As the procession descended, so those worshippers nearest to the head of the stairs rose to their feet, lit their torches at the brazier and followed the abbot down. There was a general movement along the terrace to join the flow, and as it began to empty, Nicholas lifted Royan down from her perch on the balustrade.
‘We must get into the church while there are still enough people around to cover us,’ he whispered. Leading her by the hand, with his other hand hanging on to the strap of his camera bag, he joined the movement down the terrace. He allowed them to be carried forward, but all the time he was edging across the stream of humanity towards the entrance to the church. He saw Boris and Tessay in the crush ahead of him, but they had not seen him, and he crouched lower so as to screen himself from them.
As he and Royan reached the gateway to the outer chamber of the church, he eased them out of the throng of humanity and drew her gently through the low entrance into the dim, deserted interior. With a quick glance he made certain that they were alone, and that the guards were no longer at their stations beside the inner gates. Then he moved quickly along the side wall, to where one of the soot-grimed tapestries hung from the ceiling to the stone floor. He lifted the folds of heavy woven wool and drew Royan behind them, letting them fall back into place, concealing them both.
They were only just in time, for hardly had they flattened their backs against the wall and let the tapestry settle when they heard footsteps approaching from the qiddist. Nicholas peeked around the corner of the tapestry and saw four white-robed priests cross the outer chamber and swing the main doors closed as they left the church. There was a weighty thud from outside as they dropped the locking beam into place, and then a profound silence pervaded the cavern.
‘I didn’t reckon on that,’ Nicholas whispered. ‘They have locked us in for the night.’
‘At least it means that we won’t be disturbed,’ Royan replied briskly. ‘We can get to work right away.’
Stealthily they emerged from their hiding-place, and moved across the outer chamber to the doorway of the qiddist. Here Nicholas paused and cautioned her with a hand on her arm. ‘From here on we are in forbidden territory. Better let me go ahead and scout the lie of the land.’
She shook her head firmly. ‘You are not leaving me here. I am coming with you all the way.’ He knew better than to argue.
‘Come on, then.’ He led her up the steps and into the middle chamber.
It was smaller and lower than the room they had left. The wall hangings were richer and in a better state of repair. The floor was bare, except for a pyramid-shaped framework of hand-hewn native timber upon which stood rows of brass lamps, each with the wick floating in a puddle of melted oil. The meagre light they provided was all that there was, and it left the ceiling and the recesses of the chamber in shadow.
As they crossed the floor towards the gates that closed off the maqdas, Nicholas took two electric torches from his camera bag and handed one to her. ‘New batteries,’ he told her, ‘but don’t waste them. We may be here all night.’
They stopped in front of the doors to the Holy of Holies. Quickly Nicholas examined them. There were engravings of St Frumentius on each panel, his head enclosed in a nimbus of celestial radiance and his right hand lifted in the act of benediction.
‘Primitive lock,’ he murmured, ‘must be hundreds of years old. You could throw your hat through the gap between the hasp and the tongue.’ He slipped his hand into the bag and brought out a Leatherman tool.
‘Clever little job, this is. With it you do anything from digging the stones out of a horse’s hoof, to opening the lock on a chastity belt.’
He knelt in front of the massive iron lock and unfolded one of the multiple blades of the tool. She watched anxiously as he worked, and then gave a little start as with a satisfying clunk the tongue of the lock slid back.
‘Mis-spent youth?’ she asked. ‘Burglary amongst your many talents?’
‘You don’t really want to know.’ He stood up and put his shoulder to one leaf of the door. It gave with a groan of unlubricated hinges, and he pushed it open only just wide enough for them to squeeze through, then immediately shut it behind them.
They stood side by side on the threshold of the maqdas and gazed about them in silent awe.
The Holy of Holies was a small chamber, much smaller than either of them had expected. Nicholas could have crossed it in a dozen strides. The vaulted roof was so low that by standing on tiptoe he could have touched it with his outstretched fingertips.
From the floor upwards the walls were lined with shelves upon which stood the gifts and offerings of the faithful, icons of the Trinity and the Virgin rendered in Byzantine style, framed in ornate silver. There were ranks of statuettes of saints and emperors, medallions and wreaths made of polished metal, pots and bowls and jewelled boxes, candelabra with many branches, on each of which the votive candles burned providing an uncertain wavering light. It was an extraordinary collection of junk and treasures, of objects of virtue and garish bric-à-brac, offered as articles of faith by the emperors and chieftains of Ethiopia over the centuries.
In the centre of the floor stood the altar of cedarwood, the panels carved with visionary scenes of revelation and creation, of the temptation and the fall from Eden, and of the Last Judgement. The altar cloth was crocheted raw silk, and the cross and the chalice were in massive worked silver. The abbot’s crown gleamed in the candlelight, with the blue ceramic seal of Taita in the centre of its brow.
Royan crossed the floor and knelt in front of the altar. She bowed her head in prayer. Nicholas waited respectfully at the threshold until she rose to her feet again, and then he went to join her.
‘The tabot stone!’ He pointed beyond the altar, and they went forward side by side. At the back of the maqdas stood an object covered with a heavy damask cloth encrusted with embroidered thread of silver and gold. From the outline beneath the covering they could see that it was of elegant and pleasing proportions, as tall as a man, but slender with a pedestal topping.
They both circled it, studying the cloaked shape avidly, but reluctant to touch it or to uncover it, fearful that their expectations might prove unwarranted, and that their hopes would be dashed like the turbulent river waters plunging into the cauldron of the Nile. Nicholas broke the tension that gripped them by turning away from the tabot stone to the barred gate in the back wall of the sanctuary.
‘The tomb of St Frumentius!’ he said, and went to the grille. She came to his side, and together they peered through the square openings in the woodwork that was black with age. The interior was in darkness. Nicholas prodded his torch through one of the openings and pressed the switch.
The tomb lit up in a rainbow of colour so bright in the beam of the torch that their eyes took a few moments to adjust and then Royan gasped aloud.
‘Oh, sweet heaven!’ She began to tremble as if in high fever, and her face went creamy pale as all the blood drained from it.
The coffin was set into a stone shelf in the rear wall of the cell-like tomb. On the exterior was painted the likeness of the man within. Although it was badly faded and most of the paint had flaked away, the pale face and reddish beard of the dead man were still discernible.
This was not the only reason for Royan’s amazement. She was staring at the walls above and on either side of the shelf on which the coffin lay. They were a riot of colour, every inch of them covered with the most intricate and elaborate paintings that had miraculously weathered the passage of the millennia.
Nicholas played his torchbeam over them in awestruck silence, and Royan clung to his arm as if to save herself from falling. She dug her sharp nails into his flesh, but he was heedless of the pain.
There were scenes of great battles, fighting galleys locked in terrible combat upon the blue eternal waters of the river. There were scenes of the hunt, the pursuit of the river horse and of great elephants with long tusks of gleaming ivory. There were battle scenes of regiments plumed and armour
ed, raging in their fury and blood lust. Squadrons of chariots wheeled and charged each other across these narrow walls, half obscured by the dust of their own mad career.
The foreground of each mural was dominated by the same tall heroic figure. In one scene he drew the bow to full stretch, in another he swung high the blade of bronze. His enemies quailed before him, he trod them underfoot or gathered together their severed heads like a bouquet of flowers.
Nicholas played the beam over all this splendid array of art, and brought it to a stop upon the central panel that covered the entire main wall above the shelf on which the rotting coffin lay. Here the same godlike figure rode the footplate of his chariot. In one hand he held the bow and in the other a bundle of javelins. His head was bare of any helmet, and his hair flowed out behind him in the wind of his passage, a thick golden braid like the tail of a lion. His features were noble and proud, his gaze direct and indomitable.
Below him was a legend in classical Egyptian hieroglyphics. In a sepulchral whisper Royan translated them aloud:
Great Lion of Egypt
Best of One Hundred Thousand
Holder of the Gold of Valour
Pharaoh’s Sole Companion
Warrior of all the Gods
May you live for ever!
Her hand shook upon his arm, and her voice choked and died away, stifled with emotion. She gave a little sob, and then shook herself as she brought herself back under control.
‘I know this artist,’ she said softly. ‘I have spent five years studying his work. I would know it anywhere.’ She drew a breath. ‘I know with utter certainty that nearly four thousand years ago Taita the slave decorated these walls and designed this tomb.’
She pointed to the name of the dead man carved into the stone above the shelf on which his coffin lay.
‘This is not the tomb of a Christian saint. Centuries ago some old priest must have stumbled upon it and, in his ignorance, usurped it for his own religion.’ She drew another shaky breath. ‘Look there! That is the seal of Tanus, Lord Harreb, the commander of all the armies of Egypt, lover of Queen Lostris and the natural father of Prince Memnon, who became the Pharaoh Tamose.’
They were both silent then, lost in the wonder of their discovery. Nicholas broke the silence at last.
‘It’s all true, then. The secrets of the seventh scroll are all here for us, if we can find the key to them.’
‘Yes,’ she said softly. ‘The key. Taita’s stone testament.’ She turned back towards the tabot stone and approached it slowly, almost fearfully.
‘I can’t bring myself to look, Nicky. I am terrified that it’s not what we hope it is. You do it!’
He went directly to the column, and with a magician’s flourish jerked away the damask cloth that covered it. They stared at the pillar of pink mottled granite that he had revealed. It was about six feet high and a foot square at the base, tapering up to half that width at the flat pedestal of the summit. The granite had been polished, and then engraved.
Royan stepped forward and touched the cold stone, running her fingers lingeringly over the hieroglyphic script in the way a blind man reads Braille.
‘Taita’s letter to us,’ she whispered, picking out the symbol of the hawk with a broken wing from the mass of close-chiselled script, tracing the outline with a long, slim forefinger that trembled softly. ‘Written almost four thousand years ago, waiting all these ages for us to read and understand it. See how he has signed it.’ Slowly she circled the granite pillar, studying each of the four sides in turn, smiling and nodding, frowning and shaking her head, then smiling again as if it were a love letter.
‘Read it to me,’ Nicholas invited. ‘It’s too complicated for me – I understand the characters, but I cannot follow the sense or the meaning. Explain it to me.’
‘It’s pure Taita.’ She laughed, her awe and wonder at last giving way to excitement. ‘He is being his usual obscure and capricious self.’ It was as though she were talking of a beloved but infuriating old friend. ‘It’s all in verse and is probably some esoteric code of his own.’ She picked out a line of hieroglyphics, and followed them with her finger as she read aloud, ‘“The vulture rises on mighty pinions to greet the sun. The jackal howls and turns upon his tail. The river flows towards the earth. Beware, you violators of the sacred places, lest the wrath of all the gods descend upon you!”’
‘It’s nonsense jargon. It does not make sense,’ he protested.
‘Oh, yes, it makes sense all right. Taita always makes sense, once you follow the way his oblique mind is working.’ She turned to face him squarely. ‘Don’t look so glum, Nicky. You can’t expect to read Taita like an editorial in The Times. He has set us a riddle that may take weeks and months of work to unravel.’
‘Well, one thing is certain. We can’t stay here in the maqdas for weeks and months while we puzzle it out. Let’s get to work.’
‘Photographs first.’ She became brisk and businesslike. ‘Then we can lift impressions from the stone.’
He set down the camera bag and knelt over it to open the flap. ‘I will shoot two rolls of colour first, and then use the Polaroid. That will give us something to work on until we can have the colour developed.’
She stood out of his way as he circled the pillar on his knees, keeping the angle correct so as not to distort the perspective. He took a series of shots of each of the four sides, using different shutter speeds and exposures.
‘Don’t use up all your film,’ she warned him. ‘We need some shots of the walls of the tomb itself.’
Obediently he went to the grille gates and studied the locking system. ‘This is a bit more complicated than the outer gate. If I try to get in here, I might do some damage. I don’t think it will be worth the risk of being discovered.’
‘All right,’ she agreed. ‘Work through the openings in the grille.’
He filmed as best he was able, extending the camera through the openings at the full stretch of his arms, and estimating his focus.
‘That’s the lot,’ he told her at last. ‘Now for the Polaroids.’ He changed cameras and repeated the entire process, but this time Royan held a small tape measure against the pillar to give the scale.
As he exposed each plate he handed it to her to check the development. Once or twice when the flash setting on the camera had either overexposed or rendered the subject too dull, or for some other reason she was not satisfied, she asked him to repeat the shot.
After almost two hours’ work they had a complete set of Polaroids, and Nicholas packed his cameras away and brought out the roll of art paper. Working together, they stretched it over one face of the pillar and secured it in place with masking tape. Then he started at the top and she at the bottom. Each with a black art crayon, they rubbed the precise shape and form of the engravings on to the sheet of blank paper.
‘I have learned how important this is when dealing with Taita. If you are not able to work with the original, then you must have an exact copy. Sometimes the most minute detail of the engraving may change the entire sense and meaning of the script. He layers everything with hidden depths. You have read in River God how he considers himself to be the riddler and punster par excellence and the greatest exponent of the game of bao that ever lived. Well, that much of the book is accurate. Wherever he is now, he knows the game is on and he is revelling in every move we make. I can just imagine him giggling and rubbing his hands together with glee.’
‘Bit fanciful, dear girl.’ He settled back to work. ‘But I know what you mean.’
The task of transferring the outline of the designs on to the blank sheets of art paper was painstaking and monotonous, and the hours passed as they laboured on hands and knees or crouched over the granite pillar. At last Nicholas stepped back and massaged his aching back.
‘That does it, then. All finished.’
She stood up beside him. ‘What time is it?’ she asked, and he checked his wrist-watch.
‘Four in the morning. We had better
tidy up in here. Make certain we leave no sign of our visit.’
‘One last thing,’ Royan said, tearing a corner off one of the sheets of art paper. With it she went to the altar where the abbot’s crown lay. Quickly she taped the scrap of paper over the blue ceramic seal in the centre of the crown, and filled it with a rubbing of the design of the hawk with a broken wing.
‘Just for luck,’ she explained to him, as she came back to help him fold the long sheets of paper and pack them back in the bag. Then they gathered up the shreds of discarded masking tape and the empty film wrappers that he had strewn on the stone slabs.
Before they covered the granite stele with the damask cloth, Royan caressed the stone panels of script as if to take leave of them for ever. Then she nodded at Nicholas.
He spread the cloth over the pillar and they adjusted the folds to hang as they had found them. From the threshold of the brass-bound door they surveyed the maqdas for the last time, then he opened the door a crack.
‘Let’s go!’ She squeezed through and he followed her out into the qiddist of the church. It took him only a few minutes to slide the tongue of the lock back into place.
‘How will we get out through the main doors?’ she asked.
‘I don’t think that will be necessary. The priests obviously have another entrance from their quarters directly into the qiddist. You very seldom see them using the main gates.’ He stood in the centre of the floor, and looked around carefully. ‘It must be on this side if it leads directly into the monks’ living quarters—’ he broke off with a grunt of satisfaction. ‘Aha! You can see where all their feet have actually worn a pathway over the centuries.’ He pointed out a smooth area of dished and worn stone near the side wall. ‘And look at the marks of grubby fingers on the tapestry over there.’ He crossed quickly to the hanging and drew a fold aside. ‘I thought as much.’ There was a narrow doorway concealed behind the hanging. ‘Follow me.’
They found themselves in a dark passageway through the living rock. Nicholas flashed his torch down its length, but he masked the bulb with his hand to show only as much light as they needed. ‘This way.’