The process of tapping out Vicky's despatch on the telegraph was a
long, laborious business, almost beyond the ability of the station
master whose previous transmissions had seldom exceeded a dozen words
at a time. He frowned and muttered to himself as he worked, and Vicky
wondered in what mangled state her masterpiece of the journalistic art
would reach her editor's desk in New York. The Prince had left her and
gone off with his escort to the official government residence on the
outskirts of the village, and it was after nine o'clock before the
station master had sent the last of Vicky's despatch a total of almost
five thousand words and Vicky found that her legs were unsteady and her
brain woolly with fatigue when she went out into the utter darkness of
the mountain night. There were no stars, for the night mists had
filled the basin and swirled in the headlights as Vicky groped her way
through the village and at last found the government residence.
It was a large sprawling complex of buildings with wide verandas,
whitewashed and iron-roofed, standing in a grove of dark-foliaged cosa
flora trees from which the bats screeched and fluttered to dive upon
the insects that swarmed in the light from the windows of the main
building.
Vicky halted the car in front of the largest building and found herself
surrounded by silent but watchful throngs of dark men, all of them
heavily armed like the Harari she knew, but these were a different
people. She did not know why, but she was sure of it.
There were many others camped in the grove. She could see their fires
and hear the stamp and snort of their tethered horses, the voices of
the women and the laughter of the men.
The throng opened for her and she crossed the veranda and entered the
large room which was crowded with many men, and lit by the smoky
paraffin lamps that hung from the ceiling. The room stank of male
sweat, tobacco and the hot spicy aroma of food and tej.
A hostile silence fell as she entered, and Vicky stood uncertainly on
the threshold, scrutinized by a hundred dark suspicious eyes, until Lij
Mikhael rose from where he sat at the far end of the room.
"Miss Camberwell." He took her hand. "I was beginning to worry about
you. Did you send your despatch?" He led her across the room and
seated her beside him, before he indicated the man who sat opposite
him.
"This is Ras Kullah of the Gallas," he said, and despite her weariness,
Vicky studied him with interest.
Her first impression was identical to that she had received from the
men amongst the cosa flora trees outside in the darkness. There was a
veiled hostility, a coldness of the spirit about the man, almost
reptilian aura about the dark unblinking eyes.
He was a young man, still in his twenties, but his face and body were
bloated by disease or debauchery so that there was a soft jelly-like
look to his flesh. The skin was a pale creamy colour, unhealthy and
clammy, as though it had never been exposed to sunlight. His lips were
full and petulant, a startling cherry red in colour that ill suited the
pale tones of his skin.
He watched Vicky, when the Prince introduced her, with the same dead
expression in his eyes, but gave no acknowledgement though the flat
snakelike eyes moved slowly over her body, like loathsome hands,
dwelling and lingering on her breasts and her legs, before moving back
to Lij Mikhael's face.
The pudgy, swollen hands lifted a buck-horn pipe to the dark cherry
lips and Ras Kullah drew deeply upon it holding the smoke in his lungs
before exhaling slowly.
When Vicky smelled the smoke, she knew the reason for the dead eyes in
the Ras's puffy face.
"You have not eaten all day," said Lij Mikhael, and gave instructions
for food to be brought to Vicky. "You will excuse me now, Miss
Camberwell, the Ras speaks no English and our negotiations are still at
an early stage. I have ordered a room made ready where you may rest as
soon as you have eaten. We shall be talking all the night," the Lij
smiled briefly, "and saying very little, for a blood feud of a hundred
years is what we are talking around." He turned back to the Ras.
The hot, spicy food warmed and filled the cold hollow place in the pit
of Vicky's stomach, and a mug of fiery tej made her choke and gasp, but
then lifted her spirits and revived her journalist's curiosity so that
she could look again with interest at what was happening around her.
The interminable discussion went on between the two men, cautious
plodding negotiations between implacable luctantly drawn together by a
greater danger and enemies, a more powerful adversary.
On either side Ras sat two young women, pale sloe-eyed creatures, with
noble regular features and thick dark hair frizzled out into a stiff
round bush that caught the light of the lanterns and glowed along the
periphery like a luminous halo. They sat impassively showing no
emotion, even when the Ras fondled one or the other of them with the
absent-minded caress that he might have bestowed on a lap dog.
Only once, as he took a fat round breast in one plump soft paw and
