A Spear of Summer Grass (22 page)

“Will they? And will that really help your cause?”

“It’s early days yet, my dear, too early to say,” he said dismissively. “But the king’s second son could be a powerful ally, and I have hopes the duke may be persuaded to see reason where others have failed. If we are successful, well, the future could be a dazzling one for us.”

I opened my mouth, but he shook his head. “I shouldn’t have said anything. But yours is remarkably soothing company, Delilah. You have been a wonderful comfort, my dear,” he finished lightly. He rose. “I must go, but if at any time you need me, you have only to say.”

He didn’t say another word, just gave me a sad, meaningful smile and went on his way, closing the door softly behind him.

* * *

That night I awoke suddenly, although I couldn’t say why. The crickets were singing in the garden, but the nightjars had gone quiet. I waited for a sound, but there was nothing—no crashing in the bushes that meant a hippo was wandering through, no shrill laugh from the hyenas. Nothing but the high, insistent chirp of the insects and a feeling that something was wrong. I lit a cigarette and waited. The full moon was veiled in cloud and the only light was the glow from the tip of my cigarette, winking like a firefly. Still I waited, but nothing happened and after a while I stubbed out the cigarette and rolled over in the dark.

It was the shouts that awakened me the second time. Omar the cook raised the alarm, shouting for Pierre, who shouted for me. I threw on my clothes and shoved my feet into my boots without stopping to fasten anything properly. I ran outside and found them, lying in the complete stillness that only death can bring. Their throats had been torn and their feathers were scattered around the little chicken run.

“What did it?” I demanded. “An animal?
Une animale?
”

Pierre pointed to the locked run, replying in unsteady French. “An animal cannot walk through fences,
madame.
”

He was right. I inspected the perimeter of the run and there wasn’t a single hole or bent section of wire. It was solid as the day it had been constructed. I dusted off my hands and instructed the cook to pluck them and salvage what he could to feed the farmhands.

He backed away, holding his hands in front of himself as if to push me away.

“What is the trouble?”

Pierre looked from the cook to me. “No one will eat the chickens,
madame.
They have been touched by bad magic.” The words in French had a chilling grace.
Mauvaise magie.

“Bad magic? Don’t be daft. The damage was done by a human with a key and a grudge and I think we all know who that is.”

Pierre shrugged. “A man can command bad spirits to do his bidding.”

“No spirit did this. It was a man,” I insisted. But Pierre and Omar would not be budged. They refused even to touch the chickens, and I had to find one of the hardier Kikuyu to remove the carcasses and burn them. It was the only way to cleanse the bad magic, Pierre insisted, although he added that the services of one of the local witches would not go amiss.

I cursed under my breath, but suddenly I realised that it was fully dawn. The sun had finished rising, a great ball of blood just over the horizon. And there was no noise from the cattle, no persistent demands to be milked, no encouragement to Moses to turn them out to pasture.

“No!” I shouted, setting off at a dead run.

I smelled the blood before I opened the door to the barn. The floor was awash with it, and I slipped as I ran inside. The cows were silent lumps of flesh, already rotting, but something in that barn still lived, I realised. I threw myself down on the floor next to Moses and felt his throat for a pulse. It was there, thin and thready as a bird’s. Uneven, but it was there. I checked him for broken bones and injuries and found a vicious wound to his head. His blood had mingled with that of the cows, and I gathered him up and moved him out of that dark place that smelled of death. I carried him out into the open, collapsing just as Gideon walked up. He had brought firewood, and the smile faded from his face as he opened his arms and dropped the load of it to the ground. He ran, hurdling over the pasture fence as if it were no more than a bush. He took his little brother into his arms.

“He needs a doctor, Gideon. A proper doctor. I can’t fix this. I don’t have enough experience with head wounds.”

Gideon’s expression hardened. “No,
Bibi.
There has been enough of white men in this. I will take him to our
babu.
”

He rose with Moses, limp in his arms. “Gideon, this isn’t a matter of magic. No incantations can fix this. He needs proper medicine.”

Gideon gave me a sorrowful look, as one might to a child who cannot learn its lessons.

“No, this was not magic,
Bibi.
But it was evil. And no one knows more about evil than our
babu.
”

I didn’t argue with him. He carried his brother down the dusty track and I ran after them, carrying Gideon’s spear and watching his back for lions. It was the least I could do.

I spent the day with the Masai, watching closely as the elders worked to save Moses’ life. The
babu
had summoned the
laibon,
the tribal witch, the local healer and caster out of demons. He treated the head wound, packing it with their native remedies, and prepared a series of potions to spoon into the boy’s mouth. He explained the herbs and how each would help, one to keep down the swelling, one to halt the bleeding, another to give peaceful rest. I heard little of what he said. I spent most of my time thinking of Gates and how stupid I had been not to confiscate his keys when I kicked him off the property. And I thought of what I would do when I got my hands on him.

After a few hours, one of the women presented me with a tin cup of corn porridge and a gourd of hot smoky milk. I hadn’t thought I was hungry, but I finished them both and felt a little better. Gideon and I sat outside the hut and talked for hours. He told me stories of Moses and how smart the boy was, what expectations he had for his brother. We talked of his bravery and his winsome ways, his bright smile and his curiosity. And then I talked, telling him stories of my Granny Miette—how she scandalised the other white women by the dark things she sometimes did with Angele and Teenie. I told him of the
chaudron,
the sugaring cauldron big enough to hold a man, a great cast-iron beast that squatted at the edge of the cane fields waiting for the alchemy of fire and the syrup. It was a crucible, boiling down the thick syrup and filling the air with smoked sweetness.

But there were other times—times when the fire was kindled for other reasons, and the
chaudron
did darker work. It might be to visit retribution on a man who had ruined a girl or forfeited a debt of honour. It might have been to still a gossiping tongue or pay back a piece of malice in kind. Granny Miette always sent me to bed early on those nights, nights when the moon had turned its dark face to the earth, away from the things that happened in the hour after midnight. But sometimes I crept out of bed and stood in the shadows of the tea olives, as Mossy had done before me, and I saw the same rituals she had seen and I shivered even though there was no wind. I never stayed to the end. I always hurried back to my bed and burrowed under the covers, the smell of tea olives and sweet smoke clinging to my skin. And on those nights, I dreamed things that came true, grisly red things that I didn’t want to know. I wanted to know them now. I wanted every one of those things visited upon Gates until he cried a river of tears so deep it would drown him. I told that to Gideon, too, and he smiled.

“Moses will be fine,
Bibi,
” he told me.

“How can you be so sure? Sometimes people aren’t, you know.” It was wrong to say it, but there was bitterness on my tongue.

“
Babu
has told his future, and it is not his time to leave us.”

I laughed rudely, but Gideon’s level gaze didn’t waver. “I’m sorry,” I told him. I turned away. My throat was too tight to say more.

One of the women brought me another calabash of milk and I held it to give my hands something to do. Just then the
babu
emerged from his little mud house. He moved slowly and Gideon hurried to lend him a strong arm, settling him next to me on the ground. The
babu
spoke and Gideon translated.

“He says there is nothing to do but wait.”

“But Moses—” I began.

To my astonishment, the
babu’s
leathery old face split into a smile.

“He says that there is nothing to do but wait, although he sees that this is a difficult thing for you. You are a woman who runs.”

“A woman who runs?”

The
babu
opened the leather pouch at his neck and took out a pinch of tobacco. He worked it into a plug and began to chew, spitting expertly. Then he took off his spectacles and cleaned them on the edge of his toga. The cloth smeared them a little, so I sighed and pulled out a handkerchief. I motioned for the spectacles and he handed them over, watching intently as I polished them. When I gave them back he peered through them, then grunted his satisfaction. I gave him the handkerchief and he tucked it away with a gracious nod.

“What does he mean, a woman who runs?”

Gideon repeated the question and the
babu
launched into a lengthy recitation. Gideon listened intently then turned to me.

“He says that you learned long ago to run, to hide from the dark thing that is like the dog who is half a man.”

“The
rougarou,
” I whispered.

“I do not know this word,
Bibi,
” Gideon told me. “What is a
rougarou?
”

“It’s a bogeyman, a story used to frighten children where I come from. It doesn’t exist.”

But even as I said the words, I tasted the lie in them. The
rougarou
was real. I had seen him often enough. The only lie was that he looked like a wolf-man. Granny Miette was the first to tell me the story of the
rougarou.
Some Creoles called him the
loup garou;
some said he punished bad Catholics. Some even said one could become a
rougarou
by
being
a bad Catholic. Seven years of broken Lents could earn you a wolf’s head, it was whispered. But Granny Miette had said those were just silly superstitions. She said everyone knew the
rougarou
came by night to steal away children who were bad, who caused mischief and made their mothers cry. The
rougarou
would roam the swamps looking for naughty children, sniffing out the tender flesh and the cindery smell of wickedness with his long wolf’s nose, until he found them tucked in their beds. If you were a lucky child, the
rougarou
would eat you whole, leaving nothing but the bony feet behind. But if you were very bad indeed, if your black deeds had turned your heart to the colour of night, the
rougarou
wouldn’t carry you off. He would devour only your blood, turning you into a
rougarou
yourself.

“The
rougarou
has a sense for wickedness, Delilah Belle,” she murmured, her pansy-blue eyes piercing in her papery face. “He can smell it out, same as you can smell new bread or the mud in the Mississippi. You can fool your grandpapa and you can even fool old Granny Miette,” she would tell me, leaning so close I could smell the odour of singed violets on her skin. “But you cannot fool the
rougarou.
His nose follows pain, same as a hound follows blood. And when he sniffs you out, you can’t outrun him. You can try,
chou-chou,
you can run hard and you can run fast. But no one outruns the
rougarou
forever.”

It was that moment when I made up my mind to try. I knew the
rougarou
would come for me. I had always been a naughty child. I left candles burning long into the night to read. I stole pocketfuls of penny candy when Grandfather said I had had enough. And when Mossy’s mother, the bricked-up saint who never left her rooms, summoned me to say the rosary with her, I skipped every third bead because I knew God would never notice. As I grew older, my crimes grew more audacious. I swam naked in the creek, knowing the sharecroppers’ sons would get whipped for watching. I stole Mossy’s favourite pair of earrings and lost them at a masked ball I wasn’t supposed to attend. I strapped a flask under my garters and kissed boys in shadowy gardens. I rolled my own cigarettes and smoked them under the house while I read trashy novels that Granny Miette warned would wreck both my morals and my eyesight.

The
rougarou
never came for me. I packed away the story of him like everything else in my childhood. I thought I’d gotten away with it all, but the
rougarou
keeps careful accounts. He bided his time, waiting for me, always waiting, as patient as a wolf stalking a lamb. He sniffed out not my pain but my happiness, and that was when he lunged, snatching Johnny from me. I sobbed over the pieces of his uniform that came back, and in those sobs I heard the howl of the
rougarou.
I set off running then, and I hadn’t stopped running since.

“It doesn’t exist.” I repeated the lie stubbornly.

The
babu
shrugged.

“He says that your belief does not make this thing true or not true. It is what he sees.”

“I thought he saw a man in a uniform waiting with Death,” I said. “Now he sees a werewolf. I think the
babu
needs better spectacles.”

The
babu
didn’t understand sarcasm, or if he did, he chose to ignore it. He laughed when Gideon translated my words, treating it all as a big joke. I stood up, my face hot.

“The
babu
says that you have run all the way to Africa,
Bibi,
but you do not have to run anymore. The wolf-man cannot hurt you here.”

“That’s what you think,” I said bitterly.

I walked off then, but Gideon followed me, and I was glad. Tears blurred my vision and I was so tired I kept stumbling into the pig holes where warthogs ran to ground. Gideon walked patiently beside me, his stride easy and loose, his spear held at the ready.