‘I am hoping to get to see the Ark of the Covenant.’
‘Well, I’m none the wiser,’ said a perplexed Vince Castellano.
His cockney accent produced a diametrically opposite reaction. ‘That would quite possibly be, fellow, because you are likely to be an ignoramus.’
‘Nicest thing anyone’s said to me all day, luv.’
‘It would help if you told us, Mrs Littleton,’ said Jardine. ‘We have, after all, come some way to find you.’
‘Not at my bidding.’
‘Just tell us, Mother,’ Corrie Littleton sighed.
‘Oh, very well, then,’ she responded, her voice then taking on a preachy tone. ‘The Ark is reputed to have been brought here by the son of Solomon and Sheba. If it exists at all, and it might be no more than a fable, it is housed here in Aksum, in a special chapel in the Church of St Mary of Zion.’
‘So go visit.’
That got her daughter a withering look. ‘You cannot! It is guarded by one monk, who is the only man allowed to enter the chapel where it is kept. Before he dies he names a successor, so that line of damned monks are the only folk who know if it is a myth or a fact, and you can ask till you’re blue and offer a fortune, but it won’t get you inside; and that means, as far as I can gather, not even the damned emperor.’
‘That still does not explain why you are waiting for the Italians,’ insisted Alverson.
The arch look he got equated him to something untoward on the sole of her shoe, but she did answer, if not with much regard. ‘You, too, must be an idiot. The Italians will not be constrained by Ethiopian tradition, will they?’
‘You think,’ Corrie Littleton said softly, ‘they will let you have a little look-see?’
‘Thank God someone has got some brains round here.’
‘And what if they refuse?’ Jardine asked.
The reply, ‘They would not dare, I am an American’, was priceless.
‘Lady,’ Vince said, ‘strikes me you don’t know much about the Italians.’
‘And I suppose,’ she replied, with contemptuous doubt, ‘you are going to tell me you do.’
‘When it comes to anythin’ religious, they are as superstitious as anythin’ going.’
‘Can’t you speak in plain English, man?’
Jardine had never seen Vince so patient, but then, she was a woman of some years, not a bloke, whom he would likely have floored. ‘They won’t go into that chapel, an’ nor will they let anyone else, ’cause they is deeply religious themselves and likely frightened of being struck down dead.’
‘Poppycock!’
‘Tell her your name and where you were born, Vince.’
‘Name’s Castellano, lady, an’ I was born in a place called Montesarchio, near to Capua, which is where most of my family still lives.’
‘Oh!’
‘So you see, Mrs Littleton, Vince knows of what he speaks.’
‘They won’t touch the door of that chapel, lady, in case it sends them straight to hell.’
‘You believe that?’
‘Not me, lady, them. Personally I think it’s all bollocks, if you’ll pardon my French.’
‘That’s not French, is it?’
‘Let’s say it’s Italian, shall we?’ Jardine proposed, with a grin.
‘Quite apart,’ Alverson added, ‘of the effect such a sacrilegious act would have on the folk they want to rule.’
‘The locals would riot,’ Jardine added, ‘which is the last thing a fighting army wants at its back.’
‘I’m sure,’ she replied, though with the first hint of uncertainty, ‘they will understand my position.’
‘They might,’ Alverson said, with some relish, ‘but they might also shoot you as a spy.’
Speaking before she could react, Cal Jardine suggested she should depart with them.
‘He’s right, Mother,’ her daughter said.
‘Are you mad?’ came the response, in a way that made Jardine wonder if she was that. ‘Can you imagine what I will have achieved if I can see the Ark and photograph it?’
‘This is not another attempt to outshine Daddy, is it?’ In order to explain, she included the others. ‘He’s quite a famous academic.’
‘To hell with your father.’ Mother Littleton’s eyes had taken on a look of boundless vision. ‘I’ll be world-famous, Corrine, a person of consequence, invited to lecture at the great halls of learning, a guest at the White House-’
‘Or,’ Alverson interrupted, ‘a corpse in an unmarked grave.’
‘Corrie,’ Jardine said, using her Christian name for the first time, which got a raised eyebrow from mater.
‘Please do not use that diminutive, young man, my daughter’s name is Corrine.’
‘Tyler and I, along with Vince, have a little nosing around to do, but I think we will be getting out of here very soon, because if what I saw from the air this morning decides to move, the Italian army will be here in hours, there is nothing to stop them. I think it would be sensible to depart tomorrow, certainly the next day; so, Miss Littleton, that is how much time you have to persuade your mother to join us.’
‘She’ll be wasting her breath.’
‘Let us see, shall we?’
‘What a cow,’ Vince said, as they emerged into sunlight once more.
‘She’s a Boston Brahmin, Vince.’ The look of confusion made Alverson explain the Indian caste system and how the Brahmins were the highest ranked. ‘That’s what we call those snotty Bostonian bastards who can trace the ancestors back to somewhere in England, and usually to the landed gentry.’
‘Some of them were transported criminals.’
‘They ended up in Virginia,’ Alverson replied, grinning. ‘The Boston Brahmins are at the top of the social pile, and that is where folk like Mrs Littleton see themselves.’
‘She didn’t think much of you, did she?’
‘As you so aptly described her, Vince, she is a cow.’
‘So, Tyler, what is it you want to do?’
‘Get as close to the Italian lines as I can.’
‘We won’t see much.’
Alverson pointed to one of the high conical hills which overlooked Aksum. ‘Maybe from on top of something like that.’
‘You prepared to walk up one?’
‘For a story, I’d walk through fire, buddy boy.’
‘As you wish, but food first. Vince, get the water canteens filled, will you, please, while I go and see if we can hire some donkeys?’
‘We’re not taking the car?’ Alverson asked.
‘No point, Tyler: the road runs out just north of here, and by the time we get close it will be too dark to get back, so we’ll need bedrolls too.’
The roly-poly owner of the place was only too happy to rustle them up a meal — a dish of spiced peppers stuffed with lamb that was heavy on the garlic too.
‘Why worry?’ Jardine said to Alverson, as the American waved his hand in front of his mouth. ‘You weren’t planning to kiss anyone, were you?’
‘I’ll leave that to you, friend.’
‘In your dreams,’ came the response; Jardine knew what he was driving at.
‘You seen a movie called It Happened One Night?’
‘I did,’ Vince said, as Jardine shook his head. ‘It just came over, didn’t it? Claudette Colbert an’ Clark Gable. She’s a peach, but he’s a bit fat. They spend the whole film arguin’ wiv each other, then fall in love.’
‘Life can mirror art, Vince, wouldn’t you say?’
‘Can we get on?’ Cal Jardine insisted.
Even with a saddle there is little comfort in riding a donkey, quite apart from the fact of feeling ridiculous, as anyone of any height, like Jardine and Alverson, had trouble keeping their feet off the ground, while Vince just managed. But they were the perfect animal for the terrain: sturdy, sure-footed on uneven ground and good on the lower slopes of the hill they eventually decided to climb, one that was topped by what looked like a tiny, stone-built monastery.
They had got Alverson out of his suit and into more suitable clothes again, while each now had their bedroll behind the saddle and their kitbags on their back, Vince and Jardine also carrying their weapons. In line they had passed through ploughed fields being tended by working women and old men, again there being no sense of impending invasion, then on to the cultivated terraced hillsides.