Limbo Lodge (21 page)

They could tell when they drew near to the lower cave because of the warm smell of horse that came drifting up the cliff path. Stepping slowly down, carrying the grass-wrapped baby (who was quite heavy – she must weigh as much as a Michaelmas goose) – Dido became possessed by an unreasonable fear. Suppose those massive crocodiles had decided to clamber all the way up the cliff path and devour the horses? But when they reached the lower cave, all seemed orderly and quiet, the horses peaceably munching on their fodder and no rapacious reptiles to be seen.

The baby was so tranquil and well behaved that Dido wondered if her mother had given her a dose of some calming herb juice to quiet her when they escaped from the Quinquilho ranch. But when offered a sip of djeela juice she sucked it willingly enough, then went back to sleep in her cocoon of grass and leaves.

“What’ll us do now?” Dido whispered to Tylo, and he whispered back, “Wait till day come.”

This seemed a sensible plan, as they were all exhausted after the day’s trek through the forest, the parting from Talisman at the cliff foot, and the long struggle up and down the cliff path. They piled themselves beds of keedo-grass and opoe vine, sprinkled kandu nuts, and gratefully lay down to sleep. Outside they could hear the distant roar of the Kai river, far below still, and sometimes the cry of a night bird.

It should have been easy to sink into slumber, but Dido lay wakeful and worried.

We are in a right dicey pickle, she thought, with those Angrian coves up above, a-planning to do in old John King, and Doc Tally lord knows where, and Cap Sanderson laid up with snake-bite in that crazy-feller’s hut – and the
Siwara
loaded with pearls on its way to Valparaiso leaving us marooned in Aratu – I reckon Cap’n Hughes back on the
Thrush
will be wondering where the devil we’ve got to – and poor old Multiple in that creepy hospital being cared for by a passel of witches – all because we came hunting for Frankie Herodsfoot and his precious games. Those games just better cure old King Jamie of his megrims, if we ever do get back to London, that’s all . . .

At last she slept.

And woke to a thin silver blade of sunlight slicing in from the cave’s upper left-hand corner, piercing between the bulbous stalactites; and Yorka’s small hard hands urgently tugging her awake.

“
Yorka!
”

“Shaki-Dido! You wake quick! I bring news and breakfast!”

“We got news too,” said Dido, “We found a baby.”

“O-o-o-o!” Yorka exclaimed mournfully as Dido told the baby’s history. “Well, well, that poor Outros girl she now with her Kaubre in under-forest, better than stay in dark cold unkind house. But we best take the baby to Aunt Tala’aa pretty quick—”

“Where
is
Aunt Tala’aa?”

“Breakfast first, we feed baby, then now-and-now I find out.”

Yorka had brought tikkol fruit, which had firm juicy pink flesh under a thin brittle rind. The baby accepted some of its juice, trickled into her mouth, and then slept again. Yorka showed Dido how to wrap her snugly in one of the huge green ukka leaves.

“What about Cap Sanderson, where did you leave him?” asked Dido.

Yorka said she had fetched back the guide, Trinki, who had taken care of Sanderson before, when he was making for Manati harbour. “Take him back to Regina town. Snakebite better. Ruiz still sleep.”

“I thought Trinki’s father was dying.”

“Father die, go to under-forest, Trinki glad come back.”

“I just hope Sanderson won’t get into trouble in Regina town. He was so angry about his ship—”

Herodsfoot, who had been munching tikkol fruit in gloomy silence (it seemed as if, on top of everything else, he was suffering from a homesick longing for bacon, eggs, toast, and marmalade), now said, “And what are
we
proposing to do?”

“First find Aunt Tala’aa,” said Yorka.

Dido had been wondering how Yorka had been able to summon Trinki to conduct Captain Sanderson back to the town. Now she watched with interest as Yorka stepped outside the cave, climbed a short way up the sloping cliffface to a knob of rock, and stood on this, tilting her head as far back as it would go. She looked as if she were staring intently at the sky, but her eyes were shut. So she stood, absolutely still, for about five minutes. Once Herodsfoot began to say something, but Tylo hushed him with a gesture. Dido, listening intently, caught the faint sound of drums in the far distance; also – more disquieting and closer at hand – a sharp crackle, now and then, which might be rifle-fire.

Now Yorka came down from her rock. “Aunt Tala’aa not far. On Mount Fura.”

“But that’s where Limbo Lodge is – ain’t it?” said Dido. “Across the gorge?”

Tylo said: “Maybe Aunt Tala’aa go visit old Sovran John. Be golly-good she do that.”

“So what do
we
do? Is there a bridge? Can we get across?”

“I go see,” said Tylo. “You-all wait here.” And he flitted away up the steep cliff path.

“I hope he’ll be careful,” said Dido anxiously. “Seems to me I heard gunfire up there.”

“He go taku,” said Yorka.

Then Yorka related an item of news which she had been politely withholding until the party’s plans had been discussed. While at the foot of the cliff path, by the crocodile beach, she had seen a strange sight. A large number of men – “five times fingers and toes” – climbed, quite easily it seemed, down the Cliff of Death – “like some person before made foot-places in rock.”

“Stairs?” said Dido. “Steps? Like when we went to bed in the Ereira house, high up in the tower?”

“Yes. Stair path on cliff, men coming down, many, many Outros men.”

“That’s mighty queer. D’you think John King was one of them; escaping from Limbo Lodge by the back door?”

“Old Sovran King much old climb cliff,” said Yorka firmly.

“What did the men do when they got to the bottom? How did they get past all those crocodiles?”

They had dropped rafts into the sea, Yorka said, big light rafts made of sliced-up clove-wood; they climbed down on to the rafts and floated away up the west side of the island.

“Where will they get to?”

“Regina town.”

Yorka explained that every few months, when the volcano south of the island was due to erupt, a warm ocean current set in, flowing northwards, which would, in about three days, carry the rafts directly to the north tip of the island.

“Do you think they were going for help? Help to fight Manoel?”

Yorka thought this unlikely. “Who would help?”

“The Forest People?”

But the Forest People would
never
fight, Yorka said. Their task was to sing and listen and heal; what useful result did fighting ever produce?

Now Tylo came back. His report was discouraging. Manoel Roy, with a large troop of Angrian Town Guard, was encamped on the brink of the gorge by the bridge over the Kai ravine. The bridge could not be crossed.

Guards with muskets patrolled it every few minutes. And the troop, from time to time, fired their muskets into the forest which surrounded Limbo Lodge.

“Maybe Manoel plans to starve King out,” said Herodsfoot. “What a way to use your own brother!
Disgraceful
When I return to London I shall tell His Majesty King James that we must immediately cancel our treaty of trade and defence with Aratu.”

“Before that, though,” said Dido, “how are we going to get to
see
John King? Had us better climb up those steps in the cliff?”

She did not sound at all eager. Herodsfoot turned pale at the very suggestion, and both Tylo and Yorka were opposed to it.

“Cliff of Death holy place, for jumping off, not climbing up.”

“Talisman did.”

“Well . . .”

Talisman had her own good reasons and was special, their silence conveyed.

“So – what, then?”

Yorka had a plan. It would not be too hard, she said, to make another bridge. They would do it farther down the gorge, around several bends, where Manoel and his men could not see what they were up to.

“But the gorge is wider down there. And how in the
world
, may I ask, can you build a bridge?” asked Herodsfoot in disbelief. He did not sound any happier about this idea than he had at the notion of climbing home-made steps up a thousand-foot cliff.

But Yorka sent Tylo off to the fishing-village on the other side of the headland with a gift of some djeela-pods, which she had by her, and a request for shark-rope.

“What is shark-rope, Yorka?”

“Rope made from human hair, very strong, easy catch shark.”

While Tylo was gone, Yorka strolled down the cliff path, looking across the gorge, until she found what she considered a suitable place for a bridge. And she set Dido to collecting spider-webs. These were plentiful, all up and down the cliff path, spread over the thorny, heather shrubs which grew on the lip of the cliff and at the edge of the trees. The large grey-black-and-yellow spiders who spun the webs were not at all pleased at having their handiwork taken away, and shook their legs furiously at Dido, who did not greatly care for the task of despoiling them.

“Will they bite me?” she asked Yorka, who said, “Not if you don’t let them.”

Herodsfoot was no use at this job as his short sight prevented him from seeing where the webs were, and he broke the stem of his glasses again trying to help.

“Lucky spider-web good for mending glasses,” Yorka said, and did an emergency repair while Dido went on with the web-collecting. In the end they had a substantial heap, which Yorka skilfully twisted into a thin line, only just visible in the sunshine. Then Yorka’s memory-bird was sent across the gorge at the selected spot with instructions to fly round a chosen tree and come back again with the end of the cord. A thicker strand was now attached and pulled across.

At this point Tylo returned from his trip to the fishing-village with two huge hanks of human hair-cord and a gift of shark steaks. When he saw the slender strand stretched across the ravine he beamed approval.

“Golly-good! Soon now we make bridge.”

Herodsfoot had been watching these activities with incredulous disapproval. “We cross
that
? Who, pray, will carry the baby? And what about the horses?”

“I fetch Trinki, he take horses back to Regina,” said Yorka.

Meanwhile Dido cooked the shark steaks, and Tylo passed a third strand, then a fourth, across the width of the gorge. Next a length of rope was pulled across; and another. Then Tylo went across himself, holding the upper rope, sliding his feet along the lower; Dido found it impossible to watch him, she gulped, and had to close her eyes, thinking of the roaring white water forcing its way between rocks so very far down below, but he did it without the least concern, and skipped ashore on the far side to fasten the ropes more securely and clear out a foothold on the top of the cliff. The forest grew right down to the cliff edge on that side, but Yorka had chosen her site well; there were two large smooth tikkol trees which provided a strong reliable support for the bridge. By the time the shark steaks were cooked, Tylo and Yorka had constructed a trustworthy-looking rope bridge with two strands of rope on each side, an upper and a lower, and a network of cord zigzagging between, forming a floor, or footing.

Tylo and Yorka had both been across the gorge several times, during the construction of the bridge; now Yorka said, “You go this time, Dido, take baby; time you go,” as if she were conferring a big privilege, and Tylo, returning from a scouting trip up the cliff path, said, “Best us all go, pretty-golly quick. Outros guards coming down path for look-about.”

With a lump in her gullet the size of a cricket-ball, Dido picked up the baby and moved towards the bridge.

“No, no, baby on back,” said Yorka, and, with a swift whipping of opoë vine, fastened the bundle of baby and ukka-leaf on to Dido’s shoulders. “Now you got two hand for hold.”

Dido found it best not to look at the foamy water crashing and thundering among the rocks such a long way below those frail-seeming strands of rope that supported her feet. She kept her eyes steadily fixed straight ahead, on the dark tree-covered slope in front, and tried to ignore sounds from behind – the rattle of musket-fire, and then, more ominously, men’s shouts from higher up the hill on her right. She knew the bridge was not strong enough to support more than one person at a time; she tried to accelerate her pace, but it made the rope structure swing about in a terrifying way, and she dared not go any faster.

“Come along, Shaki-Dido – you do good!” shouted Tylo encouragingly from the far bank. She plunged on desperately. The baby woke and let out a thin wail. Muskets cracked from the hillside behind her right shoulder, and she saw a chip fly off one of the tikkol trunks. Then Tylo’s hand was grasping hers, pulling her up on to the cliff edge.

“Good now you Shaki-Dido lie down behind tree,” urged Tylo, and she was glad to do so, but could not help peering out to see Yorka, nimble as a sting-monkey, flit across the bridge, hardly more visible than a gust of wind among branches. Last came Herodsfoot, and Dido grew sick with fright as she watched his gangling, awkward progress. Now the men with their muskets were not more than three or four turns of the cliff path from the bushes above Yorka’s bridge – Dido could see the flashes and the puffs of smoke as they discharged their weapons. It seemed impossible that they should miss him. But luckily their aim was poor, and Herodsfoot’s own clumsiness stood him in good stead – the bridge swung about so wildly that he was never in the same spot for two consecutive seconds. But just as Tylo had caught one of his hands to pull him to safety, a bullet did catch him in the shoulder and he jerked uncontrollably and cried out.

“Come, quick come!” cried Yorka, and grabbed his arm; he was dragged on to the bank and hustled down out of view. Tylo without wasting a moment cut through the support-cords of the bridge and jerked on a rope which attached it by a slip-knot on the opposite side. The whole flimsy structure dropped into the gorge and was gone.