The Seventh Scroll tes-2

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The Seventh Scroll tes-2 Page 17

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

 

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