A Spear of Summer Grass. Deanna Raybourn

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      I tried to roll over, but Dora stopped me. “Well, you do look a bit of a fright.”

      I sat up and took inventory. Crumpled silk dress stained with red dust and Ryder’s fingerprints on the sleeve. Shoes caked in mud and buffalo blood. Empty flask on my lap, and I knew without even looking in a mirror that yesterday’s maquillage would be smeared everywhere.

      “Say no more. Is there hot water?” I croaked.

      “After a fashion,” she said. She pushed a cup of hot coffee into my hands. I detested coffee and she knew it, but it did the trick. I drank it down and lurched to my feet.

      She showed me to the bathroom and I turned back to face her. “Is this a joke? Dodo, I count seven different kinds of insects, including a spider that may well be poisonous.”

      “Spiders are arachnids,” she corrected.

      I slammed the door in her face and applied my bloody shoe to the lurkers in the bathtub, eradicating all, except one little scorpion that dodged behind the toilet. I flung myself into the hot water and scrubbed, grateful that she had unpacked my French-milled soaps and a proper washcloth. After I was clean and dry and had washed my hair, I felt a pinch better.

      Dodo had laid out a particularly fetching frock of green-and-black figured silk with green suede shoes, and as I put them on I wondered if they’d make it through the day. This country was hard on shoes, I thought ruefully. The white suede pair covered in Anthony Wickenden’s blood had been burned by the Norfolk staff, and the white silk ones soaked in buffalo blood would be next. I could have cried.

      I emerged from my room looking vastly improved and feeling famished. Dora had found the dining room and there was toast, proper toast, with oranges and boiled eggs and some sort of meat that fought back when I poked it with a fork.

      “Make a list, Dodo. First order of business – find a cook.”

      Mercifully, she remembered the untouched picnic hamper from the previous day and we fell on it like Mongols, tearing into the parcels only to find flatbreads hardened to the consistency of rocks and some fruit that lay limp and apologetic in the bottom of the basket. There was a clutch of boiled eggs there as well, and some sort of potted meat I wouldn’t have touched if you’d offered me a palace on the moon.

      When the meager meal was finished, we took a tour of the house led by the turbaned fellow whose name, as unlikely as it seemed, was Pierre.

      “Surely that can’t be right,” I murmured to Dodo. But the name gave me an idea, and I turned to him. “Parlez-vous français?”

      His face lit up. “Oui!” And then he burst into a volley of rapid and fairly grammatical French. In a very few minutes I learned everything I needed to know about him and about the situation at Fairlight. Dora, whose French limped along at its most athletic, had been left far behind. She waited for me to translate.

      “Pierre was educated at a mission school not far from here. French Benedictine nuns who taught him their own language and a smattering of Latin, but no English.”

      “Latin?”

      “That’s what the man says. He remembers Nigel quite well, although he was merely the houseboy at the time. Since then he’s grown and married. Two wives, although he hopes to add a third soon.”

      “Goodness,” Dora said faintly, but I noticed she was looking at Pierre with heightened interest. His features were arresting, more akin to those painted on an Egyptian tomb than what one would expect to find in sub-Saharan Africa. His nose was sharp and beaky and his skin the colour of polished walnuts. He was tall and stately and moved with such peculiar grace, he would have put any Paris mannequin to shame.

      “He’s Somali and Christian – good for us because it means that, unlike a Mohammedan majordomo, he’ll touch pork and alcohol.”

      “Well, that covers your nutritional requirements,” she put in.

      She wasn’t wrong. I related the rest of what Pierre had told me. “There’s a farm manager, a fellow called Gates. He has a wife and a pair of children, but they’re away for a few days. There’s a cottage down the road that Fairlight lets to an artist from New York, and farther on is the boma where Ryder lives. They are our nearest neighbours. He said we should expect people coming from farther afield as soon as they realise we’re here. Apparently newcomers are fresh meat.”

      I gave her a wolfish smile and she turned to Pierre and asked him in her halting French if she might see the garden. Since she always believed that volume was at least as important as vocabulary in making herself understood, she stood a foot away from Pierre, repeating, “LE JARDIN. COMPRENEZ-VOUS? LE JARDIN?”

      He looked to me and I nodded, taking myself off to the kitchen. At least, I went to where I thought the kitchen might be. Instead it seemed to be a sort of butler’s pantry with an assortment of cloudy crystal and cracked china and a long table, and I realised Fairlight had been built along the same lines as Reveille with the kitchens outside the house. It made sense for several reasons, the most important of which were the heat and the risk of fire. In the butler’s pantry there was a door leading outside and I headed out and down a short path to a separate building. I could smell something that might have been food, but I almost hoped wasn’t.

      I tapped at the door and entered immediately. I have regretted few things so quickly in my life. The smell was repellent. Old grease and rotten vegetables formed the base note. Over it hung the sulfurous reek of old boiled eggs, choking out almost everything else. Almost everything.

      A plump old man, the cook, I had no doubt, hunched at the hearth, smoking. I could smell unwashed flesh and soiled clothes, but something besides, something sweet and heavy.

      I clapped my hands and the old man peered at me, struggling to focus through a cloud of dense and familiar smoke.

      “What’s the matter, Grandpa? Ganja got your tongue?”

      I grabbed up a broom and advanced. He got to his feet and started gabbling away in one of the native tongues. I brandished the broom.

      “No wonder the food is so disgusting. You’ve probably kept the best of it for yourself. Get up!” He had prostrated himself at my feet but rather spoiled the effect by giggling. I poked him lightly with the broom. “Get up, I said. Now get out.” I fumbled in the pocket of my dress, rather surprised to find anything there. “Here’s a pound. Take it in lieu of wages and don’t come back.”

      He took the money and started jabbering again, rubbing his fingers together as if he wanted more.

      “Not likely,” I told him roundly. “You’re lucky you got anything. You could have poisoned us with the trash you served. Now get out.” I lifted the broom and he scurried away, so quickly he left his smouldering cigarette behind.

      I lifted it and sniffed. Then I took a deep drag and held it.

      “Delilah!”

      Dora stood in the doorway, her tone heavy with disapproval.

      I exhaled slowly. “I found the cook.” I held up the cigarette. “This is why he wasn’t up to par. Quite good stuff actually. I haven’t had any with this much kick since Harlem.”

      She reached out and took the cigarette and ground it out on a hearthstone, scattering СКАЧАТЬ