That discouraged them, and presently they rode off, Yando shouting what sounded like a mixture of pleas and menaces.
“They will return,” says Uliba. “Yando dare not go back to Gobayzy with a tale of failure. We shall have them round my citadel before night, so the sooner we are within the walls the better.”
She rode her horse and I led my lame screw, and as we went I demanded and got an explanation of our recent stirring encounter. She gave it straight-faced matter-of-fact, as though it were an account of everyday social activities among the smart set—which I guess it was, Abyssinian style.
Her husband, she reminded me, was held prisoner by King Gobayzy of Lasta, who had lustful designs on her and had threat ened to have hubby dismembered at length unless she placed herself at his majesty’s disposal. This she had declined to do, so Gobayzy had ordered Yando, a local petty chief, to abduct her. But Yando too had designs on her, and these being troubled times, with Gobayzy at sporadic war with Theodore, had decided to take her for himself, possibly passing her on to Gobayzy later or fobbing him off with some fiction. Hence Yando’s ambush, foiled by resourceful Flashy. Whether her husband remained whole and intact or not, she forgot to mention.
I could see now what she had meant by referring to her “suitors", and how right she’d been to describe herself as an unsafe travel ling companion. Half Abyssinia seemed to be nuts on her, eager to abduct her, and happy to butcher her chance associates, such as myself—and this was the woman who was to guide me through hostile country and present me to her barmy half-sister whom she might well try to depose. By Gad, Speedy could pick ’em, couldn’t he just?
In addition to which, she was the sort who abandoned lovers to their fate, and didn’t seem to care if someone dissected the man she’d sworn to love, honour and obey… but then again, she had a lovely figure, and such legs as the faithful imagine on the houris of paradise.
And she was not without womanly sentiment. “God send that Sarafa died quickly in the fight,” says she. “If he was taken alive Yando will give him a thousand deaths because he was my lover.”
I said Yando might not be aware of that, and she looked at me in astonishment. “Why, Sarafa will taunt him with it!” cries she. “He will throw it in Yando’s face!” She didn’t add “Wouldn’t you?” possibly because she thought the question superfluous.
Once over the ridge we came in sight of the citadel, and it didn’t look any less sinister on second viewing, perched high on a rocky outcrop with a drop of hundreds of feet to the valley below. We reached it in half an hour, and I became aware that it was two towers joined together, six storeys high judging from the window spaces, the farther tower actually projecting out over the void beneath. It was a steep climb to the main door, and before we reached it the womenfolk of the tower were hurrying down to us, full of chatter and alarm, clamouring their questions at Uliba, but sparing a glance for the handsome stranger with the interesting whiskers. I’m not unused to female attention, as you know, but I don’t recall more brazen preening and ogling than I got from Uliba-Wark’s domestics. Plainly they were no strangers to the hayloft and the long grass.
One reason for their shameless glad-eyeing soon became apparent: Uliba-Wark’s stronghold proved to be almost entirely devoid of men, the few there were being either grey-bearded dotards or small boys. Presumably the young ones were away at the civil wars, as conscripts or mercenaries, but I never found out, on account of not speaking the lingo. It’s a damned bore, as you know, for you stand like a tailor’s dummy while the world prattles about you, and worse for me, I think, because I’m used to slinging the bat (* Speak the language (Army slang, from Hind.).) wherever I am.
They’re mighty strange places, these Abyssinian castles, not unlike our Border peels, with rooms piled on each other like so many boxes connected by stairs that are no better than ladders. Since from what Uliba had said we might have to withstand a siege, I was relieved to find that the main door was a massive affair which it would have taken artillery to breach, and the adobe walls were feet thick, with narrow windows well above ground level, offering a good field of fire. With my Joslyn and fifty rounds I could give a warm reception to anyone toiling up the path to our eyrie.
If I’d had any doubts about Uliba-Wark’s importance, they would have been dispelled by the respect amounting to reverence with which she was treated. They fairly grovelled to her, not only the slaves, who made up half the citadel’s residents, but the free women and the two elderly men who seemed to act as stewards or chamberlains. She delivered a brisk speech to the assembled staff in the great ground-floor hall which seemed to be used as a common room, but what she said was Amharic to me, except at the point where she indicated me, and the whole gang turned in my direction and bowed. When she’d dismissed them I was con ducted to an airy chamber on the third floor, bone clean and well if sparsely furnished with a good charpoy (* Native frame-and-cord bedstead.) leather chair, table, wash-stand, rug on the floor and leather curtain on the arrow-slit window—I’ve stayed in country inns at home that were less decent and comfortable.
To my disappointment I was attended by the village idiot super vised by a stout dragon with a moustache who must have been the only Plain Jane in the place, for the dollymops who’d been on hand at our arrival had been typical Ab, which is to say they’d ranged from comely to ravishing. I wondered if Uliba had decided I’d be safer with a fat crone; if so, it wasn’t a bad omen.
Not having had a wink of sleep since our bivouac at Ad Abaga the night before last, I slept the day through, and it was evening when I was summoned to a spacious apartment on the second floor and had my first taste of formal Ab dining. What is the norm, I can’t say, because on later occasions I’ve lounged on cushions on the floor, and sat up at a table like a Christian, but Chez Uliba we reclined on charpoys, Roman orgy fashion, with a low table apiece. But what lent the meal a delightful charm was that the girls waiting on us wore nothing but little aprons of leather laces—I think they had brass collars and a bracelet or two as well, but I can’t say I took much note. You don’t, when your maise (* Mead.) is being poured by a lovely little Hebe who rests her bare poont on your shoulder as she stoops to your cup; how I resisted the temptation to turn my head and go munch, I cannot imagine.
If you suppose, by the way, that I am unduly susceptible, you should read the recollections of J. A. St John, Esq., who travelled in Abyssinia in the 1840s and appears to have spent most of his time goggling at boobies, on which he was obviously an authority. He has drooling descriptions of slave-girls, and a most scholarly passage in which he compares Ethiopian juggs to Egyptian ones, and finds the former “more finely shaped and better placed"; the negro bosom he discounts as having a tendency to droop, which suggests to me that he never got the length of Zululand or Dahomey where the ladies give glorious meaning to the term double-breasted. That by the way. I admire the female form myself, but J. A. St John needed a course of cold baths if you ask me. [29]