Sunbird (14 page)

Back in camp we built a huge fire and I got out the Glen Grant to celebrate. We were so elated, and there was so much to discuss and marvel over, that sleep was long delayed.

We went over the lighting phenomenon again in greater detail, agreeing how it worked and ruefully remembering how close we had come to the truth when we discussed the low sun effect on our very first day, the day we discovered the fresh-water mussel shells. We discussed the shells and their new significance.

'I swear here and now, with all the gods as my witness, that I will never again toss a piece of vital scientific evidence over my shoulder.' I made oath and testament.

'Let's drink to that,' suggested Sal.

'What a wonderful idea,' I agreed, and refilled the glasses. Then we went on to the old bushman's story.

'It just goes to show you that every piece of legend, every piece of folklore is based on some fact, however garbled.' Sally becomes all philosophical after one shot of Glen Grant.

'And let's face facts, my blood brother Xhai is a champion garbler of facts from way back - the City of the Moon, forsooth.'

'It's a lovely name. Let's keep it,' Sally suggested. 'And what do you think about Xhai's grandfather actually meeting one of the white ghosts?'

'He probably saw one of the old hunters or prospectors, remember, we nearly had ghost status awarded us.'

'Literally and figuratively,' Sally reminded me.

The talk went on and on while the moon made its splendid transit of the sky above us. Every now and then serious discussion degenerated into effusive outbursts of, 'Oh, Ben. Isn't it wonderful. We've got a whole Phoenician city to excavate. All to ourselves.' Or, 'My God, Sal. All my life I've dreamed of something like this happening to me.'

It was long past midnight before we got our feet back on the earth, and Sally brought up the subject of practical procedure.

'What do we do, Ben? Do we tell Louren Sturvesant now?'

I poured another drink slowly, while I considered this.

'Don't you think, Sal, we should sink a pothole, a small one, of course, on the foundations. Just to be certain we're not making fools of ourselves?'

'Ben, you know that's the first rule. Don't go scratching around haphazardly. You might destroy something valuable. We should wait until we can go in on an orderly, organized basis.'

'I know, Sal. But I just can't help myself. Just one tiny little hole?'

'Okay,' she grinned. 'Just one tiny little hole.'

'I suppose we'd better try and get some sleep now, it's past two o'clock.'

Just before we finally drifted off, Sally murmured against my chest, 'I still wonder what happened to our city. If the bushman picture was correct then huge walls and towers of masonry have vanished into thin air.'

'Yes. It's going to be exciting to find out.'

With that strength of character which I am able occasionally to conjure up, I firmly thrust aside the temptation to open a trench within the temple enclosure, and instead I chose a spot upon the foundations of the outer wall where I hoped I would do minimum damage.

With Sally watching avidly, and volunteering more than her share of advice, I marked out with tapes torn from my sheets the outline of the intended excavation. A narrow trench three foot wide and twenty foot long, set at a right-angle to the run of the foundations so as to open a cross-section of the horizon.

We numbered the tapes at intervals of one foot, and Sally cross-referenced her notebook to the markings on the tapes. I fetched the cameras, tools and tarpaulin from the Land-Rover. Our trench was only thirty yards from the tents. We had camped almost on top of the ancient wall.

I spread the tarpaulin ready to receive the earth removed from the trench, and then I pulled off my shirt and threw it aside. I was no longer ashamed to expose my body in front of Sally. I spat on the palms of my hands, straddled the tapes, hefted the pick, and glanced at Sally, sitting attentively on the tarpaulin with a big floppy-brimmed hat on her head.

'Okay?' I grinned at her.

'All the way, partner?' she said, and I was startled. The words jarred, they were Louren's and mine. We didn't say them to other people. Then suddenly I thought, what the hell! I love her also.

'All the way, girl!' I agreed and swung the pick. It was good to fed the pick feather-light in my hands, and the head clunking deep into the sandy earth. I worked steadily, swinging pick and shovel easily, but soon the sweat was running in rivulets down my body and soaking my breeches. As I shovelled the earth from the trench and piled it on the tarpaulin, Sally began sifting it carefully. She chattered away happily as she worked, but my only reply was the grunt at each swing of pick.

By noon I had opened the trench along its full length to a depth of three feet. The sandy soil gave way at a depth of eighteen inches to a dark reddish loam which still held the damp of the recent rains. We rested and I ate a mess of canned food and drank a bottle of Windhoek to replace some of my lost moisture.

'You know,' Sally looked me over thoughtfully, 'once you get used to it, your body has a strange sort of beauty,' she said, and I blushed until my eyes watered.

I worked for another hour, and then suddenly the bite of the pick turned up black. I swung again - still black. I dropped the pick, and knelt in the trench.

'What is it?' Sally was there immediately.

'Ash!' I said. 'Charcoal!'

'An ancient hearth,' she guessed.

'Perhaps.' I didn't commit myself, luckily, so that later I could chide her for her presumption. 'Let's take some samples for dating.'

I worked more carefully now, trying to expose the layer of ash without disturbing it. We sampled it and found that it varied between a quarter of an inch and two inches deep across the full horizon of the trench. Sally noted the depth from surface, and the position of each of the carbon samples we took, while I photographed the trench and tapes.

Then we straightened up and looked at each other.

'Too big for a hearth,' she said, and I nodded. 'We shouldn't go deeper, Ben. Not like this, crashing in with pick and shovel.'

'I know,' I said. 'We will stop on half the trench, leave the layer of ash undisturbed - I'll make that concession to the rules - but I am sure as hell going down on the rest of it, to bedrock, if I can!'

'I'm glad you said that,' Sally applauded my decision. 'It's exactly what I feel as well.'

'You begin at the far end. I'll start here and we will work towards each other,' I instructed, and we began lifting the layer of ash from half the trench. I found that immediately below it was a floor of hard clay and, though I didn't say so, I guessed it was a building filler. A transported layer, not occurring naturally.

'Go carefully,' I cautioned Sally.

'Quoth the pick-and-shovel man,' she muttered sarcastically without looking up, and almost immediately she made the first discovery from the ruins of the City of the Moon.

As I write I have her notebook in front of me, with her grubby, earthy fingerprints upon the pages and her big schoolgirlish handwriting filling it.

Trench 1. Reference AC. 6. II.4. Depth 4'21/2".

Item. One glass bead. Oval. Blue. Circum 21/2 mm,

Pierced. Slightly heat-distorted.

Remarks: Found in layer of ash at Level I

Index No CM. 1

This laconic notation can give no idea of our jubilation, the way we hugged each other and laughed in the sun. It was a typical blue Phoenician trade bead, and I cupped the tiny pellet of glass in my one hand.

'I'm going to take it and stick it up their backsides.' I threatened, referring of course to my critics.

'If that end is as narrow as their minds, Ben dear, then it will be a pretty tight fit.'

I started using a small pick and fifteen minutes later I made the next discovery. A charred fragment of bone.

'Human?' Sally asked.

'Possibly.' I said. 'Head of a human femur - the shaft has been burned away'

'Cannibalism? Cremation?' Sally hazarded.

'You do run on,' I said.

'What do you think then?' she challenged. I was silent for a long time, then I made up my mind, and came out with it.

'I think at this level the City of the Moon was sacked and burned, its inhabitants were slaughtered, the walls thrown down and its buildings obliterated.'

Sally whistled softly, staring at me in mock amazement. 'On the evidence of one bead, and a piece of bone - that just has to be the greatest flyer of all time!'

That evening, in reply to Larkin's bellowed queries, I replied, 'Thanks, Peter. We are fine. No, we don't need anything. Yes. Good. Please tell Mr Sturvesant there is no change here, nothing to report.'

I switched off the set, and avoided Sally's eyes.

'Yes,' she told me sternly. 'After a stinking one like that, you should look guilty!'

'Well, you said yourself it's only one bead and a piece of bone.'

But by the evening two days later, I had no such excuse, for I had sunk my trench seven feet five inches and there I uncovered the first of four courses of dry packed masonry. The stones were skilfully dressed, and squared. The joints between each block were so tight that a knife-blade would not go between them. The stones were bigger than those of Zimbabwe, clearly intended to support the weight of a substantial edifice; the average size was approximately four feet, by two, by two. They were cut from red sandstone similar to that of the cliffs and as I examined the workmanship I knew beyond any doubt that they were the work of artisans from a powerful and wealthy civilization.

That night I spoke to Larkin again.

'How soon can you get a message through to Mr Sturvesant, Peter?'

'He should have got back from New York today. I can put a phone call through this evening.'

'Please ask him to come right away.'

'You mean you want him to drop everything and come running - that's a laugh.'

'Just do it, please.'

The helicopter arrived at three o'clock the following afternoon, and I ran to meet it, pulling on my shirt.

'What have you got for me, Ben?' Louren demanded as he climbed, big and blond, out of the cabin.

'I think you are going to like it,' I told him, as we shook hands.

Five hours later we sat around the fire and Louren smiled over the rim of his glass at me.

'You were right, lad. I do like it!' This was the first opinion he had expressed since his arrival. He had followed Sal and me from excavation to cavern to cliff-top, listening attentively to our explanations, shaking his head with a rueful grin when I explained our theory of low-angle light on the ruins, firing a question occasionally in the same tone I had heard him use in a directors' meeting. Each time the question was relevant, incisive and searching, as though he were evaluating a business deal. When Sally spoke he stood close to her, looking frankly into her face, those marvellous classical features of his rapt and still. Once she touched his arm to enforce a point and they smiled at each other. I was happy to see them so friendly at last, for they were the two people in the world I loved.

He knelt with me in the bottom of the trench and caressed the worked stone with his hands, he held the charred bone and melted glass bead in his palm and frowned at them as though trying to draw their secrets from them by sheer force of concentration.