Blood Diamond Chapter 16

They were trying to kill him. Daniel was certain of that, but he puzzled it out over the next days, trying to make sense of it all. They were trying to kill him, but obviously they couldn’t do it openly, or it could have happened at any time, at any moment, a thousand times over. He was as helpless in their midst as a lamb, yet each of the attempts was staged to resemble an accident or some unforeseeable misfortune, some peril of life in the wild. That could only mean that he was under the protection of the powerful – of the King and the Princess – but that the ordinary people, the warrior and the guards and the hunters, were determined that he should nevertheless be removed from their midst.

The explanation at last seemed obvious. Whatever was happening between Daniel and the Princess – and he himself wasn’t sure what it was - it had not gone unnoticed by the tribe. The guards of the Stone Temple would have reported their nocturnal visit; others would have seen the lingering looks, the long moments of held eye contact. Each attempt seemed to be spurred by some fresh incident that might have offered evidence of a connection between Princess Kamelka and himself. What were they afraid of? That he might marry the Princess, of course, and that an outsider might be welcomed into the family one day to reign over them. Better to remove the danger now.

So far he had survived by luck and instinct, but he knew those could not hold forever. Sooner or later, and probably sooner, one of the attempts on his life would succeed. Even if it did not, the conspirators might simply be driven by frustration to greater extremes of boldness. 

Daniel no longer went hunting with the others, no longer allowed himself to be alone with people outside of the Royal inner circle. He weighed his options. There was no enemy to fight, no face to his foes. It could be any of them – quite possibly all of them. If he were to go to the Royals and plead his case, what might their reactions be? Could they imaginably side with him, favoured guest though he was, against a united front of their own people? Any sane monarch would instantly sacrifice him to political expediency. Besides, who was to say Tregoning was not part of the conspiracy? Perhaps the old man was jealous of his rising popularity with the Royals, concerned for his own position of influence. Perhaps this was why he had been elusive these weeks past. Daniel did not know who to trust, or if anyone could be trusted at all.

The only solution was to leave them, to flee and take his chances with that savage wilderness, among the prowling, slithering beats of the bush and the night. He knew not where they were – they had turned westward some time ago, he estimated, and were making their way deeper into the heart of that unknowable land – and he knew that there was no civilisation, no outpost of the civilised world, to which he could realistically turn his footsteps. He would perish just as surely as if he stayed, and perhaps more quickly. A lonely death or death among the Annuba – these were his choices.

But that was not all. There was yet another complication binding him to his lot among the tribe. All this past while, Daniel had been nightly visited by dreams from which he woke sodden with sweat. They were not fearful dreams of peril, nor longing dreams of home, nor even yearning dreams for the long, smooth limbs and the full breasts of the Princess Kamelka although, in his waking hours, his mind turned with increasing frequency in that direction. No, they were ungodly, tormented dreams in which one object floated before his feverish mind’s eye, an object dancing out of his grasp, ever out of his reach, an object reached for again and again, which dissolved at the clutch and resolved itself again, taunting him, drawing him to it. He dreamed each night, beyond reason, beyond explanation, of the Stone.

It made no sense to Daniel. He had never been driven by riches or the love of wealth, but the Stone, the bright, burning Stone, lit from within by its heart of cruel blood, possessed his dreams and, when he woke, he felt himself bereft, as though a loved one had been snatched away. More and more, even when awake and passing the slow hours of the day, he felt himself thinking of the Stone, remembering its lustre, recreating for his mind’s eye the fullness of it, the depth, the passion.

It was a like a low-burning fever in him, kindling with each passing day until the thought of leaving, and of never seeing the Stone again seemed to him like a purgatory, a living hell. Daniel wondered if he were becoming mad. To have formed such an obsession was insanity, but it was there, and he could not wish it away.

One afternoon, as he took his rest beneath a shade tree and watched bright-coloured birds eating insects in the branches, Tregoning hobbled nearer to him. The old man had sunk since his illness. He was thinner, more frail. He walked with greater difficulty, but when he sat beside Daniel, his blue eyes blazed with urgency.

“You have the illness,” he said.

“What?” asked Daniel, shaken from reverie.

“I see the signs. I recognise them. You have the dreams, do you not? You have the urge. The Stone.”

Daniel stared at him, unwilling to acknowledge it, but the truth was painted across his face.

“It is doom, the Stone,” said Tregoning urgently. “For a man who is not of the tribe, it is doom. Why do you think it is hidden from all eyes?”

“I’m afraid I do not follow …”

“You do! It cannot be hidden! Do I not see the same illness that struck me, these many years ago?”

Daniel stared at the man, and he thought now he saw the blue eyes burning with the light of madness.

“The Princess will take you for a husband,” said Tregoning, low and urgent. “That also is plain for all eyes to see.”

“And is she not entitled to choose a mate?” asked Daniel weakly.

“Ha!” barked Tregoning. “And has she not taken a husband before? Has she not taken many, many, many before you? Through the years?”

“But surely she is a young woman.”

“Now hear me,” said Tregoning hoarsely, a lunatic urgency seizing him. “The Stone has powers. You can feel them at work on you. The Stone has powers, but they are not for those from without the Annuba. How do you think the Royal line is sustained? Do you see another of their kind?”

“No,” said Daniel, becoming confused as Tregoning leapt between subjects, “but …”

“When I came into this tribe, oh, it was fifty years, is it? Or perhaps more, I cannot now remember. The mind’s vision grows dim. When I came into this tribe, I was enslaved unto the Princess.”

Daniel stared at him. Tregoning licked his cracked lips.

“The Stone has an enchantment, a magic. It possesses the mind of those who behold and covet it. It is destructive, it is evil to people like you and me, who do not belong in its presence. It destroys us from the outside, just as it preserves those to whom it belongs. You do not believe me? Consider this: the Princess to whom I was bound was this Princess, and in all these years, she has not aged! No, not even a day!”

Copyright Ranulph Moore

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Ranulph Moore describes himself as an explorer, who became a writer to purge himself of the adventures that were crowding his life. He says he has seen it all, in a life spent observing the lives of others. He will travel anywhere – as long as he can make a decent cup of tea and launder a linen jacket. He describes Africa as one of his great loves. He has spent time in every country on the continent. If he can’t find a good champagne, he has been known to resort to gin. He has homes in Paris, Jura and Cape Town. At present, he lives in Madagascar, where he is researching his latest book.

Read an interview with Ranulph Moore.