Forest of the Pygmies(52)
"Didn't I tell you the youngsters would be back? Praise be to God!" Brother Fernando kept repeating.
In one corner of the hut, they had made a place for the guards whose lives Angie had saved. One of them, named Adrien, was dying from the knife in his stomach. The other, called Nzé, was wounded in the chest, but according to the missionary, who had seen many wounds in the war in Rwanda, no vital organ was compromised and he could recover—unless the wound became infected. He had lost a lot of blood, but he was young and strong. Brother Fernando bandaged him up the best he could and was giving him antibiotics from the store Angie carried in her first-aid kit.
"It's good that you kids got back. We have to get out of here before Kosongo claims me as a wife," Angie told Alex and Nadia.
"We will do that with the Pygmies' help, but first we have to help them," Alexander replied. "This afternoon the hunters will come. The plan is to unmask Kosongo and then challenge Mbembelé."
"Sounds like taking candy from a baby," Kate said sarcastically. "But how are you going to do it?"
Alexander and Nadia explained the strategy, which included, among other points, engaging the Bantus, telling them that Queen Nana-Asante was alive, and setting the slave women free so they could fight along with their men.
"Does anyone here know how we can disable the soldiers' rifles?" Alexander asked.
"You have to jam the firing mechanism," Kate said.
It occurred to the writer that they could do that with the resin used to light the torches, a thick, sticky substance kept stored in tin drums in each of the huts. The only persons with free access to the soldiers' barracks were the Pygmy slave women charged with cleaning, carrying water, and preparing food. Nadia offered to direct that operation, since she had already established contact with them when she visited their corral. Kate picked up Angie's rifle to explain where to put the resin.
Brother Fernando told them that Nzé, one of the two wounded Bantus, could also help. His mother, along with Adrien's mother and other family members, had come the night before bringing gifts of fruit, food, palm wine, and even tobacco for Angie. She had become the local heroine for being the only person in their history who had stood up to the commandant. She not only had talked back to him, she had touched him. The villagers didn't know how they could repay her for having saved Adrien and Nzé from certain death at the hands of Mbembelé.
Adrien was expected to die at any moment, but Nzé was lucid, though very weak. The terrible tourney had shaken him from the paralysis of terror he had lived in for years. He felt reborn; fate was offering him a few more days of life as a gift. He had nothing to lose, since he was as good as dead. As soon as the strangers left, Mbembelé would throw him to the crocodiles. By accepting the possibility of imminent death, he gained a courage he had not had before. That bravery was redoubled when he learned that Queen Nana-Asante was going to return to reclaim the throne Kosongo had usurped. He accepted the strangers' plan to incite the Bantus of Ngoubé, but he asked that if the plan did not turn out as expected, they promise to give Adrien and him a merciful death. They did not want to fall into Mbembelé's hands alive.
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Later that morning Kate called on the commandant to inform him that Nadia and Alexander had miraculously escaped death in the forest and were back in the village. That meant that she and the rest of her group would be leaving as soon as the canoes came the next day to pick them up. She added that she was very disappointed that she had not been able to interview His Most Serene Majesty, King Kosongo, for her magazine.
The commandant seemed relieved to learn that the bothersome foreigners would be leaving his territory, and he was willing to help them as long as Angie kept her promise to take her place in King Kosongo's harem. Kate had feared that would happen, and she had a story ready. She asked where the king was. Why hadn't they seen him? Was he ill? She hoped that the sorcerer who meant to marry Angie Ninderera hadn't put a curse on him from across all that distance. Everyone knew that the betrothed or the wife of a witch man is untouchable. And this was a particularly vengeful man, she said. Once before when an important politician had insisted on paying court to Angie, he had lost his position in government, his health, and his fortune. Desperate, he had paid some hirelings to murder the sorcerer, but they hadn't succeeded because their machetes melted like butter in their hands, she added.
Perhaps Mbembelé was impressed with her story, but Kate couldn't tell because she couldn't read his expression behind the mirrored glasses.
"This afternoon His Majesty King Kosongo will preside over a celebration in honor of the woman and the ivory the Pygmies will be bringing," he announced.
"Forgive me, Commandant, but isn't dealing in ivory outlawed?" Kate asked.
"Ivory, and every product here, belongs to the king. Is that understood, old woman?"
"Understood, Commandant."
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In the meantime, Nadia, Alexander, and the others in the International Geographic group were making their preparations. Angie couldn't help, as she wanted, because four of the king's young wives came to get her and take her to the river, where they kept her company during a long bath overseen by the old man with the bamboo stick. When he raised his arm to administer a few preventative canings to his master's future wife, Angie laid him out flat in the mud with a right to the chin. Then she broke the bamboo over one ample knee and threw the pieces in his face, with the warning that the next time he lifted a hand to her she would dispatch him to the land of his ancestors. The four girls were overcome with such a fit of laughing that they had to sit down; their legs wouldn't hold them. Awed, they felt Angie's muscles and realized that if this husky woman entered the harem their lives might possibly take a turn for the better. Perhaps Kosongo had at last met an opponent who was his equal.