Every Whispered Word (32 page)

“How did Lord Stamford react to your calling his daughter that?” Simon wondered.

“His lordship was happy to hear I believed she had such strength,” Zareb replied. “He was very afraid for his young daughter when she first arrived in Africa. She was small and pale and lost—like a delicate flower. He feared she would not be able to endure living so far away from the world to which she had been born. And so he planned to take her back to the land she knew, to England.”

“Then why didn't he?” wondered Oliver.

“Because he soon realized Africa burns in Tisha's heart. Africa, and her father, and the search for the Tomb of Kings. For many years, there has been nothing else. But the heart can change,” he reflected soberly. “And what fills it one day may not necessarily fill it the next.”

“Camelia will never leave Africa, Zareb,” Simon told him with absolute certainty. “She belongs here, and she knows it.”

“I was not speaking of Tisha.” Zareb regarded him intently.

Simon looked away, suddenly uncomfortable. “If I'm to get that list to you, I'd better get started.” He cast one final glance at Camelia, who was still doubled over in the murky pool of her dig, searching for more pieces of his pump. “Excuse me.”

         

Camelia inhaled a deep breath and dove into the river's cleansing embrace, washing away the day's layers of mud and dust and despair. She closed her eyes and cut through the soft, cool blackness with swift strokes, her arms reaching and reaching as her legs propelled her forward, gliding through the star-studded swath of ebony. She tried not to think of anything except the sensation of the water around her, the feeling of it holding her up as she moved through it. Farther and farther she swam, away from the banks where her towel and nightdress lay, away from the rock on which Zareb, Harriet, Oscar, and Rupert sat guarding her, with one small lantern as their beacon.

Away from the dig and Simon's ruined pump, and the fearful looks of the native workers who worried that they, too, would soon fall victim to the curse of Pumulani. Away from Elliott's anger and Simon's frustration, although Simon had done his best to hide it from her. Away from Oliver and Zareb, who had both tried to cheer her and help mitigate the crushing sense of failure that threatened to overwhelm her the moment she saw the pump lying in the muddy grave of her father's dig.

And away from the painful memory of her beloved father, who died not knowing whether his life's work would prove to be a brilliant discovery or a ludicrous folly.

She broke the surface of the water and gasped for air. The sound she made was more a sob than a breath. She followed it quickly with a few more breaths, trying to make them loud and even, because she was afraid Zareb might have heard her cry and worry that something was happening to her.

“Are you well, Tisha?” Zareb called, his voice edged with concern.

“I'm fine.” She could see him standing on the riverbank, with Harriet on one shoulder and Oscar on the other, staring out into the darkness. “I just lost my breath, that's all.”

“You should not swim out so far,” he objected. “You should come in now.”

“I'll be there in a moment. I want to swim a little more.”

“The air is cold, Tisha. You must not let yourself get chilled, or you will get sick.”

“I never get sick.”

“You were sick on the voyage over here.”

“I'm not going to get seasick from swimming in the river at night.”

“You may catch a chill and a fever.” He picked up her towel and held it out. “Come in, Tisha. It is late.”

“I'll be there in a minute.”

She turned to float on her back, letting the water pull the silky wet tangle of her hair into a veil around her, unable to hear whatever more Zareb was saying. She didn't want to defy him, but she didn't want to leave the river yet, either. There was no sound except the whisper of the water, like the call of a seashell as it weeps for the ocean. She sighed and closed her eyes.

Look up.

Frowning, she opened her eyes.

A silky cape of black stretched over her, scattered with a handful of shimmering silver stars. The moon had slipped behind a froth of clouds, softening its pearly light. This made the stars glitter even more than before, like tiny jewels against the velvet African night sky.

The stars will guide you.

She started suddenly and looked around. Zareb was seated on the rock once again, offering some nuts to Oscar.

“Did you say something, Zareb?”

“I said you should come in, Tisha. The river is cold.”

“I mean did you say something about the stars?”

“No. But they are very bright tonight. If you want to look at them, you should come in.”

“I'll be there in a minute.” Cautiously, she lay back against the water once more.

The river surrounded her again. She held herself very still, her senses keen, straining to listen.

The stars will guide you.

“Did you hear that?” she demanded suddenly, looking toward Zareb.

“Hear what?”

“That voice.”

“I heard nothing, Tisha.” Zareb looked around. “There is no one else here. Perhaps you are hearing the men singing at the camp.”

“It isn't singing.”

“Maybe an animal?”

“No.”

Zareb was silent a long moment. “What is this voice saying to you, Tisha?” he asked quietly.

Suddenly she felt uncertain and foolish. She had probably just imagined it. Maybe she had spent too much time in the sun that day.

“Nothing.”

She waited for Zareb to question her further, but he did not.

She lay back once again in the water. A few more minutes and she would get out. Then she would head straight to her bed. Clearly she needed to sleep.

Let the stars be your guide.

This time she did not move. She stayed as she was, floating on the water, trying to decide if she was going mad. She didn't think that she was, since everything else around her seemed entirely normal.
Let the stars be your guide.
Zareb had always relied on the stars to guide him. It was one of the reasons he had disliked London. The city's relentless caul of smoke and soot and clouds had not only blocked out the sun, but had also prevented Zareb from seeing the stars at night. It didn't matter that they were in a city organized around streets and squares and thoroughfares, with gas lamps and signs.

Without the stars, Zareb was lost.

Camelia lay there a moment, barely breathing. The river continued to gently lap around her. She strained to listen, but there was nothing more. Confused, she turned over to swim in to Zareb.

And then she heard a lion roar.

“What is it, Tisha?” Concern was carved deep into Zareb's features as she scrambled out of the river in her sopping wet chemise and drawers and grabbed the towel he was holding for her. “Did something frighten you?”

“I have to see the stone.” She hastily wrapped the towel around herself and pulled on her boots.

“It is late, Tisha,” Zareb objected. “You can see the stone in the morning. It will not have moved.”

“I have to see it now, Zareb.”

“At least dry yourself and put on these warm clothes, Tisha. I will not go until you do.” He turned, giving her privacy so she could get dressed.

And then shook his head in bewilderment when Oscar and Harriet started to screech, telling him she had gone on without him.

W
ake up, Simon!”

Simon cracked open a bleary eye and scowled. “What is it about the way I sleep that makes everyone feel obliged to wake me?”

“We've been digging in the wrong place,” Camelia informed him.

“Wonderful. Tell me about it tomorrow.” He closed his eye and slumped back into his pillow.

“We've been digging in the wrong place, Simon! Don't you care?”

“The only thing I care about at this point is getting a few more hours of sleep.”

“You have the rest of your life to sleep, Simon.” She grabbed his shoulders and shook him roughly. “Wake up!”

He rolled onto his back and glared at her. “If this is how you are going to wake me up, Camelia, then I can see that our mornings are going to be rather difficult.”

“I need you to listen to me.”

“Fine. I'm listening.”

“Are you awake enough to understand what I'm saying?”

“I'm awake enough to understand that if I don't give you my attention you're going to keep on shaking me. That will have to suffice.”

“We've been digging in the wrong place, Simon.”

“So you keep saying. I take it then you still believe there is a tomb?”

“Of course there's a tomb!”

“Just checking. Any idea where it is?”

“I'm not sure. I was hoping you might be able to help me solve that puzzle. You're good with things like that.”

“Things like what?”

“You know—thinking strangely.”

“Are you trying to insult me into helping you?”

“I'm not trying to insult you,” Camelia assured him. “I've told you before, you don't look at things the way most people do. Where most people see boundaries, you see possibilities. That is what makes you brilliant.”

“If I were brilliant, I would have made a pump that could withstand being tossed into a giant mud hole,” Simon reflected dryly. “Or at least I would have developed some kind of reasonable secondary plan, in the event that the pump was destroyed practically beyond repair. That would have been the actions of a brilliant strategist—something which I obviously am not.”

“You can't be expected to anticipate every little thing that can go wrong.”

“I would call having a steam engine smashed to pieces and heaved into the mud a rather big thing.”

“Forget about the steam engine, Simon!” Exasperated, she marched toward the opening of the tent. “Are you coming or not?”

“That depends. Do you really think I'm brilliant?”

“Yes. Incredibly. Now come on!” She jerked open the flap of his tent and disappeared into the darkness.

Sighing, Simon climbed out of his bed and wearily pulled on his boots.

         

“. . . and then if you look at this lion, there are different ways of interpreting it as well,” Camelia continued earnestly, pointing to the lion figure on the rock as Zareb held the lantern. “The lion may be about to attack one of the antelope, or one of the warriors, which means he symbolizes danger. But it is also possible that it is the lion himself who is in danger, because he could just as easily be trampled by the antelope, or shot by one of these warriors. Or perhaps he isn't really a lion at all, but a shaman who has taken the form of a lion. That would mean he can't be killed, and therefore he really isn't in any danger, because shamans are believed to be able to transcend the animal forms they sometimes take. But if that's the case, then why is he here at all?”

Simon yawned.

Camelia shot him an exasperated look. “Have you been paying attention?”

“Amazingly, yes. And that's despite the fact that I've been dragged from my bed in the middle of the night after working sixteen hours to repair your steam engine. I think that must grant me a least a little bit of leniency when it comes to yawning.”

“What do you think it means?”

“It means I need more sleep.”

“Not that—the rock painting!”

Simon sighed. “I don't really know, Camelia. Archaeology is your area of expertise, not mine. What I don't understand is, why did you feel compelled to bring me here now so we could debate the meaning of this rock painting in the bloody dark? Couldn't it have waited until morning?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because there are stars in this painting.” She pointed to the faded yellow stars above the antelope and warriors. “For years I've been looking at it and thinking as my father did: that the stars symbolized the mythical element of the painting. But now I think my father was wrong. I don't think the stars are meant to symbolize the spirituality of the animals or a shaman. I think the stars are meant to be used as a kind of guide—maybe even a map—to show the viewer where the tomb is.”

“How?”

“I don't know,” she admitted. “That's why I wanted you to look at it. Zareb and I studied it for over an hour before I finally went to wake you—we couldn't sort out what the stars meant.”

“They may not mean anything, Camelia.”

“Yes, they do,” she insisted. “They are a guide. I'm certain of it.”

“What makes you suddenly so sure?”

She hesitated. Somehow she did not think that was the right time to start telling Simon she had heard strange voices whispering to her in the river. “It's a feeling I have—like knowing when we had reached the coast of Africa. You told me sometimes our intuition is the only thing we can trust.”

Simon turned to Zareb. “What do you think, Zareb?”

“I believe Pumulani has spoken to Tisha tonight,” he answered seriously. “It may be the Tomb of Kings is finally going to permit itself to be found.”

“Then why doesn't it give her something a bit clearer to go on than all this veiled stuff about stars and lions and shamans?”

“Pumulani has had its own reasons for staying hidden. When it finally reveals itself, it will have its reasons for that also. We cannot be expected to understand.”

Simon sighed. Since it was quite clear Camelia was not going to let him go back to bed, he figured he might as well at least try to understand what the hell she and Zareb were talking about.

“All right, then,” he began, focusing his attention on the enormous stone. “Here we have the lion, here we have the antelope, and here we have these warriors, who actually look a bit skinny, if you ask me. Then, if we look up, we can see a scattering of stars. I count—let's see . . . four, five, six.”

“Five,” Camelia corrected.

“I see six.”

“There are only five,” Camelia insisted. “Look—see? That's how many are drawn in my father's journal.” She opened her father's book to show him.

“He may have only drawn five, but that doesn't change the fact that I see six,” Simon countered. “Zareb, would you please bring the lantern closer?”

Zareb moved closer, casting a golden wash of light across the worn surface of the ancient stone.

“There, you see? Six stars,” Simon affirmed, pointing to each of them.

“That last mark you pointed to isn't a star,” Camelia objected. “It's just a place where the surface of the rock has faded a bit—maybe it was chipped by something.”

“It was chipped by the person who was making it a star,” Simon insisted. “Fresh eyes see things differently. Here, run your finger over it—you'll see it is definitely a star.”

“It might be,” Camelia allowed, lightly grazing her finger over the rough surface. “But even if it is, what does that mean?”

“I'm not sure it means anything. I'm just saying I see six stars, not five.”

“Fine, then. Six stars. What else do you see?”

He drew his brows together and stared at the simply drawn scene. “I don't believe the grouping of stars follows any of the accepted recorded constellations, so it's hard to determine if the artist was trying to render something specific in the sky.”

“Whoever drew this would not have known about the accepted constellations,” Zareb pointed out. “They had no telescope to see beyond what their eyes told them.”

“So it could just be a random assortment of stars, just telling us that this hunting scene is taking place at night.”

“But hunters don't hunt at night,” Camelia argued. “They hunt during the day, when animals are grazing and the light is good. So the fact that whoever drew this included stars is important. The stars mean something. I tried imagining lines drawn between them, to see if they made some sort of pattern, but I couldn't come up with anything that made any sense to me.”

“It looks like they are in the shape of a kite,” Simon reflected. “But I doubt the ancient tribes had kites.”

“Where do you see a kite?” asked Camelia. “If you join the stars in order, they form a triangle.”

“I'm including this other star you thought was just a scratch in the rock. If you draw a line from star to star, this last one forms the top point of a kite.” Simon traced an imaginary line between the stars to show her. “There, you see? A kite.”

Camelia's eyes widened. “It's a shield,” she breathed softly.

Simon shrugged. “If you prefer. Personally, I think it looks more like a kite than a shield.”

Exhilaration lit her face. “Of course! Why didn't I see that before? It's a shield, hovering in the sky between the antelope and the lion!”

“Wonderful. So what does that mean?”

“The shield represents guardianship—trying to keep something or someone safe,” Camelia explained excitedly. “And it's angled toward the lion, which means the shield is there to protect the lion.”

“Since when does a lion need a shield?”

“The lion is symbolic,” Zareb told him. “He represents a powerful spirit.”

“And he's facing those warriors and the antelope dead on,” Camelia continued, “and has no intention of running away—because he's guarding something—he's guarding the Tomb of Kings!”

Simon raised a brow, intrigued. “So if he's guarding the Tomb of Kings, where is it?”

She bit her lip, unsure. Tentatively, she reached up and skimmed her finger along the pattern of stars on the rock. Her finger grew warm as it reached the last star, which was the one at the top of the shield. She hesitated, uncertain.

And then her finger slowly began to move down of its own accord, until it stopped at the lion.

“It's behind the lion,” Camelia said softly.

Simon glanced at the endless surrounding darkness. “Which is where? Unfortunately, the painting doesn't give us any clues for that—or if it did, they have been worn away.”

Let the stars be your guide.

Camelia tilted her head back to see the sky. “Look,” she whispered.

Simon looked up. Six stars in the shape of a shield glittered against the inky sea of black.

“That's strange,” he said, bewildered. “I don't remember seeing that star formation before.”

Zareb stared at the stars and smiled. “It would only show itself when the moment was right.”

“If we take the star at the tip, and imagine a line coming down from it like the one you traced on the rock, Camelia, then that would put the lion somewhere over there.” Simon pointed to a dark cluster of bushes and rocks near the base of the mountain.

“Come on!” she urged, racing toward the bushes.

“Couldn't we do this in the morning?” Simon pleaded. “If we're going to have to start digging around in the dirt, I think I'd rather have a bit more light and a lot more sleep.”

“We have to do it
now,
” Camelia insisted, swiftly studying the bushes and rocks around her. “The stars are pointing us in the right direction.”

“And now that we know what that direction is, we can just leave some kind of marker here,” Simon pointed out as he joined her. “It would be much easier to do this when there is light.”

“It may be that Pumulani was not meant to be found in the light.” Zareb approached with Oscar and Harriet riding grandly on his shoulders. “We need to respect the signs that have been given to us tonight.”

“If we don't search for the opening to the tomb now, the opportunity might be lost to us.” Camelia began riffling through the bushes, looking for some clue as to what she was supposed to do next. “Look around, and move everything you see. But be careful—we don't want to damage any artifacts we may find.”

“Since you're here, you might as well look around too, Oscar.” Simon pulled the monkey off Zareb's shoulder and set him on the ground. “If you find something, there might be an oatcake in it for you.”

Oscar obligingly scurried over to an enormous rock and began to make a great show of pretending to push it with his paws.

“That's strange.” Camelia frowned at a thick clump of bushes growing before the rock. “This cluster of bushes seems thicker than the rest.”

She went over to it and began to search through them, trying to see if they were covering something underneath.