A Spear of Summer Grass - By Deanna Raybourn Page 0,63
the place to let it go. I can’t blame him. I feel that way about all of Africa.”
He fell silent again and I went back to my drink. He rose then and put out his hand, pulling me to my feet.
“I think I might actually feel better.”
“I can’t imagine how. I didn’t do anything.”
“You let me sit and just be. That’s a rare gift for a man. You have no idea how rare.”
He dropped another kiss, this one markedly warmer, to my cheek and left, his step lighter. Dora appeared just as he drove away.
“Was that Rex?”
“It was.” I poured her a gin and tonic of her own and handed it over.
“What did he want?”
“To have a moan about an unrequited passion. Apparently he’s in love with Africa and she doesn’t love him back.”
She kicked off her shoes. “Mr. Patel has stacked everything in the storeroom, and retrieved his vile little monkey. He just left. I managed to get Gates to finish the henhouse just in time for the chickens. They’re not settling in at all well. The hens are all huddled together in the corner, whimpering, and the rooster is making a nuisance of himself by trying to escape.”
“Just make sure you warn them, the first one to wake me at dawn is going into the cookpot.”
She saluted wearily. “Aye, aye, Captain.”
* * *
It wasn’t the rooster that awakened me at dawn. It was the shouts of the Kikuyu, keening and wailing as they gathered in the garden. I shoved my arms into a kimono and hurled on my slippers, falling over Dora as we threw back the locks and hurried outside. All the Kikuyu farmworkers were there, clustered around a group in the centre who were carrying something on a blanket. As we got closer, they set it onto the ground, and it took me a moment to realise what I was looking at. The body was small and so broken I could only recognise bits of it. I saw the white bandage, grubby and torn and a handful of shredded skin attached to small braids. The feet were entirely intact, the little white bones snapped just above the ankle, and there were long white femurs, cracked open, the marrow lapped. Above the ululations of the Kikuyu, I heard another sound, a high, gasping shriek that went on and on.
I turned to Dora and shoved her head down onto my shoulder, shielding her eyes and muffling her scream. After a moment she stilled and pushed away from me to be sick in the bushes. I moved forward to the mother who had collapsed onto the ground. She was tearing a bit of bougainvillea into shreds in her fingers. I covered her hands with my own.
She looked up at me, and the word came out flat and dull between lips that were stiff with shock. “Simba.”
I nodded. A shadow fell over us, and I looked up to see Gates, struggling into his shirt, the broad fish-belly white of his torso gleaming in the early morning light.
“A lion has killed her child.”
He nodded. “You can tell from the bites. Lions like big muscle. That’s why the thighs and buttocks are gone. They don’t bother with the smaller bits,” he added, pointing toward the tiny feet.
I swung around on my heels. “Shut up. Shut up. Shut up.” Each word was punctuated by a slap to his legs.
His eyes were round as he stared from the mother to me, comprehension slowly dawning. “Are you worried about her? These Kukes don’t speak English, Miss Drummond. There’s no need to tiptoe around their feelings. Besides, if it wasn’t lion or leopard or snake, it would have been disease or fire. They don’t always have the best luck keeping their children alive,” he finished with a shake of the head.
I rose, putting one hand to the mother’s head as I did so. I turned to the Kikuyu and addressed them in halting Swahili. I asked if the lion had been killed, and they shook their heads. After a great deal of pantomime, it became clear that this was why they had come. They wanted to show me the lion’s work and take back with them a promise that it would be taken care of. I turned to Gates.
“Did I understand them correctly? They expect us to hunt down the lion and kill it?”
He nodded. “They could do it themselves, but it’s dangerous work and they aren’t allowed guns. It’s easier for a white man to