Palavers were held at irregular intervals, whenever disputes occurred which could not be settled privately. They took place in the compound, in the open space between the stockade and the first huts. Though serious enough to the disputants, they were regarded as a form of entertainment by those not involved and were always well attended. In the hot season evening was the preferred time but now, in the cooler weather, mid-morning was judged suitable, particularly as that evening would be taken up with the naming of Neema’s latest child, under the joint fathership of Cavana and Tiamoko – friends and partners, these two, sharing wife and trade interests. Neema had decided to have the naming on the same day as the Palaver so as to ensure a good attendance – desirable alike for prestige and the volume of gifts and good wishes.
It was early still, not long after sunrise, and Paris was in his sickroom administering an infusion of quassia and dried orange peels to Libby, who had a jaundiced look to his solitary eye this morning and had come with complaints of a night disturbed by vomiting. This morbid condition, accompanied in the first hours by a low fever, was one that Libby had suffered from at intervals for a good number of years now.
He was not alone in this. Others of the crew people, though none of the Africans, were troubled by a recurrent fever, mystifying in its cause to Paris, as there seemed to be no evidence of reinfection. In some cases it took the form of a single mild bout lasting a day or two, in others there was a more dangerous period of closely spaced peaks. Libby’s fever was accompanied by an evident obstruction of the bile, but this was not so with any of the others. It was difficult to see a pattern anywhere. However, the men seemed well enough between times and there had been no deaths from fever since Rimmer’s, five summers ago. Paris himself had experienced no recurrence of the illness that had stricken him aboard ship, except for a tendency to ache and shiver when he caught the mildest chill.
He had long since exhausted his store of cinchona; now, to allay the fever and clear the blood, he relied on the powdered bark of the bitter ash, of which he had discovered isolated specimens growing on the shorewards side of some jungle hummocks, or on a concoction of sassafras.
Libby was grateful enough, in his surly way, and Paris took the opportunity to ask his opinion of the charge against Iboti, due to be heard later that morning. As he had expected from a hanger-on of Kireku – and it was really the purpose of his question – it was the Shantee view that he got.
‘It is clear as daylight,’ Libby said. ‘Iboti is guilty. He tried to kill Hambo just as much as if he had stuck a knife into him. He was seen gatherin’ dust from Hambo’s footprint to make the fetish. Why should Hambo’s woman say she seen him if she never did?’
‘She is Iboti’s woman too. Why she says this or that is what we hope to find out at the Palaver.’
Libby made a gesture of contempt. ‘Palaver’s a shaggin’ waste o’ time,’ he said. ‘The death fetish was found on Hambo’s roof.’
Paris looked curiously at the other man’s face, which was pallid and swollen with the bad night he had passed. Libby borrowed opinions from those he served. Why not beliefs too? ‘I did not know you set so much store by fetishes, Libby,’ he said.
‘Me? A few sticks an’ feathers an’ a bit o’ spit?’ As he got up to go Libby uttered a short laugh, not altogether convincing. ‘When I am sick,’ he said, ‘don’t I come for medicine? I don’t go to Amansa, beggin’ for a charm.’
After he had gone, Paris stood quietly, without moving. There was an ugliness of spirit about Libby, which showed even when he was trying to be amiable – perhaps more then. A period of silence seemed necessary before the place could be healed of his visit. Paris knew this was a superstitious feeling, but superstition of one sort or another, like nostalgia, moved among them all; and this sickroom, though open to everyone, was a very private place for him, it was where he came to commune with himself and with the past.
Everything he possessed was here. His mahogany medicine chest stood on trestles of split palm log, with his small set of instruments, cleaned and polished, laid out in their slots of frayed plush and his glass-stopped bottles set in a row. Barber had made him a cabinet out of mangrove wood and he kept his collection of roots and oils and dried leaves on the shelves and his few books in the drawer.
In a certain way the past was gathered here, as it was in the cemetery. Paris had kept the splints he had used to set a broken leg, the charred cane with which he had vainly tried to cauterize a snake-bite and save a life. In a jar on the shelf of his cabinet he kept the eel-skin – carefully cured – from which in desperate haste he had fashioned a catheter to pass down the throat and into the stomach of a baby of six months that had swallowed some Makings of koonti root – poisonous before pulping and draining. The child had been at the point of death, pulse and respiration had almost ceased. The improvised tube had enabled Paris to use his syringe to inject an emetic – it was a common pewter syringe, still there among his instruments. The effect had been miraculous: within minutes the pulse had become perceptible again at the wrist, the convulsed action of the mouth had ceased and the child had taken a quivering breath. Verging on the miraculous too that fortunate chance of the fresh eels caught from the creek and the tiny quantity of ipecacuanha still remaining at that time among his medicines. The little girl was six years old now …
Memories are grafted together in ways beyond our choosing. He could not think of the child saved without some memory of his lost Ruth, though his thoughts of her in these days most often went back before the time of their misfortunes to the early days of courtship and marriage. Now there came to his mind a day in spring when they had walked together along the shore near her parents’ home, in Norfolk. They had walked a long way, hand in hand, far beyond the harbour, to a deserted stretch of shore. The tide was out, he remembered. Levels of rippled sand, the pale blue of the tide-pools and the real sea beyond, darker, uniform to the horizon. Sunlight: the shingle was bright along the beach and the bunches of wet kelp were gleaming. Terns were screaming overhead – he had brought his telescope to watch them plunging for fish. Ruth had felt cold in the ruffling breeze from the sea and he had used his tinder-box to make a fire of driftwood up among the dunes. Bright flame against the pale dune grass. They held out their hands to the flame and laughed at nothing but the joy of being there together. Her pale hands reddened by the chill and then the fire. She had gone a little way alone to gather the blue flowers that grew there, that kept their colour when dried – he could not remember the name. He had followed with his eyes the slight, lonely figure against the sweep of the dunes. On an impulse he had taken up the telescope and trained it on her. She was brought suddenly close before him and he was amazed and deeply moved to see the cherishing and tentative way she put out her hand to the flowers. All the gentleness of her nature was in it. He had realized then that this was the way she touched everything, and he had been swept by such love for her that his sight for the moment seemed darkened and her figure lost …
He was still standing in the same place half an hour later when Nadri approached, carrying a fish trap he had made, which he was intending to leave here while he attended the Palaver. In fact he could have left it anywhere with perfect security. Theft was rare in the settlement, the nature of life was too public. But in any case no one would have dreamed of carrying off his trap because it was instantly recognizable for Nadri’s: no one else made traps the equal of his, either for cunning or beauty. This one, which he set down at a corner of the sickroom, was quite large, a yard or so in diameter, cylindrical in shape, with one end open and a funnel-shaped passageway leading to the interior. Warp splints made of willow sticks curved inward, admitting entry of the fish into the maze-like filling of the trap, and the closed end had a wicker lid.
‘That’s a fish-trap?’ Paris said. ‘I don’t believe it.’
Nadri smiled. His perfectionism in the matter of traps was a long-standing joke between them. ‘Why, what you think it is?’
Sharing the same woman had thrown them together and over the years Nadri had picked up a good deal of English from Paris, helped in this by a good ear and a quick intelligence and also, Paris had learned, by a grasp of language derived from his education – he was a Moslem and had been taught as a child to read and write and figure in Arabic. Other things too Paris had learned by degrees. Nadri came from a region of high grasslands and wooded valleys behind the Ivory Coast and had been clerk to a merchant, subsequently marrying his employer’s daughter. It was while journeying on business for his father-in-law that he had been taken by a slaving party. He had a daughter who would be fourteen now if she was still alive.
‘Mebbe looks good, I dunno,’ he said now. ‘But this trap is going to catch plenty of fish, I know that. One thing I find out, Matthew, while I have been here in this place.’
‘What is that?’
‘A trap looks good gives good result, whether you after bird or fish or fox.’ He smiled again. It was an attractive smile, lighting up the normally rather stern expression of his face with the prominent bones at the cheeks and temples. ‘Twelve summers here I learn one thing,’ he said. ‘That is not so bad, I think.’
Paris was silent for a moment, looking at this man to whom he was close but who would never fully be his friend. Nadri was tall – the eyes that looked back at him were on a level with his own. They were the eyes that had looked into his in pain and bewilderment on the slaveship as Nadri was whipped forward to be examined and branded. He was naked now above the waist and the brandmark of Kemp showed livid on his chest. He had been the first that Paris had violated with his touch, as Tabakali had been the first of the women he had looked at and wanted. Now they shared her together. The woman had forgiven him, or so it seemed – perhaps because he had needed her so much; but for the man there could be no forgetting that first encounter, for all the affection that had grown between them.
‘It is a great pity that what you say of traps is not true also of people,’ Paris said. ‘At least then we would not be deceived.’
Nadri spread his hands, revealing the paler, vulnerable-seeming skin of the palms. ‘Trap is a very simple thing,’ he said. ‘Only has one purpose. When we say the name of it we say what it is. People are not like that. I dunno why it is, Matthew, you are all the time wanting to make some kind of laws for people. Why you never content to look at one person then another person?’
There was a note of reproof in this, stronger, as it seemed to Paris, than his own rather mild words had warranted. Some of the warmth left his face. He took no more kindly now than he ever had to being told how to shape his thoughts, and Nadri’s constitutional unwillingness to generalize about human behaviour had caused arguments between them before. ‘If we cannot proceed from particular truths to general ones our thoughts will get nowhere,’ he said.
‘Better for us you get nowhere,’ Nadri said. ‘Partikklar to gen’ral is story of the slave trade, I think.’
‘That is not fair, Nadri. If you bring everything down to that, we cannot discuss things at all.’ However, he had seen quite suddenly that Nadri’s resentment came from wanting to be separate and free, not wanting to be herded as it were into a law of human nature. ‘It is only an attempt at understanding,’ he said more gently. ‘We are all here by accident.’
‘No, excuse me, you are here by accident, I am here because you bringed me. For accident there must be choosing somewhere. That is one big difference between us, Matthew. The crew people here because they kill the captain. You say an attempt understanding but it is only an attempt proving your ideas the right ones. First you bringed us, say we are free, then you want to make us serve some idea in your head. But the people cannot serve your idea, you cannot make them do that.’
Paris did not reply at once. He was not so much dashed by the argument – he could not see how he could be held guilty of coercion simply by virtue of his own mental processes – as hurt in some obscure way by Nadri’s remark about the difference between them. It was true he bore a responsibility that none of the black people could be expected to share. Even the people of the crew he felt to be less accountable than himself. They had shared the physical misery of the negroes in a way he had not, they had been flogged in the negroes’ view, they had begged from the negroes’ bowls. No doubt it was for this reason they had been able to settle here together on equal terms. Paris had found happiness here, he knew himself to be useful and respected. But he knew also that in certain essential respects he was quite alone.
‘Only way to live here is day by day, same as anywhere,’ Nadri said in a different tone. ‘A wise man know his limits. Like the trokki, you know?’
‘What is trokki?’
Nadri was fond of Paris and had seen that he was hurt. He allowed his face to assume the expression, sly and slightly ironic, which it always wore on his excursions into folk wisdom. ‘Trokki is tortos’,’ he said. ‘Mebbe tortos’ wan’ fight but he sabee him arm short.’
‘You arm long nuff,’ Paris said, smiling in sudden relief. ‘You arm long pas’ anyone dis place.’ A surge of affection for Nadri came with the words. The use of pidgin often released feeling between them in this way. Between those men who shared a woman, which was still the case with most, feelings were rarely neutral. There sometimes grew enmity and sometimes a close bond. But Paris knew that the grace of the friendship came from Nadri and the sense of this, a feeling close to gratitude, pained his throat still when he thought of it. Now, true to the restraints of his upringing, he sought for a way to continue that would not betray his feeling. ‘Tabakali,’ he said, ‘dat one woman look good an’ good insai.’
‘Dat de perfec’ trut,’ Nadri said gravely. ‘She one fine woman.’
The two nodded together on this and the silence of total accord fell upon them, broken after some time by Nadri. ‘Time for Palaver,’ he said. ‘They are coming together.’
They left the sickroom and made their way across to the wide clearing before the stockade gates, where people were already assembled, men, women and children, seated on mats brought for the purpose, in two files facing inwards, separated by the space of a dozen feet or so. Paris noticed Hughes among them and Amos and Cavana – men often away from the settlement. Cavana, of course, would have returned for the naming. Tabakali and the youngest child were there already and Paris and Nadri joined them.
The beck-man, or holder of the stick, elected for this occasion, was Billy Blair, a man without discernible interest to serve save that of justice, having no cultivation in common or trade connection with either of the disputing parties. He sat between the files, at one end, holding the elegant, silver-headed cane that had once belonged to Delblanc; he it was who, a year or so before his death, had introduced this regulating device into the chaos of their earlier debates. No one could address the assembly unless he was on his feet between the files and holding the cane; and it was the task of the beck-man to make sure this rule was observed.
As was customary, the accuser spoke first. Hambo walked to and fro between the lines, gesturing fiercely with the cane. Iboti, he said, had tried to kill him by making a powerful fetish and attaching it to the roof of his hut. He had returned to his hut to find the fetish-bundle in the thatch. Danka had seen him find it. The bundle contained dried leaves, two sticks, one of them sharpened, and two cane whistles, one of them filled with dust. He knew Iboti had put it there because Iboti had threatened to kill him. He had threatened this in the hearing of Arifa, the woman they shared. ‘He say he kill me,’ Hambo said, with a prolonged flourish of the stick. ‘He say make me eye blind, gut rot, spit blood. Arifa hear him say it.’
‘Dat lie,’ Iboti shouted suddenly from his place beside Tongman. ‘Hambo, you say lie.’ He swallowed and the whites of his eyes showed prominently as he glanced from side to side of him.
‘You call me lie?’ Hambo stopped near Iboti and glowered down at him. ‘You pig Bulum, you call me lie I break you troat,’ he said.
‘Iboti,’ Billy said, ‘you turn come baimbai. Hambo got de stick now. Hambo, you talk badmowf, I take back stick, you altagedder finish.’
Sullenly Hambo gave back a little and after a moment resumed his pacing. He was shorter than the other Shantee, stocky in build and deep-chested. The column of his neck was not much narrower than the back of his head, which gave him the look of having been hewn from a single block. In contrast to his fierce gestures, he spoke rather slowly, pausing sometimes to marshal his thoughts. In these pauses, he made loud spitting sounds in token of the truth of his words. Arifa, he said, had not only heard the threats but had seen Iboti gathering dust from a footprint, as she would shortly be telling them. ‘Now I show fetish, you sabee I speak trut’,’ he said. He went to his place, took up the bundle and held it above his head for all to see. ‘Leaf look like dey bombiri leaf,’ he said. ‘Mebbe Iboti find bombiri tree.’
Tongman rose. It was the right of the accused person, or the one speaking for him, to address questions to the beck-man. ‘What dis sarve?’ he said. ‘I ask what puppose all dis sarvin’. Whedder dey bombiri leaf or no, who care bout dat?’
‘What de puppose?’ Billy asked Hambo.
‘Bombiri leaf fall quick when him stick cut from tree. Dat mean bad fetish, make house fall down me. Tongman, you head go soft, you sabee dat before.’
Billy thought for some time, his small, pugnacious face tight with the seriousness of his office. There was tension in the air of the meeting and he was feeling it along with everybody else. Apart from the occasional voices of the smaller children, complete silence reigned among the people gathered there. ‘Hambo got de right,’ Billy said. ‘He tryin’ show us dis fetish strong too much, capsai him house.’
Encouraged thus, and aware of the intense interest of his audience, Hambo went on to draw attention to the two sticks, one blunt and one sharpened, the sharp one being unkumba, the second spear of witchcraft. Finally he held up the dust-stopped whistle. ‘Dust under him foot,’ he said. ‘Arifa see him take it. Dust in whissul make Hambo die, foul him win’pipe.’
He strode back and forth some time longer, still waving the cane, but it was clear that he had stated his case and was now merely repeating it, a favoured rhetorical device of the Shantee.
After some minutes of this Billy asked for the return of the stick, which passed next to Arifa. She was a big woman, built on voluptuous lines, with heavy features and a stolid expression, somewhat redeemed by the coquetry of luxuriant eyelashes. She had taken particular care with her appearance for this public occasion: white cowrie shells, exactly matched, adorned the large lobes of her ears and a gold coin, found on the beach by Calley and obtained from him by means everyone knew of, hung shining between her breasts. These were not very much concealed by the cotton wrap thrown with studied negligence over her shoulders, and they swayed and swung magnificently with the motions of her narrative. Yes, she had heard Iboti utter the death threats. He had threatened, among other things, to open up Hambo from puga to chin and to cut off his testicles and compel him to eat them. Some laughter came from the audience at this, whether from the sense that a man with his belly cut open would not be in a fit state to eat his own testicles or at the very evident contrast in physique between the two men. But the silence of total absorption returned when Arifa began to tell of seeing Iboti gather up the dust.
She had seen him stoop and take up the dust in the palm of his hand and move away with it in the direction of his hut. It had been just after sunrise, she was outside her hut putting pulped koonti roots into a basket so as to take them and wash them in the creek. ‘He hol’ dat dust like it water in him hand,’ she said, in her strong contralto voice. ‘Like cargo gol’ dust. Never take me like dat – Iboti ball go sleep long time ago.’
Iboti lowered his head in humiliation at this. Paris heard Tabakali beside him utter a harsh exhalation of anger and contempt. She had never liked Arifa. ‘Dat one bumbot woman,’ she said loudly. ‘She put man out when Hambo say, den she say fault him ball. Dat one fat bumbot hussy.’
‘Tabakali, stow you gab, you ’pinion Arifa not de bleddy question,’ Billy said.
‘You no ’fraid, Iboti,’ Tabakali called. ‘You find anadder woman good pas’ dis one.’
‘Matthew, Nadri, you woman no keep mum, we still here tomorrow. Stick pass to Hambo agin, ask for Iboti punish.’
Hambo’s plea for the punishment of his alleged evil-wisher was brief. ‘Dis man try kill me,’ he said. ‘What he go give me now? He poor like kabo, like rat. He give me bag koonti root? Hah! Hambo life wort’ more dan bag koonti. My country, man try kill me, I kill him. We kill Wilson long time ago for kill one man. But Hambo good heart, no ask Iboti kill, ask him sarve me three year gremetto, carry cargo for Shantee. I finish now, give back de stick.’
Silence at this was complete. Paris saw Kireku and Danka sitting side by side nodding in grave assent and behind them the face of Barton, raised and peering in that old expression of his, that relish at the scent of weakness. Libby was there too, and Hambo’s woman had returned to her place among them. It was a phalanx of power.
The shock of the announcement brought a sense of cleared vision to Paris, like a slap that first blurs the eyes then sharpens them. He understood now that Hambo had never meant to ask for goods in compensation, that he must have intended all along to demand this term of labour. Others must be realizing it too … He glanced at some of the faces nearest him: they were deeply absorbed, but he saw no sign of any strong dissent. Nadri was frowning slightly, it seemed in concentration, and Sullivan’s face showed a sort of startlement, as if he had just awoken. Beyond them Jimmy sat cross-legged. The smile for once was absent, but Paris knew in that moment, with a sort of prophetic chill, that Iboti’s bondage to the Shantee, if it became a fact, would be incorporated by the teacher into the history of the settlement, it would become a story with a moral like the mutiny, Wilson’s execution, the freeing of the Indians. In the course of time the people would come to believe that a term of servitude was fitting punishment. The slave who had tried to kill himself with his own nails on board the ship, there had been a fetish somewhere in that too – he had been wrongly accused. It was Jimmy who had explained it …
The silence continued as the stick was returned. Billy was beginning to look harassed. There was no precedent for Hambo’s demand. Labour had sometimes been imposed, but only for specific tasks and when there was clear evidence of some previous contract or undertaking – to repair a roof, for example, or cut a certain quantity of wood. ‘We listen both sai, den see,’ Billy said at last.
Paris scrambled to his feet. ‘I ask Hambo change him word,’ he said to Billy, in a voice vibrant with feeling. ‘I ask him tink what we do here. He forgit how we come here, where we come from? We come dis place make man free or make him slave?’
‘Dat not question, dat you ’pinion.’ Billy shook his head from side to side as if to clear it. The familiar nightmare of logical incoherence was descending on him. ‘Sound like question, but it not. You no ken say ’pinion without de stick, no ken get stick till finish both side Palaver.’
‘But if he is found guilty,’ Paris said, abandoning pidgin in the stress of his feelings, ‘if the vote goes against him, it will be a vote also on this demand for servitude, not only on the crime itself. It will be too late to modify the punishment, except in degree – not in its nature. And not only that, it will establish –’
‘What lingo dis?’ Kireku was on his feet now, a tall, imposing figure. ‘Why you talk dis rabbish lingo?’ He surveyed Paris steadily for some moments with an expression of frowning severity. ‘My fren’, you talk people lingo or you get down stow gab altagedder,’ he said. He extended his arm in a sudden fierce gesture, notably at odds with the dignified calm of his speech. ‘You, beck-man,’ he said, turning towards Billy, ‘you no sabee keep palaver, you get down, give place better man.’
‘Dat man not you,’ Inchebe shouted, in immediate defence of his friend. ‘Shantee beck-man say everything for Shantee.’
Billy’s face had gone red as fire and he had taken a hard grip on Delblanc’s cane. His first words, perhaps fortunately, were impeded by rage and not properly audible to Kireku. It was at this point that Tongman, with a superb sense of timing, rose to his feet. ‘Why dis palaver bout punish?’ he demanded. ‘Iboti not punish, done notting wrong. I speak for Iboti now. I ask for de stick.’
Once armed with this, he moved between the files, portly and unruffled. His forensic style was completely different from Hambo’s. He did not gesture and declaim, but appealed directly to his audience with an air of taking them into his confidence. There were some strange features in this case, he said, and one of the strangest was the ease with which Hambo had come upon the fetish. In his, Tongman’s experience – and he had no doubt this corresponded to the experience of his audience – when a man went to the trouble of making up a fetish-bundle and placing it on another man’s roof, he generally concealed it well, intending that it should remain there for as long as possible, so as to have its full effect. Indeed, it was usually only when a roof was repaired that a fetish was found in the thatch.
Sounds of assent came from here and there among his listeners and Tongman nodded and smiled. Then the smile faded and he compressed his lips in an expression of perplexity. Was it not surprising, then, that Hambo had so easily come upon this particular fetish? By his own account he had returned to his hut and found it on the roof. Danka, his friend and fellow-tribesman, had seen him find it.
Tongman’s strolling between the lines had brought him, it seemed accidentally, opposite to Danka now. He stopped and looked mildly down. ‘You see Hambo find de fetish, dat right?’
‘Dat right,’ Danka said.
‘You see him klem up roof, look roun’, find de fetish?’
‘Dat right, I see him. He say, “Danka, look dis, someone try kill me.” ’
‘I no ask you what he say. I sartin he say many ting. You see him look de roof adder time?’
‘Adder time?’
‘You see him look de roof adder time or jus’ dat one time?’
Danka was a loyal friend, but his wits were nowhere near equal to Tongman’s and he had been taken by surprise. He hesitated a moment, then uttered a short grunt of contempt for the question. ‘I no see him look adder time. Why he look adder time?’
‘Why he look adder time? Dat a very good question.’ Tongman resumed his perambulation between the lines. ‘Danka no see Hambo look adder time. Nobody see Hambo look adder time. I go tell you why.’ However, for a moment he hesitated, his confident expression wavered a little and he passed his tongue quickly over his lips. Then, with a dramatic increase of volume, he said, ‘Hambo no look adder time cause he sabee well fetish no on de roof adder time.’
Hambo shouted a denial and rose to his feet, taking some steps between the files towards Tongman. The latter, his brief attack of nerves now quite overcome, demonstrated his sense of theatre by turning his back on his furious opponent, drawing himself up to his full height and raising Delblanc’s cane high in the air. ‘Who got the stick?’ he demanded loudly. Neema’s baby, disturbed by all the noise, set up a lusty bawling.
‘I tell you one time, Hambo,’ Billy shouted over the hubbub. ‘Now I tell you agin. Tongman got the stick. Shove you oar in one more time, Palaver finish, Iboti go free.’
Hambo’s face expressed violent displeasure, but he was obliged to return to his place. After courteous thanks to the beck-man for his timely intervention, Tongman resumed his case. He had the audience now in the palm of his hand. They might think, he said, that if a man knows exactly when and where to look for a thing, he either has some special information about it or he has put it there himself. But Hambo had made no claim to special information, except only the knowledge of the death threats and the business of the dust – both derived from Arifa. Perhaps Arifa could now throw some light on these extremely puzzling questions …
Arifa had been pondering all this while and had hit upon what she thought a good way of neutralizing the damning point that Tongman had just made. In her eagerness she did not wait for questions, a serious error as it turned out. ‘Hambo no look de roof adder time, ha-ha, dat easy say why. He no sabee Iboti badmowf, I no tell him Iboti badmowf, I no tell him Iboti pick up dust. I tell him after. When I tell him, den he look.’
‘You no tell him?’ Tongman raised his eyebrows. ‘We go see now. Day you see Iboti, dat de day you take koonti root wash in creek, seven-eight adder woman same-same ting altagedder? Dat de day, yes? An’ you no tell Hambo dat day?’
‘No, I no tell him.’
‘Man try kill you bootiful Hambo, you no tell? Why dat?’
Arifa settled the wrap over her ample shoulders and lowered her lashes. ‘I ’fraid Iboti too much,’ she said.
There was laughter at this, especially from the women. Arifa was bigger than Iboti and noted for her termagant temper. ‘Poor little kuku, poor mwona,’ Tabakali called, ‘I so sorry for you.’
Under this provocation, Arifa forgot her role of fearful woman. Her eyes flashed and she clenched her fists. ‘Foulani baggage, crow pick you eye,’ she said.
‘Never mind dem,’ Tongman said, giving her a look of sympathetic understanding. ‘I sabee why you no tell Hambo. You not sartin, dat why. Early mornin’ light no very good. You see Iboti pick up someting, but mebbe piece string, mebbe piece flint. Mebbe not Iboti. Dat right?’
Flustered by the laughter and misled by Tongman’s sympathetic tone, Arifa was brought to agree that in fact Iboti had been some considerable distance away and that a man picking up dust would not easily be distinguished from a man picking up any small object. But she still swore it was Iboti and said she knew it was dust because of the careful way he had carried it.
Tongman turned away from her to address the assembly at large. The evidence against Iboti was completely discredited already, as he felt sure they would agree; however, he proposed to call one witness who would demolish any shreds of credibility still remaining. There was something of a sensation at this, for Tongman had told noboby about this witness, for fear she might be intimidated. It was Koudi, who had been sitting silent among them all this while. She was a quiet, long-limbed, rather shy and self-effacing woman with a kind expression of the eyes.
Gently, amidst complete silence, Tongman drew out her story. She had seen Iboti on that particular morning – she knew it was the same day that Arifa had been referring to, because it was the day for the washing of the pulped koonti roots. She herself had gone down to the creek, though a little later. There had been several women already there, Arifa among them.
This evidence as to the day carried complete conviction. Everyone knew that the washing of the pulp was planned in advance and that it was collective work, involving repeated saturation and straining, the women helping one another with the heavy baskets.
‘So now de day fix, you tell us where you see Iboti,’ Tongman said.
‘See him nearby de graveyar’.’
‘What time day?’
‘What he carry?’
‘Carry chop knife an’ baskit.’
‘An’ you comin’ from graveyar’, dat right? Come from Wilson an’ Tibo grave?’
‘Dat right.’
This too, no one would have dreamed of doubting. It was common knowledge that Koudi visited the graveyard frequently in the early hours of the day so as to sprinkle water on the graves of Wilson and Tibo and conciliate their spirits. These two men had died because of her in the early days of the settlement, one murdered for her sake and the other put to death for the crime. An aura of evil fortune had hung over Koudi ever since. Nobody held her directly responsible, but a woman who brings death to two men can never be quite as others are. Koudi was regarded as an unlucky woman and so, to some extent, guilty. However, on this occasion, for Iboti, she was lucky enough.
Tongman had allowed an appreciable pause for the significance of her statements to come fully home to the people. Now he put his last, crucial, question to her: ‘What course Iboti lay? He lay for hut, he lay adder way, for bush?’
‘Adder way,’ Koudi said, without hesitation. ‘Iboti lay for bush.’
‘Iboti lay for bush,’ Tongman repeated loudly. ‘I tank you. Dat all. Now, Iboti, stan’ up, hoist up you head. You no ’fraid. Only one ting you say dese good people. Where you go with you baskit an’ knife?’
It was Iboti’s moment. He raised his head and straightened his shoulders. ‘I go cut cabbage in de ammack,’ he said, in his drawling, thick-tongued voice.
‘Iboti, you good man,’ Tongman said. ‘I sorry you have dis trouble.’ He was standing still now between the rows. It was time for the plea for acquittal and he was conscious of the need to tread carefully. The case was won, he knew it from the faces round him. His fee was sure, his reputation enhanced. But a wise man thinks of the future. The Shantee were strong and likely to get stronger; they were warriors as well as traders, whereas he was a trader only. It was highly inadvisable to make enemies of them. He had caused offence already, but this had been unavoidable. Now he would do what he could to mend matters.
He cleared his throat and began, addressing himself to Billy. There were still elements of mystery in the business, they must all feel that, but one thing was abundantly clear: whoever had put the fetish on Hambo’s roof, it had not been Iboti. There was no case against Iboti at all. Arifa had seen a man pick something up, but that man had not been Iboti because he was on his way to cut cabbage at the time and he was only a mortal man and could not be in two places at once. However, Arifa’s mistake was natural. It was early morning and the distance considerable. The identity of the man she had seen would perhaps never be known. Possibly, if he resembled Iboti, it was the ghost of one of Iboti’s relatives come to pick up something he needed.
The fact that Hambo had known exactly when and where to look for the fetish could be explained by some message that had come to him in a dream or vision, which had now disappeared from his recollection – such things were known to occur. He, Tongman, was very far from wishing to make accusations against anyone. It was enough for him that Iboti should be cleared.
On this, Tongman rested his case and returned the stick. The matter was put to the vote by Billy, as custom required, though now it was the merest formality: the show of hands in favour of acquittal was so overwhelming that a count of those against was not deemed necessary. The Shantee contingent stalked off in stony silence, not waiting for the formal verdict. Billy pronounced Iboti not guilty of witchcraft and within a very few minutes the clearing, scene of so much excitement, was once again quite empty of people.