A Place to Stay

Abomey had found a way to sell everything Senamé wanted within the same stretch of road.

Plantain hissed in black pans. A metalworker turned a copper bowl beneath his hammer, drawing sunlight out of each new hollow. Beside him, a woman painted birds onto a length of cloth. When her fingers left the fabric, the blue feathers continued stirring.

Senamé leaned out of the travelling seat.

She could feel where the working caught: pressure beneath the pigment, then a release at the wrist. Her hand began following it against her thigh before the ache in her palm reminded her what yesterday had cost.

The painter noticed.

Instead of scolding, she turned the cloth so Senamé could see the underside.

For a few steps, the moving wing followed them along the street.

Senamé twisted around until Afiwa caught her waistband.

“You’re allowed to come back.”

Of course she was. The thought had simply not occurred to her.

Afiwa bought plantain while the elephant waited behind a cart. In the shelter of his flank, Kékéli traded his feathers for a child’s limbs, arriving barefoot between them with coppery skin and bright locks still holding the green and scarlet of his plumage. Senamé put a piece into his hand before he could take it with his mouth.

The market opened into a square lined with eating houses. Beneath one awning, women pounded yam in alternating strokes, folding the steaming mound between blows. Diners leaned across crowded benches, arguing over bowls of sauce.

All those people eating without a wedding, a funeral or anybody being related.

A young man carrying indigo cloth walked into a post while looking at her.

His companion saved the cloth.

“Oh,” Afiwa murmured. “You’re going to like it here.”

Senamé was deciding whether to smile back when she heard someone remark on her legs. Another voice answered, followed by a laugh that made her pull her knees closer together.

Kpo passed beneath the awning.

Silence travelled ahead of her.

The Panther had taken human shape at the outpost: a towering woman in black cloth, silver bright in the folds of her gele. People bowed without waiting to meet her eyes. Senamé looked down at the hand carrying her plantain and remembered a paw covering half the road.

Near the palace, officials began gathering around Tassi. One brought papers, another seals; a third was explaining the collapse of a storehouse roof. Their arrival swallowed the woman Senamé had eaten breakfast beside. Within moments, she was following a sovereign again.

She climbed down with Kékéli and pushed after her.

Someone put a document into her hands.

Six signatures supported the repair of the roof. At Azara, they would have sent her with a ladder.

Tassi retrieved it before the attendant could discover his mistake.

“You met me on the northern road,” she told the girls quietly. “Anything further, let them ask me.”

Senamé nodded. Beneath the baggage, Kpénahi’s papers had survived the journey. Around her, every request passed from hand to hand with its history attached. Perhaps somewhere inside these walls a man’s disappearance had been preserved as carefully as a damaged roof.

At the palace entrance, a guard stopped Kékéli.

The clerk beside him asked for their names, then their houses of origin.

“The queen’s guests,” Senamé answered.

“Your house.”

Tassi had already been drawn farther into the courtyard. Senamé could see her beyond the clerk, surrounded by people whose urgent questions apparently took precedence over whether her guests could follow.

“Enter them under Her Majesty’s household.”

The voice came from the shaded walk behind him.

A young man approached in white cloth edged with blue. His sandals were clean, his shoulders straight, and he seemed to have reached this moment without ever falling into a ravine or smelling of elephant.

The clerk stood.

That irritated Senamé until the young man came close enough for her to see his mouth. Then irritation became difficult to organize.

“Sètondji,” he introduced himself, returning the register to the proper column.

She supplied her name, although he had just heard it. He handed her a wooden guest token without remarking on the repetition.

Clean cloth and a faint spice accompanied him as he turned to lead them inside. Senamé hid the greasy leaf behind her back.

Afiwa noticed. Naturally.

Beyond the gate, painted walls enclosed gardens and shaded verandas. Red earth glowed between carved doorways; somewhere out of sight, a musician kept stumbling over the same phrase. Senamé wanted to find the instrument, the player and the missing notes. She also wanted to keep following Sètondji, who appeared to know where everything belonged.

A woman waited beneath the veranda ahead.

Gold weighted her wrists. Her wrapper fell in heavy, immaculate folds, and she greeted Kpo before acknowledging the daughter who had returned with soot on her clothes.

“Six days,” she told Tassi when the Panther had moved away. “Your ministers have been receiving rumours in your place.”

“Then they should be relieved to have me back.”

A woman beside the doorway concealed a smile behind her fan. Pearls nestled against her temples; even standing still, she seemed to have arranged the attention of everyone nearby.

The queen mother’s inspection reached Senamé.

“These are the travellers?”

“My guests. Senamé and Afiwa.”

“We can find them something to wear.”

Senamé’s answer pressed against her teeth. Tassi ordered cool water before it could escape, but Kékéli had been listening with dangerous interest.

“We can find you something to wear,” he informed the queen mother.

Afiwa made a strangled sound behind the baggage.

The beautiful woman closed her fan.

“He likes your cloth, Mother.”

Adonon regarded him long enough for Senamé to imagine being escorted straight back through the gates.

“He may admire it quietly.”

Sètondji opened the way towards the veranda. Senamé took Kékéli with her before his admiration developed.

Cool coconut water waited in glazed cups. She had scarcely tasted it before the questions began: their village, their families, whether they were unmarried. The smiles made it harder to know which answers were safe.

Tassi interrupted to remind everyone that her guests had travelled through the night. An attendant was already waiting to claim her; as she left, her fingers rested briefly on Senamé’s shoulder.

“I haven’t forgotten.”

The scales beneath her waistband prickled.

Sètondji returned with a woman carrying towels and directed them towards their room. Senamé asked where to find him if they needed anything.

“Across the musicians’ courtyard.”

That was convenient. She could investigate both disturbances at once.

Their room overlooked a flowering tree. Two sleeping places stood raised from the floor, with a carved chest between them and shutters opening onto the garden. Senamé went straight to the window.

For the first time since leaving Azara, she could put her bag down without knowing when she would have to lift it again.

The woman introduced herself as Yétundé and began unpacking their wash things. She was a little older than Senamé, with capable hands and a narrow scar disappearing beneath her sleeve.

“We can do that,” Afiwa told her.

“It’s my work.”

Her accent caught Senamé’s attention.

“You’re from Oya?”

“Nago.”

Yétundé lifted the left shutter before pushing it open. Senamé had noticed the swollen wood and been preparing to offer her help.

“Are you assigned to us?” Senamé asked.

“Until you leave.”

“And afterwards?”

“They’ll assign me elsewhere.”

Senamé turned from the garden. Yétundé was smoothing the blue cloth, knowing exactly how to handle a stranger’s possessions.

“Can you ask for something else?”

“Who would I ask?”

The question was practical. That made it worse.

Outside, the musician finally found the missing notes. The phrase rose cleanly through the shutters while Senamé took the cloth into her own hands.

“I’ll finish this.”

Yétundé let her. At the door, she asked whether they needed anything before the next bell, then left them among the things she had arranged.

Afiwa closed the door.

Senamé expected a remark about Sètondji. Instead, her friend unpacked Kpénahi’s papers and placed them beside the wooden token.

“Don’t lose these in all the pretty things.”

Senamé sat by the window with the packet open across her knees. The palace had given her a room, water, someone to carry what she could carry herself. It would be easy to enjoy all of it without asking how a woman came to have no choice about whose bag she lifted.

She read Kpénahi’s father’s name again.

Across the garden, clerks were bringing their registers indoors.