Strange Gods

by Annamaria Alfieri

  There was a table covered with a snow-white linen cloth set up in the shade near the veranda. Two of the houseboys ferried between it and the knots of guests on the lawn with trays of teacups, glasses of lemonade, and little sandwiches. Vera was sure some of the people would have preferred a tumbler of something much stronger, but her father had refused that idea. “Not even a Scot as patriotic as I would serve whiskey at a funeral at eleven in the morning.”

  Justin Tolliver, whose presence Vera had noted immediately, from her perch on the organ bench, approached her and her father as they stood side by side. He was in the white uniform he always wore in her dreams. He spoke to her father so softly that she could barely hear what he said, but he looked at her all the while he was speaking. Then he came to her and took her fingers in his gloved hand, very much as he had the first time she agreed to dance with him. “I am so sorry for your loss,” he said. “I wonder if I might come back later. Right now, I must go and meet Kwai Libazo at the stable. I have an order to follow.”

  The look in his eyes was disturbed, and the intensity with which he looked into hers disturbing. “Please do.” She could feel how crooked and fleeting her smile must look.

  “I will come back as soon as I can.” He was still holding her hand. He bowed over it and for a second, she thought he was going to kiss it. But he let it go and marched away.

  Vera turned away, shook hands with, and accepted kind words from D.C. Cranford, Lord and Lady Delamere, Berkeley Cole who was Lady Delamere’s brother, and a newcomer who turned out to be a Swedish baron named Bror von Blixen-Finecke, just arrived in the Protectorate. Vera wondered why he had come to a perfect stranger’s funeral. He took her hand and did kiss it. “Did you know my uncle?”

  “We played cards a few times at the club.” He had a lilting accent that went up at the end of his sentence, making it sound something between a statement and a question. Their little group went, then, to speak with some others near the refreshments table. Vera glanced at the house, half expecting her grief-stricken mother to be watching out from the window.

  A few at a time, the mourners eventually made their way off on their ponies, carts, and buggies. When there were only a few left, Vera found herself alone. She took a plate of sandwiches and a cup of tea to the veranda to wait for Tolliver to return. She was sitting, wondering if the order he had to follow had to do with Gichinga Mbura, when Denys Finch Hatton left a group that was heading for the stable and came toward her.

  “May I sit with you? I am in sore need of tea and you look as if you are just as much in need of sympathy.”

  “Certainly,” she said. She started to stand to serve him the tea.

  “No. No. I can help myself.”

  He was an athletic-looking man, not unlike Tolliver in that way, or her uncle. She knew that since he arrived a few months ago, he had been very much admired by all the settlers. Well, by all of the women, and if not all, by many of the men. He was handsome and graceful and had lovely manners. But there was something about the intense and intimate way he spoke to her that Vera found disturbing. As disturbing as she found being near Justin Tolliver, but not the same. There was nothing at all sinister about this man, and yet she felt in danger just being near him.

  * * *

  Assistant District Superintendent Justin Tolliver led Constable Kwai Libazo and his contingent of young native policemen along the path the farmworkers took to go back and forth to their village. “Do you think that Gichinga Mbura killed Josiah Pennyman, Libazo?” He hoped the other men did not understand English. Ostensibly, they knew the language, but few spoke it fluently. Kwai always spoke to them in Swahili or Kikuyu, but Tolliver could not be sure if the askaris understood what he was saying. He was trying his best to learn the native languages, but there were many of them, and they remained an absolute muddle to him. He feared his French teacher at Harrow had been correct when he said, “Tolliver, you are hopeless at foreign languages.”

  Libazo’s back stiffened at the question. “I cannot know if Mbura is guilty, sir.” He continued to march.

  It was the kind of answer Tolliver expected. One could never get any of these boys to hazard a guess at anything. They were too afraid of being wrong. “Do you think it likely?” He heard too much frustration and even a tinge of fear coming out with his own words. He did not want to do an injustice. In fact, he feared that was exactly what the arrest he was about to make would be.

  “Gichinga Mbura has a lot to lose,” Libazo said. Enigmatic and vague as ever.

  “It is going to be up to us to make sure justice is done here.”

  “Yes, sir.” Libazo’s answer was crisp and strong. As if he were mimicking the voice of the sergeant who had taught him the proper response to an officer.

  The Kikuyu village near the Scottish mission was a neat collection of round huts thatched with grass surrounded by fields of maize, sweet potatoes, and sorghum. On the hillside above them goats and cattle grazed. Cooking fires burned in shallow pits in front of each doorway. On a few, clay cooking vessels sat on circles of stones. Acacia trees, with their flat umbrellas of foliage, shaded the hard-packed bare ground between the dwellings. There was not a person in sight. Tolliver was sure word of their coming had preceded them, though how that could be, he did not know.

  “Which one is his?”

  Libazo pointed to the other end of the village.

  As they neared the witch doctor’s doorway, Tolliver heard a kind of low, mumbling chanting. “Libazo, you come with me,” he said quietly. “Tell the others to stand by the entrance and stop him if he tries to escape.” He waited while Libazo translated. He unsnapped the flap that held his pistol in its leather holster, looked Libazo in the eye, and nodded. Together, they ducked their heads and entered the hut.

  Gichinga Mbura stood swaying before a fire inside the small round room. The temperature in the hut was stifling. Mbura was no longer wearing the dark orange cloth he had had on the day before. In fact, he was hardy recognizable. He was naked except for a short grass skirt and a ruff around his neck of what looked like the remnants of a lace tablecloth decorated with colorful bird’s feathers. He had smeared his dark brown face with a black paste of some sort, and then dabbed chalk-white designs on top of the black. There were three white lines above his nose and three on each cheek. Smeared above and below his lips were a white chalk mustache and beard. On his head he wore a crown of ostrich feathers that swayed gently with the movements of his body. He crooned to the fire in a low-pitched hum, as if he were adoring it or pleading with it. The sound seemed to carry a threat. He could have been chanting words or just random sounds. Tolliver could not tell. He slipped his hand under the flap of his holster and felt the metal of his pistol, but did not remove it. He was sure that what he was about to do, what he had been ordered to do, would not have a good outcome. “Tell him what we are here to do,” Tolliver ordered Libazo.

  Kwai spoke with a commanding tone, too loud for the small space, but his words seemed to have no effect whatsoever on Mbura. Libazo looked inquiringly at Tolliver.

  “Repeat it,” Tolliver said. He reached up and unbuttoned the brass button that held down the epaulette of his khaki shirt. He removed the coil of brown hemp cord that hung from his right shoulder.

  Libazo spoke the lilting words even louder the second time. Mbura still paid them no mind, continued to sway and chant.

  “Listen, man,” Tolliver said, speaking to the witch doctor in English, keeping his voice even, having no idea if the savage would understand a word. “We are here to arrest you for the murder of Dr. Josiah Pennyman. You must come with us. If you did not kill B’wana Pennyman, you will not be punished.” The last sentence fell out of his mouth before he quite knew it was coming.

  Libazo looked shocked when he heard it.

  Gichinga Mbura straightened his body, put his head back, and laughed—a gleeful, satiric laugh that seemed to come from deep within him. Against the deep black of his painted face, his perfect teeth looked bright and
as white as milk, matching the streaks that decorated his face. His broad tongue was surprisingly pink.

  Without being asked, Libazo spoke to him again, sharply, and after Mbura stopped laughing continued with some sort of long explanation. The only part Tolliver understood was that Libazo pointed to the holster, which immediately subdued Mbura’s mirth.

  Tolliver waited and thought about something the district superintendent of police had said to him when he was working hard to recruit Justin to the force—that whatever happened, the English would prevail, because they had firearms and the natives did not. It did not seem to Tolliver the proper way to convert the primitive world to civilization.

  Mbura raised his fists, and for a moment, Tolliver thought he might have to use the pistol, but then the witch doctor held out his hands over the fire and opened them. A powder of some sort fell into the flames and startled all but Mbura by causing a green flare and a slight explosive sound.

  Before Tolliver could recoup and react, Libazo, taller, more physically powerful than Mbura—leapt forward and took the witch doctor by the wrists. Kwai said something low and guttural that made the usually musical native language sound like the hiss of a snake. Mbura answered him in kind.

  Tolliver took the cord and tied Mbura’s wrists. He placed the end of the lead in Libazo’s hand. Seeing Mbura’s hatred and anger gave him hope that what he was doing might very well turn out to be the right thing. Tolliver had no idea what sort of god or gods these Kikuyu worshipped, if any, but it was clear from Gichinga Mbura’s action that he was filled with exactly the sort of resentment Vera had described. The European settlers had brought their god as well as their rule of law to this place and in doing so had supplanted whatever deities endowed Mbura with his power over his people.

  “Tie the cord to your belt, Kwai,” he said. “Take him to the police station and lock him up. I will meet you there. And remember what happened when that boy who shot those other children was allowed to escape. If Mbura gets away from you, the district commissioner will assume you let him go on purpose, and I will have no way to defend you without District Superintendent Jodrell to back me up.”

  Before exiting, Tolliver looked around the hut and found two native spears. Their blades were as Libazo had described a Kikuyu spear point: leaf-shaped, but with a long taper into the shaft, more oval, whereas the blade that killed Pennyman was more triangular. He took the spears and handed them to Libazo. “Lock these up with the murder weapon in the storage room in the police station.”

  When they ducked out of the hut, Tolliver was blinded for a moment by the bright sunlight.

  Ordinarily, the ground between the random arrangement of small, round thatched huts would be alive with noisy children, scolding mothers, the sound of grain being ground in stone mortars. Now, though it was no longer deserted, it was silent but for the breeze rattling through the fronds of the banana plants. At least two dozen Kikuyu stood, here and there, in twos or threes, still as statues—even the children—and watched with wide eyes as Tolliver and his squadron marched their medicine man along the path that led through the forest back to the Scottish Mission.

  Tolliver saw Libazo and the other men off, with Mbura in tow. “Go directly to the jail. Be seen by as few people as possible.”

  Libazo nodded knowingly. He understood the problem. Not only was he a black constable mounted on a pony, but his prisoner was mounted in front of him. Tolliver judged this the best method for ensuring that Mbura would not escape, but if Cranford got word of it, Tolliver would be on the carpet. The rest of the askaris would run alongside, as was the norm for natives with parties of black and white policemen on duty.

  Tolliver went to the pump beside the stable, washed his hands, and rubbed the back of his neck with cool water. He dried off with his handkerchief and fitted his pith helmet back onto his damp hair. Vera McIntosh would give him a cup of tea and perhaps some lunch. The eggs and sausages and bread with marmalade that he had for breakfast had long since worn off. The soothing thought of sitting with her on her veranda and sipping tea quickened his step.

  As he rounded the corner of the house, he heard her speaking in an earnest voice. “What right have we to walk in and act as if we own it?”

  “We do that wherever we go,” a man’s voice responded with a laugh.

  Tolliver hesitated and then grimaced. Finch Hatton. He was talking with Vera. For a second, Tolliver thought of turning on his heel and leaving her to the charming interloper. Ever since Denys Finch Hatton had arrived in the Protectorate, at every social gathering, he was there, taking an interest in her. Tolliver could not imagine what he was about. Like Tolliver he was the younger son of a nobleman without enough in the way of funds to live well in England. Like Tolliver, he was here trying to make some sort of life for himself. But unlike Tolliver, he did not seem at all the type to take a serious interest in a missionary’s daughter, however gentlemanly her reverend father might be. He’d marry a fortune. Or not at all.

  Well, Tolliver was not about to leave the field to the charming Denys. He stiffened his spine and rounded the corner.

  Both Vera and her guest were facing away from him. Finch Hatton was sitting in the noisy wicker chair, which was keeping quiet for him, as it had not for Justin. He was much too close to Vera McIntosh, leaning toward her in that insinuating way of his. He was making a sweeping gesture taking in the panorama of flowering coffee fields, cattle grazing on the far hillside, the meandering river, and across it, the vast plains, bright with new green growth after the rains. “Besides, who wouldn’t want to own that?”

  “The Kikuyu do not believe anyone can own it,” Vera said. Her voice was wistful. “And now that the British government are here, it will never be the same.”

  Tolliver took off his hat, stepped forward, and cleared his throat. “Nothing ever stays the same.” He heard the sharpness in his voice, which he had no way of controlling. She was changing before his eyes now that Finch Hatton was paying court to her.

  “Tolliver,” Finch Hatton said and extended his hand.

  Tolliver took it.

  “I have been here at the feet of my instructress, learning the lore and philosophy of the native,” Finch Hatton said.

  Vera turned her deep brown gaze on Justin. “May I offer you some refreshment? Some sandwiches? Tea?”

  It was what Tolliver had been hoping for, but he could not remain with her while Finch Hatton hovered. Nor did he want to leave just yet.

  “I would like to speak with the Reverend McIntosh.”

  “I will find him for you,” she said and whisked through the door, in that light, quick way of hers, as if her feet hardly touched the ground.

  “What do you make of this business with her uncle?” Finch Hatton asked as soon as she was out of earshot. “Everyone is saying it was the witch doctor.”

  Tolliver had no wish whatsoever to discuss his work with this man. They ought to have been allies. Finch Hatton had an easy way about him. Tolliver had thought they had a lot in common when they first met, but any hopes that they might be friends were blotted out by their rival interest in Vera McIntosh. In the past month, the chaps at the club had begun to notice how Tolliver prickled in Finch Hatton’s presence. Tolliver joked with them that Denys was Eton and Oxford and he was Harrow and Cambridge. Besides, they played for different polo teams. Among British men, it was enough of an excuse to be plausible.

  “We have just arrested Gichinga Mbura,” Tolliver answered, despite himself. Word of that would get around soon enough in the tight society of European Nairobi. “The proof of his guilt is still in play, however.” This also slipped out against his will. Instinct told him that the Kikuyu medicine man was not the murderer, but he had no reason to let his rival know that.

  Finch Hatton’s blue eyes narrowed. “If not, who?”

  Tolliver got control of his tongue. Bringing up Kirk Buxton was much too much to reveal. He was saved by Vera’s returning with her father.

  Clement McIntosh was a b
ig-boned and florid man with a lumbering walk, and as unlike Vera as Tolliver’s father was unlike him. The missionary took Tolliver’s shoulders in his hands and squeezed them in greeting. It was a purely fatherly gesture of the kind Tolliver had never received from his own papa. “My dear chap, what are we to make of this dreadful business?”

  Tolliver put on his helmet and indicated the lawn that sloped toward the coffee fields. “Let’s walk out for a moment,” he said. “There are some things I wanted to ask you.”

  The missionary picked up a pale straw hat with a black band from a table next to the door, put it on, and followed Tolliver. Vera gave them a look of curiosity and disappointment that Tolliver enjoyed.

  When they were across the lawn and close enough to the fields to hear the natives chanting as they worked, Tolliver stopped in the shade of a thorn tree. “I wanted to ask you some questions about your brother-in-law’s private life,” he said. “I thought it would not be proper to speak of it in the presence of Miss McIntosh.”

  “Quite right,” her father said, as if he understood already what the subject of this conversation would be.

  “On orders from D.C. Cranford, I have sent Gichinga Mbura to the jail in the Nairobi police station, but I am not convinced that he murdered Dr. Pennyman.”

  “Nor am I, if the truth be known.”

  “The truth is what I am after. I feel very strongly that if we do injustice to the natives, we will never succeed at what we came here to accomplish.”

  McIntosh looked into Tolliver’s face not without surprise. “You are more sensible than many a policeman, and I could not agree with you more, my lad. Ours is not an extremely popular point of view with the settlers or the crown’s administrators, however. Many would give lip service to the notion but find ways to ignore it when it suits their purposes.”