Jake guided Florence by the waist, the pair staggering along the ridge like competitors in a three-legged race. He prayed for a cave, a fissure, anywhere to provide shelter from the stream of frozen air. He’d never dreamed it could get so cold in Africa. They had no matches to light a fire, and he knew from far-off memories of Boy Scouts that rubbing sticks together was a waste of time.
“Down there!” shouted Florence.
On the far side of the mountain from Axum a flicker of yellow was visible through the rain.
“Well spotted,” said Jake, with impressive understatement.
The pair skidded down the slope, frantic for warmth. As they lost altitude the harshness of the upper reaches gave way to grass that glittered with dew. The village was like the Africa of childhood imagination: circular huts, mud walls and grass roofs. Flaming torches had been dotted about to ward off baboon and hyena, and vegetable gardens had been planted between the hovels. Jake saw nothing that would have been out of place in prehistory.
There was an explosion of barks as six dogs shot from the enclosure – they were of one bloodline, wiry and longhaired with muzzles of black felt. The pack ran circles around Jake and Florence, howling in anger but unsure what to do. Children arrived next, shaven-headed tots in tartan shawls with knees too big for their legs. They were shocked to see faranji, and Jake was led by the hand into the largest hut.
The interior had been landscaped into an amphitheatre of mud benches around a fire; the smoke wafted out through vents in the thatch. Faces peered at the newcomers in the flickering light. The women had braided hair and wore dresses of yellow cloth, a cross tattooed on each forehead in green ink. One of them pointed at Florence and circled her face with an open palm, cooing to her neighbour. The archaeologist was unaware of their interest. She stared numbly into the flames, steam rising from her knees.
A woman in her twenties produced a shallow pan and a handful of red beans which she roasted in a little oil. She crushed them and placed the mulch inside a clay flask with some water. When she set it on the embers the smell of coffee began to fill the hut. As it came to the boil she lit a pinch of frankincense and the two aromas twirled around each other. Then she handed them cups of black coffee, hands darting back like a startled animal as each drink was received. Jake recognized this as an exquisite moment: backpackers spent a lifetime seeking this sort of cultural penetration. Their beds were strips of leather stretched across frames and he soon fell into a dreamless sleep.
But the night’s events were not over.
Something else was to happen before daybreak, something strange and elemental. At the stillest moment of the night Jake awoke. The rain was over, although thunder could be heard to the north. The fire had collapsed in on itself leaving a triangle of embers. Snores echoed through the hut – but beside him there was silence.
Florence had gone.
After half an hour Jake surrendered to chivalry and went to check on her, creeping out of the hut. He saw her at once: storm-watching again. The violence of the weather system had moved towards the Eritrean border and the horizon crackled with energy as the clouds smashed into each other. That was when the lightning hit, arcing to earth far away in the north-east and holding its form for three seconds, like some crooked finger pointing from the heavens. Jake had never seen lightning like it.
Except …
Except on a hillside in northern Italy, when the end of days was foretold by thunder. Florence was kneeling with the same reverence as those Etruscans of his imagination, fixated on the spot where the bolt had struck.
That was when it hit Jake.
Florence believes it too.