India told Maggie about the days spent waiting for news. She remembered going to look in on Charlotte in her tent and not finding her. She remembered turning the entire camp upside down and still not finding her. And she remembered a guide saying footprints had been found leading to the river... that they'd checked the river... that Charlotte was not there. She remembered collapsing and sobbing and little else, until three days later, when Florence Delamere came rushing to her side to tell her that Charlotte was alive and being looked after at a nearby farm. She'd gotten up from her bed then, still groggy from the sedative, and asked that a horse be brought. Florence had tried to talk her out of riding. Freddie, too. India didn't tell Maggie Carr what had passed between them.
"India, for God's sake be sensible," Freddie had said to her. "You're in no condition to ride. Charlotte is fine. It's better that she stay where she is. They'll bring her to us as soon as she's able to travel."
"Pretend you care, Freddie," she'd replied acidly. "For appearances' sake at least, if not for Charlotte's."
She'd mounted her horse and ridden the nine miles with Tom Meade. She'd run into the McGregors' house, barely greeting them. Mrs. McGregor had taken her to Charlotte immediately and India had sunk to her knees by her daughter's bedside, smiling and crying all at once, scolding her dreadfully for wandering off, then embracing her and covering her in kisses. Freddie, who'd decided to follow after all, sat on the edge of the bed, affecting concern. After India had calmed down a little, she remembered herself; she stood and made the proper introductions. She took Mrs. McGregor's hands in hers and thanked her over and over again.
"I was rather effusive," she said to Maggie now. "I quite flustered the poor woman. She kept trying to take her hands back. Kept telling me it was Sid Baxter I should be thanking, not her. We are so lucky that Tom Meade knew of him and thought to get him."
"You are indeed. No one knows this area like Sid."
India put her coffee cup down. "You know, Mrs. Carr, it's quite an unusual thing, Mr. Baxter's reticence. Most men would not have disappeared after rescuing the undersecretary's daughter. Most would have been front and center, hand out, hoping for some sort of reward. Or busy telling stories to newspapers for money."
"Sid Baxter's not most people," Maggie said.
"So I gather," India said. She dropped her gaze to her coffee cup, then haltingly continued. "Charlotte is my entire life, Mrs. Carr, I cannot imagine what I would have done if I had lost her. I am forever in Mr. Baxter's debt. If there's ever anything I can do for him, anything he needs..."
"He was only happy he got to her in time. That's all the reward he wants."
India smiled. "That sounds like something he told you to say. Is he avoiding us?"
It was Maggie's turn to blush. "You have to understand something about Sid--he's a very shy man. Doesn't like people much. Wouldn't be out here in the middle of nowhere if he did."
"I see. Well, I'm disappointed to have missed him. I had very much hoped to thank him in person. But perhaps you would do that for me?"
"I'd be glad to."
India said they must be getting back.
"Are you still on safari?" Maggie asked.
India shook her head. "I've had enough of safaris to last me a lifetime," she said. She explained that she and Charlotte were staying with the McGregors. Most of the others were staying on at the campsite, enjoying a few more days' shooting. Freddie and Hayes Sadler had traveled back to Nairobi as they had a few days' business there. When that was concluded, he would fetch them from the McGregors' and they would travel together to Mount Kenya for a fortnight's holiday before returning to England.
Maggie and India went to find Charlotte. She was sitting on the steps of Sid Baxter's house with Baaru, a boy of ten. They were feeding Mocha pieces of carrot. India thanked Maggie for her hospitality. She and Charlotte said their goodbyes, then Baaru brought them their horses, which had been borrowed from the McGregors. Charlotte's was a pony.
Maggie stood in her yard and waved them off. She watched until they'd ridden all the way down her drive to the road, then she turned and walked past her house through her backyard and into her barn. Hands on her hips, she scowled up at the hayloft and shouted, "You can come down now, you bloody great coward!"
A head appeared over the edge of the loft. "They're gone?" Sid said.
"They are. You're safe."
Sid lowered a wooden ladder to the ground and climbed down it.
"You could have said hello to them. The little girl was sad to have missed you."
Sid said nothing.
Maggie gave him a long, thoughtful look. "Beautiful child, that one, isn't she? Spitting image of her mother. Six years old, she is. Nearly."
Sid still said nothing, just made his way to the barn door.
"Did you see them from the window?"
"No."
"Liar." She shook her head, then said, "I don't know about you anymore, Bax. Running off with the surveyor. Hiding in the barn. Moping and mooning. I just don't understand it. India Lytton's a fine woman, to be sure, but she's not worth all this. No woman is. No man, either. It's time you got over her."
Sid turned and looked at her. "Great idea, Maggs," he said. "Thanks. Care to tell me how?"
Chapter 99
"Bloody hell," Seamie swore. He threw his gloves on the ground and shoved his blue, aching hands under his clothing and into his armpits to warm them. "It's an icefall. A bloody great icefall! How on earth could we have missed it?"
"The snow," Willa said, gazing up at the glistening slope. "The light it throws plays with your eyes. Shortens distances. Blurs features. I'll bet we saw it. We just thought it was part of the couloir."
She turned to look at him and he swore again. "What is it?" she said.
He touched his fingers to her lips and held them up so she could see them. They were smeared with blood.
"It's nothing," she said.
"Willa, you're sick. And in case you haven't noticed, there's an icefall ahead of us. It's probably sixty feet high. The angle's seventy degrees. At least. You're in no condition to tackle it. We have to go back."
"I'm fine."
Seamie shook his head. "The sun's too high. We took too long. It's melting the ice. We dodged rockfalls all the way up the couloir."
"We're off the couloir now."
"Willa--"
"Look, Seamie, I'm knackered, I admit it. My head's pounding like a tomtom. I want to throw up all the time. But I know I've got enough left in me to make the summit. I know it. I also know that it's all I've got. If I go down now, I won't get back up."
"That's no way to climb."
"It's going to have to be."
"For Christ's sake, look at the chance you're taking!" Seamie yelled. "You're sick, tired. You're not thinking straight. You're too ...too ..."
"Too what?"
"Too damned competitive!"
"Oh, I am, am I?" she said hotly. "Tell me something."
"What?"
"Say I were to go down. Right now. What would you do?"
Seamie hesitated, just for a second, then said, "Go up."
"Of course you would, you bastard."
"Your point?"
"I didn't come this far to let you steal all the glory, Finnegan. I'm summiting Mawenzi with you. I don't care if I have to crawl the rest of the way to do it."
"A good climber would turn back. You know that."
"No, you're wrong. A weak climber would turn back. A good climber would reach the summit."
"Summiting's only half the battle. We still have to descend."
"If you were with George Mallory right now instead of me, would you tell him to go down?"
Seamie looked away. He said nothing.
"No, you wouldn't. So why are you telling me?"
"Because--"
Willa cut him off. "Because I'm a woman."
"No, Willa, that's not why."
"Why, then? Tell me."
Seamie looked away. Because I
care for you, he thought, and if anything ever happened to you it would kill me.
"I thought so," Willa said angrily. "Do me a favor, Seamie. Don't patronize me. I get that from the rest of the world. I don't need it from you."
Seamie's anger flared. "Go, then," he snapped. "After you."
He knew what he was doing. He was telling her to lead. To pull herself up a seventy-degree slope using only crampons, axes, and brute strength. To cut steps where needed into thick, hard ice. It was hard work under normal circumstances. At nearly sixteen thousand feet, when you were sick and your lungs could not draw enough oxygen, it was crucifying.
"Get out of my way and I bloody well will," she said.
He readied his gear, then watched her attack the icefall. He could hear her breathing. She was laboring to draw quick, deep breaths. She'd learned the technique from Mallory on one of their Alps climbs. It helped get more oxygen into the lungs. Within minutes of her start, Seamie's anger was forgotten. He loved to watch her climb. She was breathtaking, one of the most technically gifted climbers--male or female--he'd ever seen. She seemed not so much to climb a face, but to flow up it, her every movement fluid and sure. She seemed to know by instinct where to place her hands, her feet. Holds he was certain were too small, weren't. Others he was sure would give way, didn't. She lost her footing once, slipping a good ten feet before she arrested her fall with one of her axes--nearly giving him a heart attack in the bargain-- but even with the slip, she still made it up the icefall in under an hour.
Looking at her, so strong and graceful, so damned determined to reach the peak, he realized that he'd been wrong the other night, when she asked him what made a great mountain climber. They'd both been wrong. It wasn't skill or fearlessness, strength or arrogance. It was longing. A great unquenchable yearning for that which was always just out of reach. He saw it in her, that longing, that greatness. She would not be denied.
Two minutes later she was hanging over the edge, smiling down at him. "I'm on a col!" she shouted gleefully. "With a lovely huge boulder! I've got a belay! Hold on!"
A few minutes later the rope that had been coiled over her shoulder came flying down to him. He grabbed it, looped it around his waist, and tied it with a bowline. He started up the icefall, distressed to see drops of crimson on it. Her bleeding was worsening. They mustn't mess around. He was very glad of the belay. It was a huge boon. Between the rope and his crampons, he was up the icefall in minutes.
"There it is!" she said, pointing due south of where they stood. "Alden-Finnegan peak!"
"Looks solid," Seamie said excitedly. "And it's Finnegan-Alden peak, by the way."
Willa laughed. "We've some powdery snow to contend with. And a few rocks, but most look well sunk in. We shouldn't have any movement. Let's go."
It was only a short distance to the peak and straightforward. Half an hour later they were only steps away. Seamie was in the lead. Three yards from the top he stopped, looked at Willa, and stepped aside.
"No," she said. "Together."
She took his hand. He pulled her up alongside him and they took the last few steps in unison, each placing a foot on the summit at the same time. They were quiet for a moment, breathlessly taking it all in--Kibo to the west, the ocean to the east, the hills and sweeping plains north and south of them. And then Seamie let out a loud, long, echoing whoop. Willa did, too. And suddenly they were jumping up and down in the snow like children, shouting and laughing, giddy from adrenaline, exhaustion, and too little oxygen. Willa threw her arms around him. He hugged her, pulling her close, burying his face in her neck, and then it happened--without planning to, without meaning to, he kissed her. He tasted her mouth, the blood on her lips. He felt her twine her arms around his neck and then she was kissing him back.
He broke away and looked at her, at her beautiful, weary face. He took her face in his hands and kissed her again and again and then guilt and despair broke through his happiness and overwhelmed him and he pulled away again. "God, I shouldn't have done that. I shouldn't have kissed you. Good Christ, what a cockup. I'm sorry."
Willa's face, so radiant only seconds ago, clouded. "Sorry? Why?"
He looked at her as if he hadn't heard her correctly. "Because of George."
Worry filled her eyes. "I don't understand, Seamie. Is there something between you and George?"
"Me and George? No, there damn well isn't! It's you and George!"
"You think that George and I... that we... that we're lovers?"
"Aren't you? The way you were with him in the pub in Cambridge... you kissed him good night."
"I kissed Albie good night, too."
"Albie's your brother."
"And George is my second brother. If I kissed him, it was just like kissing Albie, believe me. Why didn't you ask me about George? Or ask George about me? He would have told you. He has no time for girls, only mountains. You daft man. Why didn't you say something in Cambridge?"
"Too jealous, I guess."
"I wanted you so. I would have kissed you on top of St. Botolph's."
"Why didn't you?"
"Because I'd already done it in my garden!"
"That was five bloody years ago!"
"It would've been twice that I'd taken the lead. Just how forward is a girl supposed to be? I thought you had someone else. I thought you must."
"No, Wills."
"I wanted you every night of that damned boat ride. Every night at the Mombasa Club. I wanted you to make love to me. When you didn't, I thought it was because of another girl."
"There's no other girl, Wills. Never has been. Not since that night in your back garden. Under Orion."
He kissed her again, long and slow and deeply. Never in his life had he felt like this, so happy, so complete. Insanely excited, yet calm and content. On a mad impulse, he took her hands in his and said, "I love you, Willa."
He thought she might laugh. Blush. Scold him. Tell him he was insane. Instead she simply said, "I love you, too. Always have. Since forever."
She kissed him then and they took one long, last look at the view. And took photographs, two of each of them, with the camera Seamie had lugged up in his pack.
It was nearly one o'clock when they began their descent. The sun was high and bright, but neither Seamie nor Willa, reeling from attaining the summit, and from what had happened between them there, noticed. They didn't notice that the black tops of rocks now peeked out on the short stretch above the col--rocks that had been completely covered earlier. They didn't notice the water trickling in drips off the edge of the col and down the icefall. They didn't notice any of this until they were back in the couloir and they realized the snow was dangerously soft. Until Seamie lost his footing on loose rock and stopped himself sliding a hundred feet only with a hard swing of his ice-axe.
Until ice that had embedded a rock wedged under a boulder on the ridge above them suddenly crumbled in the afternoon heat, releasing both rock and boulder, sending them smashing down the couloir.
Seamie didn't realize any of this until he heard the roar and looked up in time to see the rock-slide bearing down on Willa. Until the boulder clipped her shoulder, knocking her off the couloir. Until she went hurtling past him, screaming, and was gone.
Chapter 100
"Will be good harvest, no?" Wainaina, Sid's head field worker, said, pinching off a hard red coffee berry from a lush, healthy bush.
"I think so, but I'm afraid to count my chickens."
Wainaina cocked her head. Her puzzled expression told him that she didn't understand. Sid explained the saying's meaning to her in his poor Kikuyu. She nodded and laughed and told him don't count his chickens, then, but by all means, count his coffee beans. "The bushes should give a ton," she said.
Sid snorted. "More like two, I should think."
Wainaina considered this figure. "Perhaps one and one half," she allowed.
She warned him that with a good harvest would come many demands. The other workers were already counting up the goats
they would earn. Some would expect new fences built for their shambas, no less than twenty by twenty. Wainaina wanted these things, too, and an iron griddle besides--one just like the Msabu's cook had.
"Tell them they'll get their pens and their goats--and you'll get your griddle--if I get my two tons."
Wainaina nodded. Sid nodded, too. He knew this was just the opening salvo in Wainaina's yearly battle to get all she could for herself and her fellow workers. She had to have something to offer the other women, something to motivate them to pick every ripe berry on every bush and leave nothing behind. They would go back and forth, Sid and Wainaina, with Sid demanding ever-increasing quantities of coffee and Wainaina declaring his demands impossible, but making a few more of her own. Another griddle. A length of cloth. Two chickens. A lantern. Sid thought that Jevanjee and the rest of the Nairobi merchants could learn much from her.
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