The Seventh Scroll - Smith Wilbur - Страница 35

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down ahead of them.

He found a place to sit and unrolled the satellite photograph between

them. Picking out the major peaks and features of the scene, they

orientated themselves and began to make some order out of the

cataclysmic landscape that rioted below them.

"We can't see the Abbay river from here," Nicholas pointed out. "It's

still deep in the sub-gorge. We will probably only get our first glimpse

of it from almost directly above."

"If we have identified our present position accurately, then the river

will make two ox'bow bends around that bluff over there."

"Yes, and the confluence of the Dandera river with the Abbay is over

there, below those cliffs." He used his thumb knuckle as a rough scale

measure. "About fifteen miles from here."

"It looks as though the Dandera has changed its course many times over

the centuries.-I can see at least two gullies that look like ancient

river beds." She pointed down: "Mere, and there. They are all choked

with jungle now." She looked crestfallen, "Oh, Nicholas, it is such a

huge and confused area. How are we ever going to find the single

entrance to a tomb hidden in all that?"

"Tomb? What tomb is this?" Boris demanded with interest. He had come

back up the trail to find them. They had not heard his approach, and now

he stood over them.

"What tomb are you talking about?, "Why, the tomb of St. Frumentius, of

course," Nicholas told him smoothly, showing no concern at having been

overheard.

"Isn't the monastery dedicated to the saint?" Royan asked as smoothly,

as she rolled up the photograph.

"Da." He nodded, looking disappointed, as though he expected something

of more interest. "Yes, St. Frumentius.

But they will not let you visit the tomb. They will not let you into the

inner part of the monastery. Only the priests are allowed in there."

He removed his cap and scratched the short, stiff bristles that covered

his scalp. They rasped like wire under his fingernails. "This week is

the ceremony of Timkat, the Blessing of the Tabot. There will be a great

deal of excitement down there. You will find it very interesting, but

you will not be able to enter the Holy of Holies, nor will you be able

to see the actual tomb. I have never met any white man who has seen it."

He squinted up at the sun. "We must get on. It looks close, but it will

take us two more days to reach the Abbay.

It is bad ground down there. A long march, even for a famous dik-dik

hunter." He laughed delightedly at his own joke, and turned away down

the path.

As they approached the bottom of the cliff, the gradient of the trail

smoothed out and the steps became shallower and further apart. The going

became easier and their progress swifter, but the air had changed in

quality and taste. It was no longer cool, bracing mountain air but the

languid, enervating air of the equator, with the smell and taste of the

encroaching jungle.

"Hod' said Royan, shrugging out of the woollen shawl.

"Ten degrees hotter, at least," Nicholas agreed. He pulled his old army

jersey over his head, leaving.his hair in curly disarray. "And we can

expect it to get hotter before we reach the Abbay. We still have to

descend another three thousand feet."

Now the path followed the Dandera river for a while.

Sometimes they were several hundred feet above it, and shortly

afterwards they splashed waist-deep through a ford, hanging on to the

panniers of the mules to keep themselves from being swept away on the

flood.

Then the gorge of the Dandera river was too deep and steep to follow any

longer, as sheer cliffs dropped into dark pools. So they left the river

and followed the track that squirmed like a dying snake amongst eroded

hills and tall red stone bluffs.

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

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