TWO
The Phoenix had come and gone. The rains had slackened, and soon would be seen no more until the spring. Burutu was a hive of activity, because Quintus was busy tallying stores and making calculations regarding the number of donkeys that would be required to carry them. There was much haggling between the monk and Langoisse over the number of men that ought to go on the expedition, and they argued the benefits, measure for measure, of powder and salt, needles and knives, grain and blankets. Quintus interrogated natives from half a dozen tribes about the meanderings of the great river, and the people who lived along it, and the nature of the country through which they might pass on their way to the mysterious land of Adamawara.
Noell had remained on the fringes of this tumult of preparation; he had gone back to his daily ritual with the microscope. The prospect of a journey to this mysterious Adamawara intrigued him, but he could not wholeheartedly believe in an African Eden where a vampire Adam had long ago received the sacred breath of life.
The only person who observed Noell’s unenthusiasm was Leilah. She was the only one who felt that she had a right to interrupt him at his secular worship whenever she liked, and though he usually disliked such interruption, the day came when he was glad of it, because his microscopic studies could no longer fully absorb his interest, or distract him from contemplation of what lay ahead.
‘Thou hast not been kind to me,’ Leilah told him, reproachfully, on the day in question. She meant that he had not talked to her overmuch, especially not in private. In the course of her past visits, he had often been prepared to confide in her, a little, and she had told him her intimate thoughts in exchange. Being a poor sort of Christian, she had no other confessor, nor would she have wanted one, but she liked to think of Noell as a friend even though she could not have him for a lover. She seemed to gain some small glimmering of pleasure from telling him a few of those thoughts which otherwise would have remained secret. During this visit, though, she had not yet succeeded in bringing him to such a confidential mood.
‘I am sorry,’ he told her. ‘I have had much to do, because of the Phoenix, and now am repentant because my labour of study has been neglected. There is so much to be seen in the microcosm, and I am a very long way from understanding.’
She sat beside him on the verandah. ‘Sad thou art,’ she guessed, ‘and in bad humour. I know thou dost not like the notion of a journey in the great forest, but I do not think thou wouldst refuse it.’
Her English was better now than it had been when they had first met, and although it was still the case that by far the greater part of her conversation was with Langoisse she knew well enough the conventional uses of thee and thou. But she had continued, obstinately, through all the years of their acquaintance, to use the intimate form of speech with Noell. He never replied in kind.
‘You read me right,’ he said. ‘The forest is a bad place, and there are some there who would do us harm. No raiders have attacked the station for five years now, but that is because the blacks who live nearby benefit more from our continued presence than they ever could from a single looting of our warehouses. They keep their more distant neighbours at bay, more efficiently than the firepower of our cannon. Quintus may have grown too trusting, believing that he can deal with any tribesmen squarely and safely. I am not so sure.
‘Then again, there is the fever. Over the years, I have seen Quintus labour to find an effective treatment. He long ago abandoned bleeding as ineffectual, and has lately tried native medicines, but there is no real defence. And there is the heat of the afternoon and the cold of the dead of night. I know that Quintus once walked across half of Europe, and that the emissaries of popes and princes think little of embarking upon journeys of thousands of miles, but in Europe there are roads, and inns, and the climate is much kinder. I know not how far it might be to Adamawara, if there really is such a place, but the journey there and back will not be short, and this quest seems to me to be dicing with the devil, while the dice are loaded to our disadvantage.’
‘Then do not go,’ she said, simply. ‘And I will stay here with thee, to see if our friends return.’
‘Can I see Quintus go without me?’ he objected. ‘Can I bid him hail and farewell, if I think that he goes into danger? Now that my mother is dead, he seems to me the only real kin which I have in all the world, more a father to me than my father ever was. I would not desert him; nor would I trust Langoisse to look after him well enough.’
She did not take offence at his reckoning of those he considered to be his kin; she did not desire to be a sister to him. ‘Is that a copy of the device thy father built?’ she asked him, pointing at the microscope after a pause in the conversation. ‘May I look into it?’
He showed her how to put her right eye to the lens, and close her left, then placed her fingers on the focusing-wheel.
‘What is it?’ she asked. He explained that the thing at which he had been peering was a tiny seed, which he had divided when it had begun to grow, so that he could examine the shoot and the root which were sprouting from it.
She asked him what he had learned from such examinations, and he told her something of the work that Kenelm Digby had done with microscopes at Gayhurst. He explained that Digby disputed the theory of preformation, which held that all the parts of an animal were present in the egg-cell from which it grew, very small in size, and had only to grow as the embryo developed toward its hatching or its birth. He told her that Digby favoured instead the theory of epigenesis, which held that the parts of the body came into existence by stages, and that the egg was a very simple thing which was dramatically transformed as it developed.
Noell explained how Digby had proved his case by taking a batch of eggs laid by chickens, and breaking them open at different times, to see how differently developed were the embryos inside, and with the aid of the microscope had put his theory successfully to the proof.
He told her that Digby was an atomist, who believed that all things were composed of tiny parts, and thought that all things might be understood if these atoms were to be described, and their transactions and transformations examined. But here, his explanations became too peculiar, and Leilah had difficulty following their course. She begged him to tell her instead what he was doing, and why.
‘I too am studying the development of seeds and embryos,’ Noell explained, ‘and I think that the process of unfolding by which tiny things become whole living bodies is a process of multiplication, in which atoms of flesh divide themselves again and again. In the meantime, I believe that they change themselves according to a predetermined plan. I have seen that the flesh of very simple plants is made up of clusters of similar particles, which I think are fleshly atoms. I have seen such atoms in certain kinds of animal flesh too – like the skin, or the liver. Bodily fluids like blood and semen are made up of corpuscles in a liquid serum, and the water of the river is filled with very tiny creatures, some of which resemble the seminal particles.
‘I am interested in these atoms because I think they may be the agents of disease: a possibility which my father once debated with Carmilla Bourdillon. We have long been taught to think of sickness as a disturbance of the bodily humours, but our bodies are more complicated machines than that simple notion allows. I think that sickness may be a disturbance of the bodily particles, perhaps because something makes them change in ways other than is proper or good for them. I believe that foreign atoms and corpuscles often get into the body, especially into the blood. It may be that bleeding cures some sicknesses not because it redresses the balance of the bodily humours, but because it lets out of the body some of the particles which have invaded it, but it works imperfectly as a method, because it does not get to grips with the real problem. Effective medicines may be those whose own atoms are poisonous to the atoms of disease, but not to the atoms of our bodies.’
Noell knew that Leilah could not properly follow the logic of the argument, which must seem to her to be rather cryptic, but she would not
tell him so, replying to him only with a bland stare. He went on, trying to find words which she might grasp more easily. ‘If I am right,’ he said, ‘then I hope also to begin to understand what vampires are. I cannot believe what the Gregorians say, that they are demons in human guise, or what they say themselves, that the difference is in their souls rather than their flesh. It might be, I think, that the particles which make up the bodies of vampires have undergone some further change, which the fleshly atoms of common men have not. It is clear that the long life which vampires enjoy is not contained in the pattern which God wrote into the seed of humankind, but is put there by a process which only the vampires know. I think that there may be a medicine which brings about this change, and which the vampires of Africa use in the rite they call Ogo-Ejodun just as the vampires of Gaul use it in their so-called sabbats. I do not believe that prayers or incantations, however much the vampires may use them, have any real effect. It is only a transformation of the bodily mechanism, wrought by the addition of some new particle, which makes the atoms of common flesh into atoms of vampire flesh.
‘This is what my father may have believed, though he could not give me a full explanation before he died. He may also have believed that the conversion of vampire flesh to common flesh might be reversed – again, perhaps, by some kind of particle introduced into vampire blood. That, I think, is what he might have been trying to prove in the manner of his death. In order to destroy vampires, it may first be necessary to make them human again.’
‘Is that what you want?’ she asked. ‘Not to become a vampire yourself, but rather to destroy the ones there are.’
He shook his head. ‘For the moment,’ he answered, ‘I seek only to understand, to draw aside that curtain of mystery which hides the mechanisms of ordinary life as well as the secrets of vampire flesh. There is more mystery in the growth of plants, or in the lives of creatures too tiny for the naked eye to see, than ever I could have imagined, and I would be glad to win any enlightenment at all. First of all, I must find the truth; then and then only might I begin to see how the truth might be pitted against the evils of the world. ’
‘And what does Quintus say about your atoms and your corpuscles?’ she asked, in all innocence.
Sometimes, Noell wondered whether it was to be his fate that he was to be entirely eclipsed by the shadow of his teacher. Since Quintus had acquired the reputation of being the wisest man in England, the question was always: What does Quintus say? Here, it was no different. Quintus was the babalawo from the sea, to whom the black men listened. Noell was simply the man who stared into the strange device.
Before he could reply, though, Ntikima came running to them, with news filling his mouth so amply that he could hardly spit it out.
‘Another ship?’ exclaimed Noell, springing to his feet.
But Ntikima shook his head, and pointed not to the channel which led to the sea, but to the forest on the northern shore. He repeated a single word, excitedly: ‘Mkumkwe! Mkumkwe!’
‘What does he mean?’ asked Leilah.
‘I don’t know,’ said Noell, who knew that he had heard the word before, but had forgotten its meaning.
Ntikima said more, the sentences tumbling over one another in his hurry. He spoke in Uruba, but Noell’s command of that language was not very good, and he switched to English.
‘Men come,’ said Ntikima. ‘Men of Adamawara. They come with elemi, to seek out the babalawo from the sea. The time has come to go to Adamawara. They come! They come!’
Noell stared at the boy, unable to believe what was being said to him. Only twelve days had passed since Quintus and Langoisse had finally decided that this was the year to outfit the long-planned expedition. How could the elemi possibly know that? When had these mysterious travellers set out from their own land?
‘How does he know they are coming?’ asked Leilah.
‘The forest people can communicate with drums,’ said Noell. ‘Perhaps he has heard a signal drum. Or perhaps the news has been brought by travellers who have come down the river. The tribes upriver send goods down by canoe, and news travels much faster down the river than overland, especially when its waters are in flood. The African vampires do not often visit the delta – if vampires really are coming, the entire country will be alert to their arrival.’
‘Will no one try to kill them?’ she asked, ingenuously.
‘No one will do them harm,’ Noell assured her. ‘These vampires are not princes, who rule by tyrannic force, but godlings who weave the tapestries of faith and magic, and are trusted to weave them well.’
Other boys had gathered now, disappointed that they had been outraced in the bringing of the news, but eager to make up now by supplying further detail. There was a clamour of voices, from which it was difficult to divine anything coherent, but it seemed that there was not much else to know. Noell called for quiet, then dismissed them, as soon as he was confident that they had nothing of importance to tell.
‘Is this a bad thing?’ asked Leilah, uncertainly.
‘I cannot tell,’ said Noell. ‘The elemi are a mystery, and we do not know whether they may mean us harm. If they have come for Quintus, they might as easily mean to destroy him as to help him on his journey.’
‘But how did they know that they should come here now?’
‘Who knows? Perhaps it is coincidence; or perhaps they do have powers of divination which we cannot understand. But these vampires hold the fate of the station in their hands. If they were to pronounce sentence of death upon us, the tribesmen would readily turn to the business of slaughter. We have seen black vampires once or twice before, but they were utterly indifferent to us, as though we did not even belong to their world. I have always thought that here, as in the Imperium, it is better not to attract the attention of such beings.’
‘The Stingray is here,’ she said, ‘and we have many guns to set beside your own if the need should arise.’
He laughed. ‘Perhaps we should all go aboard her, and sail away,’ he said, if the elemi wish us evil, no power will suffice to save us while we are in their land, and we’d far better trust to the mercy of a rotten hull and a tattered sail. But if they really mean to guide us that might be the best hope we have of arriving in Adamawara alive and well.’
Noell watched the boys running to carry the news to Quintus, who was tending his donkeys. He saw the monk take Ntikima by the shoulder, hardly able to confine the boy’s excitement. Then Quintus looked across the bright-lit sand, to the verandah where he and Leilah stood, and though he could not see the monk’s blue eyes, shadowed by the broad-brimmed hat, he knew that they must be shining with curiosity, and with the warmth of tempting dreams.
THREE
Ntikima watched with avid interest when the party of black warriors arrived in the settlement. Though they came in canoes, and had local tribesman to serve as ferrymen, they were obviously remote in origin. They were tall, and they had round broad heads with almond-shaped eyes set rather far apart. Their thick black hair was arranged in tufts and plaits. Their noses were flat and their lips thick; their cheeks, foreheads and upper arms were scored and the scars pigmented with red and yellow dyes. These were the Mkumkwe.
The Mkumkwe warriors carried themselves in the haughty manner which Ntikima associated with hillmen. Upland herdsmen, who measured a man’s worth by the cattle he had, always affected to despise the forest-dwellers, whose only livestock were fowl and few goats, and who therefore lived by uplander reckoning a life of abject poverty. The Mkumkwe carried long spears, with broad iron blades, and they wore plumes of white feathers and ornaments of beaten copper. These warriors announced to Quintus and Noell Cordery, speaking in the Uruba tongue, that a great Oni-Olorun awaited them in a nearby village, to which they were summoned in order that they should hear his words.
It was obvious to Ntikima that Noell Cordery did not like the tone of this summons, but the babalawo told him that he must not mind. Though he must have travelled far to speak with the white men, a
priest of Olorun who was an elemi and an elder of Adamawara must insist as a matter of honour that the white men should now come to him.
The white babalawo seemed careful that his own status should be established before he set out to this appointed meeting. He asked the warriors several questions, but they answered him only by echoing his words. Ntikima knew that such men as the Mkumkwe were never willing to direct questions, and he intervened to help Quintus, speculating that the warriors had brought the Oni-Olorun from Adamawara because the elders had heard of the many cures which his medicines had wrought, and wished to learn a little of the wisdom of the tribes beyond the sea. The Mkumkwe admitted that it might be so.
Quintus asked Mburrai and Ngadze – the most imposing of the settlement’s black labourers – to take Noell and himself to the northern shore. He did not mention Ntikima, but made no objection when Ntikima also climbed into the canoe. Noell was dressed simply enough, in a white shirt and grey hose, but had fine leather boots. The babalawo wore his white habit, with stout boots beneath, and a big, broad – brimmed hat which only half-hid his glinting eyeglasses. Ntikima, who thought of them as his white men, was proud of their appearance; they seemed to him more than a match for the feathered and tattooed warriors, if only because of their height – they topped the biggest of the proud hillmen by an easy handspan.
The walk through the forest was an easy one, along a well-worn track, though Ntikima would have advised the white men to go on donkey-back had he been asked. Usually, when Ntikima went this way in the hazy morning light, the forest was nearly silent and there was no one about, but today there were Ibau men and boys out in force, to see the Mkumkwe, and to gossip about the meaning of their arrival. Ntikima was glad of this attention, pleased to be seen in this exotic company, and strode along with the self-possession which was fitting in an Uruba warrior among men of subject tribes.
Empire of Fear Page 18
