Monsters in the Sand (10 page)

A noise disturbed them and horses appeared on the top of the mound. The sheik wrapped the Koran safely in its silk and looked around for his gun.

‘It’s all right,’ Austen said. ‘That is Hormuzd, leading thirty new workers here.’

The sheik peered closely at the new arrivals. ‘But they are unbelievers.’

‘Yes. And I need their strength to crack open the
earth with crowbars. They will pitch their tents to guard the southern trenches of the palaces. And you will be their superintendent.’

‘My Lord, I don’t understand.’

‘I have enough money for many months to pay for thirty men from Mirkan Valley and one hundred Arab workers.’

‘A hundred!’

‘One of your tasks as superintendent is to choose those hundred good workers and bring them here with their families. They will pitch their tents as a protective wall against raiders. We need the wives for cooking and the children to carry water and food to the workers. Every working day, at eleven in the morning, they will take breakfast to the men. I will provide enough food so the men don’t need to kill each other in order to feed their families.’

‘But, surely the true believers and Christian unbelievers will kill one another?’

‘You and the men of Selamiya have already worked in peace with Hormuzd. You haven’t regarded it as your sacred duty to kill the Christian. Let that spirit of harmony live here among a community of believers. So a most important task as superintendent of all workers, is that you make sure each man will respect the others’ Sabbaths and times of prayer. No work will be done
during devotions, no man will interfere in the private worship of another and, to keep the men apart, the men from Mirkan will break the earth with crowbars, then move on, leaving the Arabs to carry away the soil. I want you to make sure that men from each clan or village will work with their own people. They must be in groups of no more than ten, and be kept busy at many separate places across the mound so that no single large group can form. I will set one spy in each working party to report to me if any man talks about bloodshed. Any troublemaker will answer to me.’

Austen smiled. ‘Look around at the walls of the palaces you have so faithfully and bravely defended. All of us are surrounded every day by graven images of false gods.

‘Your third task is to take twenty Arab men with their families to the landing place by the river. I have brought three carpenters with me. You will supervise the construction of a fortress to protect our treasures, while we are loading them onto rafts. Those men must also build a jetty strong enough for safe loading.

‘I want you to visit each tribe to find workers and give the sheiks this message from me. In three nights from now, I will host a spring feast. We will slaughter many sheep, have many nights of feasting and dancing. Principal wives will set up their white tents nearby.
We will celebrate our friendship for days and nights without ceasing. I have paid Kurdish musicians, dancers and pedlars to come from Mosul and entertain us. After feasting all night, we will go hunting in the mornings. Does not the old word for Paradise mean a hunting ground? I challenge any man to bring dogs more swift and skilful than mine. And, because hunting and war have always gone together, we will have riding competitions and mock cavalry battles, using blunt sticks only.’

‘Won’t the battles be too dangerous?’

‘Of course. That’s why I can’t wait to join in and smack a few skulls.’

Near the edge of the mound, one of the men ploughing called out, ‘Sheik Awad, look!’ He pointed to the river.

Was it an attack? Awad and Austen ran to the edge. On the far bank of the Tigris, a group of horsemen rode back and forth, then two jumped from their horses and waded into the water.

To Austen’s surprise, they began to swim and drifted downstream with the current. What was so urgent that they couldn’t wait to ride down to the crossing at the River Zab? He hurried down the path, and Abraham Agha was already holding the bridles of two horses.

Estimating where the swimmers would come ashore they rode to the river, and waited for them. The first man carried a waterproof parcel tied to his head. When he neared the bank and stood chest–deep, Austen realised it was a young woman, not a man. She waded ashore and untied a knot of cord under her chin. Her companion who also was a girl of about fifteen, laughed and waved her arms as she came ashore.
‘Ya bey,
we raced to bring you this.’

Austen took two coins from the purse tied to his belt and the young women slipped them into their mouths and waded back into the river.

Inside the parcel was a letter, sealed in waterproof oilpaper. Austen unfolded it anxiously and read.

‘What is it, My Lord?’ asked Abraham.

The British Museum was keeping for itself money promised to him by parliament. Of course, officials said, it was his fault. He was to blame for misunderstanding the arrangement. His anger flared, but he folded the letter quietly and slid it back into the oilcloth. The letter also said the French were planning to bring Botta back to dig up Kuyunjik, the mound across the Tigris from Mosul.

But what if Nineveh was discovered at Kuyunjik rather than Nimrud?

‘Stay with me, Longworth.’ Austen charged up the path to the top of Nimrud. ‘Time, time, time,’ he growled.

Behind him, Longworth was struggling to keep up. His slippery leather-soled shoes slid from under him and he fell flat onto the dusty path. One hand held high his reporter’s notepad, the other clutched his spectacles, but the front of his smart London suit was smothered in powdery dust.

‘Hurry, or you’ll miss it.’ With his hands on his hips, Austen waited at the top of the path.

Longworth slithered and clambered up. ‘Wonderful,’ he gasped. ‘Beautiful.’

‘Sunrise at Nimrud is the best time of day.’

Songs of prayer floated into the dawn sky.

From the southern edge of the mound, workers rode back into camp, driving a flock of sheep ahead of them.

‘Well, dawn is the best time of day, until trouble arrives.’ While the men were cantering over, Austen said, ‘Longworth, you are not to report the conversation I am about to have.’

The men grinned down at him.

‘I suppose these sheep are stolen?’

‘Ya bey,
yes, they are stolen.’ The man shrugged. ‘We are nomads. This is what we do – steal things. We get bored shifting baskets of dirt all day.’

‘Did you kill anybody?’

‘Not really.’

‘There is no god but God. I will need to buy some of those sheep. Get about your business.’

‘
Ya bey.’
The men whistled and sang as they drove the sheep to their camp.

‘Breakfast is this way, Longworth – breakfast and our daily business meeting.’

On carpets spread outside his mud hut, the sheik’s wives set out dishes of bread, sour milk, and boiled eggs in brown shells. Austen sat and washed his hands, then tore the bread open – steam rising – and dipped it in the sour milk.

Longworth sat uncomfortably, tried to cross his
legs under, like Austen, but it was too difficult. He examined the food and grimaced at the sour milk.

Hormuzd, in a long white cloak fringed with gold braid and with a leather satchel in one hand, came from the hut and knelt on the edge of the carpet. He bowed north of east, more towards the north of the Pole Star, and thanked God for his meal.

Then he opened the satchel, took out several files and accounting books, and glanced at Longworth.

‘It’s all right,’ Austen said. ‘Mr Longworth understands discretion, don’t you? If you report anything amiss, well, remember it was Aunt Sara who arranged your assignment at Nimrud.’

‘I have no desire to twist the tail of a tigress.’

Then Hormuzd opened the accounts and showed Austen the figures.

‘Time is money, Longworth, and truth is we are running out of both.’

‘People will ask about the costs of your spring party for the sheik.’ The reporter opened his notebook and licked his pencil.

‘Damn their impudence. I paid for that with Aunt Sara’s money and Hormuzd has every single penny accounted for.’ Austen rolled a warm boiled egg in his hand, crunching the shell. ‘The party became five days and nights, but since then, the sheiks have sent
workers, not raiders. There’s no question that the party was worth it.’

Longworth wrote fast in shorthand, looked up for more words and Austen raised his voice. ‘Since that party, I have been beset by sheiks from the north, as far as Mount Ararat, to Basra in the south. Yesterday, I was eight hours –
eight,
I tell you – with the sheik of the Abou Salman. Why? Because the only way to shift my treasures from Nimrud to Basra is by raft, but the Abou Salman control the confluence of the Zab and Tigris rivers. They can wait for me to load a raft with artefacts worth a king’s ransom, then simply take the raft by force. Eight hours and the compulsory gifts of silk gowns, averaging fifteen pounds. But all that time and money in fact earned safe passage for the rafts and protection for the treasures of Nimrud.’

Austen felt his temper rising and he made himself calm down. ‘Eat up,’ he said. ‘Don’t insult the cooks.’

Longworth tore a strip of bread and nibbled it.

‘It was cooked on dried camel dung,’ Austen added, then hurried on. ‘Imagine my feelings when Tahyar brought his court to Nimrud for three days and nights! But in return, he gave me the written permissions to dig at Kuyunjik. What is the good of
firmans,
I ask you, without the funds to dig? You have
my permission to print the following sentiment.
Layard is an unpaid quarry worker for the British Museum.’

A worker and a woman approached, but stood some distance off. The woman had a black eye and the man’s face was bandaged. He bowed. ‘We have kept our promise, O Lion.’ Then they scurried away.

‘What promise?’ asked Longworth.

‘The workers come to me with their problems. She found him with another woman. He hit her, she smacked him with a spade and I sorted it out.’

Hormuzd laughed. ‘Mr Layard has become the sheik of Nimrud.’

‘You’ve just given me the title for my article.’ Longworth beamed.

‘It’s not a laughing matter; it’s a damned time-waster.’

Blushing, Hormuzd opened another file labelled,
Correspondence.

He read letters from around the world. Well-wishers, scholars interested in Assyrian history, curious amateurs, officials demanding immediate and detailed answers, journalists, lunatics, fundamentalist Christians terrified that Austen’s discoveries would prove one word of the Bible was not literally true –

Austen dictated his replies for Hormuzd to write and give him to sign later. When all the letters had been answered, he clicked open his fob-watch. ‘Can
you begin to imagine my despair, Longworth? There are uncounted thousands of lines of cuneiform to copy, hundreds upon hundreds of bas-reliefs and any one of them might hold the clues to crack the code of the Assyrian language. Every day, I send copies by courier to Henry Rawlinson in Constantinople. The postal horses cover only eighty miles a day, so time is precious. Carrier pigeons cost as much as three horses on the black market, so I’m stuck with the couriers. Rawlinson is working hard to break through with the translation, though. I am plagued by the horror that the one wall I have no time to copy will turn out to be the key to unlock the language.’

Another man and woman stood at a respectful distance. They were holding a baby.

‘In a little while,’ Hormuzd said to them.

‘They asked me to name their baby,’ Austen said. ‘This morning is the naming ceremony and I must attend it.’

‘How many hours a day do you work?’

‘Eighteen to twenty. I have so little time that I’ll keep going until I drop in my traces. Or, until the day Hormuzd draws a red line across the page and closes the account books.’

‘The public want to know why you dress as an Arab.’

‘It’s not an affectation, if that’s what you mean. I’m not a tourist dressing up. How could I be a sheik if I wore an English business suit? And on days of 120 degrees, Arabian or Persian clothes are cooler and more comfortable. But it’s more than a practical choice. I escaped cities to live here because I hate walls closing around me. When Colonel Taylor offered me a comfortable room in the Baghdad residency, I took my tent out to the riverbank.’

Four workers ran towards them and Austen swore in Urdu.

‘What did you just say?’ Longworth asked.

‘I swear in languages the Recording Angel can’t understand.’

‘Do you realise, Mr Layard, that my article will make you into a celebrity?’

‘A celebrated pauper.’

The four workers fell to their knees.
‘Ya bey,
it is a blasphemy. Those infidel Christian women are washing themselves with no clothes on. There is one God.’

‘That is their custom in washing. But how do you know they were entirely naked?’

‘We climbed up to a high place and looked into their camp.’

‘It’ll cost you a week’s wage if you spy on them again.’

‘Forgive us.’ They bowed their heads and ran away as fast as rabbits.

‘But my special prize is hidden in a tunnel.’ Austen rose to his feet. ‘It’ll be a world scoop for you, Longworth, and make you into a celebrity. Come along – I can see that a good Arabian breakfast is wasted on you.’

As they walked towards the northwest palace, there was a strange music in the distance.

‘Isn’t that the most beautiful song on earth?’ Austen gripped Longworth’s arm. ‘To my ears it’s sweeter than Mozart and more stirring than Beethoven. Listen. We call it the nightingale’s song.’

‘What is it?’

‘See? Coming from the river.’

A huge flat cart, drawn by a team of eight oxen, lumbered through the sand. ‘That’s my cart, made of solid mulberry wood. Ah, but it’s not entirely mine. The axles are from one of Botta’s abandoned carts. Can you hear the nightingale song of heavy wheels on axles? It is the song to accompany my treasures when they travel to the river.’

‘What’s piled on the cart?’

‘Poplar trunks from the valley of Mirkan.’

‘Why?’