tracks.

  “Miss del Cameron, I did a bit of checking around for you about your Mr. Worthy.”

  Jade’s attention snapped towards the pudgy little man. “Yes?”

  “Well, Miss del Cameron. I got to thinking that I was not here in 1915. Holiday, you know. So I inquired of a doctor in Nairobi. He said he did recall such a man dying here. Said it was most peculiar.”

  Jade felt her impatience rising. She wanted to grab the little round man by his lapels and shake the story out of him. Instead, she merely nodded and urged him to continue with a simple “Please go on.”

  “The doctor said that this Mr. Worthy was mauled to death by an animal, possibly a hyena.”

  “I don’t understand,” said Jade. “What is so peculiar about that?”

  “The man was in his room on the second floor. How would a hyena get in there?”

  “How indeed,” murmured Jade as the manager walked away.

  “Memsabu,” Jelani said in a serious whisper. “There is another Swahili word you should know. It is hatari. It means danger.”

  CHAPTER 5

  “Africa’s voice is neither the siren call luring men to promised fortune nor the primal scream of bloodlust and danger. It is the whisper to the sleeping soul, a call of awakening that seeps out of its ancient rocks like a hidden, life-giving spring. It can be drunk and accepted as is or it can be dammed and converted to power. The response depends entirely on the soul.”

  —The Traveler

  SWEAT, URINE, AND SOMETHING MORE NAUSEATING filled the dank and windowless mud hut. The odors forced their way into every crack in the mud, through the rotting grass fibers in the roof and into the pores of the human form hunched over the glowing coals. From there they insinuated themselves into his muscles. He threw two gristly bones on the coals and watched them dance. The tendons tightened reluctantly in the heat and screeched in protest before snapping in two. Marrow sizzled inside and whined through gaps in the bone as though begging to be released from the torture.

  The man sucked in the pungent smoke, letting it bully its way into his bloodstream. He mumbled incantations in what sounded like gibberish, focused his thoughts on his hate, and grabbed power from smoke, words, and emotion. How dared they push their goats onto his land! How dared they compare their miserable little beasts to his cattle, his money, his manhood. He’d sent one of his messengers before to harvest their goats. He sent one again to take one of their own, a puny old man whose very bones were now blackening on his fire. Now they strengthened their thorn bomas and huddled in their huts, too frightened to go out, too foolish to leave.

  This time he must go himself. A beast can be taught to kill, but it doesn’t understand revenge. That took a human’s touch. Even his former mentor, who could do this much more easily than he, would not suit his purposes tonight. He took a lion’s form and killed too quickly. No, tonight he needed to choose the victim and make sure that the others heard the screams.

  The man reached into the fire with a third bone and knocked one of the blackened ones out onto the dirt by his feet. He picked up the sizzling femur and bit into it. The brittle bone cracked under the pressure of his powerful jaws. Hot marrow scalded his mouth, and he swallowed quickly without tasting. Power coursed through his muscles, honing them, molding them. Red coals turned white and the yellow smoke appeared gray as his eyes lost their color sense. But what he lost in color, he gained in sharpness of contrast.

  He grew aware of previously hidden sounds—a small lizard in the thatch, termites gnawing in the walls. His ears gradually shifted to hone in on the different locations, listening, discarding the unimportant noises. He lifted his face and tested the air. A new smell wafted in through the low door. It was the smell of humans: cowering, frightened humans. He opened his mouth and flared to capture the scent of their acrid sweat. He longed for the coppery smell of blood but it wasn’t there. Not yet.

  The hunching man tried to sit upright but couldn’t. His spine locked in the hunch. Ropy muscles thickened and tugged at his legs. He drank in the pain and let it feed his hatred, sorry that there was less pain each time he did this. But then, he reasoned, what he lacked in hate, he supplemented with scorn. And it got easier every time. Already he was as good as his teacher. No, better. The figure stalked out from the hut and laughed a hideous, giggling laugh.

  CHAPTER 6

  “Nairobi enjoys the benefit of an extensive society including clubs, polo grounds, and golf courses. Horse racing is very popular in Happy Valley, and horse breeding is less an occupation and more an avocation. How could any horse not do his best when surrounded by the grandeur of the Athi Plains to the east, Mount Kenya to the north, and Mount Kilimanjaro to the southwest? The challenge to race is given by the native springbuck, impala, and zebra, and taken up eagerly by the Thoroughbred.”

  —The Traveler

  “YOUR SOFT-BOILED EGG, MISS, WITH HAM and toast.”

  The waiter placed the porcelain egg cup on her plate next to one minuscule circle of thin, dry ham and set a rack of toasted white bread next to it. A jam pot joined the other items. Jade’s shoulders slumped in disappointment. She’d envisioned a thick, juicy ham steak and at least two eggs fried in the drippings. There weren’t even any hashed brown potatoes. And Britain considers itself a civilized nation. At this point she could kill for several slabs of bacon. She wondered what fried hippo tasted like. At least her cup held coffee and the waiter left the pot.

  “Good morning, Miss del Cameron,” sang a cheery voice. “So sorry we’re late. Mmmm, looks delicious,” added Madeline as she eyed Jade’s breakfast.

  Jade looked up from her plate to see both Madeline and Neville. “Good morning,” she echoed. “I hope you don’t mind my ordering already. I’m starved. And please, call me Jade. After last evening, I feel we’re past the formalities.”

  “Then you must do the same for us,” Neville added.

  Jade waited as Neville held a chair opposite Jade for his wife and then seated himself next to Madeline. They ordered the same breakfast she had and insisted she continue before her egg chilled. She obliged by tapping the top off her egg with her spoon.

  “Did you enjoy your introduction to Happy Valley society last evening, Jade?” inquired Madeline.

  Jade loaded her egg with salt and pepper. “Happy Valley? Is that what the generator flume is called?”

  Madeline’s laugh was a delicate musical ripple. “No. Happy Valley is where the Nairobi elite live. The polo fields, the country clubs, the government house, all of it.”

  Jade wondered if the nickname had or
iginally been meant to be sarcastic and decided not to inquire. “I enjoyed meeting you and Neville.”

  Madeline beamed at the compliment. “Then you are still planning to stay with us at our farm? You haven’t changed your mind?” The waiter brought the Thompsons’ breakfast. Jade noticed the same small circles of ham. Must have been cut with a cookie cutter.

  “On the contrary, I’m looking forward to it. I’m grateful to have met you on my own without resorting to stuffy letters of introduction.” She uncapped the jam pot, scooped out a dollop of golden orange marmalade, and spread it on a triangle of toast while she waited for this little bit of news to penetrate. Bait and wait. Jade didn’t have to wait long, but with traditional, well-bred British tact, the Thompsons inquired obliquely about these supposed letters.

  “I agree, Miss Jade,” said Neville, who couldn’t quite get as familiar as his wife. “There is no good way to go about using a letter of introduction short of thrusting it on someone, er, no matter who wrote it.” In that last clause, he two-stepped around wanting to know the author.

  Madeline picked up the marmalade spoon. “Neville is quite right,” she added in an attempt to dance a little closer. “And then, what if no one really knows the letter’s author? How horrid!”

  Jade stifled her smile. They really were too cute, and she felt a pang of guilt for toying with them. Still, she always enjoyed playing the game, so she dropped the juiciest bit of bait on them. “Oh, absolutely. And, Madeline, you hit the nail on the head, as we say in America. That was my very concern. What if no one knew Lord Dunbury? What would I do then?”

  Jade bit into the toast. From the corner of her eyes she saw Madeline’s brown ones widen perceptibly. The marmalade spoon slipped from Mrs. Thompson’s fingers and landed with a clang. Neville threw himself into the breach while his wife retrieved the spoon.