Monsters in the Sand (4 page)

Austen didn’t know what to say. Felix stared at a spot on the ceiling and pursed his lips in a silent whistle. Nelson covered his nose with his paws.

Colonel Taylor lowered his voice. ‘But, as punishment for my sins, I may need your assistance.’ His words were friendly, but his fists remained clenched. ‘I gather you’re at a loose end at present. You have no money, no horse, a few paltry possessions in your saddlebags, no possibility of employment and, finally, no hope of excavating Nineveh. Am I right?’

That last twist of the knife, Nineveh, hurt the most.

‘However,’ he went on, ‘you are fluent in Persian, Arabic, Turkish and local dialects. Your language lessons in my library weren’t wasted after all. For reasons that escape me, Turks, Arabs and Persians trust you.’

‘Trust Austen?’ Felix murmured almost inaudibly. ‘Not the mothers with beautiful daughters.’

Colonel Taylor gave Felix a look that could have opened a gun case at fifty yards.

‘Now where was I? That’s right. More to the point, Layard, apparently you’ve mapped river crossings, mountain passes and hundreds of useful topographical details.’

Austen’s hopes soared. Was he being sent back into Persia?

The colonel held up a hand. ‘Let me be perfectly clear. You’re far too impulsive and hot-headed for my liking. You have an uncanny knack for getting into trouble –
and
getting out of it. You’re tough as old boot leather and have an innate reverence for fighting, feasts and the glories of the past.’

Why had he hinted at Nineveh again?

‘Trouble is, my boy, I’ve got to think of a name for the job. Maybe call it vice-consul or some such rubbish.
Agent,
on the other hand, might sound vaguer and safer.’

What had this to do with Nineveh?

‘I want you to write a full report on your Persian fiasco, complete with detailed maps. You will carry that report, along with other sensitive documents, to Constantinople, where you will deliver them personally to Sir Stratford Canning, the British Ambassador. While you are in Constantinople, you will have a chance to meet Major Rawlinson, who is close to cracking the code of the ancient Assyrian language. I will recommend that Sir Stratford find you useful employment as an agent – any employment – to get you out of my sight.’

Sensitive documents, maps – spying? Colonel Taylor was giving him the chance to ride across ancient Assyria. He could search for Nineveh, visit Castle Tul, live a life of freedom and adventure. He could ride alone through the deserts, hunt bears and wolves in the mountains.

‘I take it that your silence means assent?’

Austen felt stupid, propped up like this on one arm. ‘Thank you, sir. Yes, yes.’

‘Don’t be too hasty. There are certain considerations. First, before you leave, you are to write a letter to your long-suffering mother. You may imagine that because you are a man of twenty-five summers, you are no longer her child. If I remember correctly, your mother sent you east in the fond hope that you would become a dutiful legal clerk on a tea plantation, marry a nice English girl and take tiffin. When you write to her, you are to make no mention of quixotic cavalry charges against cannon, and not a word about Persian women, whatever their charms. Understood? And not one reference to the black death, or walking barefoot through the desert. Give her
some
hope that you are forsaking your wild ways. Tell her you are settling down into regular employment with the British Embassy in Constantinople. Let her be at peace, because the prodigal son has returned.’

‘I always feel sorry for the fatted calves,’ Felix chortled.

‘What?’ Austen and Colonel Taylor spoke as one.

Felix’s eyes twinkled. ‘Whenever a prodigal son returns, a fatted calf gets the knife.’

‘Jones, you naval wallahs have absolutely no sense of occasion.’ The colonel permitted himself the hint of a smile. His eyes darted sideways under their wrinkled lids. ‘By the way, Layard, I hear the French are digging for Nineveh near Mosul. We wouldn’t want them to steal the glory, would we?’

A butterfly with wings wider than a house drifted above shimmering desert sand. Gossamer wings beat through waves of mirage and a long proboscis uncurled from the giant insect’s mouth. Austen stopped his horse and watched, as moment by moment the butterfly’s wings retracted into long wooden frames and the proboscis shrank until it was the swaying neck of a camel.

Two more camels, a horse, the black dots of sheep and goats emerged from the quivering air. A Bedouin nomad, gun raised, spurred his horse straight for him.

Austen dismounted, scooped up a handful of sand and, as the rider approached, let it trickle through his fingers as a sign of peace. ‘
Salam alaikum,
Peace be with you,’ he called.

‘
Alaikum as salam,’
the nomad replied, then pushed his gun back into its holster. He examined Austen quizzically. Why was this snub-nose dressed in the headscarf, cloak and shoes of his people?

An infant’s face popped out of his saddlebag and stared at Austen.

When the tented camel-litter passed by, a woman’s hand decorated with brown henna, reached to twitch the doorflap shut.

A sheep, tied to the camel by a rope, trotted along. The fresh skin of a camel calf was strapped to its back. A second camel, with her head down, sniffed the skin of the calf and moaned piteously. Somewhere back in the desert, her calf had died, and she’d refused to leave it. Now, bewildered by grief, she followed the smell of its skin. Even in death the calf continued its journey.

Austen nudged his horse’s side with his heels. ‘There is no god, but God.’

He rode down a long slope of desert towards the wide, flat bank of the River Tigris, where lines of pack mules struggled through deep sand. Women trod ankle-deep in the sand, water jars on their heads and baskets in their hands. Near the doorways of black tents, camels roared against the pain of their nose pegs and fought against kneeling. Singing children led horses
down to water, as they had in the days of the patriarch, Abraham.

A bridge of boats chained together spanned the river and led to the gates of Mosul. Mules and camels loaded with bales and chests, walked along the narrow road of planks, which rocked slightly as the chains moved. Mosul’s high walls, mosques and houses glowed in the hot sun.

A call to prayer, sung in a beautiful tenor voice, floated across the river from a high minaret.

A thrill tingled through Austen. Here he was, actually living in the magical world of
The Arabian Nights!
His mind drifted back to the glass chest filled with books in Grandfather’s drawing room. When he was only eight and Grandfather wasn’t looking, he had sneaked in there and stared through the glass walls at the books – all beautiful and precious, but forbidden.

Every night, when Grandfather had finished reading, he would put his book in the glass chest and turn the key in the big lock. Then, peeking around to make sure no one was watching, he would put the key under one of his armchair cushions. As soon as he’d gone, Austen would creep out of his hiding place and open the chest. Closing his eyes, he’d reach in for a book.

Fate chose his first one,
The Arabian Nights.
He hid under the table to read it, with the cloth pulled down like a tent and a candle for light. That night, he entered the pit of the dead with Sinbad and followed Aladdin into the underground caves of jewels. He dug up an old bottle, rubbed it and released a jinn with hands like pitchforks. His imagination almost burst with visions of treasure chests, heroic battles and beautiful women. The marvels of hidden cities, monsters in the sand and wicked magicians enthralled him. From that night, his fate was sealed. The world of
The Arabian Nights
would be his destiny.

In a waking-dream, Austen rode along the bank of the Tigris. Ahead was the mound called Kuyunjik, as high as a cathedral steeple, with peaks, troughs and valleys carved by centuries of wind and rain. This massive heap of earth was big enough to bury a small town and the French archaeologists thought it covered Nineveh. To prove it, they’d started digging.

Austen’s stomach was in knots. Surely, Nineveh had to be further south, hidden in the mound at Nimrud – not here. But what if he was wrong and the French beat him to the discovery of Nineveh?

He tethered his horse to a bush near the mound and, slinging the saddlebag of secret documents over one shoulder, he started the steep climb. Each footstep sank in loose soil and hurt, despite the bandages on his feet. He was puffing by the time he reached the top and he stopped to catch his breath.

About twenty yards away, on the edge of a newly dug trench, a young man sat on a stool. His boots were surrounded by broken pottery and fragments of alabaster – a form of smooth, hard limestone. In a dark suit with a red cravat at his throat, he sucked lazily on
a pipe and stared through the smoke into the desert. At the sound of Austen’s footsteps, a haunted expression crossed his face, as if he was struggling to return from a terrible dream. Then his eyes focussed on Austen’s stubbly hair showing beneath the headdress. His attention settled for a moment on the saddlebags. At last he spoke.
‘Ça va
?’

‘Comme ci, comme ça.’
Austen fell into the French of his schooldays in Paris. ‘My name is Austen Henry Layard.’

The stranger showed no surprise. ‘Paul Emile Botta. French vice-consul at the hellhole of Mosul.’ He held the pipe out for Austen, but Austen winced at the fumes. ‘Thanks – but it’s wasted on me.’

‘My informers told me to expect you.’ Botta shrugged and took another puff. ‘I hear you’ve been having some fun in Persia.’ His eyes drifted back to the saddlebags. ‘You are, I think, more than a nomad?’

Austen picked up a piece of alabaster. To his immense relief, it was blank. No carving, no cuneiform writing. ‘And you are more than a vice-consul?’

‘I have a few interests. I am a naturalist and historian by inclination, diplomat by necessity and, by misfortune, a son of that Botta who wrote the history of Florence.’ Botta’s dark eyes flashed with anger and his lips tightened, then he quickly hid his feelings.

Austen pretended not to notice. ‘I’ve read your father’s book.’ He sat cross-legged on the ground beside Paul. ‘When I was eight years old, I lived in Florence with my grandfather and I fell in love with the city.’

They sat together in silence. Botta seemed to be contemplating the wisps of smoke from his pipe. Austen held the lump of alabaster, agonising over a decision. His instinct was to trust this man, even though he was a spy for the French.

‘I thought you’d be taller,’ Botta said. ‘All this time I’ve wanted to meet the Lion, and he’s nothing but a stocky English boy.’ He inhaled deeply and released the smoke through his nose. ‘I’m supposed to find Nineveh, you know. The Louvre has appointed me as an archaeologist and France has sent a warship to the Persian Gulf to carry my marvellous loot back home.’

Austen undid his saddlebag and took out a sketchbook. ‘My first sketches were done in Florence. I was so infatuated with its buildings and paintings that I took a few art lessons and began to record the city in my book. By the time I was nine, I was a tour guide for rich Europeans.’

It was the Nineveh sketchbook. He opened it and put his fingertip on a curved line. ‘This is all that remained of a carving. The locals used it for shooting practice. I think it was a tulip, or lily.’

Botta peered closely. ‘If you extend the curve this way, it could be the honeysuckle of Greek Ionic.’

‘Exactly.’ Austen laughed. ‘Imagine the outrage in museums if we proved that western art was influenced by Assyria! What if Asia, not Greece, was the cradle of our civilisation?’

‘I’d love to see the curators’ faces.’

Austen turned the pages slowly, until he stopped at the tree he had been sketching when he was shot at. He showed it to Botta. ‘This is from southern Persia.’ His mind flew away to Khanumi tying his dagger to her arm, Hussein defying the eunuch, and Au Kerim dying in the river.

He brought his mind back to Kuyunjik. ‘I think this is the Tree of Life.’

‘Hm. Perhaps.’ Botta scratched his chin. ‘Your sketch is incomplete.’

‘Gunfire.’

‘Inconvenient.’

‘So, the Louvre thinks this mound is Nineveh? My hunch is that Nineveh is not here, but south, at Nimrud.’

‘No. I’ve dug there and found the usual scraps, which tell nothing. It’s the same story here. Maybe my best hope is north, at the mound of Khorsabad.
A farmer told me he found some interesting bricks there.’ He sighed. ‘But they all say that, don’t they?’

Botta turned his pipe upside down, tapped it and ashes fell out. ‘I’ve just had an idea. Why don’t you come with me to Khorsabad? We could have some fun digging together. What if we discovered Nineveh? To hell with national glory. Why don’t we share the fame? Throw in your job as a spy. I’ll pay you good French money as a supervisor. Come on – what do you say?’

How could he be a mere supervisor? Nineveh was his passion, his dream. ‘Khorsabad is too far from the river.’ He could barely control the tremor in his voice. ‘The capital city would’ve needed the river at its walls for trade and survival during sieges. No, Khorsabad is at best an outlying fortress city. Nimrud is still my choice.’

‘Nimrud is two miles from the river.’

‘But last year, I saw masonry that must have been wharves beside Nimrud. The ancient River Tigris washed the walls of Nineveh, but centuries later the river shifted to its present course.’

‘That sounds like forcing the evidence to fit the theory.’

‘The prophet Jonah said the city of Nineveh was three days journey from what is now Mosul. Nimrud
is about twenty miles south of Mosul. The average day of travelling with sheep and goats is about seven miles, so Nimrud is in the right place.’

‘Well, so be it. The Lion prefers to hunt alone.’

Austen smiled. ‘A wager. Twenty bottles of fine shiraz that I find Nineveh first.’

Botta shook his head. ‘I have a warship at Basra, unlimited money and an army of workers whenever I wish. What support do you have?’