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.