White Eagles Over Serbia Read online

  “Now, my beauty,” he said coaxingly, “take it easy,” and edged his way softly past the reptile into the cave. It hissed again, but did not move, perhaps out of drowsiness, or perhaps because it had eaten a heavy meal of mayflies. Once inside he switched on his torch and confirmed his memories of that long-lost week-end when they had sheltered here from a storm. Here was a wide stone platform, ideally suited for a bed; and here at the farther end was a long fault in the rock which made a natural chimney against which a fire could be lighted. “So far,” he said, “so good.”

  He set to work to put his house in order with the methodical deftness that only long practice can give, ignoring the snake which stayed sunning itself at the mouth of the cave. First he laid out his kit and then, taking a clasp knife, cut himself some branches of greenery for a mattress. The transport of these caused the snake a good deal of alarm, but it was already showing signs of getting used to him and he ignored it, confident that if it did sting him it would never penetrate the heavy boots he wore. His bed made up for the night, he next gathered himself some firewood from a nearby clearing where some trees had been felled, leaving a litter of chips and bark admirable for the purpose. These basic points of housekeeping once settled, he returned to the snake and poured out a few drops of tea from his little Thermos as a peace-offering, but it was obviously a gesture which awoke no comprehension in the reptile for it squirmed away from him, hissing savagely—yet, he thought, more in sorrow than in anger. “All right. All right,” he said soothingly and left it to its own devices.

  Evening was rapidly settling over the mountains now and having shed all his kit except his pistol and glasses he felt very much more at ease. From the shadow of the cave-mouth he explored the whole terrain with great care, methodically sweeping the mauve contours of the hills. There was no sign of movement, save where the wind ruffled the tree-tops on the crest opposite. He sat quietly on a stone and drank in that quietness, punctuated only by the distant whistle of a train in the stone cuttings above the Ibar river, or the shuffle of maize stalks in the fields below him. The babble of the Studenitsa was silenced by the moss-lined pools into which it curled, and here Methuen saw the fish rising languidly to the flies which dotted the surface.

  It was more than human nature could stand, this evidence of the evening rise and, hastening back to the cave he unearthed his trout-rod and set off down the slope, solacing his conscience with a lie: “I know it’s too dangerous to fish to-night,” he said, “but it would be a good idea to assemble my rod and hide it in a convenient place by the river, ready for emergencies.” His conscience was not taken in; and indeed when he arrived at the nearest pool he discovered a spot so well hidden from view on every side that he could not resist making what he described to himself as “just a practice cast or two”.

  In a matter of moments he had a glittering gasping trout beating its life out in the grass upon which he sat, and he was just stuffing it into the pocket of his duffle coat when a rustle in the bushes behind him, but some way up the hill, startled him. He pushed the rod into the bushes and lay for a while behind a bush, nursing his pistol and waiting for developments. But none came, and after a quarter of an hour he eased his cramped knees by crawling swiftly and quietly back to the great tree, feeling the trout wriggling in his pocket all the way.

  The snake had retired to bed, and the yellow beam of his torch revealed no sign of it in the cave. He dumped his trout and returned to the entrance with his glasses, deciding to have one final look round before the rapidly approaching darkness made visibility impossible. Bats had begun to nicker against the sky, and from the north came the plaintive whoop of an owl. He sat drinking in the silence and full of that delightful repose which comes only to the camper who knows that he has food, fuel and shelter against the approaching night.

  Here and there now came the nocturnal stirrings of animals preparing for the night. A large grey wolf came down to the water to drink and, having lifted its muzzle to sniff the air, looked once or twice in his direction with a distinct anxiety before it turned back out of sight into the dense shrub. A water-rat plopped, and a late-scampering lizard skidded among the rocks.

  Methuen suddenly realized that he was tired, and yawning, made his way back to the cave, drawing a screen of branches across the mouth of it. The main chamber where he was to sleep was at right angles to the entrance so he had no fear that the light of his fire might be observed; while from what he remembered of the rock-chimney, the smoke, which emerged thirty yards higher up the hill where the air-currents were stronger, dispersed at the point of issue.

  He had brought a diminutive nest of billies with him which included a small spoked grid upon which he prepared his trout after having let the fire burn up into a heap of soft grey embers; he basted it with some fat scraped from a tin of bully beef and peppered it lightly with some cummin which he had noticed growing near a cottage on his way across the hill. It tasted delicious, and he ate it with his fingers, wiping them on the duffle coat, and having eaten, took a nip at his whisky flask before settling himself finally for the night on the stone pedestal. It was only half-past six, and as yet not completely dark, but as he had work to do tomorrow he felt that a good night’s sleep was the best insurance against fatigue. Despite his boasting about being in perfect condition the climb up the mountain had tired him and he took the precaution to open the little carton of talc and empty it liberally into his socks. From long experience he had learned that a blistered heel could be as dangerous to him as anything could be, and he took the precaution of massaging his feet once he had divested them of the boots which Boris had ordered for him. It was an old walker’s trick inherited from the first war, when those unlucky enough to get trench feet were penalized for it.

  The bed of soft dark bracken upon which his light sleeping-bag had been unrolled was sweet-smelling and comfortable, though he knew from experience that it must be changed every second day or else it collected fleas—from where he had never managed to discover. He settled himself to doze after having set out his torch and pistol within easy reach of his hand. The massive walls of the cave blotted out all the sounds of the outer world and in the silence he felt his mind slowly clearing as it returned to the incidents of the past few days—so perplexingly rich in the promise of solutions which fate had withheld.

  The torturing thought of Vida’s death returned once more to worry him; and then—those strange oracular messages which were being passed over the radio every few days to the little groups of émigré royalists in Paris and London—what did they mean? He had brought a carbon copy of the messages with him and pondering thus he was tempted to light the single candle in his kit and read them once more before he fell asleep; but he desisted and allowed himself to float downwards along the shallow river of memory to where sleep lay waiting for him like some shadowed pool.

  The dial of his watch showed him that it was a quarter to four when next he woke, and he sat up with a start. Some half-irrational prompting seemed to tell him that it was the noise of footsteps which had shaken him into wakefulness. He grabbed his pistol, comforted by the cool feel of the butt, and waited. Nothing. The deep silence filled every corner of the cave, save where a single mosquito droned in the darkness. He was about to lie back again when he heard it—the clumsy scratch of boots on the bank below the cave. It was as if someone had slipped and fallen. He waited now with every muscle tense but nothing further followed so after a pause he slipped on his boots, and taking his torch in his hand went softly to the entrance where he peered through the screen of branches at a fragment of night-sky still full of fading stars.

  There was nothing to be seen, and after a further long silence Methuen set aside the branches as quietly as he could and crawled out on to the rock where the great tree cast its black cricle of shadow. The hillside was still sleeping innocently under a sky of the palest lavender. He looked anxiously about him but could find nothing which might give him a clue as to the nature of his visitor—if such he was. From s
omewhere over the hill a cock crowed and its clarion was answered hoarsely from the direction of the monastery. A faint distant rumble proclaimed a train. But all around him the forest scrub and river was utterly silent.

  He shivered with a sudden dawn-chill and retraced his steps to the cave where he lit the fire and put some water on to boil, glad of the warmth of the crackling twigs. The noise had probably come from some prowling wolf, he thought, remembering the incident of the night before; nevertheless he must be careful. And his thoughts turned involuntarily to the corpse of the monk lying there by the river behind the next shoulder of hill. It would be unlucky if the old man’s murder attracted unwelcome attention to this part of the country and compromised his headquarters. “I suppose to be really sure I should move,” said Methuen aloud, yet he knew himself loth to leave so splendid a hideout.

  He busied himself with setting his temporary home to rights, burying the scraps left over from his meal in the soft earth outside and scouring the utensils he had dirtied the night before. By the time he had done this his water was boiling and he made himself a mug of tea, standing outside to drink it, watching the pale tones of the dawn light creep up from the east. To-day was to be devoted to a patrol of the railway to north and south of the valley, and with this in mind he set off in full fancy dress well before sunrise, crossing the river at the nearest point, and walking swiftly into the forest-clad depression which lay opposite him. He skirted the monastery this time and gazed for a while at the old sawmill by the café where he had once sat and played chess against all comers. It seemed iust the same. There was a light burning in one of the windows of the tavern and he could imagine a party of lumbermen downing their plum brandies before setting forth on the day’s work.

  It took him an hour to reach the point where the main valley intersected that formed by the Studenitsa and here he paused to eat some plums and blackberries which he found in a deserted orchard and to wash his face in a pool. Then he set off in the deep woods which crowned the summit, keeping the valley to his left and pausing from time to time to sweep the river and railway with his glasses. There was no untoward sign of movement save for a couple of lorries full of blue-coated policemen reinforced by a sprinkling of leather-men. They were travelling north at some speed and he judged that they were bound for some collective farm where trouble had broken out, and where they would administer summary socialist justice with their truncheons and handcuffs.

  The air on this mountain was light and pure, and though he walked fast he felt full of energy; in fact it was all he could do to keep himself from singing as he walked. He examined the fortress he had seen the day before and calculated that not more than a company of soldiers were based there; the tunnels of the railway, however, which lay some three hundred feet below the eagle’s nest, were all heavily guarded and he was careful to use his cover skilfully lest he should be picked up from the opposite canyon by someone using glasses as powerful as his own.

  But the farther he walked the more astonishingly peaceful became the landscape. Here and there were men ploughing, and once he saw a caravan of mules setting off down the mountain, but in general there was nothing to indicate the presence of alarms or dangers. Once he ran into an old woman gathering firewood and passed the time of day with her, stopping only to ask her if she had any milk for sale; but her hopeless gesture—raising both hands to the sky—told him more eloquently than words could do how impoverished the peasantry in these parts was. He asked her a few questions which, while they were useful to him, were the kind that any passer-by might ask; and told her that he was walking to Rashka to see his family. “Why don’t you walk on the road?” she asked. “It is easier.” Methuen gave her a knowing wink and said: “Mother, the road is full of official cars and very dusty.”

  By midday he had covered several miles without seeing anything to arouse his interest and he lay up for a rest in a patch of maize. He had managed to locate the point where he had jumped out of the car yesterday and also the tree which overhung the road, and out of which he was to toss his report to Porson—unless he chose to wait by the milestone and get a lift back to Belgrade. He calculated that the rendezvous was exactly an hour’s walking distance from the cave he had chosen as his hideout.

  He set off back to the cave in the late afternoon, but this time he gathered some corn-cobs for his evening meal and almost entirely filled one of his large poacher’s pockets with stolen almonds and dwarf-pears. Made bolder by the general peacefulness of the scene he several times left cover to take a promising footpath through those scented fields, and it was while he was crossing a stream by a little wooden footbridge that he came upon a man leading a mule laden with small sacks. Methuen stood aside to let him pass and saluted him gruffly and the man replied in a surly tone. He was a huge ugly brute, dressed in patched and greasy clothes and canvas leggings. A torn straw hat was on his head. Having negotiated the stream he turned to face Methuen and said: “Who are you? You don’t belong to us!”

  Methuen repeated his story only instead of mentioning Rashka, which lay in the direction from which he had already come, he named another village higher up the mountain. The man’s eyes narrowed and he looked furtively about him. “Are you alone?” he said and seemed reassured when Methuen said that he was.

  “I have some tobacco for sale,” he said in an ingratiating whine.

  “Good?”

  “The best.”

  “I have no money.”

  “What have you?”

  “A needle and thread.”

  The man’s eyes widened and a smile came over his face. “A needle!” he repeated and laughed with surprise. “From America,” said Methuen sticking to the brief Boris had given him. “I get a parcel every month.” The man undid his donkey and from a sack took a great twist—several pounds of contraband tobacco—and pressed it on Methuen saying: “In our whole village there is only one needle, passed from house to house.”

  This incident seemed to thaw him out and he was disposed to stop and chatter but Methuen was anxious to be on his way. As they parted he called after Methuen: “Be careful up there! There are bad people!” and then he winked and gave a horrid leer. “Is it possible”, asked Methuen of himself, “that he takes me for a White Eagle?”

  He cut across an orchard and down the slope behind the monastery; altogether he had travelled about seven miles, along the four sides of a square. The body of the old monk still lay under the tree by the river and for a moment Methuen felt a pang of conscience: he should, he supposed, dig a grave for it. But there was no time and no energy over, and a diversion from his central plan might prove fatal. He retired into the cave, where the snake once more sat on duty, and shedding his boots, lit a candle and commenced his brief report for Dombey.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Footsteps in the Night

  His excursion had given him much more confidence and that evening he permitted himself a rapturous hour of fishing in the dusk before returning to the cave. The trout showed little interest in a Pale Olive Dun but rose nicely to a Winged Standard, though once hooked they showed little disposition to fight so that in half an hour he had caught enough to feed a dinner-party of eight. He tried two of the flies which the Ambassador had tied himself, but without conspicuous success, and he abandoned them regretfully as possibly too highly coloured for their purpose.

  The snake too showed the first signs of domestication, for it no longer hissed when he appeared in the cave-mouth, and he was able to walk about with more confidence though he did not dare to shed his boots unless he was actually sitting up beyond its reach on the stone bed he had chosen. His dinner that night was more ambitious, consisting of a grilled trout, two corn-cobs, and some nuts and blackberries: and he ate it beside a roaring fire which lit up the cave with a rosy glare and dispelled the evening damps rising from the river.

  It did not take him long to write a brief description of the day’s exploration, and to add that he intended to stay on—he did not add for how long. With his
report he added a note for transmission to Dombey saying that he was well and that the fishing was excellent. Then, turning aside from these tedious chores, he cleaned his pistol, and after tidying his equipment treated himself to half an hour of Walden, revelling in the smooth oracular prose which never wearied him, and which seemed to contain a message which tantalized him without ever satisfying.

  “Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it; but while I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. Its thin current slides away, but eternity remains.”

  He would have been at a loss to explain why phrases like that haunted him, yet they did, carrying magical undertones which made him repeat them to himself under his breath. And it was particularly when he found himself in a place like this, far from the habitations of men, that he found in this little book a richness and resonance which made him feel at one with the lone American in his log cabin, watching the leaves fall on Walden pond.

  He blew out the candle and crawled into his sleeping-bag, repeating another of those oracular phrases like a talisman. “Shams and delusions are esteemed for soundest truths, while reality is fabulous!” Methuen murmured the word “fabulous” twice and wondering what his author could mean slid smoothly into a deep sleep.

  Once again he was woken that night by what seemed to him the sound of stealthy footsteps near the cave. The fire had burned down to a bed of soft ash, and his watch marked the hour of three. This time, however, he decided to be more ambitious, and crawling swiftly and smoothly from the cave he slipped down the slope to the water’s edge and waited there silently for half a minute before fording the stream and crawling up the hillock opposite. From here he could examine the cave-mouth and the hillside around it with his powerful night-glasses, but the visibility was poor and despite a long watch he could see nothing which might account for the noise. He returned to his bed and spent the rest of the night anxiously dozing and starting up at every sound.