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Authors: David Harris

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Chapter 25

Why was nobody visible on the top of Nimrud? Austen spurred his horse to gallop around the end of the mound and into camp. The inspector tried to keep up, but Austen didn’t care about him. Something or someone had stopped the digging at the palaces.

A man in a red cloak stood at Austen’s tent. Horses were tethered to spears thrust into the ground and irregulars lounged about in the shade.

Austen quickly checked the camp, but could see no signs of damage or wounded people.

The sheik and Hormuzd came out of his tent, where they’d probably been guarding his property. They hurried to him and the sheik pointed at the side of Nimrud. ‘See those stones? This morning, Captain Daoud’s irregulars brought a graveyard here.’

Gravestones leaned at crazy angles in the mound.

Austen dismounted and walked towards the captain, a man with cold eyes. The hand on his gun was sinewy and weathered.

The camp went quiet as all eyes turned towards the captain and Austen.

‘Welcome to my camp, Daoud Agha.’ Austen didn’t use a Muslim or Christian greeting, because the man was no believer. ‘Please come in and share a meal.’

He held the tent flap aside and said to the sheik, ‘I need to entertain my guest in private. Would you please care for my other visitor, the pasha’s inspector of Nimrud?’

Daoud ducked his head and entered the tent. Austen followed, went to a small wooden chest and opened it. ‘A drink?’

He lifted out a jar, while his guest sat on the carpet. ‘This is the best Persian wine, from Shiraz.’ He raised two goblets of burnished copper. ‘You will share?’

‘Why waste good wine on an Englishman?’

Austen was sure he saw the faintest glimmer of humour in Daoud’s eyes. He poured wine into the goblets. ‘I am surprised you are not busy along the River Zab,’ he said.

‘The raiders we met yesterday were unexpected good luck.’ Daoud’s voice was as dry as the leathery
skin on his hands. ‘I was on my way to collect the gravestones, as the pasha had ordered, when we happened to see them.’

‘And the graves?’

Clearly Austen had touched a nerve. Did Daoud resent being the pasha’s errand boy?

‘Curse those gravestones!’ Daoud arched his back as though in pain. ‘They nearly killed our horses and broke our backs.’ He held out his goblet and Austen filled it again.

Two women entered, carrying trays with bowls of water, chunks of fresh bread and two steaming bowls of stew with lamb bones. They placed the trays on the carpet between the men, bowed, and walked out backwards.

Austen and Daoud washed their hands in the water. Then Austen handed the captain a bowl of stew and they ate without speaking – but not without loud slurping.

‘If I am not mistaken,’ Austen said, sipping his wine, ‘the gravestones are
not
those of true believers.’

Daoud glanced over the rim of his bowl.

‘Captain, if I were to take my compass to the gravestones, I think we would find that they do not face southwest towards Mecca. Therefore, they cannot be graves of true believers.’

Daoud snapped a bone and sucked out the marrow.

‘Furthermore, Captain, I could use my compass to prove this fact to the pasha’s inspector.’

‘And then?’

‘Well, first of all, I must respectfully replace the stones of unbelievers out of sight on the other side of Nimrud.’

Daoud put down his bowl, tore some bread apart and waited for Austen to go on.

‘We are men of the world.’ Austen stood up and opened another chest. ‘Our business here is private.’ He lifted a red silk robe from the chest, folded it and placed it on the carpet. Then he reached into the bottom of the chest and held up a small bag, which chinked. ‘This is my family’s farewell gift.’ He sat down again and rested the moneybag in his lap. ‘My father died when I was seventeen.’

‘My father was killed in battle when I was nine years old.’ The mask shifted for a moment. ‘I walked to my uncle’s home, near Mount Ararat, eight hundred miles away.’ Daoud was lost a while in memories and his eyes, usually cold and calculating, were confused. Then the glint returned, he remembered this meal and pushed his bread hard into the bowl of stew.

Austen spoke as if nothing had happened. ‘When my father died, it was my uncle who cared for me.
Uncle Austen was a banker, who lost everything when his partner cheated him. Just before I was about to leave home and travel here, to Iraq, he gave me this small bag of money. In exchange, all he asked was that I took his name, Austen.’

He loosened the drawstring. ‘All my life people called me by my birth name, Henry. I’ve always thought of myself as Henry. But now I must be Austen.’

He poured a few coins into the palm of his hand. One pound was worth a thousand piastres – enough to hire workers for another month, or pay a soldier’s wage for many months. He chose three coins and dropped them into Daoud’s hand.

The captain considered them, then picked one and handed it back. ‘You must respect that I cannot give you permission to dig in the palaces of Nimrud. So what will you do? Go back to Constantinople?’

Chapter 26

Outside the tent, a Bedouin cameleer washed his hands in the jet of warm urine from a she-camel. He showed her his hands, she sniffed them and then allowed him to start milking. While he squirted the milk into a bowl, he crooned a lullaby and she turned her head to watch him with gentle eyes.

Austen filled Daoud’s goblet for the third time. ‘I respect your straight talking, but I will not return to Constantinople until my work here is satisfactory. My plan is to send my men back into the palaces of Nimrud.’

‘I have heard of your courage at Castle Tul. Are you ever able to surrender?’ He savoured the fragrance of the wine.

‘As everybody knows, the pasha has a certain interest in gold. My only concern is to faithfully
protect his interest in the treasures of Nimrud. To do that, I need to send my men up the mound with their spades and crowbars as weapons to
guard
the palaces from raiders.’

‘My friend, you should be called the Fox.’ Daoud nodded towards the large chest. ‘I’m certain that the inspector will be struck blind by the light that shines from just one of your silken robes. I know that man. He is a worthless parasite, who has good reason to fear me. I will make sure that he reports nothing but men
on guard
at the palaces.’

They drank and sighed with pleasure.

Austen’s greyhounds lolled outside in the shade of the tent, panting after their race home from the river. Their flanks were streaked yellow and red from chasing hares through fields of wildflowers.

The sheik’s children trotted past. Little Hadla peeked in at Austen, then ran off at full speed. Her brother Masoud had a wicker cage tied to his back and the tiny beak of a partridge chick pecked between the slats. In his right hand, Masoud carried a toy bow and two buckled twigs for arrows.

Pots clanged, sheep bleated, and women sang as they kneaded bread. Beyond the camp were the high ramparts of Nimrud, delivering their secrets as calmly as the camel gave her milk.

Chapter 27

Austen’s eyes drooped shut and the pencil slipped from his hand. A man with an eagle’s head seemed to rise from the page of his sketchbook. Priests flayed prisoners alive and stretched their skins across the palace wall. A severed human head, upside down, looked up an eagle flying off with a coil of entrails writhing like serpents in its talons.

The sketchbook slid from Austen’s lap and he woke. He rubbed the back of his aching neck. ‘I spend too much time among the dead.’

He held his watch close to the lamp. One o’clock. He had four hours until he started tomorrow’s work. He had no idea what day of the week it was, or how many weeks had passed at Nimrud – was it ten or twelve?

Money, not time, was the measure. His uncle’s coins had dropped like the final grains of sand in an hourglass. Aunt Sara had collected a few pounds from friends and relatives. Her fiery articles in the
Times,
and her stormy meetings with members of parliament might bring some money, but too late. Sir Stratford Canning had secretly sent him the expenses for a few more weeks work at Nimrud, but in less than a week the money for workers would be gone. What then?

He was furious with the British Museum, who’d refused to send money for workers, or even give him an artist to help copy the walls. In London, well-fed members of the museum sat smugly in their clubs, smoked cigars and drank brandy, while he slaved away like an unpaid bricklayer. ‘Priceless treasures, from Nineveh,’ they’d boast to Queen Victoria. ‘And we got them for nothing.’

If the treasures ever reached London.

When he left Nimrud, as he had to, thieves, vandals and hurricanes would destroy the palaces. They would become rubbish dumps and quarries, like Paul Botta’s abandoned diggings at Khorsabad.

He’d be defeated not by failure, but by too much success. If he’d only collected a few boxes of treasures he could easily float them away on a raft. But how could any raft or fleet of rafts carry away palaces and
treasures enough to fill a museum? He couldn’t measure his discoveries in mere inches or feet. The palaces had yielded more than a mile of walls. Nimrud, just reborn into a new world, would soon be reduced to rubble and be lost forever.

Chapter 28

Voices cried out in the darkness. Austen picked up the lantern and hurried up the ladder to the surface. People were rushing about, shouting joyfully and sparks flew up from fires.

Somebody was climbing up the steep path towards him. ‘Mr Layard.’ ‘Hormuzd?’

‘Great news!’ Hormuzd shouted. ‘The pasha is deposed.’

‘Is it another of his tricks?’ Austen raised the lamp to look closely at Hormuzd’s face. The large brown eyes like a spaniel’s gave no hint of deception.

Not long ago, the pasha had sent messengers throughout Mosul to announce that he’d died. Citizens had poured into the streets to rejoice, not
knowing he’d set his spies to note their names. Later that day he had unleashed his soldiers to murder them and confiscate their possessions.

‘No, he really is deposed by the army of the supreme sultan. It’s true. My brother sent the messenger from Mosul and he told me the pasha is in jail, with dogs licking his wounds.’

‘And good riddance. But who’s replacing him?’

‘The new ruler of Mosul will be your friend, Tahyar.’

‘That’s wonderful news for the people. Tahyar is a grand old Turk. He’s an educated, honourable man and Mosul will regain its glory. The people can return to their lands.’

‘But –’

‘What?’

‘The messenger says there are troubles in my father’s village. Soldiers are invading the land of my people.’

Below them, people in the camp began to dance and fire guns in the air.

Austen’s voice was almost lost in the noise. ‘Of course. You must leave in the morning.’

‘I’ll do what I can for my people and come back, I promise, and keep working for you.’

‘I’m afraid by the time you get back, my money will be all gone. And the
firman
from Constantinople
has permitted me to dig here for only two months. That time has passed and I mustn’t break the laws under Tahyar. Everything is suddenly changed.’

‘What will you do?’

‘I’ll send urgent messages to Sir Stratford Canning and London, warning them that I must, to Britain’s undying shame, abandon Nineveh to looters.’

‘No, that mustn’t be allowed.’

‘Look, I have no intention of abandoning Nimrud. But it will take time for more money to come from London – if it comes at all. In the meantime, we have work to do.’

‘We?’

‘Yes. We’ll go down to the camp and use some of the remaining money to pay Sheik Awad to be the official protector of Nineveh, with the men of Selamiya as his assistants.

‘Then you will ride with me to Mosul tonight so we can have an audience in the morning with Tahyar. We’ll beg him to stop the soldiers attacking your people. And we’ll also ask him to extend our
firman
so we can keep digging. Tahyar is a lover of history and I think he’ll support us.

‘After that, in case the soldiers don’t call off their invasion, you and I will go and see what we can do to stop the killing.’

‘You will go against an army for people you do not know?’

‘Ah, but I know you. Anyway, your people are descendants of the Assyrians and I’ve been waiting for an excuse to examine some old ruins in your mountains.’

‘Mr Layard, you’ve always told me the truth.’ Hormuzd’s voice trembled.

‘I’m sorry, of course you of all people deserve to know. Well, let me see. It goes back to when I was a little boy at school in Paris. A gang of boys drew the shape of their cross in chalk on the school yard and pushed my face onto it. I twisted and turned away, but they kept bashing my face onto the cross, trying to make me kiss it. When I wouldn’t give in, they dragged me to the river and held my head and shoulders under the water. I might’ve drowned if a man passing by hadn’t jumped in the water and lifted me out.’

Chapter 29

Hormuzd turned his face aside. ‘The soldiers did this three years ago.’

Skeletons sprawled in heaps along the base of the cliff. Dried corpses hung heads down from thorn bushes. The braided hair of girls and women dangled from their skulls and strips of their clothes flapped in the breeze. Tangled bones littered the earth for a hundred yards along the bottom of the precipice. ‘Three thousand of my people died here and seven thousand in the next valley.’

Austen looked up at the top of the cliff. What must it have been like up there? If it was him, he would’ve rushed the guns and been shot or stabbed with bayonets. He’d have gone down fighting. But how many of these people had chosen to jump, maybe
clutching their children to their chests? It was too horrific to think about.

Hormuzd held a cloth over his nose and mouth.

This wasn’t only about religion, Austen thought. He was sure of that. Why massacre so many people because their sabbath was on Wednesday, or because they didn’t pray facing the right direction? No, all the lies about devil-worship and false scriptures were excuses to wipe out people who wouldn’t submit. As always, even as it had been in ancient Assyria, it was all about power. Who’d rule, who’d die and who’d be slaves.

BOOK: Monsters in the Sand
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