by Wilbur Smith
“Chip the plaster away from the crack around the vulture’s head,” she ordered, and he wiped the blade against his trouser leg and attacked the wall again.
“It’s free,” he said at last. “It looks as though the head will travel up the groove. Anyway, I am going to try it. Stand back and give me room to work.”
He placed the heels of both hands under the head of the vulture, and heaved upwards against it. Royan bunched her hands into fists and screwed up her face in sympathy with his effort.
There was a soft grating sound, and the head began to move jerkily up the exposed groove in the wall. It reached the top of the slot and Nicholas jumped down from the crate. They both stared expectantly at the disembodied head, now disfigured by the chipped and damaged plaster.
After a long, breathless wait, Royan whispered dejectedly, “Nothing! It hasn’t changed anything.”
“The rest of the quotation from the stele,” he reminded her. “There was more to it than just the vulture and the sun.”
“You are right.” She looked around the rest of the wall eagerly. “‘The jackal howls and turns upon his tail.’”
She pointed with a trembling finger at the small, almost insignificant figure of Anubis, the jackal-headed god of the graveyards, on the wall opposite the vulture that they had mutilated. Standing at the foot of the huge, towering painting of Osiris, he was only a little larger in size than the ringed and bejewelled big toe of the husband of Isis and father of Horus.
Royan ran to the wall, and the moment she touched Anubis she felt that his image too was raised. She flung all her strength against the tiny figure, trying to twist it first one way and then the other.
“‘The jackal turns upon his tail,’” she panted as she wrestled with him. “He must turn!”
“Here, let me do that.” Gently Nicholas pulled her away, and knelt before the black-headed god image. Once again he used the blade of his clasp knife to chip away the plaster and the thick layer of paint from around the outline.
“It seems to be carved in some sort of hard wood and then it’s been plastered over,” he told her, as he tested the construction of the figure with the point of the blade.
When at last he had chipped it clear he tried to twist it in a clockwise direction, and grunted with the effort.
“No!” He gave up at last.
“They had no clock dials in ancient Egypt,” she reminded him agitatedly. “The other way. Turn it the other way.”
When he tried to turn it counter-clockwise, there was another rasping, gritty sound from behind the wall panel. The tiny figure revolved slowly in his hands, until the black head pointed down towards the yellow tiles.
They both stood well back from the wall, looking expectantly at it, but after another long wait even Nicholas was disheartened.
“I don’t know what to expect, but whatever it is, it isn’t happening,” he grunted with disgust.
“There is still the last part of the quotation,” Royan whispered. “‘The river flows towards the earth. Beware, you violators of the sacred places, lest the wrath of all the gods descend upon you!’”
“The river?” Nicholas asked. “As Sapper might say, I don’t see no perishing river.”
Royan did not even smile at the cockney accent. Instead she searched the profusion of writing and images that covered all the walls around them. Then she saw it.
“Hapi!” Her voice was shrill with excitement. “The god of the Nile! The river!”
High up the wall, on a level with the head of the great god Osiris, the god of the river looked down upon them. Hapi was a hermaphrodite, with the breasts of a woman and the genitals of a man protruding from under the pendulous belly. The mouth in his hippopotamus head gaped wide to display the great curved tusks that lined his cavernous jaws.
Standing on a pile of ammunition boxes, Nicholas was able to reach the Hapi image at the full stretch of his arms. As he touched it he exulted, “This one is raised also.”
“‘The river flows towards the earth,’” she called up to him. “It must move downwards. Try it, Nicky.”
“Give me a chance to clear the edges.” He used the point of the blade to chip the outline of the god free, and then he probed the plaster beneath it and found another vertical slot running towards the floor.
“Ready to give it a go now.” He folded the knife and tucked it back into his pocket. “Hold your breath and say a little prayer for me,” he instructed.
He settled both hands on the image of the god and began to pull steadily downwards. Gradually he brought more pressure to bear upon it, until he was hanging all his weight on it. Nothing moved.
“It’s not working,” he grunted.
“Wait!” she ordered. “I am coming up.”
She scrambled up on to the boxes behind him and placed both arms around his neck. “Hang on tight,” she ordered.
“Every little bit helps, I suppose,” he agreed, as she lifted her feet and hung her full weight on his shoulders.
“It’s moving!” he shouted. Suddenly the image of Hapi gave way under his hands, and with a sharp grating sound travelled down to the bottom end of the groove in the wall.
Nicholas lost his grip on the smoothly rounded shape as it came up hard against the end of its slot. The stack of boxes under them toppled, and both he and Royan dropped back to the floor of the gallery. She was still hanging around his neck, and he lost his balance as she pulled him over backwards. The two of them sprawled on the agate floor in an untidy tangle of arms and legs. Nicholas scrambled to his feet and pulled her up beside him.
“What has happened?” she gasped, looking up wildly at the damaged Hapi figure and then around the walls of the gallery.
“Nothing,” he said. “Nothing has moved.”
“Perhaps there is another—” she began, but broke off at a sound from the roof above them. They both stared upwards, startled and filled with sudden trepidation. There was a ponderous movement from above the high plastered ceiling.
“What is that?” Royan whispered. “There is something up there. It sounds like a living thing.”
A giant was moving, coming awake after slumbering for thousands of years, stretching and turning as he awoke.
“Is it—?” She could not finish the question. She had an image in her mind of the great god himself stirring in a hidden chamber in the rock, opening those baleful, slanted eyes, rising on one elbow to discover who had disturbed him from his eternal sleep.
Then there was another sound, a creaking and rumbling as though the arm of a mighty balance was swinging slowly across, as its equilibrium altered. Softly at first, then louder, the movement gathered momentum, like the beginning of a mountain avalanche. Then there was a report like the shot of a cannon.
A crack appeared in the high ceiling, running the length of the gallery. Dust smoked from the jagged opening, and then, slowly as a nightmare, the roof began to sag down over where they stood. Both of them were paralysed with superstitious horror, unable to tear their gaze from the slow, inexorable collapse of the ceiling upon them. Then a chunk of plaster struck Nicholas’s upturned face, slamming into his cheek, tearing the skin and sending him staggering backwards against the wall. The shock and pain aroused him at last.
“The warning!” he blurted. “Taita’s warning. The wrath of the gods.” He sprang to her side and grabbed her hand. “Run!” He pulled her after him. “Taita has booby-trapped the roof!”
They raced back along the gallery towards the opening in the sealed entrance. Lumps of stone and plaster began to rain down and dust filled the passageway, half-blinding them. The dull rumble overhead became a rising roar as progressively the roof collapsed. They did not dare to look back as the thunder of falling masonry swept towards them, threatening to overtake and overwhelm them before they were able to reach the entrance.
A jagged piece of rock as large as her head struck Royan a glancing blow on her shoulder, and her legs sagged under her. She would have gone down if he had not
flung one arm around her and held her upright, dragging her along the gallery. The dust obscured the passage ahead of them, so that the square opening that offered their only chance of escape receded in the choking fog.
“Keep going!” he yelled at her. “Almost there.” As he spoke, a thick sheet of plaster came crashing down and smashed into the tripod stand of the floodlamp. Instantly the gallery was plunged into utter darkness.
Completely unsighted, Nicholas’s first instinct was to come up short and try to orientate himself. But all around him the rubble of the roof was falling heavier and faster. He knew that at any second the entire roof would come down on top of them, burying and crushing them. Running on without a check, he dragged Royan along behind him in the darkness. He reached the end wall at full tilt, and the impact knocked the breath out of him. Now, through the swirling dust cloud, he was just able to make out the rectangular opening in the plaster wall in front of him, backlit by the lamps on the landing at the head of the staircase outside.
As he reeled backwards he seized Royan around the waist and lifted her bodily off her feet. He hurled her through the opening and heard her cry out as she fell heavily on the far side. Another piece of rubble struck him on the back of his head and knocked him to his knees. He felt himself teetering on the very brink of consciousness, but crawled forward, groping frantically until he touched the jagged edge of the opening. With this handhold he was able to drag himself over the sill, just as the full weight of the roof came thundering down along the entire gallery.
Here on the upper landing of the staircase Royan was crouching on her knees. She crawled towards him, guided once more by the lamplight.
“Are you all right?” she panted. A trickle of blood snaked down her cheek from a wound in her scalp line. It cut a dark glistening runnel through the caked white dust that powdered her face.
He did not answer, but dragged himself to his feet and pulled Royan up beside him. “Can’t stay here,” he croaked, just as a thick white breath of dust blew through the mouth of the opening and swept over them, choking them and dimming the floodlamps to a faint glimmer.
“Not safe.” He pulled her away from the opening. “The whole thing might cave in.” His voice was rough, his throat closing with the dust.
He dragged her to the head of the steps and they staggered down together, stumbling against each other, their feet sliding under them as they came on to the algae-slippery footing. Through the dust mist ahead of them loomed the broad square figure of Sapper.
“What the ruddy hell is going on?” he bellowed with relief as he saw them.
“Give me a hand here,” Nicholas yelled back at him. Sapper lifted Royan in his arms and together they ran back down the tunnel, only stopping to draw breath when they reached the causeway over the sink-hole.
* * *
The post office in the village of Debra Maryam was a small building in the dusty street behind the church. Its walls were of unplastered unburnt and unpainted brick, and its galvanized iron roof glared like a mirror in the high mountain sunlight. The public telephone should have been in its booth outside the front door. However, the instrument had long since vanished—stolen, vandalized or, more likely, removed by the military to prevent it being used by political dissidents and rebels.
Tessay had expected this, and hardly glanced into the booth before she strode into the small room which was the main post office. It was filled with a motley crowd of peasants and villagers, queuing to conduct their leisurely business with the elderly postmaster, the only person behind the barred counter. Some of the customers had spread their cloaks on the floor and settled in for a long wait, chatting and smoking while their children romped and crawled around them.
Most of the patient crowd recognized Tessay as soon as she entered the room. Even those who had waited most of the morning in the lines at the counter greeted her respectfully and stood aside to allow her to go to the head of the queue. Despite two decades of African socialism, the feudal instincts of the rural population were still strong. Tessay was a noblewoman and she was entitled to this preference.
“Thank you, my friends.” She smiled at them and shook her head. “You are kind, but I will wait my turn.”
They were embarrassed by her refusal, and when the old postmaster leaned over his counter top and added his insistence to the others, one of the older women seized Tessay’s arm and forcefully propelled her forward.
“Jesus and all the saints bless you, Woizero Tessay.” The postmaster clapped his hands in respectful greeting. “Welcome back to Debra Maryam. What is it that your ladyship desires?”
The entire clientele of the post office crowded around Tessay so as not to miss a detail of her transaction.
“I want to make a telephone call to Addis,” she told the postmaster and there was a hum of comment and discussion. This was unusual and important business indeed.
“I will take you to the telephone exchange,” the postmaster told her importantly, and donned his official blue cap for the occasion. He came around the counter shouting and hectoring the other customers, pushing them aside to make way for Lady Sun. Then he ushered her through to the back room of the building, where the telephone exchange occupied a cubicle the size of a small lavatory.
Tessay, the postmaster and as many of the other customers who could find standing room pushed their way into the tiny room. The exchange operator was almost overcome by the honour being accorded him by the beautiful Tessay, and he shouted into his headset like a sergeant major commanding a flag party.
“Soon now!” he beamed at Tessay. “Only small delay. Then you speak to British Embassy in Addis.”
Tessay, who knew well what a small delay constituted, retired to the front veranda of the post office and sent for food and flasks to be brought from the village tej shop. She treated her escort of monks, together with half the population of Debra Maryam, to a happy picnic while she waited for her call to be patched through half a dozen antiquated village exchanges to the capital. Thanks to the tej, spirits were high amongst her entourage when finally, an hour later, the postmaster rushed out to tell her proudly that they had succeeded and that her party was awaiting her on the line in the back room.
Tessay, the monks and fifty villagers followed the postmaster back into the exchange and crowded, jabbering, into the cubicle. The overflow backed up into the main post hall.
“Geoffrey Tennant speaking.” The upper-class English accent was tinny with distance and static.
“Mr. Tennant, this is Woizero Tessay.”
“I was expecting your call.” Geoffrey’s voice lightened as he realized that he was talking to a pretty girl. “How are you, my dear?”
Tessay passed Nicholas’s message to him.
“Tell Nicky it’s as good as done,” Geoffrey acknowledged, and hung up.
“Now,” Tessay addressed the postmaster, “I want to place another call to Addis—to the Egyptian Embassy.”
There was a buzz of delight from her audience when they realized that the entertainment was not yet over for the day. Everybody repaired to the veranda for more tej and conversation.
The second call took even longer to connect, and it was after five o’clock when Tessay was at last put in contact with the Egyptian cultural attaché. Had she not once met him at one of those ubiquitous cocktail parties on the diplomatic circuit in Addis, and made a profound impression on him then, he would probably not have accepted her call now.
“You are very lucky to have reached me so late,” he told her. “We usually close at four-thirty, but there is a meeting of the Organization of African Unity on at the moment and I am working late. Anyway, how may I help you, Woizero Tessay?”
As soon as she told him the name and rank of the person in Cairo to whom Royan’s message was addressed, his superior and condescending attitude altered dramatically and he became effusive and eager to please. He wrote down everything she said in detail, asking her to repeat and spell the names of people and places. Finally he rea
d his notes back to her for confirmation.
At the end of the long conversation, he dropped his voice to an intimate level and told her, “I was greatly saddened to hear of your recent bereavement, Lady Sun. Colonel Brusilov was a man I held in high regard. Perhaps when you return to Addis you would do me the honour of dining with me one evening.”
“How kind and thoughtful of you.” Tessay’s tones were honeyed. “I would so much enjoy meeting your charming wife again.” She hung up while he was still making confused noises of assent and denial.
By this time the sun was already setting behind the sky castles of cumulo-nimbus, and there was the smell of rain in the air. It was too late to start the journey back down the escarpment that evening, so Tessay was relieved when the headman of Debra Maryam village sent one of his teenage daughters to invite her to spend the night as a guest in his home.
The headman’s house was the finest in the village, not one of the circular tukuls, but a square brick building with an iron roof. His wife and daughters had prepared a banquet in Tessay’s honour, and all the village notables, including the priests from the church, had been invited. It was therefore after midnight before Tessay was able to escape to the principal bedroom, which the headman and his wife had vacated for her.
Just before Tessay fell asleep she heard the heavy raindrops rattling on the corrugated iron roof over her head. It was a comforting sound, but she thought briefly of the dam further downstream in the gorge, and hoped that this shower was merely the harbinger and not the true onset of the big rains.
When she started awake much later the rain had passed. Beyond her uncurtained window the night was moonless and silent, except for the howling of a pariah-dog down in the village. She wondered what had woken her, and was filled suddenly with a premonition of impending disaster, a legacy from the Mengistu days, when any sound in the night might warn of the arrival of the security police. So strong was this feeling that she could not get to sleep again. Creeping quietly out of her bed, she began dressing in the dark. She had decided to call her monks and start back along the trail in the darkness. Only when she was at Mek Nimmur’s side once again would she feel secure.