The Seventh Scroll (18 page)

A mile or two further downstream they rejoined the river in a different mood as it rippled through dense forest.

The dangling lianas swept the surface and tree moss brushed their heads as they passed, straggling and unkempt as the beard of the old priest at Debra Maryam. Vervet monkeys chattered at them from the treetops and ducked their heads in wide-eyed outrage at the human intrusion into these secret places. Once a large animal crashed away through the

undergrowth, and Nicholas glanced across at Boris.

The Russian shook his head, laughing. "No, English, not dik-dik. Only kudu."

On the hillside above them the kudu paused to look back. He was a large bull with full twists to his wide corkscrew horns, a magnificent beast with a maned dewlap and pricked ears shaped like trumpets. He stared at them with huge, startled eyes. Boris whistled softly and his attitude changed abruptly.

"Those horns are over fifty inches. They would get a place right at the top of Rowland Ward." He was referring to the register of big game which was the Bible of the trophy hunter. "Don't you want to take him, English?" He ran to the nearest mule and pulled the Rigby rifle from its slip case, then ran back and offered it to Nicholas.

"Let him go." Nicholas shook his head. "Only dik-dik for me." With a flirt of his white powder-puff tail, the bull was gone over the ridge. Boris shook his head disgustedly and spat into the river.

"Why did he try to insist that you kill it?" Royan demanded as they went on.

"A photograph of a record pair of horns like that would look good on his advertising brochure. Suck in them clients."

All day they followed the winding trail, and in the late afternoon they camped in a clearing above the river where it was evident that other caravans had camped many times before them. It seemed obvious that this road was divided into time-honoured stages: every traveller took three full days from the top of the falls to reach the monastery, and they all camped at the same sites.

"Sorry. No shower here," Boris told his clients. "If you want to wash, there is a safe pool around the first bend upstream."

Royan looked appealingly at Nicholas, "I am so tired and sweaty. Please won't you stand guard for me, where you can hear me call if I need you?" So he lay on the mossy bank just below the bend, out of sight but close enough to hear her splash and squeal at the cold embrace of the water. Once when he turned his head he realized that the current must have drifted her downstream, for through the trees he caught a flash of a naked back, and the curve of a buttock, creamy and glistening wet with water. He looked away again guiltily, but he was startled by the intensity of his physical arousal brought on by that brief glimpse of lambent skin dappled with the late sunlight through the trees.

When she came downstream along the bank, singing softly, towelling her wet hair, she called to him, "Your turn.

Do you want me to stand guard for you?"

"I am a big boy now." He shook his head, but as she passed him he noticed the saucy glint in her eye, and he ly if she had been fully aware of just how wondered sudden far downstream she had swum, and how much he had seen.

He was titillated by the thought.

He went upstream to the pool alone, and as he stripped he looked down at himself and felt guilty when he saw how she had moved him-Since Rosalind, no other woman had had this effect on him.

"A nice cold plunge won't do you any harm, my lad." He threw his jeans over a bush, and dived into the pool.

sat at the campfire after the evening meal, olas looked up suddenly and cocked his

"Am I hearing things?" he wondered.

"No," Tessay laughed. "That is singing you hear. The priests from the monastery are coming to welcome us."

They saw the torches then, winding up the hillside in procession, flickering through the trees as they approached the camp. The muleteers and the servants crowded forward, singing and clapping rhythmically to greet the deputation from the monastery.

The deep male voices soared and then dropped away, almost to a whisper, then rose again in descant, haunting and beautiful, the sound of Africa in the night. It drove icy thrills down Nicholas's spine, so that he shivered involuntarily.

Then they saw the white robes of the priests, flitting like moths in the torchlight as they wound along the trail The camp servants fell on their knees as the first of the holy men entered the perimeter of the camp. They were young acolytes, bare-headed and barefooted. They were followed by the monks, wearing long robes and tall turbans.

Their ranks wheeled aside and opened up, an honour guard for the phalanx of deacons and fully ordained priests in their gaudy embroidered robes and vestments.

Each of them carried a heavy Coptic cross, set on a tall staff and intricately chased and worked innative silver.

They in turn opened into two ranks, still chanting, and allowed the canopied palanquin to be carried forward by four hefty young acolytes and placed in the centre of the camp. The crimson and yellow silk curtains shimmered in the light of the camp lanterns and the torches of the procession.

"We must go forward to welcome the abbot," Boris told Nicholas in a stage whisper. "His name is Jali Hora." As they stepped up to the litter, the curtains were drawn dramatically aside and a tall figure stepped down to earth.

Both Tessay and Royan sank to their knees respectfully, and clasped their hands at the breast. However, Nicholas and Boris remained on their feet, and Nicholas inspected the abbot with interest.

jali Hora was skeletally thin. Beneath the skirts of his robe his legs were like sticks of cured tobacco, tar'black and twisted, with desiccated sinew and stringy muscle. His robe was green and gold, worked with gold thread that glittered in the firelight. On his head he wore a tall hat with a flat top embroidered with a pattern of crosses and stars.

The abbot's face -was dead sooty black, the skin wrinkled and riven with the deep etchings of age. There were few teeth behind his puckered lips, and even those were yellowed and askew. His beard was startling silver white, breaking like storm surf on the old bones of his jaw.

One eye was opaque blue and blinded with tropical ophthalmia, but the other eye glistened like that of a hunting leopard.

He began to speak in a high, quavering voice. "A blessing," Boris warned Nicholas, and they both bowed their heads respectfully. The assembled priests came in with the chanted response each time the old man paused. When at last he had finished giving his blessing jali Hora made the sign of the cross in four directions, rotating slowly towards each point of the compass, while two altar boys swung their silver censers vigorously, deluging the night with pungent clouds of incense smoke.

After the blessing the two women came forward to kneel before the abbot. He stooped over them and struck them lightly on each cheek with his silver cross, chanting a falsetto blessing over them.

"They say the old man is over a hundred years old," Boris whispered to Nicholas.

Two white-robed debteras brought forward a stool of African ebony, so beautifully carved that Nicholas eyed it acquisitively. He guessed that it was probably centuries old, and would have made a handsome addition to the museum collection. The two debteras took Jah Hora's elbows and gently seated him on the stool. Then the rest of the company sank to the earth in a congregation around him, their black faces lifted towards him attentively.

Tessay sat at his feet, and when her husband spoke she translated quietly for him into Amharic. "It is a great pleasure and an honour for me to greet you again, Holy Father."

The old man nodded, and Boris went on, "I have brought an English nobleman of royal blood to, visit the monastery of St. Frumentius."

"I say, steady on, old boy!, Nicholas protested, but all the congregation studied him with expectant interest.

"What do I do now?" he asked Boris out of the corner of his mouth.

"What do You think he came all this way for?" Boris grinned maliciously.

"He wants a gift. Money,'

"Maria Theresa dollars?" he enquired, referring to the centuries-old traditional currency of Ethiopia, "Not necessarily. Times have changed. jali Hora will be happy to take Yankee green-backs."

"How much?"

"You are a nobleman of royal blood. You will be hunting in his valley. Five hundred dollars at least."

Nicholas winced and went to fetch his bag from one of the mule panniers. When he came back he bowed to the abbot and placed the sheaf of currency in his outstretched, pink-palmed claw. The abbot smiled, exposing the yellow stumps of his teeth, and spoke briefly.

Tessay translated for him, "He says, "Welcome to the monastery of St. Frumentius and the season of Timkat." He wishes you good hunting on the banks of the Abbay river."

Immediately the solemn mood of the devout company changed. They broke out in smiles and laughter, and the abbot looked expectantly at Boris.

"The holy abbot says it has been a thirsty journey," Tessay translated.

"The old devil loves his brandy," Boris explained, and shouted to the camp butler. With some ceremony a bottle of brandy was brought and placed on the camp table in front of the abbot, shoulder to shoulder with the bottle of vodka in front of Boris. They toasted each other, and the abbot tossed back a dram that made his good eye weep with tears, and his voice husky as he directed a question at Royan.

"He asks you, Woizero Royan, where do you come from, daughter, that you follow the true path of Christ the Saviour of man?"

"I am an Egyptian, of the old religion," Royan replied. The abbot and all his priests nodded and beamed with approval.

"We are all brothers and sisters in Christ, the Egyptians and the Ethiopians," the abbot told her. "Even the word Coptic derives from the Greek for Egyptian. For over sixteen hundred years the Abuna, the bishop, of Ethiopia was always appointed by the Patriarch in Cairo. Only the Emperor Haile Selassie changed that in 1959, but we still follow the true road to Christ. You are welcome, my daughter."

His debtera poured another dram of brandy and the old man swallowed it at a gulp. Even Boris looked impressed, "Where does the skinny old black tortoise put it?" he wondered aloud. Tessay did not translate, but she lowered her eyes and the hurt she felt for the insult to the holy man showed on her madonna features.

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.