Mark of the Lion (43 page)

“But,” continued Jade, “even if David’s mother hired Roger, I’m not sure I can get proof. Still, we need to keep Pili’s whereabouts in England secret.”

And,
she thought,
I’ll need to watch my back.

 

“We’re here.” Beverly’s melodious voice brought Jade back from Africa to the French countryside and to the present. Both of the Dunburys knew how important this trip was to Jade, and she felt a surge of gratitude towards them for making it possible. The steam engine chugged to a stop.

The walk from the station to the cemetery took them through the French village to a quaint stone churchyard. Jade marveled at how quickly the townspeople had repaired many of the buildings. Even the earth had healed itself and spread a lush carpet over the hillside as green as the rare green garnets that Pili now owned. Together, the four of them found the grave site and the simple marker.

 

 

Beverly and Avery placed a wreath of roses over the stone. Jade let a silent tear fall onto the grave. It was her gift, one from the heart.

I found out what happened to your father, David. I found your brother, too, and brought him to you.
She paused and conquered the tightness in her chest.
He’s a fine man and truly worthy.
She bowed her head.
Thank you for entrusting me with the task. I think I know who hired Forster to kill your father, and someday, I’ll get the proof.

Jade looked up at David’s brother and smiled. Her own green eyes sparkled like the mysterious stones. She remembered the ring she still wore under her blouse. Technically it, too, belonged to Pili. She took it from around her neck and held it out to him. “This is yours as well.”

Pili gently closed her fingers over the ring with his slender hand. “My brother loved you. He wanted you to have it. Perhaps if you had married, you would be my sister, and I want my sister to have this ring.”

Beverly came forward and hugged them both. “David can be very proud of his brother. You’ll have a good life ahead of you.” She turned to her husband. “Avery, tell them our news.”

“We’ve decided to settle in British East Africa,” he said. “We bought Leticia Kenton’s farm from her. We’re going to raise horses, and once Pili has finished his veterinary courses, he’s going to be our partner. Neville and I are making plans to get an aeroplane and start that safari guide business we talked of.”

“And, Jade, we want you to come stay with us,” added Beverly. “There’s plenty of room for you. Maddy can’t wait for you to be one of her neighbors. You know she’s started her first book, don’t you? It’s all about you. I think she needs you around for more material.” She took Jade’s hand in hers and pleaded. “Oh, please say you’ll stay with us.”

“I’m very happy for all of you,” Jade said, “but, Bev, I can’t—” Her throat caught and the remaining words died before they came out. “I have no idea what I’m going to do right now, Bev,” she said finally. “The magazine wants me to write more articles on Africa, so I promised I would. After all, Africa’s gotten under my skin.” She fingered her lion-tooth tattoo. “But I don’t think I can stay in Nairobi.”

As she said it, she wondered what sort of life lay ahead for her. She’d paid her debt to David, but she felt no release. Maybe it was the war. Maybe it would always haunt her. She did know this: she’d never feel settled anywhere. If anything, she’d use her new job as an excuse to travel, to wander, to search over that vast continent. It would be easier if she knew what she was searching for.

THE PREMISE FOR THIS STORY COMES from an interesting tale. Bror von Blixen (husband of
Out of Africa
author Isak Dinesen, and a famous hunter/author in his own right) was once asked to shoot a particularly troublesome hyena. The tribespeople claimed it belonged to a witch and feared revenge if they tackled it themselves. Blixen shot the animal but only wounded it at first. He followed the trail, flushed it from some brush, and shot it again. Baron Blixen claims that when he finally came near the carcass, there was no hyena, but a man with two bullet holes. This tale and similar stories of vengeance animals can be found in
The Tree Where Man Was Born
, by Peter Matthiessen, and in
Death in the Long Grass
, by Peter Hathaway Capstick.

Any of the books that Jade found or looked to find in Gil Worthy’s library will also give the reader insight into colonial Africa. All of these can be borrowed through interlibrary loans. Other excellent and more accessible resources include any of Elspeth Huxley’s books, such as
The Flame Trees of Thika
and
The Mottled Lizard
, as well as books by Isak Dinesen and Beryl Markham. Osa and Martin Johnson wrote several books on life in 1920s Africa, including the famous
Four Years in Paradise
and
I Married Adventure
. Information on the Johnsons is also available at the Martin and Osa Johnson Safari Museum, which has an excellent Web site (
www.safarimuseum.com
) and an even more magnificent research library in the museum in Chanute, Kansas.

 

For more information on women ambulance drivers, the reader can start with
Gentlemen Volunteers
, by Arlen J. Hansen. There is a chapter devoted to women drivers and tremendous resources listed in the back of the book. An excellent fictionalized version is
Not So Quiet …
, a novel by Helen Zenna Smith. This novel, printed shortly after World War I, was banned in some places for being too controversial.

Suzanne Arruda
, a zookeeper turned science teacher and freelance writer, is the author of several biographies for young adults. She has published science and nature articles for adults and children and is a regular contributor to a weekly newspaper supplement. An avid hiker and outdoorswoman, Suzanne lives in Kansas with her husband, twin sons, and a small menagerie of pets. You can reach her at
www.suzannearruda.com
.

THE LAST ELEPHANT COW SMACKED HER baby on the rump with her trunk, and the calf squealed and trotted after the rest of the herd.

“I’m betting if it hadn’t been for that lovesick bull elk, I wouldn’t be stuck up in this tree with you, Bev, hiding from elephants.”

Jade del Cameron watched her friend’s wide-eyed reaction with a great deal of amusement. The herd had passed beneath them, brushing their bulky sides against the stinkwood tree’s trunk. Jade’s former ambulance corps comrade Beverly Dunbury had clutched an overhead limb for dear life, her blue eyes bugging out of her head. Once the pachyderms melted back into the forest, Bev relaxed her grip on the branch and sank onto the blind’s planking. The scent of bitter almond hung heavy in the air from the bruised leaves. Jade shifted in the tree blind and resumed setting up her equipment for a night shot.

“You will simply have to explain that to me,” Beverly whispered as she fanned herself.

“Of course. Several years ago there was this
big
bull elk hanging around my family’s ranch in New Mexico. Eight points at least. That’s the size of his rack, his antlers.” She paused to see if Beverly understood and decided she didn’t. “It shows he wasn’t a calf and not a real old-timer, either. Anyway, it seems he fell head over hooves in love, so to speak, with one of our horses, and—” Jade cut her narrative short as a loud trumpeting ripped through the forest. “Whoa, now. Speaking of bulls, that sounds like our big old fellow. Gads, but I want to get a good photograph of him. He’s so ancient that his tusks nearly cross each other. Probably would if he hadn’t broken one of them.”

“Too far away to hunt up tonight,” added Beverly’s husband, Avery, from the other side of the tree blind. “Is this contraption really going to take pictures?” Avery inquired. He put down his book and scooted over the narrow planking to inspect the work in progress.

“It did in Nairobi, but we’ll get our field test tonight,” Jade said. “In theory it should. At least I’ve rigged it correctly up here.” She patted the Graflex gently.

“When did you test in it Nairobi?” asked Beverly. “Did you set something up by the pond at our house?”

Jade chuckled, her voice warm and mellow. “Now what would I photograph at your house, Bev? I’d have done better at Neville and Madeline Thompson’s coffee farm. At least that looks African. You’ve turned yours into a proper English estate with all those rosebushes.”

“You might have taken a picture of whatever ate all her peacocks,” suggested Avery. “Lion, I suspect.”

“Well, unless you wanted to offer him another peacock as bait, I doubt I’d have seen him. No, I rigged up a test line outside of the Muthaiga Club. Put it near some of the cars during the party Lord Colridge threw for his son Edmunde’s homecoming.” What an evening that had been, most notable for the conversation she’d had with Blaney Percival, the Protectorate’s chief game warden. It had all seemed so incongruous: her dressed in her best apricot-colored gown, Mr. Percival in evening kit, surrounded by half of Nairobi society, discussing elephants and dangerous poachers as casually as the others talked of dinner parties and flirtations.

“I wouldn’t recommend this sort of trip to a woman, but I believe you could tackle it, Miss del Cameron,” Blaney Percival had said over the blare of the gramophone.

Jade’s skin tingled as he spoke those words. “Would I find many elephants?” she asked. “More than at Mount Kenya?”

“Undoubtably, and I’ll even send word to Isiolo to let the patrol up there know you’re coming. In return, though, I want you to do me a favor… .”

“Jade! Pay attention, I’m trying to talk to you.” Back in the present, Beverly put her hands on her hips and scolded Jade. “You’re a sneaky little devil! I’d wondered where you’d gone off to during the dancing and why you looked so smug when you came back. All this time I’d hoped you were off having a romantic tête-à-tête with someone.”

Jade snorted and adjusted the camera’s lens again, then shouldered the roll of wire. “All that remains now is to anchor the trip wire across the trail. Cover me, Avery.”

Avery Dunbury hefted his Mannlicher rifle and scouted the surrounding brush for any hidden danger. “All clear.”

Jade shinnied down the stinkwood tree. The daughter of a New Mexican rancher, she always felt more at home in the wilderness than with crowds of people, and her current position as a writer and photographer for
The Traveler
suited her temperament well. Her first assignment, after her stint as a frontline ambulance driver with the Hackett-Lowther unit in the Great War, took her on safari in Tsavo near Mount Kilimanjaro and gave her a taste for Africa and its wild expanses. Unfortunately, as she was also searching for a murderer at the same time, it exposed her to the seamier side of Nairobi’s population.

That was why, when Jade had accepted another assignment in Africa from her editor, she had specifically requested to photograph wildlife in an area relatively uninhabited by people. She would have been the first to admit that what she really wanted was to be as far away from humanity as possible and this seemed the easiest way to do it. She’d had enough of people to last a lifetime. Of course Beverly, and Beverly’s husband, Lord Avery Dunbury, didn’t count. They were friends. They now owned some land and a beautiful stone house a few miles outside of Nairobi, and since they planned to make British East Africa their home, Jade had let them tag along.

As she eyed the thick woods surrounding the game trail, she knew she’d gotten as close to her wish for isolation as possible. Mount Marsabit was as remote an area in the Protectorate’s northern frontier as she could have wanted. The heavily forested volcanic craters were an oasis of wildlife in the middle of desolation. To the southwest lay the Kaisoot Desert; to the east the Chalbi; and to the north, the even more inhospitable black lava wastes of the Dida Galgalla desert. Somalia sat two hundred miles east and Nairobi, with all its pretension, was at least a blessed 250 miles away as the crow, or in this case the cape rook, flew.