Free Rose by Martin Cruz Smith Page A

sue you. There ‘nigger’ means slave, nothing else. He’d sue you for libel in a Gold Coast civil court and he’d win. The word was fixed on me by the newspapers in London, that’s all. I can’t sue here.”
    “They have lawyers there?” Lydia Rowland asked.
    “African lawyers, the first crop of civilization,” Blair said.
    “So you’re not offended when someone says, ‘Nigger Blair.’?” Earnshaw asked.
    “No, no more than I would be if another man called a springbok a spaniel because he doesn’t know the difference. I can’t be offended if someone is uninformed.” Blair was so pleased with himself for producing such a moderate response that he accepted another glass of wine. “Whether he’s a member of Parliament or not.”
    Teeth showed in Earnshaw’s beard. It was a smile. He said, “The interior of the Gold Coast is not civilized; it is the kingdom of the Ashanti. Just where did you stand in the Ashanti War?”
    Blair said, “There was no war.”
    “Pardon?”
    “There was no war,” Blair repeated.
    “We read about it in
The Times
,” Earnshaw said.
    “They marched out to have a war. They had dysentery instead. No war.”
    “The disease?” Lydia Rowland asked, to be certain.
    “An epidemic. Wiped out whole villages, and also hit the armies, British and Ashanti. They were both too sick to fight. And many people died.”
    Earnshaw said, “I read that you helped the Ashanti escape.”
    “Members of the king’s family were sick, some dying. Women and children. I led them out.”
    “So you were practically a member of the Ashanti retinue. Why else would they trust you with their women?”
    “Don’t worry, Earnshaw, there’ll be another Ashanti war and this time you’ll get to kill the king and his family, too. Or maybe we can introduce syphilis.”
    “He really is fully as awful as my son promised,” Lady Rowland told the Bishop.
    “Then you’re not disappointed,” Hannay said.
    Turtle soup was followed by poached trout. Aspic made Blair queasy. He had more wine and wondered whether anyone was ever going to take the empty chair at the end of the table.
    “I read something fascinating,” Lydia Rowland said. “That the African explorer Samuel Baker bought his wife at a Turkish slave auction. She’s Hungarian—I mean, she’s white. Can you imagine?”
    Bishop Hannay had more wine himself. “Is this what all the young ladies of your set are imagining, Lydia?”
    “I meant that it’s terrible. She speaks four or five languages, goes to Africa with him and shoots lions.”
    “Well, as you said, she’s Hungarian.”
    “And he’s famous and successful. He was received at court by the Queen.”
    “But his wife was not, dear, and that’s the point,” Lady Rowland said.
    “Whom we receive at court and whom we send to Africa can be two different sorts,” Hannay said. “We could send a thoroughbred horse, for example, but it would be a total waste. Most of Central Africa is fly country. The insects carry some sort of malady that kills horses, even the best, within weeks. What you want is any four-legged animal that has been ‘salted’—bitten by the flies and survived. The same with men. The Royal Society selects its explorers from gallant officers. Then they get into the jungle and rot with fever or blow their brains out. But you could cut Blair’s leg off and he would walk on the other. Cut off both and he would walk on the stumps. That’s his gift: he absorbs punishment.”
    Lady Rowland said, “May I change the subject from Africa? Mr. Earnshaw, what is it that brings you to Wigan?”
    Earnshaw laid his soupspoon down. “It’s kind of you to ask. I am a member of a parliamentary committee looking into the employment of women called pit girls in the coal mines. They’re women who work on the surface, sorting and moving coal as it comes up. We are, in fact, the third parliamentary committee that has tried to remove these women from the mines, but they are