The Burning Sky

CHAPTER TWENTY

Aksum was far from the deserted town Jardine had expected: not only was it still crowded but there was an open-air market in progress, as bustling as if it was peacetime, if you accepted the absence of any younger men: they were all with the army. Female stallholders selling cloth mingled with those who, squatting on the dusty ground, vended from sacks and baskets containing everything a fertile land could produce: flour, spices, peppers, great tubs of garlic, as well as penned livestock and creel-like baskets full of flapping fowl.

‘Has anybody told them an army is coming this way?’ Vince asked.

‘They’re stoical, these Ethiopians.’

‘Is that a disease, guv?’

‘Oddly, Vince, it could be called one.’ Jardine was recalling all those tales told by Ras Kassa, as well as his unshakeable attitude — one, even if he could not understand the language, that seemed common to the whole nation. ‘They are so convinced of their preeminence as a civilisation that they cannot imagine being subdued.’

‘You mean like the English?’ Alverson joked from the driving seat.

‘The Scots are best when it comes to that. Now, stop the car so I can ask if there is somewhere to stay.’

‘We staying, Jardine?’

‘No, but if the lady you call Ma Littleton-’

The interruption from the lady’s daughter was swift. ‘Don’t let her hear you say that, either of you, or she’ll kill you.’

‘What I was going to say is there can’t be too many places for a farang woman to lay her head round here, so your mother is going to be in one of them.’

When the Rolls stopped, curious children surrounded them. They touched the body with a sort of reverence and sent warm smiles in the direction of the occupants. Almost all of them were either beautiful or handsome with gorgeous big eyes and the soft, unblemished skin of their years, which led Jardine to a reflection he had harboured before: part of the Ethiopian sense of themselves as a nation was in that attractiveness of their features and their grace of movement.

Of course, there were ugly people, old crones and bent, aged men, but there had been in those warriors they had passed not only a physical attraction, but a look in the eye that bespoke of folk at harmony with their life and surroundings; in short, though there were bound to be people with whom he could not bond, he definitely liked the Ethiopians in the mass.

In the same manner his enquiries were treated with respect, the way he tilted his head and put his hands to one side as if sleeping understood, that followed by a mime of eating, producing a flood of instructions which were initially confusing, given there was a noisy competition to assist. Eventually, one tall fellow, of fighting age but unfortunately with very swollen lower legs and feet, used his staff to draw a sort of map in the dust, and after a few pointed hand gestures from Jardine he had a good idea he knew where to go.

It was not a hotel but a sort of inn, a two-storey mud-brick building with whitened walls, dark inside, cool, and run by one of the few fat men any of them had seen in this country of lean folk: a jolly round fellow who did not speak a word of any language they knew. But he understood almost immediately who they were looking for and she was indeed accommodated in his establishment.

When they finally came face-to-face with Mother Littleton his gestures indicating something square made sense, for she was indeed formidable and not in the least bit rangy like her daughter. She was big-boned, especially in the shoulders, tall, and added to that she had a booming voice and a seeming lack of any maternal instinct, not that there was much of a filial nature in the response.

‘What in the name of the devil incarnate are you doing here, Corrine?’

‘No “hello” Mother? No saying “thank you” to me for coming to find and rescue you? No kiss on the cheek?’

‘Fiddlesticks. I do not need you to rescue me.’

‘Is that so?’ her daughter croaked. ‘Like there is not over half a million Italian soldiers headed your way?’

‘Happy families, guv,’ whispered Vince. ‘Just like home.’

‘And just who are you?’ Ma demanded, giving Vince a withering look.

‘Just passing, lady.’

‘Then pass and be on your way.’

‘Just a moment, madam,’ Jardine said. ‘Your daughter is right, and I do not know if you are aware of it, but what she says about the Italian army is true.’

‘Of course I know it’s true. Why do you think I am here waiting for them to arrive?’

‘You’re waiting for them?’ Corrie Littleton spat. ‘In God’s name, why?’

‘If you had any sense, child, you would not ask.’

‘It does not occur to you that Dad is worried for you.’

That got a loud, dismissive sniff. ‘So worried he sent you and did not come himself.’

‘You are supposed to be researching in Gondar.’

‘I have done that and sent masses of stuff home, but where I choose to go and what I choose to do are none of your concern.’

‘Yes it damn well is, Mother!’

‘Stop!’ None of them had ever heard Alverson shout, but he did so now and it had the desired effect. ‘Mrs Littleton, would you mind explaining what you have just said?’

‘And who are you, sir?’

‘He’s a reporter, Mother.’

The eyes showed a mixture of anger and surprise as they fixed on her daughter. ‘And you mix with such people. How could you?’

‘Whadaya mean, “such people”?’

‘What he wants to know,’ Jardine interjected softly, ‘indeed, so do we all, is why you are waiting for the Italians.’

It was hard to know what produced a full and polite response; perhaps it was that, to a Bostonian matron of advanced years, his accent, English gentleman with a hint of a Scottish burr, was more acceptable.

‘I am hoping to get to see the Ark of the Covenant.’

‘Well, I’m none the wiser,’ said a perplexed Vince Castellano.

His cockney accent produced a diametrically opposite reaction. ‘That would quite possibly be, fellow, because you are likely to be an ignoramus.’

‘Nicest thing anyone’s said to me all day, luv.’

‘It would help if you told us, Mrs Littleton,’ said Jardine. ‘We have, after all, come some way to find you.’

‘Not at my bidding.’

‘Just tell us, Mother,’ Corrie Littleton sighed.

‘Oh, very well, then,’ she responded, her voice then taking on a preachy tone. ‘The Ark is reputed to have been brought here by the son of Solomon and Sheba. If it exists at all, and it might be no more than a fable, it is housed here in Aksum, in a special chapel in the Church of St Mary of Zion.’

‘So go visit.’

That got her daughter a withering look. ‘You cannot! It is guarded by one monk, who is the only man allowed to enter the chapel where it is kept. Before he dies he names a successor, so that line of damned monks are the only folk who know if it is a myth or a fact, and you can ask till you’re blue and offer a fortune, but it won’t get you inside; and that means, as far as I can gather, not even the damned emperor.’

‘That still does not explain why you are waiting for the Italians,’ insisted Alverson.

The arch look he got equated him to something untoward on the sole of her shoe, but she did answer, if not with much regard. ‘You, too, must be an idiot. The Italians will not be constrained by Ethiopian tradition, will they?’

‘You think,’ Corrie Littleton said softly, ‘they will let you have a little look-see?’

‘Thank God someone has got some brains round here.’

‘And what if they refuse?’ Jardine asked.

The reply, ‘They would not dare, I am an American’, was priceless.

‘Lady,’ Vince said, ‘strikes me you don’t know much about the Italians.’

‘And I suppose,’ she replied, with contemptuous doubt, ‘you are going to tell me you do.’

‘When it comes to anythin’ religious, they are as superstitious as anythin’ going.’

‘Can’t you speak in plain English, man?’

Jardine had never seen Vince so patient, but then, she was a woman of some years, not a bloke, whom he would likely have floored. ‘They won’t go into that chapel, an’ nor will they let anyone else, ’cause they is deeply religious themselves and likely frightened of being struck down dead.’

‘Poppycock!’

‘Tell her your name and where you were born, Vince.’

‘Name’s Castellano, lady, an’ I was born in a place called Montesarchio, near to Capua, which is where most of my family still lives.’

‘Oh!’

‘So you see, Mrs Littleton, Vince knows of what he speaks.’

‘They won’t touch the door of that chapel, lady, in case it sends them straight to hell.’

‘You believe that?’

‘Not me, lady, them. Personally I think it’s all bollocks, if you’ll pardon my French.’

‘That’s not French, is it?’

‘Let’s say it’s Italian, shall we?’ Jardine proposed, with a grin.

‘Quite apart,’ Alverson added, ‘of the effect such a sacrilegious act would have on the folk they want to rule.’

‘The locals would riot,’ Jardine added, ‘which is the last thing a fighting army wants at its back.’

‘I’m sure,’ she replied, though with the first hint of uncertainty, ‘they will understand my position.’

‘They might,’ Alverson said, with some relish, ‘but they might also shoot you as a spy.’

Speaking before she could react, Cal Jardine suggested she should depart with them.

‘He’s right, Mother,’ her daughter said.

‘Are you mad?’ came the response, in a way that made Jardine wonder if she was that. ‘Can you imagine what I will have achieved if I can see the Ark and photograph it?’

‘This is not another attempt to outshine Daddy, is it?’ In order to explain, she included the others. ‘He’s quite a famous academic.’

‘To hell with your father.’ Mother Littleton’s eyes had taken on a look of boundless vision. ‘I’ll be world-famous, Corrine, a person of consequence, invited to lecture at the great halls of learning, a guest at the White House-’

‘Or,’ Alverson interrupted, ‘a corpse in an unmarked grave.’

‘Corrie,’ Jardine said, using her Christian name for the first time, which got a raised eyebrow from mater.

‘Please do not use that diminutive, young man, my daughter’s name is Corrine.’

‘Tyler and I, along with Vince, have a little nosing around to do, but I think we will be getting out of here very soon, because if what I saw from the air this morning decides to move, the Italian army will be here in hours, there is nothing to stop them. I think it would be sensible to depart tomorrow, certainly the next day; so, Miss Littleton, that is how much time you have to persuade your mother to join us.’

‘She’ll be wasting her breath.’

‘Let us see, shall we?’

‘What a cow,’ Vince said, as they emerged into sunlight once more.

‘She’s a Boston Brahmin, Vince.’ The look of confusion made Alverson explain the Indian caste system and how the Brahmins were the highest ranked. ‘That’s what we call those snotty Bostonian bastards who can trace the ancestors back to somewhere in England, and usually to the landed gentry.’

‘Some of them were transported criminals.’

‘They ended up in Virginia,’ Alverson replied, grinning. ‘The Boston Brahmins are at the top of the social pile, and that is where folk like Mrs Littleton see themselves.’

‘She didn’t think much of you, did she?’

‘As you so aptly described her, Vince, she is a cow.’

‘So, Tyler, what is it you want to do?’

‘Get as close to the Italian lines as I can.’

‘We won’t see much.’

Alverson pointed to one of the high conical hills which overlooked Aksum. ‘Maybe from on top of something like that.’

‘You prepared to walk up one?’

‘For a story, I’d walk through fire, buddy boy.’

‘As you wish, but food first. Vince, get the water canteens filled, will you, please, while I go and see if we can hire some donkeys?’

‘We’re not taking the car?’ Alverson asked.

‘No point, Tyler: the road runs out just north of here, and by the time we get close it will be too dark to get back, so we’ll need bedrolls too.’

The roly-poly owner of the place was only too happy to rustle them up a meal — a dish of spiced peppers stuffed with lamb that was heavy on the garlic too.

‘Why worry?’ Jardine said to Alverson, as the American waved his hand in front of his mouth. ‘You weren’t planning to kiss anyone, were you?’

‘I’ll leave that to you, friend.’

‘In your dreams,’ came the response; Jardine knew what he was driving at.

‘You seen a movie called It Happened One Night?’

‘I did,’ Vince said, as Jardine shook his head. ‘It just came over, didn’t it? Claudette Colbert an’ Clark Gable. She’s a peach, but he’s a bit fat. They spend the whole film arguin’ wiv each other, then fall in love.’

‘Life can mirror art, Vince, wouldn’t you say?’

‘Can we get on?’ Cal Jardine insisted.

Even with a saddle there is little comfort in riding a donkey, quite apart from the fact of feeling ridiculous, as anyone of any height, like Jardine and Alverson, had trouble keeping their feet off the ground, while Vince just managed. But they were the perfect animal for the terrain: sturdy, sure-footed on uneven ground and good on the lower slopes of the hill they eventually decided to climb, one that was topped by what looked like a tiny, stone-built monastery.

They had got Alverson out of his suit and into more suitable clothes again, while each now had their bedroll behind the saddle and their kitbags on their back, Vince and Jardine also carrying their weapons. In line they had passed through ploughed fields being tended by working women and old men, again there being no sense of impending invasion, then on to the cultivated terraced hillsides.

These were cut in such a way as to preserve as much as possible of the water that would cascade down the hills in a land that was short on irrigation and subject to torrential rainfall. Once past those, the hill was too steep, meaning the donkeys had to be led, and by the time they got to the summit, sweating profusely and cursing the loose earth underneath, the sun was dipping towards the horizon.

The monastery, with only slits to let in any light, was an ancient structure in a state of some dilapidation, the walls stained with age and the mortar loose or missing on the walls, but the monks were welcoming, if utterly incomprehensible in their greetings. No matter, sign language and a gift of a couple of thalers made sure they had a cell to sleep in and, when they took off their boots, a monk came to wash and dry their feet as an act of Christ-like humility.

‘I haven’t had this kind of treatment since I was in a Manchurian bordello,’ Alverson proclaimed.

‘Let’s hope you don’t get offered the other bits, guv,’ Vince joked. ‘They’re all blokes up here and you can guess what that means.’

‘You have a twisted mind, Vince.’

‘And a virgin arse. I know about places like these, ’cause the Italian mountains are full of ’em — supposed holy men who seem to spend all their time drinking hooch and rogering each other.’

‘And praying for forgiveness for their sins.’

‘Sleep, gents,’ Jardine said. ‘We are up with the lark.’

They were up before that, even, woken by the gentle chanting of the Ethiopian monks, breakfasting on dates and unleavened bread before emerging to overlook, in moon and starlight, the still-dark landscape to the north, with Jardine focusing on the fires and lanterns of the Italian front lines.

‘They’re up and about early.’

‘Let’s have a look-see.’

The field glasses were handed over just as the sun tinged the eastern horizon, with Alverson still as he examined the encampment, reciting what he would write in a semi-jocular way …

‘Your reporter has tramped alongside the peasant defender of Ethiopia, his feet raw from toiling through the rocks and dust of a terrain that would tax the most intrepid explorer. But how can he not follow the example of these sturdy farmer-warriors, who have marched with their out-of-date weaponry to get close to a powerful enemy equipped with the most modern of munitions …?’

‘Did I explain to you what “bollocks” means, given you are in good boots?’

‘No need, Vince, I am just setting the scene, giving it a bit of colour. To continue: Fearless, I have come close to the lines of the invaders, an army half a million or more strong, to bring to you, my readers, some sense of what these under-equipped … dammit,’ he said softly. ‘I’ve used “equipped” once already.’

‘Does it matter?’ Jardine asked.

‘Sure does, brother, never use the same word in the same paragraph unless it’s a name. Basic journalism.’

‘Do go on, I’m fascinated.’

‘Was that a yawn I just saw out of the corner of my eye?’

‘Don’t take it personally.’

Alverson dropped the field glasses and slowly passed them to Jardine. ‘You might want to take this personally, old buddy. I think our friends over yonder are getting ready to pull out.’

Jardine was issuing orders to Vince before he had the binoculars to his eyes. ‘Donkeys ready to leave. Get armed, Vince, and fetch my weapon too.’

There was no need to tell Vince to top up the water canteens, that was standard, and he concentrated on looking at the Italian lines. What he could see, as the morning light increased, was numerous khaki-clad soldiers clambering into lorries. Small tankettes were moving through gaps which had only just been created in the line of defensive sandbags he had seen from the air. Behind them, other troops were forming up in what he suspected to be preparatory to an order to march; those he could stay ahead of, it was the trucked infantry and the tracked vehicles that were the problem.

‘Your despatch is going to be more exciting than you thought, Tyler; that is, unless they catch us.’

‘Will they?’

‘Depends on the speed they want to advance, and the ground, which should hold them up some.’

‘Ready, guv.’

‘Then let’s get the bloody hell out of here.’

They went down the hill fast, the donkeys, sure-footed as they were, occasionally splaying their feet at some particularly dangerous spot, forcing Jardine to seek out an alternative route, and all the while they could see less and less of what they would need to avoid until all it became was a dust cloud on the edge of their horizon. On even ground they started to jog, even Alverson, who was far from as fit as Vince and Jardine, their kitbags bouncing against their backs.

It was not tanks and trucks that presented a problem to the fleeing trio, but the cavalry screen General De Bono had sent out in the hours of darkness to warn him of any potential threat to his measured advance. Thankfully, because of their higher profile, added to the direction of their concentration, Jardine spotted them before they saw him, yet that was not of much use: he could seek cover, but not with donkeys, and together they were at more risk than separate, while to just let the animals go would only create curiosity and most certainly initiate a search.

‘Vince,’ Jardine called softly, as they crouched down, passing over his sub-machine gun. ‘Give me your knife.’ That was passed over swiftly and unquestioningly. ‘Use the gullies and irrigation ditches to try to stay out of sight. Get Tyler back to Aksum and get the hell out of there with or without the Littletons. Wherever the Ethiopian lines are, get to the rear of them.’

‘You, guv?’

‘Distraction, Vince; we can’t all get away.’

‘Hold the phone here-’

Jardine rounded on Alverson then, his voice a furious hiss. ‘Do as you’re bloody well told. Now get down and crawl for cover.’

Waiting till they were out of sight, he crouched to discard two of the bedrolls, jammed Vince’s knife into his own so it was out of sight, then taking the lead ropes of their donkeys, Jardine stood up and began to walk towards the cavalry.