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the man and the boy helped her lift the body into the shallow grave.
    Nandzi stood up, the hoe still in her hand.
    â€œOh, Ancestors,” she intoned, “ancestors of Tigen my father and of Itsho's father. I am Nandzi, daughter of Tigen and Tabitsha. Forgive me that I, a mere woman, address you directly. Forgive me that I bring you no drink. You will know the reason. The Bedagbam captured me. My lover Itsho came to rescue me and they killed him. I have had to bury him in this lonely place, far from his home and mine. Protect his body from the wild beasts. Accept his spirit, I beg you, to live amongst you. Accept the spirit of Itsho. I am Nandzi. I have spoken.”
    She paused. Damba looked about anxiously.
    â€œOh Ancestors,” Nandzi continued, “another matter. One of our people, I do not know his name or where he comes from, lies down there. The vultures are eating his flesh. There may be more. I do not know. Accept his spirit too and those of any others who have died in trying to rescue us from the Bedagbam. Do not let them become evil spirits of the bush. It is not our fault that they have not received a proper burial. There is nothing to be done about it.”
    When they had finished the filling, Damba and Suba stamped on the soil to discourage the hyenas from digging up the grave. Then they piled stones and branches on the surface. Damba was becoming more and more anxious. But Nandzi was at peace with herself. What had happened had happened. She had done her duty. Itsho would know.
    * * *
    Nandzi touched Damba's arm and looked him in the eye for the first time.
    â€œThank you,” she said.
    Damba nodded an acknowledgement. These people are also human , he thought, as he sent the two of them back into the prison. He had been led to believe otherwise.
    Nandzi sat down against the wall. Dry-eyed, she examined her fellow captives. One man was wearing an apron of leaves, another was dressed in bark cloth. Others wore torn and dirty cotton garments. They sat and lay uncomfortably, their wrists still tied behind their backs. She searched for a spark of rebellion, but their eyes were listless, without hope.
    She looked up at the clear blue sky. Then, without warning, she felt reality strike her like the blow of a cudgel on the back of her neck. Itsho is dead. I am a slave. No one will come to rescue me. I will never again see my mother and my family.
    She wailed a dirge. She had never been deeply moved by a death before, not even when Tabitsha had lost a new-born baby. She had hardly seen the child before it died. When the women had shrieked their customary lamentations she had smiled secretly because she thought their grief was feigned. She had always smiled at the way her mother would wail at a funeral. Tabitsha could turn her tears on and off, as if by command.
    Now it was her turn to howl; but the cry came from her heart. She wept for Itsho and she wept for herself. The sobbing convulsed her and it would not stop. The men were embarrassed. Nandzi was the only woman in the cell. Their skills did not run to the comforting of a strange woman.
    Then Suba also began to cry. He was the youngest of the prisoners; but Suba liked to think of himself as a man and he knew that men did not express their grief openly as women did. He was proud of his manly behaviour that morning, of how he had concealed his shock and had even helped to lower Itsho into the grave. But he too had been snatched from his mother; and the encounter with the two disfigured corpses had shaken him more than he had cared to admit to himself. Now Nandzi's wailing and sobbing broke his reserve and his tears began to flow. Once the dam had broken there was no holding his grief. He cried for his mother.
    Suba's outburst penetrated the cocoon of self-pity in which Nandzi had enveloped herself. She stopped crying and wiped her face.
    â€œSuba,” she called, but he paid no attention.
    She rose and went to him. She put her hand on his