The Seventh Scroll - Smith Wilbur - Страница 76

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the boy.

"I think we should start with Tamre, our faithful guide," she said, and

took his hand. "Listen to me, Tamre. Listen very carefully!" Obediently

he cocked his head and stared at her face, summoning all his errant

concentration.

"We are looking for a place where the square stones come from." He

looked mystified, so she tried again. "Long ago there were men who cut

the rock from the mountains.

Somewhere near here, they left a big hole. Perhaps there are still

square blocks of stone lying in the hole?"

Suddenly the boy's face cleared and split into a beatific smile. "The

Jesus stone!the cried happily.

He sprang to his feet without relinquishing his grip on her hand. "I

show you my Jesus stone." He dragged her after him as he bounded away

down the valley.

"Wait, Tamre! she pleaded. "Not so fast." But in vain.

Tamre kept up the pace and burst into an Amharic hymn as he ran.

Nicholas followed at a more sedate pace, and caught up with them a

quarter of a mile down the valley.

There he found Tamre on his knees, pressing his forehead against the

rock wall of the valley, his eyes shut tightly as he prayed. He had

dragged Royan down beside him.

"What on earth are you doing?"Nicholas demanded, as he came up.

"We are praying," she told him primly. "Tamre's instructions. We have to

pray before we can go to the Jesus stone." She turned away from

Nicholas, closed her eyes and clasped her hands in front of her eyes,

then began to pray softly.

Nicholas found a seat on a boulder a little way from them. "I don't

suppose it can do any harm," he consoled himself, as he settled down to

wait.

Abruptly Tamre sprang to his feet and performed a giddy little dance,

flapping his arms and whirling around until he raised the dust. Then he

stopped and chanted. "It is done. We can go in to the Jesus stone."

Once again he seized Royan's hand and led her to the rock wall. In front

of Nicholas's eyes the two of them seemed to vanish, and he stood up in

mild alarm.

"Royan!" he called. "Where are you? What's going on?"

"This way, Nicky. Come this way!'

He went to the wall and exclaimed with astonishment, "My oath! We would

never have found this in a year of searching."

The cliff face was folded back upon itself, forming a concealed

entrance. He walked through the opening, gazing up the vertical sides,

and within thirty paces came out into an open amphitheatre that was at

least a hundred yards across and open to the sky. The walls were of

solid rock, and he could see at a glance that it was the same micaceous

schist as the block which Royan had found lying on the floor of the

valley.

It was apparent that the bowl had been quarried out of the living rock,

leaving tiers rising up to the top of the walls. The recesses from which

the blocks had been hacked were still plain to see and had left deep

steps with rightangled profiles. Some scrub and undergrowth had found a

precarious foothold in the cracks, but the open quarry was not choked

with this growth and Nicholas could see that a stockpile of finished

granite blocks remained scattered about the bottom of the excavation. He

was so awed by the discovery that he could find no words to express

himself. He stood just inside the entrance, his head slowly turning from

side to side as he tried to take it all in.

Tamre had led Royan to the centre of the quarry where one large slab lay

on its own. It was obvious that the ancients had been on the point -of

removing it and transporting it up the valley, for it was finished and

dressed into a perfect rectangle.

"The Jesus stone!" Tamre chanted, kneeling before the slab and pulling

Royan down beside him. "Jesus led me here. The first time I came here I

saw him standing on the stone. He had a long white beard and eyes that

were kind and sad." He crossed himself and began to recite one of the

psalms, swaying and bobbing to the rhythm.

As Nicholas moved up quietly behind them he saw the evidence that Tamre

had visited this sacred place of his regularly. The Jesus stone was his

own private altar, and his pathetic little offerings were lying where he

had laid them. There were old tej flasks and baked clay pots, most of

them cracked and broken. In them stood bunches of wild flowers that had

long ago wilted and dried out. There were other treasures that he had

gathered and placed upon his altar - tortoise shells and porcupine

quills, a cross that had been hand-carved from wood and decorated with

scraps of coloured cloth, necklaces of lucky beans, and models of

animals and birds moulded from blue river clay.

Nicholas stood and watched the two of them kneeling and praying together

in front of the primitive altar. He felt deeply moved by this evidence

of the boy's faith, and by his childlike trust in bringing them to this

place.

At last Royan stood up and came to join him. Together she and Nicholas

began to make a slow circuit of the quarry floor. They spoke little, and

then only in whispers as though they were in a cathedral or some holy

place. She touched his arm and pointed. A number of the square blocks

still lay in their original positions in the quarry walls. They had not

been completely freed from the mother rock, like a foetus attached by an

umbilical cord which had never been severed by the ancient masons.

It was a perfect illustration of the quarrying methods used by the

ancients. Work could be seen in progress in all the various stages, from

the marking out of the blocks by the master craftsman, the drilling of

the tap holes, the wedging of the cleavage lines, right up to the

finished product lifted out of the wall and ready for transport to the

dam site.

The sun had set and it was almost dark by the time they came round to

the entrance of the quarry again. They sat together on one of the

finished blocks, with Tamre sitting at their feet like a puppy, looking

up at Royan's face.

"If he had a tail he would wag it,'Nicholas smiled.

"We can never betray his trust, and desecrate this place in any way. He

has made it his own temple. I don't think he has ever brought another

living soul here. Will you promise me that we will always respect it, no

matter what?"

"That is the very least I can do," he agreed. Then, turning to Tamre, he

said, "You have done a very good thing by bringing us here to your Jesus

stone. I am very pleased with you. The lady is very pleased with you."

"We should start back to camp now," Royan suggested, looking up at the

patch of sky above them. Already it was purple and indigo, shot through

with the last rays of the sunset.

"I don't think that would be very wise," he disagreed.

"Because it is a moonless night one of us could very easily break a leg

in the dark. That is something not to be recommended out here. It might

take a week to get back to any adequate medical attention."

"You plan to sleep here?" she asked, with surprise.

"Why not? I can whip up a fire in no time and I also have a pack of

survival rations for dinner - I have done this kind of thing before, you

know! And you have your chaperon with you, so your honour is safe. So

why not?"

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