Strange Gods

by Annamaria Alfieri

  Vera and Ngethe Meru and their group arrived at Nyeri at midday and continued on after only a brief respite. They were making good time despite Ngethe’s slow pace and her blistered feet. She would push their pace as fast as she could without harming Ngethe, not rest until she had found her brother safe and was nearby to keep him so.

  The old tracker proved his mettle in picking up signs of the Newland group only a few leagues out of town. He knew the habits of the safari men and how to find good spots for shooting game. He guessed Newland’s tracker and gunbearers also knew the best way to take, and he was right.

  Passing through Nyeri the next morning, Tolliver learned from the local people that Vera had left the town not twenty-four hours before. The trail that Kinuthia picked up just after noon was not that of the Newland party but Vera’s. As they followed, the tracker confirmed that Vera was on the right trail. Older indications showed that an even larger party had come the same way two weeks or more ago.

  Tolliver was relieved. Whoever was guiding Vera had the right skills. Then he wondered if she herself were capable of reading the earth like a tracker. He did not like the idea that she might have such a manly talent that he did not possess.

  * * *

  While Tolliver was wondering what it would be like to be in love with a woman who knew more than he, Ngethe was convincing Vera that they should take a brief detour. Ngethe reckoned that the Newland party would have lingered on the plain that surrounded them, since game was so plentiful here and the little river would give them an ample source of water. There was a high outcropping across the river. Though the Newland party had not crossed here, he proposed that they do so. He wanted to climb the tor. The view from the top would allow them to look out a long, long distance. At dusk, they would very likely be able to see the bonfire Newland’s guides would use to signal the position of their camp. Then all they would have to do was to make straight for the camp. If they did not see a fire, then they could easily come back, recross the river, and pick up the Newlands’ trail again. Vera welcomed any shortcut that had a chance of getting her to Otis faster.

  So they crossed the river.

  17.

  Kwai Libazo knew immediately that Justin Tolliver was faking a calm exterior and that Denys Finch Hatton was also trying to hide his agitation. Kinuthia had discovered that the two parties he was tracking had gone in different directions. And Kwai rightly guessed that Tolliver was now torn as to which of the groups they should follow.

  “Do we think her tracker made a mistake and thought Newland crossed the river here?” Tolliver asked of Finch Hatton.

  Libazo waited until Finch Hatton began to interrogate Kinuthia on the subject. “Sir,” he said quietly to Tolliver, “Kinuthia already told me that the signs of which way the Newland party went are plain here. I have been trying to learn how to track, watching what Kinuthia looks for. Even I can see very well that the Newland group went that way.” He pointed along the course of the river. “The lady’s tracker must have been able to see that, too. Yet they crossed.” He pointed across the stream.

  “But why?”

  “I cannot say.”

  Tolliver disliked the situation. He had hoped to catch Vera up by dusk this evening. Now the light was fading, and he was stuck in a cleft stick. Duty drew him to follow Newland to apprehend the man who very likely had killed Josiah Pennyman. But his blood, his skin, and also his heart, if he admitted it, told him that he must protect Vera from harm.

  “Listen, old chap,” Finch Hatton was saying, before Tolliver had expressed even the slightest doubt as to how to proceed. “There are two of us. You have your mission to apprehend Newland. You take Kinuthia and follow that way.” He pointed in the direction the Newlands had taken. “Miss McIntosh’s trail is fresh. I’ll take Libazo here and follow her. We will leave ourselves plenty of markings to make it easy for us to get back to this spot. As you go along, drop a line of obvious clues—bread crumbs for us to follow so that we can come along after you.”

  It was the very last thing Tolliver wanted to do. Not only would he have to leave Vera’s safety to Finch Hatton; worse yet, the dreaded Denys would be the hero who rescued her, what Tolliver himself desired with all his heart to be.

  She must be quite near. He looked out across the river. If only he could get up high enough to see, he might be able to spot her in the distance. But there was no place nearby. Not even a tall tree he could climb. Three feet off the ground was as high as he could get, and the only trees were along the river bank where they were below the level of the ground that rose slightly across the water. There was a high outcropping on the other side. It would give him the vantage point he needed to see her. It stood about five miles away and was easily a hundred, a hundred and thirty feet high, if his guess was correct given the deceptive distances and sizes of landmarks in the African bush.

  But the dark was coming fast. There was practically no dusk here so near the equator. Finch Hatton had begun to tap his foot, like a man about to start a foot race.

  “No,” Tolliver said. “We should not split our group. We will make camp here tonight and at first light we will make straight for that outcropping in the distance.” He pointed to it. “If Newland or Miss McIntosh is anywhere in the area, we will be able to see them from up there.”

  Finch Hatton looked disappointed and doubtful, but Kinuthia nodded approvingly and Libazo saluted. For the first time in his life, but not the last, Tolliver preferred the approval of the Africans to that of his own race.

  * * *

  Eight miles off, Vera’s camp was in turmoil.

  Ngethe Meru had climbed the rocky outcropping just before sunset to see if he could spot the fires of the Newland party in the distance. He had, and he pointed out the camp to his three companions. It was no more than three hours’ walk to their northeast.

  Then, as he turned to descend, something that looked like the movement of people back near the river distracted him. He was about to ask his men to look that way with their younger eyes. He did not watch where he stepped. The snake was sequestered in among the scrub bushes and boulders. It struck.

  Down at the foot of the outcropping, organizing the cooking of their dinner, Vera heard the old man’s scream and knew. She dropped what she was doing and ran. Oh. No. No. No. NO! Her inner voice was shouting as loud as the three warrior boys who had climbed up with Ngethe.

  The old tracker was moaning and crying, being carried down by two of the younger men. The third carried the now-dead snake impaled on his spear.

  Vera sank to the ground. The worst. The worst possible. A puff adder.

  Ngethe was writhing. Blood was dripping from the wound just above his right ankle. His bearers laid him on the ground before her. The others behind her hopped and shouted, cried out their panic and dread.

  Vera covered her face with her hands. Darkness was descending like a pall. She did not make a sound. Unspeakable. Unspeakable. Unspeakable. The only word she could think drummed in her brain.

  Muiri came and sat beside her. The girl was only fourteen but she was considered a woman by Kikuyu standards. She put a hand on Vera’s arm. Vera took Muiri’s hand in hers. “We will be alright,” she whispered, though she knew that such would not be the case.

  Vera rose.

  They all knew the consequences of this, as they all knew that death could strike at any time here in this loveliest of all lands. Vera could easily predict what would happen. Ngethe would be dead within a day, in two at the most, in horrible pain the whole while. What Vera did not know was what if anything she could do. She had grown up next to a hospital. At home there were always people who knew what to do with illness or injury. But in this situation she was supposed to take charge. At least that was the way of things here and now.

  She went and sat by the fire, and called everyone together around her. One of the men who had carried Ngethe stayed with him, out of earshot. She hardly knew what she was doing, but whatever happened, they were in this together. She needed t
o be one of them. But she also needed to make sure she did the right thing. As an African. For this was an African problem. And the best way to decide was this way, together—all of them, the African way.

  Around their circle, the grave brown faces reflected the red of the fire’s flames. “We must do what is best,” she said. “We must decide together what that is.”

  They began to speak their minds. They did not look at one another when they spoke but stared into the flames. They did not have to talk for long about what would happen to Ngethe. None of them saw much point in stating the obvious. Leaving him alone while he died was not an option anyone mentioned. Here, alone, he would have hyenas on him while he still lived. That would be the worst of all choices. The possible ways to deal with his suffering narrowed down within minutes to two: stay with him while he suffered or put him out of his misery.

  Vera listened as they argued for the latter. They spoke of kindness, of ending their revered father figure’s suffering. She said they could wait, stay with him until the end. It was what she as a Christian had been taught was right. They all grimaced when she suggested Ngethe should be allowed to die in agony. Their dark eyes were tearful when they talked of saying good-bye to him, but they were determined to save him from further suffering. She heard them. And her own father’s voice spoke to her in her mind. The priest of the Church of Scotland would say that there was no mercy in killing another person before the Lord took him in His own time.

  Vera felt as if a fist were squeezing her heart. “How would we help him to die?” she asked. “Who would do it?” She did not want to think about it. She wanted to run away. She wanted to go to sleep and wake up at home with the sound of the workers spreading out in the coffee fields and the cup rattling on the tray as Njui brought her mother her breakfast. She wanted her uncle to be alive so he could learn to be a better man. And she wanted to silence Ngethe’s moans that came through the night as soon as the voices around the fire were still. No one answered her questions.

  She put her hand on Muiri’s shoulder and leaned on her while she rose on stiff legs. “I will speak to Ngethe,” she said. She signaled his men to come with her.

  They squatted around the old man as he lay on the ground. “Baba,” she said, addressing him as if he were her father, “what do you want us to do for you?”

  He looked to his companions, not to her. He said a phrase she did not know, but it contained the word “muti,” which she understood. It meant “tree.” It was from the bark of a tree that they obtained the poison they used on the tips of their arrows and spears when they hunted. Poison that would mean instant death. Her father’s voice would not be quiet in her heart.

  His men stood. “Leave this to us, little sister,” they told her.

  She could not stop her tears. She took Ngethe Meru’s hand and kissed it. “Good-bye, Baba,” she said.

  “Yes” was all he answered.

  She did not go to the camp bed in her tent, but took her blanket and lay on the ground near the fire with the others. Looking up at the starry sky she loved so well, she tried to believe what her playmates of old had told her, that each star was the soul of a person who had died. That soon Ngethe would be up there shining down upon them.

  A sob escaped her when it occurred to her that he would not be dying if she had not brought him here.

  18.

  Both Tolliver and Vera were awake before first light the next morning, impatient to be away.

  After only an hour or so of fitful sleep, she wanted to run as fast as her legs would carry her from the scene of Ngethe’s demise.

  Two hours’ march away, back near the river, Tolliver knew that only action would keep at bay the torrent of worrisome pictures falling into his head of her attacked by lions, gored by buffalo. To keep from beating his head on the ground to halt his imaginings, he was up and moving with the merest lightening of the sky.

  “March,” he called as his raggedy column formed up. With him at its head they forded the river and moved off, following the trail of Vera’s party that led straight to the high tor in the distance.

  With fewer people to organize and all of her group determined to be away from the place where they knew Ngethe’s remains lay exposed to the carrion eaters, Vera had less trouble getting underway with speed. By the time the sunlight was strong enough to throw a shadow, she and her Kikuyu were several miles gone, making straight for the camp Ngethe had seen before the snake bit him.

  But Tolliver had halted. There, over a spot near the high outcropping, buzzards were circling. In three beats of his heart, his hand was in the air. “Doubletime, lads,” he shouted. Now Tolliver’s target was whatever the scavenger birds had their eyes on. With every step he tried to convince himself that many things having nothing to do with Vera could be dying out there. The area was replete with game. That was the whole point of people coming here to hunt. But those reassuring thoughts were soon overwhelmed by fear: there were other predators out here besides men—lions … and there were subtler dangers—deadly things that hid among the rocks. Good God, snakes. The striking cobra was the last thing he wished to imagine.

  At the front of his jogging column, he picked up his pace. Suppose, he asked himself, that Newland saw her coming and realized that she had found him out. Then she would become the target of the worst predator of all: a man bent on murder. He ordered himself to stop such imaginings. He tried to laugh at his overly dramatic terrors. But he could not manage it. He just ran faster.

  Finch Hatton was keeping pace, of course. He seemed to be treating the whole effort as if it were some sort of sporting event. The boys carrying the heaviest loads were falling quite a bit behind.

  The birds were still circling, which could mean that whatever it was had not yet died. Or there could be animals gnawing on whatever the vultures were waiting to get at. Tolliver did not pause when he saw the jackals. He took the rifle slung over his shoulder and held it at the ready, but the beasts ran off without a second glance as the runners approached. The carcass, whatever it was, was still hidden in the grass.

  Tolliver held up his hand to signal a stop, but the boys behind him had already done so. He approached, and his stomach turned. It was recognizable as a person, but not easily. The Kikuyu boys exclaimed loudest.

  Kwai Libazo came up behind him. “He was a Kikuyu. Do you see the iron necklace? The rings around his ankle? The enlarged earlobes. These are Kikuyu emblems.”

  “He must have been with Miss McIntosh’s party,” Finch Hatton said. “But his hair is gray. He must have been quite an old man. Why would she have taken a man so old on such a mission?”

  “He must have been her tracker,” Tolliver and Kinuthia said in unison.

  “Then she is now without a tracker,” Libazo said, speaking out of turn, as had become his wont.

  It was not Libazo’s insolence but what he had said that Tolliver found upsetting. “She has gone off without a tracker then,” he said. “It can’t have been that long ago.” He was already making for the outcropping that loomed above them. “Kinuthia, come with me. Libazo, tell the men to drink and catch their breath,” he called over his shoulder.

  As they climbed, Tolliver made for the side of the outcropping that faced in the direction where Vera’s party must have gone. Before they were more than thirty feet up, Kinuthia touched Tolliver’s shoulder and pointed. The emerald green plain that surrounded them stretched for miles in every direction. It was dotted here and there with clumps of thorn trees and herds of antelope. The river they had crossed this morning curved sharply to the right, glistening in the distance. The carrion birds were still circling, but a little farther off from the corpse.

  In the middistance, where Kinuthia’s finger indicated, Tolliver made out a party of about twenty, trekking away from them. They looked few and very vulnerable in the middle of this vast area. At least sixty Cape buffalo were grazing about a hundred yards off to their right. Tolliver jumped down a level and made to descend and get after them. Kinuthia g
rabbed his shoulder and pointed again: farther into the distance, off next to the river, at the foot of some low hills, was a large camp; smoke rose from its fires. The Newland camp. Vera and her boys were making directly for it.

  And if Tolliver knew anything, there was a murderer there.

  * * *

  Every step Vera took pained her. Blisters on her toes, cramps in her calves. The remorse over Ngethe tortured her soul. Only her fear for Otis could have driven her to go on.

  A whiff of smoke in the air told her she was close, though she could not see the Newland camp in the undulating plain. The boys with her chanted as they ran, and suddenly there were eight or ten porters approaching them. They were dressed in the brown and navy uniforms of Tarlton and Company, the leading safari outfitters, which she found odd. Ordinarily, settlers traveled on safari less expensively than one did with Tarlton’s.

  “Are you with Richard Newland’s party?” she asked in Swahili.

  “Yes, Miss,” the lead boy answered in English. “You look done in, may we help you?” They had a pallet with them, on which she gladly lay herself down.

  Richard Newland and his son came out to meet her before she arrived at their campsite. “Where is Otis?” she demanded to know.

  “In a minute,” Richard said. “Let us get you settled. You’ve had a difficult time.” His aquiline face was careworn, as if he were the one who had spent the last several days tramping through the wilderness as fast as he could move. He led his porters to a camp bed under an acacia tree, where they placed her, pallet and all.