A Kiss of Adventure (14 page)

After lunch they wandered to the upper deck and stood side by side at the railing. Fishing boats plied the shallows. Egrets and pied kingfishers turned and wheeled overhead, while the occasional hippo surfaced to blow a stream of water.

“Remember that hippo circling us?” Tillie leaned on the rail, her shoulder inches from Graeme’s.

“I’ll never forget your face when he came up under us, and we were riding around on his back like a couple of kids on a Tilt-A-Whirl at the fair.”

She laughed at the memory, and he slipped his arm around her. Without a moment’s hesitation, she leaned into him and nestled her head against his chest. He swallowed. What was happening?

From the minute he’d pushed her into the water and watched her swim away with her boyfriend, he’d wanted her back. He had escaped the Tuareg with a few gunshots in the air to scatter them, rented a room for the night, and arranged to send the fishing boat back upriver to the village where they’d taken it. Then he’d booked himself a spot on the CMN steamer to Djenne.

But he couldn’t go.

Instead, he had spent the night combing the streets and alleys of Segou asking people if they’d seen a white woman with golden hair. When he found the hotel, he made up his mind to go talk to her. And then he couldn’t do that, either. After all, she was where she’d wanted to be all along. Safe, secure. With another man.

That morning, when Graeme saw the Tuareg gathering around the hotel, he’d almost blessed them. They’d given him a chance to see Tillie again. Like a man possessed, he had rented the scooter and raced to her rescue, half expecting her boyfriend to plug him with that pistol of his. Instead, she had dropped back into his life, gone with him eagerly, responded to his impulsive kiss, and was now snuggled up to him like he was the best thing to come along in years.

“It’s been fun,” she murmured, “all this running around. I can’t deny I’m thankful to take a break from it, though. Even Arthur got treasure fever the minute I told him what was going on.”

“You told him?”

“A little.”

Graeme studied the shoreline a moment. “Listen, Tillie, about this Arthur guy—”

“I don’t want to talk about him. Or the treasure. I don’t want to hear the words
tree-planting woman
ever again.”

He couldn’t blame her. At the same time, he wanted to keep her talking. He wanted to know as much about her as he could. Her thoughts. Her feelings.

“About that tree-planting business,” he said, tossing out bait. “I think I’ve figured out what Mungo Park meant when he wrote those words.”

He could see that she was torn. Wanting to know, wanting to leave it all behind. “The tree-planting part? Really?”

“Let me see the document.”

She opened the amulet and slipped out the roll of paper.

He scanned it. “Right here at the end, I think Park was looking into the future. I think he foresaw a time when the Niger would be as it is today—fully explored and inhabited. He knew white men and women would live here. He had warned the king of Segou about it. He could envision the land looking like a little piece of Scotland, white women planting trees and gardens, and having tea parties to boot.”

In spite of herself, she looked at the paper in his hand. “But why does he write, ‘She will plant trees. She will find the treasure of Timbuktu’? Like they’re connected.”

“I think he believed that when white people moved onto the land, they’d find the real treasure of Timbuktu. To him, the real treasure must have been the land itself.”

“And the river.” She lifted her eyes. “Graeme, I think you’re right! I think he was looking to the future. The tree-planting woman isn’t me after all. It’s civilization. Englishmen and their women coming to tame the land.”

He folded the page and put it in the amulet. “That’s my theory. Let’s take that concept and see where it goes. How do you think the Tuareg interpreted it? What do you think they plan to do?”

She gave a low laugh. “You never give up, do you? I don’t want to think about why we’re here or what happened to bring us here, remember? I don’t even want to speculate about what’s going to happen. I just want to be here and rest. For today, I just want to be with you, and I don’t want to think about yesterday or tomorrow.”

He brushed a kiss on the top of her head. “Okay, then. No past, no future.”

She fell silent a moment. Then she repeated his words in an almost inaudible whisper. “No future.”

The lead weight that had settled in Graeme’s chest the minute Tillie echoed those words sank lower as the day wore on. He knew what she meant. They didn’t have a future together. Couldn’t. Two people thrown together like that— one of them practically engaged and the other alone and determined to stay that way— didn’t just toss their old lives off the deck of a steamer.

So they spent the afternoon wandering the decks, talking about nothing in particular, watching the shoreline slide by. The other passengers at first stared at the white man and woman who strolled among them. But after a while they tired of gawking and went on about their selling and bartering and chatting in the sunshine.

Graeme and Tillie chatted about mundane things. About the steamer and how it negotiated the sandbars. How many of the passengers probably made their homes aboard it. How trade had changed in Mali from salt, gold, ivory, and slaves to cloth printed in Hong Kong, beads made in Taiwan, and battered tinned goods brought in from France and England. They talked about the color of the river, the species of trees on the shore, the numbers of fish being pulled up in nets. But they didn’t talk about what the next day would bring. Or the next week.

Tillie floated beside Graeme all that afternoon, a cloud of pink and gold, just out of his reach. And the more he thought about losing her again, the deeper that lead weight in his chest sank. He decided to take all she would give. He held her hand, wove his thick brown fingers through her slender ones as though he could somehow absorb their softness into his own body. He memorized the melody of her laughter, the rhythm of her voice, the silly words she invented when fussing over children or puppies. Like an addict, he was drawn to drink in the smell of her hair— spice and herbs and flowers. And the more he drank, the more he wanted.

That evening a steward brought their dinner to a small, private, first-class sitting room. A table set with candles stood in the center of the room. A sofa with plush pillows sat near a bookcase. They feasted on fresh fish broiled in butter, steaming bread, and plump black dates. The air was warm, and the slight breeze that filtered through the porthole did no more than make the golden candlelight waver.

As they ate, he searched her face, willing her to give him something to take away the heaviness inside him. “We’ll get to Djenne tomorrow,” he said, trying again to point her toward the future.

She lowered her eyes. “What time?”

“Around midmorning, I imagine. Maybe noon. So . . . have you given much thought to Timbuktu? Are you going to—”

“Please don’t talk about it, Graeme.”

“Look, Tillie—I’d like to know what’s going to happen between us.”

“I don’t know what’s going to happen. I don’t know.” She twisted the cloth napkin in her lap. “I don’t know what to do, Graeme. I’m not impulsive like you. I have to think.”

She rose and turned away from him. He tossed his napkin onto the table. He hadn’t meant to snuff that light in her eyes. The dispirited droop to her shoulders troubled him more than he cared to admit. He longed for the sparkling Tillie, the adventurer who could race a hippo to shore and outrun a crocodile.

“You’re not impulsive like me, huh?” he asked, forcing a lightness to his voice. “Are you sure?”

She glanced back at him in confusion, and as she did, he flicked water at her from his glass. “Oh! Graeme, stop that.”

She lifted her hand to smack him on the shoulder, but as she did so he poked a finger into her ribs.

“Impulsive, am I?” He grinned as she took a step backward and stumbled onto the couch. But when he tried to tackle her, she grabbed a pillow and clobbered him over the head.

Fending off a rain of blows, he trailed her around the tiny room like a hungry lion. Lobbing pillows back and forth at each other, they scrambled around the little table and edged across the floor. Tillie laughed until tears ran down her cheeks.

“Graeme, the candles!” she shrieked as he dived for her and dropped her onto the sofa amid a shower of feathers from a burst pillow. “Okay, okay. I give up. I quit.”

He smiled and kissed her lightly. “Never give up, Tillie,” he whispered. “Never quit.”

Her lower lip trembled, and she bit it. “All day I’ve told myself I could do this. That I could just be your friend. Be light and easy about us.”

“Nothing’s light and easy right now. You’ve got a Targui, fully equipped with a broadsword, who thinks you’re going to find him a stash of gold. And you don’t have Arthur Robinson. You’ve got me.”

“Oh, Graeme.” She sat up and stared down at the floor. “I’m walking a tightrope.”

“I’ll catch you if you fall.”

“It’s you who’s going to make me fall.”

“You know I wouldn’t do that.”

“Not on purpose. But you’re here . . . and you’re all these things I like . . . things I want. Things I can’t have.”

“Look, if it’s Arthur—”

“It’s not Arthur.” She jumped up and walked to the cabin door. “It’s not Arthur. It’s you and me. We’re different.”

“So?”

“So, it’s not right. You’re your own boss, Graeme, but I’m not in control of my life. I don’t make my own choices, not like you do. And I’m happy about that. A long time ago, I surrendered who I am and what I want to Christ. That puts you and me poles apart. It makes us fundamentally opposite. That’s all.” She opened the door, and he could see she was crying. “That’s all, okay? Just leave it.”

He watched the door close, listened to the latch click, and he wanted nothing more than to walk out onto the deck, grab her, and kiss her. He wanted to wipe those tears of confusion off her face. He wanted to tell her he’d never hurt her, swear he’d protect her, promise anything it would take to keep her.

Instead, he lay back on the sofa and cocked his hands behind his head. Matilda Thornton was a woman unafraid to live in Africa, to jump into the Niger River, to outwit a crocodile, to knock a broadsword away from a Targui. But something was holding her back where he was concerned.

There was something in her life that was more important than anything else. Something strong enough to seal her heart away from his. Something so potent she would stifle every emotion she so clearly felt for him. Something so powerful she would give up everything she wanted just to keep it. Could it really be this business about her faith in God? Surely rational people like Tillie didn’t give control of their lives to some unknown, unseen spirit. Did they? Faith as strong as Tillie’s required a basis that was solid, concrete.

No. This wasn’t about God. The barrier that kept Tillie from him had to be human. Maybe her old friend Hannah had warned her away. Or maybe it was Arthur Robinson. Graeme studied the curls of plaster dripping from the ceiling. What was it that held Tillie’s soul?

EIGHT

“Father. Lord. Savior.”

Tillie murmured the words as she showered before dressing in the white dress Hannah had bought her. Early morning sunlight slanted into the cabin. Lifting her face to its warmth, she dropped the amulet down her neckline. For all its delicate design, the pendant was proving to be a heavy yoke. She let out a deep breath.

The thing is, Father, Graeme cares about me. Cares enough to give me his promise of honor. Not every man would do that.

She twisted the ring as she stepped into her sandals.
I care about him, too. I like him. I want to be with him. Would you really send a man like Graeme into my life, put him before me like a sugar cube held out to a horse? A man who’s everything I’ve dreamed about. Just the kind of man who could share my strange, unconventional lifestyle. Handsome and kind and honorable. A good man.

She struggled with tears of confusion.
And because he’s not a Christian, I’m supposed to reject him? Why are you testing me like this, Lord? This is not fun. This hurts.

She walked out of her cabin, down the narrow hall, and up the flight of steps to the deck. Graeme was standing at the iron railing, his dark hair ruffling in the breeze as he huddled over a map. She knew it was a map of Djenne.

Boxed in. That’s what I am, Father. I need to get away from this river so I can think. But it’s here, all around me. Inescapable. And what could I escape to? Arthur? I want to know the future, but you won’t tell me. Not even a clue. The only thing you’ve made clear is that no matter how much I want to be with Graeme, I can’t.

As she walked across the creaking boards, Tillie saw the city nestled in the middle of the river like an island. She stopped at Graeme’s side, and he looked up. His face was drawn, as though he hadn’t slept any more than she had.

“Mornin’, glory.” His voice was hoarse. He took her hand and slid his fingers between hers. Then he went back to his map.

As the steamer puffed into port and the anchors dropped, she scanned the town. Djenne was an island located eighteen miles off the main Bamako-to-Mopti road at the southern end of an inland delta. Surrounded by a natural moat and latticed with waterways, the town was made up of clay houses and mosques boasting facades decorated with porches, all lined in pointed crenellations. Old men on mats rested their bent backs against the clay walls. Across the sundappled river a fisherman gripped a net between one hand and his outstretched feet. In the other hand he held a bobbin that he dipped in and out across the net.

“It’s like something from a different age,” she whispered.

“What is?”

“The town. Look at the dugouts. They’re filled with dried fish. They have canopies. It’s hard to believe no one can get here except by boat. Like Shangri-La. I wonder if the old men have ever seen cars or airplanes.”

He glanced up from his map. “Hmm? Seen what?”

She pursed her lips. “What are you doing?”

He folded the map and slipped it into his jeans pocket. “I’ve made a decision. Come on.”

“What about our stuff? My pink dress—”

“We’re taking the steamer on to Mopti this afternoon.” He pulled her through the crowd toward the row of dugouts waiting to ferry people ashore. “I want to go into Djenne and find the police station. We’ll call the hotel in Segou, check on Hannah, and find out if Robinson is here yet. Then we’ll get this thing between you and him settled once and for all.”

“Between me and Arthur?”

Instead of answering, he began to dicker in French with the pilot of a dugout, haggling over the price of the trip. Shoving two bills into the man’s waiting palm, he looked back at Tillie. “This guy says he can take us to the police station. We can go the whole way by boat.”

She followed him down the rope ladder into the bobbing canoe. “I told you this is not about Arthur.” She squatted on a splintery board beside a pile of flopping fish.

Graeme thinks I love Arthur. He thinks that’s what is holding me back. Arthur. Oh, Lord, I can’t even think about Arthur.

If I keep insisting it’s you, Father—it’s my relationship with you that matters most—he’ll resent that. Why would he worship you when he sees you as a barrier to me, and not as the Way to a new life? Maybe he would turn to you, but would it be honest?

The dugout slipped into one of the canals between two rows of clay houses. It was an eerie feeling, floating along when reason said a person should be walking or driving. Djenne was filled with busy traders hauling baskets of fish, dates, millet, and yams to the town market. As in Bamako, children scampered along the wooden boardwalks beside the white-skinned visitors. Some giggled and danced around like silly marionettes. Others tried to sell poorly woven blankets or fly-encrusted food as the dugout skimmed past.

The fisherman was a skilled pilot who navigated his boat as if it were a precision race car. They whipped around corners, sliced the water beneath crude bridges, and zipped past piers of docked dugouts. Graeme sat in the prow of the slender boat and drummed his fingers on the smooth wood. Through the sheer turban fabric that blew around her face, Tillie studied him. His lean legs were tensed for action, as though he might leap off the boat at any moment. His arms were roped with the strain of his clenched fists. The tiny muscle in his jaw beat a regular rhythm, and his focus darted back and forth, missing nothing.

The dugout bumped into a whitewashed clay building beside the bustling marketplace. Graeme scrambled to the boardwalk. He gave rapid instructions to the fisherman as he helped Tillie out of the boat.

“This is the police station,” he told her. “This guy’s going to wait for us here.”

“You think they’ll have a phone?”

“They have one. Whether it’s working or not is another matter.”

As they walked into the sleepy little office, Tillie’s heart hammered against her ribs. What if Arthur was here in Djenne? Could she tell him it was over between them? tell him just like that in the middle of this mixed-up mess when she could hardly think straight?

Spotting them, an official stood and walked around his sagging desk to greet Graeme like an old friend. “Monsieur McLeod!
Bonjour
!”

Confused, Tillie watched the men shake hands and slap each other on the back. “
Tout à vous,
Mohammed,” Graeme said. “
Ma compagnon de voyage,
Matilda Thornton.”

“Mademoiselle Thornton.” He kissed the back of her hand.
“La belle dame. Bonjour, bonjour.”

Graeme rattled off a long monologue that had something to do with the steamer, the Tuareg, Bamako, and Djenne. Tillie spoke Swahili, Kikuyu, Kikamba, a little Maasai, and some German. But she could barely get by in French. It frustrated her to no end. All she could tell was that Mohammed was welcoming Graeme back to the town. When had Graeme ever been to Djenne?

“What’s he telling you?” She touched Graeme’s arm. “Have they seen Arthur and Hannah?”

“Says he can’t remember. He’s going to go through his files. They make every tourist sign some documents when they pass through.” Graeme leaned over the sheaf of tattered papers to watch as the official began riffling through them.

Tillie strolled around the dull, gray room. Through fly-speckled windowpanes she could see the busy, colorful open-air marketplace next door. Inside, two bored-looking clerks sat at their desks sorting through stacks of yellow papers. The thought of seeing Arthur again sent a curl of discomfort through her stomach. And Hannah. What would Hannah say if she knew how deeply her
toto
had come to care for the black-haired stranger? And she would know the minute she saw them together. Hannah’s warm brown eyes didn’t miss a thing.

Trust me,
God had said. Trusting was harder now than it had been when the hippo dumped her into the Niger. Strange to prefer terror to an aching heart. She wandered across the room and stepped out into the blinding sunlight.
Trust me.
She meandered down the red-painted concrete stairs and sat beside a clay newel near the market.

She couldn’t plan. Couldn’t decide. Couldn’t act. She had walked into a box. A blind alley. She felt trapped by walls that were squeezing her in, tighter and tighter.

She stood up and followed the wall along the water’s edge. The fisherman in his little dugout waved at her. She tried to smile and failed miserably. Was there any way out? Pressed by the crowds of market-goers, unable to move ahead and unable to turn back, she leaned against the clay wall and slid to a crouch.

What am I supposed to do, Lord?
Her dress bunched around her ankles in folds of soft white fabric. She dipped her head and studied her hands.

“He who belongs to God hears what God says.”
The words from John’s Gospel were as certain as the beaded ring of honor on Tillie’s finger. So were the passages from Luke:
“Whoever is ashamed of me and my words, of him will the Son of Man be ashamed. . . . No one of you can be my disciple who does not give up all his own possessions.”

Give it up. Give him up, Tillie.

That was her answer, then. Give Graeme up. Walk back to that police station. Turn in the amulet. Say good-bye to him and go home to Bamako. She belonged to God. She was his disciple. She had chosen that a long time ago, and she still wanted to serve him more than she wanted anything—or anybody—else.

The truth was difficult, painful. And yet, as she stood, peace drifted around Tillie’s heart like a warm blanket. She turned back in the direction of the whitewashed building, lifted her chin, and stepped into the street.

A sharp blow slammed into her back, knocking the breath from her lungs and buckling her knees. Before she hit the street, she was whisked into the air and flung across a blue-robed shoulder.

“Tree-Planting Woman,” a deep voice said as everything went black, “you belong to me now.”

Slowly Tillie became aware of her surroundings. She was bouncing along, upside down, slung over the
amenoukal
’s shoulder. Disoriented, it took her a moment to realize the chieftain was running on foot in the middle of a thick force of his Tuareg companions. Broadswords, spears, flowing black robes, and leather sandals were all she could see. Her turban unwound from her head and trickled down the street like a rivulet of melting vanilla ice cream.

“Graeme!” she screamed. “Graeme, help!”

She lifted her head from the
amenoukal
’s broad back to see Graeme hurtle through the police station doorway and stop in shock.

“Tillie! What in—” He ran down the stairs and disappeared in the jostling crowd.

She had no choice but to lower her head. Their broadswords drawn, the Tuareg pounded down the sidewalk and around a corner. The crowd scattered in panic before the phalanx.

Blood throbbing in her head, Tillie pummeled the
amenoukal
’s muscular back as hard as she could. He didn’t pause, didn’t even flinch. In fact, his gait was exhilarated, triumphant. Again, she tried to lift her head to see where Graeme was. The excited throng blocked her view.

“Put me down!” she yelled. “I don’t know where the treasure is! I don’t know anything. Put me down!”

The
amenoukal
chuckled low in his throat and ran on. The Tuareg battalion jogged across a bridge and down a narrow alley. As they moved out onto another sidewalk, they slowed to a trot.

Tillie’s head reeled. Dizzy, sure she was going to be sick, she couldn’t think what to do beyond shouting. And then the
amenoukal
’s wiry hands grasped her waist, lifted her into the air, tossed her. She saw spinning blue sky, minarets of a mosque, someone’s wash hanging on a line. Headfirst, she tumbled onto the hard deck of a boat.

For a moment she couldn’t breathe, couldn’t see. Then her lungs sucked in a huge breath of air, and her vision cleared. The
amenoukal
seated himself regally before her, a sneer of victory lighting his eyes above the blue veil. His slippered foot rested on her stomach. His broadsword pinned her burnous to the bottom of the boat.