The Seventh Scroll (56 page)

She sighed softly, "Don't stop. That feels good."

"I'll give you a Brufen for the inflammation." He dug the pills out of his pack and then spread his padded jacket AI for her to lie on. "Sorry, the sleeping bags are with our other gear. Have to rough it until Jannie makes his air drop."

He passed her the water bottle, and while she swallowed the pill he pulled the tab on a pack of emergency rations. "Not exactly gourmet fare He sniffed the contents.

"In the army we call them rat packs." She fell asleep with her mouth still halffilled with tasteless meat loaf and plastic cheese.

When Nicholas woke her with a mug of hot sweet tea, she saw it was already late afternoon. He sat beside her and sipped at his own mug, noisily blowing away the steam between each mouthful.

"You will be pleased to know that Mek is now fully in the picture. He has agreed to help us."

"What have you told him?"

"Just enough to keep him interested."Nicholas grinned.

"The theory of progressive disclosure. Never tell everything all at once, feed it to them a little at a time. He knows what we are looking for, and that we are going to dam a river."

hat about men to work on the dam?"

monks at St. Frumentius will do whatever he tells them. He is a great hero."

"What have you promised him in return?"

"We haven't got round to that yet. I told him that we have no idea what we are going to find, and he laughed and said he would trust me."

"Silly boy, isn't he?"

"Not exactly how I would describe Mek Nimmur," he murmured. "I think when the time is ripe he will let us know what the price of his cooperation is." He looked up at that moment. "We were just talking about you, Mek." Mek strode up to them, and then squatted on his haunches beside Nicholas.

"What were you saying about me

"Royan says you are a hard bastard, pushing er on a forced march all night."

"Nicholas is spoiling you. I have been watching him fussing over you,' he chuckled. "What I say is, treat them rough. Women love it." Then he grew serious. "I am sorry, Royan. The border is always a bad place. You will find me less of a monster now we are on home ground."

"We are very grateful for all you are doing." He inclined his head gravely,

"Nicholas is an old friend, and I hope that you are a new friend."

"I have been terribly distressed. Tessay told me last night that there had been trouble at the monastery."

Mek scowled and tugged at his short beard, pulling a tuft of hair from his own chin with the force of his anger.

"Nogo and his killers. This is just a sample of what we are fighting against. We have been rescued from the tyranny of Mengistu, only to be plunged into fresh horror."

"What happened, MA?"

Speaking tersely but vividly, he described the massacre and the plunder of the monastery's treasures. "There was no doubt it was Nogo. Every one of the monks that escaped knows him well."

His anger was too fierce for him to contain, and he stood up abruptly. "The monastery means much to all the people of the Gojam. I was christened there, by Jali Hora himself. The murder of the abbot and the desecration of the church is a terrible outrage." He jammed his cap down, on his head.

"And now we must get on. The road ahead is steep and difficult. Now that they were clear of the border, it was safe to move in daylight. The second day's march carried them into the depths of the orge. There were no foothills: it was like entering through the keep of a vast castle. The walls of the great central massif rose up almost four thousand feet on either hand, and the river snaked along in the depths, its entire length churned by rapids and breaking white water. At noon Mek broke the march to rest in a grove of trees beside the river.

There was a beach below them, sheltered by massive boulders which must have rolled down from the cliffs that hung like a rampart above them. The five of them sat a little apart from each other.

Sapper was still smarting from his altercation over the theodolite with Mek, and keeping himself aloof. He placed the heavy instrument in a conspicuous position and sat ostentatiously close to it. Mek and Tessay seemed strangely quiet and withdrawn, until suddenly Tessay reached out and grasped Mek's hand..

I want to tell them, she blurted out impulsively.

Mek looked away at the river for a moment before he nodded. "Why not?" he shrugged at last.

"I want them to know," Tessay insisted. "They knew Boris. They will understand."

"Do you.,want me to tell them?" Mek asked softly, and he was still holding her hand.

"Yes," she nodded, "it is best that it comes from you." Mek was silent for a while, gathering his words, and then he started in that low rumbling voice, not looking at them, but watching Tessay's face. "The very first moment I looked upon this woman, I knew that she was the one that God had sent my way."

Tessay moved closer to him.

"Tessay and I said our vows together on the night of Timkat and asked for God's forgiveness, and then I took man."

her away as my wo She laid her head upon his great muscular shoulder.

"The Russian followed us. He found us here, on this very spot. He tried to kill us both."

Tessay looked down at the beach upon which she and Mek had so nearly died, and she shuddered at the memory.

"We fought," he said simply, "and when he was dead, I sent his body floating away down the river."

"We knew he was dead," Royan told them. "We heard from the people at the embassy that the police found his body downstream, near the border. We didn't know how it had happened."

They were all quiet for a while, and then Nicholas broke the silence, "I wish I had been there to watch. It must have been one hell of a fight. He shook his head in awe.

"The Russian was good. I am glad I don't have to fight him again," Mek admitted, and stood up. "We can reach the monastery before dark, if we start now."

ai Metemma, the newly elected abbot of St. Frumentius, met them on the terrace of the monastery overlooking the river. He was only a little younger than Jah Hora had been, tall and with a dignified silver head, and today he was wearing the blue crown in honour of such a distinguished guest as Mek

After the visitors had bathed and rested for an hour in the cells that had been set aside for them, the monks came to lead them to the welcome feast that had been prepared.

When the tej flasks had been refilled for the third time, and the mood of the abbot and of his monks had mellowed, Mek began to whisper into the old man's ear.

"You recall the history of St. Frumentius - how God cast him up on our shore from the storm-tossed sea, so that he might bring the true faith to us?"

The abbot's eyes filled with tears. "His holy body was entombed here, in our nwqdas. The barbarians came and stole the relic away from us. We are children without a father. The reason for the building of this church and monastery has been taken away," he lamented. "No longer will the pilgrims come from every corner of Ethiopia to i pray at his shrine. We will be forgotten by the Church. We are undone. Our monastery will perish and our monks will be blown away like dead leaves on the wind."

"When St. Frumentius came to Ethiopia he was not alone. Another Christian came with him from the High Church in Byzantium," Mek reminded him in a soft, soothing rumble.

"St. Antonia." The abbot reached for his tei flask to allay the intensity of his sorrow.

Mek agreed. "He died before St. Frumen "St. Antonia tius, but he was no less holy than his brother."

"St. Antonia was also a great and holy man, deserving of our love and veneration." The abbot took a long swallow from the flask.

"The ways of God are mysterious, are they not?" Mek shook his head at the wonder of the workings of the universe.

"His ways are deep and not for us to question or understand., "And yet he is compassionate, and he rewards the devout."

"He is all'compassionate." The abbot's tears overflowed and ran down his cheeks.

"You and your monastery have suffered a grievous loss.

The sacred relic of St. Frumentius has been taken from you alas, never to be recovered. But what if God were to send you another? What if he were to send you the sacred body of St. Antonia?"

The abbot looked up through his tears, his expression suddenly calculating. That would be a miracle indeed."

Mek Nimmur placed his arm around the old man's shoulders and

whispered quietly in his ear, and Mai Metemma stopped weeping and listened intently.

have obtained your workers for you," Mek told Nicholas as they began the march up the valley the next morning. "Mai Metemma has promised to give us a hundred men within two days and another five hundred to follow them within the next week. He is handing out indulgences to all those who volunteer to work on the dam. They will be spared the fires of purgatory if they take part in such a glorious project as the recovery of the holy relic of St. Antonia."

Both the women stopped in their tracks and stared at him.

"What did you promise the poor old man?" Tessay demanded.

"A body to replace the one that Nogo plundered from the church. If we do discover the tomb, then the monastery's share will be the mummy of Mamose."

"That's a mean thing to do,"

A Royan exploded. "You will cheat him into helping us."

"It is not a cheat." Mek's dark eyes flashed at the accusation. "The relic that they lost was not the veritable body of St. Frumentius, and yet for hundreds of years it served the purpose of uniting the community of monks and drawing Christians from all over this land. Now that it is gone, the very existence of the monastery is threatened.

They have lost their reason for continuing."

"So you are tempting them with a false promiseP Royan was still angry.

"The body of Mamose is every bit as authentic as the one they lost. What does it matter if it is the body of an ancient Egyptian rather than that of an ancient Christian, just as long as it serves as a focus for the faith and if it is the means by which the monastery might survive for another five hundred years?"

"I think Mek is making sense." Nicholas gave his opinion.

"Since when have you been an expert in Christianity?

You are an atheist," Royan flashed at him, and he held up his hands as if to ward off a blow.

"You are right. What do I know about it anyway?

You argue it out with Mek. I am going to discuss the theory of dambuilding with Sapper Webb." He sauntered up to the head of the file of men and fell in beside his engineer.

From time to time he heard heated voices raised behind him, and he grinned. He knew Mek, but he was also beginning to understand the lady. It would be fascinating to see who would win this argument.

They reached the head of the chasm in the middle of the afternoon, and while Mek 6.. searched out a campsite Nicholas took Sapper immediately to the narrow neck of the river just above where it plunged over the waterfall. While Sapper set up the theodolite, Nicholas took the graduated levelling staff.

Sapper ordered him up and down the face of the cliff with peremptory hand signals, all the while peering into the lens of the theodolite, while Nicholas teetered on insecure footing and tried to keep the staff upright for Sapper to take his sightings.

"Okay!" Sapper bellowed, after taking his twentieth shot. "Now I want you on the other side of the river."

Tine!" Nicholas bellowed back. "Do you want me to fly or swim?" Nicholas hiked three miles upstream to the ford where the trail crossed the Dandera river, and then fought his way back through the tangled river in undergrowth to the point on the bank opposite which Sapper lay in the shade smoking a soothing cigarette.

"Don't rupture yourself, will you?" Nicholas yelled across the water at him. It was almost dark before Sapper had made all the shots he wanted, and Nicholas was still faced with the long return trip over the ford. He covered the last mile in almost total darkness, guided only by the flicker of the campfires.

Wearily he stumbled into the camp and flung down the levelling staff.

"You had beer tell me that it was worth it," he tt growled at Sapper, who did not look up from his slide rule.

He was working over his revised drawings by the glaring light of a small butane lantern.

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"You weren't too far out in your estimates," he congratulated Nicholas.

"The river is forty'one yards wide at the critical point above the falls, where I want to site the structure."

"All I want to know is if you will be able to throw a dam across it." Sapper grinned and laid his finger down the side of his nose, "You get me my ruddy front-ender, and I'll dam the bleeding Nile itself." had eaten their dinner - another of the packs - Royan glanced across the fire at cholas. -When she caught his eye she inclined her head in invitation. Then she stood up and casually drifted out of camp, looking back once to make sure he was following her. Nicholas lighted the path with his torch as they picked their way back to the dam site and found a boulder overlooking the water on which to sit.

He switched off the torch and they were silent for a while as their eyes adjusted to the starlight, and then Royan whispered, "There were times that I thought we would never return here - that it was all a dream, and that Taita's pool never existed."

"For us perhaps it never will, without the help of the monks from the monastery." There was a note of enquiry in his voice.

"You and Mek Nimmur win," she chuckled softly. "Of course we have to accept their help. Mek's arguments were very convincing."

"So you agree that their reward should be the mummy of Mamose?"

"I agree that they may take whatever mummy we discover, if we discover one at all," she qualified. "For all we know, the true mummy of Mamose may be the one that Nogo stole."

Quite naturally he slipped his arm around her shoulders, and after a moment she relaxed against him. -oh, Nicky, I am afraid and excited. Afraid that all our hopes are vain, and excited that we might have found the key to Taita's game." She turned her face to his, and he felt her breath on his lips.