by Wilbur Smith
‘I know, Sal. But I just can’t help myself. Just one tiny little hole?’
‘Okay,’ she grinned. ‘Just one tiny little hole.’
‘I suppose we’d better try and get some sleep now, it’s past two o’clock.’
Just before we finally drifted off, Sally murmured against my chest, ‘I still wonder what happened to our city. If the bushman picture was correct then huge walls and towers of masonry have vanished into thin air.’
‘Yes. It’s going to be exciting to find out.’
With that strength of character which I am able occasionally to conjure up, I firmly thrust aside the temptation to open a trench within the temple enclosure, and instead I chose a spot upon the foundations of the outer wall where I hoped I would do minimum damage.
With Sally watching avidly, and volunteering more than her share of advice, I marked out with tapes torn from my sheets the outline of the intended excavation. A narrow trench three foot wide and twenty foot long, set at a right-angle to the run of the foundations so as to open a cross-section of the horizon.
We numbered the tapes at intervals of one foot, and Sally cross-referenced her notebook to the markings on the tapes. I fetched the cameras, tools and tarpaulin from the Land-Rover. Our trench was only thirty yards from the tents. We had camped almost on top of the ancient wall.
I spread the tarpaulin ready to receive the earth removed from the trench, and then I pulled off my shirt and threw it aside. I was no longer ashamed to expose my body in front of Sally. I spat on the palms of my hands, straddled the tapes, hefted the pick, and glanced at Sally, sitting attentively on the tarpaulin with a big floppy-brimmed hat on her head.
‘Okay?’ I grinned at her.
‘All the way, partner?’ she said, and I was startled. The words jarred, they were Louren’s and mine. We didn’t say them to other people. Then suddenly I thought, what the hell! I love her also.
‘All the way, girl!’ I agreed and swung the pick. It was good to fed the pick feather-light in my hands, and the head clunking deep into the sandy earth. I worked steadily, swinging pick and shovel easily, but soon the sweat was running in rivulets down my body and soaking my breeches. As I shovelled the earth from the trench and piled it on the tarpaulin, Sally began sifting it carefully. She chattered away happily as she worked, but my only reply was the grunt at each swing of pick.
By noon I had opened the trench along its full length to a depth of three feet. The sandy soil gave way at a depth of eighteen inches to a dark reddish loam which still held the damp of the recent rains. We rested and I ate a mess of canned food and drank a bottle of Windhoek to replace some of my lost moisture.
‘You know,’ Sally looked me over thoughtfully, ‘once you get used to it, your body has a strange sort of beauty,’ she said, and I blushed until my eyes watered.
I worked for another hour, and then suddenly the bite of the pick turned up black. I swung again - still black. I dropped the pick, and knelt in the trench.
‘What is it?’ Sally was there immediately.
‘Ash!’ I said. ‘Charcoal!’
‘An ancient hearth,’ she guessed.
‘Perhaps.’ I didn’t commit myself, luckily, so that later I could chide her for her presumption. ‘Let’s take some samples for dating.’
I worked more carefully now, trying to expose the layer of ash without disturbing it. We sampled it and found that it varied between a quarter of an inch and two inches deep across the full horizon of the trench. Sally noted the depth from surface, and the position of each of the carbon samples we took, while I photographed the trench and tapes.
Then we straightened up and looked at each other.
‘Too big for a hearth,’ she said, and I nodded. ‘We shouldn’t go deeper, Ben. Not like this, crashing in with pick and shovel.’
‘I know,’ I said. ‘We will stop on half the trench, leave the layer of ash undisturbed - I’ll make that concession to the rules - but I am sure as hell going down on the rest of it, to bedrock, if I can!’
‘I’m glad you said that,’ Sally applauded my decision. ‘It’s exactly what I feel as well.’
‘You begin at the far end. I’ll start here and we will work towards each other,’ I instructed, and we began lifting the layer of ash from half the trench. I found that immediately below it was a floor of hard clay and, though I didn’t say so, I guessed it was a building filler. A transported layer, not occurring naturally.
‘Go carefully,’ I cautioned Sally.
‘Quoth the pick-and-shovel man,’ she muttered sarcastically without looking up, and almost immediately she made the first discovery from the ruins of the City of the Moon.
As I write I have her notebook in front of me, with her grubby, earthy fingerprints upon the pages and her big schoolgirlish handwriting filling it.
Trench 1. Reference AC. 6. II.4. Depth 4’2½“.
Item. One glass bead. Oval. Blue. Circum 2½ mm,
Pierced. Slightly heat-distorted.
Remarks: Found in layer of ash at Level I
Index No CM. 1
This laconic notation can give no idea of our jubilation, the way we hugged each other and laughed in the sun. It was a typical blue Phoenician trade bead, and I cupped the tiny pellet of glass in my one hand.
‘I’m going to take it and stick it up their backsides.’ I threatened, referring of course to my critics.
‘If that end is as narrow as their minds, Ben dear, then it will be a pretty tight fit.’
I started using a small pick and fifteen minutes later I made the next discovery. A charred fragment of bone.
‘Human?’ Sally asked.
‘Possibly.’ I said. ‘Head of a human femur - the shaft has been burned away’
‘Cannibalism? Cremation?’ Sally hazarded.
‘You do run on,’ I said.
‘What do you think then?’ she challenged. I was silent for a long time, then I made up my mind, and came out with it.
‘I think at this level the City of the Moon was sacked and burned, its inhabitants were slaughtered, the walls thrown down and its buildings obliterated.’
Sally whistled softly, staring at me in mock amazement. ‘On the evidence of one bead, and a piece of bone - that just has to be the greatest flyer of all time!’
That evening, in reply to Larkin’s bellowed queries, I replied, ‘Thanks, Peter. We are fine. No, we don’t need anything. Yes. Good. Please tell Mr Sturvesant there is no change here, nothing to report.’
I switched off the set, and avoided Sally’s eyes.
‘Yes,’ she told me sternly. ‘After a stinking one like that, you should look guilty!’
‘Well, you said yourself it’s only one bead and a piece of bone.’
But by the evening two days later, I had no such excuse, for I had sunk my trench seven feet five inches and there I uncovered the first of four courses of dry packed masonry. The stones were skilfully dressed, and squared. The joints between each block were so tight that a knife-blade would not go between them. The stones were bigger than those of Zimbabwe, clearly intended to support the weight of a substantial edifice; the average size was approximately four feet, by two, by two. They were cut from red sandstone similar to that of the cliffs and as I examined the workmanship I knew beyond any doubt that they were the work of artisans from a powerful and wealthy civilization.
That night I spoke to Larkin again.
‘How soon can you get a message through to Mr Sturvesant, Peter?’
‘He should have got back from New York today. I can put a phone call through this evening.’
‘Please ask him to come right away.’
‘You mean you want him to drop everything and come running - that’s a laugh.’
‘Just do it, please.’
The helicopter arrived at three o’clock the following afternoon, and I ran to meet it, pulling on my shirt.
‘What have you got for me, Ben?’ Louren demanded as he climbed, big and blond, out of the cabin.
&nbs
p; ‘I think you are going to like it,’ I told him, as we shook hands.
Five hours later we sat around the fire and Louren smiled over the rim of his glass at me.
‘You were right, lad. I do like it!’ This was the first opinion he had expressed since his arrival. He had followed Sal and me from excavation to cavern to cliff-top, listening attentively to our explanations, shaking his head with a rueful grin when I explained our theory of low-angle light on the ruins, firing a question occasionally in the same tone I had heard him use in a directors’ meeting. Each time the question was relevant, incisive and searching, as though he were evaluating a business deal. When Sally spoke he stood close to her, looking frankly into her face, those marvellous classical features of his rapt and still. Once she touched his arm to enforce a point and they smiled at each other. I was happy to see them so friendly at last, for they were the two people in the world I loved.
He knelt with me in the bottom of the trench and caressed the worked stone with his hands, he held the charred bone and melted glass bead in his palm and frowned at them as though trying to draw their secrets from them by sheer force of concentration.
Just before sunset, at Louren’s insistence, we returned to the cavern and went to the rear wall. I lit one of the gas lanterns and placed it so that its light fell full on the painting of the white king. Then the three of us sat around it in a semicircle and studied it in every detail. The king’s head was in profile and Sally pointed out the features, the long straight nose and high forehead.
‘A face like that never came out of Africa,’ she said, and as a contrast she picked out the painting of another figure farther down the wall. ‘Look at that. It’s a Bantu and no mistaking it. The artist was skilled enough to differentiate between the features of each type.’
However, Louren’s attention never wavered from his scrutiny of the king. Again he seemed to be trying to wrest its secrets from it, but the king was regally aloof and at last Louren sighed and stood up. He was about to turn away when his glance dropped to the white-robed priest figures below the king.
‘What are those?’ he asked.
‘We have named them the priests,’ I told him, ‘but Sally feels they could be Arab traders or—’
‘The figure in the centre—’ he pointed out the central priest figure, and his voice was sharp, almost alarmed, ‘what is he doing?’
‘Bowing to the king,’ Sally suggested.
‘Even though he is bowing, he stands taller than the others?’ Louren protested.
‘Size was the bushman artist’s way of showing importance. See the relative size of the king - although they are pygmies they always show themselves as giants - the size of the central priest would signify that he was the High Priest, or the leader of the Arabs, if Sally is right.’
‘If he is bowing, it’s with the top third of his body only and he is the only one doing it. The others are erect.’ Louren was still not convinced. ‘It’s almost as though—’ his voice trailed away, and he shook his head. Then suddenly he shivered briefly, and I saw the gooseflesh appear on the smooth tanned skin of his upper arms.
‘It’s become cold in here,’ he said, folding his arms across his chest, I had not noticed any drop in temperature, but I stood up also.
‘Let’s get back to camp,’ Louren said, and it was only after I had built up the fire to a cheerfully crackling, spark-flying blaze that he spoke again.
‘You are right, lad. I do like it!’ And he took a swallow of the malt whisky. ‘Now let’s start talking prices,’ he suggested.
‘Set it out for us. Lo,’ I agreed.
‘I will negotiate with the Botswana Government. I can put a little leverage on them. We’ll have to have a formal agreement drawn up, probably split any finds fifty-fifty, they’ll have to guarantee us access and exclusive rights. That sort of thing.’
‘Good. That’s certainly your bag of tricks, Lo.’
‘Knowing you, Benjamin, you have a list of your requirements, the men you want, equipment - am I right?’
I laughed and unbuttoned my top pocket. ‘As a matter of fact—’ I admitted as I handed him three foolscap sheets. He glanced over them quickly.
‘Very Spartan, Ben,’ he congratulated me. ‘But I think we can go in a bit bigger than this. I’ll want at least a rough landing-strip here to start with, something to handle a Dakota. The hot weather is coming. You’ll die living out under canvas. We’ll need solid accommodation, also office and storage space with air-conditioning. That means a generator for lighting and to pump water down from the pool.’
‘No one can ever accuse you of being half-arsed, Lo,’ I told him, and we all laughed. Sally refilled my glass. I was jubilant and mightily pleased with myself that evening. I had much to be proud of, ferreting out a secret so well hidden for millennia, and Louren was going to back me all the way, partner. The whisky went down my throat like water.
I used to drink a lot of whisky. It was a way of forgetting certain things and making others easier to accept. Then about six years ago I found I hadn’t worked on a book for a year, that my memory and intellect were blurry and unreliable, and my hands shook in the morning. I still drink a tot or two of an evening, and occasionally I take on a full blast of the stuff. But now I drink because I am happy, not because I am sad.
‘Come on, Ben. Tonight we’ve got something to celebrate,’ Sally laughed and poured me another heavy portion.
‘Wow! Gently, Doctor,’ I protested weakly, but that night I got drunk, pleasantly, contentedly, floating drunk. With dignity I refused Louren’s offer of assistance and made my own way to the tent wherein Sally had discreetly segregated me since Louren’s arrival. I fell on top of my bed fully clothed and went to sleep. I half woke when Louren came in and climbed into his bed across the tent. I remember opening one eye and seeing the glow of the waning moon through the fly of the tent - or was it the first glow of dawn? It didn’t seem important then.
The personnel for the project was the most important consideration, and here I was lucky. Peter Willcox was due for his sabbatical leave from Cape Town University. I flew down to see him, and in six hours convinced him that he wouldn’t enjoy the fleshpots of Europe at all. Heather, his wife, was a little harder to sway, until I showed her the photographs of the white king. Like Sally, rock art is one of her big things.
They were good people to have on a dig. We had been together on the excavation of the Slangkop caves. They were both in their thirties: he a little paunchy and balding with steel-rimmed spectacles and trousers always on the point of falling down. He had to keep tugging at the waistband. She was thin and angular, with a wide laughing mouth and a snub, heavily freckled nose They were childless, cheerful, knowledgeable and hard-working. Peter plays a very jazzy accordion and Heather has a voice that harmonizes well with mine.
Peter introduced me to two of his postgraduate students whom he recommended without reservation. I was startled at my first meeting with them. Ral Davidson was a young man of twenty-one - although the fact that he was a man was not immediately obvious. However, Peter assured me that beneath all the untidy hair lurked a promising young archaeologist. His fiancee was an intense bespectacled young woman, who had graduated at the head of her year. Although she was depressingly plain and I prefer my women beautiful, Leslie Johns endeared herself to me immediately by whispering breathlessly, ‘Dr Kazin, I think your book, Ancient Africa, is the most exciting thing I’ve ever read.’
This display of good taste secured the job for them.
Peter Larkin found me forty-six African labourers from the southern territories of Botswana, who had never heard of the Hills of Blood nor of any curse upon them.
My only disappointment was with Timothy Mageba. I spent five days at the Institute in Johannesburg on my way back from Cape Town, mostly trying to convince Timothy that I needed him at the Hills of Blood.
‘Machane,’ he said, ‘there is work here that no one else can do.’ I was to remember those words later. ‘Where y
ou are going there is work that many men are capable of. You have these men and women already, specialists all of them. You do not need me.’
‘Please, Timothy. It would be for six months or so. Your work here can wait.’
He shook his head vehemently, but I hurried on.
‘I really want you, and need you. There are things that you alone can explain. Timothy, there are over fifteen thousand square feet of paintings on the rocks. Much of it is symbol, stylized emblems which only you—’
‘Dr Kazin, you could send me copies of them. I can still give you my interpretation.’ Timothy switched to English, which with him was always a discouraging sign. ‘I hope you don’t insist that I leave the Institute now. My assistants cannot work without my direction.’
We stared at each other for a few seconds. It was a deadlock. I could order him to come, but an unwilling helper is worse than none at all. There was a rebellious, independent spirit smouldering in Timothy’s dark eyes and I knew that there was some deeper reason why he refused to accompany me.
‘Is it—’ I hesitated. I was about to ask him if the ancient curse was the reason for his refusal. It was always disquieting to find superstition influencing an intelligent and well-educated man. I was reluctant to come straight out with it, for even with an African like Timothy the direct question is considered gauche and discourteous.
‘There are always reasons within reasons, Doctor. Please believe me when I tell you it would be better if I did not accompany you this time.’
‘All right, Timothy,’ I agreed with resignation, and stood up. Again we locked glances, and it seemed to me that he was different. The flickering fires burned brighter, and again I felt the stirring of unease, of fear even, deep within me.
‘I promise you, Doctor, that my work here is at a critical stage.’
‘I will be very interested to see it when you are ready, Timothy.’
My four new assistants arrived on the commercial flight from Cape Town the following morning and we drove directly to the Sturvesant hangar where the Dakota transport was waiting for us.