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that keeps evil spirits away. It’s often planted over graves for that purpose. All this may seem mere mumbo jumbo, but witchcraft abounds. To this day I do not know what Julien was doing with the hakata. Katie once told me that Julien was studying about the Umlimo, a god of the Ndebele, who they believe lives in the Matopos Mountain Range by the Bulawayo region. There is a spirit guide who lives in the caves who reportedly speaks dark sayings for this god. I still ask myself why Julien would be studying about the Umlimo, and about bone casting for divination
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    Of this I am certain. When it comes to diamonds and gold, I’d trust him no more than a banded cobra
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    Rogan looked up from the yellowing sheets. The ship’s groaning timbers gave voice to mental images of Sir Julien Bley engaged in divination. The idea seemed ludicrous from what Rogan knew of him. Odd…was it so? Sir Julien Bley involved with African witchcraft? Old practical Julien would have been the last person he’d ever suspect of dabbling in superstition. Was there power in such nonsense? Rogan tried to think back to his growing-up years in the church under Vicar Edmund Havering. He couldn’t recall the vicar ever discussing anything diabolical.
    I’ll have a look into this myself. Derwent might know a few things. Does the Bible speak about it? Just what was Julien trying to do when Henry walked in on him?
    Rogan drew his brows together. Along with his blood uncle’s warnings, his own suspicions grew stronger. Henry had his faults, but he had never been ruthless in the hardened way Julien was.
    Julien’s presence at Rookswood made Rogan wary, even as a boy.After Henry’s will was read and his bequest of the map known to the family, Julien would come from Capetown and seek him out alone to “have a small chat.” By the time Rogan turned twelve, he didn’t trust Julien. He would sense being “watched” from the shadows of the mansion, or in the garden. Julien would come to Rookswood each year to visit “the dear family,” something he had never made much of before the reading of Uncle Henry’s will. More than clever for his age, Rogan began to turn the tables on Sir Julien. He would follow him at night to the third floor and watch him enter Henry’s old rooms to search time and again.
    Was Henry killed for the Black Diamond, or the map? Was it Uncle Julien who murdered Henry? With his powerful influence, Julien could have easily arranged things at Grimston Way to cover over anything that might point to him.
    Rogan reached for the other item on his desk, perhaps the more important, the map. The ship pitched again, and Rogan held a column to steady himself. He squinted for perhaps the hundredth time at the emblem of a bird—or birds. He’d long pondered the meaning of the symbols Henry had drawn on the map. Could it represent a falcon, a hawk, or some fowl peculiar to that area? Perhaps he was making too much of it. In all the meticulous research he’d done in London since locating the map, he had yet to find anything significant about a bird in the region north of the Limpopo River. Henry had also drawn a lion and a baobab tree.
    Perhaps the trek itself would shed light on any obscure meanings contained in the wildlife symbols. Was it possible that Henry had nothing more in mind than adding a touch of artistic flair to the painting? If so, its application here would merely have detracted from his usual clarity.
    Rogan’s thoughts roamed to his grandfather, Sir George, who died at sea on a return voyage from the Cape in 1869. Rogan knew him only by his grandiose portrait displayed above the stairwell in the Great Hall at Rookswood with the rest of the Chantry squires.
    Soon after discovering the map, Rogan had asked about his grandfather. One day he found his father busy writing a history of Rookswood. He looked up from his books with typical impatience, brows twisted as