Текст книги "The Seventh Scroll"

Автор книги: Wilbur Smith

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asleep before him. Her breathing was gentle and even, and he could just

hear it above the sound of the water. It was a long time since he had

had a lovely woman lying at his side. When he was sure she was deeply

under, he reached across and touched her cheek gently.

"Pleasant dreams, little one," he whispered tenderly.

"You have had a busy day." That was the way he had often bid his younger

daughter sleep.

The muleteers were stirring long before the dawn, and the whole party

was on the path, way again as soon as the light was strong enough to

reveal their footing. When the early sun struck the upper walls of the

cliff face, they were still high enough above the valley floor to have

an aerial view of the terrain.

Nicholas drew Royan aside and they let the rest of the caravan go on

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

Rosalind, no other woman had had this effect on him.

"A nice cold plunge won't do you any harm, my lad." He threw his jeans

over a bush, and dived into the pool.

sat at the campfire after the evening meal, olas looked up suddenly and

cocked his

"Am I hearing things?" he wondered.

"No," Tessay laughed. "That is singing you hear. The priests from the

monastery are coming to welcome us."

They saw the torches then, winding up the hillside in procession,

flickering through the trees as they approached the camp. The muleteers

and the servants crowded forward, singing and clapping rhythmically to

greet the deputation from the monastery.

The deep male voices soared and then dropped away, almost to a whisper,

then rose again in descant, haunting and beautiful, the sound of Africa

in the night. It drove icy thrills down Nicholas's spine, so that he

shivered involuntarily.

Then they saw the white robes of the priests, flitting like moths in the

torchlight as they wound along the trail The camp servants fell on their

knees as the first of the holy men entered the perimeter of the camp.

They were young acolytes, bare-headed and barefooted. They were followed

by the monks, wearing long robes and tall turbans.

Their ranks wheeled aside and opened up, an honour guard for the phalanx

of deacons and fully ordained priests in their gaudy embroidered robes

and vestments.

Each of them carried a heavy Coptic cross, set on a tall staff and

intricately chased and worked innative silver.

They in turn opened into two ranks, still chanting, and allowed the

canopied palanquin to be carried forward by four hefty young acolytes

and placed in the centre of the camp. The crimson and yellow silk

curtains shimmered in the light of the camp lanterns and the torches of

the procession.

"We must go forward to welcome the abbot," Boris told Nicholas in a

stage whisper. "His name is Jali Hora." As they stepped up to the

litter, the curtains were drawn dramatically aside and a tall figure

stepped down to earth.

Both Tessay and Royan sank to their knees respectfully, and clasped

their hands at the breast. However, Nicholas and Boris remained on their

feet, and Nicholas inspected the abbot with interest.

jali Hora was skeletally thin. Beneath the skirts of his robe his legs

were like sticks of cured tobacco, tar'black and twisted, with

desiccated sinew and stringy muscle. His robe was green and gold, worked

with gold thread that glittered in the firelight. On his head he wore a

tall hat with a flat top embroidered with a pattern of crosses and

stars.

The abbot's face -was dead sooty black, the skin wrinkled and riven with

the deep etchings of age. There were few teeth behind his puckered lips,

and even those were yellowed and askew. His beard was startling silver

white, breaking like storm surf on the old bones of his jaw.

One eye was opaque blue and blinded with tropical ophthalmia, but the

other eye glistened like that of a hunting leopard.

He began to speak in a high, quavering voice. "A blessing," Boris warned

Nicholas, and they both bowed their heads respectfully. The assembled

priests came in with the chanted response each time the old man paused.

When at last he had finished giving his blessing jali Hora made the sign

of the cross in four directions, rotating slowly towards each point of

the compass, while two altar boys swung their silver censers vigorously,

deluging the night with pungent clouds of incense smoke.

After the blessing the two women came forward to kneel before the abbot.

He stooped over them and struck them lightly on each cheek with his

silver cross, chanting a falsetto blessing over them.

"They say the old man is over a hundred years old," Boris whispered to

Nicholas.

Two white-robed debteras brought forward a stool of African ebony, so

beautifully carved that Nicholas eyed it acquisitively. He guessed that

it was probably centuries old, and would have made a handsome addition

to the museum collection. The two debteras took Jah Hora's elbows and

gently seated him on the stool. Then the rest of the company sank to the

earth in a congregation around him, their black faces lifted towards him

attentively.

Tessay sat at his feet, and when her husband spoke she translated

quietly for him into Amharic. "It is a great pleasure and an honour for

me to greet you again, Holy Father."

The old man nodded, and Boris went on, "I have brought an English

nobleman of royal blood to, visit the monastery of St. Frumentius."

"I say, steady on, old boy!, Nicholas protested, but all the

congregation studied him with expectant interest.

"What do I do now?" he asked Boris out of the corner of his mouth.

"What do You think he came all this way for?" Boris grinned maliciously.

"He wants a gift. Money,'

"Maria Theresa dollars?" he enquired, referring to the centuries-old

traditional currency of Ethiopia, "Not necessarily. Times have changed.

jali Hora will be happy to take Yankee green-backs."

"How much?"

"You are a nobleman of royal blood. You will be hunting in his valley.

Five hundred dollars at least."

Nicholas winced and went to fetch his bag from one of the mule panniers.

When he came back he bowed to the abbot and placed the sheaf of currency

in his outstretched, pink-palmed claw. The abbot smiled, exposing the

yellow stumps of his teeth, and spoke briefly.

Tessay translated for him, "He says, "Welcome to the monastery of St.

Frumentius and the season of Timkat." He wishes you good hunting on the

banks of the Abbay river."

Immediately the solemn mood of the devout company changed. They broke

out in smiles and laughter, and the abbot looked expectantly at Boris.

"The holy abbot says it has been a thirsty journey," Tessay translated.

"The old devil loves his brandy," Boris explained, and shouted to the

camp butler. With some ceremony a bottle of brandy was brought and

placed on the camp table in front of the abbot, shoulder to shoulder

with the bottle of vodka in front of Boris. They toasted each other, and

the abbot tossed back a dram that made his good eye weep with tears, and

his voice husky as he directed a question at Royan.

"He asks you, Woizero Royan, where do you come from, daughter, that you

follow the true path of Christ the Saviour of man?"

"I am an Egyptian, of the old religion," Royan replied.

The abbot and all his priests nodded and beamed with approval.

"We are all brothers and sisters in Christ, the Egyptians and the

Ethiopians," the abbot told her. "Even the word Coptic derives from the

Greek for Egyptian. For over sixteen hundred years the Abuna, the

bishop, of Ethiopia was always appointed by the Patriarch in Cairo. Only

the Emperor Haile Selassie changed that in 1959, but we still follow the

true road to Christ. You are welcome, my daughter."

His debtera poured another dram of brandy and the old man swallowed it

at a gulp. Even Boris looked impressed, "Where does the skinny old black

tortoise put it?" he wondered aloud. Tessay did not translate, but she

lowered her eyes and the hurt she felt for the insult to the holy man

showed on her madonna features.

Jah Hora turned to Nicholas. "He wants to know what animals you have

come to hunt here in his valley," Tessay told him.

Nicholas steeled himself and then replied carefully.

There was a long moment of disbelief, then the abbot cackled happily and

the assembled priests shouted with incredulous mirth.

"A dik-dik! You have come to hunt a dikdik! But there is no meat on an

animal that size."

Nicholas let them get over the first shock, and then produced a

photograph of the mounted specimen of Moquoda harPerU from the museum.

He placed it on the table in front of Jah Hora.

"This is no ordinary dik-dik. It is a holy dik-dik," he told them in

portentous tones, nodding at Tessay for the translation. "Let me recount

the legend." They were silenced by the prospect of a good story with

religious overtones. Even the abbot arrested the glass on its way to his

lips and replaced it on the table. His one eye swivelled from the

photograph to Nicholas's face.

"When John the Baptist was dying of starvation in the desert," Nicholas

began, and a few of the priests crossed themselves at the mention of the

saint's name, "he had been thirty days and thirty nights without a

morsel passing his lips-' Nicholas spun out the yarn for a while,

dwellin on the extremities of hunger endured by the saint, details

savoured by his audience who liked their holy men to suffer in the name

of righteousness.

"In the end the Lord took mercy on his servant and placed a small

antelope in a thicket of acacia, held fast by the thorns. He said unto

the saint: "I have prepared a meal for you that you shall not die. Take

of this meat and eat."

Where John the Baptist touched the small creature, the marks of his

thumb and fingers were imprinted upon its back for all time, and all

generations to come." They were silent and impressed.

Nicholas passed the photograph to the abbot. "See the prints of the

saint's fingers upon it."

The old man studied the print avidly, holding it up to his single eye,

and at last he exclaimed, "It is true. The marks of the saint's fingers

are clear to see."

He passed it to his deacons. Encouraged by the abbot's endorsement, they

exclaimed and wondered over the picture of the insignificant creature in

its coat of striped fur'.

"Have any of your men ever laid eyes upon one of these animals?"

Nicholas demanded, and one after the other they shook their heads. The

photograph completed the circle and was passed to the rank of squatting

acolytes.

Suddenly one of them leaped to his feet prancing, brandishing the

photograph and gibbering with excitement.

"I have seen this holy creature! With my very own eyes, I have seen it."

He was a young boy, barely adolescent.

There were cries of derision and disbelief from the others. One of them

snatched the print from the boy's grasp and waved it out of his reach,

taunting him with it.

"The child is soft in the head, and often possessed by demons and

fits,'Jali Hora explained sorrowfully. "Take no notice of him, poor

Tamre!'

Tamre's eyes were wild as he ran down the rank of acolytes, trying

desperately to recapture the photograph.

But they passed it back and forth, keeping it just out of his reach,

teasing him and jeering at his antics.

Nicholas rose to his feet to intervene. He found this taunting of a

weak'minded lad offensive, but at that moment something tripped in the

boy's mind, and he fell to the ground as though struck down by a club.

His back arched and his limbs twitched and jerked uncontrollably, his

eyes rolled back into his skull until only the whites showed, and white

froth creamed on his lips that were drawn back in a grinning rictus.

Before Nicholas could go to him, four of his peers picked him up bodily

and carried him away. Their laughter dwindled into the night. The others

acted as though this was nothing out of the ordinary, and Jali Hora

nodded to his debtera to refill his glass.

it was late when at last Jah Hora took his leave and was helped into the

palanquin by his deacons. He took the remains of the brandy with him,

clutching the halfempty bottle in one clawed hand and tossing out

benedictions with the other.

"You made a good impression, Milord English," Boris told him. "He liked

your story of John the Baptist, but he liked your money even more."

When they set out the next morning, the path followed the river for a

while. But within a mile the waters quickened their pace, and then raced

through the narrow opening between high red cliffs and plunged over

another waterfall.

Nicholas left the welltrodden trail and went down to the brink of the

falls. He looked down two hundred feet into a deep cleft in the rock,

only just wide enough to allow the angry river to squeeze through. He

could have thrown a stone across the gap. There was no path nor foothold

in that chasm, and he turned back and rejoined the rest of the caravan

as it detoured away from the river and into another thickly wooded

valley.

"This was probably once the course of the Dandera river, before it cut a

fresh bed for itself through the chasm." Royan pointed to the high

ground on each side of the path, and then to the water-worn boulders

that littered the trail.

"I think you are right," Nicholas agreed. These cliffs seem to be an

intrusion of limestone through the basalt and sandstone. The whole area

has been severely faulted and cut up by erosion and the ever-changing

river. You can be certain that those limestone cliffs are riddled with

caves and springs."

Now the trail descended rapidly towards the Blue Nile, falling away

almost fifteen hundred feet in altitude' in the last few miles. The

sides of the valley were heavily covered with vegetation and at many

places small springs of water oozed from the limestone and trickled down

the old river bed.

The heat built up steadily as they went down, and soon even Royan's

khaki shirt was stained with dark patches of sweat between her shoulder

blades.

At one stage a freshet of clear water gushed from an area of dense bush

high up the hillside and swelled the stream into a small river. Then

they turned a corner of the valley and found that they and the stream

had rejoined the main flow of the Dandera river. Looking back up the

gorge, they could see where the river had emerged from the chasm through

a narrow archway in the cliff. The rock surrounding the cleft was a

peculiar pink in colour, smooth and polished, folded back upon itself,

so that it resembled the mucous membrane on the inside of a pair of

human lips.

The rock -was of such an unusual colour and texture that they were both

struck by it. They turned aside to study it while the mules went on

downwards, the clatter of their receding hoofbeats and the voices of the

men echoing and reverberating weirdly in this confined and unearthly

place.

"It looks like some monstrous gargoyle, gushing water through its

mouth," Royan whispered, looking up at the cleft and at those strange

rock formations. "I can imagine how the ancient Egyptians, led by Taita

and Prince Memnon, would have been moved if they had ever reached this

place. &at mystical connotations would they have attributed to such a

natural phenomenon!'

Nicholas was silent, studying her face. Her eyes were dark with awe, and

her expression solemn. In this setting she reminded him strongly of a

portrait that he had in his collection at Quenton Park, It was a

fragment of a fresco from the Valley of the Kings, depicting a

Ramessidian princess.

Why should that surprise you?" he asked himself. "The very same blood

runs in her veins."

She turned to face him, "Give me hope, Nicky. Tell me that I have not

dreamed all this. Tell me that we are going to find what we are looking

for, and that we are going to vindicate Duraid's death."

Her face was upturned to his, and it seemed to glow under the light dew

of perspiration and the strength of her commitment. He was seized by an

almost overwhelming urge to take her up in his arms and kiss those

moistly parted lips, but instead he turned away and started down the

trail.

He dared not look back at her until he had himself fully under control.

After a while he heard her quick, light tread on the rock behind him.

They went on down in silence, and he was so preoccupied that he was

unprepared for the sudden stunning vista that opened abruptly before

them.

They stood high on a ledge above the sub-gorge of the Nile. Below them

was a mighty cauldron of red rock five hundred feet deep. The main flow

of the legendary river plunged in a green torrent into the shadowy

abyss. It was so deep that the sunlight did not reach down into it.

Beside them the sparser waters of the Dandera river took the same leap,

falling white as an egret's feather, twisting and blowing in the false

wind of the gorge. In the depths the waters mingled, churning and

roiling together in a welter of foam, turning upon themselves like a

great wheel, weighty and viscous as oil, until at last they found the

exit gorge and tore away down it with irresistible force and power.

"You sailed through that in a boat?"Royan asked, with awe in her voice.

"We were young and foolish, then,'Nicholas said with a sad little smile

that was haunted by old memories.

They were silent for a long while. Then RQyan said softly, "One can see

how this would have stopped Taita and his prince as they came upstream."

She looked about her, and then pointed down the gorge towards the west.

"They certainly could never have come up the sub-gorge itself. They must

have followed the line of the top of the cliffs, right along here where

we are standing." Her voice took on an edge of excitement at the

thought.

"Unless they came up the other side of the river," Nicholas suggested to

tease her, and her face fell.

"I hadn't thought of that. Of course it's possible. How would we ever

cross over, if we find no evidence on this side?

"Let's consider that only when it's forced upon us. We have enough to

contend with as it is, without looking for more hardships."

Again they were silent, both of them considering the magnitude and

uncertainty of the task that they had taken on. Then Royan roused

herself.

"Where is the monastery? I can see no sign of it."

"It's in the cliff right under our feet."

"Will we camp down there?"

"I doubt it. Let's catch up with Boris and find out what he intends to

do."

They followed the trail along the edge of the cauldron, and came up with

the mule caravan at a spot where the track forked. One branch turned

away from the river into a wooded depression, while the other still

hugged the rimrock.

Boris was waiting for them, and he indicated the track that led away

from the river. "There is a good campsite up there in the trees where I

stayed last time I hunted down here."

There were several tall wild fig trees throwing shade across this glade,

and a spring of fresh water at the head.

To minimize the loads, Boris had not carried tents down into the gorge.

So as soon as the mules were unloaded he set his men to building three

small thatched huts for their accommodation, and to digging a pit

latrine well away from the spring.

While this work was going on, Nicholas beckoned to Royan and Tessay, and

the three of them set off to explore the monastery. Where the trail

forked, Tessay led them along the path that skirted the cliff top, and

soon they came to a broad rock staircase that descended the cliff face.

There was a party of white-robed monks coming UP the stone stairway, and

Tessay stopped briefly to chat to them. As they went on she told

Nicholas and Royan, "Today is Katera, the eve of the festival of Timkat,

which begins tomorrow. They are very excited. It is one of the major

events of the religious year."

"What does the festival celebrate?" Royan asked. "It is not part of the

Church calendar in Egypt."

"It's the Ethiopian Epiphany, celebrating the baptis  of Christ,' Tessay

explained. "During the ceremony the tabot will be taken down to the

river to be rededicated and revitalized, and the acolytes will receive

baptism, as did Jesus Christ at the hand of the Baptist."

They followed the staircase down the sheer cliff face.

The treads of the steps had been dished by the passage of bare feet over

the centuries. Down they went, with the great cauldron of the Nile

boiling and hissing and steaming with spray hundreds of feet below them.

Suddenly they came out on to a wide terrace that had been hewn by man's

hand from the living rock. The red rock overhung it, forming a roof to

the cloister with arches of stone left in place by the ancient builders

to support it.

The interior wall of the long covered terrace was riddled with the

entrances to the catacombs beyond. Over the ages the cliff face had been

mined and burrowed to form the halls and cells, the vestibules, churches

and shrines of the monastic community which had inhabited them for well

over a thousand years.

There were groups of monks seated along the length of the terrace. Some

of them were listening to one of the deacons reading aloud from an

illuminated copy of the scriptures.

"So many of them are illiterate," Tessay sighed. "The Bible must be read

and explained to even the monks, for most of them are unable to read it

for themselves."

"This was what the Church of Constantine was like, the Church of

Byzantium," Nicholas pointed out quietly.

"It remains the Church of cross and book, of elaborate and sumptuous

ritual in a predominantly illiterate world today." As they wandered

slowly down the cloister they passed other seated groups who, under the

direction of a precentor, were chanting and singing the Amharic psalms

and hymns.

>From the interior of the cells and caves there came the IC hum of

voices raised in prayer or supplication, and the air was thick with the

smell of human occupation that had taken place over hundreds of years.

It was the smell of wood smoke and incense, of stale food and excrement,

of sweat and piety, of suffering and of sickness. Amongst the groups of

monks were the pilgrims who had made the journey, or been carried by

their relatives, down into the gorge to make petition to the saint, or

to seek from him a cure for their disease and suffering.

There were blind children weeping in their mothers' arms, and lepers

with the flesh rotting and falling from their bones, and still others in

the coma of sleeping sickness or some other terrible tropical

affliction. Their whines and moans of agony blended with the chanting of

the monks, and with the distant clamour of the Nile as it cascaded into

the cauldron.

They came at last to the entrance to the cavern cathedral of St.

Frumentius. It was a circular opening like the mouth of a fish, but the

surrounds of the portals were painted with a dense border of stars and

crosses, and of saintly heads. The portraits were primitive, and

rendered in ochre and soft earthy tones that were all the more appealing

for their childlike simplicity. The eyes of the saints were huge and

outlined in charcoal, their expressions tranquil and benign.

A deacon in a grubby green velvet robe guarded the entrance, but when

Tessay spoke to him he smiled and nodded and gestured for them to enter.