trouble for one party to sit around waiting at Roseires for the others
to arrive.'
awn on the first of April,' Nicholas gave Tessay the message. 'Tell
Jannie . we will be there on April Fools' Day! A nice easy one to
remember.'
They watched Tessay set off along the trail with her escort of monks and
Royan asked Mek Nimmur quietly, 'Don't you worry about her going off
like this on her own?'
'She is a very competent person, and she is well known and liked
throughout the Gojam- She is as safe as any person can be in a dangerous
land.' Mek watched Tessay's slim figure in shamnw and jodhpur pants
becoming smaller with distance. 'I wish I could go with her, but-' Mek
shrugged.
Suddenly Royan exclaimed, 'There is something that I forgot to ask her.'
She left Nicholas and Mek standing, and ran down the trail calling after
the other woman. Her voice floated back to where Nicholas stood watching
her.
'Tessay! Wait! Come back!'
Tessay turned and waited for Royan to catch up with her. While the two
women stood talking together, Nicholas lost interest and turned to study
the distant silhouette of the escarpment-With a sinking feeling in the
pit of his stomach he saw that the thunderheads on the mountain tops
were denser and more ominous than they had been only days before. The
rains were building up swiftly now.
He wondered if they really had as long as they hoed before the dam was
threatened and they were driven out of the gorge by the rising waters.
All, He looked back down the path just in time to see Royan pass
something to Tessay, who nodded and pushed it into the pocket of her
jodhpurs. Then at last the two women embraced warmly, and Tessay turned
away. Royan stood in the middle of the trail, watching until a bend in
the valley hid Tessay from her. Then she walked slowly back to where
Nicholas waited.
'What was all that about?'he wanted to know, and she smiled
mysteriously.
'Girls' secrets. There are some things that it's best you brutish
males'don't know about.' But when Nicholas raised an eyebrow at her, she
relented and told him, 'Tessay will ask Geoffrey Tennant to send a
message to Mummy, just to let her know that I am all right. I don't want
her to worry about me.'
As they climbed back down the scaffolding to where the fly camp had been
set up on the rock ledge beside Taita's pool, Nicholas thought how
fortuitous it was that Royan had her mother's phone number already
written down to hand to Tessay, and he wondered at this sudden
(I urge of Royan's to report her whereabouts to her mother.
wonder what she is really up to?' he mused. 'I will try and wheedle it
out of Tessay when she returns.'
Royan would have preferred to camp in the tomb itself, so as to be in
the midst of the inscriptions on which she was working, but Nicholas had
insisted that they sleep in the open air, and the ledge was as close as
they could get to their workplace. 'The musty air in the tomb is very
