Serenummo steps back a pace when the ambassador stops before him. The fat man glances shrewdly at the bundles lashed to the sagging asses, then looks Serenummo in the eye. “You’ve been sent by the white men, no? Doing the bidding of demons, yes?” Serenummo nods. The giants stare off into the trees, as if contemplating some rarefied spectacle beyond the ken of mere earth dwellers. “Follow me,” the ambassador snaps.
They are led into a central courtyard overshadowed by a rambling mud-and-timber structure, a sort of longhouse divided into individual dwellings, some neat and symmetrical and roofed with stone, others so misaligned as to suggest the full range of geometrical possibility. In the near distance they can see the ancient sycamore fig that presides over the place like a protective deity. “Wait here,” the ambassador commands, at the same time motioning to a pair of cowering servants who come forward to lead the asses off for inspection. Then he ducks into a passageway that seems to open up before him like a mouth, and Serenummo and Dosita are left standing in the muddy courtyard under the watchful eyes of the two giants. They’ve come a long way, and they’re hungry, thirsty, tired and wet. No one offers them food or drink. No one invites them in out of the rain or asks them to take a load off their feet.
Half an hour later the ambassador appears at the entrance of a dark twisting passage at the far end of the courtyard. He motions to them with his index finger, then turns and flaps off in his sandals. They have to hurry to keep up, turning first right and then left, heading east, west, north, south, passing through room after room, courtyards, walkways, corrals and stables, led by the red flash of the fat man’s toga as if it were unraveling, thread by thread, the secrets of the labyrinth. Finally they are shown into a dark mud-walled room lit only by a brazier and smelling of sweat and incense.
At the ambassador’s command they go down on their knees, touch their foreheads to the earthen floor in submission. When Serenummo looks up, he sees that he is indeed in the throne room, in the presence of the potentate himself. Mansong is seated on his gilt stool, enormous, like a park statue. He is wearing a dirty periwig and earrings fashioned from silver spoons. Beside him, his son Da, a miniature version of the king; at his feet, a white dog. Wokoko, witch doctor and chief counselor, sits on Mansong’s right hand, dressed in his hyena skins and ostrich plumes, and the shadows are swollen with the big shifting forms of the bodyguards. But what is surprising is the presence of the two Moors. A one-eyed man drawing on a pipe, and his companion, a big man, hard as stone, with black messianic eyes and a hyphenated scar across the bridge of his nose. What would Mansong be doing with Moors in his council room?
“Mansong the Magnificent finds your gifts acceptable,” the ambassador announces. “Have you any message for the king?”
Serenummo rises slowly, loosening the strings of his saphie bag in order to extract the letter. But then he hesitates, remembering the explorer’s injunction. He can feel the Moors’ eyes on him.
“Well?” the ambassador snaps. “Mansong is waiting.”
Serenummo fumbles in his pouch and produces the letter. He bows, and steps forward to hand it to the king, but suddenly the big Moor is on his feet, quick as some pouncing beast. The royal hand is outstretched, the letter raised and proferred, when the Moor intercedes. “I’ll take that,” he growls in Arabic, brushing back the extended hand of Mansong the Puissant as if it were the importuning hand of a beggar, snatching the letter from the air and depositing it in the folds of his jubbah with a look of rage and contempt.
No one, not even the fiercest of the guards, says a word.
♦ DASSOUD’S STORY, PART II ♦
A nobleman, as proud as he was fierce, representative of a culture light years in advance of the tabala-thumping, goat-sucking Sahelian Moors, a man who had gazed on the Mediterranean and traversed the Sahara, Dassoud was not the sort to be long content in the role of henchman and human jackal. Second fiddle might be all right for a young man, someone footloose and untried, but as Dassoud matured he came to expect a bigger slice of the pie. Where before he’d been content, now he began to chafe in his subsidiary role. He found himself resenting Ali’s authority, coveting his prerogatives, criticizing his tactics on the battlefield and at the peace table alike. But the real key to his dissatisfaction, if the truth be known, was Fatima. As she grew in years, so she grew in bulk. She blossomed, tucking away kouskous and seedcakes, twenty meals a day, waking in the night to call for milk and honey. By the time she reached her late twenties, the queen had put on another eighty pounds. At four-sixty, she was irresistible. Dassoud decided to make his move.
He came for Ali in the night, just as sixteen years earlier Ali had come for his own predecessor. Dispatching the Nubian guard and separating Ali’s head from his body was nothing, the work of a minute — the real trick had been locating Ali in the first place. For the Emir, reasoning that the night would inevitably come when the new usurper would stalk Benowm with scimitar or garrote, had made it his practice to postpone retiring until the latest possible hour, and to tell no one — absolutely no one — whose tent he would grace with his recumbent presence. One morning he might emerge from Mohammed Gumsoo’s tent, the next from Mahmud Imail’s. It was a game of musical tents, and a practice of such long standing that the Emir’s people found it as natural a part of waking as the smell of cooksmoke.
For two weeks, Dassoud had quietly visited each of the tents from which Ali had appeared in the morning, remarking the servants who bundled the Emir’s bedclothes, rolled up his rugs and carted off his hookah. The servants varied from day to day, but one — an old woman whose jubbah hung on her like a winding cloth — was there to clean up nearly every morning. Dassoud took her aside and threatened her: betray Ali or he would crush her like a dung beetle. She was a twisted thorn root, her skin almost pale, one eye as cloudy as a puddle of semen. A tarnished ring glinted on her lip as she threw her head back and laughed. “I’ll betray him,” she hissed, “gladly.” Later, after mounting Ali’s head on a stake in the center of camp, Dassoud went to his queen, the blood still wet on his hands.
With Fatima’s support, Dassoud was able to establish a broad base of power. As the widow of Ali, she lent him legitimacy in the eyes of the Moors of Ludamar; as daughter to Boo Khaloom, she gave him a blood tie to the Al-Mu’ta tribe of Jafnoo. It was a beginning, and Dassoud pursued it for all it was worth. Where Ali had been satisfied with rapprochement, Dassoud pushed for an active alliance; where Ali had overlooked encroachment on his borders, Dassoud sought to extend them. He went to great lengths to assure himself of Boo Khaloom’s allegiance, and then, dealing from a position of strength, he approached the fierce Il Braken and Trasart tribes of the northwest and challenged their leaders to single combat. Remorseless, mechanical, he hacked them down one after another.
Within the year Dassoud was able to command a force of some fifteen hundred horsemen; from among these he picked two hundred men to serve as his elite cavalry. They were the best the desert had to offer. From Jafnoo and Ludamar and Masina, from the Il Braken and Trasart and Al-Mu’ta tribes, they came to Dassoud’s tent, savage and skillful, quick lithe athletes, crack shots, superlative horsemen. No one could stand up to them. With Dassoud in the van like some hellish apparition, like a black shaitan, they ranged the length and breadth of the western Sahel, from Gedumah to Timbuctoo, pounding the earth to dust and terrorizing Foulah, Mandingo and Wolof alike. Even the mighty Mansong was cowed.