Assegai

In the middle of the morning they raised the flat top of Lonsonyo Mountain above the dreaming blue horizon ahead, but it was late in the day when they stood under its towering mass, and dark before they rode into the manyatta and dismounted in front of Lusima’s hut. She had heard the horses and stood tall in the doorway with the firelight behind her. She was naked except for the string of beads around her waist. Her skin had been freshly anointed with fat and ochre, and polished until it gleamed.

Leon walked across to her and went down on one knee. ‘Give me your blessing, Mama,’ he asked.

‘You have it, my son.’ She touched his head. ‘My motherly love is yours also.’

‘I have brought another petitioner to you.’ Leon stood up and beckoned Kermit forward. ‘His Swahili name is Bwana Popoo Hima.’

‘So this is the prince, the son of a great white king.’ Lusima looked closely into Kermit’s face. ‘He is a twig of the mighty tree, but he will never grow as tall as the tree from which he sprang. There is always one tree in the forest that grows taller than any other, one eagle that flies higher than any other bird.’ She smiled kindly at Kermit. ‘All these things he knows in his heart, and it makes him feel small and unhappy.’

Even Leon was amazed at her insight. ‘He longs desperately to earn his father’s respect,’ he agreed.

‘So he comes to me to find him an elephant.’ She nodded. ‘In the morning I will bless his bunduki and point the way of the hunter for him. But now you will feast with me. I have killed a young goat for you and this mzungu, who does not drink blood and milk, and prefers cooked meat.’

They gathered at noon the next day under the council tree in the cattle pen. Big Medicine lay on the tanned lionskin. The blued metal was freshly oiled and her woodwork shone. The sacrificial offering of fresh cow’s blood and milk, salt, snuff and glass trade beads had been set out. Leon and Kermit squatted side by side at the head of the lionskin with Manyoro and Loikot behind them.

Lusima emerged from her hut, magnificent in her finery. She came to the council tree with her regal stride, her slave girls attending her closely. The men clapped with respect and called her praises: ‘She is the great black cow who feeds us with the milk of her udders. She is the watcher who sees all things. She is the mother of the tribe. She is the wise one who knows all things on this earth. Pray for us, Lusima Mama.’

She squatted in front of the men and asked the ritual questions: ‘Why do you come to my mountain? What is it you seek from me?’

‘We beg you to bless our weapons,’ Leon replied. ‘We importune you to divine the path that the great grey men take through the wilderness.’

Lusima rose and sprinkled the rifle with blood and milk, snuff and salt. ‘Make this weapon as the dreadful eye of the hunter that it may slay whatever he looks upon. May his popoo fly straight as the bee returning to the hive.’

Then she went to Kermit and, with the giraffe-tail switch, sprinkled the blood and milk on his bowed head. ‘The game will never escape him, for he has the heart of the hunter. Let him follow his quarry unerringly. May it never escape his hunter’s eye.’

Leon whispered the translation to Kermit, and after each sentence she spoke, they clapped and said the refrain to her prayer: ‘Even as the great black cow speaks, let it be so.’

Lusima began to dance, whirling in a tight circle, her bare feet like those of a young girl, her sweat mingled with the oil and ochre until she glowed like a carving of precious amber. At last she collapsed on the lionskin and her face contorted. She bit her lips until blood ran down her chin. Her whole body juddered and shook, her breath sawing and rasping in her throat, froth coating her lips and mingling pinkly with the blood. When she spoke her voice was as thick and hoarse as a man’s: ‘The hunter makes his way homewards. The clever hunter listens to the cheeping of the small black birds in the dawn,’ she grated. ‘If he waits on the hilltop the hunter will be thrice blessed.’ She gasped and shook herself as a hunting spaniel does when it clambers from the water on to the riverbank.