‘You’re mad to take on an enemy who’s got a superior plane.’
‘Ah, but mon ami, he is not the superior pilot, as you witnessed.’
‘That was luck!’
The wagging single digit was infuriating, but not as much as the admonishing schoolmasterly voice. ‘Non! Not luck, but skill. The best man won, as you say in English, and what sort of man would I be to turn down a challenge to a dogfight, eh, and from a miserable Italian?’
‘They can kill too,’ insisted Vince. ‘Even Frenchmen.’
‘To be afraid to die, not Henri de Billancourt, monsieur! Henri de Billancourt is not afraid to die. To fear death is a nonsense; to die nobly and in single combat, a gift.’
‘While you are so nobly dying, would you mind making sure you are alone?’
‘If you were full of fear, I ask forgiveness. I thought you were a soldier.’
‘He’s full of anger, mate!’ Vince spat, handing Jardine his sub-machine gun. ‘You might want to use this, guv.’
‘Would somebody mind telling me what the hell is going on?’ demanded Tyler Alverson.
‘I will,’ Jardine barked, and he did, aware as he related what he knew, that the admiration in the eyes of Corrie Littleton was increasing, not diminishing, which he found even more annoying, summed up in the words she used.
‘How gallant you are.’
‘Mademoiselle will not mind if I dedicate my victory to your beauty?’
‘I think I’m going to be sick,’ Vince croaked.
‘Our victory,’ Jardine snapped.
‘Of course,’ the count replied with an elegant half-bow. ‘I must acknowledge you were a most able associate.’
Alverson laughed, a shoulder-shaking affair. ‘I’ve never heard anyone make that sound like the shoeshine boy before.’
When he took off again, Corrie Littleton watched him go until the Potez was so small it was like a fly on a window, her face when she turned round having on it a beatific look.
‘What a guy.’
‘What an arsehole,’ Jardine spat. ‘Now, if you are ready, we can go find your bloody mother.’
‘Who rattled his cage?’ she demanded of Tyler Alverson.
‘You did, honey.’
CHAPTER TWENTY
Aksum was far from the deserted town Jardine had expected: not only was it still crowded but there was an open-air market in progress, as bustling as if it was peacetime, if you accepted the absence of any younger men: they were all with the army. Female stallholders selling cloth mingled with those who, squatting on the dusty ground, vended from sacks and baskets containing everything a fertile land could produce: flour, spices, peppers, great tubs of garlic, as well as penned livestock and creel-like baskets full of flapping fowl.
‘Has anybody told them an army is coming this way?’ Vince asked.
‘They’re stoical, these Ethiopians.’
‘Is that a disease, guv?’
‘Oddly, Vince, it could be called one.’ Jardine was recalling all those tales told by Ras Kassa, as well as his unshakeable attitude — one, even if he could not understand the language, that seemed common to the whole nation. ‘They are so convinced of their preeminence as a civilisation that they cannot imagine being subdued.’
‘You mean like the English?’ Alverson joked from the driving seat.
‘The Scots are best when it comes to that. Now, stop the car so I can ask if there is somewhere to stay.’
‘We staying, Jardine?’
‘No, but if the lady you call Ma Littleton-’
The interruption from the lady’s daughter was swift. ‘Don’t let her hear you say that, either of you, or she’ll kill you.’
‘What I was going to say is there can’t be too many places for a farang woman to lay her head round here, so your mother is going to be in one of them.’
When the Rolls stopped, curious children surrounded them. They touched the body with a sort of reverence and sent warm smiles in the direction of the occupants. Almost all of them were either beautiful or handsome with gorgeous big eyes and the soft, unblemished skin of their years, which led Jardine to a reflection he had harboured before: part of the Ethiopian sense of themselves as a nation was in that attractiveness of their features and their grace of movement.
Of course, there were ugly people, old crones and bent, aged men, but there had been in those warriors they had passed not only a physical attraction, but a look in the eye that bespoke of folk at harmony with their life and surroundings; in short, though there were bound to be people with whom he could not bond, he definitely liked the Ethiopians in the mass.
In the same manner his enquiries were treated with respect, the way he tilted his head and put his hands to one side as if sleeping understood, that followed by a mime of eating, producing a flood of instructions which were initially confusing, given there was a noisy competition to assist. Eventually, one tall fellow, of fighting age but unfortunately with very swollen lower legs and feet, used his staff to draw a sort of map in the dust, and after a few pointed hand gestures from Jardine he had a good idea he knew where to go.
It was not a hotel but a sort of inn, a two-storey mud-brick building with whitened walls, dark inside, cool, and run by one of the few fat men any of them had seen in this country of lean folk: a jolly round fellow who did not speak a word of any language they knew. But he understood almost immediately who they were looking for and she was indeed accommodated in his establishment.
When they finally came face-to-face with Mother Littleton his gestures indicating something square made sense, for she was indeed formidable and not in the least bit rangy like her daughter. She was big-boned, especially in the shoulders, tall, and added to that she had a booming voice and a seeming lack of any maternal instinct, not that there was much of a filial nature in the response.
‘What in the name of the devil incarnate are you doing here, Corrine?’
‘No “hello” Mother? No saying “thank you” to me for coming to find and rescue you? No kiss on the cheek?’
‘Fiddlesticks. I do not need you to rescue me.’
‘Is that so?’ her daughter croaked. ‘Like there is not over half a million Italian soldiers headed your way?’
‘Happy families, guv,’ whispered Vince. ‘Just like home.’
‘And just who are you?’ Ma demanded, giving Vince a withering look.
‘Just passing, lady.’
‘Then pass and be on your way.’
‘Just a moment, madam,’ Jardine said. ‘Your daughter is right, and I do not know if you are aware of it, but what she says about the Italian army is true.’
‘Of course I know it’s true. Why do you think I am here waiting for them to arrive?’
‘You’re waiting for them?’ Corrie Littleton spat. ‘In God’s name, why?’
‘If you had any sense, child, you would not ask.’
‘It does not occur to you that Dad is worried for you.’
That got a loud, dismissive sniff. ‘So worried he sent you and did not come himself.’
‘You are supposed to be researching in Gondar.’
‘I have done that and sent masses of stuff home, but where I choose to go and what I choose to do are none of your concern.’
‘Yes it damn well is, Mother!’
‘Stop!’ None of them had ever heard Alverson shout, but he did so now and it had the desired effect. ‘Mrs Littleton, would you mind explaining what you have just said?’
‘And who are you, sir?’
‘He’s a reporter, Mother.’
The eyes showed a mixture of anger and surprise as they fixed on her daughter. ‘And you mix with such people. How could you?’
‘Whadaya mean, “such people”?’
‘What he wants to know,’ Jardine interjected softly, ‘indeed, so do we all, is why you are waiting for the Italians.’
It was hard to know what produced a full and polite response; perhaps it was that, to a Bostonian matron of advanced years, his accent, English gentleman with a hint of a Scottish burr, was more acceptable.