Neither Juba nor Robyn moved or looked directly at him until he squatted a dozen paces from them, then slowly Robyn turned her head towards him. The old man whimpered with fear.

It was clear to Robyn that he had been selected as an emissary because he was the least valuable member of the tribe, and Robyn wondered what threats had been made to force him to come down from the hilltop.

Moving very slowly and calmly, as though she were dealing with a timid wild creature, Robyn held out a stick of half-cured buffalo meat. The old man stared at it, fascinated. As Juba had told her, these people probably existed almost entirely on their meagre crops and such roots and wild fruit as they could glean in the forest.

Meat was a rare treat, and such an unproductive member of the tribe would be given only a very little of what there was.

The way he stared at the piece in Robyn's hand made her believe that the old man had not had so much as a taste of the buffalo haunch. He was more than half starved. He rolled his tongue loosely around in his toothless mouth, gathering his courage, and then shuffled close enough to hold out the claws of his bony fingers, palms cupped upwards in the polite gesture of acceptance. There you are, dearie. " Robyn placed the stick in his hands and the man s.n.a.t.c.hed it to his mouth, sucking noisily upon it, worrying it with his smooth gums, drooling silver strings of saliva as his mouth flooded, his eyes streaming again, this time with pleasure rather than fear.

Robyn laughed with delight, and the old man rapidly blinked his eyes and then cackled around the stick of meat, the sound so comical that Juba laughed also, the laughter of the two younger women rippling and tinkling without restraint. Almost immediately, the dense leaves of the millet garden stirred and rustled, as other dark, half-naked figures came slowly forward, their anxiety relieved by the sound of laughing women.

The hilltop settlement consisted of not more than a hundred individuals men, women and children, and every one of them came out to stare and laugh and clap as Robyn and Juba climbed the steep twisting path. The J old silver-headed man, almost unbearably proud of his achievement, led Robyn by the hand possessively, screeching out explanations to those around, pausing every now and then to perform a little shuffling dance of triumph.

Mothers held up their infants to look at this marvelous being, and the children ran forward to touch Robyn's legs and then squeal with their own courage, skipping away ahead of her up the path.

The pathway followed the contours of the hillside, and it pa.s.sed between defensive gateways and under terraced walls. Above the path at every steep place were piled boulders, ready to be hurled down upon an enemy, but now Robyn's ascent was a triumphant progress, and she came out into the village surrounded by a welcoming throng of singing, dancing women.

The village was laid out in a circular pattern of thatched and windowless huts. The walls were o p astered clay with low doorways and beside each hut was a granary of the same materials but raised on poles to protect it from vermin. Apart from a few diminutive chickens, there were no domestic animals.

The s.p.a.ce between the huts, and the central courtyard was swept, and the whole village had an air of order and cleanliness. The people themselves were handsome, though none of them carried any excess flesh or fat.

Robyn was reminded by their slim, lithe bodies that they were almost exclusively vegetarian.

They had alert and intelligent faces, and the laughter and singing with which they welcomed her was easy and unaffected. These are the people whom Zouga shot down like animals, " she thought, looking around her with pleasure.

They had set a low carved stool in the shade for her and Juba squatted beside her. As soon as Robyn was seated, the old man squealed importantly and a giggling young girl brought her a pot of the millet beer. Only when she had drunk a mouthful of the beer did the crowd fall silent, and draw aside to let a commanding figure come through.

On his head was a tall headdress of animal fur, similar to the one worn by the chieftain on the elephant road pa.s.s. He wore a cloak of leopard skin over his shoulders, the skins so worn that they must have been very old, probably the heredity symbol of his chieftainship. He sat down on another stool facing Robyn. He was a man of middle age, with a pleasant humorous face, and a lively imagination, for he followed Robyn's sign language with attention, and then acted out his own replies with facial expressions and gestures that Robyn understood readily.

This way he asked her from where she came and she showed him the north and made a circle of her hands towards the sun for each day's travel. He wanted to know who was her husband and how many children she had. That she was both unmarried and childless was a source of amazement to the whole village.

More beer was brought out in the clay pots and Robyn felt slightly light-headed, and her cheeks turned pink and her eyes shone. Juba was contemptuous of their hosts.

They do not have even a goad" she pointed out scornfully. Perhaps your brave young men have stolen them all, Robyn answered tartly, and raised her beer pot in salute to the chief.

The chief clapped his hands, signalling his drummers to stoop to their instruments. The drums were hollowed tree trunks, beaten with a pair of short wooden clubs. to a frantic rhythm that soon had the drummers running with rivulets of sweat and gla.s.sy-eyed with the mesmeric effects of the beat. The chieftain threw off his leopaid-skin cloak and launched himself into the dance, swirling and leaping until his necklaces and bracelets jangled and rattled.

On his chest he wore a pendant of ivory, snowy-white polished ivory, and it caught the firelight, for by now the sun was long set. Robyn had not noticed the ornament before for it had been covered by the cloak, but now she felt her eye drawn repeatedly to the bouncing white disc.

The disc seemed too perfectly shaped, and as the chief came bounding up to her stool to perform a solo pa.s.s before her Robyn saw that it was decorated with a regular pattern around its border. The next moment her heart raced with excitement for the decoration was writing, she was not sure in what language, but it was Latin script, that was certain. Then the chief had gone, leaping away to prance in front of his drummers, exhorting them to greater efforts.

Robyn had to wait until the chief exhausted himself, and staggered panting back to his stool to quaff a pot of the thick grey beer, before she could lean forward and get her first close look at the ornament.

She had been mistaken. It was not ivory but porcelain, and its perfect shape and whiteness was immediately accounted for. It was an item of European manufacture, the lid of a small pot, the type in which tooth-powder or potted meats are sold. The writing was English, printed in neat capitals were the words: O PATUM PEPERIUM, THE GENTLEMAN'S RELISH."

She felt her skin go clammy with excitement. Clearly she remembered her father's rage when the pantry at King's Lynn had been bare of this delicacy. She remembered as a small girl running down the village street in the rain to the grocer to buy another pot. It is my one weakness, my only weakness, she remembered her father's exact words while he spread the savoury paste on his toast, his anger mollified so that he came near to making a joke of it. "Without my Gentleman's Relish, I doubt I would have had strength for the Transversa."

When Robyn's mother left for Africa on that last illfated voyage, there had been a dozen cases of the relish in her luggage. There was only one possible way that the porcelain lid could have reached here.

Robyn stretched out a hand and touched it, but the chief's expression changed instantly and he jumped back, out of reach. The singing and drumming came to an abrupt halt, and the consternation of the entire village made Robyn realize that the porcelain lid was a charm of great personal magic, and that it was a disaster that another hand had touched it.

She made an attempt to mollify the chief, but swiftly he covered himself with his leopard cloak and stalked away to his hut at the end of the village. The festivities were clearly ended. The rest of the villagers were subdued and crept away after the chief, leaving only the silver-haired toothless ancient, possessive as ever, to lead Robyn to the hut which had earlier been set aside for her.

She lay awake most of the night on the plaited reed sleeping-mat, excited at the evidence that her father had pa.s.sed this way, and worried that she had ruined her relationship with the Mashona chief and would learn no more of the ornament and, through it, of her father.

She did not have an early opportunity to meet the chief again, and make amends for her breach of manners. The villagers kept away from her, obviously hoping she would go, but she stayed on stubbornly in the hilltop village, attended only by the faithful old man. For Robyn was the most important thing that had ever happened in his long life, and he was not going to relinquish her for the chief or for anybody else.

In the end, there was nothing for it but to send the chief an extravagant gift. She used the last khete of samsam beads and one of the double-bladed axes.

The chief could not resist such princely bribes, and though his att.i.tude was cooler and more reserved than at first, he listened attentively while Robyn asked her questions, acting out little charades, which the chief discussed seriously with his elders, before giving his answers.

The answer was southwards again, south for five circles of the sun, and the chief would send somebody to guide Robyn. He was obviously pleased to be rid of her at last, for, though her gifts were welcome, the chief was still deeply troubled by the ill-fortune that her sacrilegious action must bring upon the tribe.

For a guide the chief chose the silver-headed old man, ridding himself of a useless mouth and an unwelcome visitor at one stroke.

Robyn had doubted that her guide's thin legs could carry him either very fast or very far. However, the old man surprised her. He armed himself with a long throwing spear which looked as old and frail as he did himself and on his head he balanced a rolled sleeping-mat and a clay cooking pot, these clearly const.i.tuted his total worldly possessions. He girded up his tattered kilts and set off southwards at a pace that had Robyn's porters grumbling again. Robyn had to restrain him.

It took a little time to get the old man to understand that he was now her language tutor. As they marched she pointed at herself, and everything around them, naming them clearly in English, and then looking at him enquiringly. He returned the look with equal enquiry in his rheumy old eyes. However, she persevered, repeating her own name "Nomusa" as she touched her chest, and suddenly he understood.

He slapped his own chest. "Karanga, "he squeaked. "Karanga! " Once again his enthusiasm for this new activity was such that she had to restrain him. Within a few days Robyn had dozens of verbs and hundreds of nouns which she could begin stringing together, much to old Karanga's delight.

However, it was four days before Robyn realized that there had been an initial misunderstanding. Karanga was not the old man's name, but the name of his tribe. It was too late to rectify, because by that time everybody in the caravan was calling him "Karanga', and the old man answered to it readily. It was difficult to get him to leave Robyn's side. He followed her wherever she went, much to Juba's disgust and undisguised jealousy. He smells, she told Robyn virtuously. "He smells very bad. " Which was true, Robyn had to admit. But after a while you do not notice it, so much. " There was one thing, however, which could not be so readily overlooked, it appeared from under the old man's kilts whenever he squatted which he did whenever at rest.

Robyn solved this by giving old Karanga a pair of Zougals woollen underwear and taking her chances with her brother's wrath later. The underwear filled old Karanga with almost unbearable pride. He preened and strutted like a peac.o.c.k, as they flapped around his long thin legs.

Old Karanga led them cautiously wide of every occupied village along their route, although he a.s.sured Robyn they were also of the same tribe. There seemed to be no trade nor commerce between these settlements, each perched on its fortified hilltop in suspicious and hostile isolation.

By this time, Robyn could speak enough of the language to find out from Karanga more about the great wizard, from whom the chief had received the magical porcelain talisman, and the story filled her with excitement and antic.i.p.ation.

Many rainy seasons ago, old Karanga was not sure how many, at his age every season blurred into the one before or the one after, anyway, at some not too far distant date an extraordinary man had come out of the forest, even as she had come, and like her he had been fair skinned.

However, his hair and beard were the colour of flames (he showed her the camp fire), and he was without doubt a magician and prophet and rainmaker, for the day he arrived the long drought had broken with thunderous storms that filled the rivers for the first time in many years.

This pale wizard had performed other rare and wonc erful feats, transforming himself first into a lion and then into an eagle, raising the dead from the grave, and directing the lightning with a wave of his hand. The tale had lost nothing in the retelling Robyn noted wryly.

Did anybody speak to him? " Robyn asked. We were all too afraid, Karanga admitted, shaking theatrically with terror, "but I myself saw the wizard as an eagle fly over village and drop the talisman from the sky. " He flapped his skinny old arms in pantomime.

The strong anchovy smell would have attracted the bird to the discarded pot, Robyn reflected, but when it proved inedible the bird would have dropped it, by chance over Karanga's village. The wizard stayed a short time near our village and then went away to the south. We have heard that he travelled swiftly, obviously in his guise as a lion. We heard of his miracles, the word shouted from hilltop to hill-top or tapped out by the drums. How he cured others sick to death, how he challenged the ancestral spirits of the Karanga in their most sacred places shouting abuse at them so all who heard him trembled.

rWe heard also how he slew the high priestess of the dead, an Umlimo of vast power in her own stronghold.

This strange pale magician slew her and destroyed her sacred relics."

In fact he had raged through the land like a man-eating lion, which of course he was, until finally he came to rest upon a dark hilltop far to the south, the mountain of iron Thaba Simbi, where he stayed to perform diverse curses and miracles so that the people came to him from far and wide to buy his services with corn and other offerings.

Is he still there? " Robyn demanded.

Old Karanga rolled his watery eyes and shrugged. "It is always difficult and dangerous to predict the comings and goings of wizards and magicians, that eloquent gesture seemed to say.

The journey was not so straightforward as Robyn had hoped, for the further he went from his own village the less certain old Karanga became of his direction, or of the exact location of the Iron Mountain, which he had told her of.

At the beginning of each day's march, he informed Robyn confidently that they would reach their destination that day, and as they went into camp each evening he told her apologetically that it would be the next day for certain.

Twice he pointed out rocky kopies, That is indeed the Iron Mountain', but each time they were driven off with a hail of boulders and throwing spears from the heights. I was mistaken, Karanga mumbled, "there is a darkness in my eyes sometimes, even under the noonday sun. "Have you verily and truly seen this mountain? " Robyn demanded sternly, almost at the end of her patience, and Karanga hung his silver-wrinkled head and with great industry picked at his nostrils with a bony finger to hide his discomfiture. It is true that I have not personally seen this place, not with my own eyes, but I have been told by one who spoke with a man who himself. . . " he admitted, and Robyn was so angry that she shouted at him in English. You naughty old devil, why did you not say so beforeV Old Karanga understood the tone, if not the words, and his misery was so apparent that she could not sustain her anger for more than an hour, his grat.i.tude when she once more allowed him to carry her water bottle and food bag was pathetic to see.

Robyn was now consumed with impatience. She had no way of knowing how far behind her was Zouga and his hunting-party. He might have returned to the camp at Mount Hampden and found her note the very day after her departure, or he might still be killing elephant a hundred miles away, completely unaware that she had marched without him.

Her disapproval of her brother, and her anger at his recent actions, had gradually evoked a sense of compet.i.tion in her.

She had come so far and accomplished so much on her own, from the contact with the Karanga village to following the traces of her father so far and so doggedly, that she fiercely resented the idea of his arrival when she was at the very point of making the prayed-for and long-delayed reunion with Fuller Ballantyne. She guessed how the tale would be told in Zouga's journal, and in the book that would follow it. She knew who would get all the credit for the arduous search, and its brilliantly successful conclusion.

Once she had thought that fame and praise meant little to her, she believed she would be content to leave that to her brother. She had believed that her own reward would be her father's embrace, and the deep personal knowledge that she had brought some comfort or some surcease to the surf ering black peoples of her Africa. I still do not know myself all that well, she admitted, as she called the third successive tirikeza, double-marching her porters relentlessly to keep ahead of Zouga wherever he might be.

I want to find Pater, I want to find him alone, and I want the world to know I found him."

Pride is sinful, but then I have always been a sinner.

Forgive me, Sweet Jesus, I will make it up in a thousand other ways. Only forgive this one small unimportant sin, she prayed in her rude gra.s.s shelter, and as she did so she listened with one ear for the shouts of Zouga's bearers coming into camp, and her heart tripped at each sudden noise. She was tempted to break camp and call a night march towards the next distant hill they had seen on the horizon at sunset and which old Karanga had once again confidently declared to be the Iron Mountain.

The moon was full and would rise in an hour, that one march might be all that was necessary to keep ahead of her brother.

However, her porters were exhausted, even Juba was complaining of thorns in her feet. It seemed that only she and old Karanga were able to maintain this pace for day after day. She must let them rest.

The next morning she had them away when the gra.s.s was still bent under the weight of dew drops, and before she had gone a mile her breeches were soaked to the thighs. During the last few days, march the character of the land had altered. The elevated plateau of rolling gra.s.sland and open forest across which they had marched so long now seemed to be dipping southwards, and the single peak which she had seen the night before slowly evolved into a whole series of hills stretching across her horizon from west to east, and she felt her spirits sag.

What chance would she ever have of finding one man's camp, one single hilltop, amongst so many? But she slogged on doggedly, and she and Karanga reached the first foothills before noon well ahead of the column. She checked Zouga's barometer nestling in its velvet-lined wooden case, and found that the alt.i.tude was still well over 1,200 feet, though they had dropped two hundred feet in the last two days, march.

Then, followed closely by Karanga, and at a little distance by Juba, she climbed the roc; shoulder of one of the foothills an from its height had a clearer view ahead over the con used an ground. She could see that the hills descended sharply into the south. Perhaps they had crossed the highlands and before them lay the descent to one of the known rivers that Tom Harkness had marked upon his map. She tried to remember the names, Shashi and Toti and Madoutsi.

Suddenly she was starting to feel very lonely and uncertain again. The land was so vast, she felt like a tiny insect pinned to an endless plain beneath the high pitiless blue sky.

She turned and looked back into the north, using the long, bra.s.s-bound telescope to search for any signs of Zouga's party. She was not certain if she was relieved or disappointed to find none. Karanga! " she called, and he scrambled to his feet readily and looked up at her on the pinnacle of rock on which she stood. His expression was trusting as that of a petdog. Which way now? " she demanded, and he dropped his eyes and stood on one bird-thin leg, scratching his calf with the other foot as he pondered the question. Then with an apologetic gesture he indicated the nearest half dozen promontories along the skyline ahead with a hesitant all-embracing gesture, and Robyn felt her heart sink further. She had to admit at last that she was lost.

She knew then that she would have to do one of two things. Either camp where she was until Zouga came up, or turn back along her own spoor until she met him.

Neither alternative was attractive, and she put off the decision until the morrow.

There was water in the river-bed below her, the usual shallow warm green pools, foul with bird and animal droppings.

Suddenly she felt very tired. While the expectations of success had buoyed her up she had not noticed it, but now she felt deflated and the marrow of her bones ached with weariness. We will camp here, she told the Corporal. "Take two men and find meat."

They had marched so hard and long since leaving Karanga's village that there had been no time to hunt. By this time the last of the dried buffalo meat smelt like badly cured hides and was full of bacon beetles. She could only eat it in a strong curry and the curry powder was almost finished. They needed fresh meat desperately, but she was too dispirited to lead the hunting partyThe porters had not finished thatching the low leanto roof that would be her home for the night when she heard a fusillade of musket fire dose by in the forest, and an hour later the Corporal came into camp. They had found a large herd of the lovely sable antelope, Harris buck, as Zouga insisted on calling them, and had succeeded in bringing down five fat chocolate-coloured COWS. The porters, chattering happily, left en ma.s.se to help bring in the meat, and Robyn wandered listlessly down the river-bed, accompanied only by Juba, until she found a secluded pool. I must smell as good as old Karanga, she thought, scrubbing herself with handfuls of white sand for she had weeks previously used the last of her soap. She washed out her clothing and spread it to dry on the smooth, water-worn rocks around the pool. Then, still naked, she sat in the sunlight and Juba knelt behind her and combed out her hair so that it could dry.

Juba was obviously pleased to have Robyn to herself again, without old Karanga hovering nearby. Even though Robyn was silent and dejected, Juba loved to play with her hair and delighted in the reddish lights that flared in the sunlight as the comb stroked through it.

She chatted merrily as she worked and gurgled with laughter at her own sallies, so that neither of them heard the footsteps in the sand, and it was only when the shadow fell at Robyn's feet that she realized that they were not alone. With a cry of alarm she rose, s.n.a.t.c.hing UP her still wet breeches and holding them to her breast to cover her nudity.

The woman who stood before her was unarmed, nervous as she was and shy.

Not a young woman, though her skin was smooth and unlined and she had all her teeth still. She was almost certainly Mashona with the finer, more Egyptian features than the Nguni, and she wore the short kilt that left her upper body bare. Her naked b.r.e.a.s.t.s were large, out of proportion to the slim upright body, the nipples were raised and drawn-out as though she had recently been nursing an infant. I heard the guns, " she whispered shyly, and Robyn felt a lift of relief when she understood the language. It was Karanga. "I came when I heard the guns. I came to lead you to Ma.n.a.li."

Robyn felt the quick rush of tears scald her eyes at the name, and the leap of her heart made her gasp aloud.

Ma.n.a.li, the man who wears a red shirt, her father had always stoutly maintained that the colour red discouraged tsetse fly and other stinging insects, and that good thick flannel staved off the ague of fever.

Robyn jumped to her feet, completely oblivious now of her nudity and rushed to the woman, seizing her arm and shaking it.

Ma.n.a.li! " she cried, and then in English. rWhere is he?

Oh, take me to him this instant."

it was more than mere chance, and old Karanga's faltering guidance, that had led her, Robyn decided exultantly as she followed her new guide along one of the narrow winding game paths. It was blood calling to blood.

Instinctively, like a migrating swallow, she had flown straight to her father.

She felt like shouting aloud, singing her joy to the forest while the woman went swiftly ahead of Robyn, her narrow, smoothly muscled back and shoulders hardly moved above the gliding roll of her hips, that graceful walk of the African woman trained from childhood to carry a burden upon her head so smoothly that not a drop spills from a br.i.m.m.i.n.g pot.

She did not move swiftly enough for Robyn's expectations. Already Robyn could imagine the powerful figure of her father striding towards her, the great flaming bush of his beard, the deep compelling voice as he called her name, and swung her high as he had when she was a child, then the crushing embrace of his arms.

She imagined his joy matching hers, and after the first heady moments of reunion, then the serious hours of discussion, the recital of the long years between, the growing trust and intimacy between them that they had lacked before, so that finally they could march together to a common goal. In the long years ahead, he could hand the torch to her confident that his faith and work would go forward in loving and loyal hands.

What would be his first words when he saw and recognized her? How immense his surprise? She laughed aloud breathlessly, of course, he would he deeply touched and grateful that she had come so far, so determinedly to be with him, and she, Robyn, knew that she would not be able to hold back her own tears of joy, she could imagine her father tenderly wiping them away. The tone of his voice would betray the pent-up love of all the intervening years that had parted them, and which would be so sweet that she could hardly bear it.

Ahead of her, in the fading light of a dying day the Mashona woman led them on to a steep pathway, climbing at a traverse across the western slope of the highest hill. Robyn laughed again when she realized that it was the same hill that old Karanga had pointed out from twenty miles away. He had been right in the end, she must praise him lavishly for that. In her own happiness she wanted to give joy to all the world.

The path came out on a level shelf just below the crest, with a shallow cliff at the back of it and the slope of the hill falling away steeply towards the sunset, and a breathtaking view across the forest and savannah. The entire land turned pink and gold in the low sun and the stupendous flat-topped thunderheads of cloud rose along the dark blue horizon. The setting was right for this magical moment, but Robyn glanced at it only once and then her full attention fastened on what lay ahead of her.

in the face of the cliff was the mouth of a low cave, the slanting rays of the sun struck fully into it showing that it was not very deep, but had been occupied for a long time. The roof and walls were blackened with the soot of the cooking fire, the floor had been swept bare except for the fire at the entrance, with its circle of blackened hearth stones and a small clay pot standing upon them.

The clearing in front of the cave was bare also, trodden by feet over many years, and there was the offal of human occupation scattered about it, the bare bones of small animals, sc.r.a.ps of fur, chips of wood and shards of broken pottery. There was the odour of rotting food fragments, unwashed leather garments, wood smoke and human excrement that confirmed the other evidence that men had lived here for a long time.

There was a single human figure crouched over the smoky little fire, an old crone, bowed by age, a mere bundle of filthy fur blankets, moth-eaten and ragged, looking more like an ancient ape than a human being.

It did not stir, and Robyn barely glanced at it for something else held her attention.

In the back of the cave, lit by the last fleeting sunlight stood a bed. It was made of rudely cut poles, and to together with bark rope, yet it stood on four legs in European style, not the African sleeping-mat, and it was piled with a stained fur kaross that might have contained a human shape.

On a ledge directly above the bed stood a bra.s.s telescope, a teak box similar to the one that held Zouga's s.e.xtant and chronometer, but scarred and battered with age, and a small cheap tin chest. The chest was much battered also, most of the original paint chipped away so the bare metal showed.

Robyn remembered that box so vividly, open in Uncle William's study at Kings Lynn, the papers from it overflowing on to the desk top and her father bowed over them, steel-rimmed spectacles on the end of his beaked nose, tugging at his thick red beard as he worked.

Robyn gave a little choking cry, and ran forward pa.s.sing the old crone sitting at the fire, crossing the cave, and flinging herself on her knees beside the crude bedstead. Pater! " Her voice husked over with emotion rasped her own throat. "Pater! It's me, Robyn There was no movement beneath the fur blanket and she put out a hand, then stopped before it touched. He is dead, she thought miserably. "I am too late!

She forced her hand to move again, and touched the malodorous pile of old furs. They collapsed under her touch, and it took her seconds to realize that she had been mistaken. The bed was empty, the discarded blanket had fallen in the shape of a man, but the bed was empty.

Bewildered, Robyn rose to her feet and turned back towards the entrance of the cave. The Karanga woman stood by the fire, watching her expressionlessly, while little Juba hung back fearfully at the far side of the clearing. Where is he? " Robyn spread her hands to emphasize the question. "Where is Ma.n.a.li?

The Karanga woman dropped her eyes. For a moment Robyn did not understand, and then she too looked down at the grotesque figure that crouched by the fire at her feet.