The Egyptian Novels 02 - The Seventh Scroll (1995)

by Wilbur Smith

  The passage turned at right-angles and ahead they could make out a dull illumination. Nicholas switched off the torch and led her on.

  Now there was the smell of stale food and humanity, and they passed the doorless entrance to a monk’s rock cell. Nicholas flashed his torch into it. It was deserted and bare. A wooden cross hung on the wall with a truckle bed below it. There were no other furnishings. They went on past a dozen others which were almost identical.

  At the next turning of the passage Nicholas paused. He felt a tiny draught on his cheek, and the taste of fresh air on his tongue. ‘This way,’ he whispered.

  They hurried on, until suddenly Royan grabbed his shoulder from behind and forced him to stop.

  ‘What—’ he began, but she squeezed his shoulder to silence him. He heard it then, the sound of a human voice, echoing eerily through the labyrinth of passageways.

  Then came a weird haunting cry, that of a soul in agony, wailing and sobbing. They crept forward, trying to make their escape before they were discovered, but the sounds grew stronger as they went on.

  ‘Dead ahead,’ Nicholas warned her in a whisper. ‘We are going to have to sneak past.’

  Now they saw soft yellow lamplight spilling from the doorway of one of the cells into the passage. There came another heart-rending female cry that echoed down the passage and froze them in their tracks.

  ‘That’s a woman’s voice. What is happening?’ Royan breathed, but he shook his head for silence and led her on.

  They had to pass the open door of the lit cell. Nicholas edged towards it with his back flattened to the opposite wall. She followed him, keeping close and clinging to his arm for comfort.

  As they looked into the cell the woman cried out again, but this time her voice blended with that of a man. It was a duet without words, but racked with all the feral agony of a passion too fierce to be borne in silence.

  In their full view a couple lay naked upon the truckle bed. The woman lay spread-eagled, holding the man’s hips between her uplifted knees. Her arms wound hard around his back, upon which each separate muscle stood out proudly and gleamed with sweat. He thrust down into her savagely, his buttocks bunching and pounding with the force of a great black battering ram.

  She rolled her head from side to side as another incoherent cry was torn from her straining throat. It seemed too much for the man above her to bear, and he reared back like a flaring cobra, his pelvis still locked to hers, but his back arched like a war bow. Spasm after spasm gripped him. The sinews in the back of his legs were stretched to snapping point, and the muscles in his back fluttered and jumped like separate living creatures.

  The woman opened her eyes and looked directly at them as they stood transfixed in the doorway, but she was blinded with the strength of her passion. Her eyes were sightless, as she cried aloud to the man above her.

  Nicholas drew Royan away, and they slipped down the passageway and out on to the deserted terrace. They stopped at the foot of the staircase, and breathed the sweet cool night air that was perfumed by the waters of the Nile.

  ‘Tessay has gone to him,’ Royan whispered softly.

  ‘For tonight at least,’ Nicholas agreed.

  ‘No,’ Royan denied. ‘You saw her face, Nicky. She belongs to Mek Nimmur now.’

  The dawn was flushing the serrated crests of the escarpment to the colours of port wine and roses when they reached camp and separated at the door to Royan’s hut.

  ‘I am bushed,’ she told Nicholas. ‘The excitement has been too much for me. You won’t see me again before noon.’

  ‘Good thinking! Sleep as long as you wish. I want you scintillating and perceptive when we start going over the material which we gathered last night.’

  It was long before noon, however, when Nicholas was woken from a deep sleep by the harsh and intrusive bellows of Boris as he stormed into the hut.

  ‘English, wake up! I must talk to you. Wake up, man, wake up.’

  Nicholas rolled over and thrust one arm out from under the mosquito net as he groped for his wrist-watch. ‘Damn you, Brusilov! What the hell do you want?’

  ‘My wife! Have you seen my wife?’

  ‘Now what has your wife got to do with me?’

  ‘She has gone! I have not seen her since last night.’

  ‘The way you treat her, that comes as no stunning surprise. Now go away and leave me to sleep.’

  ‘The whore has run off with that black bastard, Mek Nimmur. I know all about them. Don’t try and protect her, English. I know everything that goes on around here. You are trying to cover for her – admit it!’

  ‘Get out of here, Boris. Don’t try and involve me in your sordid private life.’

  ‘I saw you and that shufta bastard talking in the skinning hut the other night. Don’t try to deny it, English. You are in this thing with them.’

  Nicholas flung back the mosquito net and jumped out of his bed. ‘Kindly moderate your language when you talk to me, you great oaf.’

  Boris backed off towards the door. ‘I know that she has run away with him. I searched for them all last night at the river. They have gone, and most of his men with them.’

  ‘Good for Tessay. She is showing some taste in men for a change.’

  ‘You think I will let the whore get away with this? You are wrong, very wrong. I am going to follow them and kill them both. I know which way they are headed. You think I am a fool. I know all about Mek Nimmur. I was head of intelligence—’ He broke off as he realized what he had said. ‘I will shoot him in the belly and let that whore Tessay watch him die.’

  ‘If you are going after Mek Nimmur, then my bet is that you won’t be coming back.’

  ‘You don’t know me, English. You beat me up one night when I had a bottle of vodka in my belly, so you think I am easy, da? Well, Mek Nimmur will see now how easy I am.’

  Boris flung out of the hut. Nicholas pulled on a shirt over his shorts and followed him.

  Back in his own hut, Boris had flung a few essential items into a light pack. Now he was stuffing cartridges into the magazine of his 30/06 hunting rifle.

  ‘Let them go, Boris,’ Nicholas advised him in a more reasonable tone of voice. ‘Mek is a tough lad – they don’t come tougher – and he has a war party of fifty men with him. You are old enough to know that you can never hold on to a woman by force. Let her go!’

  ‘I do not want to hold on to her. I want to kill her. The safari is over, English.’ He flung a pair of keys on a leather tag on the floor at Nicholas’s feet. ‘There are the keys of the Land Cruiser. You can make your own way back to Addis from here. I will leave four of my best men to look after you, and hold your hand. Leave the big truck for me to use. When you get to Addis, leave the keys of the Land Cruiser with my tracker, Aly. I will know where to find him later. I will send you the money I owe you for cancellation. Don’t worry – I am a man of principles.’

  ‘How could I ever doubt it?’ Nicholas smiled. ‘Goodbye, old chum. I wish you luck. You’ll need plenty of that if you are going up against Mek Nimmur.’

  Boris was several hours behind his quarry, and as soon as he had left the camp he broke into a jog trot that carried him down the pathway to join the main track to the west, towards the Sudanese border. He ran like a scout, with an easy swinging gait that ate up the ground.

  ‘Looks as though he is still in good shape, even with the vodka.’ Despite himself Nicholas was impressed as he watched him go. ‘But I wonder how long he will be able to keep up that pace?’

  He turned back to his own quarters to get a little more sleep, but as he passed her hut Royan popped her head out. ‘What was all the shouting about? I thought that you and Boris were having another little difference of opinion.’

  ‘Tessay has done a bunk. Boris has guessed that she has gone off with Mek, and he is chasing after them.’

  ‘Oh, Nicky! Can’t we warn them?’

  ‘No chance of that, but unless Mek has gone soft he will be expecting Boris to com
e after him. In fact, now that I come to think of it, he is probably hoping for just that chance to even the score. No, Mek doesn’t need any more help from us. Go back to sleep!’

  ‘I can’t possibly sleep now. I am so worked up. I have been looking at the Polaroids that we took last night. Taita has given us an overflowing cup. Come and have a look at this.’

  ‘Just one hour’s sleep more?’ He made a mock plea.

  ‘Immediately, if not sooner.’ She laughed at him.

  In her hut she had the Polaroids and the rubbings spread out on the camp table, and she beckoned him to take the seat beside her.

  ‘While you were snoring your head off, I made some progress.’ She laid four Polaroids side by side, and placed her large magnifying glass over them. It was a professional land surveyor’s model on folding legs, and under it every detail of the photographs was revealed. ‘Taita has headed each of the sides of the stele with the name of one of the seasons of the year – spring, summer, autumn and winter. What do you think he was getting at?’

  ‘Page numbers?’

  ‘Exactly my own thought,’ she agreed. ‘The Egyptians considered spring as the beginning of all new life. He is telling us in which order to read the panels. This one is spring.’ She selected one of the photographs.

  ‘It starts with four standard quotations from the Book of the Dead.’ She quoted the first few lines of the opening section: ‘“I am the first breeze blowing softly over the dark ocean of eternity. I am the first sunrise. The first glimmer of light. A white feather blowing in the dawn wind. I am Ra. I am the beginning of all things. I will live for ever. I shall never perish.”’ Still holding the glass poised, she looked up at him. ‘As far as I can see, they do not differ substantially from the original. My instinct is to set these aside for the time being. We can always come back to them later.’

  ‘Let’s go with your instinct,’ he suggested. ‘Read the next section.’

  She held the glass to the Polaroid. ‘I am not going to look at you while I read this. Taita can be as earthy as Rabelais when he is in the mood. Anyway, here goes. “The daughter of the goddess pines for her dam. She roars like a lioness as she hurries to meet her. She leaps from the mountain, and her fangs are white. She is the harlot of all the world. Her vagina pisseth out great torrents. Her vagina has swallowed an army of men. Her sex eateth up the masons and the workers of stone. Her vagina is an octopus that has swallowed up a king.”’

  ‘Whoa there!’ Nicholas chuckled. ‘Pretty fruity stuff, don’t you think?’ He leaned forward to study her face, for it was still turned away from him. ‘Och, lassie, you have roses in your bonny cheeks. Not a blush, surely not?’

  ‘Your Scots accent is not in the least convincing,’ she told him coldly, still not looking at him. ‘When you have finished being clever at my expense, what do you think of what I have just read?’

  ‘Apart from the obvious, I haven’t any idea.’

  ‘I want to show you something.’ She stood up and packed the photographs and the rolls of art paper back into the haversack. ‘You’ll need to get your boots on. I am taking you on a little walk.’

  An hour later they stood in the centre of the suspension bridge, swaying gently high above the swift waters of the Dandera river.

  ‘Hapi is the goddess of the Nile. Is this river not then her daughter, pining to meet her, leaping from the mountain top, roaring like a lioness, her fangs white with spume?’ she asked him.

  They stared in silence at the archway of pink stone through which the river poured, and suddenly Nicholas grinned lasciviously. ‘I think that I know what you are going to say next. That’s what I first thought of when I looked at that cleft. You said it was like a gargoyle’s mouth, but I had another image.’

  ‘All I can say is that you must have some extraordinary lady friends,’ she said, and then covered her mouth. ‘Ooops! I didn’t mean to say that. I am being as disgusting as either you or Taita.’

  ‘The workmen swallowed up in there!’ His voice became more excited. ‘The masons and the workers in stone!’

  ‘Pharaoh Mamose was a god. The river has swallowed up a god with her – with her stone archway.’ She was equally excited. ‘I must admit that I would not have made the association if you hadn’t explored the interior of the cavern, and found those niches in the wall.’ She shook his arm. ‘Nicky, we have to get in there again. We have to get a clearer look at that bas-relief you found on the cavern wall.’

  ‘It will take some preparation,’ he said dubiously. ‘I will have to splice the ropes and make some sort of pulley system, and I will have to drill Aly and the other men to avoid a repetition of my last little fiasco. We won’t be ready to make the attempt until tomorrow morning at the very earliest.’

  ‘You get on with it. I will have plenty to keep me occupied with the translation of the stele.’ Then she stopped and looked up at the sky. ‘Listen!’ she whispered.

  He cocked his head and above the sound of the river, heard the whining flutter of rotors in the air.

  ‘Dammit!’ he snapped. ‘I thought we had lost the Pegasus presence. Come on!’ He grabbed her arm and hustled her off the bridge. When they reached the land he jumped down on to the beach, and she followed him. The two of them crept under the hanging eaves of the bridge.

  They sat quietly on the white sandy beach and listened to the Jet Ranger helicopter approaching swiftly, and then circling back over the hills beyond the pink cliffs. This time the pilot had not spotted them, for he turned away and began to patrol up and down the line of the chasm. Suddenly the engine-beat changed dramatically as the pitch altered and the pilot pulled up the collective.

  ‘Sounds as if he is going in for a landing up there in the hills,’ Nicholas said as he crawled out from under the bridge. ‘I would feel a lot easier without them snooping around.’

  ‘I don’t think we have too much to worry about,’ Royan disagreed. ‘Even if they are connected with Duraid’s killers, we are still way out ahead of them. Obviously they have not tumbled to the importance of the monastery, and the stele.’

  ‘I hope you are right. Let’s get back to camp. We must not let them see us in the vicinity of the chasm again. It will be too much of a coincidence for them to find us hanging around here every time they come this way.’

  While Royan went to her hut and pored over her photographs and etchings, Nicholas worked with the trackers and skinners. He spliced the unravelled end of the nylon rope to the second hank, to make a single length five hundred feet long. Then he cannibalized the canvas fly of the cooking hut, cutting it up and whipping the raw edges to make a sling seat. He fashioned the ends of the rope into a harness which he spliced into the four corners of the canvas seat.

  He had no block and tackle, so he put together a crude gantry of poles which could be extended out over the cliff edge to keep the rope clear of the rock. The rope would run through the groove that he drilled in the end of the central beam with a red-hot iron. He lubricated it with cooking lard.

  It was the middle of the afternoon by the time he had completed his preparations. Then, leaving Royan in camp, he led his men, burdened with the coils of rope and the pole sections of the gantry, back up the pathway to the spot where he had abseiled down into the ravine to retrieve the carcass of the dik-dik. From there they worked their way downstream, following the rim of the cliff. It was heavy going for thorn scrub grew right up to the edge, and in many places they were forced to use their machetes to hack their way through.

  The sound of the waterfall guided him. As they moved downriver it grew louder, until the rock seemed to quiver under his feet with the roar of falling waters. Finally, by leaning out over the edge and peering downwards, Nicholas could make out the flash of spray in the depths below.

  ‘This is the spot.’ He grunted with satisfaction, and explained to Aly in Arabic what he wanted done.

  In order to determine the exact position in which to set up the gantry, Nicholas climbed into the canvas sling seat
and had them lower him twenty feet down the cliff face, just as far as the beginning of the overhang. Up to that point he was able to keep the nylon rope from abrading on the rock, but he was also able to see around the bulge of the face.

  Hanging backwards over the falls and the rocky bowl of the river one hundred and fifty feet below him, he was able at last to see the double row of niches in the rock face. However, the bas-relief engraving was still hidden from view by the tumblehome of the cliff. He gave Aly the signal and they hauled him up.

  ‘We must set up the gantry a little further down,’ he told him, and directed them as they hacked away the dense shrubbery that choked the rim. Then suddenly he exclaimed, ‘I’ll be damned!’ He went down on one knee to examine the rim rock that the thorns had concealed. ‘There are more excavations here.’

  Exposed to the elements, unlike those works further down that had been protected by the overhang, these were badly eroded. There were just vague traces remaining in the rim rock, but he was certain that these indentations were the upper anchor points for the ancient scaffolding. They set up their own gantry on the same levelled area, and extended the long pole out over the drop. Then they rigged and secured it with a crude cantilever system of ropes and lighter poles.

  When they were finished, Nicholas crawled out to the end to test the structure and to run the end of the rope through the slot he had prepared for it. The whole structure seemed solid and firm. Nevertheless, it was with relief that he crawled back to solid ground.

  He stood up and looked over the tops of the thorn scrub to where the lowering sun was fuming red and angry on the horizon.

  ‘Enough for one day,’ he decided. ‘The rest can wait for tomorrow.’

  The next morning Nicholas and Royan were both up and drinking coffee at the campfire while it was still dark. Aly and his men were squatting at their own fire near by, talking quietly and coughing over the first cigarettes of the day. The project seemed to have caught their imagination. They had no inkling of the reason for this second descent into the chasm, but the enthusiasm of the two ferengi was infectious.