'The riverPhe announced importantly. Nicholas came up beside them and
whistled softly with surprise. Tamre had led them around in a wide
circle to the west, and then brought them back to the Dandera river at a
point where it still ran in the bed of the deep ravine.
Now they stood on the very edge of the chasm. He saw at once that,
although the top of the rocky ravine was less than a hundred feet wide,
the chasm opened out below the rim. From the surface of the water far
below, the rock wall belled out in the shape of one of the pottery tej
flasks.
It narrowed again as it neared the top where they stood.
saw the holy thing over there.'Tamre pointed to the far side of the
chasm where a small feeder spring meandered out of the thorny bush.
Streamers of bright green moss, nourished by the spring, hung from the
lip of the concave rock wall, and the water trickled down them and
dripped from the tips into the river two hundred feet below.
'If you saw it there, why did you bring us to this side of the
river?'Nicholas demanded.
Tamre looked as though he were on the point of tears.
This side is easier. There is no path through the bush on the other
side. The thorns would hurt Woizero Royan.'
'Don't be a bully,' Royan told him, and put her arm around the boy's
shoulder.
Nicholas shrugged, 'It looks like the two of you are ganging up on me.
Well, seeing that we are here, we might as well sit a while and see if
great-grandpa's dik-dik puts in an appearance.'
He picked out a spot in the shade of one of the stunted trees that hung
on the lip of the chasm, and with his hat swept the ground clear of
fallen thorns until there was a place for them to sit. He placed his
back against the trunk of the thorn tree and laid the Rigby rifle across
his lap.
By this time it was past noon, and the heat was stifling.
He passed the water bottle to Royan and, while she drank, glanced at
Tamre and suggested to her in English, 'This might be a good time to
find out what, if anything, the lad knows about the Taita ceramic in the
crown. He is besotted with you. He will tell you anything you want to
know.
Question him.'
She began gently, chatting softly to the boy. Occasionally she stroked
his head and petted him as though he were a puppy- She spoke to him of
the previous night's banquet, the beauty of the underground church, and
the antiquity of the murals and the tapestries, and then at last
mentioned the abbot's crown.
'Yes. Yes. That is the stone of the saint,' he agreed readily. 'The blue
stone of St. Frumentius.'
'Where did it come from?' she asked. 'Do you know?' The boy looked
embarrassed, 'I do not know. It is very old, perhaps as old as Christ
the Saviour. That is what the priests say.'
'You do not know where it was found?'
He shook his head, but then, eager to please her, he suggested, 'Perhaps
it fell from heaven.'
