Treasure of the Golden Cheetah (20 page)

By the time she’d folded it and slipped it into her pocket, Homerman returned, carrying the needed prop. “This is heavy!”

“Set it over there,” ordered Julian, pointing to a small stand near Lwiza. “All right. Places, everyone. Ready to roll film. And action!”

Jade watched while Pearl went through all the theatrics of clutching her bosom while looking up at the ceiling, then again with her head dropped. She recited lines of undying passion for the sake of lip-readers. Jade noticed that Pearl was much less skilled than Bebe, who used more expressive facial movement and far less chest heaving. Pearl pulled the pectoral from under her pillow and kissed it three times. After clutching it to her chest and kissing it again, she called to her maid.

Biscuit’s movement caught Jade’s eye. He stood suddenly as Lwiza approached with the coffer and set it on the low gilded table in front of her mistress.

The cat uttered a high-pitched, staccato growl. Jade edged around to the side, keeping out of view of the camera. Her left knee throbbed as it always did when death was close by.

“Mr. Julian,” Jade called, “there’s something wrong. Stop the scene.”

Pearl turned her head for a moment, looking at Jade.

“Get back in character, Pearl,” ordered Julian. Biscuit stepped between Pearl and the box. “Jade, tell that cat to move.”

“I’m telling you something’s wrong. He knows it.” Jade edged forward. She’d slipped her knife from her boot and held it ready. “Pearl, don’t open the box.”

“Cut!” shouted Mr. Julian. “Look, del Cameron, I’m telling you to get out of the way.” He walked up to the set and to the coffer. “I’ll prove to you that there’s nothing wrong.”

“No!” shouted Jade.

Julian ignored her. He reached out and lifted the hinged lid from behind. Pearl’s piercing scream ripped through the air.

CHAPTER 13

—The Traveler

JELANI HAD HEADED UP INTO THE MOUNTAIN’S FOREST, KEEPING west of the Chagga village. The kid goat trotted obediently behind him, pausing only on occasion to nibble some greenery. A slight tug on the rope brought the animal back to the trail. A few blue monkeys slipped quietly past him in the trees, but all else was silent.

The young healer kept his eyes and ears sharply alert, observing every shifting shadow and each noise. Leopards were more nocturnal, but one still might decide that the goat looked too tempting to pass up. More important, a Chagga warrior might decide he was trespassing and relieve him of both the goat and his life.

Jelani also studied the trees. The forest held many giants, some that he recognized, others that seemed different to him. Many carried branches draped with a long, feathery moss, like the chin fur of the wildebeest. Each ancient tree probably held many spirits, but none of them would have listened to him.

What he wanted, what he
needed
to find was a
mokoyo
, a type of fig with an orange bark that peeled away in thin strips, like a snake shedding skin in patches to reveal a fresh new yellow skin underneath. Ngai had instructed the ancestral Kikuyu man to make his sacrifice at this tree, preferring it to all others. It was even more critical now, when Jelani was far from his own village and ancestral spirits. Would they hear his call? Would they come to him? Or would the Chagga ancestors keep his own away?

Above and to his right, Jelani heard a low, croaking purr that increased in volume.
“Rurr, rurr, rurr, rurr.”
He looked up and spied a male black-and-white colobus singing. A few females sat in a second tree, browsing on leaves. When the male jumped to another branch, a trogon yelped before flying off, his scarlet breast disappearing into the dim light.
“Yow, yow, yow.”

Jelani took the bird as an omen and left the main trail as it crossed one of the smaller streams, and followed the water uphill. The
mokoyo
liked water. It gave life to the spirits within. If one of his sacred trees grew on this mountain, he would find it close to flowing water.

There must be one here. This is a holy mountain, one of many that Ngai chooses to live on when he visits.
Mount Kenya, Jelani knew, was one, but both the Maasai and the Chagga said this was another. He had walked on Mount Kenya once with his teacher and had felt the holiness seep through the soil and into his bare feet. When he stopped, he could feel the mountain’s very pulse, and his own slowed to match it. Jelani stopped and closed his eyes.
Yes, it is the same here.

He opened his eyes, and a glint of bloodred flashed before him. He followed the trogon until it settled on a branch. Whether or not the bird was a spirit, Jelani couldn’t say, but it directed him to the very tree he sought.

The ancient tree stretched straight up higher than four men standing on one another’s shoulders. At least twice that number would be needed to span it, with their arms outstretched. In a forest where the great gray
tembo
easily uprooted trees with their tusks or pulled them down with their trunks, the
mokoyo
resisted them. Ngai had given the tree a heavily fluted stem that allowed it to brace itself against all onslaughts. It was proof of the Maker’s wisdom. Why have a tree for the ancestral spirits to live in if it was only going to be torn down by a hungry animal?

Jelani approached the tree with reverence and with caution. Those same buttresses made deep recesses, places for a wild pig or a snake to hide. It would not do to disturb either one. As he gently caressed the sycamore fig’s peeling bark, he cleared his mind of all but his prayers. This task would prove to be his greatest challenge yet. It was one thing to sacrifice near your village; it was another to call on ancestors from a great distance and induce them to come to a strange mountain. But Simba Jike’s life depended on him. Now more than before.

He knew this to be true, for last night, he’d heard the Chagga interpreter talking to the cook as he prepared rations for the Nyamwezi men. The interpreter frequently brought gossip to the men in return for food. This time he told them that the angry woman who had cursed Simba Jike had just been found dead, blood draining from her nose, her arms and legs swollen. That meant that her curse was now a death curse, and nearly impossible to throw off.

Jelani took hold of the goat and pulled out his knife.

 

. . .

THE SCREAMS CONTINUED as a sequence of shrill blasts, punctuated by gasps for air. And when Pearl wasn’t shrieking, Bebe was. It reminded Jade of the hand-cranked air-raid sirens she’d heard during the Great War. She edged in closer towards the box and its writhing contents.

The slender green snake had been secured in a cloth sack, partly visible from Jade’s vantage point. But the snake had managed to insinuate itself out of the loosened drawstring. It raised its head above the rim, its eyes oversized for its egg-shaped head.

“Move out of the way,” yelled Jade. She needed a clear line of sight. Pearl stayed rooted to the spot in her terror, Biscuit in front of her.

“Biscuit. Herd. Away. Now!”

The cheetah responded immediately and butted against Pearl’s legs, pushing her backwards. When the woman still didn’t take any steps, Biscuit nipped her thigh lightly. Pearl reacted almost instinctively to what appeared to be a new threat and backed up until she bumped into the Nyamwezi wearing the pot helmet, a man named Fundikira.

The jostling coupled with the confinement irritated the snake. It raised its head and inflated its neck, giving Jade a slightly bigger target. She raised her right hand even with the top of her head.

In one blinding motion, she hurled her knife down towards the low table. The blade impaled the snake through the throat, affixing it to the coffer. But the snake wasn’t dead, and Jade had no sidearm. She spied the
panga
hanging from the guard’s belt.

“Fundikira, the
panga
!”

The Nyamwezi untied it and skimmed it across the ground to her feet. Jade snatched it up and, with one clean stroke, decapitated the snake. Its green head tumbled to the floor, rolling towards Pearl. Her screams resumed. Fundikira quickly moved out of the way, his hands over his ears.

“It’s dead,” said Jade. “You’re safe now.”

Pearl minced sideways until she was clear of the offending head and ran out into the open. “What was that horrid thing?”

Jade retrieved her knife and lifted the snake’s body from the coffer. “Boomslang.”

“Boomslang!” exclaimed McAvy, coming forward to get a better look.

Jade handed the corpse to him and wiped her knife blade on the grass.

“Is it poisonous?” asked Murdock, who joined McAvy.

“Yes,” said Jade. “Hemotoxin. Breaks down your blood cells. Destroys your organs.”

“How horrid,” whispered Cynthia. “But how did it . . . ? Who could have . . . ?” Her eyes opened wider and she backed away, hugging herself. “It was meant for me!”

“What do you mean?” demanded Julian.

Cynthia pointed her finger at the snake’s body as she stepped back. “We
were
going to shoot
my
scene with the coffer, remember? If you hadn’t changed your mind . . .”

“What are you jabbering about, you insensitive bitch?” snapped Pearl. She’d channeled all her fear into anger now and directed it at her colleague for want of a better target. “
I’m
the one who nearly got killed. If I had opened that box, I’d be dead now. Thank my lucky stars that Biscuit stopped me.” She dropped to one knee and hugged the cheetah around his neck.

“The boomslang is a pretty timid snake. It rarely bites unless you make a grab for it,” said Jade. “The fangs are in the rear of its mouth. Chances are, you would have escaped. And even then, it takes a long time, hours, before anyone ever gets sick. So, you see, you wouldn’t be dead now.” She’d meant the speech to be reassuring, but it only enraged all the women.

“No,
she
wouldn’t be dead because
I
was supposed to be playing this part,” shrieked Bebe. “That was
my
role and everyone knew it! I suppose I should be grateful to that slut,” she yelled, pointing at Pearl, “for stealing it; otherwise
I
would be dead.”

Pearl’s head jerked as though she’d been slapped in the face. “Who are you calling a slut, missy? I know how you got this part. Everyone knew Graham liked the ladies.” She stopped and ran her gaze up and down Bebe’s body. A wicked sneer crossed her lips. “I just didn’t know he liked them so long in the tooth.”

“Oh!” Bebe’s face contorted into a snarl, her teeth bared and clenched, her brow furrowed. She lunged at the younger woman, her arms outstretched like claws.

Jade, who was closer to her than anyone else, grabbed her by one arm and swung her aside. Bebe wasn’t as strong as Jade, but her fury nearly made up the difference. The actress scratched ineffectually at Jade’s arm and face, forcing Jade to pull Bebe’s arm behind the woman’s back. Once Jade had the arm pinned, she shoved her knees into the back of Bebe’s knees, forcing the woman’s legs to buckle. Bebe dropped to the ground with a shriek of pain.

“Stop it! All of you,” shouted Jade. “You’re all acting like a bunch of pissy tomcats.”

Budendorfer and Brown both snickered behind her, and she wheeled to face them. “That goes for you, too. None of you is helping here. Mr. Julian,” she said as she turned to the director. “I expect you to control your crew. If you can’t, then I’ll think of something.”

Julian stared at the snake’s head, seemingly indifferent to anything else around him. “This is tremendous,” he said to himself. “How much of that did we get on film?” he asked Brown.

“All of it, boss. I kept cranking the whole time.”

“That’s great! Here’s what we’ll do. We’ll cut out the parts where del Cameron is in view. We’ll get one of those natives,” he said with a sweep to include the empty tent where the Nyamwezi guards had stood, “to draw a knife. Then we’ll cut to the dead snake and the head.”

“But why would there be a snake in the box?” asked Budendorfer.

“What? Are you crazy?” Julian slapped the second cameraman alongside the head. “I’ll think of something. I’ll write in a scene about a curse or something. I tell you, this is priceless.”

Jade clenched her fists, itching to plant one on the man’s jaw. Instead, she helped Bebe to her feet. “You’re all overwrought,” she said. “All of you need time to simmer down.” She gave Bebe a gentle nudge in the direction of the house. “Go lie down.”

Jade nodded to Cynthia and Pearl. “You, too. Both of you go to your respective rooms.”

She felt like a parent chiding children after an explosive temper tantrum.
It’s a good thing that Pearl and Bebe aren’t in the same building. At least Cynthia and Bebe should manage.
Then she remembered that Bebe had just been accused of sleeping with Cynthia’s husband. “Woody, why don’t you go with Miss Malta and Miss Porter and stand guard outside their doors. Make sure they’re all right.”