crosses below. “But it is well that you should see. If your general doubts the kind of enemy he has to deal with, you can tell him.”
I wondered if Napier would credit it, that a Christian king could spit in the eye of Christianity by turning crucifixion into a kind of blasphemy—for that’s how it would seem to my pious countrymen. And yet that wasn’t the worst of it, as I learned when we’d led our screws through the rubble-strewn streets and past the shattered walls of what had once been shops and churches and stone houses, and came to the broad plaza before the burned-out shell of the huge palace (once the largest building, they say, between Egypt and the Cape) where long-dead kings of Abyssinia had kept their courts amidst the wealth and splendour of a continent. If Prester John existed, this was where he’d sat his throne, where the scorpions and lizards now scuttled among the broken masonry. Once it must have been the wonder of Africa, a great city of fabulous wealth and ten thousand inhabitants; now it reminded me of those age-old ruins of North Africa and Middle Asia, and I must have asked aloud for the twentieth time what in God’s name had possessed Theodore to destroy such grandeur.
“Because he hated it,” says Uliba contemptuously. “Not only for its comfort given to rebels, but for its splendour and treasure and traditions that seemed to mock his stolen royalty. Gondar the Great, the glory of Habesh, a noble city of nobles, was a living reproach to the purge-seller’s brat.”
It came on to rain at sunset, one of those crashing tropical down pours with sheet lightning crackling on the western horizon and thunder booming overhead, so we bivouacked in the porch of one of the four churches which were the only buildings Theodore had left standing. It was dry and snug with the outer door pulled to, cutting us off from the city’s desolation, and when I’d lit a fire with one of my vesuvians [31] (Uliba, such a worldly-wise and cultivated little savage in so many ways, had cried out in alarm the first time I’d used one) she set to work preparing a stew of game and kid. I led our beasts through the arch into the empty nave, where I spread their fodder and rubbed them down, and took a quick dekko around in the last of the light from the high unglazed windows.
Theodore might have spared the building, but he’d stripped it bare. There was nothing but a broken font and a bare altar, behind which was another of those crazy frescoes which I’ve already told you of: this one depicted the Children of Israel crossing the Red Sea, pursued by Pharaoh’s army who were holding their muskets over their heads, presumably to keep their Ancient Egyptian powder dry.
For the rest, there was nothing but a heavy trapdoor in the wooden floor which covered the area before the altar; elsewhere the floor was bare earth to the walls, in one of which there was a closed side door. I heaved up the trap, whose slats were warped and shrunk with age, and there beneath was a small cellar, about twelve feet by twelve and eight deep, empty but for a few ancient pots and no doubt interesting assorted insect life.
I replaced the trap and joined Uliba in the porch, where we ate our supper by the shadowy firelight with the storm bellowing outside. And now she told me the full unspeakable tale of what Theodore had done to the old city in the autumn of ’66.
“He had wrested tribute from it in the past, so the people expected no more than another shearing of their golden fleece, and came out to greet their emperor, protesting loyalty and hoping to win his favour. They might as well have tried to charm a crocodile. Although the rebels had fled away at his approach, their recent presence was all the excuse Theodore needed to loot the city to its final ruin. The wealth of Selassie, the gold of Kooksuam, the silver of Bata, the gems from the mines of Solomon beyond the Mountains of the Moon, the silks and paintings and even the precious manuscripts were all plun dered to the uttermost scrap and coin. Never was such a pillaging… aye, they lived richly in the Gondar that was.”
She poured us cups of
“But to strip the city to its ruin was not enough, Gondar itself must cease to be. Its citizens, all ten thousand, were herded out like cattle, and the whole town given to the flames: the palace, the treasury, the forty churches, the fine homes of the rich and the hovels of the poor. Gondar burned from end to end, and the glow was seen in the sky from Lake Ashangi to the frontiers of Tigre and Soudan. And when the priests cried out, calling down curses on his head, he had them bound, hundreds of aged men, and thrown into the fire, so that they burned alive, to the last man. But did that satisfy him, d’you think?”
She leaned forward to pick up the
“Let me fill your cup, you who love fair women, so that you can steady your spirit while you hear the rest. For now Theodore remembered that when the folk had come out to greet him, they had been led by the girls of the city, dancing and singing. ‘Their song was the signal for the rebels to flee!’ cries he. ‘Traitresses, bring them to me!’ And they too, every girl, from child to young woman, were thrown alive into the flames.” She paused to sip her drink. “The rest of the people he crucified or cut to pieces. What do you think of that,
“Breathe a sigh of relief, most likely, since ’twill solve a problem that’s bound to be exercising him… what to do with Theodore, I mean. This makes it simple; the bastard’ll have to go.”
“You will try him, in a court, and put him to death?”
“Oh, I doubt that. What would we charge him with? We’ve nothing against him but kidnapping a few of our people, mistreating ’em and so forth. Can’t hang him for that. What he does in his own country, to his own folk, ain’t our
“But you said of Theodore, ‘he will have to go!’”
“So he will, one way or t’sother. Bullet in the back o’ the head, shot trying to escape, dead of a surfeit of lampreys, who knows?” I gave her a pr ecis of my Harper’s Ferry adventure, where for reasons of state I was supposed to shoot mad John Brown so that the Yankee authorities wouldn’t have the embarrassment of trying and topping the daft old bugger—which I didn’t, as you probably know. “But that was a different case. Theodore’ll have to die, somehow; can’t execute him, but can’t have him hanging around Aldershot on a pension, either. Public wouldn’t stand it. He’ll just have to be done in on the quiet, accidental-looking.”
“What hypocrites you are!”
“No such thing. It’s just the civilised way of doing it, that’s all. What would you do with him, then?”
She leaned back against the wall in a way which stretched her tunic most distractingly, put her hands behind her head, and gazed pensively up at the flickering fire-shadows on the opposite wall.
“Given to me, he would take a year to die. Perhaps two. First of all I would have the bones of his hands and feet removed one at a time, then the larger bones of his arms and legs. This would be done by our most skilful surgeons, who would sew up the wounds, taking care to keep him alive and conscious…” She sighed contentedly, settling down to put her imagination to work. “Next…” But I shan’t tell you what she said next, because like me you may just have had dinner. I’ll say only that I hadn’t heard the like since my fourth wife, Sonsee-array, described what she’d done to captured scalp-hunters in the winter of ’49.
“You’d not give him the option of a fine, then?” says I. “Just so. Well, my dear, I hope you get the chance, because the evil swine deserves it. But I don’t suppose you will, what?”
“If I am Queen of Galla, who knows?” says she softly. “If your general wishes to avoid the responsibility of… punishing Theodore… might he not leave the task to the ally who had helped him to take Magdala?”
Fortunately I’m an old hand at keeping my countenance when mines are sprung under me, so I took a long pull at my
“That ally, as I understand it, is Queen Masteeat,” says I. “She’s the one I’ve been ordered to approach, leastways.”
Uliba sat upright, very erect in the firelight, and pushed her hands beneath her braids, raising them from her head, letting them fall, and raising them again, then turning her head to regard me steadily from those slanting black eyes, the heavy lips parting as she took a deep breath. It was calculated and most striking, a gesture that said “Look at me, voluptuous romp that I am, female tigress and woman of destiny, for I’m turning my batteries on you, and by gad you’d best make your mind up.” She posed for a long moment, to make sure I noticed, no doubt, and then said: “If Masteeat were no longer Queen of the Wollos—” “Then I suppose I’d have to approach Warkite of the Ambos, wouldn’t I?”
