Monsters in the Sand (11 page)

‘Levers and rollers, my dear man. Come on, here’s the tunnel.’ Austen climbed down a ladder and into a long tunnel, which followed a wall decorated with sculptures. ‘Just around one more corner and you’ll see the prize that will make your fame.’

Austen stood beside a black obelisk and ran his hands down its glistening black marble sides. ‘Start writing. It is six feet six inches high, with four sides, each carved with five panels, as you can see, and with two hundred and ten lines of writing. Some of the prisoners carved into one panel definitely look Semitic. See this line of men bringing tributes to the king? Could they be Hebrews? Look carefully. Hebrews – yes? If so, Henry Rawlinson might find their name, and the name of the Assyrian king they bowed to. We know from the
Old Testament
that Sennacherib took Hebrews into captivity. Just think, you are looking at one of the most important artworks in history.’

A violent noise came down an airshaft.

‘Is it a fight?’ Longworth flinched.

‘It’s a miracle!’ Mohammed Emin leapt into a trench where men fought to get near a giant stone face in the wall of earth.

‘It’s Nimrod, come to punish us.’ With his turban falling off, another man scrambled out and kept running until he flung himself over the edge of the mound.

A new worker forced his way close to the face that was as tall as he was and spat on it. ‘Evil jinn!’

‘No, it’s Nimrod, you fool.’ Mohammed Emin pulled him away. Then he gently wiped off the spit with the sleeve of his cloak and kissed the smiling lips.

‘Destroy the idol.’ The worker picked up a spade and swung it at the head. The sheik fired his gun into the wall and the man froze. Then the sheik drew his dagger and kept close to Austen as they climbed
down. The men moved aside, the trench went quiet, and only then did the sheik put away his dagger.

Austen positioned himself between the men and the face. Then he turned and stared into peaceful eyes that were seeing the sun for the first time in almost two thousand five hundred years.

‘Is it King Nimrod?’ The sheik stroked the beard, nose and forehead. His hands hesitated near the eyes. ‘They are looking at me.’ He shivered.

‘It’s so beautiful.’ Then Austen realised he’d been asked a question. ‘No. It’s not Nimrod.’

He hardly dared to say what they had found, though, in case the magic was broken. ‘We need two of your best teams.’ He pointed to the opposite wall of the trench. ‘See the place the head is staring at? One team will dig into that part of the wall. The other team will dig carefully around this statue.’ He prayed that the men would in fact work carefully. ‘Not one curl of hair or tip of a feather is to be damaged,’ he said.

Bit by bit, earth around the bearded stone head was eased away. There was more carved stone buried behind the head. Gradually, the shoulders, front legs and body of a fantastic winged bull towered over the workers. But its hindquarters were still stuck fast in solid earth.

On the opposite side of the trench, about twelve feet away, another face pushed its way out of the
underworld. So there were two colossal winged bulls. If they were guarding the entrance to a throne room, what treasures might be hidden there?

The sheik clasped his hands together. ‘My Lord, what wonders!’

Austen struggled to suppress tears of exhaustion and triumph.

Suddenly shouting erupted across the mound, and men swarmed out of a distant trench and flung away baskets of earth. War cries pierced the sky.

When Austen reached the trench, a huge stone lion with a human head was struggling free of the earth, which it seemed to be shaking away from its shoulders and back.

Austen sank to the ground.

‘The Lion has found his own. Here.’ He stepped out four paces in a straight line from the lion’s nose and called to another group of workers, ‘Dig straight here. Release the other lion.’

The workers tore off their cloaks and tunics and rushed forward.

‘Choose teams who aren’t afraid to watch over these trenches tonight.’ Austen’s hands were shaking, so he hid them under his cloak. ‘Two sheep will be given to each team for a feast to last them through the night.’

Longworth stood on the edge of the trench and sketched the scene. ‘What a scoop. This is my lucky day.’

‘It’s not entirely good fortune.’ Austen reached out and pressed one hand onto the first lion’s mane. ‘Once the word is out, thousands of people will hurry here from Mosul and the regions around.’

Austen climbed wearily up and spoke in a quiet voice that nobody else could hear. ‘Between you and me, we’re in trouble. The drought is getting worse, crops are failing. If there’s a famine, God help us. Law and order will break down, bandits will once again rule the roads and tribes of nomads will see Nimrud as easy pickings. Under a determined attack, what chance will we have?’

Hormuzd hurried over. ‘Sir, I have some difficult news.’ His young face seemed old with care. ‘Raiders attacked our raft as it was unloading near the fortress. The ropes and felts are gone.’

‘All of them?’

‘All gone.’

Then so were his chances of shifting the bulls and lions. The hundreds of yards of rope had been for easing the statues onto the huge cart, and then for towing the cart down to the river. Thick felt carpets were needed to cushion the fragile alabaster during its
two-mile journey to the river. And without those ropes and felts he couldn’t secure the wall slabs to the rafts. It would be impossible to pack the smaller treasures into chests and crates safely. If there were no soft padding, none would survive the long journey by raft to Basra.

Austen pictured the risky journey. At Basra, his marvels would be loaded onto a ship for Bombay, transferred to another ship, flung by gales around the Cape of Good Hope, then bashed through the stormy Atlantic, north to faraway England. One shift in the cargo, one careless handling, and treasures as wonderful as the jewels of Aladdin’s cave would be smashed to worthless junk.

But, without the ropes and felts, nothing would be shipped from Nimrud at all.

Another awful thought occurred to him. If news of one successful robbery were to spread, no one would fear him and Nimrud would soon be under attack. Replacement ropes and felt would take weeks to arrive. By then, he’d be out of money, out of workers and out of ammunition after having defended the treasures from repeated attacks.

He had unearthed a vast treasure that he couldn’t move. But raiders would. What they didn’t smash, they’d take away to sell in the markets.

‘There are more of them than I expected.’ Austen drew on the reins and checked his pistols. Abraham Agha, bristling with weapons, flexed his fingers. ‘I count forty-three.’ He spoke calmly, as if the odds were in their favour.

When they trotted towards the black tents, the crowd parted uneasily. At the sheik’s tent, Austen leapt from his horse, thrust his spear into the ground and tethered his horse to it, as a sign that he was now under the sheik’s protection. He and Abraham marched straight inside and the sheik half-rose to his feet. Austen sat on the carpet and Abraham stood guard, each hand on a pistol.

At the end of the long tent, servants hastily dragged ropes and felts out of sight. But there were too many to hide and heaps lay there in full view.

‘The peace of Allah be with you, sheik.’ Austen’s face gave away no feelings.

‘And with you, O Lion.’

‘By the laws of our friendship, sheik, what is my property is also yours. What is yours, I may claim.’

‘May Allah keep you in good health.’

Austen made a show of examining his rope which was wound around the central pole of the tent. ‘Some of my property is important to me, but of less value to others.’

‘What might those things be, Lion of Nimrud?’

A rope rubbed noisily against the base of the tent as somebody outside dragged it away.

‘My ropes and mats of felt.’

The sheik looked steadily at the piles of rope and matting. ‘Let me be your sacrificial lamb if any of your ropes or felts are in my tent.’

A crowd at the tent door added their voices in unison. ‘Our sheik speaks the truth.’

‘Two men against so many? The sheik opened his hands. ‘If you found any of your property here, why, I would happily return it.’

‘Two against so many? I learnt long ago that the estimation other people have of me is no true guide. What matters is the view I have of myself.’ Austen put one hand on his dagger hilt as the signal to Abraham,
who strode over to the sheik and clipped a pair of handcuffs on his wrists. He thrust a pistol against the startled sheik’s throat and dragged him to his feet.

Austen rested his hand on his gun. Bracing himself on one side of the sheik and with Abraham on the other side, they rushed at the door.

‘Stand aside,’ Abraham roared, ‘or the sheik dies!’

Shocked, confused, the men made way. Some half-drew swords, but were too amazed or afraid to use them.

Abraham climbed into the saddle, hoisted up the sheik like a sack of flour and spurred his horse. When Austen mounted his horse, one man grabbed timidly at his bridle, but Austen drew his pistol and the man backed off. The sheik’s wives ran wailing to Austen and clutched at his feet and clothes, begging him to release their husband. He dug his heels into the horse, broke free and galloped away.

No one was chasing them. They must really have believed that Abraham would shoot their sheik. Didn’t they have a plan in case he was kidnapped?

Austen caught up to Abraham and spoke to the bewildered sheik. ‘Within hours you will be in Mosul, where my friend, Tahyar, will decide this matter of the ropes and felts. But I do not advise you to let him hold a trial. Men of every tribe will testify
against you as a notorious thief of camels, horses and donkeys. Tahyar will send my friend Captain Daoud with a hundred irregulars to search your camp for my ropes and felts. Think what Daoud’s irregulars will do with your people, while you are imprisoned in a dark underground pit of lepers crawling with lice and rats. Think of the floggings you will suffer. Most of all, think about the executioner.’

‘No more, I beg you, O Lion. What must I do?’

‘From my tent you will send a message to your people. If every last one of my ropes and felts is not at Nimrud by sunset tonight, then you will meet your dreadful fate and your tribe will be punished most horribly. Do we have an understanding?’

‘Get everyone into shelter.’ Austen started running towards his hut.

Workers ran to their tents and grappled with ropes. Women and children scurried down ladders into tunnels and horses tugged at their tethers.

‘Mr Layard!’ Hormuzd sprinted over, waving a sheet of paper in the air. He was a tiny white figure against the onrushing sandstorm that suddenly broke over the riverbank. Rocks, earth and branches blasted upwards, spun away and fell onto the desert.

‘Get into my hut!’

‘The letter.’

‘Not now. Run for your life!’ Austen held his hut door open.

Hormuzd took one look over his shoulder and raced for the hut. The hot breath of hell swept over him, and he was flung like a straw at the hut. Austen grabbed his arm and dragged him inside just as the main force struck. A whirlpool of papers, cups and clothes swirled inside. The sunlight disappeared and the hut was blacker than night. They lost sense of time and Austen prayed that the roofs would not collapse on the treasures.

As suddenly as it struck, the storm was gone, its roar fading away. Light returned and voices were shouting outside. Austen and Hormuzd opened the door. People were climbing out of tunnels, sheep were scattered among the palaces, and women wandered about, collecting pots and pans.

‘The letter!’ Hormuzd showed his empty hands.

‘What was it?’

‘I’m sorry, Mr Layard, but the French have begun digging at Kuyunjik.’

It took a few seconds for Austen to reply. ‘Is Paul Botta there?’

‘Not yet.’

His brain raced at a hundred miles an hour.

‘Are you all right, Mr Layard?’

‘Hormuzd, we are going to dig up Kuyunjik.’

‘But – the French?’

‘Tahya loathes that slimy, troublemaking viceconsul and he’ll kick the French off Kuyunjik before you can say “Jack Robinson.” I have in writing the prior licences to dig there.’

‘Who is Jack Robinson?’

‘Never mind – it’s just a saying.’

Hormuzd put his question carefully, as if lifting the lid on a box full of snakes. ‘So, sir, we are leaving Nimrud?’

‘Not all of us and not all at once. I will leave for Kuyunjik in a week, but you will stay here to oversee the closure of Nimrud, then you will join me.’

‘Closure?’

‘Hear me out.’ Austen held up his hand. ‘I have no intention of forsaking Nimrud. There is still so much to discover here. But I must bury the palaces to protect them. When we return, in a few months, we’ll dig them up again and may yet prove that Nimrud is Nineveh.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘Look, as paymaster, you know the facts of our finances. This season of digging here at Nimrud must draw to an early close. The first sandstorm has struck, temperatures will soon hit a hundred and twenty degrees and work will be impossible. With drought, famine and marauding bandits all putting our lives in
danger as well, I’m not prepared to risk the lives of my friends.’

Hormuzd shook his head. ‘Bury everything?’

‘Not so fast, all right? We’ll ship back to England the smaller treasures and the best of the wall slabs. I’ll send one, maybe two bulls and the lions back as prizes for the Museum. They’ll be a sensation.’

‘Sir, the British Museum has not given permission for you to send bulls and lions.’

‘They will, or Aunt Sara will let loose the hounds of Fleet Street to rip open their throats.’

‘Now.’ Austen stretched his arms wide. ‘Let’s move some giants.’

‘Are you ready, sheik?’ Austen looked down from the high tower of earth.

Thirty feet below, in the pit, the sheik called, ‘Lift the ropes!’

Lines of men pulled on the ropes and took the strain. All around the top of the pit, spectators cheered and shouted songs. An orchestra of drums, pipes and trumpets burst into loud celebration.