Green City In the Sun

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to thank the following Kenya people for their kind assistance:

In Nairobi:

     Professor Godfrey Muriuki and his wife, Margaret, with the University of Nairobi; Philip and Ida Karanja; Rasheeda Litt of University Safari Tours; Allen and Gachiku Gicheru; Dr. Igo Mann and his charming wife, Erica; John Moller, who explained about hunting; Valerie and Heming Gullberg, coffee growers; and the staff of the Kenya National Archives, for smoothing the way.

In Nyeri:

     Satvinder and Jaswaran Sehmi, who became our good friends; Mr. Che Che, manager of the Outspan Hotel; Irene Mugambi, for sharing her invaluable insight into Kenya women.

In Hanyuki:

Mr. and Mrs. Jacobson; Mr. Edmond Honarau, general manager of the Mount Kenya Safari Club, for making our stay there so pleasant; Jane Tatham Warter and her friend mrs. Elizabeth Ravenhill; and P. A. G. (Sandy) Field, for a delightful afternoon of talk.

     Thanks also to Terence and Nicole Gavaghan, for an invaluable introduction; Tim and Rainie Samuels; Marvin and Sjanie Holm, who gave us that first, critical introduction; and, finally Bob and Sue Morgan od Survival Ministries, for taking us to their Kenya friends, and for coming to our aid in a dire moment.

     And to Abdul Selim, surely the most patient and cheerful driver in all of East Africa, a special asante sana,

A NOTE ON FOREIGN WORDS AND

SPELLINGS

All kikuyu and Swahili words and names are pronounced as written. The name of the African family Mathenge is pronounced

Ma-THEN-gay.

Kenya was, until 1963, pronounced Kee-ya. After independence the e was shortened and the pronounciation became officially Ken-ya, as in

pen-ya

     FOREWORD

Kenya came into existence by accident.

     In 1984 the British were anxious to get to Uganda, a strategic military point at the headwaters of the Nile in the heart of Africa, so they built a railway from the east coast of Africa inland six hundred miles to Lake Victoria, the gateway to Uganda. As it happened, that train crossed a stretch of land inhabited by wild game and warring tribes, a land that appealed only to intrepid explorers and missionaries. When, after it completion, the Uganda Railway proved to be a financial drain and a white elephant, the British government sought a way to make the railway pay for itself. The answer, it was soon seen, lay in encouraging settlement along the line.

     The first to be offered this vacant territory were the Zionist Jews, who were at the time searching for a permanent homeland. But the Jews declined, wanting to go to Palestine. So a campaign was launched to lure immigrants from all over the British Empire. Treaties were drawn up with the local tribes, which had little concept of treaties and were somewhat preplexed by what the white man was doing here; then the government offered cheaply, huge tracts of unused wilderness to anyone who would come and settle and develop it. The central highlands of this country, being at a high eleveation, were cool and fertile and lush; many Britons from England, Australia, and New Zealand, looking for a new home, a place to make a fresh start and build a new life, were attracted.

     Although the Colonial Office staunchly maintained the area was just a protectorate and would one day be returned to its black inhabitants when they had been taught how to run it. In 1905, when two thousand whites were outnumbered by four million Africans, the British commissioner for the East Africa Protectorate declared that the protectorate was a White Man's country.

PROLOGUE

D

R. TREVERTON?"

     Dr. Deborah awoke with a start. She saw the Pan Am flight attendant smiling down at her. Then she felt the shuddering of the plane which meant it was beginning its descent to Nairobi. Yes? she said to the young woman, shaking off the lingering effects of sleep.

     We have received a message for you. You will be met at the airport.

     Deborah was breathless. Thank you, she said. She closed her eyes again. She was tired. The flight had been a long one—twenty-six hours almost nonstop, with a change of planes in New York, a refueling in Nigeria. She was going to be met. By whom?

     In her purse was the letter that she had received the week before at the hospital and which had taken her by surprise. It had come from Our Lady of Grace Mission in Kenya, which was requesting that Deborah come because Mama Wachera was dying and asking for her.

     Why go back, Jonathan had said, if you don't want to? Throw the letter away. Ignore it.

     Deborah had not replied. She had lain unable to speak in Jonathan's arms. He would never understand why she had to go back to Africa or why it frightened her to do so. It was because of the secret she had kept from him, the man she was going to marry.

     After Deborah had claimed her suitcase and gone through customs, she saw, in the crowd waiting on the other side of the guarded exit, a man holding a chalkboard with her name written on it. DR. DEBORAH TREVERTON.

     She stared at him. He was a tall, well-dressed African, Kikuyu, Deborah judged, the man the mission had sent to meet her. She walked past him and hailed one of the taxis lined up along the curb outside. This, Deborah hoped, would buy her additional time. Time in which to decide if she was really going to go through with it, go back to the mission and face Mama Wachera. The mission driver would report that Dr. Treverton had not come in on this flight, and so they wouldn't be expecting her. Not yet.

     Who is this Mama Wachera? Jonathan had asked as he and Deborah had watched the fog roll into San Francisco Bay.

     But Deborah hadn't told him. She had not been able to bring herself to say, Mama Wachera is an old African medicine woman who put a curse on my family many years ago. Jonathan would have laughed, and he would have chided Deborah for the seriousness of her tone.

     But there was more. Mama Wachera was the reason why Deborah lived in America, the cause of her leaving Kenya. It all was tied up with the secret she kept from Jonathan, the chapter in her past which she would never talk about, not even after they were married.

     The taxi sped through darkness. It was two o'clock in the morning, black and chilly, with the equatorial moon peeping through branches of flattopped thorn trees. Overhead the stars were like dust. Deborah withdrew into her thoughts. One step at a time, she reminded herself. From the moment she had received the letter asking her to come, Deborah had moved only one step at a time, trying not to think of what lay beyond each of those steps.

     The first thing she had done was arrange with Jonathan to take care of her patients. They were in practice together, two surgeons sharing an office; they had become business partners before deciding to become marital partners. Then Deborah had canceled her speaking engagement at the medical school and had arranged for someone else to chair the annual medical conference in Carmel. The appointments for next month she had let stand, confident that she would be home long before then.

     Finally Deborah had obtained a visa from the Kenya Embassy—she was a United States citizen now and no longer carried a Kenya passport—had purchased malaria pills, had received last-minute shots for cholera and yellow fever, and had, twenty-eight hours ago, miraculously, finally boarded the plane at the San Francisco airport.

     Call me the instant you get to Nairobi, Jonathan had said as he had held her tightly at the departure gate. And call me every day while you're there. Come back soon, Deb.

     He had kissed her, long and hard, in front of the other passengers, so unlike Jonathan, as if to give her an incentive to return.

     The taxi followed the dark, deserted highway and took a curve at high speed, its headlights sweeping over a roadside sign and briefly illuminating the words WELCOME TO NAIROBI, GREEN CITY IN THE SUN.

     Deborah felt a pang. It rocked her out of the numb state the long flight had lulled her into. She thought: I have come home.

     The Nairobi Hilton was a golden column of light rising from the sleeping city. When the taxi drew up to the brightly lit entrance, the doorman, an African in maroon coat and top hat, hurried down to open Deborah's door. As she stepped into the cool February night, he said, Welcome, madam, and Deborah found herself unable to reply.

     She was suddenly remembering. As a teenager she had accompanied her aunt Grace on shopping trips into Nairobi, and Deborah had stood on the sidewalk in those days gawking at the taxis pulling up to the fronts of fabulous hotels. Out of those cars tourists had stepped, amazing people from faraway places, decked out in cameras and stiff new safari khakis, surrounded by heaps of luggage, laughing, excited. Young Deborah had stared, fascinated, wondering about them, envying them, wishing she could be part of their wonderful world. And now here she was, paying a taxi driver and following the doorman up marble steps to the polished glass doors he held open for her.

     It made Deborah feel sorry for that young girl. How wrong she had been.

     The people behind the front desk all were African and young, dressed in smart red uniforms and speaking perfect English. All the girls, Deborah saw, wore their hair in tight cornrow braids, twisted into intricate birdcage styles. She also saw what they chose to ignore: their receding hairlines. By middle age these young women would be nearly bald—the price for high Kenya fashion.

     They welcomed Dr. Treverton warmly. She smiled back but spoke little, taking refuge behind her facade. Deborah didn't want them to know the truth about her, didn't want to give herself away with her British accent. The desk clerks saw a slender woman in her early thirties, looking very American in blue jeans and western shirt. What they did not know was that she was not American at all, but pure Kenyan like themselves, who spoke their native language as easily as they spoke it.

     There was a basket of fresh fruit waiting in her room, and the bed had been turned down; a chocolate mint in silver foil lay on the pillow. A note from the management said, lala salama, sleep well.

     As the porter pointed to the bathroom, the minibar, and the TV, Deborah went through the money she had obtained from the cashier downstairs, trying to recall the current exchange rate. She tipped the man twenty shillings and saw by his smile that it was too much.

     And then she was alone.

     She went to the window and looked out. There was not much to see, just the dark shapes of a city folded up for the night. It was quiet, with not much traffic and not a pedestrian in sight. Nairobi, which Deborah had said goodbye to fifteen years ago.

     On that day an angry and terrified Deborah, just eighteen years old, had vowed never to set foot in this country again and had walked onto the airplane determined to find herself a new home, a new place in the sun. She had worked hard in the following years to create a new self and to put behind her this Africa, which was in her blood. Deborah had found an ending at last in San Francisco, in Jonathan. There she had found a place where she could belong, a man who could be her sanctuary.

     And then the letter had come. How had the nuns found her? How had they known the hospital where she worked, that she was even in San Francisco? The sisters at the mission must have gone to a lot of trouble and expense to find her. Why? Because that old woman was dying at last?

Why ask for me? Deborah mentally asked her reflection in the window. You always hated me, Mama Wachera, always resented me because I was a Treverton.

What have I to do with your final moments on earth?

     Urgent, the letter had said. Come at once.

     Deborah rested her forehead against the cold glass. She was remembering her last days in Kenya and the terrible thing the medicine woman had said to her. With the memory came all the old pain and sickness Deborah thought she had rid herself of.

     She went into the bathroom and turned on the bright light. After running hot water into the bathtub and scenting it with the Nivea bath foam the Hilton provided, she turned to look at herself in the mirror.

     This was Deborah's final face, after so many, and she was satisfied with it. Fifteen years ago, when she had first arrived in America, her skin had been darkly tanned, her black hair curled short under the ears, and her clothing had been a simple sleeveless dress of Kenya cotton and sandals. Now the skin was pale, as white as she could make it, from years of pointedly avoiding the sun, and the hair was ironing-board straight, gathered in a gold clasp and flat down her back. The shirt and jeans had designer labels, as did the expensive running shoes. She had worked hard to look American, to look white.

     Because she was white, she reminded herself now.

     And then she thought of Christopher. Would he recognize her?

     After her bath Deborah wrapped her long, wet hair in a towel and went to sit on the edge of the bed. She found she was not ready for sleep; there had been enough of that on the plane.

     She picked up her carry-on bag, which she had not let out of her sight since leaving San Francisco. Besides containing her passport, return ticket, and traveler's checks, the bag held something more precious, and Deborah drew it out now and laid it on the bed beside her.

     It was a small package of brown paper and string. She picked open the wrapping and separated the contents: an envelope of faded photographs, a bundle of old letters tied with a ribbon, and a journal.

     She stared at them.

     This was Deborah's legacy, all that she had come away with in her flight from Africa, all that was left of the once proud—and infamous—Treverton family. The photos she had not looked at since collecting them into this envelope and sealing it fifteen years ago; the letters she had not read again since that awful day when Mama Wachera had spoken those words to her; and the journal, an old and battered leather volume begun sixty-eight years ago, Deborah had never read. Stamped in gold on its cover was the name TREVERTON.

     A name that was magic in Kenya. Deborah had recognized the expressions on the faces of the young Africans downstairs when she had checked in: the brief, startled look when she had said her name, then the moment of staring at her, of being enchanted for an instant, followed by the inevitable shuttering, the retreat behind a fixed smile to mask the hatred and resentment because of the other things the Trevertons had stood for. Deborah had been used to those looks as a child; she was not really surprised to find them here still.

     There was a time when the name Treverton had been worshiped in Kenya. Deborah's hotel stood near a wide street that had once been Lord Treverton Avenue. Today it was Joseph Gicheru Street, named for a Kikuyu who had been martyred for independence. And the taxi had passed what had once been Treverton High School, and Deborah had seen the new sign which said MAMA WANJIRU HIGH SCHOOL.

It's as if, Deborah thought, they are trying to erase our memory from the face of the earth.

     But no amount of Kenyanizing, Deborah knew, was going to obliterate the Trevertons from this country. They were too ingrained, too much a part of its soul, its destiny. The mission where Mama Wachera lay dying was called Our Lady of Grace Mission, the name the Catholic sisters had given to it when they received it from Deborah's aunt many years ago. But before that it had been simply Grace Mission, named for the woman who had founded it, Grace Treverton, famous pioneer of public health in Kenya.

     Dr. Grace Treverton, a legend as large as her flamboyant brother the earl, had founded the mission sixty-eight years ago, in the wilderness of the Central Province. She was the woman who had reared Deborah in the place of a real mother, and she had gone to her grave with formidable secrets locked in her heart. Aunt Grace had lived through it all, Deborah knew; she had witnessed and been part of every Treverton triumph and shame, had seen Kenya rise and fall and rise again.

     Deborah reached out and touched the items on the bed; she was almost afraid of them. The photos—she barely remembered who the people in them were. Christopher as a youth. But not as a man. I regret that. And the letters—Deborah recalled in them only the few, devastating lines. Lastly, the journal, all that was left of Aunt Grace's legacy.

     Deborah had never read the journal. At the time of Grace's death she had been too grief-stricken to open it; later she had turned her back on the family and the past this book represented and contained.

     She picked it up now and held it between her hands.

     She imagined she felt an energy emerge from it. The Trevertons! In public a beautiful people, rich beyond imagining, members of nobility, gay polo-playing society leaders, primary movers in East Africa; but in private tormented by secrets, by a poor boy's affliction that was the family disgrace, by a sensational trial that had made headlines around the world, by forbidden loves and lusts, and by darker secrets yet—rumors even of human sacrifice and murder.

     And of superstitions—Mama Wachera and her curse.

And Christopher, Deborah wondered. My handsome, gentle Christopher. Were we, too, victims of the Treverton family's fate?

     Deborah opened the envelope and drew out the photographs. There were seven of them, the one on top having been taken back in 1963, just before Kenya's independence and the end of the world as she had known it. It was a group snapshot, taken with an old Box Brownie. Four children had been arranged according to height: Christopher was the tallest, being the oldest—eleven. Next to him was Sarah, his little sister, the same age as Deborah, who was eight and who stood in the middle. Last came Terry Donald, ten years old and even then a robust little boy in khaki hunting outfit.

     Tears blurred Deborah's vision as she peered closely at the smiling faces. Four barefoot kids, dirty and happy, standing in the middle of goats and chickens, seeming to be without a care in the world, unaware of the storm of change that was gathering around them, that would shatter their world. Four children—two African, two white, and all the best of friends.

Sarah, my dearest friend, Deborah thought sadly. We grew up together, played with dolls together, discovered boys together. Sarah, black and beautiful, had shared her dreams with Deborah. They had been as close as sisters, had planned their futures together, only to be torn apart by the old medicine woman. What had become of Sarah? Was she still here in Kenya?

     Deborah picked up another photo. It was of Aunt Grace, taken back in the 1930s. Looking at the sweet oval face, the smile, the softly marcel-waved hair that seemed to glow like a halo about her head, Deborah could not believe that Grace Treverton had once been accused of being mannish. This remarkable woman was known for another great achievement besides the founding of the mission: She had written a book titled When You Have to Be the Doctor. First published fifty-eight years ago and periodically revised and updated, it was one of the most widely used health manuals in the third world.

     The next picture was of a darkly handsome man riding a polo pony. Valentine, the Earl of Treverton, Deborah's grandfather—a man she'd never known. Even in this small and slightly out-of-focus shot she could see what everyone else had seen in him—a strikingly attractive man, with a resemblance to Laurence Olivier. On the back was written: July 1928, the day we had lunch with His Royal Highness Prince Edward, the Prince of Wales.

     The fourth photograph bore no date, no inscription, but Deborah knew who it was—Rose, Countess of Treverton. It looked like a candid shot; Rose was looking over her shoulder in surprise. There was a timeless quality to the picture, in the simplicity of her white gauze dress, the careless angle of her white parasol, the hair worn down about her shoulders, like a girl's, even though, at the time of this picture, she must have been around thirty. Deborah was drawn to her eyes; there was a haunted look to them, a strange melancholy that made one wonder what pain had afflicted this woman.

     Deborah could not bring herself to look at the last three pictures. The room was becoming crowded with ghosts, and some were the ghosts of people not even dead. Where was Sarah, for instance, at this moment? Sarah, who had had such dreams, such ambition! Gifted with an artistic talent that had made Deborah amazed and envious, Sarah had dreamed of designing a whole new Kenya look in clothing. She had dreamed of fame and riches, and Deborah had left her, abruptly, on that fragile brink.

Sarah Wachera Mathenge, Deborah thought. My sister...

     Then Deborah thought of Terry Donald, a ruddy, handsome boy whose bloodline stemmed from the early adventurers and explorers of the Dark Continent—the last in a line of white men born in Kenya, with the savannas and jungles and the hunt in their very bones.

     And finally, Christopher...

     Deborah put the pictures back in the envelope.

     Was Christopher still in Kenya? Fifteen years ago she had left him without explaining to him why or even that she was going. They had made plans to get married; they were in love. But she had deserted him, as she had Sarah, without a backward look.

     Suddenly Deborah knew she had come back to Africa not because a dying old woman was asking for her, but in the hope of finding herself, her people, again.

     It all came clear. There was Jonathan, back in San Francisco, waiting for her. But Deborah knew that somehow she had hesitated to make that final commitment to him and to the family they hoped to have together, before she had first reconciled the present with the past. Jonathan didn't know much about Deborah's past, about her search for identity. He knew nothing of Christopher, or of the painful truths Deborah had learned about him. Nor had Deborah told Jonathan of the discovery she had made fifteen years ago, when she had found out that Mama Wachera, the African medicine woman, was, in fact, her grandmother.

     Deborah picked up Aunt Grace's journal again, suddenly anxious to read it. She felt a powerful draw to its pages. She trembled to think of the revelations she might read here, yet perhaps there would be answers, too, and a key to her peace of mind.

     As her eyes settled on the first page, on the faded ink and the date, February 10, 1919, Deborah thought: Perhaps those were the best days, so many years ago; then Kenya had been young and innocent; visions had been crystal clear; people knew where they were going; their hearts were earnest. The men and women who came to Kenya were bold and adventurous, not just ordinary people, but people driven by a pioneering spirit to create a new land for themselves and for their children.

They are part of me, no matter how hard I've tried to run away from them; they live in me still. But there are others also, those who were already here, living on ancient ancestral land, when the white strangers came. They are part of me, too....

PART ONE

1919

1

H

ELP! WE NEED A DOCTOR! IS THERE A DOCTOR ON THE TRAIN?" Hearing the commotion, Grace Treverton opened the window of her compartment and, looking out, saw the reason for the unscheduled stop: A man was lying beside the tracks.

     What is it? said Lady Rose as her sister-in-law Grace reached for the medical bag.

     A man is hurt.

     Oh, dear.

     Grace paused before leaving the car. Rose wasn't looking good. Her skin had taken on a disturbing pallor in the last hour. They were only eighty miles out of Mombasa, the seaport where they had boarded the train, and they would not arrive at Voi, their dinner stop, for several more miles. You should eat something, Rose, Grace said, giving a significant look to Fanny, Rose's lady's maid. And drink something. I'll just quickly see to that poor man.

     I'm quite all right, Rose said a trifle breathlessly. She dabbed her forehead with a perfumed handkerchief and rested her hands on her abdomen.

     Grace hesitated a moment longer. If there was something wrong, especially with the baby, Rose could not be depended upon to admit it. Giving another look to Fanny, which said, Stay close to your mistress, Grace hurried out of the carriage.

     The desert sun and dust engulfed her at once. After weeks of being cooped up on board the ship and these past eighty miles confined to the tiny train compartment, Grace felt momentarily dizzied by the vast African sky.

     When she reached the stricken man, a group had gathered around him, talking in a mixture of English, Hindi, and Swahili. Grace said, Pardon me, please, and tried to push through.

     Stay away, miss. 'Tain't no sight for a lady. A man turned to stop her, and his eyebrows shot up.

     I might be able to help, she said, sidestepping him. I'm a doctor.

     The other men now looked at her in surprise, and when she knelt next to the fallen man, they all fell silent.

     They had never seen a woman dressed so strangely.

     Grace Treverton wore a white shirt with a black tie, a black tailored jacket, a dark blue skirt that reached her ankles, and, most curious of all, a wide-brimmed black velour tricorn hat. These colonial men, living out of touch, on the fringes of the British Empire, did not recognize the uniform of an officer in the Women's Royal Naval Service.

     They watched in astonishment as she examined the man's wounds without the slightest flinch, with no sign of fainting. The man was positively bloody, they were thinking, and this queer female was as calm as if she were pouring tea!

     The men began to murmur. Grace ignored them, trying to do something for the unconscious man, who was a native dressed in skins and beads and who appeared to have been the victim of a lion. While she worked with the antiseptics and dressings from her bag, Grace heard the low voices of the men standing around her, and she recognized the drift of what they were saying.

     Some were shocked, scandalized at her behavior, others were amused, and all were skeptical. No proper lady, Grace had heard since she first entered medical school back in London, would involve herself in such unpleasantness. Her behavior was downright improper! But these men could have no idea that the wounds of this poor African were nothing compared with the injuries Grace had treated on board the hospital ship that had assisted in the evacuation of Gallipoli.

     We must put him on the train, she said at last, when nothing more could be done for him.

     No one moved. She looked up. He needs proper help. These cuts need to be sutured. He's lost blood. Well, good heavens, don't just stand there!

     He's done for, that one, a voice grumbled.

     Don't know who he is anyway, said another.

     Masai, said a third, as if that were supposed to explain something. Grace stood up. Two of you pick him up and put him on the train. At once!

     They shuffled uncertainly. A few men turned and walked away. The rest looked at one another. Who was she to be giving them orders? They looked at her again. But she was awfully pretty, and she did appear to be a lady.

     Finally two men lifted the native and deposited him inside the brake van. As Grace turned back toward her compartment, she heard a few snickers, and two men looked at her with undisguised contempt.

     But at the carriage another man was waiting, sunburned and smiling, to help her up the impossible steps. Don't mind them, he said as he touched the brim of his hat. They're behind the times by ten years.

     Grace smiled in gratitude and paused on the small platform to watch him stride back to the second-class carriage.

     She returned to her seat to find Rose fanning herself and staring out the window.

     Grace reached across and touched her sister-in-law's thin wrist. She counted a strong and steady pulse. Then she felt the abdomen beneath the gauze of Rose's summer dress.

     Alarmed, Grace sat back in her seat. The baby had descended into the pelvis.

     Rose, she said cautiously, when did the baby drop?

     Lady Rose brought her gaze away from the window and blinked, as if she had been far away, out on the plain among the thorn trees and waterless scrub. While you were outside, she said.

     Grace tried not to let her sudden worry show. Above all, Rose must be kept quiet and untroubled. And this journey wasn't helping!

     Grace opened the flask of mineral water, poured some into a silver cup, and handed it to her sister-in-law. While Rose drank, spilling a little when the train gave a lurch and started to roll again, Grace tried to think.

     The baby had descended too soon. It wasn't time yet. The due date was more than a month away. Did that mean there was something wrong? And how far off, then, could the birth be? Surely we have time! she thought, reflecting on this deplorable little train with its individual carriages that separated the passengers from one another. Once the train was moving, there was no way to stop it to get help.

     Grace was angry with herself. She should not have allowed Rose to travel. She should have put her foot down. Rose wasn't a strong woman to begin with; the rigors of the journey from England had taken their toll. But Rose would not be dissuaded. I want my son to be born in our new home, she had persisted in her maddeningly illogical way. Ever since Valentine, Rose's husband and Grace's brother, had written eloquent letters describing the magnificent house he had built in the central highlands of British East Africa, Rose had been obsessed with having the baby there. And to weaken further Grace's stand that Rose wait to travel until after the child had been born, Valentine had written insisting that they come, agreeing with his wife that his son should be born in their new country.

     Grace had written angry replies, but both brother and sister-in-law had preferred to set aside common sense and act out their impractical dream.

     And so the two women had left England and Bella Hill, the ancestral mansion in Suffolk, with all their possessions and the company of six servants, to brave the safe postwar seas and come to the recently demilitarized, exotic, and alluring British East Africa Protectorate.

     Lady Rose leaned forward and fussed for a moment over her rosebushes. Although the five other servants and the family dogs rode behind in the second-class carriage, these rosebushes accompanied the countess as if they were children. Grace eyed them in annoyance; those plants had created more than one episode of inconvenience since they had left England! And then she softened when she saw how her sister-in-law fretted over them.

     Soon now, Grace thought, she will have the baby to center her life on. The baby that Rose had so desperately wanted, even after the specialists in London had pronounced her incapable of childbearing. The baby, Grace reminded herself now, that she hoped would make her brother settle down.

     She sighed and gazed out the window. Valentine was a restless man; this untamed country suited him. Grace could see why he had been smitten by East Africa, could understand his decision to leave Bella Hill in the care of their younger brother and come here to carve a new empire out of the wilderness.

Perhaps this land will tame him, Grace thought as the train rocked her to sleep. Perhaps Valentine will be a new man....

     GRACE WAS STILL THINKING OF MEN WHEN THE TRAIN PULLED INTO Voi station and the passengers made a dash for the dining hut. She had dreamed of the hospital ship again, and of Jeremy.

     Because of her sister-in-law's condition, it was not proper for the two women to dine with the other passengers, and so a supper was brought into the private carriage and served by an elderly, respectable-looking African. Grace touched little of the boiled beef and cabbage as she looked out the window at the dining bungalow, brightly lit against the desert night. She watched the men inside, eating at tables covered with proper white tablecloths, using china and silver, being waited on by wine stewards and white-jacketed waiters. The night air was filled with the rumble of men's talk and laughter and with the smoke from their cigars. Grace envied them.

     Rose sipped claret out of a crystal stem glass and spoke quietly of her plans for the new house. I shall plant my roses where I can always see them. And I shall have an At Home every Wednesday and shall invite all the suitable ladies from the neighborhood.

     Grace smiled indulgently at her sister-in-law. There was no need to disillusion Rose yet; she would learn soon enough the reality of her new life when she saw the plantation and discovered that her nearest neighbor was miles away and that the ladies Rose spoke of were going to be hardworking farm wives with little time for afternoon teas.

     Something outside the window caught Grace's attention. It was the man who had earlier helped her up the carriage steps. He was overseeing the transfer of supplies from the train to some wagons, and the supplies, Grace saw, were guns and camping gear. So, she thought, he is a hunter and is leaving the train here at Voi.

     Curious about him, Grace watched him. He looked very fetching in his khakis and pith helmet. When he turned suddenly and met her gaze, Grace's heart skipped a beat. He smiled, and then, as he swung himself up onto a horse, he saluted and rode away.

     As she watched him disappear into the night, she realized that this was the way it always was with Grace and men—and how it would always be. She confounded them, like those that afternoon who had not known how to act around her, or she brought out in them some inexplicable resentment, or she received their highest compliment, like the hunter's; that they regarded her as being as good as any man and therefore worth treating as a fellow.

     Grace recalled the men on the hospital ship, the wounded ones who were brought aboard each day. How wonderful they were with her at first, flirting, thinking she was a nurse. And then how abruptly their attitude changed when they discovered she was a doctor and an officer: the sudden deference and arch respect, the creation of an invisible barrier that she didn't know how to cross.

     The day she had been accepted into medical school, nine years ago, Grace had been counseled by an elderly woman doctor. You will find that your new title will be a curse as well as a blessing to you, Dr. Smythe had said. Many male doctors will resent your intrusion into their jealously guarded fraternity, and many male patients will judge you incapable of practicing medicine. You will not have a normal social life because you will not fit into any of the accepted feminine roles. Some men will place you on a pedestal and make you unreachable to them. Others will see you as a curiosity, a freak. You will intimidate some, amuse others. You will be entering a man's world without being accepted as a full member, and you will receive few of the privileges of that world.

     Dr. Alice Smythe, in her sixties and never married, had spoken truly. Grace Treverton was now twenty-nine—and a spinster.

     She rested back in her seat and closed her eyes.

     This was the price she had been warned about years ago, when she had announced her intention to pursue the study of medicine. Her father, the old earl, had refused to support her, and her brothers had laughed, predicting she was going to give up her femininity. Something of their prophecy had come true. She had indeed made sacrifices. There was little prospect now of marriage and babies, and she was, at nearly thirty and despite two years at sea working among thousands of soldiers, still a virgin.

     But not all men were like her brothers or those rough men in the dining hut. There was the hunter who had noticed her, and back in Egypt, where she had been stationed during the war, Grace had encountered officers, cultured gentlemen who had respected the stripes of rank on her sleeve and the M.D. after her name.

     And there had been Jeremy.

     In truth, Dr. Smythe's forecast had seemed extreme when Jeremy had placed the engagement ring on Grace's left hand. But that dream had gone down with the torpedoed ship, and with Jeremy, in the cold dark waters of the Mediterranean.

     The supper dishes were cleared away, and the women were asked to stand on the carriage platform while their beds were made up. Grace supported her sister-in-law by the elbow as they stood at the rail, breathing in the fresh night air and marveling at the splendor of the stars. Soon the full moon would be rising over Mount Kilimanjaro.

     England seemed a galaxy away now, almost as if it had never existed. How long ago it seemed, the departure from Southampton. And then the three weeks' steaming eastward, each day taking one farther from familiar sights and deeper into the unknown. Port Said had seemed strange to Grace now that the war was over and tourists were beginning to come back. Peasants had come aboard the ship with their trinkets and guaranteed ancient artifacts; vendors had circulated with food and strong Egyptian wine. Then there had been the Suez Canal, surrounded by harsh, barren desert, and Port Sudan with its stately trains of camels and Arabs in burnooses. From Aden, that bleak oasis in the wilderness, the steamer had carried them along the exotic Somali coast into the sultry Indian Ocean, where sunsets streaked the sky in crimson and gold. Finally Mombasa, the coast of British East Africa, with its bleached white buildings, coconut palms, mango trees, brilliant flowering shrubs, and Arabs hawking everything anyone could desire. Where were the mist of Suffolk, the dignified old stones of Bella Hill, the Elizabethan pubs along country lanes? They belonged to another world and in another time.

     Grace stared at the men sitting on the veranda of the dining hut, with brandy and cigars, waiting for their berths to be made up and for the journey to resume. What dreams had brought them to this wild and virgin territory? Which ones would survive; which, fail? What lay ahead for each of them at the end of this train ride? Nearly a whole day must be spent on the rails before Nairobi could be reached. After that, for Countess Treverton and her retinue, there would be many days yet in an oxcart, on the dirt track to Nyeri in the north.

     Grace trembled to think of it. Her dream, the dream she had shared with Jeremy during their cruelly brief time together, lay at the end of that savage road. It was Jeremy who had spun the glorious vision in her head, of a haven of hope and mercy in the wilderness; he had planned to come to Africa after the war and bring the Word of God to the heathen. They were going to work together, Jeremy healing the spirit and Grace, the body. They had filled their shipboard nights with talk of the mission they were going to establish in British East Africa, and now the moment was close at hand. Grace was going to build that hospital, for Jeremy; she was going to carry his beautiful light into the African darkness.

     Dear me, said Lady Rose, leaning against her sister-in-law, I believe I must lie down.

     Grace was startled when she looked at her; Lady Rose's face had gone as white as her muslin dress. Rose? Are you in pain? No ...

     Grace struggled with indecision. To continue on or to stay here? But this desert station was no place for a woman about to have a baby, and Nairobi lay only a day away.

     Grant us time, Lord, Grace prayed as she and Fanny put Rose to bed. Don't let it happen here. I have no chloroform, no hot water.

     There was no sign of distress on Rose's face; her expression was dreamy, as if she were far away. Are my roses all right? was all she said.

     After waiting for her sister-in-law to drift off to sleep, Grace removed her navy suit, brushed it out, and hung it up. Many women doctors were accused of adopting masculine traits, and Grace's continuing to wear her uniform, despite the fact that she had been discharged from the navy a year ago, was looked upon with suspicion. Which was nonsense. Grace was simply a pragmatic woman. The suit was good quality; the stripes had been removed from the sleeve; there was no reason it could not be worn for years to come.

     Our little sailoress Valentine had called her. Even though their father had fought in the Crimean War, and even though Valentine had enlisted to fight the Germans in East Africa and had served as a regimental officer, Grace's joining the navy had been met with great disapproval. But Grace had the Treverton stubborn streak and had followed the dictates of her conscience. Just as she was following it now, here in Africa, determined to fulfill a dream that had been born on a warship in the Mediterranean.

     Valentine didn't approve of her plan to build a hospital in the bush, bearing as he did a deep-rooted contempt for missionaries in general, and he had informed his sister that in no way was he going to assist in such a folly. But Grace did not need Valentine's help; she had a small income from her inheritance, a little support from local churches back in Suffolk, and she was possessed of a backbone as stiff as any man's.

     A moan came from Lady Rose's berth. Grace turned sharply. Her fragile sister-in-law lay breathing deeply with her hands on her abdomen.

     Are you all right? Grace asked.

     Rose smiled. We are fine.

     Grace smiled back, comfortingly, to mask her fear. So many miles, so many days to go yet—and the worst of the journey still ahead!

     Is he kicking? she asked, and Rose nodded.

     It had been decided that the baby would be named Arthur, for the younger brother who had been killed in France in the first year of the war. The Honorable Arthur Currie Treverton, one of the first brave boys to sign up when England went to war.

     The whistle blew, and the train began to roll. Grace looked out the window and saw the reassuring lights of Voi station fall behind; then there was night all around. The train chuffed across a bleak and sterile landscape, following an old slave route to Lake Victoria. This modern year of 1919 was but an eye's blink from the days of Arab caravans, when chained Africans had trudged this way to the slave ships on the coast and thus to their doom. The policing of this route, to stop illegal slaving, had been part of the way the British government's propaganda had explained the embarrassment of a railway that had cost so much and seemed to go nowhere. As golden sparks from the engine flew past her window, Grace imagined the camps of those slavers, squatting under the stars, their prisoners moaning in chains, bewildered. What had it been like for those innocent Africans to be taken away on terrible ships and forced to serve masters on the other side of the world?

     Grace made sure the windows were tightly closed. She had heard stories of man-eating lions that pulled people from train windows. This was a wild and uncivilized country, the night more treacherous than the day. Never had she felt so vulnerable, so isolated. There was no communication between the first-class carriages; they were like a string of little boxes hurtling through the night with no way to contact the passengers in the next cars, no way to stop the train. Grace prayed that they would make it to Nairobi in time.

     She tried to relax, keeping an eye on Rose, who appeared to be sleeping, and thinking of what she would do tomorrow. We will stay in Nairobi, she decided. We will not continue on until after the baby is born.

     Valentine would be petulant, of course, because delay in Nairobi could mean a delay of three or more months, as the long rains were due to start soon and all travel into the Central Province would then be impossible. But Grace would deal with her brother. She was no less anxious than he to have his wife established in the big house he had built, but for the safety of mother and child Grace was going to insist that they wait.

     Knowing that she would not be able to sleep, Grace decided to begin writing in her new journal. It had been a gift from one of her professors in medical school, a handsome volume bound in Moroccan leather with giltedged pages. She had waited until now to start it—waited for the first day of her new life.

     She had just written February 10, 1919 on the opening page when Rose screamed.

     The baby was coming.

2

S

HE WAS FURIOUS WITH HER BROTHER.

     Black clouds hung over the hills, threateningly, like vultures. And here they were, two women, six servants, and fourteen Africans, inching their way up a perilous dirt track in five wagons loaded with all their worldly possessions. What protection were the canvas covers going to be against a sudden torrent? What was Valentine going to say when he saw the ruined Aubusson carpet, the sodden paintings from Bella Hill? How was he going to soothe Rose when she saw that the lace tablecloth and silk gowns were destroyed by rain? This was a preposterous undertaking, bringing all this useless clutter into a wilderness! Valentine was insane.

     Grace looked at her sister-in-law, who was bundled up in a fur coat and staring ahead as if she could see what lay at the end of this trail.

     Rose was still very weak; she was shockingly pale. But she had refused to stay in Nairobi, especially after she had received the message from Valentine telling her to come ahead. Grace had tried to stand her ground, but there was Rose, the next morning, giving orders to her English servants to have the wagons loaded. Grace could not dissuade her sister-in-law from going, and so now here they were, in the middle of a wild land, hacking their way through mango trees and banana plants, fighting insects and being kept awake at night in their tents by the roar of lions and cheetahs. And the heavy rains about to break!

     The sound of the baby crying made Grace turn around and look at the wagon behind her. Mrs. Pembroke, the nanny, produced a feeding bottle and quieted it.

     Grace frowned. The way that baby had survived was a miracle. When the lifeless little form had appeared on the sheets, Grace had thought certain it was dead. She had not found a heartbeat, and its face was blue. But she had blown into its mouth all the same—and it lived! A small, weak baby girl, but alive and growing stronger every day.

     Grace thought about the young woman at her side. Except for the episode at the Norfolk Hotel, when she had insisted they continue on to Nyeri, Lady Rose had been silent since the birth of the baby. No, Grace reminded herself now, there had been one other exception: When pressed to give the child a name, Rose had said simply, Mona. Grace had not known what to make of it until she had seen the romantic novel Rose had been reading on the journey. The heroine's name was Mona.

     Grace had had no choice but to allow it to stand as the baby's name because her brother had made no provision in the event the baby should be a girl. In his vanity and single-minded obsession to found a dynasty, Valentine had never dreamed that he would produce anything other than a son. Grace had the baby baptized and had then sent word to her brother.

     His response had been: Come at once! All is ready!

     In the ten days since leaving Nairobi, Lady Rose had spoken not one word. Her eyes, large and dark and looking feverish, remained fixed ahead while her small white hands worked themselves inside the ermine muff. She sat inclined forward as she rode in the wagon, as if urging the oxen on. When spoken to, she did not reply; when the baby was put in her arms, she regarded it vacantly. The only interest she had shown, besides her determination to see the new house, was in her rosebushes, which rode beside her in the wagon.

It is the trauma of the birth that has caused this, Grace decided. And the shock of so many changes all at once. She'll be better once she's in the new house.

     Before meeting Valentine on her seventeenth birthday, three years ago, Rose had lived a sheltered life. And even after her engagement to the young earl Rose had been exposed to little social life; she married him three months after the first meeting and moved into Bella Hill to be swallowed up by its Tudor shadows.

     It was a mystery to everyone why Valentine had chosen shy, dreaming Rose when he had his pick of every eligible young woman in England. Valentine was dashing, handsome, wealthy and had recently inherited a title. Granted, Rose was beautiful, in an insubstantial way—she reminded Grace of the tragic maidens Poe wrote about—but she tended to live in another world, and Grace feared she was no match for a force like Valentine.

     Yet he had chosen her, and she had accepted him at once. And she had brought her incandescence into the dark, stately halls of Bella Hill.

     Grace was anxious to see what her brother had accomplished in these past twelve months. People had voiced skepticism, declaring that he had taken on what looked to be an impossible task. But Grace knew that her brother was capable of incredible things.

     Valentine Treverton was a passionate man with a restless nature, a man of such appetite for life that he had pronounced England stifling. He longed for a virgin world that he could make his own, where he would be the law, and where there were no traditions and precedents to tell him what to do.

     Anyone who had ever met Valentine was dazzled by him. He walked with a long stride and greeted people with arms held wide as if for an embrace. His laugh was deep and honest and spontaneous. And he was so handsome that even men were charmed by him. But Grace knew his other side: his temper; his moods; his utter conceit and belief that nearly everyone else was inferior to himself. Grace had no doubt that he was going to stamp this wilderness beneath his boot.

     The first raindrops made everyone look up at the sky. In an instant the Africans were shouting to one another in rapid Kikuyu and gesturing wildly. Grace didn't have to understand the language to know what they were saying. If heavy rain fell, this road would turn into an impassable bog.

     Che Che! she called to the Kikuyu headman.

     He came back to her wagon. Yes, memsaab?

     How much farther is it to the estate?

     He shrugged and held up five fingers.

     Grace gave him an impatient look. What did the man mean? Five miles? Five hours? God forbid, five days? She looked up at the sky. The clouds were low, the color of charcoal; banana fronds stirred in an ominous wind. We must hurry, Che Che, she said. Can't we go faster? The lead wagon seemed to Grace to creep at a snail's pace; the two men with rifles, riding lookout for wild animals, appeared to be dozing; and the natives dressed in goatskins and carrying spears merely strolled alongside.

     The headman nodded to Grace and walked ahead to the first wagon, where he shouted orders in Kikuyu to the driver. But the wagon moved no faster.

     Checking the urge to jump down from her wagon and prod the oxen herself, Grace wished now that she had listened to the advice of a gentleman she had met at the Blue Posts Hotel in Thika. He had explained to her that her headman's name Che Che meant slow in Kikuyu and that no doubt there was a good reason for his being called that. But Grace had not been inclined to hire a different headman in the middle of a journey, and as a result, here she was, between the town of Nyeri and her brother's estate, in the prelude of a storm.

     She turned around and saw that Mrs. Pembroke had wisely retreated under the cover of the wagon's canvas roof, the baby in her arms, with Fanny, Rose's personal maid, sitting next to her, looking miserable. All the men were walking beside the wagons and carrying guns; even old Fitzpatrick, the butler who had come with them from Bella Hill, was looking out of character in his khakis and sun helmet.

     Grace realized she might almost think this a comical parade if she weren't so anxious, so angry.

     When she looked at her sister-in-law again, Grace was surprised to see a faint smile on the pale lips. She wondered what Lady Rose was thinking.

     In fact, Lady Rose was concentrating on the sanctuary that lay at the end of this horrible trail: Bella Two, the home Valentine had built for her. He had written in a letter five months ago:

     Our estate lies in a valley forty miles wide, between Mount Kenya and the Aberdare Range, just thirty miles south of the equator. We stand at over five thousand feet above sea level, and there is a deep, lush gorge on our property down which the Chania River tumbles and churns. The house is unique. It is of my own design, something new, for this new country. I have decided to name it Bella Two, or Bella Too; you can choose which. It is a proper house complete with library, music room, and nursery for our son.

     Valentine had not needed to say more; Rose had at once pictured the new house, the house that was going to be hers, not a place where she felt like an outsider, surrounded by the grim portraits of Treverton ancestors. It was a house where she was going to be sole mistress at last, with the keys hanging at her waist.

     Since the birth of the baby four weeks before, Rose had thought of nothing other than the new house. She had found that if she concentrated very hard and focused all her energy upon Bella Two, she would not have to think about the other thing.

     She was fantasizing now about the hours she was going to spend directing the installation of draperies, the placement of chairs and tables, the arrangements of flowers. And most important, Rose was going to see that the correct etiquette was followed for her At Homes: the polishing of the tea service that had been given to her grandmother by the Duchess of Bedford; the baking of scones and sponge cakes; the making of clotted cream; teaching the staff the proper way to make finger sandwiches, that they slice the cucumber just so. And Rose herself would hold the key to the tea caddy, carefully measuring out the Earl Grey and Oolong.

     Just because one was in Africa, she had decided, there was no reason for one to stop being civilized. One must hold to decorum at all costs. Rose knew that her sister-in-law did not approve of, as Grace had put it, the "monstrous collection of