The Fall of Troy

by Peter Ackroyd

  WHEN THE LUNCH was over Thornton walked back to the excavations with Lineau. “Do tell me more about Rawlinson,” he said. “He interests me exceedingly.”

  “He is a tall man. Not as tall as you.” Thornton wondered how Lineau could have calculated his height. “He was swift in everything he did. He had shoes that did not need lacing. He used to slip them on. He said that he did not wish to waste time in tying and untying knots. But then he might spend hours contemplating the shape of signs. He was an astonishing man.” He held on to Thornton’s arm. “He still lives. In a place called Cricklade. You should call on him.”

  “I dare not. I am in too much awe of him. To have solved the mysteries of cuneiform—”

  “You are brave enough, Mr. Thornton. You dared to question Herr Obermann on his favourite theory. You dared to question Homer.”

  “I was merely putting forward a hypothesis.”

  “Herr Obermann does not deal in hypothesis or argument. This is Homer’s Troy. Or it is nothing. He is a man of great conviction. He will not be withstood on these matters. If he is attacked, he is like a tiger.”

  “I hope I will never attack him then.”

  “You must make sure that you do not.” Lineau seemed to look at him. “There would be a deal of fuss, as the English put it.”

  “We are all men of science, Monsieur Lineau. Surely we can keep our tempers.”

  “Ha!” If it was an expression of derision, it was uttered in the softest possible manner. “Herr Obermann may not agree with you on that. He is more than a man of science.” He paused for a moment, and lifted his head. “Do you notice the extreme stillness of the air? It anticipates some storm.”

  SEVENTEEN

  Later that afternoon, as Thornton was lost in his study of the clay tablets, contrasting sign with sign, he heard a low sound like a sigh coming from beneath his feet. The table at which he was working began to dance; his bed shook violently and then, as the sigh turned into a roar, the floor beneath him started to move. A pail of water rocked from side to side, and was splashed empty. His instinct was to run outside, but, first, he had to protect the tablets. Quickly, as the shaking became more violent, he gathered them together and placed them in two canvas sacks that had been used to store his soiled clothes. When he rushed outside Obermann and the others were standing by the excavations, while many of the workmen were running down the mound and on to the plain. “We are safe here!” Obermann was shouting. “Troy has endured many earthquakes!”

  The trees on the mound, and on the plain, were thrashing from side to side, and the wooden roofs of two huts collapsed; the roar of the earth had gone beyond the mound and spread beneath the plain. The ground itself was rippling and swaying as if it were the sea. “Zeus is speaking!” Obermann shouted. “He is reminding us of his power!”

  Thornton looked for Sophia. She was standing beside Lineau, and had put her arm around him. She was serene amid the turmoil. Lineau’s eyes were moving rapidly from side to side, but he also showed no fear. It seemed to Thornton that Obermann was correct and that Troy itself was somehow protected from harm. Then he watched in astonishment as a crack opened up in the eastern part of the excavations, revealing a small chamber of stone.

  The shock lasted no more than a minute, but then a dark mist of dust, lifted upwards by a sudden draught of air, rose from the mound and the plain. It mounted higher and higher into the air until it mingled with the drifting clouds.

  “It is something,” Obermann said, “to have heard the bellowing of the gods who live beneath the earth. Zeus has been joined by the sons of Tellus!” He turned to face Thornton. “So must Priam himself have heard the voices of the unseen!” He was in a state of exaltation. Leonid was at his side, and amid the mist of dust they looked like identical figures.

  Thornton was crying—not out of joy or pity, but because the dust had entered his eyes. He wiped his face with the sleeve of his shirt, and walked over to Sophia and Lineau. “Do you need any assistance?” he asked them.

  “On the contrary,” Lineau said. “We were waiting to help you. Sophia said that you were weeping.”

  “Out of discomfort, I’m afraid, not sorrow. The dust is everywhere.”

  “Did the trees dance?”

  “Oh yes.”

  “That must be a fine thing to see.” It was the first time that Thornton had heard him allude to his blindness.

  “The ground became the waves of the sea,” Sophia said. “It was majestic. Magnificent.”

  “Do you see what has opened in the earth?” Thornton asked her. “A great chasm on the eastern side.”

  “We cannot see it from here,” she replied. “Come, Monsieur Lineau. We must look.” They trod warily, as if these were their first steps on the earth, and Obermann joined them.

  “We are preserved, Sophia. The gods believe in our destiny.”

  “Fortunate gods,” Lineau said.

  “If you could see the plain,” Obermann told him, “you would see a prospect worthy of Mantegna. Telemachus, you must ride over to the village to see if help is needed. At once. Where is Kadri Bey?”

  “He has stayed with the workmen,” Leonid told him. “They fled to the bottom of the mound.”

  “They will be safe enough. Now, my friend Thornton, how do you find our Trojan climate?”

  “Bracing.”

  “Bracing?” Obermann laughed. “That is a good English word. But this is much more ancient. Much darker. This is a time of omen. Of warning.”

  “I cannot imagine why we are being warned, sir.”

  “Then you must let your imagination wander further, Mr. Thornton. Have you observed that opening in the ground?”

  “We were about to inspect it.”

  “That has been vouchsafed to us. Depend upon it. We will find something of great moment.” They went carefully towards the newly opened ground, where the outline of a rectangular chamber could clearly be seen.

  “There is much ash and earth to be cleared,” Leonid said.

  “No matter. I believe I have found what I was looking for.” Obermann went over to a side wall of the chamber, beyond which a section had been cut out of rock with a flat slab upon it. “What do you believe this to be, Mr. Thornton?”

  “I cannot say.”

  “It is a tomb. This is some ceremonial space, a room of holiness, and the tomb has been placed beside it. Quickly. While Kadri Bey remains with the workers below, we must remove the slab. I have had trouble before with the bodies of the dead. The Turks wish to bury them, against all principles of good science. If we can empty the grave before they come back, so much the better. Telemachus, go down to Kadri Bey and warn him that the excavations are not safe. Pay the men, and tell them to return next week. Kadri Bey is a coward, and will remain with them. Quickly.”

  “You wished me to ride to the village.”

  “I have changed my mind. The villagers can wait.”

  As Leonid ran down the slope, Obermann put his ear to the sealed rock and knocked upon the slab. “It is not hollow,” he said. “There is something within it. When Telemachus returns, we must remove this covering.” In the silence of the earth his voice rang out.

  The mist of dust had begun to settle. Thornton feared aftershocks. Was this a false calm, about to be broken by another earthquake? For the first time he noticed thousands of birds circling in the sky, their nests disturbed or destroyed, their massed wings casting a long shadow over the mound.

  Sophia looked up at the same moment. “A strange sight,” she said to him. “Everything has become so strange.”

  “I know it. Do you notice that the birds make no noise?”

  “That is the strangest thing of all.”

  Leonid came back. “They are returning to their villages,” he said to Obermann, “to look after their families. Kadri Bey is riding to Kannakole to see what damage has been caused.”

  “Good. May he remain there a long time. Telemachus, we will need your strength. Are you ready, gentlemen?”


  Leonid and Lineau, Obermann and Thornton tried to lift the stone slab from the enclosure of rock it had been covering. “It is too heavy,” Obermann said. “We must slide it inch by inch. Sophia, will you bring me a hammer and wedge? We must split the slab from the rock.”

  “Surely, sir, we should record it as it lies here?”

  “You have no camera, Mr. Thornton.”

  “I can draw.”

  “Then draw. Telemachus has a camera, but it will take too long to prepare it. Is that not so, Telemachus?”

  “If you wish for speed.”

  “Immensely. I wish for it more than anything in the world.”

  Thornton went back to his hut. Its interior had survived the shock, but he left the canvas sacks containing the tablets outside his door. He returned with pencil and notebook, and rapidly sketched the chamber with the rock enclosure on its eastern side. Sophia had given Obermann the hammer and wedge. He began to chip away at the surface between the slab and the rock, which seemed to be no more than a compacted layer of earth. So he worked quickly and neatly, going around the sides of the slab as the dust continued to swirl about them. They were in twilight, with the massed flocks of birds obscuring the light of the sky.

  “Now,” he said, “we can slide the slab with ease. If Mr. Thornton has finished his drawing, he is welcome to assist us.”

  “Just a few moments, sir.”

  “It is odd, is it not, Lineau, that we are more concerned with the outward appearance than the inward reality? When you examine a vase, you raise it in your mind. You re-create it. You see with your inner eye how it once appeared to its first owner. A drawing or a photograph cannot achieve that.”

  Thornton had joined them, and the four men—each at one corner of the slab—managed to slide the cover away from the rock cavity. It gave way slowly, until the interior of the cavity was revealed. Within there was a small skeleton, laid out in foetal position; the bones had been stained red, and a hammerhead of some jade material had been placed beside the skull. It seemed to Sophia that Obermann was looking at it with horror rather than amazement. Thornton shook his head, and put his hands through his hair.

  “What is it?” Lineau asked. “What is the consternation?”

  “It is a child,” Thornton said. “Its flesh has been taken from its bones, and the bones have been powdered with red ochre.”

  “I have seen this before.” Obermann was staring at the small body. “Among the ancient tribes of Mongolia.”

  “It is typical of late Mesolithic burial.” Thornton was eager to jump down into the small cavity, but he held back: by protocol, Obermann should enter first.

  “I do not like those divisions, Mr. Thornton. I find them too imprecise. Besides, what has the Stone Age to do with this level of Troy?”

  “We must take up the skeleton,” Lineau said. “We cannot examine it here.”

  “That is not possible,” Obermann replied. “It is too fragile. It may dissolve into powder and fragments. Who knows what this sudden exposure to the air will accomplish?”

  “Then we must work quickly. Give me your arm, Mr. Thornton.” Without waiting for Obermann’s permission Lineau stepped nimbly into the cavity and, with the guidance of Thornton, knelt beside the small skeleton. In a low voice Thornton described the position and posture of the body, while Lineau ran his hands across the reddened bones. Thornton noticed an arrowhead placed beside the neck, just below the hammerhead, and whispered to Lineau.

  Obermann watched them. “I am in a fever,” he said, “until you speak.”

  “It was a boy, no more than eight or ten years of age. The bones are fine. The form is very pleasing. The norma verticalis is long and oval. The norma temporalis is extended, with a long and somewhat flat vertex curve.”

  “You will have to translate that, Monsieur Lineau, for the benefit of my wife.”

  “She will understand this. The boy was executed with an arrow shot into his neck. The arrowhead is beside him. It has been put there deliberately. And there is a break in his upper spine.”

  “It is not possible.” Obermann’s voice was very loud.

  “And I will tell her something else. His flesh was eaten. There are numerous scratches on the bones that could only have been made with knives.”

  “Doubly impossible. Homer did not write of cannibals.”

  “Come and see for yourself,” Thornton said.

  “I do not need to see. This is not a city of death.”

  Sophia had been looking at the birds, which seemed to be floating above them in the sky. “It is a city of life,” she said. “Life is hungry. God made it so. Life must persist.”

  The men had paid no attention to her, too busy in their argument over the bones. “Besides,” Obermann said, “the marks could have been made by carrion birds, stripping off the flesh.”

  “They are too neat. Too uniform.” Lineau was stroking the fibula of the child. “They occur in sequence.”

  “None of you has the remotest idea about archaeology. I have opened up a new world, and you wish to darken it. You want it to fall.”

  They all raised their heads, alerted to a change in the passage of the air. There was no noise but an abrupt and violent shaking of the earth. The men instinctively held on to one another, with Sophia joining them in terror. They formed a circle beside the small grave. The shaking lasted for only a few seconds, and then there was calm. “We have survived the after-shock,” Obermann said. “Nothing more will happen.”

  “Look at the bones,” Leonid called.

  They were disintegrating in front of them, crumbling and turning to powder after their exposure to the charged air. Obermann made a sudden movement, as if to scoop them up, but the skull and part of the chest dissolved in his hands. With a cry he stepped backwards, but it seemed to Thornton to be a cry of triumph rather than of dismay.

  “The bones have gone,” Sophia whispered to Lineau. “They have disintegrated in the pressure of the air.”

  “It is not unusual. I have known swords and hammers to crumble into dust.”

  “It is as if they did not wish to be discovered.”

  “They did not wish to survive. Their work was done.”

  “Your cannibal theory has disappeared, Mr. Thornton.” Obermann’s delight was apparent to them all. “The evidence has vanished.” He brushed the dust from his hands. “The will of the gods is manifest.”

  “I have seen it, sir.”

  “Your eyes can be deceived, Mr. Thornton. Did you see anything, Telemachus?” Leonid shook his head. “Sophia?”

  “I had no opportunity, Heinrich.”

  “Nor did I.” Obermann looked from one to another. “I have seen nothing. Nothing to overturn the most celebrated poem in the history of the world.”

  Sophia noticed Thornton’s dismay and astonishment. When he walked away she followed him and touched him lightly on the shoulder. “I know that you are troubled, Alexander. I offer no excuses for my husband. He is—”

  “A vandal.”

  “Not so harsh. He is what in Greece we call one-eyed. He sees only what he wishes.”

  “Like Cyclops.”

  “Yes. Cyclops was outwitted by Ulysses, was he not?” She hesitated for a moment. “Look for your evidence elsewhere. On the tablets. If you find it there, my husband will come round to your opinion. I am sure of it. Look for the signs.”

  EIGHTEEN

  Three days after the earthquake Sophia noticed a black horse, with rider, slowly making its way over the plain; it seemed to be moving unsteadily but, as it drew closer, she realised that its rider was travelling side-saddle. He was dressed in black, like some appendage of the horse, and then Sophia recognised the tall stooped figure of the Reverend Decimus Harding. She associated him with the death of William Brand, and she felt uneasy. She waited for him as he tied his horse within a grove of small oak trees and climbed the mound.

  “Good day to you, Frau Obermann. I trust I find you well after the shock.”

  “Good d
ay to you, Father. Yes. We are all well. In good spirits.”

  “I am glad to hear it.” He seemed strangely disappointed. “I could not rest until I had seen the damage with my own eyes.”

  “There is no damage, reverend sir.” Obermann had come over to them. “We weathered the storm, as you say. We were strong.”

  “Delighted, sir. Absolutely delighted.” He looked, for a moment, disconcerted. “I had heard otherwise from the English ambassador. We were all lamenting your ill fortune.”

  “Rumour has ‘a thousand tongues,’ Mr. Harding.”

  “As Virgil has it. I recall that you know Virgil very well.” His reference, to the purification of the house in the village, was very marked. “I cannot help but think the death of the American was a kind of omen.”

  “We do not discuss it, sir.”

  “Of course not. In very bad taste.” Harding cleared his throat. “The ambassador believed that your excavations had been badly affected.”

  “Layard was mistaken.” Sir Austen Layard, the English representative in Constantinople, had himself once been an archaeologist who had found the palace of Sennacherib at Nineveh. “Not for the first time.”

  “We must not say that, Herr Obermann. Oh dear no.” Harding was delighted. “Sir Austen will not thank us.”

  “He knew nothing of wall reliefs,” Obermann said. “He did not understand the lozenge pattern.”

  “We must let the experts quarrel amongst themselves, dear lady. We do not understand these things.” He turned to Sophia, having carefully noted the detail of Obermann’s criticism. “So you have suffered no ill effects?”

  “Troy is thriving, as you can see. Did the earthquake reach Constantinople?”

  “The suburbs were shaken, but the old city stood firm. The Turks are not known for their composure, however. The shouting and yelling were tremendous. I thought that the end of the world had come.” From Harding’s expression, it seemed that he might have welcomed that moment. “There was a slight tremor, enough to rattle the cups, but nothing more.”