"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 squeezed it, the girl winced slightly and Vicky seeing the crimson linen of her blouse dampened in a wet dark patch at the nipple realized that the girl's breast was heavy with milk.
Vicky's artificial sense of well-being was fast fading now, sinking once again under the weight of her weariness, and lulled by the food in her belly, the thick smoky atmosphere and the hypnotic cadence of the Amharic language. She was on the point of excusing herself from the Lij and leaving when there was a disturbance outside the room, and the shrill angry cries of a voice creaking with age and indi nation The room was immediately electric with a charged feeling of expectation, and Ras Kullah looked up and called out querulously.
A youth of perhaps nineteen years of age was dragged into the room and held by two armed guards in the centre of the hastily cleared space before Ras Kullah. His arms were bound with rawhide that cut deeply into the flesh of his wrists, and his face was wet and shiny with the sweat of fear, while his eyes rolled wildly in their sockets.
He was followed by a shrieking crone, a wizened baboon like figure, swathed in a voluminous black sham mastiff with filth and greenish with age. Repeatedly she attempted to attack the captive youth, clawing at his face with bony hooked fingers, her toothless old mouth opened in a dark pink-lined pit as she leaped and cavorted before the terrified youth, trying again and again to reach him, while the two guys pushed her away with c ee gu aw and playful blows, never relinquishing their grip on their prisoner.
The Ras leaned forward to watch this play with awakening interest, his dark dull eyes taking on a sparkle of anticipation as he asked a question, and the crone flew to him and flung herself full-length before him.
She began to bleat out a long high-pitched plea, attempting at the same time to grasp and kiss the Ras's feet. The Ras giggled with anticipation, kicking away the old woman's hands and occasionally asking a question that was answered either by the guards or the grovelling crone.
"Miss Camberwell whispered the Prince. "I suggest that you leave now.
This will not be pleasant to watch."
"What is it?" Vicky demanded, her professional instincts roused. "What are they doing?" "The woman accuses the youth of murdering her son.
The guards are her witnesses and the Ras is trying the case.
He will give judgement in a moment, and the sentence will be carried out immediately."
Here? "Vicky looked startled.
"Yes, Miss Camberwell. I urge you to leave. The punishment will be biblical, from the Old Testament which is the centre of the Coptic faith. It will be a tooth for a tooth." Vicky hesitated to take the Prince's advice, all human experience was her field no matter how bizarre, and suddenly it was too late.
Laughingly, the Ras thrust the old woman away again with a kick to the chest that sent her sprawling across the beaten earth floor and he called a peremptory command to the guards who held the accused youth.
Flapping like a maimed black crow upon the floor, the crone set up a wailing shriek of triumph as she heard the verdict, and she tried to regain her feet. The guards guffawed again and began to strip away the condemned man's clothing, tearing it from his body until he stood completely naked except for his bonds.
The crowded room now buzzed with excitement at the coming entertainment, and the doorway and windows were packed with those who had come in from the encampment amongst the cosa flora trees. Even the two impassive madonnas who flanked the Ras had become animated, leaning forward to chatter softly to each other, smiling secretly as their dark-moon eyes shone and the full swollen breasts swung heavily under the thin material of their blouses.
The doomed youth was whimpering softly, his head turning back and forth, as though seeking escape, his naked body slim and finely muscled with dark amber skin that, glowed in the lamplight, and his arms bound tightly behind his back. His legs were long and the muscles looked hard and beautifully sculptured, and the dark bush of curls in his groin was dense and crisp-looking. His thick circumcised penis hung limply, seeming to epitomize the man's despair.
Vicky tried to tear her eyes away, ashamed to look upon a human being stripped thus of all dignity, but the spectacle was mesmeric.
The old woman hopped and flapped in front of the captive, her wrinkled brown features contorted in an expression of utter malice and she opened her toothless mouth and spat into his face. The spittle ran down his cheek and dripped on to his chest.
"Please leave now," Lij Mikhael urged Vicky, and she tried to rise, but it seemed that her legs would not respond.
One of the Galla warriors sitting opposite Vicky drew the narrow-bladed dagger from the tooled leather sheath on his hip. The handle was carved from the horn of a kudu bull and bound with copper wire, the blade was slightly curved and viciously pointed, twice the span of a man's hand in length. He shouted to attract the woman's attention, then sent the weapon skidding across the floor towards her and she pounced upon it with another gleeful shriek and pranced before the cringing youth, brandishing the knife while the watchers shouted encouragement to her.