by Wilbur Smith
photograph to Nicholas's face.
"When John the Baptist was dying of starvation in the desert," Nicholas
began, and a few of the priests crossed themselves at the mention of the
saint's name, "he had been thirty days and thirty nights without a
morsel passing his lips-' Nicholas spun out the yarn for a while,
dwellin on the extremities of hunger endured by the saint, details
savoured by his audience who liked their holy men to suffer in the name
of righteousness.
"In the end the Lord took mercy on his servant and placed a small
antelope in a thicket of acacia, held fast by the thorns. He said unto
the saint: "I have prepared a meal for you that you shall not die. Take
of this meat and eat."
Where John the Baptist touched the small creature, the marks of his
thumb and fingers were imprinted upon its back for all time, and all
generations to come." They were silent and impressed.
Nicholas passed the photograph to the abbot. "See the prints of the
saint's fingers upon it."
The old man studied the print avidly, holding it up to his single eye,
and at last he exclaimed, "It is true. The marks of the saint's fingers
are clear to see."
He passed it to his deacons. Encouraged by the abbot's endorsement, they
exclaimed and wondered over the picture of the insignificant creature in
its coat of striped fur'.
"Have any of your men ever laid eyes upon one of these animals?"
Nicholas demanded, and one after the other they shook their heads. The
photograph completed the circle and was passed to the rank of squatting
acolytes.
Suddenly one of them leaped to his feet prancing, brandishing the
photograph and gibbering with excitement.
"I have seen this holy creature! With my very own eyes, I have seen it."
He was a young boy, barely adolescent.
There were cries of derision and disbelief from the others. One of them
snatched the print from the boy's grasp and waved it out of his reach,
taunting him with it.
"The child is soft in the head, and often possessed by demons and
fits,'Jali Hora explained sorrowfully. "Take no notice of him, poor
Tamre!'
Tamre's eyes were wild as he ran down the rank of acolytes, trying
desperately to recapture the photograph.
But they passed it back and forth, keeping it just out of his reach,
teasing him and jeering at his antics.
Nicholas rose to his feet to intervene. He found this taunting of a
weak'minded lad offensive, but at that moment something tripped in the
boy's mind, and he fell to the ground as though struck down by a club.
His back arched and his limbs twitched and jerked uncontrollably, his
eyes rolled back into his skull until only the whites showed, and white
froth creamed on his lips that were drawn back in a grinning rictus.
Before Nicholas could go to him, four of his peers picked him up bodily
and carried him away. Their laughter dwindled into the night. The others
acted as though this was nothing out of the ordinary, and Jali Hora
nodded to his debtera to refill his glass.
it was late when at last Jah Hora took his leave and was helped into the
palanquin by his deacons. He took the remains of the brandy with him,
clutching the halfempty bottle in one clawed hand and tossing out
benedictions with the other.
"You made a good impression, Milord English," Boris told him. "He liked
your story of John the Baptist, but he liked your money even more."
When they set out the next morning, the path followed the river for a
while. But within a mile the waters quickened their pace, and then raced
through the narrow opening between high red cliffs and plunged over
another waterfall.
Nicholas left the welltrodden trail and went down to the brink of the
falls. He looked down two hundred feet into a deep cleft in the rock,
only just wide enough to allow the angry river to squeeze through. He
could have thrown a stone across the gap. There was no path nor foothold
in that chasm, and he turned back and rejoined the rest of the caravan
as it detoured away from the river and into another thickly wooded
valley.
"This was probably once the course of the Dandera river, before it cut a
fresh bed for itself through the chasm." Royan pointed to the high
ground on each side of the path, and then to the water-worn boulders
that littered the trail.
"I think you are right," Nicholas agreed. These cliffs seem to be an
intrusion of limestone through the basalt and sandstone. The whole area
has been severely faulted and cut up by erosion and the ever-changing
river. You can be certain that those limestone cliffs are riddled with
caves and springs."
Now the trail descended rapidly towards the Blue Nile, falling away
almost fifteen hundred feet in altitude' in the last few miles. The
sides of the valley were heavily covered with vegetation and at many
places small springs of water oozed from the limestone and trickled down
the old river bed.
The heat built up steadily as they went down, and soon even Royan's
khaki shirt was stained with dark patches of sweat between her shoulder
blades.
At one stage a freshet of clear water gushed from an area of dense bush
high up the hillside and swelled the stream into a small river. Then
they turned a corner of the valley and found that they and the stream
had rejoined the main flow of the Dandera river. Looking back up the
gorge, they could see where the river had emerged from the chasm through
a narrow archway in the cliff. The rock surrounding the cleft was a
peculiar pink in colour, smooth and polished, folded back upon itself,
so that it resembled the mucous membrane on the inside of a pair of
human lips.
The rock -was of such an unusual colour and texture that they were both
struck by it. They turned aside to study it while the mules went on
downwards, the clatter of their receding hoofbeats and the voices of the
men echoing and reverberating weirdly in this confined and unearthly
place.
"It looks like some monstrous gargoyle, gushing water through its
mouth," Royan whispered, looking up at the cleft and at those strange
rock formations. "I can imagine how the ancient Egyptians, led by Taita
and Prince Memnon, would have been moved if they had ever reached this
place. &at mystical connotations would they have attributed to such a
natural phenomenon!'
Nicholas was silent, studying her face. Her eyes were dark with awe, and
her expression solemn. In this setting she reminded him strongly of a
portrait that he had in his collection at Quenton Park, It was a
fragment of a fresco from the Valley of the Kings, depicting a
Ramessidian princess.
Why should that surprise you?" he asked himself. "The very same blood
runs in her veins."
She turned to face him, "Give me hope, Nicky. Tell me that I have not
dreamed all this. Tell me that we are going to find what we are looking
for, and that we are going to vindicate Duraid's death."
Her face
was upturned to his, and it seemed to glow under the light dew
of perspiration and the strength of her commitment. He was seized by an
almost overwhelming urge to take her up in his arms and kiss those
moistly parted lips, but instead he turned away and started down the
trail.
He dared not look back at her until he had himself fully under control.
After a while he heard her quick, light tread on the rock behind him.
They went on down in silence, and he was so preoccupied that he was
unprepared for the sudden stunning vista that opened abruptly before
them.
They stood high on a ledge above the sub-gorge of the Nile. Below them
was a mighty cauldron of red rock five hundred feet deep. The main flow
of the legendary river plunged in a green torrent into the shadowy
abyss. It was so deep that the sunlight did not reach down into it.
Beside them the sparser waters of the Dandera river took the same leap,
falling white as an egret's feather, twisting and blowing in the false
wind of the gorge. In the depths the waters mingled, churning and
roiling together in a welter of foam, turning upon themselves like a
great wheel, weighty and viscous as oil, until at last they found the
exit gorge and tore away down it with irresistible force and power.
"You sailed through that in a boat?"Royan asked, with awe in her voice.
"We were young and foolish, then,'Nicholas said with a sad little smile
that was haunted by old memories.
They were silent for a long while. Then RQyan said softly, "One can see
how this would have stopped Taita and his prince as they came upstream."
She looked about her, and then pointed down the gorge towards the west.
"They certainly could never have come up the sub-gorge itself. They must
have followed the line of the top of the cliffs, right along here where
we are standing." Her voice took on an edge of excitement at the
thought.
"Unless they came up the other side of the river," Nicholas suggested to
tease her, and her face fell.
"I hadn't thought of that. Of course it's possible. How would we ever
cross over, if we find no evidence on this side?
"Let's consider that only when it's forced upon us. We have enough to
contend with as it is, without looking for more hardships."
Again they were silent, both of them considering the magnitude and
uncertainty of the task that they had taken on. Then Royan roused
herself.
"Where is the monastery? I can see no sign of it."
"It's in the cliff right under our feet."
"Will we camp down there?"
"I doubt it. Let's catch up with Boris and find out what he intends to
do."
They followed the trail along the edge of the cauldron, and came up with
the mule caravan at a spot where the track forked. One branch turned
away from the river into a wooded depression, while the other still
hugged the rimrock.
Boris was waiting for them, and he indicated the track that led away
from the river. "There is a good campsite up there in the trees where I
stayed last time I hunted down here."
There were several tall wild fig trees throwing shade across this glade,
and a spring of fresh water at the head.
To minimize the loads, Boris had not carried tents down into the gorge.
So as soon as the mules were unloaded he set his men to building three
small thatched huts for their accommodation, and to digging a pit
latrine well away from the spring.
While this work was going on, Nicholas beckoned to Royan and Tessay, and
the three of them set off to explore the monastery. Where the trail
forked, Tessay led them along the path that skirted the cliff top, and
soon they came to a broad rock staircase that descended the cliff face.
There was a party of white-robed monks coming UP the stone stairway, and
Tessay stopped briefly to chat to them. As they went on she told
Nicholas and Royan, "Today is Katera, the eve of the festival of Timkat,
which begins tomorrow. They are very excited. It is one of the major
events of the religious year."
"What does the festival celebrate?" Royan asked. "It is not part of the
Church calendar in Egypt."
"It's the Ethiopian Epiphany, celebrating the baptis of Christ,' Tessay
explained. "During the ceremony the tabot will be taken down to the
river to be rededicated and revitalized, and the acolytes will receive
baptism, as did Jesus Christ at the hand of the Baptist."
They followed the staircase down the sheer cliff face.
The treads of the steps had been dished by the passage of bare feet over
the centuries. Down they went, with the great cauldron of the Nile
boiling and hissing and steaming with spray hundreds of feet below them.
Suddenly they came out on to a wide terrace that had been hewn by man's
hand from the living rock. The red rock overhung it, forming a roof to
the cloister with arches of stone left in place by the ancient builders
to support it.
The interior wall of the long covered terrace was riddled with the
entrances to the catacombs beyond. Over the ages the cliff face had been
mined and burrowed to form the halls and cells, the vestibules, churches
and shrines of the monastic community which had inhabited them for well
over a thousand years.
There were groups of monks seated along the length of the terrace. Some
of them were listening to one of the deacons reading aloud from an
illuminated copy of the scriptures.
"So many of them are illiterate," Tessay sighed. "The Bible must be read
and explained to even the monks, for most of them are unable to read it
for themselves."
"This was what the Church of Constantine was like, the Church of
Byzantium," Nicholas pointed out quietly.
"It remains the Church of cross and book, of elaborate and sumptuous
ritual in a predominantly illiterate world today." As they wandered
slowly down the cloister they passed other seated groups who, under the
direction of a precentor, were chanting and singing the Amharic psalms
and hymns.
>From the interior of the cells and caves there came the IC hum of
voices raised in prayer or supplication, and the air was thick with the
smell of human occupation that had taken place over hundreds of years.
It was the smell of wood smoke and incense, of stale food and excrement,
of sweat and piety, of suffering and of sickness. Amongst the groups of
monks were the pilgrims who had made the journey, or been carried by
their relatives, down into the gorge to make petition to the saint, or
to seek from him a cure for their disease and suffering.
There were blind children weeping in their mothers' arms, and lepers
with the flesh rotting and falling from their bones, and still others in
the coma of sleeping sickness or some other terrible tropical
affliction. Their whines and moans of agony blended with the chanting of
the monks, and with the distant clamour of the Nile as it cascaded into
the cauldron.
They came at last to the entrance to the cavern cathedral of St.
Frumentius. It was a circular opening lik
e the mouth of a fish, but the
surrounds of the portals were painted with a dense border of stars and
crosses, and of saintly heads. The portraits were primitive, and
rendered in ochre and soft earthy tones that were all the more appealing
for their childlike simplicity. The eyes of the saints were huge and
outlined in charcoal, their expressions tranquil and benign.
A deacon in a grubby green velvet robe guarded the entrance, but when
Tessay spoke to him he smiled and nodded and gestured for them to enter.
The lintel was low and Nicholas had to duck his head to pass under it,
but on the far side he raised it again to look about him in amazement.
The roof of the cavern was so high that it was lost in the gloom. The
rock walls -were covered with murals, a celestial host of angels and
archangels who flickered and wavered in the light of the candles and oil
lamps. They were partially obscured by the long tapestry banners that
hung down the walls, grimy with incense soot, their fringes frayed and
tattered. On one of these St. Michael rode a prancing white horse, on
another the Virgin knelt at the foot of the cross, while above her the
pate body of Christ bled from the wound of the Roman spear in his side.
This was the outer nave of the church. In the far wall ". the doorway to
the middle chamber was guarded by a massive pair of wooden doors that
stood open. The three of them crossed the stone floor, picking their way
between the kneeling petitioners and pilgrims in their rags and tatters,
in their misery and their religious ecstasy. In the feeble light of the
lamps and the blue haze of incense smoke they seemed lost souls
languishing eternally in the outer darkness of purgatory.
The visitors reached the set of three stone steps that led up to the
inner doors, but their way was blocked at the threshold by two robed
deacons in tall, flat-topped hats.
One of these addressed Tessay sternly.
"They will not even let us enter the qiddist, the middle chamber,'
Tessay told them regretfully. "Beyond that lies the maqdas, the Holy of
Holies." A
They peered past the guards, and in the gloom of the qiddist could just
make out the door to the inner sanctum.
"Only the ordained priests are allowed to enter the maqdas, for it
contains the tabot and the entrance to the tomb of the saint."
Disappointed and frustrated, they made their way out of the cavern and