“Are those letters on it?” he asked.
“Yes,” Burton murmured. “There's some sort of inscription.”
Wells reached into his pocket and pulled out a dagger. “Here, use this.”
Burton took it and used the blade to scrape the moss away. Words were revealed. They read:
Thomas Manfred Honesty
1816–1863
Lost His Life While
Liberating the Enslaved.
R.I.P.
On the morning the expedition departed Nzasa, having stayed there for a single night, Sir Richard Francis Burton sent Pox to Isabel to report his position. When the parakeet returned, it squawked: “Message from Isabel Arundell. We are still harassing the stinky-mouthed enemy. I have so far lost eighteen of my women to them. They are preparing a moronic party to follow you. We will try to hold them back. Grubby pants. Message ends.”
With the threat of pursuit, Burton tried to establish a greater sense of urgency among his porters, but already his safari was assailed by problems. Upon packing to leave the village, it was discovered that two boxes of equipment were missing and three of the Wasawahili had deserted; one of the mules appeared to be dying; and water had found its way into three sacks of flour, rendering them unusable.
The explorer, who from previous experience had resigned himself to such misfortunes, put a bullet through the mule's head, discarded the flour, redistributed the loads, and got his people moving.
The second day saw them trek from Nzasa to Tumba Ihere. The route led over gently undulating grasslands and through miry valleys, past a bone-strewn burial ground where witches and other practitioners of uchawi-black magic-had been burned at the stake, and across a fast-flowing stream where they lost another mule after it slipped and broke a leg.
They rested for an hour.
Swinburne abandoned his stretcher.
“I'm fine and dandy! In the pink! Fit as a fiddle!” he announced. “How far to the next village?”
“At least four hours' march,” Burton replied. “You can't possibly be in full bloom. You had half your blood sucked out a couple of days ago.”
“Pah! I'm perfectly all right. Confound it! I was hoping the village would be closer.”
“Why?”
“Because I want to try that pombeAfrican beer you once told me about!”
They started moving again, crossing a plain that seethed with wildlife, and for half an hour, Swinburne, who was now riding a mule while holding an umbrella over his head, amused himself by shouting the names of every species he spotted: “Zebra! Koodoo! Giraffe! Guinea-fowl! Lion! Quail! Four-legged thingummy!”
He then fell off his mount, having fainted.
They put him back onto the stretcher.
After wrestling their way through a long stretch of sticky red soil and onto firmer, hilly ground, they were met by men from the village of Kiranga-Ranga. These Wazamaro warriors each bore three long puckered scars extending across both cheeks from their earlobes to the corners of their mouths. Their hair was plastered down with ochre-coloured mud and twisted into a double row of knobs that circled their heads. They wore loincloths of unbleached cotton and had strings of beads looped around their necks, which were also fitted with tightly beaded bands, known as mgowekocollars. A solid ring of brass circled their wrists. They carried muskets, spears, bows with poisoned arrows, and long knives.
They were not friendly.
Tribute was demanded, haggled over, and finally paid in the form of two dotiof cloth and some much-prized sami-samibeads.
The safari continued, meandering past fertile fields of rice, maize, and manioc before coming up against a snarled and riotous jungle, which they were still hacking through when the rains started. They eventually stumbled out of it, soaked to the skin and covered with ticks, and found themselves amid fetid vegetation from which misshapen dwarf mango trees grew, and in this unlikely spot-Tumba Ihere-they were forced to establish their camp.
That evening, in the main Rowtie, Isabella Mayson announced that she was feeling out of sorts. By the morning she was trembling with ague and hallucinating that ravenous birds were trying to peck out her eyes. Swinburne gave up his stretcher for her.
“I have developed a horror of the horizontal!” he declared.
“Sit on your mule,” Burton instructed, “and don't overexert yourself.”
The explorer ordered the commencement of the next march.
“Kwecha! Kwecha!” Said bin Salim and his Askaris yelled. “Pakia! Hopa! Hopa!” Collect! Pack! Set out! Safari! A journey! A journey today!
So began the third day of their hike.
Pox made the daily flight eastward and back again. The report was not good. A ship had delivered two thousand Prussian reinforcements to Mzizima. The Daughters of Al-Manat had divided into two groups of ninety women, one continuing to wage a guerrilla campaign against the burgeoning town, the other harassing a contingent of men that had set off in pursuit of Burton's expedition.
“We have to move faster,” the king's agent told Said.
“I will do all I can, Mr. Burton,” the ras kafilahpromised in his habitually polite manner, “and the rest is as Allah wills it.”
They tramped through alternating bands of richly cultivated land and matted flora, with Said's Askaris forcing the porters to a brisk pace wherever possible, until they eventually found themselves in a large forest of copal trees that oozed resin and filled the air with a cloying perfume. Horseflies attacked them. Thomas Honesty was stung below the left eye by a bee and the side of his face swelled up like a balloon. Trounce started to feel a stiffness in his limbs. For an hour a strange whistling noise assaulted their ears. They never discovered its source.
They kept going.
About noon, Burton-who'd succumbed to the turgid heat and was gazing uncomprehendingly at the back of his mule's head-was roused by Swinburne, who, in his piping voice, suddenly announced:
“The dense hard passage is blind and stifled
That crawls by a track none turn to climb
To the strait waste place that the years have rifled
Of all but the thorns that are touched not of time.
The thorns he spares when the rose is taken;
The rocks are left when he wastes the plain.
The wind that wanders, the weeds wind-shaken,
These remain.”
“What?” Burton mumbled.
“Police pottery,” Swinburne replied. “Do you remember Matthew Keller in Leeds? Feels like a long time ago, durn't it?”
“I'm losing track,” Burton replied. “Since we left the Orpheus, I've been forgetting to record the date in my journal. I don't know why. It's out of character.”
He squinted against the glaring light and for the first time realised that the forest had been left behind; they were now traversing broad grain fields. He recognised the place-he'd passed through it during his previous expedition.
“We're approaching the village of Muhogwe. Its people have a reputation for violence but last time I was here they settled for mockery.”
William Trounce cleared his throat and said, “My apologies, Richard.” He slipped to the ground.
It was another case of seasoning fever.
“We're succumbing considerably sooner than I expected,” Burton said to Sister Raghavendra as they lowered the police detective onto a litter.
“Don't worry,” she replied. “There's usually a fairly long incubation period with this sort of affliction but the medicine I've been feeding you negates it. The stuff brings on the fever more rapidly, makes it burn more fiercely, and it's all over and done with in a matter of hours instead of weeks.”
Burton raised his eyebrows. “I should have liked that during my previous expedition!”
They came to Muhogwe. It was abandoned.