Without thinking Morvenna reached for a chain of mauve flowers that floated on the water, and at once a voice rapped out from the other side of the canoe: "Don't feed your fingers to the piranha. These shallow waters harbour them by the thousand."
Like a child with rapped knuckles, she withdrew her hand and turned her gaze in the other direction, hurt by the lash in the voice whose deep, warm gentleness had lulled her into sleep last night. She watched the wild fowl feeding on the crabs that scuttled in the reeds, and' then the river widened out again into a stretch of
sun-shot water. Logs floated on it and had to be deftly avoided, and sometimes they skimmed past dark shapes that were not logs but scaly brutes who drowsed just below the surface.
The rhythmic swish of the paddles through the water was sometimes the only sound to be heard, and then all at once the monkeys in the forest would set up a clamour, and birds would fly up into the gauzy sky.
Around noon the Indians edged the canoe on to a sandbank, and shared out their food and water. Morvenna's admirer handed her a pickled hog's trotter, and from sheer hunger she battled with the tough meat, and a bread-flap that was rather like a slimming biscuit.
The people who slimmed, and went to work by bus and car, seemed a million miles away from these green deeps, and stranger to her than the Indians of the forest; and the tall Tushaua Braz whose eyes were bluer than the sea which had stranded her on the shores of this faraway island.
"There is still a little water in my flask," he handed it to her. "You are not used to drinking river water, though it is quite unpolluted by industrial chemicals."
"I was just thinking how far away civilization seems," she took a thirsty gulp of water. "All this is like another world, another time. Look at those birds ! They look painted."
"Jewels of the forest, and the sun its gold." He smiled quizzically as she chewed away gallantly at the trotter in her hand. "Are you enjoying that ?" he asked.
"I'm as hungry as a hunter." She gave a laugh. "I can't imagine Poppy enjoying this trip, her hair in damp tangles, her face as shiny as a mirror — oh, I've just had a thought ! Leird must be feeling rather
anxious about us."
"But not Poppy, eh ? She thinks only of herself." The senhor quizzed his cigarette-case and gave a sigh that indicated he had run out of the slim, dark cheroots he was fond of.
"Nuno must have been taken ill in the forest, and then found by the Incalas," she said thoughtfully. "Senhor, do you think my father was looking for their encampment ? Is it at all possible that the treasure is connected with them ?"
"The Incalas are an ancient and mysterious tribe," he said quietly, "but you must not entertain the idea that they had anything to do with your father's death—"
"You say it so definitely." Her eyes locked with his, the lashes dark and sweat-clustered about her violet eyes. "Why are you so certain, senhor? What do you know, and why do you keep it from me ?"
"Perhaps I had to wait to judge how much maturity hides behind your young face." His own face was as if sculptured out of teak and shadows. "I knew weeks ago that a white man had died while following the Rio Rona, which leads to this island and the Incala camp. His canoe and supplies were found on the north bank of the Rio Rona. The news reached me by bush telegraph – the drums – and I went with a tracking party to find out if this man could still be alive, somewhere in the bush...."
The proud nostrils contracted, and a tiny stream of sweat coursed down the broad forehead into the black arch of an eyebrow. "The piranha, the cannibal fish, swarm in the still waters of the shallow creeks. Your father must have become grounded in one of these
creeks, perhaps some underwater weeds entrapped the prow of his canoe, and I would say he went over the side with the intention of freeing his boat . . . and the devil fish attacked him."
"Oh no !" Morvenna buried her face in her hands. "H-how can you be so sure that — that it was the
piranha ?"
"Because of the location of your father's canoe — a heavy downpour of rain had filled up the creek and washed the boat on to the bank, where it overturned. A creek swarming with piranha, as I discovered for myself. Though cannibalistic, they will not always attack unless a man has an open wound on his person. I think it must be assumed that your father might have cut his hand while opening a tin of the supplies he was carrying. Also," he added gently, "I made a conclusive discovery while I was investigating the near-by woods to make sure he was not lying injured, or ill with fever."
"What — sort of discovery?" Her knuckles were pressed white against her lips, her eyes were pools of pain, and fear of his next revelation.
"I met some forest Indians," he said quietly, gravely, "and I noticed that one of them was wearing an identity-disc on a chain around his neck. I asked to see it, and very reluctantly he handed it to me. After taking a look at the name inscribed upon the disc, I asked how he came by it, and he told me that he had been dragging a crab net in one of the creeks near where your father's canoe was found. When he hauled in his catch, he found the disc and chain entangled in the pincers of the crabs. He gave it a polish and hung it about his neck, regarding it as icaro — a talisman."
But for Llew Fayr it had not been a talisman, and
the senhor's lean face was sombre as he added: "After some haggling, I persuaded the man to exchange his find for the watch I was wearing."
"Tell me the name that was on the disc," Morvenna said huskily.
"Llew Gwilym Fayr. His date of birth was inscribed, also his blood group and nationality."
"Welsh," she sighed. "He was proud of being born in Wales, and he wanted to settle there, one day." "Perhaps he is there in spirit, senhorinha."
"I wonder." She glanced round at the jungle forest that was so green and wild; a paradise where danger walked hand in hand with beauty. "I sometimes think he loved these jungles more than anything else. They appealed to the tiger in him that was part of his Tiger Bay heritage. No, senhor, I feel that in spirit he is here. I think I have been feeling this ever since I came so strangely to Janaleza — as though I was meant to come here."
"Fate plays strange games with us." Lean fingers enclosed hers, steely and warm. "I despatched the disc and a letter to the authorities in Manaos, but when you said that you had come to Brazil to search for your father, I guessed that the package had somehow gone astray, that no one in Manaos could have told you that a search would be in vain."
"Did you tell Nuno about finding my father's identity-disc?"
"Yes, he knew. But I asked him not to speak of it to you, but to leave the time of telling to me. Have I hurt you very much in the telling ?"
She gazed down at his brown hand, and felt the vitality at his finger-ends stealing into her like an
infusion of strength that made the pain easier to bear, somehow.
"It had to be told, senhor. I – I only hope that it was quick – would it be quick ?"
"Quicker than snake-bite, or the fangs of a jaguar."
"Your mother—" her eyes lifted to his face. His mother had been a victim of the jungle, so it was no wonder he was being so understanding about her own loss.
"Yes." He spoke abruptly, and as the Indians pushed out from the sandbank, he took a paddle and Morvenna sat and watched the darkening of the back of his shirt as he wielded the diamond-bladed paddle as deftly as any of the Indians. There had been something else to ask, but he had evaded the question. He knew, as she now guessed, that Nuno had gone looking for the treasure marked on that fatalistic map.
A golden-red haze was stealing over the sky as they turned an arm of the river and came in sight of a sloping beach and the Incala settlement. Drums began to boom among the trees, signalling their approach. Indians began to appear out of the big stilt-houses; they scrambled down the bamboo ladders, men and their wives, naked urchins and barking dogs. They came running down the beach as the dugout nosed its way between the inverted V of a natural landing place. The four Indians leapt ashore, but Morvenna was s
o stiff from sitting still that she had to be lifted over the side by the senhor.
Her nerves tingled as she glanced round at the throng of Incalas. They had fallen silent for a moment and were staring at her, so pale, slim and youthful,
such a contrast to the brown-skinned women with painted faces, wearing short aprons fringed with beads, and little else.
A tang of woodsmoke from the evening cook-fires hung over the settlement, and the setting sun cast a weird pink light over the scene.
"Come," a lean hand gripped her elbow and, with tall, calm assurance, the senhor made a way for them through the throng. Small hands reached out to touch Morvenna, and she smiled down at the children, black-fringed, big-eyed, with teeth like polished rice. She was among people of the wilds, a tribe of lithe, black-brown people who had a look of savage innocence. A disarming, deceptive innocence, she knew, for these were the people who had kidnapped a white woman and reared her twins; their chief was brother to the man who had fought a machete duel with the senhor — and been beaten.
The chief was coming forward to greet his male visitor — he did not bother to notice Morvenna — and the two men clapped each other on the shoulder and exchanged greetings in the jungle tongue. While these formalities went on, Morvenna took stock of her surroundings and wondered in which house poor Nuno was suffering. The thatched houses were on stilts, she guessed, because of their nearness to the river, and children clung to the bamboo ladders that hung from the open doorways with all the agility of the forest monkeys, who were setting up their usual clamour as the tropical twilight approached.
All of a sudden the senhor turned to her, and she noticed in an instant that he was grimly amused about something. "A woman of the chief's household is going
to show us to a choza," he said deliberately. "Our hut."
As they crossed the compound, where the cook-fires gleamed and smoked, Morvenna glanced up wildly at the coppery profile of her companion. "Our but?" she echoed.
"Yes." The smile he slanted down at her was tenderly cruel. "To these people you are my woman – my she-thing."
She caught her breath, shocked.
"It is for your own good that you are my woman while we are here." There was a hint of a sting in his voice, and a flare of firelight showed that his eyes went hard. "Perhaps you would sooner we slept in a communal hut? It can be arranged."
"There's no need to be sarcastic," Morvenna said stiffly.
"Last night you were alone with me in the forest," he said through his teeth. "Don't you trust me yet ?"
"Of course." It wasn't the sharing of a hut with him that shook her (or was it ?) "Was there any real need to tell these people that I – belong to you ?" she said with a rush. "They saw you fight for Raya—"
"So they did," he drawled. "They also think it quite in order for a chief to have more than one woman, so don't worry that our being together at night will shock them. Don't let it shock you, pequina. I shall be with Nuno most of the time. Come, we will have a look at our choza because these people take their hospitality very seriously, then we will go to the boy. I am told he is extremely sick, and not responding to the treatment he has been given by their witch-doctor."
He spoke to the elderly woman who had guided them to a thatched abode set among the trees, then he
mounted the ladder to the rough-hewn doorway and when Morvenna joined him, he was applying a lighted match to the oil-burning lamp hanging from the crossbeam that supported the roof.
The floor was of clay, and hammocks were secured to the roof-supports. The wick of the lamp burned suddenly bright and Morvenna saw the ant-holes in the woodwork, and the shaggy thatch that overhung the outside of the hut. It was the kind of roof in which long-legged creeping things could be hiding, and she gave a shiver.
"You need some food and some coffee," the senhor said briskly. "The old woman is going to bring it to Nuno's hut."
This kit was next to that own, and they found him in the care of another of the elderly crones who always did a good share of the work around any Indian settlement. Nuno's young face was colourless and streaming with sweat; every now and again a harsh tremor shook him.
"Poor boy," Morvenna stroked the damp hair from his closed eyes, and another fever tremor shook the hammock in which he lay. He seemed unaware of their presence, and the senhor's eyes were narrowed as he took Nuno's pulse, and then pulled down the lids of his eyes to examine the colour of the whites. They were yellowish, his skin clammy, his pulse rapid.
"Is it malaria?" Morvenna asked anxiously.
"I am not sure." The senhor's lean fingers gently probed the glands in the boyish neck. "He has picked up something — anyway, a strong dose of quinine won't hurt, and he may react to it if it is given in the vein."
The needle of the syringe gleamed in the lamplight
as it was plunged into an ampoule of quinine. The quinine was carefully injected, and the old Indian woman leaned over the hammock and studied the proceedings with eyes as dark as the shadows in the corners of the hut.
She muttered something, and Morvenna glanced at the senhor in the hope that he would translate. He frowned as he tucked in the blankets around Nuno, carefully fixing them beneath the sides of his body and under his feet. "The old one knew him when he was a boy," he said. "She says he will not get well because I stab him with a needle — she thinks he is bewitched."
Morvenna's eyes widened in the smoky lamplight, and she thought of the map and the ill-luck which it seemed to bring on those who tried to find treasure with it. "He looks so ill," she whispered, "and those tremors seems to shake him to the bone."
"He certainly has a very high fever," the senhor spoke sombrely. "We must keep him covered up and try to induce as much sweating as possible. Are you nervous of illness ?"
"I don't think so." She wiped away the sweat that coursed down Nuno's face, and then glanced at the calabash of water on the floor beside the hammock. She picked it up and looked around for a cup of some sort, but there wasn't one. The old woman must have held the calabash for Nuno to drink from, but now he was too weak for that, and half-unconscious, and the moisture he was losing had to be replaced or he would grow even more exhausted.
"If I had a cup and a spoon," she said, "I could get a little moisture into him. If his lips were wetted frequently, he would gradually absorb the water."
She took the calabash. "There isn't much left, and I bet it's stale."
"Give it to me," the senhor took the calabash and turned to the old woman. He spoke to her in the dialect of the tribe, a succession of guttural sounds that seemed to add to the strange atmosphere of the hut. Smoke from the lamp hung in the air, and its wavering light cast shadows over faces that might have been depicted in a tapestry of long ago. There were broken 'places in the walls of the hut, and Morvenna heard movements outside and felt that Indian eyes were looking in at them.
The old woman shuffled away to get fresh water and the other things the senhor had asked for, and Morvenna looked at him across Nuno's bunk. Their eyes met in the lamplight, and she knew this moment to be the strangest they had yet shared.
"Don't look so anxious," he said. "Between us we will make Nuno well again."
"Senhor," she could feel her heart beating fast with what she had to put into words, "I think we should find that map — and burn it."
His eyes narrowed as he looked at her. He didn't speak for fully a minute, while Nuno's dry, feverish gasping filled the silence between them.
"Please," she begged, "let's find it and burn it !"
They found it among the things Nuno had brought with him in a rolled groundsheet; a square of tracing paper, glued to a square of brown paper, much folded, the tracings beginning to fade from the handling the map had received. Morvenna watched as the senhor flicked his eyes over it, then, his face as though carved from teak, he held the map to the wick of the lamp. It
caught alight at once, flared, and was ground to ash beneath the heel of his boot.
Neither of
them said anything, and Morvenna felt an easing of the tension as Indians came into the hut, bringing bowls of strong coffee, and larger bowls of stewed meat and rice. The aromas blended, and Morvenna realized how hungry she was.
She fortified herself with the hot, tangy coffee, sweetened with the brown sugar the Indians made from wild sugar-cane, and then ate hungrily the chunks of meat (wild deer or tapir) and the spicy clumps of rice. Her spoon was hand-carved wood, and throughout most of the night that followed, she and the senhor took turns in moistening Nuno's lips from one of these spoons dipped in water.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Towns dawn Nuno began to lick at the drops of water like a feeble puppy, and when Morvenna saw this, she smiled. The long, tedious task had been worth every bone-aching minute spent on this hard, backless stool beside his hammock, and when she glanced across to say as much to the senhor, she saw that he had dozed off to sleep, his dark head pillowed against the bamboo wall, his long legs stretched out from his backless wooden stool.
She gave Nuno a little more water, then set aside the cup and spoon and rose, stiffly, to change his blankets again. He had sweated profusely, and several times in the night the senhor had massaged his limbs in order to
ease his fever cramps. Now, with the dawn light filtering into the hut, he felt much cooler to Morvenna' s touch.
As she tucked him in, a little breeze stirred through the hut, and she glanced at the floor and saw some pieces of ash scattered into a dust indistinguishable from the clay dust. Then that errant breeze died down, and with it a rustling of leaves from outside, and everything was still again.
Morvenna came round the other side of the hammock and was careful not to arouse the senhor as she finished tucking in her patient. She stood looking down at the man who had not slept a wink for two nights running . . . such a complex man, so seemingly tough and self-contained, and yet so ready to spend himself for those he cared for....
Those he cared for? A tremor of a smile touched her lips. In her case he felt obligated to see that she came to no harm, but he cared for Nuno as though he were a young brother — indeed, in the near future they would be brothers.
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