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By Root 1433 0

through evil magic. One man testified that another had touched him with a cock’s spur, making him violently ill. A young wife declared that her new mother-in-law had hidden some bourein shrub in the wife’s kitchen, causing whatever was cooked there to turn out badly. And a widow claimed that an old man whose advances she had spurned had sprinkled powdered eggshells in her path, making her walk into a long succession of troubles, which she proceeded to describe. If presented with enough impressive evidence of evil magic’s motives and results, the Council would command immediate corrective magic to be done by the nearest traveling magic man, whom a drumtalk message would summon to Juffure at the expense of the evildoer.

Kunta saw debtors ordered to pay up, even if they had to sell their possessions, or with nothing to sell, to work off the amount as the lender’s slave. He saw slaves charging their masters with cruelty, or with providing unsuitable food or lodgings, or with taking more than their half share of what the slaves’ work had produced. Masters, in turn, accused slaves of cheating by hiding some of their produce, or of insufficient work, or of deliberately breaking farm tools. Kunta saw the Council weigh carefully the evidence in these cases, along with each person’s past record in the village, and it was not uncommon for some slaves’ reputations to be better than their masters’!

But sometimes there was no dispute between a master and his slave. Indeed, Kunta saw them coming together asking permission for the slave to marry into the master’s family. But any couple intending to marry, first had to obtain the Council’s permission. Couples judged by the Council to be too close of kinship were refused out of hand, but for those not thus disqualified, there was a waiting period of one moon between the request and the reply, during which the villagers were expected to pay quiet visits to any senior elder and reveal any private information, either good or bad, about the couple in question. Since childhood, had each of them always demonstrated a good home training? Had either of them ever caused undue trouble to anyone, including their own families? Had either of them ever displayed any undesirable tendencies of any kind, such as cheating or telling less than the full truth? Was the girl known for being irritable and argumentative? Was the man known for beating goats unmercifully? If so, the marriage was refused, for it was believed that such a person might pass these traits along to his or her children. But as Kunta knew even before he began attending the Council sessions, most couples won approval for marriage, because both sets of parents involved had already learned the answers to these questions, and found them satisfactory, before granting their own permission.

At the Council sessions, however, Kunta learned that sometimes parents hadn’t been told things that people did tell the senior elders. Kunta saw one marriage permission flatly refused when a witness came forth to testify that the young man of the planned marriage, as a young goatherd, had once stolen a basket from him, thinking he hadn’t been seen. The crime hadn’t been reported then, out of compassion for the fact that he was still a boy; if it had been reported, the law would have dictated that his right hand be cut off. Kunta sat riveted as the young thief, exposed at last, burst into tears, blurting out his guilt before his horrified parents and the girl he was asking to many, who began screaming. Soon afterward, he disappeared from Juffure and was never seen or heard of again.

After attending Council sessions for a number of moons, Kunta guessed that most problems for the senior elders came from married people—especially from men with two, three, or four wives. Adultery was the most frequent charge by such men, and unpleasant things happened to an offending man if a husband’s accusation was backed up with convincing outside testimony or other strong evidence. If a wronged husband was poor and the offending man well off, the Council might order the offender