Monsters in the Sand (12 page)

A rope slipped from the bull’s shoulder. If it slid off the protective matting, it would cut into the bull. ‘The rope!’ Austen screamed at the top of his voice.

The sheik put one hand to his ear and shrugged. Austen grabbed his long whip of hippopotamus hide and pointed frantically. The sheik saw what was wrong and yelled to the men to help him shift the rope back.

One last check. The ropes went right around his tall tower and then back to the bull, so that the solid earth took much of the weight and the bull could be lowered gently. It all looked good. He cracked the whip and the sheik fired his gun.

Ropes twanged taut and lines of men bent their backs to ease the bull down onto its side. Six of the bravest and strongest men stood beneath the ten-ton monster and held poles that propped it up and helped control its fall. Inch by inch, as it tilted, they shifted the props, their feet scrabbling to get a grip on the platform of tree trunks covered in thick mats. Spectators chanted war cries to spur them on and the orchestra went berserk.

The ropes sawed grooves into the pillar, but they were holding. Slowly, Austen said to himself, slowly. Then ropes began to fray and smoke. Look out – no! Austen cracked his whip again and again and pointed wildly at a line of buckets. The men flung water on the ropes, which hissed and steamed, but, with a dreadful rending sound, thick hawsers parted.

Austen flung himself on his face as the ropes roared over his head. Then he crawled to the edge and looked down at the bull which was teetering, losing balance. His wonderful bull. No!

The men under it jumped out of the way as it
crashed down in a great cloud of dust. It would’ve smashed into a thousand pieces, this beautiful treasure, and been totally destroyed. During a long and dreadful silence, Austen tried to see through the dust.

Undamaged, the bull lay there on its side – just lay there as if enjoying a dust bath. Its human face smiled secretly at the corners of its mouth.

Jubilation erupted as mobs broke into wild singing and dancing. Austen shoved the whip onto his broad Bedouin belt and slid down a ladder, his feet barely touching the rungs. He ran his hands lovingly over the bull. Wings of an angel, strength of a bull, face of a king – all in one piece, not sliced into slabs like Paul Botta’s bulls from Khorsabad.

The sheik organised men to gather up the ropes and splice broken sections together. Ropes, rollers and men were soon ready for the next part.

An enormous slice had been cut from the side of the mound, as if Nimrud was a gigantic pie. A road ran smoothly from the pit, all the way down to the base, ending exactly level with the top of the flat cart.

Austen took his place beside the bull and held up his whip. Musicians gathered around him and set up a deafening racket. Workers broke into song, some couldn’t resist taking the ropes as partners in a dance and Austen feared that the day was disintegrating into
a party. He cracked the whip, the sheik fired again for the fun of it, and the bull shifted. Lines of men pulled the platform of round trunks along, while behind it, others put their shoulders under poles and levered it forward. As it moved, men grabbed rollers from behind and ran them round to the front so that it glided serenely along in one continuous action. Even Austen couldn’t stop himself giving a little skip and dance beside his enormous prize.

At the bottom of the mound, it rolled easily onto the cart, which groaned and swayed under the fantastic weight and the team of eight oxen yoked to the cart felt it. They shook their heads, fell to their knees and refused to get up again.

‘Men!’ Austen yelled. ‘We need men!’

The grumpy oxen were unhitched and driven away. As soon as the oxen were out of the way, there was a stampede of humans. Villagers, wives, children, and courtiers from Mosul rushed to the ropes and fought the workers for handholds. Once again, the cart moved towards the river. People sang, the wheels sang their nightingale song, and Austen galloped madly round and round the procession.

The back wheels turned jerkily. ‘The axle!’ Austen yelled to the carter, who was walking beside the front wheels. The carter ran back, uncorked a gourd and
squirted a black liquid onto the axle. Then he poured a few drops into his own mouth as a dose of stimulant. Austen remembered the foul taste of a nomad’s medicine, made from that rock oil, which some Europeans called
petra oleum.

The cart lumbered across the ancient riverbed and was almost at the other side when the front of the cart lurched down. The front wheels sank deeper in sand and everyone who was pulling the ropes tumbled over, laughing and rolling about.

Damn and blast! Austen had checked this route carefully the day before. What if the front axle was broken? He remembered Botta’s cart, broken down and the bull burnt to make gypsum. He clawed his way under the cart and inspected the axle. There were no obvious splits or buckled sections, but it was half-buried in sand. He dug frantically beneath it and ran his hands along the timber. It felt all right, but could they raise it from the soft sand?

‘What is best?’ The sheik peered in under the cart. Then Hormuzd crawled under it. ‘What can I do?’

‘Sheik, choose your best men to lever the cart out, then use rollers to cover the hole.’

The cart could be fixed, but what if the people gave up and drifted away? ‘Hormuzd, hurry back to Nimrud and buy the entire flock of stolen sheep.’

‘All of them?’

‘Be the prince of hagglers.’

Austen wriggled out and then climbed up on the cart. ‘Stay with me!’ he shouted to the crowd. ‘If you move the bull to the river I promise you a feast to last through the long afternoon and all night.’

The people rushed to help the workers dig sand away, lever up the cart and win pride of place at the end of the ropes.

At the jetty, three carpenters watched the cart lumber closer and they shook their heads. ‘The weight will smash this, you know, and if the jetty doesn’t collapse, the raft will sink.’

But as the sun set, the bull slid smoothly onto the raft, which floated comfortably in the water and swung gently on its ropes.

Near midnight, Austen sat on the raft, with his back to the bull’s solid belly. Nimrud glowed with fires and the distant noise of celebrations drifted down to the river. He imagined his people dancing above palace rooms, where ancient kings and priests moved in the flickering light.

‘Here they come!’ Hidden among crates of treasure, Abraham checked five loaded muskets that were lined up on top of one crate. ‘See that movement to the right of the jetty?’

Austen, crawled to join him at the end of the raft, as far from the bull as possible, to draw gunfire away from it. His guns were loaded and ready.

‘They’re on the jetty now. Seven men.’

Austen shouted, ‘Go in peace!’

The intruders stopped and whispered among themselves.

‘My first shot will be above your heads, as a sign of peace.’ Austen fired.

They scrambled about and two of them ran away.

‘All of you go,’ Austen yelled, ‘or die!’

A voice bellowed back, ‘There are many more of us. Prepare to die yourself!’ One, then two matchlocks ignited halfway along the jetty.

By the time several hundred men ran down from Nimrud, armed, shouting and waving burning torches dipped in bitumen, Abraham was cleaning guns and Austen was smoothing his hands over the bull, searching for holes.

‘Yah bey,’
panted Mohammed Emin. ‘It is not fair. While we feasted, you enjoyed a fight. Are there any men we can chase and kill?’

Abraham aimed a gun at the river, where bodies floated face-down.

Austen worked his way down the cliff, kicking toeholds and digging his fingers into the sheer side. Chips of alabaster tumbled out with the soil, and hanging by one hand he scratched away at the earth. His fingernails scraped on hard rock. A broken brick. He climbed back to the top, using the holes he’d dug.

‘My Lord, be careful.’ The sheik knelt at the top and reached down with one hand.

Clambering onto the roof of Kuyunjik, Austen stamped his foot. ‘We start here.’

The sheik cupped his hands around his mouth. ‘Over here!’ he shouted.

In the distance, on the Mosul side of the mound, their team of workers waved and moved towards
them. The men of Selamiya carried spades and baskets on their shoulders. The taller men from Mirkan lugged crowbars and mattocks. They took a zigzag way among shallow trenches that had been dug by the French. When the surface flattened out, instead of walking straight towards Austen and the sheik, the group circled a long way around.

Austen couldn’t have walked across there either. Too disturbing! How horrible it must have been for them. Three years ago, in that place, a hundred refugees – devil–worshippers – had huddled together. Armed soldiers moved in and there was no escape. In any case, citizens of Mosul had broken the bridge of boats, so none of them could get into the city. The soldiers opened fire, while along the city walls, Christians and Muslims stood shoulder to shoulder and watched the slaughter.

Austen’s workers turned their heads aside as they passed by the ghosts of the families. His men were too far away for him to see their faces, but those from Mirkan were devil-worshippers, and they were armed with crowbars. Except for Abraham, who also carried a musket over one shoulder. He would’ve known some of those who were shot.

Something must’ve been said, because the group stopped. Mohammed Emin went close to Abraham
and faced him, but neither of them shifted his weapons or moved quickly.

The sheik began to chant a prayer.

Then the men continued walking, and to Austen’s relief, they stayed together as a group. His friends, his other family had not turned upon each other.

‘Allah be thanked.’ The sheik was close to tears.

The group came silently towards Austen. What had Abraham and Mohammed Emin said back there?

Mohammed Emin shrugged. ‘Abraham and I will break into the palace tonight and steal roses from the garden.’

‘What? But the penalty for that is death.’

‘That makes it more fun.’

‘May I ask why you will do this?’

‘We will both put rose petals on the place, back there.’

What was that expression in Abraham’s eyes?

The sheik cleared his throat. ‘To work, then.’ He bustled over to the place Austen had chosen.

They all gathered around to inspect the spot and Austen said, ‘You know what to do. Dig two shafts straight down for twenty feet, thirty if necessary, until you find the foundations. But be careful, I want you all safe to share our meal tonight.

‘Ya bey.’
Mohammed Emin stripped off his cloak,
spat on his hands and gripped his spade. ‘We will find at least two palaces by midday.’

But Kuyunjik was not co-operative. The men dug three, then four shafts, but found only rubbish, which crumbled into grey ash.

The sheik clicked his tongue and Mohammed Emin growled, but they began another shaft.

Austen prowled back and forth on the surface. Exhausted by lack of sleep, weak with dysentery, he was unexpectedly pestered by doubts. What if he had been wrong from the start – what if everybody was wrong? Perhaps Nineveh never had been a city, but merely a district big enough to hold Khorsabad to the north, Kuyunjik here in the centre and Nimrud to the south. Imagine if all this time he’d been searching for a place that didn’t exist, had never existed. And what if he dug out nothing but burnt alabaster? It was possible that what lay beneath was only the charred ruins of just another city.

Across the river, guns were firing in Mosul. More food riots. No foreigner was safe now that the American Christian mission station had been wiped out. Austen wondered how long it would be until even his faithful friends had to leave him and flee to safety.

He stared at the city walls and grieved for Tahya, who’d died suddenly. The scholarly, coffee-addicted,
kindly old man was gone, and with him had gone the last of law and order. Chaos and violence ruled again.

Enough of sorrows and doubts. Austen opened his new sketchbook labelled,
Kuyunjik, Folio 1.
The beginning of a new one always gave him a thrill of anticipation. He took his pencil from his waist bag, pinched the point and tried to pull the lead out. It was so hot back at Nimrud that the lead had slipped from the wood. Opening his sketchbook, he wrote the first page number,
1,371,
to keep the sequence of drawings correct. How long ago it seemed, that he had handed a sketchbook to Au Kerim in a valley near Castle Tul.

The sheik appeared at the top of a shaft. ‘A floor, My Lord, and –’

‘Tunnel along to the wall.’ Austen felt a surge of relief.

With his head and shoulders above the surface, the sheik finished his sentence. ‘Something’s in the way. It’s not a wall.’

Austen put his sketchbook aside and climbed down the ladder. Thirty feet down, in dim light, the sheik’s turban bobbed about. ‘A bull’s head.’ He waved his hands excitedly. ‘We have the first palace!’

A palace? Let it have bas-reliefs of King Sennacherib on a hundred walls. Let it have the name ‘Nineveh’ carved above every door!

Two palaces later, Austen entered a tunnel at dawn. Something or somebody was slumped in a corner. Austen drew his dagger and crept towards a man, either asleep or dead, who was covered in a riding cloak. Stealthily, he moved closer, with his dagger at the ready. Then he saw the face. ‘Henry Rawlinson!’

‘What the devil?’ Rawlinson’s bleary eyes focused on the dagger.

‘Sorry! I didn’t know you were here.’ Austen put his weapon away.

Rawlinson sat up and pulled a bag from under his cloak. ‘Two days and nights of riding. I could’ve beaten my record, if I’d kept going to Baghdad.’ He put his hand inside the travel bag. ‘You’re a betting man?’

Austen thought of Paul Botta and their race to find Nineveh. But a warning bell rang in his mind.
Never bet with and never try to outride or outdrink Major Henry Rawlinson.

‘What’s the bet?’

‘I need your fob-watch.’

His father’s watch? Austen remembered his father’s knobbly hand holding the gold watch out to him. Could he wager
that?