The Seventh Scroll - Smith Wilbur - Страница 37

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Jah Hora turned to Nicholas. "He wants to know what animals you have

come to hunt here in his valley," Tessay told him.

Nicholas steeled himself and then replied carefully.

There was a long moment of disbelief, then the abbot cackled happily and

the assembled priests shouted with incredulous mirth.

"A dik-dik! You have come to hunt a dikdik! But there is no meat on an

animal that size."

Nicholas let them get over the first shock, and then produced a

photograph of the mounted specimen of Moquoda harPerU from the museum.

He placed it on the table in front of Jah Hora.

"This is no ordinary dik-dik. It is a holy dik-dik," he told them in

portentous tones, nodding at Tessay for the translation. "Let me recount

the legend." They were silenced by the prospect of a good story with

religious overtones. Even the abbot arrested the glass on its way to his

lips and replaced it on the table. His one eye swivelled from the

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

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