A Kiss of Adventure (26 page)

“In town? But I thought they were at the rest house. When I phoned Hannah, she said you were standing guard.”

“You spoke with Hannah? Odd. She didn’t mention it. No, nothing happened at the rest house. In fact, I practically bumped straight into the
amenoukal
on a street in Timbuktu two days ago. He kidnapped me and brought me out here to their camp. I’ve had no idea where you were or what was happening. They haven’t told me a thing until just now when my guards brought me in here. I take it you didn’t find the treasure.”

“Graeme and I figured out where it was,” she told him. “Mungo Park’s box. We went to the mine, but the
amenoukal
attacked us there.”

“Did you find the treasure in the box? Did you find the journal?”

She blinked without comprehension. “The treasure?”

“The treasure of Timbuktu. Did you find it?”

“It was only a hat and a few books. There was no treasure, no journal.”

“But that’s impossible!” His voice grew hard. “Matilda, look at me. You must find the journal and the treasure. That Targui’s going to kill us both if you can’t come up with something.”

“Graeme’s dead.”

He was silent a moment. “Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“All the more reason to find the treasure. If the
amenoukal
killed McLeod for the treasure, he won’t hesitate to do the same to us.”

“And Khatty, too. The
amenoukal
’s wife. She’s dead.”

“Look, darling, I’m sorry about McLeod. But he’s dead, and it’s time to think about us. We have our future ahead of us. Nothing has changed. I mean for us to have a good life.”

She twisted the beaded ring on her finger. Arthur was wrong. Everything had changed.

“I’m tired.” She leaned her head back against the tent pole and closed her eyes. Her head throbbed. Her heart ached.

The aroma of hot black coffee drifted into the tent. She lifted her head in time to see the shy serving maid who had once belonged to Khatty hurry out of the tent after leaving a tray of food and drink on a table nearby. A Targui walked into the tent and untied the captives’ wrists and ankles.

“They’ve brought a meal,” Arthur said quietly. “Can you eat, darling?”

She shook her head. Her neck felt twice its normal size, and her eyes were swollen nearly shut. She reached out, found the demitasse, and poured strong, hot coffee down her throat.

“The box we found,” she managed. “Mungo Park’s box. The one with the hat and the books. Tell that Targui to bring it.”

Arthur glanced at the guard. “But you said—”

“Tell him the tree-planting woman is going to find the treasure of Timbuktu.”

Arthur spoke to the man, who then ran to the door of the tent and shouted. Cries erupted in the camp.

“Darling.” Arthur leaned across and took her hand. “Are you thinking clearly?”

“I’m going to find it.” She pulled her hand away and reached for another cup of coffee. “I’m going to bring it to an end.”

“Do you honestly think you can?”

“I know how to look. Graeme taught me.”

“Matilda, for heaven’s sake, what happened between you and McLeod? I have the right to an explanation.”

She let the hot liquid spill down her throat. Was Arthur so concerned about her and Graeme because he loved her? Or was it because he wanted her as his wife, an essential part of his plan for a secure, comfortable future?

“I loved Graeme,” she said softly. “I still love him.”

Arthur clambered to his feet and hurled his cup to the floor. “Matilda, listen to you! You’re behaving like some other woman. Someone I don’t even know. What about me? What about our future? What happened to that?”

She rested her forehead on her knees and wrapped her arms around her legs. It was as black as night inside her heart. How could she think? How could she talk? Tears welled.

“Darling, talk to me.” Arthur was standing in front of her. She could see his black leather shoes. “Matilda, you must be reason—”

His words stopped, and Tillie lifted her head. The
amenoukal
swept into the tent. Robed and veiled in deep blue once again, he strode to her side and pushed Arthur to his knees. One of his men bound the Englishman’s wrists and ankles and tied him to the tent pole again.

“Tree-Planting Woman.” The
amenoukal
held out the small carved chest.

Tillie took the box and gave him a nod. “The tree-planting woman will find the treasure.”

When the
amenoukal
turned to go, Tillie caught his burnous. “Tree-Planting Woman needs one thing.” She pointed to his spear and touched Graeme’s khaki shirt. “I want that.”

The man’s eyes narrowed. He gave a curt nod, untied the shirt, and tossed it to the floor at her feet.

“When I find the treasure, you will let me go back to Bamako?” she asked. “With this man, Arthur Robinson?”

A short man in an indigo turban leaned forward and whispered to the Tuareg leader. The
amenoukal
nodded again.

“Bamako,” he said. “Tree-Planting Woman. Englishman.”

“Untie him, then,” she commanded. “No more ropes.”

The
amenoukal
spoke to another of his men. As the Targui worked open the knots in Arthur’s bindings, she knelt to the carpet. The remaining Tuareg made their way back outside, leaving one man as a guard at the door to the tent.

Tillie picked up Graeme’s shirt and crushed it to her chest. She tried to imagine him lifeless and still, but she couldn’t do it. Instead he moved across her memory like a slow-motion film. Graeme driving the Land Rover, wind whipping his black hair. His tanned fingers slipping the beaded ring into her hand. A broad smile lighting his features as he paddled the fishing boat out into the Niger’s current.

Stifling a sob, she slipped his bloodied shirt over her own. She held the fabric under her nose and drank in the scent of his skin. She buttoned it, imagining his fingers touching where she touched. Unable to pray, unable even to speak, she lifted the box onto her lap.

“Matilda.” Arthur’s voice was low. “You’ve been through a terrible ordeal, but we’re going to come out all right in the end. I can feel it, darling.”

She opened the lid and took Mungo Park’s possessions out one by one. His hat. His books. His pen and ink. His shirt.

She spread the threadbare shirt onto the carpet and gazed at the tattered collar and worn elbows. “He loved to travel,” she whispered. “He was an adventurer at heart, you know. He lived for the peaks of excitement. That was how he wanted his life to be.”

Arthur stared at her. “Matilda, are you speaking of Mungo Park?”

She shrugged and picked up the worn green hat with its tiny slips of yellowed paper stuck in the band. Mungo Park had put them there two hundred years ago. Only one person had removed them since. The guide, Ahmadi Fatouma.

He had taken them to the man who had read the last page of the journal. He had had these notes translated. And from their directives—from half-understood meanings—he had germinated the legend of the treasure.

She slipped the first of the three notes from the hatband and opened it. As she had done with Graeme, she willed her mind into the simple, fearful outlook of Ahmadi Fatouma. How would the superstitious guide have interpreted the message written here? What would he have believed these words were telling him to do?

The paper cracked when she unfolded it; its ink was faded and barely legible. She read the inscription in silence.
“Mad Mungo,”
it said.
“Ailie they will call me Mad Mungo. Will you still love me, Mad Mungo?”

“What does it say?” Arthur asked. “Can you make anything of it?”

“It’s a message to Park’s wife. He knew he was delirious. Mungo Park was a doctor, you know. This note shows he knew he had gone mad.”

“What about the treasure? Does he talk about it?”

She didn’t answer. She lifted the second note and read it to herself.
“The Bight of Benin is a swampy delta. It will be difficult to transform into a profitable harbor. But one day the white man and woman will come here, and they will tame the land. A pity—and a blessing.”

She refolded the note and inserted it back into the leather band.
He was there, Graeme. Mungo Park was there at the Bight of Benin, just like you thought. He really had made it all the way to the mouth of the Niger.
The third note was barely visible, and she had to dig it out. Would this be the writing of the sane Mungo, as in the last note? Or would this be Mad Mungo again?

Tillie opened the note. Two lines had been inscribed in a shaking hand.
“Well, well, well. It is finished.”

“What does it say, Matilda?” Arthur’s voice was impatient.

She read the words again and gave a faint smile. “Arthur, please call in the
amenoukal
.”

The blue-veiled Targui must have been standing just outside the tent. He walked in, crossed his arms, and waited.

“Is there a well near here?” she asked. “A very old well?”

He frowned and turned to the short turbaned man at his side. They had a rapid exchange.

“Many old wells,” he told her. “Great Well of Timbuktu. Very full in rainy season. Many wells.”

“Is there an old, dry well near Timbuktu? One that has been dry for a long, long time. Dry before the days of your grandfather’s grandfather.”

The Targui spoke at length with the man at his side; then he thumped his spear on the tent floor.

“Old Tuareg well on path of gold and salt caravan. Well finished long, long, long time.” The
amenoukal
grabbed the chain around her neck and pulled the amulet out of her shirt. “Long ago Tuareg people find this at well.”

“You found the amulet at the well?”

The chieftain nodded. “We take. We read. We wait for Tree-Planting Woman. You come, you say go to well again. Well of Waran.”

“Well of Waran,” she repeated. So that was it. She wrapped her hands around the amulet and lifted her eyes to his. “Ahodu Ag Amastane, the treasure of Timbuktu is inside the Well of Waran.”

SIXTEEN

The
amenoukal
stared at Tillie without comprehension. “Treasure in Well of Waran?”

“Inside the well.”

The Tuareg men turned to one another in animated discussion. Tillie placed the green hat back into the chest and snapped the brass clasp. Evening sun slanted through the tent’s opening, and she wondered if they would leave immediately. For her, it was all over. The
amenoukal
would go off to the well, find his treasure, and abandon his two captives to their fate. Somehow, she and Arthur would make it back to Timbuktu and from there fly to Bamako.

“Tree-Planting Woman.” The
amenoukal
faced her. “Come with Ahodu Ag Amastane.”

She glanced at Arthur. “Why? I told you where the treasure is.”

“Tree-Planting Woman come now.”

A stiff prod from the
amenoukal
’s spear butt was enough to make her scramble to her feet. Surrounded by his Tuareg warriors, the chieftain led her into the waning sunlight. Someone pushed her toward the caravan. Someone else lifted her onto her familiar, cantankerous old dromedary.

“Wait a minute.” She grabbed the three-pronged saddle horn and closed her eyes as the camel lurched to its feet. “I told you where the treasure is. You don’t need me anymore. Where are you taking me?”

“Well of Waran.” The
amenoukal
gave a haughty smile. “Tree-Planting Woman find treasure for Ahodu Ag Amastane.”

He lifted his spear, and the caravan set off. Women rushed to hang the last of their belongings on the saddles. A pot, a cloth bag, a basket. Children raced to their favorite places in the caravan. An
imzad
began to play, and voices lifted one by one to join the song.

Numb, Tillie let the camel’s plodding gait hypnotize her. She couldn’t imagine a future. She couldn’t bear to remember the past. She couldn’t pray beyond the wordless pleading in her spirit.

Evening descended, and she stared with an empty heart at the windblown grains of sand that sifted onto her saddle and collected in the folds of her clothing. She tried to close her eyes and sleep. Instead, her mind wandered to the image of Graeme crouching empty-handed in the bottom of the mine. The
amenoukal
’s broadsword arced down toward his head. She jerked upright.

“Matilda, darling.” Arthur urged his dromedary alongside hers. “You must try to stay alert.”

“I can’t stop thinking. Remembering.”

“There, listen to that. Some woman’s just begun a song on her
imzad.
Let your mind dwell on the music.”

She focused on the haunting melody and closed her eyes again. The music had a gentle rhythm, one that soothed and comforted while evoking a nameless sorrow. The notes were high and plaintive, beckoning, calling to her almost as though she had heard them before. . . .

“Khatty.” She grabbed his arm. “Arthur, that’s Khatty’s song. She wrote it for me.”

“Now, darling, the
amenoukal
told you his wife was dead. You said he’d killed her.”

“No, no. That’s her voice. Her song. I would know it anywhere, Arthur. It’s a song about Graeme McLeod.”

“Matilda, for heaven’s sake!”

“Come, oh, desert lion,” she whispered as she listened to the gentle sounds drift across the night air. “Son of waran, man of strength and great wisdom. Your hair blows like ropes of sand in black night. Song of
djenoun
blows your sand-dune locks. Oh, man of black hair, man who sees heart of Tree-Planting Woman, come.” She fell silent for a moment. “Khatty’s wrong,” she murmured finally. “He’s not coming back.”

“How can that be the voice of this Targui you said was dead, Matilda?”

“Maybe it’s the
djenoun.
Maybe they learned Khatty’s song, and they’re singing it through the desert.”

“Djenoun?”
Arthur gripped her hand. “Matilda, pull yourself together. Now, look! Tomorrow this is all going to end one way or another. We’ll arrive at the Well of Waran, and the journal will either be there or it won’t.”

Unable to feel beyond the emptiness inside her, Tillie stared into Arthur’s face.

“Listen to me, Matilda. Listen carefully to what I’m going to tell you. I know you imagined yourself in love with Graeme McLeod. I know you think you cared for him, but I can only believe this infatuation grew out of your exhaustion, lack of proper food, and the constant pressure you’ve been subjected to. You were under terrible duress, forced to rely on this unscrupulous man during the most horribly difficult situations. Of course you looked to him for protection. It stands to reason you fell under certain delusions about him.”

He touched her cheek. “Listen to me, darling. No matter what you felt for Graeme McLeod, no matter what happened, you must recognize that it’s finished now. And I want to go on as we had planned. I want you to concentrate on what I tell you. I want you to do something for me. Something for us. It will make everything right again, I know it. I want you to do it to repair our dreams.”

She studied his moonlit face. Pale eyes. Pale skin. “What is it, Arthur?”

“When you arrive at the Well of Waran, you will be faced with two possible actions. You must do either or both of them. Do you understand?”

She nodded.

“The first regards the journal.” He went on, “It should be in a chest, probably like the one the hat was in. I want you to take the journal out of the container. Hide it in your clothing. We shall make certain you have on a burnous. The Tuareg will never know what you’ve done.”

“Hide the journal?”

“It’s an extremely valuable document, Matilda. Second, I want you to take all the treasure you can. Take the gold out of the chest, and hide it in your burnous.”

“Gold?”

“I’m certain it’s gold. It must be. Timbuktu was full of gold in those days. Take some of it, darling. Take it for us.”

“But how can I? The
amenoukal
will search—”

She knew the answer. She reached up and touched the amulet around her neck. The Tuareg people’s fear of the amulet would protect her from the
amenoukal
’s search. She could pretend to invoke its superstitious power and prevent the chieftain from looking for anything she might have concealed. Khatty had been terrified when Tillie called on the power of the cursed document. It would work again. She felt certain of it.

“Take some of the treasure,” Arthur whispered, “and take the journal. Give the
amenoukal
a few coins, enough to satisfy him and perhaps buy him a trinket or two at the Timbuktu market. Once he has what he’s been wanting, we’ll be free to go on our way. We’ll return to Bamako and catch the first flight to London. There we can marry just as we planned, and we’ll have the gold to support us, darling. We can do whatever we like with it. We’ll have everything we could ever want or need—”

“Stop, Arthur. Stop talking.” Tillie pulled away. “Just give me time to think.”

“Of course, darling.” He leaned closer and placed a kiss on her cheek. “Think about it as long as you like. But I’m trusting you’ll see the wisdom in my words soon enough. It’s all going to be perfect for us.”

Tillie’s heart throbbed with a dull ache that no promises of future happiness could erase. As she gave herself to the swaying gait of her dromedary, she closed her eyes and wept again.

The long ride to the well continued through the night. At sunup, the caravan stopped for everyone to light fires, heat coffee and tea, and eat a hurried breakfast. Arthur came to life, the military man with a mission. He demanded burnouses and turbans against the sun for himself and Tillie, and he insisted on hearty meals for the two of them.

“You’re the tree-planting woman, Tillie,” he reminded her as he rode alongside after the march resumed. “Play the part. I know these people. You’ve got to intimidate them. Keep them afraid, make them cower so you can carry out our plan.”

“I’m not into intimidation,” she said. “And I don’t like watching people cower. Look, you said I had two options at the Well of Waran. Take the journal or take the treasure. Preferably both. I see another option. Assuming I find anything, I could just hand it over to the
amenoukal
. It’s what he wants. He believes it will help his people. Why not let him have it?”

“You can’t be serious.”

“I care about these Tuareg, Arthur. They’re poor. They live in the desert. They survive on next to nothing, yet they have such pride.”

“How can you possibly have any feeling for the
amenoukal
? Just since you’ve known him, the chieftain has killed at least two people.”

“You shot more than two of his people.”

“I was protecting you!”

“Ahodu Ag Amastane believes he’s protecting his drum group. He’s cruel, even brutal, but no one can deny he wants the best for his caravan. So do I. Maybe they ought to have the treasure.”

“I cannot believe I’m hearing this.”

“Let’s drop the subject.” She patted her dromedary’s shaggy neck. “I don’t know what I’m going to do yet.”
I really don’t, Lord. Help me.

They crested silky sand dunes one after the next, skirted stone wadis, followed faint, windblown trails. Tillie searched the caravan for any sign of Khatty. She knew the song she had heard in the night. It couldn’t have been
djenoun
—she knew that—but how could it have been Khatty?

She used the hours of silence to consider Arthur’s request, but she couldn’t find peace. She studied him, his familiar back swaying ahead of her, his light brown hair lifting and scattering in the breeze, his shoulders squared like the corners of a box. He looked foreign to her now. As she turned his plan over in her mind, she knew it was wrong. Something was missing.

In the early afternoon a ripple of excitement ran through the caravan. Through a wavering, watery haze across the hot sands, she saw a giant mound of solid rock. The fierce sunlight bathed it in a white glow, making it look like an altar to some desert god. A stone outcrop lifted toward the sky in a pronged image that suggested a lizard’s open mouth.

The Well of Waran.

Like two fingers from an outstretched hand, a shadow spilled across the sand. The line of camels filed into its shade. Tillie’s throat tightened as the caravan pulled to a halt at the base of the rock. The
amenoukal
’s camel plodded from the head of the line back toward her. Arthur gave her a reassuring nod. “Just do what I told you.”

“Tree-Planting Woman.” The
amenoukal
spoke through the folds of his turban. “Well of Waran.”

“Show me the entrance to the well.”

The
amenoukal
called to the rider ahead of Arthur. The veiled man approached, and Tillie repeated her message. Upon hearing the muffled translation, the
amenoukal
nodded and tapped his camel to its knees.

At this sign, all the camels in the caravan went down, and their riders slipped to the sandy ground. Tillie followed the
amenoukal
along the base of the wadi. Arthur trailed a few steps behind.

Women and children parted to let them pass, then surged in behind, murmuring and jostling with excitement. By the time the
amenoukal
worked his way across the shifting sands and between the two stone fingers, the whole band of Tuareg had joined the expedition. The rock lost its white glow and turned black and pockmarked. Countless sandstorms had smoothed some of the jagged pinnacles into round columns of stone, but they had clawed others into distorted shapes that bore a remarkable resemblance to medieval gargoyles.

Tillie followed the
amenoukal
through the stone sculptures and into an inner ravine. He stopped and held up a hand. Jockeying for position, the Tuareg surrounded their leader.

“Tree-Planting Woman,” he said. “Well of Waran.”

He stepped aside, and she looked down into a jagged crack in the stone that resembled a snaggle-toothed mouth.

“This is a well?” She hadn’t expected Snow White’s wishing well with its round wall, neat roof, and cute little wooden bucket, but she wasn’t prepared for this either.

The
amenoukal
pointed a long finger at the hole. “Well of Waran. Get treasure.”

She edged past him and looked down into the darkness. “I need a rope and a lamp.”

After the
amenoukal
’s translator explained, the chieftain waded into the crowd, shouting orders to his men. Tuareg swarmed into action, tying tent rope to tent rope and combing their supplies for a suitable lamp and fuel. Tillie fingered her amulet, trying to pray as the
amenoukal
personally supervised the search.

“Tree-Planting Woman.” A whispered voice at her shoulder brought her around in surprise. The
amenoukal
’s translator took a step closer.

“Yes?” Tillie felt her irritation mounting. “What do you want?”

The translator said nothing. His eyes blinked, deep brown, almond eyes, heavily rimmed with kohl. Not the eyes of a Targui man, but the eyes of—

“Khatty!”

“Quiet, Tree-Planting Woman,” Khatty whispered. “He must not see.”