Tales of Adventurers (25 page)

Authors: Geoffrey Household

BOOK: Tales of Adventurers

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Below them the side of the hill fell away in what was rather a rough glacis than a cliff. It was far too steep to climb, but a man could rest against it if he had some slight means of support.
Both the man and the support – what was left of them – were visible. At the bottom, lying on a narrow platform of gravel, was a body. At the top, tied round a boulder, was the broken
end of a grass rope.

Another path, very narrow and worn smooth by the ascents and descents of a single pair of feet, skirted the edge and then plunged downwards, zigzagging across the normal slope of the hill until
it led them back to the cliff’s foot. The monk Pyotr lay with his hands crossed on his breast; he must have been some time a-dying after his fall. He wore the remains of his black frock tied
round his waist. It had not rotted. The knots showed that this rag was all he had in life. Where his flesh had been exposed to the sun it had dried; where it was covered by his long, gray hair, it
had disappeared. In the wash of the light wind the hair moved back and forth over white bone.

He held a heavy hammer in his hand. The debris upon which he lay was not gravel, but chippings from the rock face, fallen week after week and year after year during his strange, singlehanded
quarrying. The bank of debris was two hundred feet long, proving that he had worked on the end of his rope right across the face of the glacis.

Gwynn picked up a handful of the chippings. They were composed of a hard deposit left by water which had seeped over the glacis and dried, or even boiled, before it reached the bottom. This
mineral skin the monk had cleaned away from the underlying rock.

Fomin knocked out a specimen of the rock itself.

“Zinc again,” he said. “But what use did he think it was without any possible transport? Why did he want it? Did he think his God would make the railway?”

“He wanted it to make the shining light,” said Gwynn.

“They did not teach chemistry in monasteries.”

“No. They taught patience, Fomin. Patience till death. Patience for the glory of God.
Glory
he wrote, didn’t he? Oh, it’s quite plain! He saw after dark the luminous
patches of rock where sulphide of zinc had been exposed to the sun, and wanted more of it.”

“A natural sulphide of zinc in that purity is impossible,” Fomin answered shortly.

“But there it is, my good colleague. There it is! It is also impossible that one man should clear 30,000 square feet of it with nothing but a grass rope and a hammer. One square foot an
hour. Four hours a day. Ten thousand days. That would do it, Fomin, if he came in 1920. You should be proud of your compatriot. A Stakhanovite, eh?”

“But for what? For what, I ask you?”

“To light the desert.”

“For aircraft?”

“For us, commissar,” replied Mahene impatiently. “My Lord, all that work! And how he must have hoped that someone would see it!”

Quarter of a mile to the south was a steep ridge from which they could look, at an angle, onto the face of the rock. Twilight was on them when they reached it. Faint luminous patches were
visible where Pyotr had been at work and on raised surfaces where water had never run. Then the night came down and the glacis began to glow with the merciless light it had received during the
day.

The pattern of the monk’s quarrying appeared. It was very rough, and only to be distinguished after long watching, for gullies, angles and pinnacles broke the outline. The design was
intended to be a solid eight-pointed star. The eighth point was incomplete, barely started. It stood exactly above the dead body of the monk.

In the middle of the star – or so nearly the middle that Pyotr plainly had the eye of a craftsman – was a black spot which seemed to be a hollow, too deep to catch the sun during the
day. A black line which was a ledge ran across the star to its center.

They found the bottom of the ledge. That, too, had been worn into a path. It was a vile place, nowhere more than two feet wide, but the going was firm and the way could clearly be seen. The
light, when they were in the midst of it, was not so powerful as it had appeared from a distance; the rock was luminous as the bow wave of a summer boat, revealing the shapes of objects without
detail.

The black spot was a natural cleft, of which the outer edge had been knocked into a rough circle by Pyotr’s hammer. It was quite shallow. At the back they could see a dim gleam of metal
which drew a gasp of anticipation from John Mahene.

An icon of the Virgin and Child stood upon an altar crudely chipped from the surrounding rock. The two Byzantine heads stared at the intruders from a massive frame of gold. The devotion which
had inspired that indefatigable monk to rescue it from destruction or theft could be understood, but how he had carried an object of such breadth and weight and value across frontier and mountains,
whether hidden in sacks or under his cassock, was beyond conjecture; nor could they guess how he had come to the hill, over the face of which, for his remaining years, he had labored to extend the
deep and golden frame of his treasure. As likely as not, Gwynn thought, he had gone up to die, and found, like themselves, a reprieve.

“Worth the journey, Fomin?” he asked.

“I will not let you take it. It stays here,” Fomin answered with quiet and absolute determination.

“I was not thinking of its worth in Bond Street,” said Gwynn gently.

Fomin’s lack of comprehension wasn’t surprising. He served his own kingdom of the spirit. So did they all, he thought, all different kingdoms, the European, the Asiatic and the
Negro. They had risked their lives for such utterly distinct reasons, and God alone knew whether one was more valid than another.

Mahene’s upright body was tense with reverence. He was not a man to kneel. When he felt Gwynn’s eyes upon him, he found it necessary to speak.

“We shan’t get rich this time, Mr. Gwynn,” he said.

He did not sound disappointed, merely regretful that it was too much for any human being to expect profit as well as success.

“Not this time, John,” Gwynn answered. “This time we have come with our gifts.”

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Cover design by Drew Padrutt

978-1-5040-1048-1

This edition published in 2015 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

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