The Clouds Beneath the Sun (30 page)

One of the other elders stepped forward and handed Richard’s watch to Eleanor.

No one in the camp had noticed it was missing.

She took it without speaking, turned, and handed it to Daniel.

As she turned back, the chief said, “Come.” The elders had already made a gap for him to leave by and he waited while Eleanor and the others moved forward.

He led the way out of the
boma
through some trees, then around the side of a large red rock. Mosses hung in luscious swags from the rock but there was also a smell of burning, where some stubble had recently been cleared away.

Rounding the shoulder of the slope, with the large rock now behind them, they found themselves on the lip of a small valley, cut into by the dried bed of a seasonal stream. On the far side of the dried bed, the valley slope was sprinkled with trees—flat-topped acacias, figs, whistling thorns. Among the trees they could see goats grazing, watched over by two small boys.

The chief beckoned again for Eleanor and the others to come and stand near him. When they were gathered, he lifted his spear and pointed with it to the trees and goats. He spoke in short bursts, to allow the interpreter a chance to catch up.

“This is our burial ground. Notice how wooded it is, how fertile. The gods look after our ancestors. This is our land and has been for generations. Many of our warriors are buried here. We farm this land, we hunt here, we fall sick here and die here. The people we remember are buried here.”

He turned to Eleanor. “Where will Dr. Sutton be buried?”

Natalie couldn’t be sure but she thought she saw Eleanor blush. “I don’t know exactly. In America.”

“And where will you be buried, Dr. Deacon?”

“With my husband, in Nairobi.”

The chief didn’t speak for a moment.

Together they watched the goats moving between the trees on the slope opposite. The boys lay dozing on rocks, or against the trunks of trees, one of them always keeping a lookout for predators.

The wind rose and fell in gusts. Chief Marongo was in no hurry. He let his words sink in.

“Nairobi. Where the government is. A white government that soon will go away. The black man will regain what is his.” The chief turned to Eleanor again. “The government has its laws, laws introduced by foreigners, the white man. They may suit his way of life but we were never asked about these laws. They are not our laws.”

He pointed with his spear again to a cluster of trees at the upper end of the burial ground. “Dr. Sutton and someone else stole the bones of one of our finest warriors, a great man—the man, Ollantashante, that your own son was named in honor of. The greatest honor we can bestow on someone from another people. According to our custom, such an act, despoiling a burial ground, is like stealing the bones of the gods themselves.”

“I know—” Eleanor went to speak but the chief silenced her with a wave of his spear.

“The chief asks: Can you have the trial stopped?” the translator said.

“No. I’m sorry. The law must take its course.”

Hearing this, Marongo gave Eleanor a long appraising stare. At length, he spoke: “And so too with our custom … it will take its course. You have your laws, we have ours. But Dr. Sutton’s crime came before Ndekei’s. It was unprovoked and therefore, according to our traditions, Dr. Sutton’s crime was worse.”

“Please, Marongo,” urged Eleanor.

But the chief stamped his spear again. “The elders have decided. Ndekei will plead not guilty to murder and will say he was acting according to tribal custom.”

He raised himself up and drew back his head. “And we are not a small tribe—look!” He pointed behind them with his spear.

Eleanor, Natalie, and the others turned.

Kees gasped.

Beyond the village, all along the skyline, was a line of Maasai warriors, each wrapped in a dark red cloak and carrying a shield and spear. There must have been hundreds of men, throwing a line of shadow from the setting sun. The silence, the sheer numbers, and the shadows were very menacing. It was a show of force and a statement of intent.

Eleanor and the others turned back to look at Marongo.

He had taken hold of Tife’s hand. “Ndekei’s family will be in court. Kenya is to have independence soon. We shall see how the newspapers respond to the trial.”

•   •   •

“I won’t stay long. But I thought you might like to discuss what happened today—my mother has filled me in.” Jack spoke quietly as he lowered himself into Natalie’s spare seat, outside her tent. This was a new maneuver of his but she knew that he had only arrived back from Nairobi just before dusk and, after making the plane safe against the animals, had been late in to dinner. He had brought his own cigarettes and lit one.

Natalie was already smoking one of hers. The stars overhead were as close as ever, glittering against the immeasurable coal-black depth of the universe.

“What is there to discuss? It all seemed pretty straightforward to me. We are locked on a course for collision, all because of something I saw. You should have seen the number of warriors Marongo amassed. They stretched right across the skyline.” She fought to control herself.

He let a short silence elapse.

“What did you make of Marongo?”

She drew on her cigarette and breathed out the smoke. She hadn’t taken out the whiskey tonight. She didn’t know why.

“I liked him. Or, I didn’t dislike him. You can see why he’s a chief. He’s strong and, with his own people, probably fair.”

Jack fingered the scar above his eyebrow. “Before he was elected chief, he used to work here.”

“He did? As what?”

“Oh, nothing specific. He was very strong and did all sorts of jobs, lifting and carrying. I once saw him and another Maasai, during the rains, lift a Land Rover out of a hole where it had got stuck.” He paused. “He knows our ways better than we know theirs. And he’s not just strong, he’s ambitious.”

“Ambitious? I don’t understand. Where does ambition come in?”

Jack drew on his cigarette again, and breathed out heavily. “After independence, Marongo may run as a candidate for the new parliament. This case, this trial, will raise his profile, make him better known. He can’t lose. If Ndekei is convicted, and hanged, Marongo will become the representative of Maasai grievance; if Ndekei is acquitted, they will both be heroes.”

Natalie shook her head. “How do you know all this? How
long
have you known all this?”

“You remember my mother was in Nairobi about a week ago, when we went to the crater? Among other things, she met Maxwell Sandys.”

Natalie crushed out the remains of her cigarette. “Where was your mother tonight?”

Eleanor had not been present at dinner, but had had a tray sent to her tent, something Natalie had never known happen before. “Is she not well?”

“She’s well enough,” growled Jack. “But I am afraid Marongo’s implacability had a big effect on her. She thought—” He shifted in his chair. “She thought that if she came to dinner, there would be an argument, a fight, that she might say things she would regret. She thinks all this business about ‘propitious’ dates is nonsense. The meeting was held today because Marongo, cunning as he is, knew I would be away in Nairobi and he wouldn’t have to come face to face with his boyhood friend. The elders were never going to give way.” He sighed, reached forward, and put his hand on hers. “She’s right.”

“Hmm.” Natalie snorted. “I’m not sure I buy that, Jack. I don’t know your mother as well as you do, naturally, but I do know that she’s not one to avoid confrontation. She’s her own woman, strong-willed, she knows her own mind, and this is her home ground. Sulking in her tent is very definitely not your mother’s style.” She took a deep breath, considered bringing out the whiskey, thought better of it. “So what’s going on?”

Jack took his hand off hers and leaned back. He chewed at his lower lip, taking a fresh cigarette from his pack and lighting it. He breathed out the smoke.

“We had a fight.”

Natalie played with her mother’s watch on her wrist.

Baboons screamed across the gorge.

“Go on.”

The smell of the campfire came at them in wafts.

“She was sitting in her tent—in that outer room she has, the one with the radio and the first-aid kit. She had just been talking to Maxwell Sandys on the radio-telephone and he had told her about Chief Marongo’s political ambitions. She was very low.” He brushed his hair off his face. “Until then, I think, she had hoped that a solution might be found. Yes, Marongo was fairly intractable when you were all in the
boma
but that might have been a negotiating position. After all, I’m sure we could do something to help Ndekei’s family—financially, I mean—and Marongo knows that.”

He drew on his cigarette again.

“But once she heard about the chief’s political aims, she realized that nothing she could do would make a bit of difference. Either the trial has to be stopped, or the gorge will be reclaimed—either outcome suits Marongo’s wider aims.”

The drone of a jet reached them from way up high.

“So what did you fight about?”

He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “I told her she was being defeatist, that it wasn’t necessarily a question of Ndekei or us, that we still have plenty of room for maneuver.” He fingered his cigarette pack. “I said: Look—” and he put the forefinger of one hand against the thumb of the other. “One, we have a knee joint.” He moved his forefinger to the forefinger of his other hand. “Two, a jaw with teeth … three, some skull bones … four, a wall, five, some obsidian …”

He risked a smile. “That’s a hell of a lot for a two-million-year-old skeleton.”

“And—? So?” Natalie felt like a cigarette but didn’t want to smoke more than one a night.

“I suggested that we put our thinking caps on, work out what this creature was like—how tall, what sort of brain size, what his hands were capable of, whether he or she could speak, did he or she have an opposable thumb, what he or she ate—and then call a major press conference to announce what we have discovered.”

He crushed the remains of his second cigarette into the ashtray on the table.

“There’s no doubt in my mind that, put together, what we have is of worldwide significance—hugely important. And if we announced what we have, and at the same time made public the threat to the gorge, it would put immense pressure on the authorities to do something, to rein in Marongo and the elders. Our discoveries will put Kenya on the map, culturally but also financially and therefore politically—it adds to the country’s importance, will attract tourists and scientists. The economic impact could be significant.”

Natalie nodded. “I see all that, but I don’t see what your mother and you had to fight about.”

He sat back again. “First, my mother
hates
the idea of a press conference because, being of the old school, she believes we must publish in the scientific literature first—in
Nature
or
Science
or
Antiquity
, preferably all three. Second, and even more important, she hates linking the gorge—science—with politics, she hates raising the specter of the trial in the same breath, so to speak, as the discoveries in the gorge … she thinks it’s demeaning, that it tarnishes what we do here.”

He let a pause go by.

So did Natalie. “I can see all that would make Eleanor uneasy but is that
really
what you fought about?”

More screaming from the baboons.

He nodded. “It got pretty heated, yes. We were both steamed up, shouting. But it didn’t boil over until I said—in the middle of her resistance—that it was a pity our father wasn’t still around, that Jock would have instinctively understood what was needed now—”

“Oh, Jack—!”

He raised his hand. “It’s true enough. Dad would have
reveled
in this situation. He knew Kenyatta in the old days, argued with him, shouted at him, and Kenyatta shouted back, but there was a respect there, a mutual respect. Dad would have known that the solution to this crisis doesn’t lie in secret deals or negotiations with Marongo and the Maasai. It’s really about what kind of country Kenya wants to be—a tribal backwater or a modern scientific center.”

Jack was hunched forward over the table again. He lowered his voice. “You know, I think the real reason she didn’t come to dinner is that she wanted to calm down, to think about what I had said, before she heard what the rest of you had to say. She’s jealous of her authority, as you know, but she also knows she has to give way soon—to me and/or Christopher. She just didn’t count on me having this particular idea, now. She’s not happy with it, and she knows that a lot of publicity, much of it hostile, goes with the territory, but she also knows—deep down—that it could be a way out, a way forward.”

Another long silence, save for the baboons, among whom something disagreeable was clearly taking place.

“What do you think?” He leaned forward.

Natalie rubbed her eyes. The vapors given off by the hurricane lamp were stinging them.

“I can understand your mother’s objections. The scientific journals don’t like it if you go public first. But… yes, I agree, it may be a solution.”

In fact, her heart had been lifted by what Jack said, in a way that it hadn’t been lifted in weeks. “What gave you the idea?”

“Well, in a way, you did.” He put his hand on hers again.

“What do you mean? How?”

“When we were in the crater, you said you had talked with my mother about father’s womanizing. You also talked about failure, being in your twenties and failing and coming back from failure.” He rubbed the scar over his eye. “Well, you couldn’t know it, but father would never accept failure. The battles he fought, in the early years of the dig, were amazing, and half the time he fought those battles in public, in the media, manipulating them where he could, cajoling where he could, and—I feel sure, though I don’t know for certain—exaggerating here, fibbing a bit there, being creatively ambiguous somewhere else. All to get his own way, to recover from setbacks.”

He smiled ruefully.