‘And it worked?’
‘Yes, I think so,’ she repeated. ‘Let’s see if you agree.’ She pulled a sheet of paper out of her bag and unfolded it. ‘Right. The first line is, “With their shadows ever before them”. Any idea what that might mean?’
Bronson thought for a few moments. ‘I suppose it means they were walking north, with the sun behind them, because that would cast their shadows forward, so they would always be visible to them.’
‘Very good.’ Angela applauded silently. ‘That was exactly what I thought as well. The second line is slightly easier, I think. It reads, “from the rising to the setting”.’
‘That has to mean the rising and setting of the sun, so what the writer is saying in those two lines is that they walked north for a full day, which means they probably covered about twenty or thirty miles, no more. But to make any sense of that, you obviously need to know the starting point — the place they set out from.’
‘And that,’ Angela said, ‘is given in the third line. It says, “beyond the meeting point where waters tumble”. I took that to mean either a crossroads near a waterfall or, probably more likely, a place where two streams or rivers merge to become one. The problem is that the whole of this area, including the Nubra Valley, is punctuated by rivers and streams. That could have meant almost any location around here.’
‘And?’ Bronson asked.
‘I figured that the same thought must have occurred to the author of this text, so I looked at the next line to see what else he told us. This reads, “towards the mighty river that flows never”, and that marks the end of the first sentence, so that’s the entire description.’
‘Maybe he meant a dried-up river?’ Bronson suggested. ‘Did you check to see if there are any in the area?’
Angela shook her head. ‘I thought the same thing as you at first, but then I quickly realized it didn’t make sense. If he really was describing a dried-up river, why would he use a word like “mighty” to describe it? Actually there is a huge river near the Nubra Valley that never flows. Or, to be exact, it flows incredibly slowly.’
Bronson took his eyes off the road for a second or two to look where she was pointing on the map. Beside the end of her finger was a small patch of white.
‘What is that?’ he asked.
‘That’s the Siachen Glacier up on the Saltoro Ridge. It feeds the River Nubra, and from the dimensions given on the topographical chart, it looks as if it’s about a mile wide in some places. I reckon that fits the description quite nicely. It’s certainly “mighty”, and it flows so slowly it’s almost as if it doesn’t flow at all.
‘If we put that lot together, what we end up with is a description of a group of people walking northwards for between twenty and thirty miles, heading towards a glacier and starting at a point where two streams or rivers join.’
‘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.
They’d been climbing steadily ever since they’d left Leh, the road steep and rough, but it now looked as if they’d finally reached the crest of the Khardung La pass. As he spoke, he saw a sign at the side of the road bearing characters he didn’t recognize, but underneath were the English words ‘Khardung La’ and below that the height — 5,385 metres, or almost exactly 17,500 feet. The word La means ‘pass’.
‘The last time I was as high as this I was in an aircraft,’ Bronson said in amazement.
The view was, indeed, spectacular. Uninterrupted vistas opened up in all directions from their vantage point, and Bronson had the feeling of being literally on top of the world, because almost everything they could see around them was actually below them. In that instant he had a sudden insight into the reasons why mountaineers found climbing so exhilarating.
‘I guess it’s downhill all the way from now on — at least geographically,’ Angela said, as Bronson slipped the jeep into second gear for the long descent down the east side of the pass to the river Shyok that ran along the bottom of the valley. If he used the brakes to keep their speed down, they’d be useless — the fluid would boil and the pads burn out — long before they reached the end of the slope.