A Terrible Beauty Read Online Free

returned from his own domicile. Ashton smiled as he realized the inanity of his word choice. Domicile and Masai did not go together in any ordinary sense.
    Kimathi had visited Ashton erratically after having first brought him to his sister. The Masai were nomadic, and it was no short journey across seemingly endless plains for Kimathi to see his friend. When at last they sat together in front of the fire in the center of the camp, the warriors circled behind, as if protecting them from some unseen spirit. Kimathi told him what he had seen that fateful night: One of the white men in the hunting party had put something into Ashton’s drink, something that had nearly killed him. The other Englishmen, Kimathi said, believed their friend had a fever, and they all went away, worrying it was contagious. Only Hargreaves had remained behind, nursing his friend through illness and—so Hargreaves thought—death.
    Kimathi knew better, though. He knew this was not sickness, but poison, and he knew the sleep it brought mimicked death. He also knew that the man who had administered it had come back to the camp when Hargreaves was asleep, to see if Ashton had succumbed to his evil deed. This frightened Kimathi. He could see devils in this white man, and he knew that only he could protect Ashton.
    Everyone who witnessed the tragic scene believed Ashton to be dead. Even the newspapers had reported as much. His breath appeared to have stopped, and any trace of a heartbeat was too faint for anyone to detect. Kimathi stood by as Hargreaves bathed his friend’s body and dressed it before lowering it into a hastily built coffin. And then, while the Englishman dealt with the necessary arrangements to return the coffin to Ashton’s family, Kimathi replaced it with a second one, built hastily as well under the cover of night, and occupied by the corpse of an elderly Masai man from Kimathi’s tribe who had died the day before.
    The Masai do not bury their dead, but instead leave them out for predators. No one would have objected to Kimathi’s having moved the remains—bodies did not matter; the essence of the person was gone. Only great chiefs were buried, so, if anything, this man was receiving an unexpected honor. Kimathi did not think this would offend his god, Enkai, who was all of the earth and the sky and whatever else Kimathi might never see. He worried the body was too slim and added a few rocks to the wooden box, wanting to ensure that the weight would not arouse suspicion. He had wrapped it securely in blankets, and could only hope no one would try to remove them if they did have cause to open the coffin. But even if it were opened, this would not matter once Kimathi had got his friend to safety; no one would have any idea where to look for him. He removed the lid from the wooden box occupied by the Englishman, attached it to a makeshift sledge, and dragged it for a day and a night until he reached the tribe of his sister’s husband.
    Now that Ashton had his strength back, he knew he ought to set off for home, but the days he spent with the Masai ran one into the other, and he found leaving more difficult than he could have anticipated. He had grown accustomed to life in the camp, and the tribe had begun to accept him as one of their own. He hunted with them, and the thrill of this proved superior to any prior experience in his life.
    In the past, his safaris had been decidedly tourist affairs, even though, at the time, he had believed passionately he was the least European of the European hunters on the Dark Continent. How wrong he had been! Now he stalked his prey without the Western trappings of comfort he had previously required. Now he had no cook, no servants, no one to tend to his game after it had fallen. Life presented him with fewer complications here, and his experience was far richer than any he’d had in England, or even when he had traveled.
    While honing the tip of his spear in camp one