The accuser chose first, and he did bite a fruit and find it harmless. That one was thrown away, and a new fruit from the bowl was added, so that the second man might have the same risk of one out of three. He took his bite, and instantly began to swell at his throat, and to choke and make horrid gurgling sounds. And within three moments he had fallen down dead.
“Thus die all traitors,” said Imbe Calandola, and the body was carried away.
All this I found most sinister and disagreeable, for I could not see how justice was discovered with hot irons and poisoned fruits and the like. I reminded me that even in England we had known the trial by ordeal, such as the carrying of red-hot irons, or the ordeal by combat. But all of that had been abolished long ago, in the reign of Henry III or even before him, as something not worthy of a civilized people: except only the trial of witches by ducking them in a pond, for it is known that a witch cannot sink in water, which will always cast her up. But that applies only to witches, who are a special case, and not to ordinary matters at law.
After these trials, there was some quiet among the Jaqqas for a time. We did gather our strength once again to make our long-postponed onslaught against Makellacolonge, but at the last instant Imbe Calandola decided once more against it, saying the omens were not right. What fear he had of attacking that lord, I never knew, and perad venture neither did he. But we closed our camp, having never made battle from it, and marched to the westward again.
Coming along the River Kwanza once more, we reached the city of a lord that is called Shillambansa, uncle to the King of Angola. We burnt his chief town, which was after their fashion very sumptuously builded. This place was very pleasant and fruitful. Here we found great store of wild peacocks, that were everywhere about. Also was there great store of tame ones. In the middle of the town was the grave of the old lord Shillambansa, father to the present one, and there were an hundred tame peacocks on his grave-site, that he had provided for an offering to his mokisso. These birds were called Njilo mokisso, that is, the Devil’s or Idol’s Birds, and were accounted as holy things. He had great store of copper, cloth, and many other things laid upon his grave, which is the order of that country.
By command of Imbe Calandola we touched none of the Njilo mokisso birds, nor did we injure the goods on the old king’s grave. In this I had me in mind of a certain other time when a Portugal had not hesitated to plunder the dead: but a Jaqqa had more respect for the departed, or more fear of his mokisso, one or other.
The town itself we did destroy utterly, and of the wild peacocks we captured many, the tail-feathers of which we plucked as ornaments.
In the festival to celebrate the sacking of Shillambansa the palm-wine did flow most freely, and we danced and ate and greatly rejoiced ourselves. It seemed as though the time of the trials by ordeal was well behind us. To Kinguri, as we sat passing the cup one to the other, I said, “Now there is peace among the Jaqqas. It seemed a good war was all that was needed, is that not so?”
“Ah,” he said, “war is always a delight to us. But there will be more trouble, I think.”
“And more trials?”
“More trials. Always more trials.”
“They are so strange to me, so different from our English way.”
“And what way is that?” Kinguri asked.
“Why, that the accused is put forth before a judge and a jury, that are picked from among the citizenry at large, and they hear the evidence, and decide the rights and wrongs by vote.”
This did startle him. “Why, then, is anyone at all allowed to serve on these juries?”
“Anyone worthy. That is, he must be a man, and neither low nor base. But we are most of us called out to serve, and listen and weigh the tale, and make our decision.”
“But how then can the king be certain of the result?” I did not understand. “He is not,” I said. “First the rights and the wrongs must be discerned, by examination of what has befallen, and testimony of witnesses, and the like.”
Kinguri shook his head. Plainly he was astonished. “That is no way,” he said. “It is madness. There is no government, where justice is left to chance.”
“Not to chance, but to investigation.”
“It is the same thing,” said he. “For the king has no voice in the outcome, and he is not king if he cannot rule his people.”
Though I was well gone in my cups, I tried some several times more to explain how justice derives from the facts of the case, and not from the king’s wishes. But this seemed stranger and stranger to Kinguri the more ways I expressed it. And finally, being deep in his cups himself, he did impart to me certain truths about the workings of the Jaqqa system of trial, that did make very much clear to me that had been obscure before. For I had been fool enough to think there was some witchcraft involved upon it—if ever there was a place where witchcraft could thrive, and magics of all kinds, it was among these Jaqqas—but, as I had in part already guessed, there was a much more ordinary scaffolding to these ordeals.
It was not justice that the trials served, he said, so much as it was the overarching will of Calandola, that shaped all the destiny of the Jaqqa nation. In the general trials of loyalty, those suspected of being unloyal were chosen aforehand by Calandola; and the wizards, Kinguri declared to me, were put on notice to deal with those men. And then it was done by sleight of hand that the hatchet is put closer to the skin of the victim than of any others, and held there longer, so that he alone is burned, though it is made to seem that all are having equal treatment. So justice becomes an instrument of policy by the Imbe-Jaqqa, who pretends that it is divine will speaking, but it is merely his own plotting. To Kinguri this seemed a most wise way of maintaining order.
“And the trial by shells,” I said, “is there some special trickery to that as well?”
“Trickery? Who speaks of trickery? I speak of assuring that a proper verdict is reached.”
“It is all the same,” said I wearily.
“In the case you witnessed, I knew whose sword that was, and who was the false claimant. We all of us did know. But we must make the outcome seem a holy decree. Look you, Andubaticlass="underline" there is a special way of fixing these shells to the forehead, with a little twist of the hand, so that it will stick there a moment, while the other man’s falls off. This did I do, giving that twist to one, stinting it to the other that was the liar.”
“So I wondered,” said I.
I did not ask him about the trial by boiling water, for I thought I understood that one through my own reasoning: since that it sometimes happens that by apprehension alone a man is unable to swallow, it can be that guilt will close the throat of one petitioner but not the other, who is the innocent one. And I saw no way that that could be arranged aforetimes by the judge, so perhaps in this instance Jaqqa justice provided true justice.
“And the poisoned palm-fruit?” I said. “How is that done?”
Kinguri laughed. “Why, it is simplicity itself. In the saying of the prayers over the bowl, the nganga does conceal palm-fruits in his fingers, and move them about very quickly and cunningly. So that when he offers the bowl to the accuser, all three of the fruits are free of poison, for the nganga has taken the poisoned one away. Then when he gives the bowl to the accused one, he drops back in the poisoned one, and secretly puts two more poisoned ones in the place of the harmless ones. Thus all three are deadly, and there is no unsureness of the outcome.”