“How seasoned are your men?” asked Budo.
Kenton shrugged. “They are well-trained. Some have seen battle against the Mohammedans and a few of the older ones are veterans of the West Africa Squadron that was tasked by the Crown to catch or sink slavers. Make no mistake, we would have been able to defeat them quite easily, but our little…afternoon tea with your village left our numbers depleted. We have never lost to the French.”
Budo stroked the map. I noticed the cartographer frown and he seemed about to speak when Kenton silenced him with a look.
“What will you do for me in return?” asked Budo in halting Yoruba.
“Release. Full exoneration. You’ll have the thanks of the Crown,” said Kenton.
Budo laughed when I translated. “What do I care for their Crown’s gratitude?”
“You can receive papers that force anyone to assist you, or forbid any impedance. This is worth more than sacks of gold,” I said.
“I don’t care for gold either,” Budo said. “Why are you trying so hard to convince me? Do you enjoy being their slave so much?”
“I am not a slave,” I said.
“No, just a traitor.” He scratched his crotch. He had nits on his head and, I felt sure, his pubic hair as well. “Tell your Kenton that I will require absolute and immediate obedience of all my instructions if I am to do this on time.”
The first thing he did was snatch ink from the cartographer and request writing surfaces.
I will not pretend that I fully understood what happened in the days and weeks that followed. Budo supervised the making of engines using a complicated combination of dried bamboo sticks, repurposed iron and steel, rubber, gunpowder and different crystals of myriad colours. Kenton came into the workshop one day and picked up one of the contraptions which was a pole with a large but hollow ball of steel on one end. He looked at me, but I could not tell him anything. He was tired and worn out.
“You hate us, don’t you?” said Kenton.
I could not speak. All I had to do was lie, but despite all of my compromises I did not have this in me.
“Try to remember that we are people. These men have wives and children in England. I have family. I also have instructions that I must carry out.” He frowned, then turned and left.
We waited for the French just like my village waited for the British. The English still armed themselves with bolt-action rifles, but Budo had marked out places they could not walk. His eyes held a glint that was not battle-thirst. He wanted to see how well his mechanisms would work.
Rather than over-extend himself trying to defend the compound Kenton deployed forces to the south-east direction to meet the French. When the battle joined a light rain fell, drizzling, cooling every surface, causing mist to rise from the heat of the noon sun. They used conventional weapons, sinew, and raw courage. The foreigners shot at each other, and some died, some lost limbs, fighting over land that was not theirs.
Kenton never expected to win in the bush, outnumbered as he was. They fell back to the compound where they had dug foxholes and other places to hide.
To the French the compound must have appeared as a leafless forest where the trees were all six-feet high poles tipped with shining metal balls, shallow mud all over the ground and an after-smell of mulch and burnt rubber. They examined the buildings and the barracks, but found all empty. One legionnaire touched the nearest ball. Nothing happened. Then at the far end of the compound Budo emerged holding a device that looked like two polished iron hemispheres joined together with wires and metal spokes pointing outwards towards the enemy. It was the size of an adult goat, with thick cables growing out of each core and trailing behind him, woven into a tangle held up by seven infantry men. He wore elbow-length rubber gloves and half of his face was covered by a dark screen. He wobbled with the effort of manipulating the thing which looked like a giant insect.
“Close your eyes,” he screamed, and activated a trigger mechanism.
The crack that ensued was louder than thunder. Men howled with fear and despair. I had to look. A ball of fire rolled away from Budo about a foot off the ground. It seemed slow, but it bounced from pylon to pylon, leaking strands of electricity like thread from a weft coming undone. It passed through the first man and stripped his skin off in sheets, leaving a blackened skeleton. No scream. The bones crumpled to the ground, hissing in the mud.
Then, hell.
The fireball ran amok. The first one fizzled out, and Budo fired again, and a third time. There were puddles of flesh, molten gore, bones, and equipment heating and blowing up everywhere. The breeze filled our noses with sulphur and ozone and excreta. A French flag burned in isolation, lonely as the cries of dying men. The compound was alive with flames.
Scouts confirmed that the survivors had fled.
Budo pointed his fearsome device at the heavens and fired. A glowing ball of yellow light floated straight and true into the sky, trailing lightning that struck trees, flagpoles and the roof of the officer’s mess before disappearing into the clouds. I thought it was out of character for him to celebrate in this fashion, and I was right.
He dropped the smoking engine on the floor and took off the gloves. He yanked me by the arm and took me to Kenton who was yelling huzzah with his men.
“Tell the white man I have finished my task and will be on my way,” said Budo.
“Is he jesting? I don’t know if this was science or sorcery, but I have to take you to London. The Queen will have use for your talents. You’ll be under guard until I can arrange passage for you.”
I did not translate this for Budo. I said he would be released later. I wanted to spare him the feeling. Time enough to break his heart on another day. There are many events in the womb of time which will be delivered. He smiled and at that point I noticed that he was counting. His devices were also ticking, winding down to something.
“You are wrong about the French,” said Budo in English.
Kenton looked stunned, but I had already begun to suspect that Budo knew more than he revealed.
“They are not monsters any more than you English are,” said Budo. “I met many French men and women while I was in Milan and Venice. They are like you.”
“You’ve been to Italy?” said Kenton. His right hand hovered around his pistol holster.
“Many times.” Budo turned to me and said, “Run. Don’t look back.”
This was a gift, undeserved, perhaps because he knew I did him a kindness in my speech. Or perhaps he pitied my age. I sprinted away, and heard Kenton shout my name twice before a mighty rumble drowned his voice out. I looked back, like Lot’s wife, and saw the finger of God smite the outpost. An oval, brown airship hovered within the smoke of the burning buildings. A weapon projected down from the gondola and shot flames at the survivors.
Something else: I saw Omolola. She hung in the air strapped to a gas bag that strained to ascend, tethered to a tree. She helped Budo reach the airship and they floated away.
That was the last I heard of them.
The governor general of Nigeria, Lord Lugard, wrote an account of this event in volume IV of his diaries.
In 1894 a small British outpost valiantly resisted a surprise French incursion. They fought to the death, every last man Jack, preferring to burn the coastal foothold rather than surrender.
Our history is not written in the pages of books, and the story of Budo is repeated by storytellers and griots all over the West Coast of Africa, in Brazil and in Haiti. It is told by campfire and moonlight, and it is commemorated by masking. Whenever you see a Yoruba festival with a masquerade sporting gigantic goggles and strips of rubber as tassels, you are watching a re-enactment of Budo’s exploits.