Acacia - Secrets of an African Painting

CHAPTER THIRTY FIVE - THE KOPJE

  After the two witchdoctors had left, we piled all our belongings back into the car, some of which had got a soaking when I had splashed around in the river, and started to drive to the northwest, where, in the distance we could see a number of kopjes.

  I was now very worried about what was going to happen to us out here in the bush with at least one man after our blood and the two witchdoctors were certainly not to be trusted either.

  ‘What happens if they decide to take the lot, if and when we find it?’ I asked Tara, thinking that we should maybe just reverse our direction and get back to the main road as soon as we could.

  ‘They won’t.’ She replied flatly, staring straight ahead, brooding on what was to come.

  ‘With all due respect, we don’t know that do we,’ I retorted, ‘we don’t know them from Adam and no one knows exactly where we are. They could easily finish us off and hide our bodies so that we were never found.’ I was upset and angry at the situation we found ourselves in, but could not think of a way out of it for the moment.

  ‘We can’t go back, you know that.’ Tara said, ‘They can track us as easily as anything and probably know this land like the backs of their hands. Our only choice is to trust them and keep looking for the diamonds.’ She glared at me, daring a negative response.

  She was right though. The two men had assured us that they would find us again when we asked how they would know where we were. They had tracked us all the way from the road so far and it would not be difficult to follow the spoor of a 4x4 crashing across the veld. I fell silent, brooding myself now, scared, but resigned to whatever might happen.

  When we came to the first kopje, we jumped out of the car and went to have a look. Its craggy sides rose almost vertically in places and as we scoured the base for any signs of an opening, we realised that this search could take forever. After nearly an hour, we gave up on this hill and set off for the next, about a mile away to the west.

  ‘If you were looking for a place to set up a factory, what would you need?’ Tara asked, pursing her lips and the deep V frown creased her forehead.

  ‘I don’t know, I haven’t set up many diamond processing operations in my time.’ My facetious reply earned me a fierce glare from Tara and I flinched, expecting a punch to go with it.

  ‘Sorry,’ I said, ‘Okay, you would need shelter for the workers, tools, a large space to do the work, and good defences.’

  ‘Yes, but what else?’ she pressed.

  ‘Um, I don’t know. What?’ I burst out, exasperated.

  ‘Water, that’s what. Water and food, but mostly water.’ She shouted it at me, obviously surprised that I hadn’t guessed it myself.

  ‘Okay, well, there is the river not too far away. They would have used that, wouldn’t they?’ I argued.

  ‘Maybe, but I think we should be looking for a large kopje because you’re right, they would need a lot of space, and it would need to be tall to be able to give them a view out over the veld for defence. However, I think they would have chosen one with its own water supply, a pond or lake nearby or something like that.’

  I sighed knowing that Tara had control of the expedition at the moment, and also convinced that we were not going to find anything anyway. Happy to let her have her way I gave in.

  ‘Okay, so we look for a large kopje with its own water supply and ignore the rest then, is that what you’re saying?’

  ‘Exactly. Drive on.’

  I did as I was told and the adventure continued. We drove all that day but failed to find anything that matched the requirements Tara had set down. Heat haze didn’t help as several times when we thought we had spied a lake, it turned out to be nothing but a mirage, a shimmering watery effect on dry land. As night fell once more, I suggested that perhaps we should give up. Tara, however, was not in a “giving up mood” and after shrieking at me for being a wimp and a coward, stalked off into the darkness. I waited for ten minutes and then decided I should go after her, eventually finding her sitting on a large rock some metres away. I coaxed her into coming back and getting some sleep, which she did without uttering another word to me that night.

  The new day dawned and we set off again, Tara still not speaking to me and I feeling totally despondent about the whole thing, more convinced than ever that we were doomed to failure.

  After three or four hours, Tara suddenly let out a loud yell and pointed frantically at a large kopje some way off to our right. I estimated it was around five miles away, but as it looked large even from here, it must truly be huge up close. There was also a slight shimmering quality to the light at the base of the hill, which could have been yet another mirage, but which Tara was convinced was a lake at its foot.

  As we got closer, I could see that she was right and there was a small lake there, fed, I assumed by a narrow tributary of the river itself, which was some ten or fifteen miles away by now. I stopped the car near to the water, which shimmered in the bright sunlight, reflecting patterns of light onto the rock face behind it. We started to walk around the kopje as we had done on several others so far without success. It took nearly two hours to get round the whole way, checking each crevice for signs of a hidden entrance, but by the time we reached the car once again, there was not a sign of anything.

  Tara’s face fell and I slumped to the ground in the shade of the 4x4, exhausted and hot.

  ‘I was sure this was the one.’ Tara exclaimed, looking up at the monolith in search of inspiration.

  ‘Well, it doesn’t look like it I’m afraid.’ I replied wearily. ‘We’ll just have to keep on looking.’

  ‘No, let’s have another look here first.’ She was adamant, and I figured that we had might as well wander around this hill as any other, so I hauled myself to my feet and off we set again. Once more though, we returned to the lake without any luck, and I was so hot and sweaty by now that the water started to look particularly inviting. I stripped off my shirt and flung my shoes down as I ran towards the water and then plunged into its cooling depths. I started to swim to the far side, by the rock itself, feeling totally refreshed by the cool water flowing over me. As I got nearer, the rock seemed to shift ahead of me and all of a sudden, a narrow crevice opened up in front of my eyes.

  I trod water for a second and looked back at Tara, standing forlornly by the car.

  ‘Can you see this?’ I called across to her.

  ‘What?’ She looked up, shielding her eyes from the glare off the surface.

  ‘There is an opening here.’ I called again and moved towards it, reaching down with my legs, trying to find the bottom. It came soon enough and I waded towards the crevice, which opened further as I got closer. Then, I reached out and touched the stone wall and peered around the jagged edge of the protruding buttress. Behind, there was a corridor, narrow at first, but widening as it snaked its way into the kopje. I realised that the glare of the sun on the water coupled with the distance one had to stand from it, had kept this opening hidden for decades and a thrill of anticipation went through me as I turned towards it.

  I walked in, careful not to trip on the slimy surface and entered another world, cool and dark, the walls of solid granite reaching up above me, closing in the higher they went. Tangled vines formed a green roof to the passage, filtering the light and making it eerie and quiet.

  After a few more yards, I came into a wide courtyard, again vines and creepers closed in over the top, hiding its existence from the outside world. There were remnants of sacks stacked up on the far side and piles of rock everywhere. I picked up a piece thoughtfully tossing it up and down and at that moment, knew that we had indeed found the Matabele diamond factory where Frederick had suffered so terribly and had seen his companions brutally slain in front of his eyes.

  There was a dark opening at the back of the courtyard and I moved hesitantly towards it, shivering from the cold now that the sun was blocked, the vines above denying this space the warmth of its rays. As I peered into the blackness, I could
vaguely make out some pale shapes piled at one side, although I could not see what they were. I walked cautiously inside, hoping that my eyes would become accustomed to the gloom. The temperature dropped even further in the cave, but the shivers that ran through me now were not just because of the cold.

  I moved to the pale outlines on the floor, my eyes becoming more and more accustomed to the darkness with every step and as I got closer, I suddenly realised what I was looking at. The skull grinned at me as it had grinned for the past hundred years, the empty eye sockets dark and unseeing, but I imagined containing the pain and suffering these men had been subjected to as they died.

  I turned and ran from the cave, not wanting to see any more and ran smack bang into someone coming in. I fell headlong to the floor and cracked my head on the rock as I went down. Tara fell heavily on top of me and groaned as she too hit the ground.

  ‘This is it.’ I managed to gasp, holding my head where a trickle of blood had started to appear. ‘This is the place we have been looking for and Frederick’s “companions” are still inside.’