Traitors Gate - Anne Perry [47]
“I remember Livingstone’s early years,” Nobby said with a self-conscious smile. “That makes me sound old, doesn’t it? How excited everyone was then. Nobody said anything about gold or ivory. It was all a matter of discovering people, finding new and wonderful sights, great cataracts like the Victoria Falls.” She stared up through the dark green boughs of the cedar at the brilliance of the sky. “I met someone who had seen it once, just a few months earlier. I was standing outside in the evening. It was still hot, really hot. England is never close to the skin like that, touching, breathing heat.
“All the acacia trees were flat-topped against a sky burning with stars, and I could smell the dust and the dry grass. It was full of insects singing, and half a mile away at the water hole, I heard a lioness roar. It was so still, I felt as if I could have reached out and touched her.”
There was a sadness close to tears in Nobby’s face. Vespasia did not interrupt her.
“The man was an explorer who had set out with a party. A white man,” Nobby went on quietly, almost as if to herself. “He was ill with a fever when he reached us. He staggered into our camp so exhausted he could barely stand. He was wasted until he was skin and bone, but his face lit up when he spoke and his eyes were like a child’s. He had seen it some three months before … the greatest cataract in the world, he said … as if the ocean itself poured off the cliffs of the sky in an endless torrent, leaping and roaring into a chasm of which one could not see the bottom for the white spume flying and the endless rainbows. The river had a dozen arms, and every one of them flung itself into that gorge and the jungle clung to the sides and leaned over the brink in a hundred different places.” She fell silent.
“What happened to him?” Vespasia asked.
Somewhere above them a bird was singing in the cedar tree.
“He died of fever two years later,” Nobby answered. “But please God the falls will be there till the end of time.” She stood up again and began to walk back across the grass towards the house, Vespasia behind her. “I’m sure tea must be ready. Would you care for some now?”
“Yes please.” Vespasia caught up with her.
“Mr. Kreisler hunted with Selous, you know,” Nobby continued.
“Who is Selous?”
“Oh! Frederick Courtney Selous, a marvelous hunter and scout,” Nobby replied. “Mr. Kreisler told me Mr. Selous is the one leading the Rhodes column north to settle Zambezia.” The shadow was back in her face, and yet there was a lift in her voice, a subtle alteration when she spoke Kreisler’s name. “I know Mr. Chancellor is backing Rhodes. And of course Francis Standish’s bank.”
“And Mr. Kreisler disapproves,” Vespasia said. It was not really a question.
“I fear he has reason,” Nobby answered, looking across at Vespasia suddenly. “I think he loves Africa genuinely, not for what he hopes to gain, but for itself, because it is wild and strange, beautiful and terrible and very, very old.” There was no need to say how much she admired him for it; it shone in her face and whispered in the gentleness of her voice.
Vespasia smiled and said nothing. They continued side by side across the lawn, their skirts brushing the grass, and went up the steps and in through the French window to take tea.
There was a charity bazaar the day after which Vespasia had promised to attend. It was being conducted by an old friend, and in spite of disliking such events, she felt obliged in kindness to support her efforts, although she would far rather simply have donated the money. However she thought Charlotte might find it entertaining, so she dispatched her carriage to fetch her if she wished.
As it turned out, it was not at all as she had expected, and the moment she and Charlotte had arrived, she knew it would at least be entertaining, at best possibly informative. Her friend,