“We find the source of the Ewe drum from the west. And Bunshi guess right that here we find a man devoted to the cause.”
Ne Vampi tell her of Basu Fumanguru. This man from Fasisi, who had the ear of this King even before he become King, but withdraw once the King appoint him as elder. The dead elder he replace breathe his last on top of the latest sacrificial virgin, and didn’t come back to the council as spirit, as was the custom. The King was looking for eyes and ears within this secret bunch of bastards, but Fumanguru had his own ambitions. He was the one who push the King to appoint him, saying, You have my eyes and ears as surely as you have my love, so put me in this position where all three can serve you. So Kwash Dara appoint him because Basu was like him in all ways. Or so the King lead himself to think. Fumanguru may have been like him when they were young and sporting, and drinking and whoring with women who were not whores, but when he become elder, he truly become like an elder. See, the man became devout and pious and annoy both temple and royal house. No law was there written that the King like that Basu didn’t challenge. And many customs too. Letters he write plenty, writs he post until the walls were exhausted from bearing so much parchment. Fumanguru take his old ease with the King as liberty to visit court whenever he please, without announcement. Sometimes even the King’s bedchambers. I already know that cock as much as my own, he say to King, who just throw his hands up. If the King take an order to the nobles, Fumanguru take it to the people and whisper that the land is only a quartermoon away from rebellion to get his way. Indeed many people start to ask who is King and who is elder? Before Kwash Dara even produce a prince, Fumanguru take a pious wife and breed many boys.
Hear this now, Bunshi say, for the elder was making more trouble for the benefit of the realm. But he was also arrogant and boastful, and nobody was convinced of his intellect more than he. Even in this noble move, we had to make him think that the idea was first his. One morning the people passing by the dungeons hear a cry coming from it, and the cry was from Fumanguru. He shout that the King imprison him to stop him from speaking out against his brutal and barbaric grain tax on old men while his own friends remain rich and fat.
“Woe will hit this land, you hear me. I prophesy it,” he say.
Not a quartermoon pass when there it come, flood rains even though it was not rain season, that sink towns and villages, sweep away hundreds of people, destroy crops and kill hundreds of cows. The flood waters even come for the mountain of Fasisi, turning every road in and out into a river. The King relent, but he also release himself from their friendship after that. But imprisonment didn’t stop Fumanguru. It take a smart one to see the method, the heart of all his actions, and we in Mantha see it first.
So Fumanguru make enemy of the King, but he also make enemy of his fellow elders. Who know which step was the step too far—the writs or the beating. Listen here about this beating. People called the elders fat and corrupt, but they were wise and wicked too. Along come this Fumanguru to challenge their ways, which didn’t please them at all. I say before that the last dead elder die on top of a little girl they was about to take turns raping. When will they stop coming for our girls, the people ask. They are taking them younger and younger, and no man will marry them. People say, Go to Basu if that elder took your crops. Go to Basu if a witch spun a curse. Go to Basu for he is the one with reason. Go to Basu.
So an elder spot someone barely older than a maiden selling necklaces and bracelets in Baganda district and decide not to make his manhood go to waste. My words, not Bunshi’s, since she never seem to find any reason to speak bitter. This is what he tell the father, that unless he hand over the girl for the divine privilege of serving as maid to the water goddess, no wind or sun will prevent his sorghum fields from blight. The mother didn’t even have time to make her a new dress before the elder arrive to take her away. The girl don’t take the basket off her head before he set upon her. Basu was in another room tying the neck of his nkita nsumbu bag. He was setting to go hunting down the evil besetting an old Taha clan when the screaming beset his room, followed by the slaps and grunts of the elder. Right beside Basu was a gold staff of correction. March into the room he do, he waste no time, and strike the elder five time in the back of his head. Of course he killed the elder, of course after that come nothing but wahala. The year don’t pass before he move his entire family to Kongor, where they live now.
Listen here about these writs, Bunshi say to me. Being a Writ in the Presence of the King, by his most humble and loyal servant, Basu Fumanguru. That is how they begin and they are thirty in number. Basu do with the writs as he do with anything to be taken to the King—he bring it to the people first. I remember as soon as she say so, that day before we head to Mantha, me walking through the floating district. Other than Ibiku this was the only place in Fasisi that I tell myself that I must see. The floating city still float, but now they call it Mijagham, and where it used to house all who barely belong in Fasisi, now it overrun with those ruling it, who come with their magnificent dwellings and torchlit streets and no taverns or houses of pleasurable goods and services. I thought the rich and noble lived in Ugliko, I say to nobody. Yet it was on the walls of Mijagham that I see them, red letters, on wood, on linen, and sometimes right on the wall. A free man can never be enslaved again, say one. The property of a dead man should go to his first wife, say another. Another call the royal house corrupted, though that was a mark on paper. Still another on a floating rock call for a return to the real line of kings, wrong for seven generations. Not until a half a day’s ride from Fasisi that I remember that I live through the rule of six Kings, seven if you count Paki who last only a few moons, one that you didn’t need the Aesi’s magic to forget.
So the man write a few grievances down on paper. That’s all we need to trust him?” Lissisolo ask.
“He is a voice against the King.”
“Many have voice. What mark him special?”
“He’s still alive. But more than that, Highness, he was looking for you.”
That is true. Fumanguru finish the writs, then send a message under the Ewe drum that only devout women could hear, for he play it like a devotional, saying he have words for the princess and tidings that may be good, may be bad, but will certainly be wise.
Bunshi rise out of the window frame and form herself.