The Tenth Saint (10 page)

Gabriel had no idea who she was, nor that it was she who had excavated him from the eternal sands. He drank. The liquid tasted like vinegar, sour and sharp, but he was parched, so he gulped. He was oblivious to the fact that he was being watched until the young men around him whooped their approval as he upended the cup. He winced at the aftertaste.

Two of the young men pulled Gabriel to his feet and dragged him, in spite of his protests, toward the center of the circle. To the happy beat of a bucolic flute song, the men stomped and rocked and waved their arms skyward, chanting an unintelligible cadence. They prodded him to move as hysterical laughter and good-natured hollers from the crowd ensued. He had no choice but to have fun and let himself be made fun of. He did his best to imitate the other men’s movements, but he lacked the grace to improvise a dance to an unfamiliar tune. It was of little consequence to him or to anyone else, for that matter. The idea was to delight in the moment. Eventually, he released his inhibitions and let the music take his feet as he gazed dreamily at the strange and beautiful scene around him.

The children were asleep by the fire. The stars— so many stars—quivered like acrobats balancing on a tightrope above a black abyss. Gabriel danced until the smoke from the waning fire stung his eyes, his cue to call it a night.

By the time Gabriel awoke the following day, the desert felt like a sauna. The dry heat, mixed with smoke from the cooking fire, rudely invaded his air passages. He parted the flap of his tent and realized he had slept later than he’d intended. The men were gone and the women were at work, the younger ones cooking and the older, feebler ones launching into their weaving and embroidery projects.

The weaving looked to Gabriel like complicated business, and he marveled at the dexterity of the women as they brushed the raw wool on carders made from palm leaves and spun it with hypnotic rhythm. They separated the threads from the tufts of wool entirely by hand, their fingers moving as quickly and fastidiously as if they were making music on a complicated instrument. The bundles of yarn were dyed in pots bubbling with concoctions of saturated earth colors—indigo from the shells of sea snails, brown from canyon clay, yellow from saffron, red from the crimson mountain worm or animal blood—and then set to dry on grids made of intersecting tree branches. The weavers slipped into primitive backstrap looms fashioned of sticks and rope and sang as they worked, simple tunes about the stars, the plenitude of the oasis, the stubbornness of the animals, the loneliness of the desert. It was a ritual born of necessity, for the women made these textiles for function and warmth, but there was immense beauty in it.

Weaving was an outlet for expressing emotion, and it was evident in the finished piece. If a woman had just taken a husband and was in good spirits, her cloth depicted abstract figures reaching to the sky. Trees laden with fruit symbolized fertility and life. If a woman had recently suffered the loss of a child, her textile somberly depicted stars and scrolls representative of the spirit-sky. Gabriel looked down at his own blanket, examining the characters for the first time. It was an elaborate pattern of scrolls and peaks arranged in concentric circles, which he interpreted as the changing seasons in the desert.

Behind him, a voice spoke. Gabriel turned to see a boy who couldn’t have been older than sixteen. He was diminutive in stature, no taller than five feet, his hands and feet as small as a young child’s, but didn’t seem to be intimidated that Gabriel towered over him. Back straight and chest out, he asserted his presence. He pursed his fleshy lips as if he was considering the odd man before him.

“I don’t understand, my friend,” Gabriel replied.

The impish boy spoke and placed his hand on his chest. He repeated slowly: “Daaa’ud.”

“Da’ud. Pleasure to meet you.”

The boy pointed to Gabriel. “Abyan.” He said something more and started to walk away but turned back and signaled him to follow.

The sand felt like dried breadcrumbs to Gabriel’s naked feet. It was unusually coarse in this part of the desert, where basalt outcroppings protruded from the sand and gravel to give the land a prehistoric appearance. It was just one of many faces of the desert. Day to day and week to week, the terrain changed from vast dustbowl to scattered stone fields to brush plains to fecund oasis. It was this variety that enabled the nomad to subsist, and his survival depended on his knowing the idiosyncrasies of each terrain as he knew the stride of his own camel. But to Gabriel, it was all frustratingly foreign and unpredictable.

Gabriel wondered where the young man was leading him. The Bedouin tents were well out of sight now, and the two of them were threading their way around a basalt labyrinth. These stones, bleached to a chalky gray by the cruel sun of the millennia, had surely seen it all: volcanic eruptions, continental drifts, ice ages, meteor impacts. Now they were headstones in a sandy graveyard, the silent sentinels of some universal secret containing all the wisdom of the ages in their fossilized masses.

Da’ud said something to him, then disappeared behind a monolith and into a cavity in the massive boulder’s underbelly.

Gabriel crawled in behind him. It was dark and cool, a welcome reprieve from the punishing heat. The air smelled of ash.

Da’ud proceeded to light a fire with some sticks and dry brush that someone had left in the cave.

A refuge. Gabriel would have never fathomed, had he not seen it with his own eyes, that a place as hostile and bleak as the desert could provide so well for its creatures. Shelter, food, and water were always available for those who knew the desert’s curves and caprices and were willing to submit to her rhythms rather than create an order of their own.

Gabriel sat on the cold ground, gathering his knees to his chest. Though his line of sight was limited to a stone wall tentatively illuminated by the anemic fire, their voices bounced and echoed off unseen chambers. Shadows danced around him like the silhouettes of muses, alternately hiding and revealing the texture of the rock.

The young Bedouin stuffed a clay pipe with tobacco and, with a kindly smile revealing his misaligned gray teeth, offered it to his companion. Gabriel used a piece of kindling to light the pipe and drew back, coughing as he inhaled.

“What is this stuff? It’s disgusting.”

Da’ud howled hysterically.

Gabriel laughed too. He drew back again and feigned his pleasure on the exhale so as to not offend his new friend. He was repelled by the substance, but the act of smoking was comforting.

Da’ud wrapped a piece of gauze around a stick and dipped it into the fire to make a torch. He gestured to Gabriel to follow him as he scooted, using his hands and feet like a monkey, toward the far end of the cave. He held the torch close to the wall.

Remarkably, the rock from the base of the wall to the ceiling was covered with strange drawings and what appeared to be characters of a language, all carved into the stone.

“You can write? You know language?” Gabriel was stunned.

Da’ud pointed to the stick figures accompanying the text, which were lined up in storyboard fashion, and with charadelike gestures proceeded to explain their meaning. He pointed to the figure of a horseman raising a spear and emulated a mean expression.

Gabriel watched intently. Though he understood nothing the boy was saying, he could sense his anger. He read the gesture as the description of an enemy.

Da’ud pointed to another scene, showing the horseman and his men trampling people and tents. His voice grew loud—almost frantic—as he recounted his story. The next figure depicted a man lying on the ground and the horse rearing over his body while a small boy stood nearby. Da’ud wrapped his arms around himself and rocked back and forth, his eyes glistening with tears and his voice full of angst.

Gabriel struggled to comprehend. Was the trampled man a relative? His father, perhaps? Was he the small boy watching the scene unfold?

Da’ud composed himself, and his eyes filled with hatred. He thumped his chest thrice and held up his fists. He pointed to another figure that showed two men fighting hand to hand. He clenched his teeth and ran his hand across his throat, a gesticulation that was unmistakable.

The figures, combined with Da’ud’s gestures and wild-eyed delivery, told the story of revenge, the taking of one life to avenge another. The boy before him might have been young but not too young to spill blood for justice. Gabriel was at a loss for words.

Da’ud continued, pointing to another row of figures. His eyes were blank as he told the last part of the story. He pointed to a piece of sharp stone on the ground, picked up the flint, and handed it to Gabriel.

Gabriel protested, but Da’ud’s hard expression told Gabriel he’d better acquiesce. He put his hand on the young Bedouin’s shoulder. The two exchanged glances, a silent understanding between men. They were not so different after all.

Six

S
arah sat at her desk, staring out the window of her cabin at the ceaseless downpour that had kept her crew inside the past three days. The wet season had finally arrived in Aksum.

Two weeks had passed since their trip to Addis, and she was still trying to make sense of the events. She kept thinking of the inscription on the Ezana throne:
My medicine man placed himself between my body and the lance-blade and fell in my place.
The king’s narrative was consistent with the wound on the entombed man’s rib cage. Could this be the tenth saint? Was that why the warning was etched on the coffin?

She had spent the time indoors researching the battle at Meroe, hoping for any clue about the king’s medicine man, but had found nothing. The only evidence of his existence, as far as she could tell, was what Matakala had shown her.

The brotherhood to which Matakala had alluded also weighed on her mind. She and Daniel had both placed calls to colleagues at Cambridge, Rutgers, and elsewhere, but the responses had come back empty. Either this sect was extremely well guarded or it didn’t exist at all. She hoped for the latter.

She picked up a letter from among her pile of papers. It was from Matakala, on official Ministry of Culture letterhead, and had arrived by certified post shortly after their return to Aksum.

Dear Dr. Weston,

I enjoyed our meeting the other night and look forward to a mutually cooperative relationship.

I trust you have had the time to evaluate my proposal. Please call my office in the next forty-eight hours with your reply.

Most sincerely,

Andrew Matakala

The deadline had come and gone, and she hadn’t answered. She was determined to stand her ground, whatever the consequences. Still, she wanted to know more about her adversary. She poured herself a glass of Ethiopian
tej
and drew back on her harsh Rothman cigarette. Technically, she’d quit two years ago, but she needed whatever help she could muster.

“Weston here.” The voice was a source of both comfort and angst.

“Hello, Daddy.” She drew the smoke deep into her lungs and exhaled.

“Darling, are you smoking? Don’t tell me you’re so weak willed you’ve gone back.”

Sarah felt the pang but brushed it aside. “Not now, Daddy. I need your help. There’s someone I want you to check out for me. A man by the name of Andrew Matakala. I need to know who he is, where he was educated … whatever you can tell me about him.”

“Is this your new beau, darling?”

“I’m being serious. It’s someone I ran into in Addis. He works for the Ministry of Culture, but there’s something about him I don’t trust.”

“Oh, Sarah, are you sure you’re not being paranoid? This isn’t your overactive imagination speaking, is it?”

There he went again, dismissing her as if she were a child. She regretted calling him. “Listen, if it’s a big deal, forget about it. I’ll get the information some other way.”

“Let me see what I can do. But it will take some time. I have an agenda full of meetings, you know, and then there’s all the travel: Brussels, Dubai, Tokyo. I will try to get to it between things.”

Between things.

She heard a rap on her door. Matakala’s warning came to mind:
You don’t know whom you’re up against.

“Fair enough. Must run; someone’s at the door.” She hung up hastily.

Another knock.