“Wait.” His clutch was on my arm. “Surely it can’t be the white people from the valley!”
He reeled, and I seized the instant to spring upon the ladder. But I had forgotten Christopher. He turned me round to face the king.
The stricken monarch was standing in a tenseness sprung from unnamable fears. But he started as something new fell on his hearing.
“No,” he said, “not they. Something else. They are growing more quiet.... It is a woman.... They are hailing her. She speaks. Don’t you hear her voice?”
I could hear only a blur of noises.
“She is shaming the women.... And sending them away.... She is my friend!... Do you know the voice?” He seized my arm and gazed into my face.
“No, Sire.”
“She is fighting her way through the men.... She calls them fools, cowards, ingrates.... They are dazed.... Only one woman on all this island would have the courage to do that.”
“Sire, if you———”
“She is calling, pleading; she is saying that I am the kind, wise father of them all.”