Drummer In the Dark (23 page)

As they walked, he explained, “To our left are cells for monks who come out. You understand? Like me. We see the visitors, we work with poor, we farm, we teach. Farther on are cells for those who do not come out. There is a word, yes?”

“Hermits,” Sybel supplied.

“Hermits, yes, of course. Before, they live in caves. Now, we make caves for them here.” He pointed to the open chambers lining the right-hand wall. “Here we make lime for the walls. Olive press. Grape press. Grain room. Kitchen. Wells. All this is the middle court. Ninth century, some eleventh. Mostly ninth. Here another chapel, no, we do not enter here. This way, please.”

He led them down six crumbling steps and into another deep-set alcove. He halted before a door of barred iron and parched wood, searched his robes, and extracted a ring of keys. The door was almost a foot thick but swung open with silent ease. They stepped into another world, one of impossible age.

“Saint Anthony was world’s first monk. His monastery was in Western Desert. He passes to heaven in 325. His student was Saint Baramous. He and others come here in 310. They build this home.”

Wynn stood before a limestone monolith. There were no windows on the ground level, and those higher up were mere cross-shaped slits. High overhead ran a wooden drawbridge.

“Saint Baramous is man of peace in time of war. Barbarians come here many times, attacking oasis villages of Wadi Natrum.” He pointed to the left. “This is northeast corner of monastery. This wall and this house, all fourth century. There you see our caves for hermits.”

Along the outer wall’s rim were crudely carved openings. They looked indeed like entrances to caves, set far apart and utterly isolated. The wind moaned overhead but did not enter. Here the world’s storms were not welcome. Here was only light and heat and silence beyond time.

The monk escorted them away from the hermit caves, toward a flight of stairs carved up the outer wall, steep and curved and slippery with age. “Careful here, please. Very careful.”

Sybel cast Wynn a glance full of questions, then turned and followed the monk. Wynn used both hands to search the decayed surface for holds. They followed a narrow path around the corner of the wall, until the drawbridge came into view. There they halted once more.

When the monk realized they were no longer following, he turned and laughed delightedly. “You think this bridge stands for sixteen centuries, waiting for pretty English lady and gentleman to come and fall down?”

“We’re American.”

“American, English, is making no difference to bridge. Please to come.”

When she turned and looked at him a second time, Wynn said, “Your call.”

Sybel followed the monk. The planks were warped so that Wynn could see the sandy lane far below. One railing was gone entirely. The other shivered in what wind found its way over the parapet. He chose his steps carefully and did not breathe until he reached the other side.

The monk welcomed them with benevolent humor. “When barbarians come, they are not liking bridge either. The monks pull it into long hall here, you see? They close this door, then they wait. There is well for water, there is meal for bread. One time they wait seven years.”

He led them down the narrow hall, dark save for light filtering through cross-shaped windows. His keys rattled again as he unlocked another door. “Here is the church of Saint Baramous. Our heart, our home. Please, you are welcome.”

A faint breath of wind followed them inside, as the monk walked to the nave and returned with a lighted candle. The flame weaved and beckoned, causing wall frescoes made faint by eons to come alive and bid them silent welcome. Seventeen centuries of incense perfumed the air.

The monk carried the candle back to stand before Sybel. His smile danced with the flames. “Here in the heart of our home, we may speak the truth, yes? I think you carry sadness with you.”

If she found the comment strange, Sybel made no sign. Perhaps she shivered, perhaps it was a nod. The monk seemed satisfied, for he said, “Also I think you carry a servant’s heart. The eternal lesson is hard to remember sometimes for servants. So I remind you. You can save only one person. Who is that, please?”

“Myself,” she whispered, the trembling visible now.

“Yes, is very true. We pray for others. We serve with joy. We trust in the One who can save all else. And we hold fast to His gift.” He ushered them from the chapel. “Peace. Peace now. Peace always.”

Sybel’s words rippled like wind scattering dust over the parapet. “This lesson is beyond me.”

As the monk relocked the chapel, he said, “No, Miss. No. You do not understand. So many servants, they learn only to work, to struggle. But this peace, you do not earn. Is
gift
. To receive, you must only do as desert teaches. Be still. Trust. Wait.”

The wind had quieted while they were inside. The sky was once again an utterly unblemished blue. They clambered along the narrow seam and descended the steps at a very slow pace. The monk smiled at Sybel, made the sign of the cross, and said, “We hunger, we thirst for the realm beyond words. This is your destiny, to drink at the eternal well.”

“I—”

“Mrs. Wells? Congressman?” A wide-eyed Nabil Saad came around the corner, leading a group of four monks. He cast astounded eyes at Father Benyamin, at the central monolith, at them. “How do you come to be here?”

“He wanted to show us.”

“No one is allowed here. No one. In all my years of visiting this place, never have I been invited.” He greeted the monk with a deep bow and words half chanted. The monk replied with a brief murmur and another sign of the cross. The monks behind Nabil smiled and chattered among themselves.

As the monk turned to go, Nabil fell in beside Wynn and said softly, “Father Benyamin is a very famous teacher. He has been named head of this monastery, the youngest ever. Did he say anything?”

“Not a single word to me.” Wynn pointed with his chin to where the monk continued his soft conversation with Sybel.

“He spoke with your sister? About what?”

Before Wynn could respond, however, the entourage came to a halt as one of the hermit doors creaked open. A man of impossible years hobbled out, blinking in the light. And smiling. He waved one claw in the air, calling to them with the rusty sound of a crow taking flight. One of the younger monks rushed forward and helped him down the stairs. The man scarcely saw him. He used the young man as a crutch, but kept his eyes focused upon the group. Even the monastery’s new abbot appeared poleaxed by the hermit’s sudden appearance.

The man was scarcely higher than a gnome, shriveled and dried as desiccated fruit. He stopped before Wynn and spoke words that set all the monks to chattering. Nabil stammered, “The father is inviting you to visit his cell.”

Wynn would have paid good money to do nothing of the sort. “Is this normal?”

“Please, sir, he is doing you great honor. The men in these cells, they are legends.” The monks behind Nabil chirruped a musical mystery. “I beg you, do as he asks.”

Impatiently the old man plucked at Wynn’s shirt. His touch was feather-light, soft as death. Even so, Wynn found himself drawn forward. He glanced behind him, a swift cast that swept up several images—Sybel weeping now as Father Benyamin leaned over and spoke in delicate tones, the other monks watching with the wonder of men seeing the sun set at noon, Nabil following a few paces behind him.

“Father Marak is known throughout all Egypt,” Nabil continued. “Seven years ago he fell very ill. He was then the abbot of Bishoy, another monastery not far from here. For days he lay as one dead. He was given the final sacrament. Then he recovered. No one could explain it. Father Marak resigned as abbot, saying he would spend whatever days he had left praying here for a fallen world.”

The desert cell was beyond austere. And small. There was scarcely room for Wynn to stand up straight. The ceiling sloped downward and formed a tight little alcove around a single window, ten inches to a side. Wynn could reach out and touch all four crumbling stone walls, but did not, for fear of making the space smaller still. A tallow cross was burned into the ceiling. A wooden cross hung upon the eastern wall. A bed of leather straps was tucked under the window overhang. Two blankets. A wooden bookstand stood at shoulder height, pointed so that the reader could look out the square window and inspect a forsaken world. An icon hung on the eastern wall, so old the face was no longer visible. Wynn could not even say if he stared at the picture of a man or woman. It did not matter. After his years in this cell, the old monk no doubt saw it in his dreams.

The monk shuffled in closer beside him. His odor was like that of dry earth, strong but parched. Wynn looked over his head to where Nabil stood in the doorway. “Should I offer him money?”

“Oh no, it would be a great insult. If you wish, there is an offering urn by the front gate.”

“Fine. Can we go back . . .” He was halted by the monk suddenly touching his arm and speaking. The monk’s voice sounded like the reluctant opening of a rusty gate.

Nabil’s eyes widened further still.

When Nabil did not translate, the old man turned, inspected Nabil’s face, and cackled. He offered Wynn a claw of benediction, then ushered him out.

Wynn stepped back into the desert heat, heard the cell door close behind him with a permanent thunk, and listened to the monk cackling from within. “What did he say?”

Nabil’s eyes rested upon the closed cell door. “That you will do great deeds,” he replied numbly. “If only you can come to remember your own name.”

31

Thursday

B
Y THE TIME the conference ended and the gathering dispersed, the afternoon was crowned in amber heat. Wynn stood by the car, partially sheltered by the surrounding palms, and watched as a gardener passed along a nearby row of young plants. He splashed a cupful upon each in turn, carrying the water in an urn on his back. Sparrows followed in panicked droves, drinking before the earth could suck the surface dry and filling the air with the thunder of tiny wings. Almost all the diplomats had already departed, leaving the place increasingly empty and isolated. Still there was no sign of Kay Trilling, Sybel, or Nabil.

Wynn felt tormented by an emptiness so vast he could not take it in, much less name it. Even the rising wind carried messages, if only Wynn had the wisdom to understand. Even the dove’s murmur, and the flickering script of tree shadow upon sand. All mysteries there to be unlocked, if only he were a better man.

All the borders that had safely defined his carefully constructed world had been stripped away. Instead of standing on his veranda, watching another slow, sultry Florida afternoon spread gold on the western bay, he was trapped in a place of angry wind and fathomless desert reaches. Wynn was impatient to return to safety, even if it meant an air-conditioned hotel cage and the grinding din of a third-world city. Anywhere else was better than facing the yellow-tinted mirrors of sand and heat.

“There you are.” Kay Trilling walked over. Sybel followed a few steps behind, shadowed by Nabil. Perhaps it was a trick of the light, but the two women seemed to share one expression, gaunt and tight and robbed of any satisfaction. “We’re ready.”

For once Kay appeared too weary to spear him with hostility. Wynn watched as Nabil reluctantly disengaged himself from Sybel’s side, and he knew Nabil had still been trying to find out what the monk had told her.

Wynn said to his sister, “You know what I hate most about this place? How they’ve managed to make a single day seem a hundred years long.”

They drove down the long central lane, past the monks bent over in timeless labor, through the gates, and out into the desert. Wynn leaned forward and asked Nabil, “I still don’t understand how those monks knew enough to talk to us like that. Did somebody ask you about us earlier?”

“The monks do not ask such questions of anyone save the supplicant.”

“They must have heard about the conference,” Wynn said, struggling to make the day’s experiences fit into the comforting box of his world. “And just assumed who we were.”

“Mr. Bryant.” Nabil’s voice held a hint of quiet humor. “The monk who spoke with you has not been out of his cell for years.”

“At least, that’s what the monks told you.”

“Why would they lie?”

“There has to be some explanation.”

“Of course, Mr. Bryant.” Nabil smiled at the sun-drenched road. Neither Sybel nor Kay Trilling gave any indication that they even heard the exchange. “Of course.”

A half hour into the return journey, the winds picked up. Dust and pellets attacked the car, acrid and hissing. The dust tainted Wynn’s nose and mouth and eyes, even with all the windows tightly closed. Nabil slowed and pressed on through the swirling clouds, driving now by feel.

The dunes unfurled like great spinning flags, which slammed into the car. The wind buffeted and shook, then departed. All became calm once more, the sky utterly empty.

Then over the sound of the motor Wynn heard the growl. A desert beast was rising from its lair, hungry and mordant. Nabil gunned the motor. The car took the next pothole like a ski jump.

When the senator complained, Nabil replied, “Either we reach the main highway before it hits, or we pull over and sit out the storm.”

“How long will it last?”

“Sometimes hours, sometimes days.”

Trilling did not complain again.

They hammered through the village with their horn blaring a constant frantic note, scattering chickens and donkey carts and snarling dogs. Children pointed and danced, laughing at the outsiders who feared the desert beast.

Just beyond the village, the
khamsin
attacked with vehemence. As they descended into the valley, the cavern walls with their wind-etched shapes became as indistinct as waves at night. Pellets and sand rattled the car. Overhead poured a dismal stream, laced with dark tongues of ocher and brown.

Where the road began rising into the storm, the attackers struck.

Bullets slapped down the right side of the fender and the hood, then erupted against the windshield and right side window. Wynn was showered with glass. Sand and dust streamed through the shattered windshield. Nabil spun the car over hard to the left, or perhaps he fell that way and pulled the wheel with his body. They tumbled off the road at full speed, braked not by Nabil but by scraping along the canyon. Then the wall opened and they shot into darkness, slamming into the cave’s opposite wall. Wynn was catapulted over the seat in front of him, landing atop Nabil.

Before he had managed to unwind, the car was pounded from behind with blasts of automatic fire rattling across the trunk, shattering the rear windshield. Kay screamed. But it was another sound that froze his blood, the sound of a woman gasping and choking. Drowning in a sea of dust and wind.

Wynn pushed himself back down, pounded open his door, and fell to the sand. He pried open Nabil’s door and shouted, “Get out!”

Feebly the Egyptian tried to obey. His left arm and hand were streaming blood. Wynn wriggled forward, gripped Nabil with both hands, and pulled hard.

The Egyptian spilled down onto him just as the next spray of bullets spattered overhead, showering them with rocks and sparks and whanging noise. Kay screamed again and piled out by his feet, crawling with the adrenaline panic of one who had not been injured, or at least not badly. From Sybel there was no sound except a frantic search for air.

Wynn crawled through the door and up across the seat. “Oh, no, no, Sybel, please.”

She sat against the far door, watching him with the wide-eyed expression of a terrified little girl. Her front was splotched and stained almost black in the poor light. The same color pooled about the seat.

As gently as he could, Wynn pulled her across the seat and out of the car. He took her weight in his arms as she spilled helplessly onto the sand. Her eyes never left his, not even when the next shower of metal hail rang about them, chipping stones and sand and sending Kay into another screaming fit. She had pulled Nabil back into a narrow alcove, a cave within a cave, scarcely large enough for them to fit with legs drawn up tight against their chests. There was blood on the sand in front of them, but not much. Kay’s only injury appeared to be a gash across her forehead and the frantic dread in her eyes.

Wynn half-pushed, half-carried Sybel into a neighboring alcove, its wind-carved surface smooth and cool. Sybel rested in the position he placed her. He did not want to let her go, not even when another round of gunfire pelted the car and the opposite wall. But a single glance at the blood drenching him, all of it hers, left Wynn in no doubt that to stay would doom her as surely as another bullet.

Wynn crawled past Kay and Nabil, then crouched by the rear left wheel, and searched the empty space beyond the cave. It did not matter that there was neither sense nor hope to his actions. He raised his head a fraction and saw the pinpoint flashes of light from an alcove on the road’s opposite side. He crouched, ready for the rush he knew would be his doom.

“Wynn!” Kay’s shriek seemed joined to the demented wind. “
No!
”

Then he heard a different roar, and realized a single threat of hope had just entered the storm-blasted canyon.

As soon as the great square shape appeared in the shadows, Wynn was up and sprinting. When the truck rumbled past, he raced up alongside, jumped up on the running board, and flung open the passenger door.

The driver was caught in the act of laughing and speaking to his mate, who sprawled in the cubbyhole behind the two seats. They both froze and gaped at Wynn, who stretched out one hand far enough to see the blood coating his fingers, his shirt, his body. He felt the stickiness on his face as well, when he opened his mouth and screamed so loud he felt the muscles of his throat tearing loose,
“STOP! NOW!”

Whether or not the driver understood the words, or whether he thought Wynn pointed a bloodied weapon into his face, he rammed on the brakes with both feet. The second driver tumbled out of his perch and down upon Wynn. Together they fell out of the truck and onto the ground. The terrified Egyptian raced off screaming, losing himself in the desert and the wind, headed pell-mell in the direction of Wadi Natrum and safety.

Before the truck had shuddered to a full halt, Kay Trilling was already moving, her arms locked around the badly limping Nabil. Wynn raced back to the cave, the truck blocking him from the attackers. His mind was filled with images of them appearing at any moment, splattering him with close-range fire. He hefted Sybel and raced back. Kay stood half in, half out of the truck, waving him forward and shouting words he could not hear.

Together they managed to pull Sybel inside the cab. Wynn slammed the door and shrieked, “
Drive!
” But the truck was already moving.

Wynn looked around to see Kay staring with dread at the bloody mess of Sybel’s chest. Nabil was sprawled in the rear cubbyhole, eyes shut, taking shallow breaths. Wynn attacked him with an elbow. “Don’t you pass out on me! Don’t you
dare!
”

Nabil groaned and opened his eyes. Wynn shouted, “Tell him where to go!”

Nabil moaned the words, received a distraught and trembly response from the driver, then collapsed.

As they joined the main desert highway, the wind keened a new note. Which was strange, since they were jammed inside the cab of a battered produce truck, the windows shut tight against the swirling maelstrom and the engine racing. Wynn could not even hear Sybel’s gasping, though he knew she was making sounds because he could see the frantic search of her eyes and feel her lungs struggling within his sheltering arms. He did not need to urge the driver on. The truck bounced and rattled at a frantic speed. The driver either looked in horror at them or held his chin inches above the wheel and squinted through the yellow fog, swerving to avoid slower-moving vehicles only at the last minute.

Even so, Wynn heard the change to the wind’s shrieking melody. A new note, higher than the rest, not a keening of grief so much as one of separation. Higher and higher it sang, as Sybel’s struggles grew weaker and her eyes glazed. Finally her clutching hands released him. Higher still it climbed, far beyond the range of mortal ears, until only his heart heard the tone. His poor, shattered heart.