suppose it can do any harm,' he consoled himself, as he settled down to
wait.
Abruptly Tamre sprang to his feet and performed a giddy little dance,
flapping his arms and whirling around until he raised the dust. Then he
stopped and chanted. 'It is done. We can go in to the Jesus stone.'
Once again he seized Royan's hand and led her to the rock wall. In front
of Nicholas's eyes the two of them seemed to vanish, and he stood up in
mild alarm.
'Royan!' he called. 'Where are you? What's going on?'
'This way, Nicky. Come this way!'
He went to the wall and exclaimed with astonishment, 'My oath! We would
never have found this in a year of searching.'
The cliff face was folded back upon itself, forming a concealed
entrance. He walked through the opening, gazing up the vertical sides,
and within thirty paces came out into an open amphitheatre that was at
least a hundred yards across and open to the sky. The walls were of
solid rock, and he could see at a glance that it was the same micaceous
schist as the block which Royan had found lying on the floor of the
valley.
It was apparent that the bowl had been quarried out of the living rock,
leaving tiers rising up to the top of the walls. The recesses from which
the blocks had been hacked were still plain to see and had left deep
steps with rightangled profiles. Some scrub and undergrowth had found a
precarious foothold in the cracks, but the open quarry was not choked
with this growth and Nicholas could see that a stockpile of finished
granite blocks remained scattered about the bottom of the excavation. He
was so awed by the discovery that he could find no words to express
himself. He stood just inside the entrance, his head slowly turning from
side to side as he tried to take it all in.
Tamre had led Royan to the centre of the quarry where one large slab lay
on its own. It was obvious that the ancients had been on the point -of
removing it and transporting it up the valley, for it was finished and
dressed into a perfect rectangle.
'The Jesus stone!' Tamre chanted, kneeling before the slab and pulling
Royan down beside him. 'Jesus led me here. The first time I came here I
saw him standing on the stone. He had a long white beard and eyes that
were kind and sad.' He crossed himself and began to recite one of the
psalms, swaying and bobbing to the rhythm.
As Nicholas moved up quietly behind them he saw the evidence that Tamre
had visited this sacred place of his regularly. The Jesus stone was his
own private altar, and his pathetic little offerings were lying where he
had laid them. There were old tej flasks and baked clay pots, most of
them cracked and broken. In them stood bunches of wild flowers that had
long ago wilted and dried out. There were other treasures that he had
gathered and placed upon his altar - tortoise shells and porcupine
quills, a cross that had been hand-carved from wood and decorated with
scraps of coloured cloth, necklaces of lucky beans, and models of
animals and birds moulded from blue river clay.
Nicholas stood and watched the two of them kneeling and praying together
