by K. T. Tomb
Feeling unsteady on her feet, almost seasick now that she was on dry land after more than a day, she began to walk into the village.
The houses were made of wood, wattle and thatch, but they were well built. They seemed to be as sturdy and as well maintained as any brick house she had seen in the world she knew.
The streets between the houses were not paved, but they were clean, which surprised Cash.
Still not over her motion sickness, and slightly dizzy, Cash walked onto a square at the edge of the village. There were kids there, dressed in frayed clothes of gold brocade. She blinked. It seemed surreal to see this and even be there.
A half dozen children were playing with marbles, which shone brightly in the sun. They each had small nets of marbles and were bowling the shiners into a small hole in the ground. A man in a bright costume was leaning against the wall of a house on the edge which seemed longer than all the others. None seemed to notice Cash's presence.
One of the marbles rolled toward her as one of the kids pulled a shot and seemed to swear, earning him a berating from the teacher.
Cash bent down and picked up the marble. She turned it over between her fingers and could hardly believe what she was holding. It was a pure green emerald, rivaling any stone in the crown jewels.
Just then, the teacher rang a bell and called the children back into the long house. The kids just dropped their marbles where they stood and ran off. Carefully, Cash moved from the shadows of the street to take a look at the marbles. She was stunned to find they were all precious stones: rubies and emeralds and pieces of gold and silver that had been shaped into perfect rounds. From the way the kids had been allowed to play with them and how they had been left, Cash knew she was in a place where such things carried no value. At least, not in the same way as any Westerner would value them.
Nevertheless, Cash picked them up, more out of habit than anything else and walked toward the teacher, who was waiting by the door of the school for the laggards to come in. She held them out to the man. He looked at her, not knowing what she wanted. She thrust the stones into his hands. He just shrugged and threw them down by the side of the door and went inside.
Cash walked on, wanting to explore the village. There were some people in the village streets and they looked at her carefully. They studied her clothes and checked out her golden hair, but they greeted her in a very friendly manner and let her continue on her way.
One house in particular stood out. Though it was made from the same materials as the other buildings, it was built like a small palace. In fact, it reminded her in particular of Apsley House, the Iron Duke's old house at Hyde Park Corner.
She walked around it and found a door at the back was open. A smell of cooking drifted out on the wind. Cash could not help but stick her head inside the door. She had not eaten for more than a day and the smell of food was something that just drew her in. When she popped her head in, she heard the sound of music too. It sounded like a harp and a flute. The melody was something very clever, not quite Western, but certainly not an Indian tune either. It was as though someone like Tchaikovsky had spent years in South America and composed this piece.
A servant, also dressed in gold brocade, finally noticed her and gestured at her to step in. She spoke to her in a language that must have been a dialect of Arawakan or Caribe. Cash knew that much about the region, but she could not understand a word of what was being said to her.
The servant looked her up and down and waved at someone else to come and help her out here. She said something to the woman who showed up, rubbing her fingers on a silver apron.
The woman asked Cash who she was and what she was doing there in hesitant, broken Portuguese. It took Cash a moment to understand her, but then she responded in the same language.
She said she was not sure how she got here, but that she had arrived here by boat earlier.
“You look like you are hungry,” the servant in the silver apron said.
“I am,” Cash said with a smile as she felt her stomach rumble. “Perhaps you can spare some food?”
The woman waved her hand dismissively at that and turned around. She indicated that Cash should follow her. She led her into the house, down a corridor and eventually into a large room. There were several long tables there and several men and women sat around the tables on benches and chairs, all enjoying their meals.
The woman motioned for Cash to take a seat and then winked for someone to serve her food. Immediately someone brought her something, bread and roast poultry, on a silver plate.
“I haven't any money.” Cash protested. “How will I pay for all of this?”
Again the woman waved her hand dismissively. “This is an inn for travelers. Government pays for everything here for travelers and merchants.”
The bird was small and Cash ate it quickly. The bread turned out to be made of corn and it tasted divine. She looked around and let her gaze wander over the crowd. The men gathered there seemed to all be well-off. They were all well-dressed and well-mannered. And all of them seemed to eat well.
The cook who spoke Portuguese came back to the table and asked Cash whether she wanted something more to eat. Cash shook her head.
“This seems to be a wealthy village,” Cash remarked to her.
The woman shook her head and laughed. “No, no. We are a small village. Not wealthy at all.”
Cash could not imagine it. She knew this must be El Dorado, but she was amazed by the strangeness of the society she had encountered. The woman must have seen the bemusement on her face, because she stepped in immediately. “The village elder served at the court of our King for most of his life, like his father before him. Maybe he can tell you more about ourselves and about this land. I do have to work as well.”
“Where does he live?” Cash asked.
“He lives in the house on the edge of the central plaza.” She turned around, but then checked herself. “He did travel too. He speaks this language too.”
So Cash got up and left the inn by the front door. She took a while to find the main plaza of the village, and then it was not even obvious which house was the elder's. She eventually knew the house because of the knotted ropes that hung over the doorway. She realized then that these people must be related or even descended from the Inca. It was odd to find Incan links in the jungle so far east of the Andes, but there it was.
The elder confirmed as much too. He said this had been part of the Inca Empire, but one that had remained hidden from the Spanish Conquistadores.
He offered his explanation of all of this in fluent Portuguese in the living room of his simple house. The house was simple, but the furniture would be less than simple anywhere else in the world. The cushions were made from fine red alpaca wool and filled with down. Tapestries hung from every wall.
The elder offered Cash a room in his house too, so she could spend the night there. She could wash herself and spend the night in comfort. If she wanted to, she could use one of his coaches to head to the capital too. Though he also explained the capital lay on a canal that was connected to the river, so she could use her boat to get there if she would rather.
And so Cash Cassidy had arrived in El Dorado, and for the time being all her worries were gone. She was safe, and she had found what she was looking for.
***
In Trinidad, Tim Mathews was having kittens. He had been wandering around the beach all the previous day, and today he was there again, trying to take his mind off the lack of information from his wife. He knew she would not just stop sending him updates. Stubborn, headstrong, pigheaded as she was, she was a woman of her word. He checked the last message he received again. He saw the GPS coordinates she had given last. But for the last three days, he had not heard a thing.
He went about his business in Port of Spain in a stressed daze. He wandered around the hotel room, the streets and along the beach constantly looking at his phone, waiting for an update. But there were none.
He did not sleep that
night, and in the morning he had made up his mind. He needed to go and look for Cash. But the question was how to get there. She pointed it out all the time and he always refused to admit to the truth of her opinion. But he was fully aware of how incompetent he was right now. The last time he had been in any sort of environment like the one he would have to head into, was in the Australian outback. That had been a holiday with Cash, and she had really taken care of him then.
He had done a short stint in the Terries as a paratrooper, something that had run in his family for a long time, and had done some survival training, but he knew he did not have the skills required to spend any significant amount of time in the jungle. He had no skills in rafting or canoeing. He knew how to use a knife, but he had never practiced the use of a machete, the tool needed to survive in the jungle. But despite all those practical objections, he knew he could not waste time. Nor could he count on any authorities in that area. He knew neither the Suriname or the Guyana government would allow a large scale search to be set up without the permission of the other. The bureaucratic tangle would not be unknotted in time for Cash to be helped if she were in distress. Maybe, for once, it was time to take a leaf out of her book.
When Tim Mathews wanted, he found a way. The school he went to, Eaton College, opened many doors. His father's name and his mother's contacts opened doors, his family history and links opened doors. Their name was not in Burke's Peerage, but it was not far away from it. His direct family was only two generations away from a title. Given his great uncle's sexuality, he might soon find himself in line for a barony though.
It took Tim a day of calling around, contacting mates, calling in favors and schmoozing to arrange what he needed. What he needed was to get to Cash's last known location fast and then to travel fast and find her fast, before he got himself into trouble. And of course arrange a means of getting back out of the jungle.
He found it when a former classmate of his, a man who had joined Her Majesty's Army and graduated from Sandhurst, told him of a former classmate of his at Sandhurst who was from Guyana. He did not know whether the man was still in active service, but it turned out he was when Tim called him. This man in turn put him in touch with the commander of the Guyana Air Corps.
The Guyana Air Corps was small, just a brace of transport planes and four various helicopters. But if Tim could find a pilot willing to take him to that area, he could land there, or even parachute down and try and locate Cash.
The commander of the Air Corps told him there would be a scheduled flight over that general area in two days' time. Just a routine flight over that particular stretch of the Courantyne River to remind the Surinamers they had a claim to the area. They would stick to their own bank if they could, of course, but they should be flying over the area he was looking at and encounter no trouble.
So Tim packed up and made sure he could fly to Georgetown in the morning.
By the time Tim touched down at Ogle International Airport, Cash was awake again. The smell of food wafted through the house of the village elder where she had spent the night. Her clothes had been washed for her when she went to bed, and they were drying on the line behind the house now that the sun was out. She had been given a set of clothes like those of the natives to wear in the meantime.
When she got to the main room of the house, she sort of expected from the smell to see breakfast laid out, but the old man and his entire family were gathered there and waiting for her. When she joined their table, the old man began singing a solemn song, with some vocal participation from the others. It seemed like a hymn of praise, though again, it was a strange song to Cash. It was not quite Indian, but it was not Western, either. It was on par with any Western composition, and yet it was not.
Cash kept a respectful silence, but was glad when half an hour later the song ended and breakfast was served. Half a dozen servants brought the many dishes in, which consisted mainly of roast poultry, breads, cakes and fruits. She did not speak for a long time, simply enjoying a meal she never thought was even possible.
The old man just smiled at her for a while, noticing the relish with which she tackled her food. But when she finally slowed down, he spoke.
“Are you going to be heading to our capital today?”
Cash swallowed a mouthful and nodded.
“My daughter here will be heading there too. If you wish, you can ride with her?”
Cash thought about that. She was in half a mind to go by canoe. She did not want to bother anyone, nor did she want to be dependent on anyone. But a ride in one of the llama coaches was tempting. Especially as she would not have to paddle back upstream if she wanted to come back to this place.
Cash remained dressed in the local finery, but she did go down to the canoe to grab her backpack. She pulled her jungle boots on, which, with clean socks, were far more comfortable than the sandals she had been given. Her own dried clothes stuffed into her bag, she joined the elder's daughter at the side of the house.
On the other side of the plaza was a communal coach house and it was there the elder's coach had been stalled. It was a beautiful thing, dressed in gold leaf and decorated with precious stones, which did not seem so precious here. There were no real windows, but the coach was made wind tight by curtains of very fine cloth that shimmered like the most beautiful silk, but which felt like cotton. When she asked about them, the daughter told her, also in remarkably good Portuguese, that it was indeed cotton, but their people had perfected a means of preparing cotton to this delicate standard many hundreds of years ago.
Six huge llamas were brought out and they were harnessed to the coach. The girl got in first, and she offered a hand to Cash. Cash got in clumsily, encumbered by the dress she was wearing. She was simply not used to that anymore. A driver got up on his seat at the front of the coach and cracked his whip. He steered the coach skillfully through the village streets and toward the big road. There he took the turn with equal care and precision and cracked his whip again. He shouted something and the llamas began to run at full pace so suddenly, Cash was thrown deep down into the cushions of the coach. And at breakneck speed, she was now heading for the capital of El Dorado.
Chapter Nine
“Cabeza de Vaca told of the Seven Cities of Cibola; interest in these treasure-laden cities reached a peak with the stories of Fray Marcos de Niza and culminated in a tremendous but fruitless expedition under Francisco Vásquez de Coronado. El Dorado is used figuratively to mean any place of fabulous wealth, a utopian dream, or the land of desire.”
—The Columbia Encyclopedia, 6th ed. | 2014
If Tim was not preoccupied, he would probably have enjoyed Georgetown. As it was, his mind was solely focused on finding his wife. By the time he got on board the Short SC.7 Skyvan at the Guyana Defense Force Air Corps at the same airport he first landed at, Cash had been missing a week. He just did not know what was going on. He was fully aware she was more than capable of getting out of the jungle alive if she lost her canoe and supplies, but he just could not shake the thought that something was going on. Of course, it could mean she had found The City of Gold and was now unable to contact him. But there was nothing he could do now but try and find her.
Knowing Cash, she would choose the easiest path back to the civilized world if she was in trouble. That would mean following the river to the coast. No doubt there would be villages along the river too. He knew the best thing he could do now was to parachute down with a raft and follow the river and look for clues of Cash's presence.
He had spent the previous day trying to find a suitable raft. He had eventually found an inflatable raft that was sturdy enough to take on what the Courantyne River might throw at him. He had bought a rifle and cartridges and a backpack with supplies. He also obtained a knife and a machete, which he had hung from his belt. He would drop his gear on a chute then follow himself. He would use a GPS tracker and a locator to find his gear and then get to where Cash last gave him an update.
The light craft flew toward th
e Suriname border first, tracking the Courantyne River for a while and then it turned inland. The pilot told him they were first going to the town of Lethem, on the Brazilian border. From there they would head for the Suriname border and the Courantyne River and fly along the river until they would reach the airstrip at Kumaka. They would refuel there and head further along the river to the coast and Georgetown.
On the plane, Tim tried to do what Cash would do – simply try to sleep while he could do nothing more – but the worries about Cash did not allow him to do that. He just looked down at the forest below and tried to see where his wife might be. Of course, there was no way he could see anything down there. Even in Letham, he was barely able to sleep. He lay in the barrack bunk that had been provided for him, eyes opened, gazing at the bunk above him.
He had the room to himself. The barracks was only one building. One side of it was the offices of the Guyana Defense Force and two thirds were barracks. The building was supposed to house a dozen men, but they all really lived in the town. The only other people there now were the guard and the crew of the airplane. As there were three rooms stacked with bunks, all three of them had taken their own room. It spared Tim trying to sleep through the snoring of the captain, but sleeping was difficult anyway.
When they left Letham on the way to the Courantyne River, Tim was still half asleep. He had barely slept and now he was drifting in and out of sleep that morning. In the few moments he was awake, he had something different to worry about. He grinned to himself when he realized that his lack of sleep had finally taken his mind of Cash's well-being. Instead, he worried about his problems. He had not jumped in a while, and to jump into the forest now when sleep deprived was not perhaps the best idea he had ever had. But he committed to it now.
