The Sleeping Sands (21 page)

‘This time, the dog had brought a gift to the man. In his old stained teeth, he gently held a small, round object, which he dropped by the crack and nudged gently towards the Frank with his nose. The Frank inspected the object and found it to be a hard brown seed or nut of some kind. He tried to bite it, but it was too tough to eat, so thinking it might at least grow into a flower to brighten his cave, he buried it in the dirt by the crack where it might at least get a little light. Carefully, he sprinkled a few precious drops of water on it to help it grow.

‘The years passed and still the yellow dog came each day after I had left the food and drink. The old dog became older, the Frank became a little more used to the terror of the sleeping beast and the little plant grew as each day the Frank dripped a little water upon it. First it sprouted out tiny green shoots. Then, these grew into a strong little seedling. From the seedling sprang a fine sapling and this in turn grew into a tough little bush. Year upon year, the trunk of the bush became a little thicker and its branches and roots twined a little tighter around the rocks.

‘Then one day, a miracle! The Frank awoke as usual in his cave, to find himself dazzled by a blinding light. Sunshine was flooding into the tomb. The little bush had twisted and twined its roots and branches so deeply into the rock that it had cracked asunder, leaving a space big enough for the Frank to easily walk through. Hardly believing it was possible, he sprang to his feet and leaped through the opening. Sitting, faithfully waiting for him on the outside was the yellow dog. The Frank bent down to the dog and threw his arms around its neck, weeping tears of joy and calling down all the blessings of Allah upon it. Then, he stood and faced the sunrise and walked into the desert, the faithful dog at his heel. For all I know, they are still out there.’

Mad Mrs Walmington

‘Unlike my brother’s tale,’ chirruped the moon-faced dervish, ‘my story happened just a few weeks ago, in the great city of Baghdad. It concerns another mad foreigner, but this one was a woman.

‘I found myself in Baghdad a few months past and briefly in need of some travelling funds, so I decided to set myself up in business as a purveyor of religious relics and various magical items. The trade in these items is always lively in that great city and within a fairly short time, I found that I had established a reputation and my business had begun to grow to such an extent that I was able to establish a small booth in the bazaar. I was sitting in my booth one day when an elderly European woman entered, wearing the strangest mixture of English and Bedouin clothes. She announced herself as a Mrs Edith Walmington and declared that she had been told by a reliable source that I might be able to furnish her with items containing secrets of the Chaldean astrologers of ancient Babylon.

‘I reluctantly explained to the woman that, to my knowledge, I possessed at that time only one item pertaining to the Chaldeans, as she called the Babylonians and that, for reasons best left unsaid, that item was not for sale. At this she became quite agitated and insisted I sell it to her. I tried to calm her, indicating that there remained some dubiety as to the exact provenance of the item and warning her that objects of this sort were not always easy to possess. This only added to her determination and anger, to the both of which I now found myself exposed. Mrs Walmington was a remarkably formidable woman and I soon found myself subject to a battery of threats, pleas and promises. She offered me quantities of gold; she threatened to call down the officers of the Pashalic upon me; she even described how she would return with a company of British marines to take the item by force if need be, in the name of free trading and fair bargaining. Against such an onslaught, no-one could hold strong.

‘Alas, I am only human. I took a wooden casket from a chest in my booth and opened it up before her, revealing a small stone tablet. The tablet was greatly aged and much of its inscription had been eroded but it still bore a profile that was unmistakably Babylonian and a series of faint zodiac inscriptions. Mrs Walmington was overjoyed. She at once offered me a bag of gold coins for the tablet. For reasons of my own, I refused, insisting that I would sell it for one copper coin; nothing more and nothing less. She consented at once and eagerly handed me the coin, snatching up the tablet in triumph and dashing from the shop before I had the chance to change my mind or the opportunity to tell her any more of the artefact. However, if I thought that was the end of the matter, I was grievously mistaken.

‘A few days later, the woman returned to my booth in a state of great distress. Her skin was pale and grey and there were black rings around her eyes as if she had been unable to sleep. I asked her the cause of her discomfort and she explained to me that its source was the artefact itself. She told me that every night since purchasing it from me, she had been plagued by the same terrible dream. Each night, no matter where she had secreted it, the tablet would appear in a dream at her bedside. From within the tablet itself, a great voice would be heard and a djinn of horrific appearance would spring forth from it, chanting the same incantation over and over:

Silver begets silver; gold begets gold;

Copper begets copper; mysteries beget the untold;

To escape with your lives, sell me four times;

Gold, silver, copper - each has one worth;

The last is for metal not made on God’s earth;

When the last sale is made, if you still keep a hold,

The final price I claim is your mortal soul!

The terrible djinn chanted its spell over and over in Mrs Walmington’s dream until at last the cock crowed for morning. When she awoke, she found that, sure enough, no matter where she had hidden it, the tablet was sitting beside her bed.

‘I listened in horror to her tale, for while the tablet had been in my possession I had experienced the very same dream! I decided to tell her the story of the tablet. I had first received the tablet in an honest trade, but, as soon as the dreams started to occur, I had investigated further and had discovered a little more of its history.

‘The tablet had been discovered deep in the desert in an old tomb by a brother dervish. He had been delighted to discover that, upon taking possession of the tablet, his personal fortunes began to change for the better and, being a wise man, he connected this good fortune to some power of the tablet. However, soon after finding it, he began to experience a strange and disturbing dream of much the same nature as Mrs Walmington’s. He decided that, good fortune or not, his soul was too precious a commodity to be risked so he sold the tablet for one gold piece to a European traveller who was interested in relics of the Holy Lands. This traveller was a superstitious Christian who became quite terrified by the dreams that plagued him upon taking possession of the artefact. He at once cast the stone away in the desert and fled to Baghdad, convinced that some sort of devil was after him. However, no matter how often he cast the stone away, each morning it would return to his side. Terrified, he sought out a trader in magical artefacts and discovered me, just at the point of establishing my trade. I was very happy to buy it for the price of one silver piece and soon enjoyed the pleasant upturn in my business that I have already described.

‘However, I too was plagued by terrible dreams. Each night I would lock away the tablet in a magical wooden casket yet every morning it would reappear at my bedside. I had no magic strong enough to break its curse. I determined therefore to seek out advice from my brothers, to find some way to escape the spell of the tablet. Before I had the opportunity to seek my brothers out, Mrs Walmington had stormed into my shop like a desert wind and whisked the tablet away for one copper piece.

‘The delirious Mrs Walmington insisted I buy back the tablet but alas, I could not. For, as the djinn had predicted in the dream, the tablet could only be sold four times and each time for a different metal. The first three sales had already taken place – for gold, silver and copper. The fourth and final sale could only be for a metal not made on earth. I had no idea what kind of metal that was and sent the poor woman from my booth, afraid that I might share whatever awful fate the djinn had planned for the tablet’s owner.

‘When next I heard of the unfortunate Mrs Walmington, she seemed to have gone quite mad. She was seen roaming the streets of Baghdad in a frenzy, accosting passers by and demanding to see their purses. When those foolish enough to oblige her showed their purses to her, she would rant and scream that they had no coins and that they were penniless paupers, even if their purses were filled to the brim with gold or silver. She would ask in all seriousness whether men had coins forged by angels in the clouds or minted by whales and mermaids in the depths of the sea. No coin made on earth was of any possible value, she would insist. Soon, news of the crazy woman’s arrival in the bazaar was enough to send strong men running for the safety of their homes. Yet, despite her reputation as a madwoman, Mrs Walmington’s fortunes continued to flourish. An English publisher paid her a very large sum for the rights to publish her memoirs and several of the antiquities she had collected on her trip to date proved to be of exceptional value, commanding high prices from collectors of such curios. In a short while, she became very wealthy.

‘Rumours began to be whispered about the source of her fortune. It was said that she possessed a talisman of great power that had made her rich. These rumours came to the ears of a Bashi Bozuk arrived in the city. The Bashi Bozuk was an ambitious man, with an interest in ancient artefacts. He determined to buy Mrs Walmington’s talisman. He paid a visit to her, offering forth a bag full of gold coins in return for the object that he had heard she possessed. The mad Mrs Walmington took one look at the bag of gold and chased the Bashi Bozuk from the house, babbling away that she would only take coins made by angels and whales and all the usual concerns. Undaunted, the Bashi Bozuk returned the next day to call on Mrs Walmington. This time, he made no offer to purchase the tablet, but rather asked simply to see it, as a fellow antiquarian. Mrs Walmington obliged and left the Bashi Bozuk to examine the tablet while she arranged tea. When they had drunk the tea, the Bashi Bozuk made to depart. At the door, he turned to look at a fine basket of lemons and oranges picked from Mrs Walmington’s garden. He declared that it would be a great honour if he could buy the fruit, and generously offered one of his gold coins for it. Mrs Walmington assented, impressed by the flamboyant Bashi Bozuk’s chivalrous offer and the transaction was duly made.

‘That night, Mrs Walmington searched for the tablet but it was nowhere to be found. She slept a restful, dreamless sleep and awoke to the realisation that the tablet had gone. She suspected that somehow the Bashi Bozuk had stolen away the tablet but could not understand how. She sought me out in the bazaar and explained what had happened and together we set out to find the Bashi Bozuk and discover the answer to the riddle.

‘It proved easy enough to track down the soldier. He had left sufficient gambling debts and unpaid bills around the city to form a trail leading to his lodgings in a cheap rooming house. When we arrived, the house was in uproar. The servants were weeping and crying and all of the building’s contents were smashed and strewn about in chaos. A foul bitter smell hung on the air and the walls of the rooms were blackened with soot. We found the old woman who cooked for the guests wailing in the kitchen. After supplying her with words of comfort and a liberal dose of arak, I was able to calm her enough that she could relate her story.

‘Late in the previous night, she had been disturbed by a terrible noise. She had come into the kitchen to find the Bashi Bozuk, drunk and raving about a demon that was hunting him. He had declaimed that he was a terrible man who had done terrible things and now Allah was punishing him for his crimes. Desperate for atonement, he had grabbed the old lady and begun to stupidly rant some strange tale. He had spoken of finding a rock in the desert that had fallen from the stars and of breaking it apart to discover a deposit of yellow fool’s gold. He told her how he had struck coins from this metal and used it to trick his fellow gamblers. Then, he had added to his sins by tricking an old woman, hiding a valuable item in her fruit basket and purchasing the basket for a counterfeit coin. Now, in payment for his sins, Allah had sent a terrible demon to haunt his dreams and the demon would soon appear to spirit him away. In the middle of his tale he had cried out suddenly that the demon was coming and ran in a panic to his rooms, calling for his guns. A few moments later, there came a terrible roaring, as if of a great wind, followed by scream and a crashing explosion from the rooms. The old lady and the other servants ran to the rooms to find nothing but scorch marks and black ash. In his drunken madness, affirmed the old woman, the Bashi Bozuk had blown himself completely to bits so that not one part of him was left.

‘We left the servants cleaning the lodging house and walked in silence to the bazaar, where we took our leave of each other, making a silent agreement to talk no more of the matter. Of the stone tablet, nothing more was seen.’

The Compassionate Soldier

‘The main difference between my story and the tales my brothers have told you,’ said the oldest of the dervishes, ‘is that it is true. It happened many hundreds of years ago, which means that, as my memory is not what it used to be, it is also considerably shorter.

‘We can join the story at the point when a young man, eager for adventure, joins the army of the Caliphate. One day, he and his troop are camped at a village, when he sees his fellow soldiers beating a young dervish; the dervishes not being in favour with the Caliph at that time. Spurred by compassion, the young man pulls his comrades from the dervish and rescues him from the beating. He hands him water and a cloth to clean his wounds. In gratitude, the dervish hands the young man a silver token of great antiquity, which he says will guarantee protection from harm to the young man as long as he holds it.