Mackenzie Ford - The Clouds Beneath the Sun

He wiped his forehead with a handkerchief.

“The first archaeologists and paleontologists who came to this area were not only examples of white science, looking at how early people had started, but they had automobiles and, soon, airplanes, all of which I loved. So I was attracted naturally.”

“But that doesn’t explain why you are so good at what you do.”

“Maybe I have been lucky.” He smiled.

“Eleanor doesn’t think so. Nobody thinks so.”

He let a pause go by. “I will tell you one other thing. I have a Christian name—Daniel—but it’s not the only name I have. One of my other names is Owino. It is our custom for people to be named after a good ancestor, an ancestor known for doing good deeds, or being a brave warrior—benefiting the tribe in some way. The Owino I am named for was a superb tracker of game, he could ‘read’ tracks in the thinnest sand, he could ‘read’ imprints left even on savannah grass and on gravel. Maybe I inherited some of his talent.”

He held up the spectacles case. “My eyes are not brilliant, Miss Natalie, but I have taught myself to see, through living my whole life in Kenya, here in the bush. So I can be good enough at something that, one day, the Luo will name their sons for me.” He paused. “Even so, I doubt that, had I been sitting outside your tent that night when Dr. Sutton was killed, I could have identified Mutevu Ndekei. How I wish it had been me who waited up that night, and not you.”

Natalie colored. What was Daniel saying? That she should pretend she hadn’t seen what she had seen? She couldn’t do it. She just couldn’t.

Three mornings later, Natalie came back from the gorge and, as she entered the camp, it was immediately clear that there were new visitors. Two men, one gray-haired, one dark, were seated with Eleanor outside her tent. But Natalie was tired. She hadn’t exactly done much today, save sift soil-sand through a sieve, watching the Maasai who were now, increasingly, patrolling the gorge. But the bucking of the vehicle on the drive back from where they had been digging, and the constant grime from kneeling among the dust and dung, had taken their toll. She needed a shower and she needed a rest. She also needed to reread Russell’s letter one more time, to see if there were any subtle messages she had missed. She’d no doubt meet the strangers at lunch and that was soon enough.

Mgina brought the hot water.

“Is all going well with the wedding?” Natalie asked.

“Yes, Miss Natalie. My sisters are making my wedding jewelry.”

“What is the jewelry made of?”

“Black stone, white stone, ostrich beads. Jewelry must come from the land, so you will remain here always.”

Not for the first time, Natalie remarked on the simple—but sensitive and sensible—iconography of Maasai customs. Most Maasai customs.

She changed, brushed her hair, put on her shoes, lighter than her boots, and tried a little lipstick. She always felt better after that.

As she approached the refectory tent, the men turned toward her.

With a start she realized that one was the deputy attorney general she had met in Nairobi—what was his name? The other man she didn’t know.

They stood up as she approached. The deputy attorney general was virtually unrecognizable out of his lawyer’s uniform of gown and wig. He wore an open-necked shirt and green-cum-khaki trousers. He was sweating. The other man, the dark-haired one, was more elegant, in a pale linen suit.

“Natalie,” said Eleanor, rising from her chair. “I am sure you remember Maxwell Sandys. And this is Peter Jeavons, he’s British minister of state for science. He’s here to see what we do.”

Natalie shook hands with them and then sat in her place. Sandys’s name had come to her just before Eleanor had mentioned it.

“You are a long way from court,” she said as she sat down. “Is this work or pleasure?”

Sandys opened a cardboard folder he was holding and took from it a newspaper. He handed it to Natalie. “We’re here because of this. It’s an editorial in the East African Gazette , and appeared three mornings ago. Will you read it please?”

The knot of foreboding that had been finding a regular home in Natalie’s stomach reformed itself in no time. She took the newspaper and read the article carefully, in her own time. It described a case where the judge had been John Tudor, and where a white security guard had beaten a black burglar fourteen times with an iron bar, so badly he was still in hospital and couldn’t attend his trial. Tudor had dismissed the charges against the security guard and freed him.

When she had finished reading the long editorial that attacked the judge’s behavior, she handed the paper back to Sandys.

“Jack was right about John Tudor being a racist. Fourteen blows is fourteen too many.”

Sandys nodded. “We’re agreed there, Dr. Nelson. But this isn’t the first time Tudor has shown undue leniency towards white security guards when they have attacked and injured black robbers or burglars. He’s giving people—white people—license to ill-treat blacks if they catch them committing crimes. No one wants to condone robbery, of course, but Tudor is showing no sense of proportion and, as I am sure you can see, this only exacerbates a situation that is already very sensitive. Tudor, as I think you have been told, is to be the judge in the case where you will give evidence. It is fair to say that any case coming before Judge Tudor from now on, and which pits a black person against a white person, is going to be big news, the focus of potentially sensational newspaper coverage and will almost certainly stoke the political fires.”

He reached forward and lifted a water jug, filling their glasses one by one as he went on speaking. “Your case, of course, if I can phrase it in that way, your case is even more sensational, at least potentially, because of the defense Ndekei is running, that he was acting according to tribal law. That hasn’t reached the papers yet, but it will, it will.”

Natalie drank some water. It always smelled a little of the purification pills that were needed to keep it sanitary.

“However,” Sandys went on, “I am afraid we have been dealt another blow that I suspect you know nothing about.”

Natalie bit her lip. What was coming?

“We now have a date for the trial—February the twelfth.”

“Why is that significant?”

He drank some water himself and looked at Eleanor. “That is exactly one day before the opening of the independence conference in London. It couldn’t come at a worse time—black–white relations will be under intense scrutiny and if … if Tudor steps out of line, or makes one of his racist gaffes, who knows what will happen? The whole thing is a tinderbox.”

“Can’t you change the date, or change Tudor?”

Sandys shook his head. “Cases are set by rotation, Tudor has already been assigned to the case, and he refuses to back down—I actually think he’s looking forward to it.” He shook his head. “As for the date, he won’t hear of that being changed either. In any case, the Lord Chancellor’s Department, which administers the judges and the courts, has already begun its transition to independence—the deputy in that department is himself black, and is not about to do us any favors. I think he is looking forward to this case, too.”

Sandys shifted in his seat. “We also know that the American ambassador in Nairobi is taking a keen interest in the trial—Richard Sutton Senior went to see him while he was in town, and reminded him he was a big donor to the President’s campaign. That’s another reason this case is a tinderbox. There’s nothing to be done. The case goes ahead.”