Jake tried not to make a habit of disobeying Foreign Office guidelines, so he stepped out of Axum’s matchbox airport with unease. They were close to the disputed zone between Ethiopia and Eritrea, where four backpackers had just been shot dead by bandits who had crossed the porous frontier. There was speculation that the killings were ordered by the Eritrean government; the Foreign Office was recommending against ‘all but essential travel’ to within ten kilometres of the border.
Axum was the home of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. But this was no Vatican City. Lone camels clomped past shacks stained ruddy by the universal dust of Africa; there was a sense of the Wild West in the wind. A dozen obelisks shaped like stone electricity pylons dominated the town centre. Each stele was hewn from a single block of granite, circles and rectangles carved down the sides.
“The steles of the Axumite rulers.” Florence’s eyes shone. “Each one erected to the memory of a dead king.”
“I’ve never even heard of the Axumites,” Jake admitted.
“It’s one of those civilizations which for some reason never permeated the public consciousness,” she said. “But it was one of the four great kingdoms in its day. Rome, China, Persia, Axum. They were literate too. Ge’ez is still the language of the Ethiopian Church.”
One of the steles had toppled in the distant past and the colossus had fractured into five blocks, each the size of a minibus. The shattered rock was warm to the touch. A lizard scuttled away in fright.
“That one would’ve stood higher than the tallest obelisk in Egypt,” said Florence. “To this day nobody knows how they got it to stand vertical.”
Jake channelled Shelley. “Ozymandias, king of kings. Look on my works and despair! Nothing remains.”
“No nation lives forever,” said Florence quietly. “All that lives must die.”
Jake leaned against the broken monolith and gave her a loaded look. “The imperial edifice?”
“There’s only one way to find out.”
The sun had slouched low in the sky by the time they finished searching the stele field. Damp patches emanated from Jake’s armpits and the dust had turned his hair strawberry-blond. But not a trace of Etruscan could be found.
“There’s nothing here,” said Florence.
“Then let’s see what we came here to see.” Jake grinned, his teeth white behind the mask of dirt. “The Ark of the Covenant.”
*
All the wretchedness of humanity was awaiting them at Ethiopia’s holiest site. There was a man with no nose, a boy with no hands or feet, an elderly woman with mushroom-like protrusions on her face. A suspension of sweat and decomposition was in the air – the smell of poverty – and culture shock hit Jake like a breezeblock to the head. It was like nothing he’d ever seen before. Not in Addis; not even in India. Beggars clawed at his arms as he muscled through the press and there were shouts of ‘faranji’, foreigner. Jake looked at the ground, at the litter and the faeces. A phrase came to mind. In tatters. The worst of medieval London must have been like this. He offered the mushroom woman a banknote; her tongue glistened as she grasped for it and the general cry for money became more persistent. He batted a little hand away from his pocket as they made it to the gate.
Inside the compound the noise fell away: the desperate were not allowed in. The trees were ablaze with violet blossom and a vermilion bird threaded its song around the trunks. The late afternoon sun cast the world orange and the air was warm and still. An elderly monk wearing saffron robes and a fez leaned on his prayer stick, one foot dangling above the ground as he regarded them through cataract-ridden eyes. At first Jake wondered if the holy man could see them. But when the reporter held his hands together as if in prayer the monk’s face contorted into a toothless smile. Then he mumbled something in Amharic and pointed at a man in a frayed suit who came skipping towards them.
The newcomer beamed, revealing huge gums. “I am guide.”
The pair were led to a church with battlements and irregular walls. Little light penetrated the interior, which was imbued with the smell of parchment and desiccated wood.
“This place has to be a thousand years old if it’s a day,” said Florence.
Wooden panels cordoned off the inner sanctum, a mural of three bearded men spread across the screen: the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. The faces glowered at Jake as if sensing his intentions.
“The Ark is kept inside?” Florence’s words bounced about the basilica.
But the guide shook his head, taking her by the elbow and leading her back into the sunlight. “Ark is here, madam.”
Jake had to laugh. The purported inheritance of Solomon and David had been stashed in a tiny modern chapel, lime green with an egg-shell blue pimple of a dome perched on top. The garden was a riot of nature; weeds proliferated and a column of termites snaked towards their mound.
“The Ark of the Covenant is kept there?” asked Florence.
The guide nodded, emotion welling in his eyes.
“It fits with Eusebius,” said Jake. “The Axumite steles are the imperial edifice – and the Ark would always have been kept in a ‘Church of God’.”
Florence glanced around. “Only these two old-timers here,” she said. “Do we go for it?”
Jake stroked the stubble on his cheeks as he considered it. “I don’t know. It feels wrong somehow – this is their sacred place.”
“We’re not going to steal anything,” said Florence. “We’ll take a few photos and do a rubbing. And anyway … aren’t you curious? We may even find ourselves looking at the Ark of the Covenant. The chest that contains the tablets on which the Ten Commandments were inscribed by God. Just think of it!”
Jake felt a welt of excitement. “Ok, ok,” he said. “Of course we’re going in there. But I’m not going to just leg it through the door. The old boys will raise hell. We need to be cuter than that. It’s nearly full moon, right?”
Florence frowned. “Not sure – why do you ask?”
“I’ve just had a bit of an idea …”