by David Harris
The workers tore off their cloaks and tunics and rushed forward.
‘Choose teams who aren’t afraid to watch over these trenches tonight.’ Austen’s hands were shaking, so he hid them under his cloak. ‘Two sheep will be given to each team for a feast to last them through the night.’
Longworth stood on the edge of the trench and sketched the scene. ‘What a scoop. This is my lucky day.’
‘It’s not entirely good fortune.’ Austen reached out and pressed one hand onto the first lion’s mane. ‘Once the word is out, thousands of people will hurry here from Mosul and the regions around.’
Austen climbed wearily up and spoke in a quiet voice that nobody else could hear. ‘Between you and me, we’re in trouble. The drought is getting worse, crops are failing. If there’s a famine, God help us. Law and order will break down, bandits will once again rule the roads and tribes of nomads will see Nimrud as easy pickings. Under a determined attack, what chance will we have?’
Hormuzd hurried over. ‘Sir, I have some difficult news.’ His young face seemed old with care. ‘Raiders attacked our raft as it was unloading near the fortress. The ropes and felts are gone.’
‘All of them?’
‘All gone.’
Then so were his chances of shifting the bulls and lions. The hundreds of yards of rope had been for easing the statues onto the huge cart, and then for towing the cart down to the river. Thick felt carpets were needed to cushion the fragile alabaster during its two-mile journey to the river. And without those ropes and felts he couldn’t secure the wall slabs to the rafts. It would be impossible to pack the smaller treasures into chests and crates safely. If there were no soft padding, none would survive the long journey by raft to Basra.
Austen pictured the risky journey. At Basra, his marvels would be loaded onto a ship for Bombay, transferred to another ship, flung by gales around the Cape of Good Hope, then bashed through the stormy Atlantic, north to faraway England. One shift in the cargo, one careless handling, and treasures as wonderful as the jewels of Aladdin’s cave would be smashed to worthless junk.
But, without the ropes and felts, nothing would be shipped from Nimrud at all.
Another awful thought occurred to him. If news of one successful robbery were to spread, no one would fear him and Nimrud would soon be under attack. Replacement ropes and felt would take weeks to arrive. By then, he’d be out of money, out of workers and out of ammunition after having defended the treasures from repeated attacks.
He had unearthed a vast treasure that he couldn’t move. But raiders would. What they didn’t smash, they’d take away to sell in the markets.
Chapter 34
‘There are more of them than I expected.’ Austen drew on the reins and checked his pistols. Abraham Agha, bristling with weapons, flexed his fingers. ‘I count forty-three.’ He spoke calmly, as if the odds were in their favour.
When they trotted towards the black tents, the crowd parted uneasily. At the sheik’s tent, Austen leapt from his horse, thrust his spear into the ground and tethered his horse to it, as a sign that he was now under the sheik’s protection. He and Abraham marched straight inside and the sheik half-rose to his feet. Austen sat on the carpet and Abraham stood guard, each hand on a pistol.
At the end of the long tent, servants hastily dragged ropes and felts out of sight. But there were too many to hide and heaps lay there in full view.
‘The peace of Allah be with you, sheik.’ Austen’s face gave away no feelings.
‘And with you, O Lion.’
‘By the laws of our friendship, sheik, what is my property is also yours. What is yours, I may claim.’
‘May Allah keep you in good health.’
Austen made a show of examining his rope which was wound around the central pole of the tent. ‘Some of my property is important to me, but of less value to others.’
‘What might those things be, Lion of Nimrud?’
A rope rubbed noisily against the base of the tent as somebody outside dragged it away.
‘My ropes and mats of felt.’
The sheik looked steadily at the piles of rope and matting. ‘Let me be your sacrificial lamb if any of your ropes or felts are in my tent.’
A crowd at the tent door added their voices in unison. ‘Our sheik speaks the truth.’
‘Two men against so many? The sheik opened his hands. ‘If you found any of your property here, why, I would happily return it.’
‘Two against so many? I learnt long ago that the estimation other people have of me is no true guide. What matters is the view I have of myself.’ Austen put one hand on his dagger hilt as the signal to Abraham, who strode over to the sheik and clipped a pair of handcuffs on his wrists. He thrust a pistol against the startled sheik’s throat and dragged him to his feet.
Austen rested his hand on his gun. Bracing himself on one side of the sheik and with Abraham on the other side, they rushed at the door.
‘Stand aside,’ Abraham roared, ‘or the sheik dies!’
Shocked, confused, the men made way. Some half-drew swords, but were too amazed or afraid to use them.
Abraham climbed into the saddle, hoisted up the sheik like a sack of flour and spurred his horse. When Austen mounted his horse, one man grabbed timidly at his bridle, but Austen drew his pistol and the man backed off. The sheik’s wives ran wailing to Austen and clutched at his feet and clothes, begging him to release their husband. He dug his heels into the horse, broke free and galloped away.
No one was chasing them. They must really have believed that Abraham would shoot their sheik. Didn’t they have a plan in case he was kidnapped?
Austen caught up to Abraham and spoke to the bewildered sheik. ‘Within hours you will be in Mosul, where my friend, Tahyar, will decide this matter of the ropes and felts. But I do not advise you to let him hold a trial. Men of every tribe will testify against you as a notorious thief of camels, horses and donkeys. Tahyar will send my friend Captain Daoud with a hundred irregulars to search your camp for my ropes and felts. Think what Daoud’s irregulars will do with your people, while you are imprisoned in a dark underground pit of lepers crawling with lice and rats. Think of the floggings you will suffer. Most of all, think about the executioner.’
‘No more, I beg you, O Lion. What must I do?’
‘From my tent you will send a message to your people. If every last one of my ropes and felts is not at Nimrud by sunset tonight, then you will meet your dreadful fate and your tribe will be punished most horribly. Do we have an understanding?’
Chapter 35
‘Get everyone into shelter.’ Austen started running towards his hut.
Workers ran to their tents and grappled with ropes. Women and children scurried down ladders into tunnels and horses tugged at their tethers.
‘Mr Layard!’ Hormuzd sprinted over, waving a sheet of paper in the air. He was a tiny white figure against the onrushing sandstorm that suddenly broke over the riverbank. Rocks, earth and branches blasted upwards, spun away and fell onto the desert.
‘Get into my hut!’
‘The letter.’
‘Not now. Run for your life!’ Austen held his hut door open.
Hormuzd took one look over his shoulder and raced for the hut. The hot breath of hell swept over him, and he was flung like a straw at the hut. Austen grabbed his arm and dragged him inside just as the main force struck. A whirlpool of papers, cups and clothes swirled inside. The sunlight disappeared and the hut was blacker than night. They lost sense of time and Austen prayed that the roofs would not collapse on the treasures.
As suddenly as it struck, the storm was gone, its roar fading away. Light returned and voices were shouting outside. Austen and Hormuzd opened the door. People were climbing out of tunnels, sheep were scattered among the palaces, and women wandered about, collecting pots and pans.
‘The letter!’ Hormuzd showed his empty hands.
‘What was it?’
‘I’m sorry, Mr Layard, but the Fr
ench have begun digging at Kuyunjik.’
It took a few seconds for Austen to reply. ‘Is Paul Botta there?’
‘Not yet.’
His brain raced at a hundred miles an hour.
‘Are you all right, Mr Layard?’
‘Hormuzd, we are going to dig up Kuyunjik.’
‘But – the French?’
‘Tahya loathes that slimy, troublemaking viceconsul and he’ll kick the French off Kuyunjik before you can say “Jack Robinson.” I have in writing the prior licences to dig there.’
‘Who is Jack Robinson?’
‘Never mind – it’s just a saying.’
Hormuzd put his question carefully, as if lifting the lid on a box full of snakes. ‘So, sir, we are leaving Nimrud?’
‘Not all of us and not all at once. I will leave for Kuyunjik in a week, but you will stay here to oversee the closure of Nimrud, then you will join me.’
‘Closure?’
‘Hear me out.’ Austen held up his hand. ‘I have no intention of forsaking Nimrud. There is still so much to discover here. But I must bury the palaces to protect them. When we return, in a few months, we’ll dig them up again and may yet prove that Nimrud is Nineveh.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Look, as paymaster, you know the facts of our finances. This season of digging here at Nimrud must draw to an early close. The first sandstorm has struck, temperatures will soon hit a hundred and twenty degrees and work will be impossible. With drought, famine and marauding bandits all putting our lives in danger as well, I’m not prepared to risk the lives of my friends.’
Hormuzd shook his head. ‘Bury everything?’
‘Not so fast, all right? We’ll ship back to England the smaller treasures and the best of the wall slabs. I’ll send one, maybe two bulls and the lions back as prizes for the Museum. They’ll be a sensation.’
‘Sir, the British Museum has not given permission for you to send bulls and lions.’
‘They will, or Aunt Sara will let loose the hounds of Fleet Street to rip open their throats.’
‘Now.’ Austen stretched his arms wide. ‘Let’s move some giants.’
Chapter 36
‘Are you ready, sheik?’ Austen looked down from the high tower of earth.
Thirty feet below, in the pit, the sheik called, ‘Lift the ropes!’
Lines of men pulled on the ropes and took the strain. All around the top of the pit, spectators cheered and shouted songs. An orchestra of drums, pipes and trumpets burst into loud celebration.
A rope slipped from the bull’s shoulder. If it slid off the protective matting, it would cut into the bull. ‘The rope!’ Austen screamed at the top of his voice.
The sheik put one hand to his ear and shrugged. Austen grabbed his long whip of hippopotamus hide and pointed frantically. The sheik saw what was wrong and yelled to the men to help him shift the rope back.
One last check. The ropes went right around his tall tower and then back to the bull, so that the solid earth took much of the weight and the bull could be lowered gently. It all looked good. He cracked the whip and the sheik fired his gun.
Ropes twanged taut and lines of men bent their backs to ease the bull down onto its side. Six of the bravest and strongest men stood beneath the ten-ton monster and held poles that propped it up and helped control its fall. Inch by inch, as it tilted, they shifted the props, their feet scrabbling to get a grip on the platform of tree trunks covered in thick mats. Spectators chanted war cries to spur them on and the orchestra went berserk.
The ropes sawed grooves into the pillar, but they were holding. Slowly, Austen said to himself, slowly. Then ropes began to fray and smoke. Look out – no! Austen cracked his whip again and again and pointed wildly at a line of buckets. The men flung water on the ropes, which hissed and steamed, but, with a dreadful rending sound, thick hawsers parted.
Austen flung himself on his face as the ropes roared over his head. Then he crawled to the edge and looked down at the bull which was teetering, losing balance. His wonderful bull. No!
The men under it jumped out of the way as it crashed down in a great cloud of dust. It would’ve smashed into a thousand pieces, this beautiful treasure, and been totally destroyed. During a long and dreadful silence, Austen tried to see through the dust.
Undamaged, the bull lay there on its side – just lay there as if enjoying a dust bath. Its human face smiled secretly at the corners of its mouth.
Jubilation erupted as mobs broke into wild singing and dancing. Austen shoved the whip onto his broad Bedouin belt and slid down a ladder, his feet barely touching the rungs. He ran his hands lovingly over the bull. Wings of an angel, strength of a bull, face of a king – all in one piece, not sliced into slabs like Paul Botta’s bulls from Khorsabad.
The sheik organised men to gather up the ropes and splice broken sections together. Ropes, rollers and men were soon ready for the next part.
An enormous slice had been cut from the side of the mound, as if Nimrud was a gigantic pie. A road ran smoothly from the pit, all the way down to the base, ending exactly level with the top of the flat cart.
Austen took his place beside the bull and held up his whip. Musicians gathered around him and set up a deafening racket. Workers broke into song, some couldn’t resist taking the ropes as partners in a dance and Austen feared that the day was disintegrating into a party. He cracked the whip, the sheik fired again for the fun of it, and the bull shifted. Lines of men pulled the platform of round trunks along, while behind it, others put their shoulders under poles and levered it forward. As it moved, men grabbed rollers from behind and ran them round to the front so that it glided serenely along in one continuous action. Even Austen couldn’t stop himself giving a little skip and dance beside his enormous prize.
At the bottom of the mound, it rolled easily onto the cart, which groaned and swayed under the fantastic weight and the team of eight oxen yoked to the cart felt it. They shook their heads, fell to their knees and refused to get up again.
‘Men!’ Austen yelled. ‘We need men!’
The grumpy oxen were unhitched and driven away. As soon as the oxen were out of the way, there was a stampede of humans. Villagers, wives, children, and courtiers from Mosul rushed to the ropes and fought the workers for handholds. Once again, the cart moved towards the river. People sang, the wheels sang their nightingale song, and Austen galloped madly round and round the procession.
The back wheels turned jerkily. ‘The axle!’ Austen yelled to the carter, who was walking beside the front wheels. The carter ran back, uncorked a gourd and squirted a black liquid onto the axle. Then he poured a few drops into his own mouth as a dose of stimulant. Austen remembered the foul taste of a nomad’s medicine, made from that rock oil, which some Europeans called petra oleum.
The cart lumbered across the ancient riverbed and was almost at the other side when the front of the cart lurched down. The front wheels sank deeper in sand and everyone who was pulling the ropes tumbled over, laughing and rolling about.
Damn and blast! Austen had checked this route carefully the day before. What if the front axle was broken? He remembered Botta’s cart, broken down and the bull burnt to make gypsum. He clawed his way under the cart and inspected the axle. There were no obvious splits or buckled sections, but it was half-buried in sand. He dug frantically beneath it and ran his hands along the timber. It felt all right, but could they raise it from the soft sand?
‘What is best?’ The sheik peered in under the cart. Then Hormuzd crawled under it. ‘What can I do?’
‘Sheik, choose your best men to lever the cart out, then use rollers to cover the hole.’
The cart could be fixed, but what if the people gave up and drifted away? ‘Hormuzd, hurry back to Nimrud and buy the entire flock of stolen sheep.’
‘All of them?’
‘Be the prince of hagglers.’
Austen wriggled out and then climbed up on the cart. ‘Stay with me!’ he shouted to the cr
owd. ‘If you move the bull to the river I promise you a feast to last through the long afternoon and all night.’
The people rushed to help the workers dig sand away, lever up the cart and win pride of place at the end of the ropes.
At the jetty, three carpenters watched the cart lumber closer and they shook their heads. ‘The weight will smash this, you know, and if the jetty doesn’t collapse, the raft will sink.’
But as the sun set, the bull slid smoothly onto the raft, which floated comfortably in the water and swung gently on its ropes.
Near midnight, Austen sat on the raft, with his back to the bull’s solid belly. Nimrud glowed with fires and the distant noise of celebrations drifted down to the river. He imagined his people dancing above palace rooms, where ancient kings and priests moved in the flickering light.
‘Here they come!’ Hidden among crates of treasure, Abraham checked five loaded muskets that were lined up on top of one crate. ‘See that movement to the right of the jetty?’
Austen, crawled to join him at the end of the raft, as far from the bull as possible, to draw gunfire away from it. His guns were loaded and ready.
‘They’re on the jetty now. Seven men.’
Austen shouted, ‘Go in peace!’
The intruders stopped and whispered among themselves.
‘My first shot will be above your heads, as a sign of peace.’ Austen fired.
They scrambled about and two of them ran away.
‘All of you go,’ Austen yelled, ‘or die!’
A voice bellowed back, ‘There are many more of us. Prepare to die yourself!’ One, then two matchlocks ignited halfway along the jetty.
By the time several hundred men ran down from Nimrud, armed, shouting and waving burning torches dipped in bitumen, Abraham was cleaning guns and Austen was smoothing his hands over the bull, searching for holes.
‘Yah bey,’ panted Mohammed Emin. ‘It is not fair. While we feasted, you enjoyed a fight. Are there any men we can chase and kill?’