The walls were covered with a magnificent display of paintings in brilliant primary colours. In the lantern light they blazed like gemstones. There was a strong Byzantine flavour to the style: the saints' eyes were huge and slanted, with great golden halos over their heads. Above the altar, with its tinsel and brass furnishing, the Virgin cradled her infant while the three wise men and a host of angels knelt in adoration. Nicholas slipped his Polaroid camera from the pocket of his jacket and adjusted the flash. He wandered around the church photographing these murals, while Tessay and Royan knelt before the altar side by side.
Once he had finished his photography Nicholas found a seat on the handhewn wooden pews and sat quietly watching their intent faces which the candlelight touched with golden highlights, and he was moved by the beauty of the moment.
"I wish I had that kind of faith," he thought, as he had so often before. "It must be a comfort in the hard times. I wish I were able to pray like that for Rosalind and the girls." He could not stay longer, and he went out and sat on the church portico where he watched the night sky.
In these high altitudes, in the thin unpolluted air, the stars were such a dazzling blaze that it was difficult to pick out the individual constellations. After a while his sadness abated. It was good to be back in Africa. When the two women emerged at last from the dark interior, Nicholas gave the old priest a one hundred birr note and a Polaroid photograph of himself which the old man clearly valued above the money. Then the three of them walked back down the hill together in companionable silence. icky!" Royan shook him awake. When he sat up and switched on his torch, he saw that she had thrown the woollen shawl over a pair of men's striped pyjamas before she had come into his tent.
"What is it?" he asked, but before she could answer he heard the sound of a hoarse and angry voice shouting invective in the night, and then the unmistakable thud of a clenched fist striking flesh and bone.
"He's beating her." Royan's voice was tight with out-' rage. "You have to make him stop."
There was a cry of pain after the blow, and then sobs.
Nicholas hesitated. Only a fool interferes between a man and his wife, and his reward usually is to have them unite and turn savagely upon him.
"You must do something, Nicky, please., Reluctantly he swung his legs out of the cot and stood up. He slept in'boxer shorts, and he did not bother to find his shoes. She followed him, also on bare feet, to the end of the grove where Boris's tent stood beyond the dining tent.
There was a lantern still burning within, and it threw magnified shadows on the canvas walls. He saw that Boris had his wife "by the hair and was dragging her across the floor, roaring at her in Russian.
"Boris!" Nicholas had to shout his name three times to get his attention, and then they saw the shadow play on the canvas as he dropped Tessay and flung open the tent flap.
He was dressed only in a pair of underpants. His torso was lean and muscular, the chest flat and hard-looking, covered with coppery curls. On the floor behind him Tessay lay face down, sobbing into her cupped hands. She was naked, and the planes of her body were sleek as those of a panther.
"What the hell is going on here?" Nicholas demanded, his anger only just beginning to stir as he witnessed the gracious, gentle woman's distress and humiliation.
"I am giving this black whore a lesson in good manners," Boris gloated, his face still swollen and flushed with drink and passion. "It's none of your business, English, unless you want to pay some money and have a bit of pork for yourself." He laughed, an ugly sound.
"Are you all right, Woizero Tessay?" Nicholas looked directly into Boris's face, sparing the woman the further humiliation of another man's eyes on her nudity.
Tessay sat up, lifted her knees against her chest, and hugged them with both arms to cover her body.
"It's all right, Alto Nicholas. Please go away before there is real trouble." Blood was trickling from one nostril into her mouth, and dyeing her teeth pink.
"You heard'my wife, English bastard. Go away! Mind your own business. Go away, before I give you a little lesson in good manners also." Boris staggered forward and thrust his open hand against Nicholas's chest. Nicholas moved as smoothly and as effortlessly as a matador avoiding the first wild charge of the bull. He swayed to one side, and used Boris's own momentum to send him on in the direction in which he was already committed. Completely off balance, the Russian reeled across the open ground in front of the tent until he collided with one of the camp chairs and went down in a sprawling heap.
"Royan, take Tessay to your tent!" he ordered softly. Royan ran into the tent and pulled a sheet from the nearest cot. She spread it over Tessay's shoulders and lifted her to her feet.
"Please, don't do this," Tessay sobbed. "You don't know him when he gets like this. He will hurt somebody."
Royan dragged her, still protesting and weeping, out of the tent, but by now Boris was on his feet again. He bellowed with rage and picked up the camp chair that had tripped him. With a single jerk he tore off one of the legs and hefted it in his bunched fist.
"You want to play games, English? All right, we play!" He rushed at Nicholas, swinging the chair leg like a Ninja baton, so that it hissed with the force with which he aimed it at his head. As Nicholas ducked under it Boris reversed the swing, going for the side of his chest, under his upraised arm. It would have staved in his ribs if it had landed, but again Nicholas twisted away.
They circled each other warily, and then Boris charged again. If it had not been for the effect of the vodka on the Russian's reflexes Nicholas would never have taken a chance with an adversary of this calibre, but Boris was just loose enough in his control to allow him to duck in under the swinging chair leg. He straightened, with all his weight rolling into the punch, and his fist slogged into the pit Of Boris's belly just under the sternum. The Russian's breath was driven out of him in a great gusty belch. The chair leg flew from his grip, and he doubled over and collapsed. Clasping his middle, and heaving and wheezing for breath, Boris lay curled in the dust. Nicholas stooped over him and told him softly in English,
"This sort of behaviour simply isn't good enough, old chap. We don't bullygirls. Please don't let it happen again." He straightened up and spoke to Royan, "Get her to your tent and keep her there." He combed his hair back from his face with his fingers. "And now, if you have no serious objections, may we get a little sleep?" It rained again during the early hours. The heavy drops drummed down on the canvas and the lightning lit the interior of the tents with an eerie brilliance. However, by the time that Nicholas went through to the dining tent for breakfast the next morning, the clouds had cleared and the sunshine was bright and cheering. The sweet mountain air smelt of wet earth and mushrooms.
Boris greeted Nicholas with hearty good fellowship.
"Good morning, English. We had some fun last night. I still laugh to remember it. Very good jokes. One day soon we will have some more vodka, then we will makesome more good jokes." And he bellowed through to the kitchen tent, "Hey! Lady Sun, bring your new boyfriend something to eat. He is hungry from all the sport last night." Tessay was quiet and withdrawn as she supervised the' servants handing round breakfast. One eye was swollen almost closed, and her lip was cut. She did not look at Nicholas once during the meal.
"We will go on ahead," Boris explained jovially as they drank coffee. "My servants will break camp, and follow us in my big truck. With luck, we will be able to camp tonight on the rim above the gorge, and tomorrow we will begin the descent."
As they were climbing into the truck, Tessay was able to speak to him softly for a moment, without danger of Boris overhearing her. "Thank you, Alto Nicholas. But it was not wise. You don't know him. You must be careful now. He does not forget, not does he forgive."
From the village of Debra Maryarn Boris took a branch road that ran alongside the Dandera river directly south, wards. The road they had followed the previous day from Lake Tana was shown on the map as a major highway. It had been bad enough. But this track that they were now on was marked as a secondary road "not passable in all weather'. To compound matters, it seemed that most of the heavy traffic that had torn up the main road had followed this same track. They came to a place where some huge vehicle had become bogged down in the rain-saturated earth, and the efforts to free it had left areas of ploughed land and an excavation like a bomb crater that resembled an old photograph of the battlefields of First World War Flanders.
Twice during the day the Toyota too became stuck in this foul ground. Each time this happened, the big truck that was following them came up and all the servants swarmed down from the cargo body to push and heave the Toyota through. Even Nicholas stripped to the waist to work with them in the mud to free it.
"If you had only listened to my advice," Boris grumbled, "we would not be here. There is no game where you want to go, and there are no roads worth the name either."
In the early afternoon they stopped beside the river for an alfresco lunch. Nicholas went down to the pool beside the road to wash off the mud and filth of the morning's labours. He had been in the forefront of the efforts to keep the truck moving. Royan followed him down the slope and perched on a rock above the pool while he stripped off his shirt and knelt, at the verge to splash himself with the cold mountain water. The river was muddy yellow and swollen from the rainstorms.
"I don't think Boris believes your story about the striped dik-dik," she warned him. "Tessay tells me that he is suspicious of what we are up to." She watched with interest as he sluiced his chest and upper arms. '"ere the sun had not touched it, his skin was very white and unblemished. His chest hair was thick and dark. She decided that his body was good to look at.
"He is the type that would go through our luggage if he gets a chance,'
Nicholas agreed. "You didn't bring anything with you that has any clues for him? No papers or notes?"
"Only the satellite photograph, and my notebooks are all in my own shorthand. He won't be able to make anything of them."
"Be very careful of what you discuss with Tessay."
"She is a dear. There is nothing underhand about her." Heatedly Royan came to the defence of her new friend.
"She may be all right, but she's married to my chum Boris. Her first allegiance lies there. No matter what your feelings towards her, don't trust either of them." He dried himself on his shirt, slipped it on and then buttoned it over his chest. "Let's go and get something to eat." Back at the parked truck Boris was pulling the cork from a bottle of South African white wine. He poured a tumbler full for Nicholas. Chilled in the river, it was crisp and fruity. Tessay offered them cold roast chicken and injera bread, the flat, thin sheets of stone-ground unleavened bread of the country. The trials and labours of the morning's travels faded into insignificance as Royan lay beside Nicholas in the grass and they watched a bearded vulture sailing high against the blue. It saw them and drifted overhead curiously, twisting its head to look down at them. Its eyes were masked in black like those of a highwayman, and the distinctive wedgeshaped tail feathers flirted with the wind the way the fingers of a concert pianist would stroke the ivories of the keyboard.
When it was time to go on, Nicholas gave her his hand to lift her to her feet. It was one of their rare moments of physical contact, and she held on to his fingers for just a second or two longer than was strictly necessary. There was no improvement in the surface of the trac as they drew nearer to the rim of the gorge, and the hours passed in this bone-jarring, teethrattling progress. The track snaked over a rise and then dog-legged down the far slope. Halfway down Boris swore in Russian as they came round the hairpin bend of a high earthen bank to find a huge diesel truck slewed across the track, almost blocking it.
Even though they had been following the tracks of this convoy of vehicles since the previous day, this was the first of them that they had encountered, and it took Boris by surprise. He hit his brakes so suddenly that his passengers were almost catapulted from their seats, but on the steep incline in the mud the brakes did not bring them to a complete halt. Boris was forced to change down into his lowest gear and steer for the narrow gap between the bank and the truck.
From the back seat Royan looked out of the window I beside her, up the high side of the diesel truck. There was a company name and logo emblazoned in scarlet on the green background.
A strong feeling of du vu overcame her as she stared at the image. She had seen this sign recently, but her memory cheated her: she could not recall the time or the place. She only knew that it was of vital importance that she should remember.
The side of the Toyota scraped against the metal of the truck, and then they were past it. Boris leaned out of his window and shook his fist at the driver of the larger vehicle.
He was a local man, probably recruited in Addis by the owner of the truck. Grinning at Boris's antics, he leaned out of his own cab to return the clenched fist salute, adding a nice little touch by jerking a raised forefinger upwards.
"Dungeater!" Boris roared with outrage at being bested in the exchange, but he did not stop. "No use even talking to them. What do they know?
Black chimps!'
For the rest of the wearisome journey Royan remained silent and withdrawn, shaken and troubled by the conviction that she had seen the trademark of the winged red horse before, with, set above it in a pennant, the name of the company: "PEGASUS EXPLORATION'.
As they approached the end of the day's journey at last they passed a signpost beside the track. The supporting legs of the sign were solidly set in concrete, and the artwork was of such high quality that it could only have been that of a professional signwriter.
Across the top of the board an arrow indicated a newly bulldozed road that headed off to the right, and the directions read: