The Burning Sky (20 page)

He felt the judder of the Potez as de Billancourt responded, then the sudden dip as the Frenchman put the plane into a dive, Jardine pulling both his triggers as soon as that happened. The camouflaged body of the Fiat was a huge blur as it shot past at a fractionally higher altitude that seemed very close to his head, and the notion that his man
had risked a head-on collision was a fleeting but useless concern. All he was concentrating on now was keeping his Vickers firing as he raised himself to seek to stay on target, sure that bits were flying off the enemy aircraft.

De Billancourt banked as soon as he ceased firing and executed a tight turn to come round on the Italian’s tail, which was nothing short of madness. Looking over his shoulder now, Jardine saw the Fiat beginning to climb, and at a rate he suspected the Potez could not match.

What was this bloody idiot of a Frenchman about? The pitch of the engine was now a scream as the plane sought altitude, and a craning Jardine could see the Fiat fighter plane had what he wanted, sufficient height and distance, for he was now banking to come in on a second attack.

As soon as he began to dive, de Billancourt spun his plane to drop like a stone in what turned out to be a race towards ground level. Not only was the Fiat faster, it was heavier, which increased the speed at which it could close. Jardine now saw before him, and rapidly closing, the wisp of the spinning propeller, with the certain knowledge that two machine guns were timed to fire right through the blades, only then realising how cold were the hands holding the handles of the Vickers, almost too cold to function, even in gloves.

Stiff as the fingers were, he knew he had to wait until the Italian opened fire, which he would not do until he was in range, an option open to him but not to a rear machine gunner unfamiliar with the sights, who could only guess by the size of the object he was aiming at. If he fired off
too soon it would only waste precious ammo; leave it too late and it was what the Americans called a ‘turkey shoot’, an almost unmissable target. The first wink came a split second before the gunfire hit the side of his cockpit, which proved the Frenchman was no coward, for he held his course.

The diving, attacking plane now looked like a large bee right before his eyes, the cowls covering its landing wheels in plain sight. Jardine opened up, moving his aim fractionally right, left, up and down to cover as much sky as possible inside a very small arc, and it had the desired effect: it takes a very brave man, or even a fool, to fly into a hail of bullets. He had no idea if he struck home, for de Billancourt hauled on his joystick and took the Potez, which if it was slower was more manoeuvrable, out of the line of fire, and the Italian shot by.

What happened then made Jardine thank the Lord he was strapped in: the blood rushed to his head as de Billancourt executed a tight loop the loop in what felt like a sixpence of airspace. Unbeknown to his passenger, the Frenchman had calculated that with a target no longer in his sights, the enemy plane would rapidly slow its own speed to turn. He was now on its tail again before the heavier Fiat could make that turn; closing significantly, he opened up again with his single forward-firing machine gun.

It wasn’t deadly, but it was enough to remove great patches of the covering on the Italian’s airframe, bits that flew past Jardine, still facing backwards. Then he was in amongst a trail of smoke, wondering to whom it belonged,
the answer coming as the Fiat CR32 came into view with a black trail coming from its fuselage as it headed earthwards.

De Billancourt spun to follow, but the Italian was doing the sensible thing, which Jardine had expected from the Frenchman, heading for his own lines and supporting ground fire; thankfully this daredevil pilot was too shrewd to follow and he banked gently to head south.

The victory roll was just showing off.

The trio and the Rolls had not moved, and it took Jardine a little while to realise how small an amount of time had passed since they had taken off – under twenty minutes by his watch. Taxiing to the same spot as before, the damage to the aircraft was obvious enough to have Vince rushing forward, Tyler Alverson putting his hands to his cheeks and Corrie Littleton hers to her mouth, an act which she reversed when Henri de Billancourt whipped off his helmet and grinned at her with teeth of stunning perfection.

Wondering why he was so stiff – that is, till he realised he was still cold – Cal Jardine clambered out of the cockpit just in time to see the Frenchman slobbering over the female hand again. In perfect idiomatic French, albeit with a faint trace of a Marseilles accent, Callum Jardine loudly informed him that he thought he was a glory-seeking idiot. The response was a look of surprise and amusement, so he reverted to English in order that his companions could understand.

‘You’re mad to take on an enemy who’s got a superior plane.’

‘Ah, but
mon ami
, he is not the superior pilot, as you witnessed.’

‘That was luck!’

The wagging single digit was infuriating, but not as much as the admonishing schoolmasterly voice. ‘
Non!
Not luck, but skill. The best man won, as you say in English, and what sort of man would I be to turn down a challenge to a dogfight, eh, and from a miserable Italian?’

‘They can kill too,’ insisted Vince. ‘Even Frenchmen.’

‘To be afraid to die, not Henri de Billancourt, monsieur! Henri de Billancourt is not afraid to die. To fear death is a nonsense; to die nobly and in single combat, a gift.’

‘While you are so nobly dying, would you mind making sure you are alone?’

‘If you were full of fear, I ask forgiveness. I thought you were a soldier.’

‘He’s full of anger, mate!’ Vince spat, handing Jardine his sub-machine gun. ‘You might want to use this, guv.’

‘Would somebody mind telling me what the hell is going on?’ demanded Tyler Alverson.

‘I will,’ Jardine barked, and he did, aware as he related what he knew, that the admiration in the eyes of Corrie Littleton was increasing, not diminishing, which he found even more annoying, summed up in the words she used.

‘How gallant you are.’

‘Mademoiselle will not mind if I dedicate my victory to your beauty?’

‘I think I’m going to be sick,’ Vince croaked.

‘
Our
victory,’ Jardine snapped.

‘Of course,’ the count replied with an elegant half-bow.
‘I must acknowledge you were a most able associate.’

Alverson laughed, a shoulder-shaking affair. ‘I’ve never heard anyone make that sound like the shoeshine boy before.’

When he took off again, Corrie Littleton watched him go until the Potez was so small it was like a fly on a window, her face when she turned round having on it a beatific look.

‘What a guy.’

‘What an arsehole,’ Jardine spat. ‘Now, if you are ready, we can go find your bloody mother.’

‘Who rattled his cage?’ she demanded of Tyler Alverson.

‘You did, honey.’

A
ksum 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.