Warkite was first to arrive, a plain, querulous creature but not quite the witch-like crone I’d been led to expect. Her handicap was that while Masteeat had a son who’d make a king some day, Warkite’s boy had been murdered by Theodore, and though she had a grandson, he was reputed illegitimate. She’d been consorting with Menelek, King of Shoa, the despised “fat boy” who had once laid siege to Magdala but lost his nerve and turned tail when it was at his mercy. Now, she made a poor impression on Napier, lamenting her misfortunes, railing against Masteeat, and looking less regal by the minute.
Napier asked Speedy and me aside what we thought. I said that if it came to a war Masteeat would eat her alive, having the men, the brains, and the will. Speedy agreed, adding that Masteeat had turned up trumps against Theodore, and should be recognised Queen of Galla, whoever had Magdala.
So that was Warkite for the workhouse. When Napier asked if she couldn’t be reconciled with her sister, she let out a great screeching laugh and cried that if they made peace today, Masteeat would betray her tomorrow. Word came just then that Masteeat was expected hourly, and Warkite was off like a rising grouse, never to be seen again.
I confess I was looking forward to my Lion Queen’s arrival, and she came in style, with an entourage of warriors and servants, sashaying along under a great brolly borne by minions, her imposing bulk magnificent in silks of every colour, festooned with jewellery, a turban with an aigret swathing her braids, and bearing a silver-mounted sceptre. The whole staff were on hand to gape at her, and she acknowledged them with a beaming smile and queenly incli nations, head high and hand extended in regal fashion as Napier came to greet her. She was overwhelming, and for a moment I thought he’d kiss her hand, but he checked in time and gave her a stiff bow, hat in hand.
He was about to present his staff when she gave a great whoop of "Basha Fallakal” at the sight of Speedy, while I was favoured with a sleepy smile but no sign at all of recognition; since the last time we’d met had been at the gallop on the floor of her dining-room, I thought her demeanour was in quite the best taste, friendly but entirely decorous. To the others she was all dignified affability, being still sober. Napier clearly was impressed, and as Speedy remarked to me: “There’s our Queen of all Galla, what?”
They gave her dinner, and she entranced and appalled the company by laying into the goods like a starving python; as Stanley reported: “She ate like a gourmande, disposing of what came before her without regard to the horrified looks… pudding before beef, blancmange with potatoes… emitting labial smacks like pistol cracks.” She also drank like a fish, shouting with laughter, more boisterous and vulgar with every draught… and no one, even Napier, seemed to mind a bit. It may have been her exotic novelty, or her undoubted sexual attraction, or simply the good nature that shone out of her, but I think there was also a recognition that despite her gross manners she was altogether too formidable to be over looked. [61]
Speedy and I were the only ones present who could talk to her directly without an interpreter, and when she’d spoken with him a few minutes alone over the coffee, she beckoned me to take his place beside her. Watching her across the table during the meal, I’d been bound to wonder what she knew of the fate of Uliba-Wark, if anything, and if she might refer to it; now, she did, but in a most roundabout way, and to this day I can only guess how she came to learn what befell on that ghastly night. Perhaps some Galla escaped the massacre; I can only repeat what she said after I had filled her cup with tej, and she had gulped it down, wiped her lips with the tail of her turban, and smiled her fat-cheeked saucy smile.
“The Basha Fallaka says I am to have my fifty thousand dollars. Your Dedjaz Napier—what a fine and courtly man he is!—has pledged his word. But", she pouted and took another swig, “he does not say whether I am to have Magdala.” She looked a question.
“If my word goes for anything, you will. But you know it’s been offered to Gobayzy.”
She giggled maliciously. “Gobayzy will shudder away like a frightened bride! What, accept an amba surrounded by my warriors? He’d sweat his fat carcase to a shadow at the mere thought. No, he will refuse, beyond doubt.”
“Then Magdala’s yours, lion lady. There is no one else.”
She nodded, sipped and wiped again, and sat for a moment. Then she spoke quietly: “Uliba-Wark is at peace now. My little Uliba, who loved and hated me. Perhaps she loved and hated you also. I do not know and I do not ask.” She took another sip and set down her cup. “You were there when she died. No, do not tell me of it. Some things are better not known. Enough that she is at peace.”
That was all she said to me, and I saw her only once more, on the following day outside her splendid silk pavilion, when Gobayzy sent word that he was honoured by the offer of Magdala, but on the whole he’d rather not. So the amba was hers, says Napier, but she must understand that he was bound to destroy its defences and burn all its buildings, to mark the disapproval (that was the word he used, so help me) of its late ruler’s conduct in daring to imprison and maltreat British citizens. She assured him that fire could only purify the place, and departed with her retinue, borne in a palki and smiling graciously on the troops who cheered her away.
The same afternoon Magdala was set on fire. The King’s Own had it cleared of its last inhabitants by four o’clock, the Sappers and Miners had laid their charges, and presently in a series of thun derous explosions the gates and defences were blown up, the last of the cannon destroyed, and the whole ramshackle town with its thatched palaces and prisons and houses put to the torch. It went up in a series of fiery jets which the wind levelled in a great rushing of flame which, as Stanley says, turned the whole top of the amba with its three thousand buildings into a huge lake of fire. The whole army watched, and I heard a fellow say that Hell must look like that, but he was wrong; the Summer Palace burning, that was Hell, wonderful beauty smashed and consumed in a mighty holocaust; Magdala was a vermin-ridden pest-hole which its dwellers had been only too glad to leave.
Indeed, they couldn’t get far enough away from it, and it was a swarming multitude tens of thousands strong, men, women, chicos, beasts and all their paraphernalia, that set off from Arogee that same day, down the defile to the Bechelo; that was Napier’s other great concern, to see them safe beyond the reach of the Galla marauders who’d been denied the plunder of Magdala and were itching to make up for it at the expense of the fugitives. Our troops rode herd on them the whole way, but Napier would run no risks, and had cavalry patrols escort them for another twenty miles beyond the river.
The next day, the eighteenth, the army set off north, with the Sherwood Foresters leading the way, their band thumping out “When Johnny Comes Marching Home Again” and “Brighton Camp", and behind them the Native Infantry sepoys swinging along followed by the jingling troopers, the Scindees and lancers and Dragoon Guards, and behind them the guns and the matlows of the Naval Brigade, and last of all the 33rd, the Irish hooligans of the Duke of Wellington’s, the long khaki column winding down the defile, dirty, bedraggled, tired, and happy, catching the drift of the music on the air and joining in:
I seek no more the fine and gay, They serve but to remind me, How swift the hours did pass away With the girl I left behind me