The Quest

They knelt beside the stream and let the water run over their hands.

Vivian said, “This is the stream. Do we follow it? Or do we follow the path?”

Purcell thought the path and the stream seemed to run parallel, but they might diverge.

Mercado said, “Ruscello. He said it twice. Il Ruscello. The stream.”

Vivian nodded and stood. They all stepped, still barefoot, into the cool, shallow water and walked upstream.

Without looking at his watch, Purcell knew they had been walking about five hours, and it was close to noon-a half day’s walk from the meeting place of the monks and the Falashas. And it had been mostly due west, even through the meandering path in the swamp. It seemed simple enough, after you’ve done it, and he tried to imagine Father Armano on his patrol with the sergeant named Giovanni, walking from the black rock-which the priest and the soldiers had no way of knowing was a meeting place of Coptic Christians and Jews. Giovanni had then taken his patrol to the giant cedar, and through the jungle, to the swamp, and to the stream, all of which the sergeant had found by accident on a previous patrol. And they had arrived again at the black monastery-but this time they entered by the reed basket, and only Father Armano came out of there alive.

And when the priest was healed of his wounds-by nature or by faith-he was given over to the Royalist soldiers and taken by the same route, or maybe another route, to his prison in the fortress, and there he remained for nearly forty years. And whatever he had seen in that monastery had sustained him, not only for all those years in his cell, but also for the hours he walked with a mortal wound on his way back to where he had experienced something so remarkable-or miraculous-that he had to return to that place, even as he was dying. He never made it back, but he had made it as far as the ruined spa, which was not even there when he had last been that way. And what he had found in the spa were three people who themselves were trying to find something. Trying to find the war. And Father Armano had asked them-or asked Vivian-Dov’è la strada? Where is the road?

Indeed, where is the road? There are many roads.

The jungle became thicker, and the stream became more narrow, and they could see smaller streams feeding into it from the higher ground. They also noticed more clusters of palm trees. None of them doubted that the black monastery was ahead, and that they were walking toward it. It was just a matter of hours, or maybe days, but it was sitting there, still hidden from the eyes of men, still unwelcoming to visitors, yet hopefully ready to receive them with a basket made of reeds.

The sun was setting ahead of them, and the few patches of sunlight were becoming dimmer. It was harder to see more than twenty or thirty feet ahead, but the stream guided them.

The jungle looked somehow different, Purcell thought, and it was more than the changing light that made it seem altered. Purcell noticed date palms and breadfruit trees, and trees that bore fleshy fruit, and other trees that he thought bore nuts, and black African violets covered the ground. This was tended land, a tropical garden such as Purcell had seen in Southeast Asia, barely distinguishable from the untamed jungle. He said, “The monastery is just ahead.”

Vivian, who was in the lead now, said, “I know.”

The stream bent sharply to their right, and they followed it for a minute, but then Vivian stepped out of the stream and walked between two towering palms.

Purcell and Mercado joined her.

To their front, about thirty feet away, rising above a twenty-foot-high thicket of bamboo, was a black wall.

Vivian stared up at the glossy stone. She said simply, “We are here.”

Chapter 55

Purcell had no image in his mind of what the wall would look like, and he saw now that the black stones were the size and shape of brick, laid without mortar, piece by piece, until the wall reached about forty feet, the height of a four-story building.

The sun had sunk lower, and the east side of the monastery where they were standing was in dark shadow, but there was a sheen to the wall, and the bamboo thicket and surrounding palms seemed to be captured in the stone.

None of them seemed to know what to do or say next, but they all understood, Purcell thought, that the road that had taken them here was strewn with betrayals and death-but also with acts of courage and caring, and memories that would last them a lifetime-no matter how short or long that was.

Mercado asked, “Do you think anyone is here?”

Vivian replied, “Let’s find out.”

They pushed their way through the thicket of bamboo to a narrow path that ran along the base of the wall and they went to their right.