Julie not very hopefully suggested a cup of cocoa to Gideon, but as she expected, he was interested in seeing the Moorish sentry post.
She looked doubtful. “It’s getting pretty cold. And look at that fog roll in.”
Indeed, the weather had worsened in the last few minutes, and, although they were wearing fleece pullovers under windbreakers, the warmest clothes they’d brought, they were chilled through, Gideon no less than Julie. They’d been warned that, while Gibraltar town could be counted on for year-round summery temperatures – it could be considered part of the Costa del Sol if you wanted to stretch a point – it could get quite chilly on top of the Rock. But they had foolishly scoffed. They were used to hiking in the multiglaciered, seven-thousand-foot Olympics. A mere thousand-foot “mountain” was something to be sneered at. But they hadn’t taken this fog, this cold, whirling, penetrating, wind-driven fog, into account.
“You go on and have your cocoa, sweetheart,” Gideon said. “I’ll only be a little while.”
“Well, keep your mind on where you’re walking, will you? They’re not exactly big on guardrails up here, and visibility is getting pretty poor, and it’s a long way to the bottom.”
“I appreciate your wifely concern,” he said, laughing, “but don’t worry. I have no intention of falling off the Rock of Gibraltar.”
“It’s only that your mind has a way of wandering sometimes – now, you know it has – and if you’re not paying attention to where you’re going-”
“Julie,” he said, taking her by both arms, and looking squarely into her eyes and speaking firmly, “go and have your cocoa. I promise you, I am not, repeat, not – going to fall off the Rock of Gibraltar.”
FIVE
And he didn’t; not for almost fifteen minutes.
The Moorish outbuilding turned out to be on the very top of the long ridge that crested the main body of the Rock, above the footpath, so that to reach it he had to mount thirty or forty steep, high steps that had been roughly carved into the limestone. These he climbed, working his way around two monkeys that only grudgingly moved aside for him. He could practically hear them sigh in exasperation. In the middle of the top step was a third one, a particularly big one, baboon-sized, that looked as if he had no intention of letting Gideon or anyone else get by him. Gideon stopped and took an unopened bag of peanuts from his pocket.
“Here, pal,” he said, making amends to all monkeys collectively. “I’m fresh out of Curly Wurlies, but maybe you’d like this? With my apologies for my earlier remarks, of course. And then perhaps you’d be kind enough to let me by?”
The monkey looked without interest at the bag and turned away his head.
“Monkeys like peanuts, don’t you know that?” Gideon asked. “Here, want me to open it for you?” He pulled apart the top of the bag and offered it. The monkey glanced up into his face with a what-the -hell-do-I-have-to-do-to-get-rid-of-this-guy expression, sauntered a few steps away, turned his back, and sullenly sat down again.
“Be that way,” Gideon said, turning his attention to the outbuilding.
It was old, all right, a small, cylindrical structure – room enough for only one man – with a conical cap of a roof and a narrow, arched entrance. The construction was a mix of roughly cut limestone, ancient mortar, cracked, crumbling cement of some kind for the roof and floor, and thin slabs of orange brick to create the curve of the doorway’s arch and to patch the walls where stone blocks had come out or been destroyed. It was precariously sited right smack at the very edge – the very edge – of the near-vertical cliff that formed the long eastern wall of the Rock, so close that Gideon assumed that it must originally have been built at the back of what had been a rock overhang that had collapsed at some point along the way. The entrance and two small, high windows just below the interior roofline all faced out over the edge, so that the man in it could, on a clearer day than today, spot sails approaching from the Mediterranean many, many hours before they arrived. There were no openings on the other side, toward Gibraltar town, from which, of course, no hostile forces would have been expected.
The wind up here was so gusty and strong that it shredded the fog in places, and he caught a sudden, unnerving glimpse straight down over the edge. An almost perpendicular gray wall fell dizzyingly away, its upper reaches devoid of plant life other than a few scrubby wisps of broom clinging to life in tiny crevices, and a single, stubborn, gnarled Aleppo pine sticking straight out of the cliff about twenty feet beneath him. A thousand dizzying feet below, bathed in wispy sunlight, was a narrow, rocky beach, gray and desolate.
“Whoo,” Gideon breathed, pulling back from the rim and laying his hand firmly on the solid little hut for safety’s sake. A man who knew himself to be reasonably brave in most situations, he had no head – and no stomach – for heights. And the wind gusts did nothing for his sense of security.
What a miserably cold, solitary station this would have been, he thought as he bent his six-foot-one frame to gingerly squeeze through the entrance. Because of its proximity to the edge, it couldn’t be approached from directly in front. He had to do it by standing on the side of the hut, chest pressed against it, getting a death grip on the margin of the doorway with his right hand, and more or less slithering along the surface and pulling himself inside; not a comfortable maneuver, but he wasn’t about to quit now. Not that he didn’t consider it.
Inside it was a little roomier than anticipated. He was able to stand to his full height and to stretch his arms almost fully out to the sides, but not above his head. It was as moldy and dank as expected, and it smelled like a bear cave after a long winter, but, as always for Gideon, it was filled with the fascination of ancient things and long-dead inhabitants. He was standing in an enclosure, he thought happily, in which watchful men had stood before America was on anybody’s map, before the Magna Carta, before Galileo and da Vinci and Michelangelo, before the Gutenberg Bible, before He wasn’t alone. As his eyes adapted to the dimness, he realized that the place was still occupied. Christ, no wonder it smelled like a zoo. Two sleeping, leathery brown bats hung peacefully by their feet from the uneven roof, and an owl he’d incompletely awakened grumbled and muttered and ruffled its feathers, and then sank its head into its chest to go back to sleep. More unsettling, less than two feet from his eyes, a now-wide-awake, nesting peregrine falcon rose menacingly onto its powerful yellow legs and hissed at him, its beak agape. Beneath it lay three rust-colored eggs.
Now, a peregrine falcon isn’t much bigger than a crow, but it is a natural predator, it has a bad temper, and being confined in a small space with it is not recommended by bird books. It has the viciously hooked beak, the talons, and the ferocious yellow eyes of an eagle, and Gideon had read somewhere that when attacking its prey – or the presumed enemies of its young – it is believed to be the fastest animal in the world.
He didn’t give it a chance to prove it. In a flash he had regrasped the margin of the arched doorway and heaved himself around to the outside, tottering momentarily but frighteningly on the edge of the cliff, his heart pounding away, as a wind gust snatched at him. The sooner he Before his mind could grasp what was happening, he was sliding down the face of the cliff, scrabbling desperately at the rough surface for a handhold that wasn’t there.
My God, he thought dully, I’m dead. Julie -
Whump! “Ow! Oogh!” The breath was knocked out of him with a whoosh, and for a few seconds it took all his concentration to get his lungs going. Once that was accomplished, his mind started working again.
Why was he still alive? He opened his eyes.