A Cleft Of Stars Page 3

I did not want to be lumped into the general category of troubles. Moreover, I was limp and edgy._ 'One can't help contracting malaria either.'

  'Well, we can be sure that it wasn't visited upon you.'

  'What on earth do you mean?'

  Her eyes were very clear and a little puzzled.

  'All our other problems – well, we weren't so sure about them.'

  I was not responding properly. My soggy brain took in the fact that she wasn't wearing bush clothes, which meant she must have stayed in town overnight and changed specially to come to visit me. The cool white cotton dress enhanced her dark hair.

  'Guy, do you believe what they say about The Hill?' she went on before I could answer.

  My fever days had been too blanked with superheated images to want any more gropings now that I was conscious again. It was good to see her next to me, warm and real. Other things didn't seem important.

  The taboo, I suppose?'

  'Ye . . . es. When you live, eat and sleep right next to The Hill–no, I can't really explain what I mean. It's more a feeling than anything else. It's not simply an ordinary hill. I'm sorry I'm putting it badly but ... but there's something there. Something.'

  'When I made the preliminary reconnaissance ahead of the expedition itself I couldn't raise help within thirty miles once the natives heard we were bound for The I replied. 'As far as I am concerned there's nothing to it. You get these extraordinary psychological upsurges of the primitive all over Africa. For instance, there's a tribe living near this very town which claims you can rid yourself of a headache merely by walking along a path the witch doctor indicates and rubbing it off on the bushes.'

  She blurted out unexpectedly as if she could not keep back the news any longer. 'We've abandoned the expedition.'

  'What!'

  I felt acutely let down in a double sense. Oddly, the more telling reason was that I had imagined all along that she had taken the trouble to make the rough trip from The Hill specially to see me. Her real motive seemed much more matter-of-fact.

  'Don't tell me your statuette is an image of the powers of darkness and that it's brought down a curse on the expedition like that of Tutankhamen!'

  She flushed slightly. 'Let me tell you. When the fuss of getting you away safely to hospital was over we set to work again. But we found we couldn't. All the survey pegs marking the trenches had been uprooted and scattered about.'

  'Probably baboons,' I asserted. 'Gardner had the same problem in '36. They're very inquisitive creatures and The Hill swarms with them. They've got a big colony up near the spring on the summit. They won't meddle with pegs if you paint 'em with pitch, however. The heat keeps it sticky and oats their paws, which they hate. I put a drum of it among the stores for that very purpose.'

  'We did exactly that,' Nadine answered steadily. 'Next day the same thing happened. Everything was higgledy-piggledy, an awful mess. It took us half a day simply to re-mark the digging sites. Then the following day: repeat performance.'

  'If The Hill's taboo is no more sinister than a baboon's curiosity, you've nothing to fear.'

  The convincing way you say that indicates how deeply you believe it, Guy. I think I share your views.'

  The ensuing pause in our conversation was full of undercurrents.

  'Well,' I ventured a little uncertainly under her steady gaze,

  'You tell me, then. You made the big discovery. Maybe there's even another gold hoard there.'

  She shook her head and the thick hair fell halfway across her cheek. I resented the hairdresser's gloss that had replaced the dust at The Hill. It affected me as a further sense of sellout. 'I'm not a treasure-seeker. Guy, can't you see what I'm trying to tell you? The Hill . . .'

  I was too unhappy about the expedition's ending, perhaps still too ill to appreciate that her emotions were ahead of her words.

  Again she gave me a long considering look. Then she resumed matter-of-factly. 'The first night after you'd gone the two remaining Land-Rovers were parked against the cliff face between the two main digging sites. We'd put them there during the day for the sake of the shade. About midnight we were all awakened by a tremendous crash. A huge boulder had fallen off The Hill on top of them.'

  'It happens all the time,' I replied a little impatiently. 'Sandstone decays in the summer and in winter when it cools chunks crumble and fall off. That's what happened in a big way when the secret stairway was formed long ago.'

  'I know, I know! Every one of the strange happenings I'm about to tell you about has a double interpretation. First, then, the jeeps were a write-off. Dr Drummond was furious-and disturbed too. Next morning he and Jock Stewart decided to climb to the summit via the secret "stairway" to see if they could spot what had caused the boulder to break away. It would have been crazy to have attempted to climb in the dark immediately after the incident. Since the two vehicles were paid for by public subscription there had to be some sort of acceptable explanation of how all that money came to be lost. Dr Drummond was also concerned about something else on the table top . . . he hinted at a possible new site but gave no details.

  'Jock told us afterwards that about two-thirds of the way up the "stairway" the professor had been leading. He was perhaps 150 feet from the bottom. You haven't been up yet, have you Guy? Let me explain: the passageway narrows and there's a nasty corner you have to squeeze round. The person below loses sight of anyone ahead. The Prof was negotiating this tricky section and was out of Jock's view. Suddenly Jock heard a choking sound. He went up as fast as he could and found Dr Drummond hanging from a wire noose round his neck. Luckily he'd thrown up his arm as he fell. That saved him and stopped the slipknot from strangling him. The wire was six feet long – the same as a gallows drop – and it was brand-new.

  'Now Jock knows all about emergency drill; he's done plenty of rock work. That's why Dr Drummond chose him in the first place to go along. He found that the loop had cut into the Prof's neck and had dislocated his right shoulder.'

  'Why should a poacher lay a snare there?' I interrupted. 'The climb's far too difficult for any but the smallest game to venture up it to the spring.'

  Nadine went on quietly without replying directly to my question. 'Listen. Jock had almost freed Dr Drummond when he himself slipped. He dropped until his right leg broke his fall by lodging across the bad narrow section. You could say he was lucky, in a way. If he hadn't stuck there would have been nothing to prevent him falling to the bottom. He'd have been killed, for sure. As it was, his leg was smashed in two places and there's a lot of damage to the knee. He'll never climb again. He's in the next ward here in the hospital.'

  'It could happen to anyone,' I rejoined, trying to dispel the sinister undertone in what she was saying. lock probably became careless in his hurry to help the Prof.'

  She thrust her tongue against her front teeth so that it forced open her lips slightly.

  'Jock said he didn't slip. He was pushed!

  'Never! There's not a soul there! The Hill's been deserted from the time the last scientific expedition left just before war broke out. Our party's the first since: you know that as well as I do.'

  'Yes, Guy, I know it only too well. It gives force to what I'm saving. All excavations came to a complete stop then, of course. We natched up their injuries and waited for your jeep to return. That same night Bob and Dave decided to move the spare petrol away from the cliff area in case of another rockfall. They made a dump about half a mile away from the camp out in the open and heaped sand over -the jerricans so that there would be no danger of sparks from the camp fires. It's fantastic, I know, but the dump blew up like an outsize Guy Fawkes display.'

  I sat incredulous.

  'Yes,' she repeated. 'Somehow or other sealed and buried jerricans managed to ignite. Like the rockfall business, it also took place in the middle of the night. The explosions were like bombs. The cans leapt high into the air trailing flames - one after another they went up. It was really pretty spectacular, if we hadn't all been so scared.'

>   'What,' I asked grimly, 'was given as the cause of that?'

  'The heat. Spontaneous combustion. Sympathetic explosions.'

  'Rubbish! Petrol in sealed cans doesn't catch fire by spontaneous combustion! Anyway, it's cooler at night than during the day if you care to put that explanation to the test.'

  'We were looking round for some sort of rational answer and it was good enough at the time for a crowd of really frightened people. The spirit had been completely knocked out of the venture by then and Dr Drummond had to take an on-the-spot decision on his own responsibility about what to do because there was no way of getting in touch with the authorities - you know yourself the nearest phone is sixty miles away. He couldn't afford either to take any risks in that heat with Jock's injury. He followed the only course he could and called off the expedition. We were all only too relieved about it and glad to leave. When your jeep returned we managed to find enough fuel in the tanks of the wrecked ones for it and made our way here to Messina. It was appallingly overcrowded and Jock suffered hell with his leg over the rough sections. Dr Drummond has already left to go back home and report.'

  The end of the expedition was the beginning of our love; The Hill with its associations could not have been other than part of it. This was strengthened by Nadine's wish to have her engagement ring copied from the queen's taken from the royal grave on the tabletop. I obtained official permission for this with considerable difficulty. In spite of her father's opposition, we intended to marry.

  Then, the day in Cohen's store when I handed over Rankin's diamonds and faced a police revolver, our world collapsed.

  How I would put the pieces together again I planned a thousand times during my remaining year in prison after Charlie Furstenberg had divulged that Rankin was at The Hill. My pent-up feelings took the form of frustrated energy which I channelled into reconstructing the jail library in its entirety. Shortly after our conversation Charlie was moved to a 'privileged' section of the prison and later put to work in the jail hospital. There was no reason why the little Jew should have been given such special consideration. I saw him only once or twice more in the distance during my imprisonment. We never had the chance to talk again. Oddly enough, it was my library work which supplied the solution to the problem of concealing from Nadine my mission to find Rankin. About a month before I was due out the Superintendent informed me that I had been given a remission of a week off my sentence in recognition of it. Nadine came as usual on the last visitors' day, unaware of my remission. She was radiant, full of plans for our future. 'Only a week and I shall come and fetch you home,' were her parting words.

  A few hours later I was released. I made my way furtively to Johannesburg, saw my old professor briefly, picked up a few belongings–and a rifle.

  I headed for The Hill.

  CHAPTER THREE

  The tool cut the barbed wire, and again I was in the presence of the hill which is death to look upon.

  Not a bird sang, not an insect moved.

  The wire sprang back to the nearest post, the barbs throwing up little spurts of dust as they plucked at the burning sand. To my tensed senses there was some doubt whether I had actually heard the faint noise of the wire's ring or whether it was tinnitus, an imaginary sound which isolation evokes in the desert, having no reality except in the ear of the hearer. By cutting the wire I had crossed my Rubicon and was committed to the critical stage of my pursuit of Rankin. I had forced a way into the prohibited area of The Hill and our confrontation would have to take place somewhere among the sunstruck tumble of rocks and hills which I could see as I raised my eyes cautiously to the level of the wide sandstone terrace on which The Hill stands along the river front. The terrace – a platform of rock half a mile long – rises abruptly about thirty feet out of a soft incline which is, in fact, the river's maximum bed at floor level. In normal times it is no more than a broad belt of sand studded with stunted palms and small trees. In The Hill's hey-day this steep platform served as its outer line of defence against attack from the river quarter. Centuries of erosion, however, had fashioned two or three sizeable gullies into gateways through the defences. These access points had now been blocked by rolls of militarystyle barbed wire where they opened on to the river bed and higher up at terrace-level by an eight-strand security fence with a workmanlike overhang at the top to prevent climbing. Furthermore, the head of each of these entry-points was reinforced by a padlocked barbed-wire gate. Whoever had done the job knew what he was about. Two high stone walls, still in a state of fair repair, completed the process of sealing off the place on either flank.

  These were the reported precautions Nadine had read out to me that day in prison. It would not be impossible to break into the fortress enclosure but it needed time and resourcefulness. My commando training had enabled me to work through the outlying rolls of barbed wire–a long, exacting crawl–but I had been stumped by the security fence and gate. Then I remembered a curious old instrument in my pocket called a diamond pencil. It was one of the things I had brought with me in my hasty departure. It was a diamond-cutter's tool which had belonged to my grandfather and had a direct association with the Cullinan, for he had lent it to the famous Joseph Asscher of Amsterdam to make the initial cut in the great gem. It was an odd-looking thing with a bronze hexagonal shaft which had been worn smooth, as if by many hands in the past. In its tip was set a diamond to cut other diamonds. Called technically a 'sharp' my diamond pencil looked like an ordinary pencil made of metal, slightly thicker where the fingers gripped it, tapering towards both ends. Before the invention of the modern polariscope, which 'sees' into the heart of a diamond, cutting depended entirely on skill. A diamond has a hidden natural grain which must be established. A groove is cut along the surface of this plane with a diamond pencil, which then receives the cleaving knife. If diamond would cut diamond, I reasoned, diamond would cut the barbed wire obstructing me now.

  It did.

  I ducked down from my quick survey of the terrace. My face came close to a tuft of grass and I could see every dead, bleached bristle and the pitiful cluster of rain-starved, torpedo shaped seeds. I tried to clamp my body against the fiery ground, out of The Hill's line of vision, behind a kanniedood ('never-die') tree. Its trunk made a natural post for the fence. My heart was fluttering like a bird's. Somewhere ahead was the guard's hut Nadine had also mentioned and somewhere too might be the guard himself. He would be armed and was not likely to regard as friendly an intruder who had just broken in through his fence, gun in hand.

  I lay low, half expecting at any moment a challenge or even a shot.

  My pulse pounded and sweat dripped on to the grass patch

  – probably the only moisture that had come its way in years. Close-to I saw how the wire had sliced into the trunk and its acid sap had rusted the bright metal. The black-and-grey striped bark curled and peeled off in papery strips. The leafless thing may have been alive, or as dead as thousands of other trees in the drought-devastated countryside.

  I lay with my arms forward to present the smallest target.

  I eased my grip on the shaft of the diamond pencil, deliberately clenching and unclenching my fingers as if the small movement could also do something for the tension which lay across my stomach like a steel band. I tried taking several long controlled breaths to quiet my nerves; then I watched in astonishment the nails of my thumb and forefinger – made brittle by the heat and moistureless air – split down to the quick. After five minutes I could take the sun's torture on my back no longer. Where my chest and stomach lay against the gritty earth were soaked patches through my khaki shirt. Despite the risk of being spotted, I realized I would have to shift soon. Even the shadow from the kanniedood trunk, like a sundial's black bar against the glowing sand, took on an attraction which was out of all proportion to its slight shade. I squirmed, still not chancing a full bodily movement, which caused the cartridges in my shirt pocket to dig into me. They were overhot but I dismissed a fear that they might explode against my c
hest. However, they did make me speculate whether the barrel of my old Mannlicher (it had once been my father's) might be so distorted by the heat that I couldn't have hit Rankin at thirty yards had he appeared in front of me like a genie out of the dancing mirage.

  I sat up, my mouth dry. I chewed and sucked at an astringent mopani tree leaf I had picked on my way from the river. It is the favourite food of elephants and the butterfly-shaped leaf is a thirst-beater for humans and animals alike. I decided to ease myself under the cut wire and reconnoitre cautiously towards the base of The Hill.

  Now that I was confronted by The Hill itself, the plans which I had made round Rankin, both in prison and on my way up-river from Messina, seemed incomplete and somewhat unworkable. Perhaps my keenness to get at him had clouded my recollection of the detailed geography of the place, or even its size. Charlie had said 'Rankin is at The Hill' as if he were to be found simply in occupation of it. When I looked now at the mass rising up before my eyes I realized that I had been over-optimistic about tracking him down quickly. The cliffs of the fortress reared up a couple of hundred feet sheer from the broad terrace. From my low angle the tabletop of the north-western summit where the queen's grave lay was invisible. Compared with this flat section the rest of the surface of the summit was more broken, being pierced here and there with great jags of rock. My view of The Hill was the same as its old enemies had had, and the receiving end wasn't pleasant. There was also a strange air of watchfulness which I could not define.

  At the back of The Hill I could see a broad wadi of sand – an ancient watercourse perhaps – about a mile wide. Here our expedition had camped. The wadi separated The Hill from a great circle of hills beyond to the south, a broken complex about five miles in circumference and two across. Intersecting this to the halfway mark, like a sawn-off wagon wheel spoke, was a broad dyke of rock. These hills were generally lower than the fortress itself, although one directly across the wadi had a peak almost as high as the tabletop.