After Sinidu had told us all this, Habte Sadek turned around so that his robes and crown flashed in the feeble light of the yellow beeswax candles. He stood in front of the glittering caskets and candlesticks on the altar and spoke in his low, lilting, fierce voice. When he’d finished, Sinidu said, ‘Every treasure you see here, the crowns and the gold and silver crosses, the jewelled censers and candlesticks, the gilded books – all of it except the paintings on the walls – my uncle and his friends and brothers carried over the mountains from Magdala. A church is nothing without its tabot, its copy of the holy commandments. So when they saved their tabot they saved their church. They worked like spiders and mice, creeping beneath the noses of the English while they loaded their own wagons. Spiderwebs joined together can catch a lion.’
Habte Sadek made a little movement of his hand. Yosef lifted his candle and swept it around the chapel, splashing reflections of flame across the walls. And I knew something else then too – this place was holy because people had made it holy. They’d brought God there themselves.
‘Teodros was defeated at Magdala,’ said Sinidu,‘but my uncle remembers with pride how he fought for him. My uncle is the only one left of those soldier-priests. My grandfather, his brother, died before I was born. And his other brother went north to Aksum and never came back. But he took Habte Sadek’s story to Aksum, to the priests at the Cathedral of Maryam Seyon. They are the ones who guard the true Ark of Zion, the Tabota Seyon, the tablet bearing the commandments God gave to Moses. All tabots are copies of the true Ark.’
‘What did they do when they heard what your uncle did?’ Em asked. ‘Were they pleased?’
‘They gave him the honour of choosing a new name for this chapel,’ Sinidu said proudly. ‘So now it is dedicated to the saintly woman Kristos Samra. Habte Sadek was born near Gondar, in the place where Kristos Samra lived hundreds of years ago.’
Habte Sadek said something else, and he said my name.
‘He is telling you that the Emperor Teodros was Ethiopia’s first great reformer,’ Sinidu explained. ‘Teodros modernised his army and unified the nation – he reached out to Europe and –’ She paused, listening hard to get everything her uncle was saying. ‘And Teodros was the first to try to put an end to slavery in Ethiopia. And that you should be proud to bear his name. And since you are so interested in my uncle’s boyhood as a soldier, he wants to show you how to throw a spear,’ Sinidu finished.
And just like that Emmy and I both fell completely, hopelessly in love with Habte Sadek.
He took us up a narrow stairway cut in the rock above the chapel, so narrow you had to climb it sideways or your shoulders wouldn’t fit. Sinidu followed, and Yosef came after a bit more slowly, carrying spears. The stairs were steep.
The stairs came out on top of Beehive H