Wilbur Smith - Assegai

‘Your Royal Highness, I am your servant.’

She did not bother to acknowledge his bow but continued to regard him as though he had just let off a particularly obnoxious fart. At last she spoke, her tone icy. ‘You are very young.’

‘Your Royal Highness, this is a regrettable circumstance for which I must apologize. In time I hope to correct it.’

The Princess did not smile. ‘I said you were young. I did not say you were too young.’ She held out her right hand.

When he took it in his he found it as hard and cold as her expression. He kissed the air an inch short of her bony white knuckles. The crêpe of tiny wrinkles across the back tittle-tattled her age.

‘The governor of the territory of British East Africa has placed his private railway coach at your disposal for the journey to Nairobi,’ Leon told her.

‘ Ja! This is fitting and anticipated,’ she agreed.

‘His excellency also begs your presence as guest of honour at a special dinner at Government House to be arranged at any time convenient to you, Princess.’

‘I did not come to Africa to eat in the company of junior civil servants. I came here to kill animals. Many animals.’

Leon bowed again. ‘Immediately, ma’am. Does Your Royal Highness have any particular preference for the animals she wishes to kill?’

‘Lions!’ she answered. ‘And pigs.’

‘How about a few elephants and buffalo?’

‘No! Only big lions and pigs with long tusks.’

Before they set off into the blue, the princess tried out every mount in the string of thoroughbreds that Leon had assembled for her. She rode astride like a man. As Leon watched her appraise the first horse with her disdainful expression, walking around it twice before she swung up gracefully into the saddle and bent the animal to her will, he realized that she was a superb horsewoman. In fact, he had seldom seen another woman who came close to her.

When they rode out from Tandala and were among the game herds, she forgot her original demand for lions and pigs and became a great deal less selective. She had a beautiful little 9.3 × 74 Mannlicher rifle made by Joseph Just of Ferlach, inlaid with gold by Wilhelm Röder with sylvan scenes of fauns and naked nymphs cavorting riotously together. When she bowled over three running Grant’s gazelle at a range of three hundred yards in three consecutive shots without dismounting, Leon decided she was probably the most deadly shot, man or woman, he had ever met.

‘Yes, I want to kill many animals,’ she remarked, as she reloaded the Mannlicher. She was smiling warmly for the first time since she had arrived in Africa.

When he took the princess up Lonsonyo Mountain to meet Lusima, Leon was unprepared for the way the two women reacted instantly to each other. Figuratively, they arched their backs and spat like two cats. ‘M’bogo, this is one with many deep, dark passions. No man will fathom her. She is as deadly as a mamba. She is not the one I promised you. Be on your guard,’ Lusima told Leon.

‘What did the black bitch say?’ the princess demanded. The hostility between the two women crackled in the air like static electricity.

‘That you are a lady of immense power, Princess.’

‘Tell the great cow not to forget that either.’

When it came to the ceremony of blessing the rifles under the council tree, Lusima emerged from her hut in her ceremonial finery, but when she was still ten paces from where the Mannlicher lay on the lionskin she stopped. Her face changed to the colour of dried mud.

‘What troubles you, Mama?’ Leon asked quietly.

‘That bunduki is a thing of evil. The white-haired woman is as powerful a sorcerer as I am. She has placed a spell on her own bunduki that frightens me.’ She turned back towards her hut. ‘I will not leave my hut until that witch departs from Lonsonyo Mountain,’ she vowed.

‘Lusima has been taken ill. She must go to her hut to rest,’ Leon translated.

‘ Ja , I know very well what troubles her.’ The princess gave one of her rare, thin-lipped smiles.

Twenty days later, in country that Manyoro and Loikot had declared totally devoid of lions, they rode out of camp at dawn for the princess to continue her slaughter of warthogs – she had already accounted for more than fifty, including three boars with incredibly long tusks. They had not ventured more than half a mile from the camp when they came across an enormous solitary black-maned lion standing in the middle of an open grassy vlei . Without a moment’s hesitation, and without dismounting, the princess brought up the little Mannlicher and, with a surgeon’s precision, put a bullet through the lion’s brain.

The two Masai should have been delighted with this performance but they were strangely subdued as they began to skin the carcass. It was left to Leon to tender his congratulations, which the princess ignored. He heard Loikot mutter to Manyoro, ‘This lion should never have been here. Where did he come from?’

‘Nywele Mweupe summoned him,’ Manyoro said sulkily. They had given the princess the Swahili name ‘White Hair’. Manyoro had not combined it with either of the titles of respect, ‘Memsahib’ or ‘Beibi’.

‘Manyoro, even from you that is an enormous stupidity,’ Leon snapped at him. ‘That lion came to the smell of all those warthog carcasses.’ He sensed mutiny in the air. Lusima had obviously had a word or two with Manyoro.

‘The bwana knows best,’ Manyoro conceded, with ostentatious courtesy, but he neither looked at Leon nor smiled. When they had finished the skinning, the two Masai did not perform the lion dance for the princess. Instead they sat apart and took snuff together. When Leon remarked on the omission Manyoro did not respond, but Loikot muttered, ‘We are too tired to dance and sing.’

When he shouldered the bundled green skin and started back for camp, Manyoro’s limp on the leg that had received the Nandi arrow, usually barely noticeable, became heavily pronounced. This was his way of expressing protest or disapproval.

When they rode into camp the princess sprang down from the saddle and strode into the mess tent where she dropped into a canvas chair. She threw her riding whip on to the table, removed her hat and sailed it across the tent, then shook out her braids and commanded, ‘Courtney, tell that useless cook of yours to bring me a cup of coffee.’

Leon relayed the order to the kitchen tent, and minutes later Ishmael hurried in with a steaming porcelain coffee pot on a silver tray. He set it down, poured a cup of the brew and placed it in front of her. Then he stood to attention behind her chair, waiting to be dismissed.

The princess raised the cup to her lips and sipped. She pulled a face of utter disgust and hurled the cup with its contents at the far wall of the tent. ‘Do you think I am a sow that you place such pig swill before me?’ she screamed. She seized her riding whip from the table and leaped to her feet. ‘I will teach you to show me more respect, savage.’ She drew back her whip arm to strike at Ishmael’s face. He made no effort to protect himself but stared at her in terrified astonishment.

Behind her, Leon sprang from his chair and grabbed her wrist before she could launch the blow. He swung her around to face him. ‘Your Royal Highness, there are no savages among my people. If you want this safari to continue you should bear that firmly in mind.’ He held her easily until she stopped struggling. Then he went on, ‘You should go to your tent now and rest until dinner time. You are clearly overwrought by the excitement of the lion hunt.’

He released her and she stormed from the tent. She did not reappear when Ishmael rang the dinner gong and Leon dined alone. Before he retired he checked her tent surreptitiously and saw that her lantern was still burning. He went to his own quarters and filled in his game book. He was about to add a comment about the incident in the mess, but as he started to write he remembered Penrod’s caution. Instead of relieving his feelings he wrote, ‘Today the princess proved once more that she is a remarkable horsewoman and rifle shot. The cool manner in which she despatched the magnificent lion was extraordinary. The more I see of her, the more I admire her skills as a huntress.’