Solomon's Throne (21 page)

“Yes, please. I am looking for the ruins of an old Jesuit mission here in town. I was told it was here at least until the end of the sixteen hundreds… but I don’t know where it was located. A gentleman at the government office that you were a teacher, and would know.” She smiled, and pulled out a three 500 metical notes.
The woman smiled more broadly.

“Ah yes, Mama, I do know where that is! I did not take my students there, of course, as many were Muslim, but we did study the history of our country, and that included the Portuguese and their Catholic church. I do not know what is left of the place now, but it was built of brick and stone, so there might be something. No one has built on that site, out of respect for the God of the Portuguese, but I do not know if the path is remaining.”

“We have a motorbike.” She waved to Gideon sitting out front.

“Ah, that is very good. Yes, you can get there on a motorbike, I am sure.” She took out a scrap of paper and found a pencil in a box next to her chair. Quickly she drew a simple map. “You will go north, to the point of the bay and the ocean.” She looked at Rei to make sure she understood. Rei nodded. “The mission was built halfway between the two waters, where there is a large pile of stones. It was built into those stones, mama, so that it was strong in the wind.”

“And how will we know where to turn off the main road?” Rei asked.

“If you go up the smaller road, the one on the bay, you will see a motoke plantation. It is small, owned by a family up that way. Just past the trees you will see a pile of stones about this high.” She held her hand up about 3 feet. “That was the marker for the small path. I believe it is still standing there, as it is the boundary marker also for the plantation. You will have to turn there, and go east towards the ocean. I do not know how far. But if it is there, you will find it. There was a small church, and another building where the priests lived. Something should remain, I think, but I do not know what.”

Rei thanked her and slid the money across the counter. She also bought two oranges and two more bottles of water. Putting the helmet over her hair once again, she went outside with her purchases in a battered plastic bag and climbed behind Gideon. She flipped up her face mask and told him the directions, showing him the paper map. He nodded, and they headed north.

They took one turn to the left, and another to the right, and were on a rutted dirt road about one and a half car widths wide. If they had been in the Prado it would have been a challenge to navigate the giant holes, but on the bike Gideon was able to stay almost on the shoulder and pick out a reasonably smooth, straight route. They were motoring beside the plantation, with the bay on their left, and Gideon slowed down. As the old woman had said, there was a pile of stones at the edge of the field, entangled in flowering vines, but just visible if one knew what to look for. They turned the bike inland.

They only got a dozen yards before there was no more path for the bike. Gideon stopped.

“We can either skirt over to those bananas or whatever they are, and try to follow along the edge under them, or walk.”

“I think we’d better walk,” Rei said. “We don’t know if the plantation goes straight east, and we also don’t know that the owners would be too keen on us wheeling through their plantation. I don’t really want to meet some mad farmer who has a machete in his hand, so you?”

They agreed that wasn’t an ideal scenario, but Gideon was still loathe to leave the bike. After wandering around the area, they decided to hide the motorcycle in a thicket near the edge of the motoke trees. It wasn’t invisible, but it wouldn’t been seen at a glance, and they felt that was the best they could hope for.

They shouldered their backpacks and walked to the original path. Gideon had driven as dead east as he could from the marker, and following a straight east west track would help them find their way back to the motorcycle. After a few hundred feet, Rei began to wish they had their own machete. The African vines had taken hold, and the thorn bushes crowded the rest of the unused area.

“Holy cow, these thorns are about three inches long! One just made a rip in my pants!” She fingered the hole. “That sucks.”

Gideon was more worried about missing the ruins for the vines and termite mounds. He knew the peninsula wasn’t very wide here, and didn’t think their chance of getting lost was high. But he thought they could probably walk right by a one story house if it was covered in vines and half eaten by termites and never realize it. He was starting to sweat from his long sleeves, long pants, and the lack of breeze inside the jungle.

They stopped and drank from one of the water bottles, and Gideon made sure the compass on his watch was still pointing east.

“I feel like we should have dropped into the ocean by now!” he said. “It can’t be much further, or else we’ve passed it.”

“I haven’t seen any rocks yet. It sounded like a big landmark, from what the lady said. Let’s just keep going. If we hit the ocean road… well, we’ll have to come back and try again.”

Gideon put away the bottle and picked some broken thorns from his jeans. “After you…”

Rei set off. Gideon got snagged by a tangle of thorns and stopped to disengage, while Rei went on. He had just untangled himself when he heard her yell for him. “Gideon!”

He jogged ahead, and saw that she was standing in a clearing, a huge rock on the left and the obvious ruins of buildings scattered around. Near the rock wall was part of a fireplace and chimney, the lower half of a wall connecting the two. The church’s rock altar was still upright in the ruins, the walls of which were mostly reduced to rubble.

Rei looked at him. “I think we’re in trouble… There’s almost nothing of the walls left at all!”

“Let’s look at the church first. That altar looks like solid slabs of rock, and it’s sitting on what looks like paving stones, not this brick.” They wandered through the piles of broken bricks to the altar and each took a side, squatting down and running their hands along the stone. They checked the inside of each leg, and the stone pavers it stood on. Nothing.

“Ok, let’s think it through. He comes here.” She started pacing, and picked up a brick. “These bricks are fine… but they’re made mostly of this red soil and reeds. So he can’t imagine that they’re substantial like stone would be. And I don’t know what the mortar was… It obviously didn’t hold up that well. And anything wood… well the termites have taken care of that.” She pointed to a large termite mound in the center of the clearing.

Gideon walked over towards the rock face that had been a part of the living quarters. He stood near the fireplace, looking at the remains of the brick wall.

“This is all the same brick, except for the stones that line the fireplace. But they’re just loosely fitted in here… and I can’t see any X.” He started to move the stones. After he’d picked each one up, looked underneath, and replaced it, he looked at Rei and shook his head. “Just dirt.”

He walked to the rock and ran his hand along the surface. Rei joined him.

“There are holes… Looks like they somehow hung shelves or pegs or something on this wall. I don’t see any carvings…” Gideon continued to scan the face. “But there are some rougher areas that might hide our X.”

Meticulously they covered the wall. Nothing. Frustrated, Rei stood looking at it with her arms crossed, tapping her foot. She spotted a small ledge that was near the ground level. She couldn’t tell if it had been inside or outside the structure. But thinking about it, she didn’t see any reason that it would have had to be inside anyway. The last clue wasn’t. She walked over and got down on her knees, leaning over to see underneath the ledge. She brushed away dirt and mud that had splashed up on the rock during many a rainy season.

“Hey! Here! I think it’s here!” She used both hands to brush at the dried mud. “Bring me some water!”

Gideon came over and handed her the half full water bottle. She couldn’t pour it directly on the wall, since it sloped back and away under the ledge. She handed the bottle back to Gideon and cupped her hands.

“Pour some in my hand and I’ll splash it up there.” He did, and she tried to throw it on the wall. “OK, that was a complete fail… Try again.” She cupped her hands again, and this time had better aim. After three more handfuls of water, she had the mud off and an X was clearly visible. She grinned at her husband.

“Ta da!” She made a game show sweep of her arm. Gideon pulled the small trowel out of his backpack and started to dig under the mark. He realized that the rock continued to angle back under the surface of the now wet soil, and quickly dug a hole about ten inches deep. He was about to give up when the trowel hit something hard, and rang out.
Clang!
He reached in with his hands and dug around the spot, coming up with the now familiar telescope tube and strip of leather.

“Excellent! Now let’s get out of here!” Rei said.

They found their way back to town uneventfully, if driving in Africa can ever be said to be uneventful. They got the motorbike into the Prado with the help of the young car sitter, and paid him handsomely for his apparently great work. Upon being asked, he had assured them that no one had come asking about the vehicle or the
wazugus
. They had no idea where to go for the night, and had a feeling that they were going to need an internet connection to help them decipher the next clue. That was not an easy task in a country like Mozambique where even power was scarce, much less an internet connection.

Rei opened her phone. “You know, it’s so weird. I have a better signal on this iPhone here than most places at home! No 3G, though, just phone. But we could call Mr. Xavier to do the internet searches, if worse comes to worse.”

“Let’s not talk about worse! Let’s just figure out where we can spend the night, and then go from there. It would sure help to have a map.”

Rei pulled out the crinkled map that the hotel manager in Maputo had drawn. She flattened it out on the dashboard. After studying it a few moments, she pointed north of the dot that represented Inhambane.

“Here. He put another dot.” She brought the paper close to her face. “I think it says… Massingo? Massinga? Something like that. It’s not too far. Ok, with the roads… it’s kinda far. But it’s out of Inhambane, and if it’s big enough for a dot, maybe it’s got a hotel. Or maybe we’ll pass something else on the way.”

“A Motel 6?” Gideon put the car into gear and headed south.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

A
s it turned out, the
Quinns only had to drive an hour and a half north before they found a suitable bed and breakfast. They saw a sign for the Kingfisher Resort as they went through a medium sized village, pointing east.

“Should we take a look?” Gideon asked.

“Why not? Although it’s hard to imagine much of a resort way out here.”

After ten kilometers of badly rutted road, over which they were extremely thankful for their four wheel drive, they saw a grouping of thatched roofs in the distance, right on the beach. As they pulled into the gated drive, passing under an old weathered metal sign that said “Kingfisher Resort” in faded blue letters, they were amazed to find that it actually was a resort.

Directly in front of them was a two level swimming pool, a small waterfall slide connecting the two. A bridge crossed over it to the left and led to the open air boma that housed the bar and restaurant. To the right was an enclosed traditional round house that had “office” painted on the side with a painting of a kingfisher next to it. The door was open. Gideon turned off the car and they got out, looking up at the tree full of weaver birds overhead, and they walked slowly to the office.