Testament
Page 34
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In this novel, the ancient hull found in 1868 at Annesley Bay on the Red Sea, the tapestry depicting Hanno discovered at Magdala in Ethiopia, and the underground chamber in the church there are all fictional, though based closely on actual historical circumstances. In the preparations for the 1868 British campaign against King Theodore of Abyssinia (Ethiopia), the Royal Engineers officer responsible for building the head of the pier in Annesley Bay—site of the fictional hull discovery—was Captain Herbert William Wood of the Madras Sappers and Miners, the basis for my fictional officer. A veteran of the 1857–9 Indian Mutiny, Wood later went on to join Grand Duke Constantine of Russia in an expedition to the Oxus and wrote a fascinating account of it in The Shores of Lake Aral (1876).
At the time of Wood’s early death in Madras in 1879, my great-great-grandfather, Lieutenant Walter Andrew Gale—the basis for Jack’s fictional ancestor—had been in the Madras Sappers for almost two years, and I have therefore imagined Wood handing on his account and the tapestry to the younger officer. The tapestry is based on an actual painting on woven wool that you can see on my website, showing fighting involving Axumites in Ethiopia; the painting is Egyptian in origin but thought to be based on a Sassanid silk that may be copied from a much older depiction. In the center is a bearded man, the basis for my fictional image of Hanno on the tapestry. Much of the loot taken by the British at Magdala, ranging from gold crosses and church vestments to weapons, manuscripts, and tabots—representations of the Tablet of Commandments—was auctioned in the field under orders of the force commander, General Napier, the proceeds being distributed among the soldiers of the expedition. Hundreds of manuscripts were acquired by the expedition archaeologist, Richard Rivington Holmes (later Sir Richard), and are in the collections of the British Museum, the British Library and Windsor Castle, among other places. You can see images of some of those treasures and read an account of the ongoing attempt to restore them to Ethiopia on my website.
The church at Magdala was guarded after the assault by soldiers of the 33rd Foot, who had been the first to enter the fortress along with an advance party of sappers, including Lieutenant Le Mesurier of the Bombay Sappers, but the guard appear to have done little to limit the plunder. Two men of the 33rd, Private Bergin and Drummer Magner, won Victoria Crosses for their exploits in climbing the fortress wall, the only decorations awarded in a campaign that was decidedly one-sided—the British did not suffer a single soldier killed in action against at least 700 Abyssinians killed and 1,200 wounded (to that figure should be added the many hundreds of his own people murdered by Theodore—Abyssinian hostages or others who displeased him—many of whom were hideously mutilated by having their hands and feet chopped off). Among the casualties of the final assault was Theodore himself, killed by his own hand with a pistol that had been sent to him as a present by Queen Victoria. The numerous eyewitness accounts of the assault of Magdala and the plundering include Coomassie and Magdala (1874) by Henry Morton Stanley, the Welshman-turned-American who was to find fame a few years later by discovering Dr. Livingstone near Lake Tanganyika.
The Abyssinian campaign was an engineers’ war, entirely dependent on the officers of the Royal Engineers and their Indian sappers for the construction of piers, railways, and roads, for supply, survey, and communication, and for many other necessities, including the operation of condensers by the sea to make fresh water. Another role was photography, and it is the extensive photo archive—much of it now online—that makes the Abyssinian campaign stand above many others of the period, not least because of the extraordinary landscape it depicts. One of those images, of the plateau overlooking the route to Magdala, I have imagined being taken by Captain Wood and Sapper Jones from their ledge the day before the assault. Many men present were struck and even unnerved by the spectacular environment in which they found themselves, so far removed from their previous experiences. One of them, the expedition geographer Clements Robert Markham (later Sir Clements, Fellow of the Royal Society), wrote in A History of the Abyssinia Expedition (1869) of seeing a celestial phenomenon in a manner that sounds like an ancient author writing of portents before a battle: “Early in the forenoon a dark-brown circle appeared round the sun, like a blister, about 15° in radius; light clouds passed and repassed over it, but it did not disappear until the usual rain-storm came up from the eastward late in the afternoon. Walda Gabir, the king’s valet, informed me that Theodore saw it when he came out of his tent that morning, and that he remarked that it was an omen of bloodshed.”
Photographs are not the only images to survive from the campaign. Another historical character in my story, Major Robert Baigrie of the Bombay Staff Corps, painted watercolors that were published as etchings in the Illustrated London News; before beginning to research this novel I had been familiar with his work because a decade earlier he had painted another of my ancestors when they had been young officers together during the Indian Mutiny. It was one of his paintings in Abyssinia, Half-way to Senafe, showing a towering mountain ridge over a valley on the route to Magdala, that inspired me to think that the mountain called the “Chariot of the Gods” in Hanno’s Periplus could refer to a mountain in present-day Ethiopia—to Magdala itself, perhaps—with the light of the sun at dawn or at dusk rippling along the ridge like fire.
You can see Baigrie’s painting and much else of interest on my website (www.davidgibbins.com; www.facebook.com/DavidGibbinsAuthor), including photographs and videos of me diving, discussion of artifacts, shipwrecks and ancient texts, and links to online source material mentioned in this note.
Also by David Gibbins
THE JACK HOWARD SERIES
Atlantis
Crusader Gold
The Last Gospel
The Tiger Warrior
The Mask of Troy
The Gods of Atlantis
Pharaoh
Pyramid
Testament
THE TOTAL WAR SERIES
Destroy Carthage
The Sword of Attila
About the Author
DAVID GIBBINS is the internationally bestselling author of nine Jack Howard novels, which have sold over three million copies worldwide and are published in thirty languages, and the Total War series of historical novels. He has worked in underwater archaeology all his professional life. After receiving a Ph.D. from Cambridge University, he taught archaeology in Britain and abroad, and is a world authority on ancient shipwrecks and sunken cities. He has led numerous expeditions to investigate underwater sites in the Mediterranean and around the world. He currently divides his time between fieldwork, England, and Canada. You can sign up for email updates here.
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Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Acknowledgments
Map
Epigraphs
Prologue
Part 1
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Part 2
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Part 3
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Part 4
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Part 5
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Epilogue
Author’s N
ote
Also by David Gibbins
About the Author
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
THOMAS DUNNE BOOKS.
An imprint of St. Martin’s Press.
TESTAMENT. Copyright © 2017 by David Gibbins. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
www.thomasdunnebooks.com
www.stmartins.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Gibbins, David J. L., author.
Title: Testament / David Gibbins.
Description: New York: Thomas Dunne Books, St. Martin’s Press, 2017.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016043272 | ISBN 9781250080653 (hardback) | ISBN 9781466892569 (e-book)
Subjects: | BISAC: FICTION / Action & Adventure.
Classification: LCC PR6107.I225 T47 2017 | DDC 823/.92—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016043272
e-ISBN 9781466892569
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First published in Great Britain by Headline Publishing Group, a Hachette UK company
First U.S. Edition: March 2017