'You are teaching your grandpapa to skin a cat,' said Boris, angling
the metaphor. He poured himself another vodka.
'Tell them to check for spoor.' Nicholas deliberately laboured his
point. 'I imagine that the tracks of the striped variety will look very
similar to those of the common dikdik. If they find indications, then
they must sit quietly along the edge of the thickest patches of bush and
watch for any movement of the animals. Dik-dik are very territorial.
They won't stray far from their own turf.'
'Da! Da! I will tell them. But what will you do? Will you spend the day
in camp with the ladies, English?' He grinned slyly. 'If you are lucky,
you may soon not need separate huts?' He guffawed at his own wit,.and
Tessay , looked distressed and stood up with the excuse that she was
going to the kitchen hut to supervise the chef.
Nicholas ignored the boorish pleasantry. 'Royan and I will work the
river in bush along the banks of the Dandera river. It looked very
promising habitat for dik-dik. Warn your people to keep clear of the
river. I don't want the game disturbed.'
They left camp the next morning in the glimmer of the dawn. Nicholas
carried the Rigby rifle and a light day pack, and led Royan along the
bank of the Dandera. They moved slowly, stopping every dozen paces to
look and listen. The thickets were alive with the sounds and movements
of the small mammals and birds.
'The Ethiopians do not have a hunting tradition, and I imagine the monks
never disturb the wildlife here in the gorge.' He pointed to the tracks
of a small antelope in the moist earth of the bank. 'Bushbuck,' he told
her. 'Menelik's bushbuck. Unique to this part of the world. A much
sought-after trophy.'
'Do you really expect to find your great-grandfather's dik-dik?' she
asked. 'You seemed so determined when you discussed it with Boris.'
'Of course not,' he grinned. 'I think the old man made it up. It should
rather have been named Harper's chimera.
It probably was the skin of a striped mongoose that he used after all.
We Harpers didn't get on in the world by always sticking to the literal
truth.'
They paused to watch a Tacazze suribird fluttering over a bunch of
yellow blossoms high above them in the canopy of the river in forest.
The tiny bird's plumage sparkled like a tiara of emeralds.
'Still, it gives us a wonderful excuse to fossick about in the bushes.'
He glanced back to make certain that they were well clear of the camp,
and then gestured for her to sit beside him on a fallen treetrunk. 'So,
let's get it clear in our minds what we are looking for. You tell me.'
'We are looking for the remains of a funerary temple, or the ruins of
the necropolis where the workers lived while they were excavating
Pharaoh Mamose's tomb.'
'Any sort of masonry or stonework,' he agreed, especially Ily some sort
of column or monument.'
Taita's stone testament,' se noc 'It's engraved or chiselled with
hieroglyphics. Probably badly weathered, fallen over, covered with
vegetation - I don't know. Anything at all. We are fishing blind in dark
waters.'
