The Sleeping Sands (29 page)

Layard, realising the men must be in league with his guide and the followers of Mullah Mohamed, angrily did as the men directed.

‘What about his money?’ asked one of the men. ‘Let’s take that and cut his throat.’

‘He doesn’t have any money,’ said another, ‘but he soon will have. He is searching for gold at the sacred tomb at Sûsan. We can wait until he finds it and then rob him.’

‘Do you hear that, foreigner?’ snarled the man who had been inclined to cut Layard’s throat. ‘We’ll be keeping an eye on you.’

He laughed and the group of men scrambled away, leaving Layard furious and alone on the plain, with no guide or compass to lead him to Sûsan.

At length, after following a seemingly endless maze of twisting paths and dead ends, Layard came to a river that he reckoned must be the Karun, on the other side of which were the ruins of Sûsan. On the journey from Mullah Mohammed’s encampment, his guide had described a raft at the river crossing but there was no sign of this. As he sat, watching the fast-flowing stream, a Bakhtiari walked up to the river beside him, unrolled a sheepskin, which he inflated and then used to float across. Within a few minutes, another had appeared and in a short time, a steady stream of tribesmen was crossing the river, to and fro, on their inflated sheepskins.

Layard called out to the men to help him cross, but the men, whom he assumed must be Mullah Feraj’s followers, simply stared at him with suspicion and said nothing. At length, in frustration, he stripped off his outer robes and rode his horse into the current to swim it across. The tribesmen floated around him as he struggled across, jeering and taunting him.

‘Look at that pink skin,’ they cried, ‘he must be a Georgian.’

‘Perhaps he is an Armenian, I have heard that their skin is so pale you can almost see through them. Are you an Armenian, stranger?’

‘Perhaps he is an infidel. Do you think we should drown him?’

‘I don’t think we need to. Look, he is trying to drown his own horse!’

At length, with a good deal of difficulty, Layard was able to scramble his horse up the far bank, where both horse and rider stood, panting and bedraggled, while the assembled mob of tribesmen swelled around them.

They were joined by more men, from the black tents of Mullah Feraj, which were pitched among the nearby ruins.

‘Are you an infidel?’ challenged one man. ‘Should we stone you?’

‘He doesn’t look like an infidel to me,’ said another.

‘What would you know?’ demanded a third. ‘You’ve never seen one.’

‘I am a simple pilgrim,’ said Layard, struggling to contain his anger. ‘I have come to see the Tomb of Daniel, the fame of which has reached even my far country.’

‘What country is that?’

‘England,’ replied Layard.

‘Is that part of Georgia?’ asked a lumbering tribesman, brandishing a huge iron mace.

‘Idiot!’ snapped another. ‘England is on the other side of the world.’

‘What would an Englishman be doing here?’

‘He’s a spy!’

‘He’s been told where to find treasure by a djinn!’

‘He’s a magician; he’s looking for some magic talisman of the prophet!’

‘I am a pilgrim, as I said!’ Layard shouted at the men, who fell silent for a moment, startled by the tall foreigner’s anger. ‘Now, will you show me the Tomb of Daniel?’

‘Of course we will,’ they chorused. ‘We are the guardians of the tomb. It is our task to guard it and to guide pilgrims to it.’

The mood of the mob changed to one of cheerful speculation as they ushered Layard through the sparse ruins towards a low mound at their far end. As they walked, the crowd chatted about the gold and other treasures that the foreigner was bound to discover and the rewards they would receive for leading him to them. Layard was able to enjoy the relative peace by observing the ruins as they passed through. They were unpromising; rough hewn lumps of masonry of what appeared to be the Sassanian period, with little evidence of any grand structures. He found it hard to imagine that this Sûsan was the biblical Shushan of Daniel’s time.

At length they came to the mound upon which was erected a low mud-brick building of markedly more modern origins than the rest of the city. It contained two rooms, one of which held a stone carved with crude Arabic characters. There was no sign of any earlier building nor any evidence to show that the tomb was anything other than that of a minor local saint. Layard emerged from the tomb, shaking his head in disappointment. The prophet had eluded him once more.

‘What infidel dares to desecrate the tomb of the prophet Nebbi Daniel?’ demanded a fierce voice.

Layard looked up to see a wild looking fakir, brandishing an ancient arquebus.

‘You have five seconds to recite the profession of faith,’ he threatened, ‘before I blow you from the Earth as an infidel!’

He levelled the antique gun in Layard’s face.

‘He’s no infidel,’ cried one of Layard’s companions, firmly pushing down the wide barrel of the gun, ‘he’s come with books telling him where to find gold among the ruins.’

‘No, he’s an agent sent by the Shah,’ said another, ‘who is preparing the way for an assault on the mountains.’

‘You know nothing,’ said a third. ‘He is the brother of the King of England who, just this minute has arrived at Baghdad and is making ready to march into the Bakhtiari country.’

‘Will the King fight against the Shah?’ cried a fourth, sparking a general clamour.

‘When will the English arrive here?’

‘Will you find the four secret treasures of Sûsan and use them against the Shah?’

‘Where’s the gold?’

‘Are you certain he’s not a Georgian?’

Layard moved in a cloud of human chaos back across the ruins to the tent of Mullah Feraj, where he found, if not a friendly welcome, a more restrained one. The Mullah chased away his more excitable followers and, having read Au Khan Baba’s letter, entertained Layard with a rudimentary meal. He gave the Englishman shelter for the night and supplied him with a guide to take him as far as Mullah Mohammed’s camp. They set out the next day and reached the tents, without incident, by late afternoon.

Layard was unsurprised to find that his spare pack had been stripped of belongings. He demanded a fresh horse of Mullah Mohammed, threatening the vengeance of Mehemet Taki Khan on his house, and spurred it on into the evening, arriving at length at the castle of Hassan Khan. There he spent a night in the tents of the former Khanum’s followers. Early next morning, he rode out into the plain of Tul, tired and bitterly disappointed. Only one more possible location remained for the tomb and that would take him away from the Bakhtiari country; and away from Khanumi. He had found a sense of belonging at Kala Tul that he had never before experienced. He could not imagine how he could leave.

Layard rode on, cloaked in a morbid cloud of despondency, his horse’s hoofs pounding heavily on the hard dry mud of the trail. As he neared Kala Tul, a growing sense of dread began to take hold of him. He imagined it was anxiety at having to leave the castle and companions he had grown to respect and even love. His horse seemed to catch his mood, snorting and twitching nervously, its ears pricked forward. Something about the air of the plain seemed wrong to Layard, as if there was an imperceptible smell that did not fit. He imagined a faint murmur; alien to the balmy tranquillity of the Khan’s pastures.

They moved on. The sensations of unease became stronger. It became palpable; no longer something that could be dismissed as a manifestation of ill humour. There was a strange smell in the air. There was a strange, soft murmur that Layard could not place. Layard felt his heart begin to beat faster. He noticed that his hand had moved unconsciously to the hilt of the Khan’s long knife. Ahead of him, on the horizon, the mound of Kala Tul came into view. There seemed to be a haze all around it. Layard spurred his horse forward and began to gallop towards the castle. As the settlement neared, Layard began to make out vague shapes and, slowly, he began to understand what had caused the haze. He slowed his horse to a walk and then to a complete halt, gazing at the spectacle before him.

The haze had been caused by dust, thrown up by thousands of men and horses, arranged in companies around the settlement. Tents and artillery batteries dotted the plain, the long ornate barrels of the cannons turned on the walls of Mehemet Taki Khan’s stronghold. Sun flashed from ranks of lances and ostrich-plumed spears. The smell of dozens of cooking fires cloyed in the air and the shouts and cries of soldiers filled the air with a droning cacophony.

The army of the Matamet had come to Kala Tul.

E
ND OF
B
OOK
II

B
OOK
III

T
HE
M
ARSHES

C
HAPTER 16

T
O
H
IS
E
XCELLENCY
C
OUNT
A
LEXANDER
K
HRISTOFORICH
B
ENKENDORF
,

Chief of Gendarmes.

Field Report prepared by Baron de Bode, special operative at large; Isfahan Province.

Decrypted by Y. K.

Ekspeditsiya III

Tretiye Otdeleniye

His Imperial Majesty’s Chancellry.

Your Excellency,

As instructed, I have joined with the forces of the Governor of Isfahan. This proved a fairly straightforward task since the Governor, or Matamet as he is referred to in the common parlance, is a man not lacking in ambition. Posing as an experienced former officer in the Imperial Army I was quickly able to secure a position as a cavalry instructor.

However, my hopes that this position would allow me either to monitor the activities of alien interests within Isfahan itself or to help influence Persian policy regarding our Ottoman problem have been temporarily and unfortunately thwarted by the immediate priorities of the Governor. I must confess that I am finding it difficult to fathom the motive behind the Governor’s current course of action.

So it is that, for reasons temporarily obscured from my understanding, I find myself, ‘with fainting soul athirst for Grace’ wandering in a desert place. I am currently camped, along with the Matamet’s army, upon a high plain in the Bakhtiari country, surrounding the shabby castle of one of the local warlords. The Matamet seems momentarily diverted from affairs of state and appears instead to be entirely focused on a feud with a group of godless mountain nomads. What is more, while the Matamet far outnumbers and outguns these tribesmen, they on the other hand occupy all of the defensible ground around the plain. This strategic advantage is further enhanced by the fact that the warlord’s allies control much of the supply routes to our rear, making any prolonged siege untenable. Your servant can only suppose that the Governor intends to expedite his aims either by some subtle means as yet unknown, or else to rely on his authority and reputation to intimidate these nomads into surrender. From both the stories I have heard tell of the Matamet and evidence of his handiwork I have observed personally, I suspect that the latter course of action would in most cases prevail. However, I have also observed among these Bakhtiari a peculiar stubbornness and strength of character bordering on fanaticism. I fear that I may be lost among these savages and madmen for some time before any resolution is found.

My only relief from the tedium of camp life has been the discovery of a British agent among the Bakhtiari. We have become excellent friends. He is Mr Layard, a lawyer and antiquarian who has come to live among the tribesmen to study local ruins before resuming an overland journey to Ceylon. At least, that is the story he related to me. I have no doubt that he is here as an informant for Her Majesty’s Government – for what other reason would a man elect to take an arduous and uncomfortable overland journey through Asia or else choose to live among unpredictable and dangerous people for whom the slaughter of Christian men is a religious obligation?

My first encounter with Mr Layard was something of a surprise. I was seeing to my horse after drilling some of the Matamet’s cavalry, when I noticed one of the Bakhtiari approaching. There is something of a fragile truce during the siege, while messages and embassies are exchanged between the parties and it is not unusual to see a few tribesmen skulking around the camp, begging from the officers or looking for things to steal. The Bakhtiari have a reputation across the region as the most bloodthirsty thieves and cutthroats and the Matamet’s ferrashes give them fairly short shrift if they catch them in the camp without good reason. This fellow was particularly savage in aspect. He was tall and tanned and his wild unruly hair and beard were dyed a bright red. His Bakhtiari robes were tattered and stained and along with the long knives worn by every tribesman he carried a powerful-looking double-barrelled gun. He looked every inch a bandit and I had no doubt that he was loitering with the intention of stealing one of our horses. I shouted at him in Persian, telling him to clear off or else I would call the ferrashes. Rather than leave, he looked me insolently in the eye and strode over towards me. Fearing the worst, I drew my pistol and repeated my imprecation. Your Excellency might imagine my surprise when the savage addressed me in flawless French, demanding of me who I was and what I was doing at Kala Tul (the name of the Castle we now besiege).

On reflection, I do not recall whether I was more shocked by his command of French or by his arrogant impudence. I must confess that I found something about his manner intimidating and could do little more than reply in French to the effect that I could not see how my affairs were any of his business – rather than call upon him the whipping he deserved. I was further nonplussed when he addressed me again, repeating his questions but this time in Russian. While I stood somewhat amazed, he informed me that he had detected the faintest Russian accent in my French and had hazarded that this would be my preferred language; adding with a smile that he was quite happy to continue our discourse in Persian if I wished to have a little more practice.