by Wilbur Smith
‘I recall. Go on.’
‘In the holds of their river galleys they are carrying the mummified body of Queen Lostris’s husband, Pharaoh Mamose the Eighth. Twelve years previously she has sworn to him as he lay dying of a Hyksos arrow through his lung that she would find a secure burial site for him, and that she would lay him in it with all his vast treasure. When they reach Khartoum she determines that the time has at last come for her to make good her promise to him. She sends out her son, the fourteen-year-old Prince Memnon, with a squadron of chariots to find the burial site. Memnon is accompanied by his mentor, the narrator of the history, the indefatigable Taita.’
‘Okay, I remember this section. Memnon and Taita consult the black Shilluk slaves they have captured, and on their advice decide to follow the left-hand fork of the river, or what we know as the Blue Nile.’
Royan nodded and continued the story. ‘They travelled eastwards and were confronted by formidable mountains, so high that they were described as a blue rampart. So far what you read in the book is a fairly faithful rendition of the scrolls, but at this point,’ she tapped the open page, ‘we come to Duraid’s red herring. In his description of the foothills—’
Before she could continue, Nicholas interjected, ‘I remember thinking when I originally read it that it didn’t accurately describe the area where the Blue Nile emerges from the Ethiopian highlands. There are no foothills. There is only the sheer western escarpment of the massif. The river comes out of it like a snake out of its hole. Whoever wrote that description doesn’t know the course of the Blue Nile.’
‘Do you know the area?’ Royan asked, and he laughed and nodded.
‘When I was younger and even more stupid than I am now, I conceived the grandiose plan of boating the Abbay gorge from Lake Tana down to the dam at Roseires in the Sudan. The Abbay is the Ethiopian name for the Blue Nile.’
‘Why did you want to do that?’
‘Because it had never been done before. Major Cheesman, the British consul, had a shot at it in 1932, and nearly drowned himself. I thought I could make a film, and write a book about the voyage and earn myself a fortune from the royalties. I talked my father into financing the expedition. It was the kind of mad escapade that appealed to him. He even wanted to join the expedition. I studied the whole course of the Abbay river, not only on maps. I also bought myself an old Cessna 180 and flew down the gorge, five hundred miles from Lake Tana to the dam. As I said, I was twenty-one years old and crazy.’
‘What happened?’ She was fascinated. Duraid had never told her about this, but it was the type of adventure that she would have expected this man to launch into.
‘I recruited eight of my friends from Sandhurst, and we devoted our Christmas holidays to the attempt. It was a fiasco. We lasted two days on those wild waters. The gorge is the most hellish corner of this earth that I know of. It’s almost twice as deep and as rugged as the Grand Canyon of the Colorado river in Arizona. It smashed up our kayaks before we had covered twenty miles out of the five hundred. We had to abandon all our equipment and climb the walls of the gorge to reach civilization again.’
He looked serious for a moment, ‘I lost two members of our party. Bobby Palmer was drowned, and Tim Marshall fell on the cliffs. We were not even able to recover their bodies. They are still down there somewhere. I had to tell their parents—’ he broke off as he remembered the agony of it.
‘Has anybody ever succeeded in navigating the Blue Nile gorge?’ she asked, to distract him.
‘Yes. I went back a few years later. This time not as leader, but as a very junior member of the official British Armed Forces Expedition. It took the army, the navy and the air force to beat that river.’
She stared at him with a feeling of awe. He had actually rafted the Abbay. It was as though she had been led to him by some strange fate. Duraid was right. There was probably no man in the world better qualified for the work in hand.
‘So you know as much as anybody about the real nature of the gorge. I will try to give you a general indication of what Taita actually set down in the seventh scroll. Unfortunately this section of the scroll had suffered some damage and Duraid and I were obliged to extrapolate from parts of the text. You will have to tell me how this agrees with your own knowledge of the terrain.’
‘Go ahead,’ he invited her.
‘Taita described the escarpment very much the way you did, as a sheer wall from which the river emerged. They were forced to leave their chariots, which were unable to cover the steep and rugged terrain of the canyon. They were forced to go forward on foot, leading the pack horses. Soon the gorge grew so steep and dangerous that they lost some of these animals, which fell from the wild goat tracks they were following and plunged into the river far below. This did not deter them and they pressed on at the orders of Prince Memnon.’
‘I can see it exactly as he describes it. It’s a fearsome bit of countryside.’
‘Taita then describes coming to a series of obstacles, which he describes as “steps”. Duraid and I could not decide with certainty what these were. But our best guess was that they were waterfalls.’
‘No shortage of those in the Abbay gorge, either,’ Nicholas nodded.
‘This is the important part of his testimony. Taita tells us that after twenty days’ travel up the gorge they came upon the “second step”. It was here that the prince received a fortuitous message from his dead father, in the form of a dream, in which he chose this as the site of his own tomb. Taita tells us that they travelled no further. If we are able to determine what it was that stopped them, that would give us an accurate measurement of just how far into the gorge they penetrated.’
‘Before we can go any further we will need maps and satellite photographs of the mountains, and I will have to go over my expedition notes and diary,’ Nicholas decided. ‘I try to keep my reference library up-to-date, and so we should have satellite photographs and the most recent maps on file here in the museum. If they are Mrs Street is the one to find them.’
He stood up and stretched, ‘I will dig out my diaries this evening and read over them. My great-grandfather also hunted and collected in Ethiopia in the last century. I know he crossed the Blue Nile near Debra Markos in 1890-something. I’ll get out his notes as well. They are preserved in our archives. The old boy may have written something there that could help us.’
He walked with her to the old green Land Rover in the car park, and as she started the engine he told her through the open window, ‘I still think that you should stay over here at the Hall. It must be an hour-and-a-half’s drive across to Brandsbury – each way that’s three hours a day. We are going to have a lot of work to do before we can even think of leaving for Africa.’
‘What would people think?’ she asked, as she let out the clutch.
‘I have never given a damn about people,’ he called after her. ‘What time will I see you tomorrow?’
‘I have to stop off to see the doctor in York. He is going to take the stitches out of my arm. I won’t be here before eleven,’ she stuck her head out of the window to yell back at him.
The wind tossed her dark hair around her face. His fancy had always run towards dark-haired women. Rosalind had had that mysterious Eastern look. He felt guilty and disloyal making the comparison, but the memory of Royan was hard to shake off.
She was the first woman who had interested him since Rosalind had gone. The admixture of her blood drew him. She was exotic enough to pique his taste for the oriental, but English enough to speak his language and understand his sense of humour. She was educated and knowledgeable about those things that interested him, and he admired her spirit. Usually Eastern women were trained from birth to be self-effacing and compliant. This one was different.
Georgina had phoned her doctor in York to make an appointment to have the stitches removed from Royan’s arm. They left after breakfast from the cottage in Brandsbury. Georgina was driving and Magic sat between them on the bench seat.
As they turned into the village street, Royan noticed a large MAN truck parked down near the post office, but she thought no more about it.
Once they were out in the countryside they found there were patches of heavy fog that in places reduced visibility to thirty yards, but Georgina made no concessions to the weather, and sent the Land Rover rattling and whining through it at the top of its speed, which Royan reflected thankfully was on the right side of sixty miles an hour.
She glanced over her shoulder to check the road behind them, and saw that the MAN truck was following them. Only the cab rose above the sea of low mist that surrounded it like the conning tower of a submarine. Even as she watched it, a bank of fog intervened and swallowed it up. She turned back to listen to her mother.
‘This government is a troop of incompetent nincompoops.’ Georgina squinted her eyes against the smoke from the cigarette that dangled from her lips. She drove single-handed, stroking Magic’s flowing silken ear with her free hand, ‘I don’t mind ministers boffing themselves into a stupor, but when they start fiddling around with my pension I get really mad.’ Her mother’s pension from the foreign service was her sole source of income, and it wasn’t much.
‘You don’t truly want a Labour government, now tell the truth, Mummy,’ Royan teased her. Her mother had always been the arch Conservative.
Georgina wavered, and then avoided the choice, ‘All I say is, bring back Maggie.’
Royan turned slightly in her seat and glanced through the dirty rear window again. The truck was still behind them, looming out of the fog and the trail of blue exhaust smoke that Georgina was laying behind her like the vapour trail of a jet aircraft. Up until now it had hung back, but suddenly it accelerated up behind them.
‘I think he wants to pass you,’ Royan told Georgina mildly.
The massive bonnet of the truck was only twenty feet from their rear bumper. The radiator was emblazoned with the chrome logo ‘MAN’ and stood taller than the cab of the Land Rover, so that she could not see the face of the driver from where she sat.
‘Everybody wants to pass me,’ lamented Georgina. ‘Story of my life.’ She held the centre of the narrow road doggedly.
Royan glanced back again, and saw that the truck was creeping still closer. It filled the rear window completely. The driver declutched and revved the gigantic engine menacingly.
‘You’d better give over. I think he means business.’
‘Let him wait,’ Georgina grunted around her cigarette butt. ‘Patience is a virtue. Anyway, can’t let him through here. There is a narrow stone bridge ahead of us. Know this stretch of road like the way to my own bathroom.’
At that moment the truck-driver sounded his klaxon so close that it was deafening. Magic jumped up on the rear seat and barked in outrage.
‘Stupid bastard,’ Georgina swore bitterly. ‘What does he think he is playing at? Write down his number plate. I am going to report him to the York police.’
‘His plates are covered with mud. Can’t make it out, but it looks like a continental registration. German, I think.’
As if the driver had heard her protest he slowed slightly and fell back until a gap of twenty yards opened between the two vehicles. Royan had swivelled right round in the seat to watch him.
‘That’s better,’ Georgina said smugly. ‘Ruddy Hun learning some manners.’ She peered ahead through the fog, ‘There is the bridge—’
For the first time Royan was able to see up into the driver’s cab of the truck. The driver wore a balaclava helmet that covered all but his eyes and nose with dark blue wool. It gave him a sinister and evil aspect.
‘Look out!’ Royan screamed suddenly. ‘He is coming straight at us!’ The engine beat of the great truck rose to a bellow that engulfed them like the sound of a gale-driven sea. For a moment Royan saw nothing but glittering steel and then the front of the truck smashed into them from behind.
She was thrown half over the back of her seat by the impact. She dragged herself up and saw that the truck had picked them up like a fox with a bird in its jaws. It carried the Land Rover forward on the steel bull bars that protected the shining chromed radiator.
Georgina wrestled with the wheel, trying to maintain control, but the effort was futile. ‘Can’t hold her. The bridge! Try and get clear—’
Royan hit the quick-release buckle on her safety-belt and reached for the door handle. The stone walls of the bridge were racing towards them at a terrifying pace. The Land Rover was slewing across the road, completely out of control.
The door burst open in Royan’s grip, but she could not push it all the way before the Land Rover was flung into the solid stonework columns that guarded the approaches to the bridge.
The two women screamed in unison as the vehicle crumpled, and the impact hurled them forward. The windscreen shattered as they bounced off the stone columns, and the body of the Land Rover flipped over as it went down the embankment and began to roll.
Royan was catapulted through the open door and flung clear. The slope of the bank broke her fall, but it knocked the wind out of her. She bounced and rolled down the incline and then dropped into the icy waters of the stream below the bridge.
Just before her head went under, she found herself looking up at the sky and the bridge above her. She caught one last glimpse of the truck before it roared away. It was towing two huge cargo trailers. The tall bodywork of the trailers stood higher than the guard rail of the bridge.
Both of the trailers were covered by a heavy green nylon tarpaulin roped down to the lugs on the body. She had only a subliminal glimpse of a large red trademark and company name painted on the side of the nearest trailer, but before she could register the name she was plunged below the surface of the stream and the cold and the force of her fall drove the air from her lungs.
She fought her way to the surface of the river, and found she had been washed some way downstream. Impeded by her sodden clothing, she floundered to the bank and used the branch of a tree to haul herself out.
She knelt in the mud, coughing up the water she had swallowed and trying to assess what injury she had suffered in the collision. Then her own plight was forgotten as she heard the terrible sounds of her mother’s agony from the overturned wreck of the Land Rover.
In frantic haste she clawed herself to her feet and stumbled through the wet and frosted grass to where the Land Rover lay on its back at the foot of the embankment. The bodywork was crumpled and torn, and the bright silver aluminium metal shone through where the dark green paint had been stripped away. The engine had stalled, and the front wheels were still spinning aimlessly as she reached it.
‘Mummy! Where are you?’ she cried, and the terrible sounds never checked. She used the metal body of the vehicle to steady herself as she dragged herself towards the sound, dreading what she might find.
Georgina sat on the wet earth with her back against the side of the car. Her legs were thrust out straight ahead of her. The left one was twisted so that the toe of the booted foot was pointed down into the mud at an unnatural angle. The leg was obviously broken at the knee or very close to it.
This was not the cause of Georgina’s distress. She held Magic in her lap, and was bowed over him in an attitude of abandoned grief; the sound of it bubbled up unchecked from deep inside her. The spaniel’s chest had been crushed between metal and earth. His tongue lolled from the corner of his mouth in his last smile, but the blood dripped steadily from the pink tip and Georgina was using her scarf to wipe it away.
Royan sank down beside her mother and placed one arm around her shoulders. She had never before seen her mother weep. She hugged her hard and tried by main strength to quell the sound of her sorrow, but it went on and on.
She never knew how long they sat together like that. But at last the sight of her mother’s maimed leg, and an awakening fear that the driver of the truck might return to finish the job, roused her. She crawled up the bank and tottered into the centre of the road to stop the next car that a
rrived on the scene.
Not until Royan was two hours late for their meeting did Nicholas become sufficiently worried to phone the police in York. Fortunately he had noticed the licence plate of the Land Rover. It was an easy one for him to remember. The registration number was his mother’s initials combined with an unlucky 13.
There was a delay while the woman constable checked her computer, and then she came back. ‘I am sorry to have to tell you, sir, that Land Rover was involved in an accident this morning.’
‘What happened to the driver?’ Nicholas demanded brusquely.
‘The driver and one passenger have been taken to the York Minster Hospital.’
‘Are they all right?’
‘I am sorry, sir. I don’t have that information.’
It took Nicholas forty minutes to reach the hospital and almost as long again to trace Royan. She was in the women’s surgical ward, sitting beside her mother’s bed. Her mother had not yet come round from the anaesthetic.
She looked up when Nicholas stood over her. ‘Are you all right? What the hell happened?’
‘My mother – her leg is badly smashed up. The surgeon had to put a pin in her thigh – the femur.’
‘How are you?’
‘A few bruises and scrapes. Nothing serious.’
‘How did it happen?’
‘A truck – it pushed us off the road.’
‘Not deliberate?’ Nicholas felt something inside him quail as he remembered another truck on another road on another night.
‘I think so. The driver wore a mask, a balaclava. He crashed into us from behind. It must have been deliberate.’
‘Did you tell the police?’
She nodded. ‘Apparently the truck was reported stolen early this morning, long before the accident, while the driver was stopped at one of those Little Chef cafés. He is German. Speaks no English.’