The Seventh Scroll: A Novel of Ancient Egypt

by Wilbur Smith

  ‘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 tej flask to allay the intensity of his sorrow.

  ‘St Antonia,’ Mek agreed. ‘He died before St Frumentius, 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.

  ‘I 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,’ 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 promise!’ 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 dam-building 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 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.’

  ‘Fine!’ 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 riverine 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 better tell me that it was worth it,’ he 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.

  ‘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.’

  After they had eaten their dinner – another of the rat packs – Royan glanced across the fire at Nicholas. 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.

  He kissed her, tenderly. Then he drew back with the warmth of her lingering on his lips and studied her face in the starlight. She made no movement to pull away from him. Instead she swayed towards him, and kissed him back. At first it was a staid sisterly kiss, with her mouth tightly closed. He brought his right hand up behind her head and weaved his fingers into her hair, holding her face to his. He opened his mouth over hers, and she made a little sound of dissent through her closed lips.

  Slowly, voluptuously, he worked her lips apart, and her protests died away as he probed her mouth deeply with his tongue. She was making a contented little mewling sound now, like a kitten nursing on the teat, and her arms went around him. She kneaded his back with strong supple fingers, her mouth wide open to his kiss, her tongue sinuous and slippery as it twined around his.

  He slid his other hand up between their bodies and unhooked the buttons of her shirt down as low as her belt. She leaned back slightly in his embrace to make it easier for him.
With a delicious shock he discovered that her breasts were naked under the thin cotton shirt. He cupped one of them in his hand: it was small and firm, only just filling his hand. When he pinched the nipple gently, it stiffened between his fingers like a tiny ripe strawberry.

  He broke off the kiss and bowed his head to her bosom. She moaned softly, and with one hand guided him down. When he sucked her nipple into his mouth she gasped and hooked the nails of her other hand into his back, like a cat responding to a caress. Her whole body undulated in his embrace, and after a while she pulled his mouth away. He thought for a moment that she was rejecting him, but then she moved his head across and placed her other nipple in his mouth. Once again she gasped as he sucked it in.

  Her movements became more abandoned, keeping pace with his own arousal. He could restrain himself no longer and he reached up under her khaki culottes and laid his hand on the plump mound of her sex. Then with one swift lithe movement she broke away and sprang to her feet. She stood back from him, smoothing down her culottes and buttoning her shirt with fingers that trembled.

  ‘I am so sorry, Nicky. I want to, oh God, you will never know how much I want to. But—’ she shook her head and she was panting wildly, ‘not yet. Please, Nicky, forgive me. I am caught between two worlds. One half of me wants this so very much, but the other half will not allow me—’

  He stood up and kissed her chastely. ‘There is no hurry. Good things are worth waiting for,’ he told her with his mouth just touching hers. ‘Come! I will take you home now.’

  While it was still dark the next morning, the first levy of priests that Mai Metemma had promised came filing up the valley. Their chanting awoke the camp, and everyone came sleepily out of their thatched lean-to shelters to welcome the long column of holy men.

  ‘Sweet heavens,’ Nicholas yawned, ‘it looks as though we have started another crusade. They must have left the monastery in the middle of the night to get here at this hour.’ He went to find Tessay, and when he did he told her, ‘You are hereby appointed official translator. Sapper speaks not a word of either Arabic or Amharic. Stick close to him.’

  As soon as it was fully light, Mek and Nicholas left camp to reconnoitre a drop site. By noon they had agreed that there was only one possibility: they would have to use the valley itself. Compared to the rocky ridges that surrounded them, the floor of the valley was level and fairly free of obstructions. It was imperative that the drop should take place as close to the dam site as possible, for every mile that the stores must be manhandled would add immeasurably to the time and effort needed for the work.

  ‘Time is the major factor,’ Nicholas told Mek as they stood in the chosen drop zone the following morning. ‘Every day counts from now until the rains break.’

  Mek looked up at the sky. ‘Pray God for late rains.’

  They marked out their drop site a mile down from the river, along the stretch where the valley was widest and there was a clear approach through a gap in the hills. Jannie would need to fly straight and level for five miles under full flap and with the loading ramp down.

  ‘Cutting it fine,’ Mek remarked, as they surveyed the rugged slopes and frowning peaks that surrounded them. ‘Can your fat friend fly?’

  ‘Fly? He is half-bird,’ Nicholas told him.

  They moved down the valley to check the placement of the flares and the markers. The markers consisted of crosses of quartz stones laid out down the centre of the valley floor, and they would be highly visible from the air. Sapper was up at the head of the valley. They could see him there on the skyline as he moved around, setting out his smoke flares to mark the approach to the drop zone.

  When Nicholas turned around and looked in the opposite direction, he could see the two women sitting on a rock together at the far end of the valley. Sapper had already helped them to set up their flares. These would mark the far limit of the zone, and give Jannie a mark for his climb out of the valley.

  Nicholas then turned his attention back to Mek’s men as they finished laying out the stark white quartz markers. Once these were all in place, Mek ordered the area to be cleared. Then, lugging the radio, they climbed up to join Sapper on the high ground at the head of the valley. Mek helped Nicholas string out the aerial. Then Nicholas switched on and adjusted the gain carefully before he thumbed the microphone.

  ‘Big Dolly. Come in, Big Dolly!’ Nicholas invited, but the static hummed and whined.

  ‘They must be running late.’ Nicholas tried not to let his disquiet show. ‘Jannie will be coming straight in from Malta on this run. After the first drop he will go back to your base at Roseires and pick up the second load. With luck, both loads should all be dropped before noon tomorrow.’

  ‘If the fat man comes at all,’ Mek remarked.

  ‘Jannie is a pro,’ Nicholas grunted. ‘He will come.’ He held the microphone to his lips, ‘Big Dolly. Do you read? Over.’

  Every ten minutes he called out into the empty echoing silence. Each time his call went unanswered he had visions of Sudanese MiG interceptors racing in with their missiles cocked and locked, and the old Hercules plunging earthwards in flames.

  ‘Come in, Big Dolly!’ he pleaded, and at last a thin, scratchy voice floated into his headset. ‘Pharaoh. This is Big Dolly. ETA forty-five minutes. Standing by.’ Jannie’s transmission was terse. He was too much of an old hand at the smuggling game to give a hostile listener time to fix his position.

  ‘Big Dolly. Understand four five. Pharaoh standing by.’ Nicholas grinned at Mek. ‘Looks like we are in business after all.’

  Mek heard it first. His ear was battle-tuned. In this land, if you wanted to go on living it paid to pick up any aircraft long before it arrived. Nicholas was out of training, so it was almost five minutes later that he picked up the distinctive drone of the multi-props echoing weirdly off the cliffs of the gorge. It was impossible to be certain of the direction, but they shaded their eyes and stared into the west.

  ‘There she is.’ Nicholas redeemed himself as he spotted the tiny dark speck, so low as almost to blend into the background of the escarpment wall. He nodded at Sapper.

  Sapper ran out to his flares and fussed over them briefly. When he backed away they bloomed into clouds of dense marigold-yellow smoke that drifted out sluggishly on the light breeze. The smoke would give Jannie the strength and direction of the wind, as well as his orientation for the drop zone.

  Nicholas lifted his binoculars and gazed towards the other end of the narrow valley. He saw that Royan and Tessay were busy with their flares. Suddenly crimson smoke billowed from them, and the women ran back to their original position and stood staring up at the sky.

  Nicholas called softly into the microphone. ‘Big Dolly. Smoke is up. Do you have it visual?’

  ‘Affirmative. You are visual. For what you are about to receive may you be truly thankful.’ Jannie’s South African accent was unmistakable as he uttered the cheerful blasphemy.

  They watched the aircraft grow in size until its wings seemed to fill half the sky, and then its profile altered as the great wing flaps dropped and the ramp below its belly drooped open. Big Dolly slowed her flight so dramatically that she seemed to hang suspended on an invisible thread from the high African sun. Slowly she came around, banking steeply as Jannie lined her up on the smoke flares, dropping lower and still lower, headed directly at where they stood.

  With a savage roar that made all three of them duck, she passed so low over their heads that it seemed she would wipe them off the crest. Nicholas had a glimpse of Jannie peering down at him from the cockpit, a fat smile on his face and one hand raised in a laconic wave, and then he was past.

  Nicholas straightened up and watched Big Dolly sweep majestically down the centre of the valley. The first pallet dropped out of her and plunged earthwards, until at the last moment its parachutes burst open like a bride’s bouquet. The fall of the heavy container was arrested abruptly. It dangled and swung, and seconds later struck the floor of the valley in a cloud of
yellow dust and with a crash they could hear up on the ridge. Then two more loads dropped from her, and they too hung for a moment on their chutes before they slammed in.

  Big Dolly’s engines howled under full throttle and her nose lifted as she bored for height while she passed over the crimson smoke clouds, and then climbed out of the deadly trap of the valley. She came round in another wide turn and lined up for the second run. Once again the pallets dropped out of her as she roared over the quartz markers and then climbed out over the end wall of the valley, skimming the rocky spikes that would have clawed her down.

  Six times Jannie repeated the dangerous manoeuvre, and each time he dropped three of the heavy rectangular loads. They lay strewn down the length of the valley, shrouded by the tumbled white silk of their own parachutes.

  As Jannie climbed away from the last pass, his voice echoed in Nicholas’s earphones. ‘Don’t go away, Pharaoh! I will be back.’ Then Big Dolly lifted her belly ramp like an old lady hoisting her knickers and headed away westwards.

  Nicholas and Mek ran down into the valley, where the monks were already jabbering and laughing around the pallets. Quickly the two of them took control, sorting the men into gangs and directing them as they broke down the loads and carried them away.

  Nicholas and Sapper had planned that the pallets should be dropped in the order that their contents would be needed. The first pallet contained canned and dried food, all their personal effects and camping equipment, along with those other little creature comforts that Nicholas had allowed, including mosquito nets and a case of malt whisky. He was relieved to see that there was no leakage from the precious case: not one of the bottles had been broken in the drop.

  Sapper took charge of the building material and heavy equipment. With Tessay relaying his orders, it was dragged and manhandled away to the ancient quarry where it would be packed and stored until needed on site. Darkness fell with more than half the pallets still not unpacked, lying where they had fallen. Mek placed an armed guard over them, and they all traipsed wearily back up the valley to the camp.