The Messiah Secret - James Becker [102]
‘And you found somewhere that matches that account?’ Angela nodded.
‘That’s where we’re heading right now. I said we’d cross the river at this place called Thirit. Just north of that village, the two rivers that define the Nubra Valley, the Nubra itself and the Shyok’ – Angela pronounced it ‘Shay-ock’ – ‘meet. The road that we’ll be following runs almost directly north from there, so that fits the description of their shadows being in front of them; and about twenty-five miles north of Thirit is a road that branches off to the east, and I believe that fits the second part of the verse.’
She took another look at the piece of paper in her hand. ‘The third verse begins with the line “Then turned to face the glory”. I think that has to be another reference to the sun, the rising sun, meaning that when they set off the next day they headed east, into the sunrise, and that also more or less matches the direction that the present road follows. From what I can see on the topographical map, there aren’t that many other routes the road could take, so it’s a reasonable assumption that the track they followed two thousand-odd years ago runs in pretty much the same direction as the road that’s there now.’
Angela paused briefly. Up to that point, she’d been reasonably happy with her interpretation of the meaning of the three verses they’d found. But she was really guessing about the end of the last verse and that, of course, was the most important bit of all.
‘Now,’ she said, ‘the last three lines, which read, “between the pillars and beyond their shadows / into the silence and the darkness formed of man / to rest forever”, are, shall we say, a little more open to interpretation.’
‘Basically, you don’t know what they mean?’ Bronson suggested.
‘I didn’t say that,’ Angela objected. ‘The last line – “to rest forever” – is simple enough, and that’s just a repeat of the last part of the second verse. And I think the second line is most likely a reference to a cave, either a man-made cave or, probably more likely, a man-made structure within a cave. That is what I believe is meant by the phrase “a place of stone” in the second verse. I don’t think Isaac and his followers would have had the time or the equipment to excavate a cave. It would have meant weeks or months of hammering away into solid rock. It’s far more likely that they found a suitable natural cave and created some kind of a stone chamber inside it. Or maybe even hid the relic at the back of a cave and simply built a rock wall in front to hide it.’
‘So where should we be looking, once we’ve started heading east along that road north of Thirit? What do you think that line means?’
‘It’s a bit ambiguous. The first part – “between the pillars” – reads as being descriptive and geographical. Somewhere along that road, and presumably over to the north because the river runs along the bottom of the valley, to the south, there must be a couple of stone pillars or a kind of rock formation that looks like a pair of pillars. Maybe some vertical fractures in the rock, something like that. I’m just hoping that when we drive along there we’ll recognize whatever feature they saw two millennia ago.’
‘And the second half of the line?’ Bronson asked.
‘That’s the tricky bit. The phrase “beyond their shadows” could refer to the pillars, perhaps, if they were free-standing structures. So it might mean that the entrance to the cave is close to the pillars, just beyond the furthest point that the sun casts their shadows. But I suppose it’s also possible that “their shadows” refers to Isaac and his company, in which case it might simply mean that they kept on going north, heading for a point “beyond their shadows”. Or it could be a description of something completely different – something that’s not so far occurred to me.’ Angela sighed in frustration.
‘Look, we’re at the top,’ Bronson said, pointing through the windscreen.