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.Men were the warriors; they did all the fighting.""Do they still fight?""We put a stop to that.The Kikuyu and Masai were constantly at war, raiding one another's villages, stealing cattle and women.We took away their spears and shields, and now they simply do nothing.""Well, you can't force them to work.""Actually, we can."Grace had heard about the Native Labor Act back in England when the archbishop of Canterbury had attacked the practice loudly in the House of Lords, calling it modern slavery.Kikuyu men, once warriors but now idle and without employment, were being forced to work on white settler farms, the rationale being that the labor gave them something to do and that their tribe benefited from the food, clothing, and medical care they received in return."The war with Germany nearly did us in, Grace.British East Africa is headed for certain bankruptcy if we don't find a way to generate revenue.This can be gotten only through agriculture and export.The white farmer can't do it single-handedly, so if we all work together, everyone—natives and Europeans—will benefit.And I'm going to fight to make this new country work, Grace.I didn't come here to fail.Others like me, like Sir James, we're bloody struggling to bring East Africa out of the Pleistocene and into the modern age.And we're dragging its people with us, kicking and screaming if we must."She looked down at the cleared fields, at the hundreds of rows waiting for their seedlings, and said, "There are more natives here than I expected.I had understood from the Land Office that we had purchased vacant land.""We did.""Then where did all these women and children come from?""Across the river." Valentine pointed, and Grace turned around.On the opposite bank, through cedars and olive trees, she could see clearings, small native plots with round thatched huts and vegetable gardens."However," Valentine said, "that's our land, too.It extends quite a bit in that direction.""People are living on your land?""They're squatters.It's a system the Colonial Office worked out.The Africans can have their shambas—that's their word for 'farm plot'—on our land if in return they work for us.We take care of them, settle their disputes, bring a doctor 'round if they need it, provide them with food and clothing, and they work the land for us.""It sounds very feudal.""As a matter of fact, that's exactly what it is.""But." Grace frowned."Weren't they already here before you bought the land?""Nothing was stolen from them, if that's what you're thinking.The Crown made an offer to their headman that he couldn't refuse.It made him a chief—the Kikuyu don't have chiefs—and gave him all sorts of authority.In return, he sold the land for some beads and copper wire.It's all legal.He put his thumbprint to a deed of sale.""Do you suppose he understood what he was doing?""Don't go 'noble savage' on me, old girl.These people are like children.Never even saw a wheel before.Those chaps down there were hauling logs on their heads.So I managed to lay hand on some wheelbarrows, and I explained that they were for the logs.Next day I saw them carrying the logs inside the wheelbarrows all right, with the wheelbarrows on their heads! And they have no notion of property, no notion of what they can do with land.It was going to waste.Someone had to step in and do something with it.If we British hadn't, then the Germans or the Arabs would have.Better us taking care of these people than the Hun or the Mohammedan slavers."He strode away from her toward Mount Kenya, with his hands on his hips, as if he were going to shout at the mountain."Yes," he said in a deadly even tone, "I'm going to do something with this land." Valentine's black eyes blazed as the wind whipped his hair and cut through his shirt.He had a wild, challenging look, as if daring Africa to defeat him.Grace sensed something barely harnessed within her brother, an energy only just under control, an obsession and a madness that had to be kept under constant rein.It was a strange power that drove him, she knew, a force that had propelled him out of dull, old, law-burdened England and into this untamed, lawless Dark Continent.He had come to conquer; he was going to sweep his hand across this primordial Eden and leave his mark."You see now, don't you?" he cried into the wind."You understand now, don't you, Grace? Why I stayed here? Why I couldn't go back to England when I was discharged from the army?"His hands curled into fists."Feudal" she had called it.Valentine liked that.Lord Treverton, truly an earl over a domain of his own creation, not like Bella Hill, where obsequious cap-lifting peasants lived on mediocre farms and looked up at the big house as if it were a Christmas pudding.Suffolk revolted him in its tiresome tradition and done things and eternal sameness, where men's imaginations stretched no farther than tea time.When Valentine had come to British East Africa to fight the Germans, he had suddenly come alive.He had looked around himself and had seen: what he had to do; where he belonged.Destiny filled him; purpose flooded his veins.It was as if Africa, a slumbering, clumsy giant waiting to be wakened and prodded into productive life, had been waiting for him and for men like him.Valentine trembled in the wind, not with cold but with vision.He lifted his dark eyes to the ominous clouds and hoisted a mental saber.He felt as if he rode a warhorse and faced an army
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