Monsters in the Sand (6 page)

Panting hard, Austen hauled himself back onboard and stared inland at the hill of Nimrud. It was moving slowly in circles against the sunset sky, until the boatman climbed back and took control of the rudder. Gradually, Nimrud found its rightful place, running north-south, with the tall pyramid shape rising at the northern end.

Nineveh’s wonders, mystery and glory were as close as breathing. Years of dreaming, hoping, sufferings came down to this moment of arrival.

Reeds parted as they nosed in to land, and when the raft bumped against the mud, Austen leapt onto dry ground. For a moment, he remembered the pasha’s warning not to dig at Nimrud, but he had letters from Constantinople. One treacherous, corrupt pasha at Mosul was not going to frighten him away. The pasha fully understood the close alliance between his supreme sultan and Sir Stratford Canning. He’d never risk the wrath of two empires.

While the boatman and Hormuzd hammered spikes into the riverbank to anchor the raft, Austen ran for sheer delight up to the top of the bank. A putrid smell like burnt rubbish drifted on the evening
air. Why were no camels or horses drinking at the river?

Dreading what he’d see, Austen ran along the riverbank. High reeds hid his view, until he rounded a bend and saw the village. The roofs had fallen in, walls were blackened by fire and no sound of life came from the ruins. Branches of dead fruit trees like skeleton fingers scratched at the darkening glass of the sky. There was no human movement.

Where were the men who would be his workers? He and Hormuzd could never dig through thousands of tons of rubble. Nimrud was five miles around the base. He was here at last, but how could he unearth Nineveh?

Austen had not waited this long and come this far for nothing. Nimrud was so close he couldn’t just turn his back on it and go away.

He scrambled down into the ancient riverbed that was now just dry sand. How strange to walk where fish had swum and boats had sailed two thousand five hundred years ago! The last of the sunset faded and he stumbled over the uneven ground. But he forged ahead, guided by Saturn shining above the high pyramid that loomed against the Milky Way. The pyramid was probably the ruins of some ziggurat like the Tower of Babylon that had challenged heaven.

Was this a trick of the eye, or an after-image of Saturn? There was a light twinkling at the base of
Nimrud. His boots crunched and squeaked on the sand as he walked towards it. When he drew closer, the flickering became bars of light between the shabby timbers of a hovel.

Austen went to the open door, looked in and screams of terror burst out into the night. Three women and two small children in rags cringed away from him and huddled in a corner. A man with ragged turban and grey beard struggled to his feet and stood between the stranger and his family. Two thin greyhounds, tails curled between their legs, limped towards Austen, but were too weak to attack. He held his hands down for them to sniff his skin and one dog licked his fingers. Behind the dog’s ears and around its neck, fleas clustered like spilt pepper.

The man, about sixty years old, wiped his eyes with the back of his hand.

Austen placed his palms together. ‘Glory be to him who guides us by night.’

‘Welcome to my home, stranger.’ The old man clutched his tattered cloak around his body.

A woman, probably a wife, knelt and spread a mat on the dirt floor. Another woman dropped a sheep’s foot into a pot hanging over a fire in the centre of the room. Austen noticed grass seeds floating on the surface of the thin soup.

The little boy, who was about six years old, crept close to his mother and pressed hard against her, like a foal demanding milk. She slipped her finger into the soup and held it behind her back so he could lick it. That was all he would eat. The girl, who was a year or two younger, gazed with large sad eyes at the food she would not taste.

Austen sat cross-legged on a mat and the man sat facing him. A scar ran down one cheek and into his beard. His hands were gnarled, and tiny quarter-moons of nail grew from the raw quick of each fingertip.

‘My name is Awad, sheik of the Jehesh. My lands have been plundered by the pasha, many of my people killed and the rest are hiding in the mountains.’

‘Truly these are dark times. The pasha brings nothing but suffering to this land. My people live in a place called England, far from here, and my name is Austen Layard.’

‘You are English? Yet you dress as a Bedouin.’

‘I prefer the life of a nomad.’

‘It was the Bedouin who attacked our village.’

‘I did not wish to bring fear to your door.’

His wife scooped out the sheep’s foot, slid it into a bowl and then spooned watery soup over it. The children sniffed the air and stared longingly at the bones and sinews.

Austen took the bowl, gave thanks to Allah, and tasted the hot soup. He felt wretched with guilt and couldn’t watch the children. From the corner of his eye he saw the little girl imitating him, holding cupped hands to her mouth, sipping, and swallowing. But he could not refuse the food or offer her any, as that would insult his host’s sacred obligation to care for a guest. So when he sucked the bone, he made sure he left most of the sinews hanging from it.

Sheik Awad noticed Austen glance again at his damaged hands. ‘I was questioned by the pasha. He accused me of hiding money, which he said was the Teeth Tax, owed to him for the wearing down of his teeth when he ate sheep he stole from me.’

‘Allah will bring him to justice.’ Austen thought of the night when the pasha invited leading citizens of Mosul to a feast at his palace, as a sign of his friendship. When the people were sitting, soldiers rushed in and slit their throats.

The sheik’s gaunt face did not fully conceal his anxiety. ‘Why do you pass by Nimrud at night?’

‘Nineveh fills me with wonder and I want to learn its secrets. Perhaps the city, built by King Nimrod’s officer, Athur, is here under the mound of Nimrud?’

‘Nineveh? An Englishman.’ The sheik’s eyes widened. ‘Are you the man they call the Lion?’

‘Yes.’

‘Al-Muhayim the preserver be praised for sending you among us.’

Austen allowed time to pass. Finally he said, ‘Sheik Awad, I need your help.’

The sheik raised his eyebrows. ‘What is your wish?’

‘To find the buried palaces of Nineveh.’

‘Ah, the Lion has a secret ability to find gold?’

‘Perhaps there is gold, but the treasures I seek are carved in stone.’

The sheik shook his head. ‘How puzzling. You travel from a land beyond the sea, where the sun sets just to dig up old stones?’

‘There is so much to discover. The writings and carvings may tell us more of the days of Abraham and the powerful dead.’

The sheik contemplated that idea. ‘What do you know of Abraham and King Nimrod?’

‘I have learnt that King Nimrod arrogantly tried to slay Abraham, but God sent an insect, which burrowed into Nimrod’s ear. It ate into his brain, where it grew fatter until the agony drove him mad. He commanded his servants to hit his head with hammers without ceasing and he lived in these pains for four hundred years until he died of his torments.’

‘You speak the truth.’

‘Sheik Awad, although your people have been scattered by the winds of war, you may know where I could hire some workers. I need them to help me dig and I could pay them with piastres and food for their daily meals. But most of all I need a man of authority and respect to supervise them.’

The sheik put one hand to his grey beard. ‘The village of Selamiya is only three miles away. It was burnt, too, but there are some families living in tents on the edge of the village.’

‘I must move all my things away from the river. When the sun rises, if my possessions are visible on the riverbank, they will be stolen.’

‘That is true. Starving tribes are moving down the River Zab to the Tigris.’

‘I have boxes of equipment and bags of flour, coffee and sugar and many other foods.’

At the mention of food, the children whimpered.

‘I also need the raft dismantled for its timbers. Perhaps my food and other things will be safer in tents near the supervisor’s house. I especially need cooks to bake bread and prepare meals for hungry workers. And I will be looking for sturdy children to help carry water, and collect dung for the cooking fires. In return, I will make sure they get their share of what I have to eat.’

One of the wives rocked backwards and forwards and wept. The others touched their foreheads to the ground and thanked God for his blessings.

Austen kept his eyes on the sheik. ‘With your permission, we’ll carry the food here first, so the cooks can straightaway prepare a meal of warm bread, dates and almonds, and then coffee with lots of sugar.’

The sheik scrambled awkwardly to his feet. ‘I will go to the village of Selamiya now, and before the moon rises, I’ll return with strong men.’

‘Sheik Awad, please accept these tokens of respect.’ Austen took two red silk handkerchiefs from his belt.

Wincing with the pain in his fingers, the sheik tucked them into the folds of his turban so that they hung down the front. Smiling, he patted his turban. ‘From this night, you may pass safely through my land with a tray of gold on your head.’ He hurried off into the night.

Austen went outside and gazed at the silhouette of Nimrud against the stars. Its steep sides rose for a hundred feet or more, like ramparts defending a city. Paul Botta had found nothing up there, because he had dug shallow trenches. But Austen had another plan. His head was hot with excitement. Tomorrow, the ghosts of Nimrud would blink in the bright sunlight.

Hormuzd quivered with excitement, or maybe he was shivering with cold. ‘Today, I become an archaeologist.’ His breath steamed as he spoke and he rubbed his hands together. He stared eagerly into the heavy mist that smoked like a battlefield across the top of Nimrud.

‘Well, go and find me a palace.’

Hormuzd bounded like a gazelle towards the ziggurat and bent low to search the ground. Above him, the line between night and day crept slowly down the high pyramid. Far away to the east, the sun climbed above the distant mountains of Persia.

Five men from Selamiya, wearing loose cloaks and white headcloths tied with braided leather, wandered over the mound. Every so often they reached down,
like herons spearing silvery fish, then held up their catch for Austen to see.

‘Over here.’ The sheik was on his knees beside a stone poking from the ground.

Austen jumped over a half-filled trench and clambered through heaps of rubble.

‘Last month’s storm must have washed away the soil.’ The sheik brushed dirt from the stone.

Austen held his breath. It was alabaster, used in Assyrian palaces, and it hadn’t been damaged by fire.

The sheik gripped the top of the stone, winced with pain, and tried to pull it out. It wouldn’t budge, so he let it go and blew on his fingertips.

Austen knelt beside him and tried pushing it sideways instead, but it was stuck. ‘Get spades and crowbars.’

Hormuzd sprinted to the heap of tools, grabbed a spade and charged back, with the blade held out before him like a lance. He skidded to a halt, slid the spade into soil beside the stone and shoved. It crunched through something.

‘Careful, careful, careful,’ Austen urged. ‘Go straight down – not at an angle.’

Hormuzd scraped away the loose soil and gravel, then pushed the blade in again slowly. It grated against the alabaster.

‘Stop, Hormuzd. Try removing soil along the top. Gently now.’

Hormuzd sucked in a breath and eased soil to the side. The men from Selamiya gathered around in a circle and watched. When the spade lifted the earth away, it was obviously more than a single rock. The white slab went down deep.

‘Wait.’ Austen rubbed dirt from the surface of the stone. ‘Do you realise what you’ve uncovered?’

‘It’s too narrow to be a path, or part of a roof.’ Then Hormuzd whooped like a crazy man and waved his spade in the air. ‘A wall. The top of a wall.’

‘Follow that line and start clearing it.’

Whirling around, Austen pointed to each man. ‘You, dig in that direction.
You
go with him. You – go ten paces east, in line with this, and dig.’

His excitement was contagious. Spades clanged and scraped and the rubble flew like winnowed chaff.

‘Careful!’ Austen cried.

‘We are being careful,’ they said, hacking away at the narrow top of a wall.

The spirit of the hunt was too much for the sheik. He grasped a pickaxe and chipped away painfully at the soil. ‘May Satan, the Accursed, have the pain of my hands.’

Hormuzd glared at him for having said the name
Satan
out loud. To save them all from punishment, he prayed, ‘I beseech you, God, restore your beloved fallen angel to sit at your right hand in Heaven.’

‘Devil-worshipper,’ whispered the sheik.

The moment of tension between them was broken by one of the men yelling, ‘Here’s a corner!’

‘Follow the wall along that side,’ Austen ordered. The men from Selamiya began to sing their war cry as they attacked the earth.

‘A feast!’ Austen yelled. ‘Tonight we will kill a sheep –
two
sheep. We’ll open bags of figs and raisins. We’ll feast until our stomachs are so hard we crack fleas on them.’

The men laughed and shouted.

Austen thrust a crowbar into the soil about a foot inside the wall. ‘Hormuzd, help me here.’

Hormuzd ran over. ‘What can I do?’

‘Let’s dig straight into the chamber. Follow the wall down – no matter how deep – and we’ll keep on until we find the floor.’

Austen speared the earth, while Hormuzd flung it away with the spade. Before long they had a rhythm and were digging fast, until they were waist-deep in the narrow trench. And all the way down, the wonderful wall shone white as new.

Above them, the sheik tied ropes to the handles of wicker baskets, then lowered the baskets into the trench. Hormuzd filled them with earth, the sheik pulled them up and tipped the dirt out.

Hormuzd saw it first, as his shovel dragged soil away – a line of wedge-shaped writing along the wall.