The Tenth Saint (13 page)

“I must have passed out.” He suddenly remembered his tiny companion. “The boy.” Alarmed by his own caliginous thoughts, he clawed at the sand. “Where is the boy?”

“He is with his mother. She is very grateful that you saved his life.”

“And the others?”

Hairan fell silent. A vague mist covered his ebony eyes.

Gabriel looked down at the makeshift camp and saw very little commotion. The women’s tent had been ripped to shreds. Bits of burlap attached to tent posts fluttered in a weak breeze. What was left of the fabric was strewn here and yonder. The men’s protective barrier of blankets, rickety to begin with, had vanished, probably swallowed by the voracious monster of dust. He heard crying—but not ordinary crying. These were the rhythmic lamentations of a requiem. His heart sank.

“The desert takes what she wants,” Hairan said.

The two men walked down the dune to survey the damage. Gabriel felt sick. Men pulled out bodies from sandy graves and checked them for signs of life. Those not breathing were laid in a pile to receive a proper burial later. A dozen or so were in the pile already. A young woman fell to her knees and with her hands muffled a heart-wrenching scream.

“Her beloved,” said one of the men, scraping the cocktail of sand and sweat off his face. “Dead.”

When they ripped the veil from the young man’s face, Gabriel realized it was Da’ud. His skin had the sickening gray pallor of departed life. He had suffocated like the others. Gabriel fell to his knees and heaved, nothing issuing from his throat but a thread of slimy saliva. He was utterly spent, physically and emotionally.

Damn you, Hairan. Damn you and your council of fools. None of this had to happen. These people did not have to die.
He wanted to bellow his anger at Hairan but thought better of it. He knew a scene like that would only make things worse for these people, who had their own grief to deal with. Instead, he joined the other men in their grim task of searching for the dead.

The mass burial took place in the afternoon, when the bodies were returned to the earth and covered with a thin film of sand. Over time, the shifting desert would engulf her sons and daughters. Their flesh would feed the scarabs, ants, and scorpions; their bones would calcify the sands. The burial was without ceremony. Loved ones simply left a pile of the deceased’s clothes at the head of the grave, a symbol of letting go and an offering to passersby in need. Nothing was wasted in the desert, least of all tears.

Gabriel sat alone for the rest of the evening, grieving in his own way. He smoked Da’ud’s pipe, which the young man’s betrothed had given Gabriel at the burial.

“You shared this pipe,” she had said. “It belongs with you now.”

His anger had subsided and been replaced by a profound sense of despair. The world he’d found was as cruel as the one he’d left.

Hairan sat next to him. “I am sorry, Abyan. Sorry for your loss.”

“What do you know of my loss?”

“I can see it in your expression. You are different.”

“Well, saying good-bye to friends will do that to a man.” Gabriel made no attempt to mask his bitterness.

“I do not understand your anger. Da’ud, your friend, would not have understood it. It is the way of all life. Death comes to all living things. We do not will when it comes. It happens according to the plan.”

Tears obscured Gabriel’s vision, his emotion equal parts frustration and grief. How could he explain to this simple nomad that there was no plan, that man and man alone created destiny? He knew he could not penetrate the armor of faith that enshrouded the desert dweller. He wiped his eyes haphazardly with his palms, took a deep breath, and stared at the sky, wondering if he would ever find peace.

Hairan invaded the silence. “We could not foresee that the sandstorm would be catastrophic. And yet you knew. How?”

Gabriel sighed and spoke in a softer tone. “I cannot explain it to you, Shaykh. The things I know are my own burden.”

Hairan put a gentle arm around his shoulder. “You remember who you are, don’t you?”

“Yes. And I wish I didn’t.”

Eight

My friend Daniel,

It is my humble duty to inform you the inscriptions you have found are not what I thought them to be— that is, an innocuous account of nomadic life. There is a message here, a warning perhaps, though without the benefit of the full text I cannot give you but a partial explanation. The passage you left with me translates thus:

Great tongues of fire will cover the land.

The tainted air will feed the flames.

Smoke will rise to the heavens with a terrible fury

Until all life is devoured and there is nothing

But the eternal silence.

Something strange is at work here. When I consulted my sources at Yemrehana Krestos, they were reluctant to discuss it. They demanded to know where the inscriptions were found and who else knew about them. I told them nothing, of course. I have never known these peaceful men to be so unsettled.

I caution you and Sarah to be vigilant. It seems these are murky waters you are treading.

Best wishes,

Rada Kabede

After reading the letter, Sarah was more convinced than ever that the tenth saint lay prostrate before her. In silence she surveyed the skeleton, fixing her gaze on his severed rib cage.
The eternal silence. Death.
Could he have been describing his own fatal moment? Could he have foreseen it before he fell to the lance-blade? Perhaps he was a prophet of some sort. That could explain his sanctity.

To complicate matters, the report from the radiocarbon dating lab arrived in her in-box sometime during the night. For the most part, it was consistent with her suspicions, but some things still didn’t make sense.

When her phone rang, she already knew who it was. She was certain Professor Simon, whom the lab had copied on the report, would want to discuss the curious nature of the findings.

She answered cheerfully. “Professor, did you receive—”

”Are you alone?”

“I’m in the lab. There is no one else here. Is something wrong?”

“Listen very carefully, Sarah. I had a call from the Minister of Culture today. Apparently, your expedition has been the subject of discussion in very high circles. It seems there has been a little too much attention on the Cambridge project, thanks to this Mr. Kabede’s murder. Yesterday, investigators went through his office and found certain objects that connect him to you. There were files in his computer marked
Aksum Expedition.
They contained only notes, but that was enough to rouse their suspicions. Then they snooped around and got eyewitness reports of his dining with you and Daniel Madigan. The final blow came when his secretary confessed that on the night before his death Mr. Kabede handed her a letter to courier over to Dr. Madigan.”

Sarah went numb.

“Sarah? Are you there?”

It was as though an invisible hand had gripped her throat. “I’m here,” she whispered.

“Where is this letter?”

“I have it. It arrived this morning.”

“Well? What does it say?”

Sarah read the contents to the professor.

“It is just as I thought—bad news.” His voice shook. “Why you insist on defying authority, I will never know. Now hear this, Sarah. You must turn this letter over to the police. Surely they are on their way as we speak.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea. It will only make matters worse.”

“No. What will make matters worse is your lack of cooperation. The expedition is already in hot water, and not cooperating would jeopardize the delicate diplomatic relationship between Ethiopia and England, to say nothing of Cambridge and UNESCO.”

“Professor, you don’t understand. This letter will be ammunition in their hands. They have been looking for an excuse to shutter the Cave I Tomb. This could be it.”

“That tomb is the least of my worries. Our predicament, young lady, is much worse than that. The Ministry want everything turned over to the government. They are pulling our permits until further notice.”

Her worst fear had come true. “What?”

“You heard me. We must shut down operations. I want you to send the crew home, effective immediately. We will then make arrangements to have artifacts already excavated shipped to the national museum in Addis, where they will be studied by an Ethiopian team.”

“This is bollocks! They have absolutely nothing to warrant shutting us down. The fact that we consulted Rada does not make us guilty of his murder. We have done nothing wrong.”

“Well, sneaking around on unofficial business with an Ethiopian linguist who turns up dead a few days later certainly does not look good, does it?”

“But what of the cave? Abandoning it now would leave the site vulnerable to looters—or worse.” She raised her voice. “We can’t afford to have these inscriptions fall into the wrong hands.”

“That’s the Ethiopian government’s concern now. They will be guarding the site until it can be reopened.”

“Dr. Simon, please. You must convince the Ministry we are the best stewards of this site. The thugs who killed Kabede will return. The inscriptions are what they’re after. Do you really think the Ethiopians will protect it when they can be bought and sold for a handful of birr?”

“That is quite enough. The decision is final. Now, I expect you to stay no longer than is needed to wrap things up. Is that clear?”

“And if I don’t?”

“If I were you, I would do exactly as told. There is more at stake here than just this expedition.” He cleared his throat. “The regents were not in support of sending someone so young and inexperienced on this project. It was I who insisted you were ready. Now I look like a fool, and they are demanding your removal. There are rumblings about … pulling you away from fieldwork altogether. I cannot defend you anymore. But if you play your cards right and come back to England, perhaps your father can intervene on your behalf.”

“My father?” Sarah’s voice broke. “I am not some little girl who needs to be rescued. I have done nothing wrong, and I will prove it. I will clear my name in my own way.” She slammed down the phone and let out a scream.

Matakala had gotten what he’d wanted after all.
I suggest you give some thought to our request—if you want to continue working in Ethiopia, that is.
When she had not rewarded his request to turn the tenth saint over to the church, clearly he’d taken it upon himself to teach her a painful lesson.

Still, she had no regrets. She would have done nothing differently.

Except one thing.

She reread the letter several times, memorizing the lines Rada had translated.

Then she held it above her lighter and set it aflame.

When the police came, she told them the letter had been shredded along with some other documents. She “hadn’t realized it was a piece of evidence—sorry.” But it was “nothing of note,” merely a “progress report on a routine translation.”

Daniel corroborated her story.

The police didn’t believe it, but they couldn’t prove otherwise.

Packing never had been easy for Sarah. It reminded her of the day she had helped pack her mother’s belongings to donate to the charity shop. Now, as then, she saw it as a barbaric act, this cold jettisoning of objects, each of which was attached to a memory, as if they’d never meant a thing.

As she arranged the artifacts and tools and journals, she knew in her scientist’s mind she should not be attached to her work; she should let go the minute an object was excavated and move on.

If only it were so simple. In this burial ground lay answers to questions she had never asked, forgotten lives in whose footsteps she had never walked. She had failed Cambridge, failed her crew, failed her father. Worst of all, she had failed the man who in death lay waiting for his message to be found, only to have it fall into bureaucratic oblivion. The question remaining was whether she would fail herself.

Aisha, the last of the crew to leave, walked into the lab, her hair wrapped in a bandana like Sarah’s, her raven eyes misty. “I’m so sorry. I know this must be very hard for you.”