The Seventh Scroll - Smith Wilbur - Страница 38

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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

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