Read Online Tefuga by Peter Dickinson - Free Book Online Page B

(thinking about it now I think perhaps he’d already thought of it for himself). I wanted Elongo to come too but everyone was frightfully shocked, including E. Apparently Kitawa don’t go inside the walls. Another juju, I suppose, like KB never crossing the river. So I left him outside to look after Salaki and my poor turkey. One of KB’s people took my brolly and stool and another insisted on carrying my paints and off we traipsed. KB must be about seventy but he does a good steady waddle. The natives working in the “gardens” got down on their elbows and knees and put their heads on the ground as we passed.
    I was a bit disappointed as we got nearer the palace, ’cos I could see it was going to be a tricky subject. I know I wasn’t really there for that, but one doesn’t like to waste one’s efforts, specially on a day when one feels one’s on form, and really there wasn’t anything. It was only a wall, you see, cutting off the bottom corner of the space inside the main wall. No windows. Buttresses and a central gate with two towers. In front of the gate, looking quite out of place, a sort of big thatched porch. I could see the tops of buildings inside the wall, rabbit’s ears poking up and bits of parapet, and I realized they’d be gone if we got too close, so when we were still a sensible distance away I tried to stop, but KB, soon as he realized, turned round and waved quite angrily at me to come on. My heart jumped. He wanted me to paint the inside of his palace!
    Some of the courtiers left us at the entrance but four or five followed us in. The rooms were better than I’d expected, almost no furniture, flaky whitewash with coloured patterns round the doors, one or two rugs on the walls sometimes, but airy and cool—by African standards, anyway. KB didn’t give me much chance to look. We went out into the sun again. This was better—a sort of courtyard, with two shade-trees only one was half dead, some men under the other one watching a sort of nursery game they play here, moving pebbles around on a pattern in the dust—Ted says they’ll play it for hours, and gamble on it like billy-oh. Dark low doorways in the walls and tiny square windows. People going around doing things. KB was in a tearing hurry but I got a bit of a chance to look ’cos a man—some kind of court official, I think—came up to him and grovelled and started to tell him something in a wheedling voice but he’d hardly started when KB put his great foot on the poor man’s shoulder and pushed him right over! He roared with laughter, peering at me between his blubbery eyelids to make sure I was enjoying the fun, then waddled on to one of the dark little doors.
    All the courtiers stood aside. I hesitated but KB waved at me to follow. Inside I got a terrible shock, ’cos straight in front of me was an enormous fat man with a naked sword, grinning at me with cruel thick lips. There was a vile sour smell in the room. I think it came from him. KB said something to him and waddled straight on through to the next room, which was smaller still—not much bigger than our bathroom at The Warren and quite empty except for the man with the sword. The doors were crooked to each other. KB slipped through like an owl popping into its hole and I followed. The next room was tiny too, and almost dark—just the light from its two doors—crooked to each other again—and beyond that another one, lighter tho’, ’cos it was leading out into the open. Two guards with swords here. The same smell. As I bent to go through the outside door—they really were tiny, I’m only five foot one!—I saw two black bare feet on the sunlit earth in front of me. The legs the feet belonged to were kneeling. There was a silver bracelet round one ankle, and the hem of a dark blue skirt.
    All in a blink I understood. KB was taking me into his harem! The men with the