‘I do not know Portuguese. But in the book of Ulima Fort, the words on the stones are like that.’
*
‘Chini, chini!’ Tensely Leli motioned Jela to go lower.
The fisherman, roped securely to a tree some distance back, obediently moved down over the broken wall of the hole. He paused at the peculiar bared stones, peered without touching. He played out the rope and lowered himself to other protruding nobbles and lumps.
He teased mud aside. Damply sticky, it fell away, and he said something, rapid, excited.
The edge of something dark showed, straight, different from the stones above.
Tentatively, he scraped more, yelled as the shape slid suddenly forwards so that he had to dance out of its way on the rope. And they watched it roll in a slow, bounce, bounce, bounce against the sides of the hole, reach the bottom, come to rest on end, topple, and subside in soft, crumbled soil, settle, and ever so slowly split, and they were all looking down at a gentle cascade, a soft gleaming yellow river, trickling silently into the beam of the hard midday sun.
‘It is dhahabu! I mean gold!’ Makena jerked the binoculars from place to place. ‘Coins there, and at the back, ingots. Other chests in the soil behind! Wedged on rock, I think, but we will have to investigate properly, and contain our impatience.’
From her dancing from foot to foot, Ally could see this was difficult. Since arriving, Makena had not stopped talking. ‘Rutere telephones, come this minute, he instructs, tell no one why, bring a trusted journalist and photographer!’
The photographer was feverishly taking picture after picture: Ally, Leli, Jela, Lumbwi, his father, the ropes still tied to the tree, the ledge where Leli’d lain, the stone she’d held, the chest at the bottom of the hole. The journalist was scribbling down every word spoken by anyone about anything.
‘Ally, Leli, it is the biggest, biggest adventure, and you give it to us! Over there, look,’ she thrust the binoculars at Leli, ‘you see? A stone platform. The curve below . . . it is a drinking well, I am guessing.’ She pointed to the stone with the marks, ‘That, very interesting. Very, very! Inscription above a door or gate maybe . . . Fractured in some violent way. The experts will have to say, but I think an explosion, fire—’
Ally stared down at it. She was seeing the figure of the boy on the beach. Blackened clothes, in shreds . . . As if he’d burst through a fire.
The way his eyes locked hers, telling her. Imploring.
She looked up, into Makena’s face. ‘It’s the gate of a fort, isn’t it?’ she said, but knowing. ‘It’s the lost one, on the island, like Mzee Kitwana says . . .’
Makena’s grin was wider than ever. ‘And see, this top thing, this thing you so luckily found to hold till brave Leli could save you, Miss Very Special Extra Clever, this is a bit of a stone cross. It is called a padrão. When the Portuguese ships claimed land for their king, they planted these to mark—’
‘Never mind the detail!’ Inspector Rutere broke in brusquely. ‘Be clear! What does it mean for Shanza?’
‘Rutere! The details must be savoured! Even by an impatient policeman! But OK, OK, I make a guess for you. We are definitely in the ruins of a very, very, very old Portuguese construction. It is built above the cave in the cliff – and the roof of the cave has fallen, whoosh! in the storms. Quickly we make it strong or everything will drop to the sea before we learn more! And those chests? They contain items of immense value! In-com-par-able value! So much that you and I and other ordinary people cannot possibly imagine!’
The broken chest splaying its extraordinary contents seemed to Ally to bask in their silent gaze.
She glanced at Leli, who seemed transfixed, unable to find any words. He met her gaze, a world of meaning in his face.
‘Is it enough?’ she asked Makena, phrasing the question for Leli. ‘I mean, is it the ammunition, like you said? To stop Kisiri being sold?’
‘Ho! Is it enough, she asks! Is it enough! I will stake my reputation on it, Ally! No government could risk allowing a site like this to pass to private owners before further investigation! So what it means, Rutere my friend,’ she clapped the policeman exuberantly on the shoulder, ‘is that I doubt this island can be sold for some time. Till we get to the bottom of this, so to speak! The very, very bottom!’ Her eyes shone. ‘Oh, there will be dancing! Even Mzee Kitwana, we will have dancing!’
Leli reached out and gripped Ally’s hand, very tight. ‘Miss Makena, do you know a word – Ally, it was speranza, you told me, yes? S-p-e-r-a-n-z-a? Do you know this thing?’
Makena pursed her lips. ‘No, no, no, I do not think . . . Oh! It is perhaps a bit like one Portuguese word. Esperança. See,’ she pronounced it slowly, ‘a little bit the same?’
Esperança. Ally savoured the sounds, repeated them slowly inside her head, recognizing. She asked aloud, ‘What does it mean?’
‘Eh!’ Makena said in delight. ‘A good word for us all! A very, very, very good word! Hope! Hope! It means hope! Let us all descend, and let us inform Mzee Shaibu and Mzee Kitwana and all our friends of hope!’ She flung her arms out, enjoying herself. ‘Ah-ha, let us broadcast to the world that Shanza has received the Gift of Hope! Shanza has found a most powerful weapon! The legacy of the old thieves who plundered these places, to use against the new thieves who wish to plunder her again. Truly, it is all in the secrets of the island!’
one month later, London
dancing
Twenty-six
Words floated in her mind: esperança . . . ghosts . . . you, me, ghosts of Kisiri . . . secrets of the island.
And faces – the boy’s, ragged, fire-scorched; Leli’s eyes willing her not to fall. Nothing else quite penetrated the half-world of muted sound and paled colour that seemed to have closed over her since she stepped off the plane in London. Like being suspended here, while everything in that distant place paused, and waited for her, and she for it.
She stood looking at the large padded envelope on the kitchen table. Still sealed, though the postman had delivered it an hour ago.
Her aunt’s writing: To Jack, Benjy, Ally.
Upstairs, she heard Ben’s voice on the landing, then Jack’s door flung open. The bathroom door slammed and the shower ran. Ten minutes, they’d be rushing down, heading for Saturday football, spotting the envelope, opening it.
Any minute her parents would emerge too, full of curiosity.
She needed to know what was in the envelope. Alone, privately, in case—
Suddenly decisive, she tore it open and emptied it on the table. Several sheets of Carole’s writing; a green plastic folder of typed pages; a wad of photos . . . She upended the envelope. A handful of other photos flopped out. Nothing else.
Disappointment rolled over her like the darkening morning outside, light rain becoming a swiftly murkier downpour. And something deeper and more lasting settled in her, a bleakness, a greyness, that not even Carole’s letter and the photos could lift from her.
Truth was, nothing waited for her. It all raced on without her, she no longer part of it, and a bit of her seemed cut away.
What did I expect? the other part said. I went away. Just got on a plane and went away. Why expect him to share his life with me now?
You could write to him, a bit of her answered back. You had to come home. It was just a holiday.
Write about what? Not the truth – that she was just sleepwalking here. That the awake Ally, the alive Ally was still there, left behind, with him. And that the sleepwalking bit trapped here was afraid he’d moved beyond and away from her.
Of course he has.
Then she was angry at the wallowing self-pity, and made herself sit down and splay out the photos and go through them properly, one by one.
There they all were – Ben, Jack, Leli, Huru, her, sitting on Saka’s ngalawa; then one of her and Leli walking by Mzee Shaibu’s house and looking back ov
er their shoulders, laughing.
She remembered that. Eshe took it. It was the afternoon after the discoveries on Kisiri, Makena donating the camera. ‘Record everything! Who knows what is important and what is not?’ She’d instructed everyone clustering to learn to work the camera, and Eshe was first to have a go, following Ally and Leli along the path. ‘I record the founders of everything: Fumo and Zawati born again,’ she’d yelled, and Leli’d attempted a withering look, ‘old joke, Eshe!’ because it was the joke Mzee Kitwana made on that very first day, that very first walk through Shanza with Leli. She remembered saying then, ‘It’s a nice joke! I quite like being called a warrior and a leader!’ and Leli’d given her his narrow-eyed look, suspicious she was teasing.
The memory warmed her. She sorted quickly through other pictures, imagining explaining who was who to Zoe and other friends, where things happened, how they happened, what it meant.
But not about Leli, not even to Zoe, folding him away just for herself. And how could she really explain Kisiri, strangeness, beauty, the horror of those slaughtered animals, the way everything about that place – his place – him – woke her up? Or the boy on the beach and the cliffs, whoever he was, who’d somehow made everything happen, sent her scrambling for the cliff, drawn them to the treasure, pulled her and Leli together again.
She’d only ever told Leli about him. It wasn’t something feverish and invented, the way people might think. Distance – four thousand miles between them, all the days since, made her certain. Sometimes she saw those moments again with a stark sunlit precision, like watching a film – the look in the boy’s eyes, his voice, the burst of flame on the cliff that sent her clambering up, the shimmer of movement that she knew was him.
How could you tell anyone here any of that? Impossible even to say it to Jack or Ben or Carole, who’d been there. Only Leli.
Misery surged up again, making her cold. She focused hard on picking through the other pictures: a shot of the Boat Crew, four little figures standing to attention, luminous in matching orange T-shirts, like a uniform; Dedan in plaster, arm and leg, brandishing a crutch proudly, another of Collins – all smiles on his still battered face – drumming on the little drum just after Makena gave it to him. ‘My Ghana friend has given me this,’ Makena’d said. ‘Special! A Talking Drum! You will make it speak for us, Collins. I cannot . . . you can make it tell our story!’
Picture after picture – the celebration dancing on Shanza’s beach every night in those following weeks, among the fishing boats, the radio singing out, Collins on his drum; everyone canoeing to Kisiri as Makena brought people to see the discoveries and assembled her team to excavate and uncover more of the ruins.
The last picture she recalled clearly. Lumbwi took it. Mzee Kitwana in the middle with Ally on one side, Leli on the other, on the storyteller’s rock-seat where he’d told them the Fumo and Zawati legend. They were all three lit by one of those basking streams of light that always came after the squally bursts of rain those last weeks. Mzee Kitwana’s eyes fixed sternly forward, but she and Leli were turned to look at him, because out of nowhere, in his bewildering way, he’d declared, ‘Bwana Fumo, eagle of the sea, Mwana Zawati, our Gift! You see, my children – beginnings and life, not endings and death!’ And then looked at them both with his head on one side, and flapped his hand to make them go.
Leli’d linked arms with her as they walked away.
Now, she stacked the photos together and picked up her aunt’s letter, sheets and sheets of large, scrawly writing. Headings underlined with fat purple highlighter.
Update, (it began) – everything’s moving so fast, faster since you left, I can barely keep up!
KISIRI
They’ve finished shoring up the roof of the cave, and now Makena’s begun excavating. The ruins are buried much, much deeper than she expected. She thinks it’ll turn out they were covered by the tidal wave that hit this coast several hundred years ago.
But they’ve already located the one bastion of the fort! So far just the parapet, just above the mouth of the cave on the edge of the cliff.
Makena came by the house last night to report about that inscription on the stone you found, Ally. They’ve matched it to official records in Portugal, so now they know exactly which fort it is! The inscription celebrates the opening of the fort in 1648 – nearly three hundred and seventy years ago.
Makena has also started to poke about in the forest very near our house – she says she was curious about a mound near the path. Wishful thinking, I thought, concentrate on Kisiri! But then she uncovered the tip of a stone pillar from an old Swahili tomb – much older than the fort on Kisiri, at least five hundred years old. It’s held in the soil almost upright, and there’s a bit of wall near it. So now Makena thinks there may be an old Swahili city under the forest, and under this house – one of the ‘lost’ ones.
Of course Mzee Kitwana announced he’ll die happy now because it’s Fumo and Zawati’s city. Makena just says cryptically that YOU made her look in the forest, Ally! If so, even I will start believing you’ve got a sixth sense. I still wake up in a nightmare sweat about what might have happened to you up there on the cliff. And the other thing – what it would be like on Kisiri and in Shanza now, with the new buyers in control, if the storm hadn’t loosened everything and some piece of lunacy hadn’t sent you charging up there with Leli. What if you’d never found the fort and its treasure? Doesn’t bear thinking about.
I just had tea with Mzee Kitwana and Makena. Arguing, as ever! Mzee Kitwana declares, ‘Before. Now. Again, again, they try to take Kisiri from us. They fail! The land and the sea – greater than everything, good friends we must never betray. When everything else is gone, the land and the sea are there, to give us life!’
‘Not if the hotel got its way,’ Makena grumbled, but only to prod Mzee further. I sort of understood Mzee – it’s like Kisiri’s a refuge, a salvation – in the legend, and now; it gave everyone back their courage to fight against impossible odds, didn’t it?
LIONS AND CHEETAHS ETC
V v good news: Rutere told me police have seized ivory and skins on a boat on the north coast, AND they’ve managed to link it foren-sically with things here, including (Rutere’s delighted), Collins’ and Dedan’s clothes (the ones you packed up, Benjy). Also to the vehicles Leli’s brother reported. There’s evidence of animals in the boats and cars, and even traces of soil from the ravine you went to with them, Jack! Ten arrests so far, SOME AT TUNDANI HOTEL. Of course the Kisiri buyers denied it was anything to do with them and tried to rush through the purchase. But the newspapers jumped on the story and there was a big public outcry.
Buried forts, treasure, ruins in Shanza forest – it really has stopped everything! Just think, Ally – you, Leli, Lumbwi and his father, Jela – you did that by falling smack in that hole!
Tundani ‘Paradise’ goes on, of course, with ‘new management’, and tourists flock in. But – some really good news – Shanza gets a Finders’ Reward for the treasure – more than enough to pay for a lawyer, and then some! The D.O. and Mzee Shaibu, Rutere and Makena between them have found one. He’s fierce about people’s control over places like Kisiri. He made Mzee Shaibu get up and speak at the public hearing last week. I thought Mzee would be very nervous! But he was immensely calm.
Here’s what he said: ‘We are not backward–looking. We welcome change and development. But we have a right to control this change in our lives and our land, to be guardians of its past and its future.’
The newspapers loved it. They keep quoting him, so Kisiri and Shanza are becoming test cases for how tourism should work in places like this, and what happens to the people caught in the middle.
Makena of course mutters dark warnings about archaeological pirates who’ll loot the ruins (thieves, just like the Portuguese in the fort, she points out). Let’s hope the lawyer can work his magic and keep Shanza and Kisiri safe.
WHAT’S NEXT . . . ?
A lot! Some of the reward is going to an Education Fund to pay school fees for everyone (including the Boat Crew). Makena’s also plotting a little museum in Shanza, and I predict those four will wangle their way in as guides. The village now runs a ferry service for the archaeologists going to Kisiri, and Collins and Dedan have taken charge. Dedan organizes who and when, Collins collects fares and delivers them to Mzee Shaibu. He demanded a uniform (there’s a photo of them wearing it). But Makena tells me Collins also finds excuses to ride the boats to Kisiri and hang about asking questions. So Makena thinks he’s secretly fascinated by the finds. A budding Makena? And other big changes afoot: the women, led by Leli’s mother and Halima, have asked for a voice or two on the village council ‘so they can look after everything properly’. Some of the Elders are squirming, but it’s going to happen!
At one point there was a plan for the four kids to live with Hasina and Aishia, Grace and Joseph with one, Collins and Dedan with the other. But they refused to be separated, and stayed in the abandoned boat. So now everyone’s helping build a room for them next to Mzee Shaibu. The four kids inspect it daily, v impressed with the real bed the carpenter is making for them.
FINALLY – I can hardly believe it myself – A HEALTH CLINIC! Impossible for the government to ignore the clamour now – the area is too much in the news.
It’s to be right here, on the main road at Kitokwe. Salim’s very excited and is going to paint the shop and put chairs and tables under a shelter for people to sit while they wait. Mosi and Pili are organizing everyone to draw pictures on the walls – of Kisiri and the fort (looking like Ulima Fort, we don’t know yet how it really looks) and decorate the tables and chairs to make it welcoming.
So – you won’t be surprised – I’m staying on in the Old Fisheries House after all! I’m going to help my friend Dr Kuanga run the Kitokwe clinic. We’re thinking of starting a temporary weekly one in a tent, just for minor treatment, until the building is finished. Rutere insists it’s the seed of the North Coast General Hospital. We’re going to prove him right!
Song Beneath the Tides Page 21
