Land of Marvels

by Unsworth, Barry

  “Indeed yes,” Spahl said. “A scoop of big proportions, my paper will be greatly pleased.”

  “I feel it is important for you to be informed of the facts, as far as Palmer and I have been able to establish them. The name on the sarcophagus is the same as that over the doorway to the tomb, it is the name of the last king in the line of Sargon, effectively the last king of Assyria. There is a name alongside it, a woman’s name.”

  “I can manage to make it out now,” Palmer said. “It is Lattalia.”

  Somerville went on to speak of the doubts that hung over the final fate of this king, the time and place of his supposed death. He told them of his own first belief that this must be an impostor. “Impostors were not uncommon in ancient Assyria,” he said, “especially in times of crisis or extreme danger, when the king might temporarily bestow his identity—and his name—on another. There are precedents for this, historically documented. If you will bear with me a few minutes longer, I will tell you what I think might have happened. In the summer of 612 B.C. the Assyrian Empire was in its death throes. Ashur, the religious capital, had been destroyed two years earlier. Now the siege was tightening around Nineveh, the administrative heart, the seat of government. Sin-shar-ishkun, whose name is on this sarcophagus, decided to give that name to someone else. The true name of the man he chose is not recorded anywhere as far as I know. I think it probable that he was some high military commander—a reasonable choice at a time like that.”

  He paused on this and smiled a little. He had visibly relaxed in posture as he talked; it was now as if he were delivering a lecture to a group of students. None of his hearers had made the slightest sound or the slightest shift of position. None of them had taken their eyes from him. He is in command of us, Edith thought. As if we were children, listening to wonders. Such different kinds of people, yet we are all in the grip of his words, in the grip of this story he is telling. She had never seen her husband as a man with a gift for storytelling. And it was more than that, much more: His voice was quiet, but there was authority in his words, a kind of power emanated from him. And there was nothing assumed, nothing theatrical; he was entirely himself.

  “So for a while there was a king in Nineveh who was not the true king. The true king escaped the siege, fled here with the belongings he valued most. Among these was a statuette of Marduk, the god of the Babylonian enemy, who he hoped might protect him. With him came queen and concubines, servants and guards, followers ready to cast their lot with him. We know now that this place was a residence, probably a summer palace, of the Assyrian kings, at least for a century or so—since the time of Esarhaddon. We have found definite proof of this. So here the king lived quietly under his borrowed name for some time longer, perhaps some years, far to the west of the Assyrian heartlands on the Tigris. This vaulted tomb and the sarcophagus were made ready on his orders, and when the time came for him to be laid to rest, he had Marduk installed in the entrance chamber as a guardian. Perhaps we can try raising the lid now. There is no room behind it, but if Elliott and Manning can take the sides, the rest of us can try to lift it from the front and rest it back against the wall.”

  It took all five of the men, straining with the effort and the need for care, to raise the lid and get it propped securely resting on its edge. In this combined effort, and in the wonderment of looking down into the coffin—they were the first to do this—these men were as one, bound together in a common sentiment for the first time and the last.

  Edith and Patricia came forward now and joined the men, and all stood close together there, looking down. The two skeletons lay side by side. They had died, or been laid in death, on their backs; the caverns where their eyes had been seemed in that inconstant light of the lamps to have retained some power of seeing, to be returning the gaze of the spectators. The flesh had long gone, but the framework of bone was perfectly preserved; no hand had touched it. Only the teeth were ruinous.

  “They have been lying here for about twenty-five hundred years,” Somerville said, breaking the long silence. She had been shorter than her burial companion by a foot at least, but the two skulls were on an exact level, he noticed now. As if they had lain with faces close, he thought. But of course they must have died outside the coffin. Perhaps the king gave orders that they should be laid with their faces touching. “Queen or concubine, no way of knowing for the moment,” he said. There was a shared headrest of what looked like filigree gold lying beneath the skulls. The dust of their decay lay around them, and a scattering of beads from the necklace she had worn, more than one necklace probably. The beads were numerous and of different types and coloring; he caught the glint of gold among them. Other jewelry he saw in this first quick, surveying glance: fibulae, armlets, a pendant with a thin chain. There were three rings on the man’s right forefinger. Priceless, these objects. He felt a surge of protectiveness almost violent in its nature. The others were standing too close; he would have liked to shift them away. “We’ll get a covering made,” he said to Palmer.

  It was Patricia, striving in typical fashion to combat the awe that had descended on her, who came up now with a question that brought them back from the violated privacy of these bones to time and event. “The man he gave his name to,” she said. “What became of him?”

  “It is not known,” Somerville said. “Nothing in this room will tell us. I can only say what I think might have happened. The man who took the king’s name was not happy with it. He was a man with high ambition. He did not want to be identified for all time to come with a defeated monarch. So he gave himself a new name, Ashur-uballit, a very illustrious one in the annals of Assyrian history. The first king of that name had freed his country from foreign domination, freed his people from the tribute they had been paying to the Mitanni, and been hailed as king of the universe by a grateful people. This army officer, whose true name has not survived, thought the adopted name would act as a sort of talisman, a guarantee of success. Like capturing a flag or appropriating an emblem of another empire or using an enemy god as guardian because he has proved a stronger god than your own.”

  “A good move,” Elliott said, speaking for the first time. “I admire that guy. Desperate situations call for desperate remedies, isn’t that what they say? He wouldn’t accept defeat, he kept his nerve. In my opinion, that was a man who deserved to make good and succeed in life.”

  Yes, you tricky devil, Manning thought as he glanced at Elliott and sought to guess whereabouts on his person the report might be. You would admire a trickster, wouldn’t you? “But did this king actually exist?” he said to Somerville, with a sense of returning to decent discourse.

  “Oh, yes, he existed. So much is certain. He proclaimed himself Ashur-uballit the Second and he succeeded in escaping to Harran, where the Belikh joins the Euphrates. There he made a stand, supported by an Egyptian force that had come to the aid of the Assyrians. But they were defeated, and he fled westward across the Euphrates and was never heard of again. It isn’t known whether he lived or died. He may have abandoned his new name in order to escape pursuit. In any case, at this point he simply disappears from history.

  “It took the invaders several more years to mop up the remnants of the Egyptian and Assyrian forces, but by 605, when they took Carchemish, it was all over, the whole region was in their hands. And that would have spelled the death of these two lying here. I think that they had these few years of grace while the fighting was going on. I think that when he knew the enemy was at the gates he took his own life, probably by poison, and she followed suit.”

  Not much was said after this. Somerville announced his intention of staying on there for a while. He wanted to look more closely at the contents of the sarcophagus and to arrange for a cover to be made. Palmer was in need of a rest after his vigil, and Patricia wanted to go back to the house with him. The three other men left in a body. Edith waited until everyone else had gone; then she went to her husband and kissed him. “John, you were wonderful,” she said. “I was so proud o
f you.”

  When she too had gone, Somerville did not approach the sarcophagus but remained where he had been standing to hear the thanks of his departing visitors. He felt the warmth of Edith’s kiss on his lips, and it sustained him in the moments of exhausted reaction that followed. Like marionettes, the two of them lying side by side, neat and dutiful and somehow pathetic, their bones perfectly in place. Not waiting to be fleshed again but for some touch on the string that would bring them both upright together . . .

  He had been troubled by the thought that some impostor, some false claimant, might be buried here. But he felt certain now, as he stood alone in the silence, that this was not so, could not be so. No man or woman of the time would choose to die under a false identity. Who would wish, as he stood at the threshold of the Underworld, to risk the curse of the god Sin by stealing his name or denying it? Sin-shar-ishkun. Not one of the great Assyrian kings, not like his grandfather Esarhaddon or his father Ashurbanipal. Heir to ruin and destruction. No hero, any more than he was himself—a hero would have died in the flames—but the last of the royal line of Sargon.

  His own name would be made now, his own identity confirmed. He would rewrite the final chapter of Assyrian history. In archaeology a discovery as revolutionary as this would generate a vast amount of activity aimed at corroboration or disproof. And the man at the heart of a controversy like that could be sure of fame.

  Drawings and notes would have to be made; the attitude and position of the skeletons would have to be carefully recorded, along with the nature of all the objects in the coffin. This before anything was touched. The necklaces would have to be restrung as closely as possible in the original order, which meant much patient work matching the beads. Before the beads could even be handled the loose dust would have to be blown away delicately enough to leave them undisturbed. For the first time now it came fully home to him, the work that would be needed, the labor of preserving this material, much of it no doubt in bad condition. Then there were the skeletons themselves; to get them without damage from the sarcophagus would mean shrouding them separately in thickly waxed linen, wrapping them around so that they could be encased and so lifted clear. Everything—the alabaster and ceramic drinking vessels, the statuette of the god, the jewelry—would have to be packed on the surface and made ready for transport to London. To get the sarcophagus to the surface some system of pulleys would have to be devised, a difficult operation in that narrow space.

  With a sudden gesture Somerville raised hands to his temples, stilling the sound, not heard but felt within him, indistinguishable from the pulse of his life in that quiet place, the clash of metal against metal. There were weeks of delicate, painstaking work awaiting them here. Three weeks, four weeks . . . He quitted the chamber with a sensation of escaping the silence there, which had become intolerable now, and began to make his way up the sloping trench on the left side. He had some idea of finding Elias or Halil and arranging for a cover to be made for the sarcophagus. Elias was there, but the first person he really saw on reaching the surface was Jehar, standing in exactly the same position as before.

  15.

  In the afternoon of that day Major Manning was as usual engaged in watching, from the half-opened window of his room, the comings and goings in the courtyard. Some two hours previously he had seen Spahl come through the gate on foot and cross to his own room, where he had remained—no doubt to keep watch too. He had seen Palmer leave, also on foot, which meant he would be making for the mound. Palmer had been wearing a cartridge belt with a revolver in the holster, the first time Manning had known him to do this. He had also been carrying a small knapsack. He would be going to relieve Somerville, who had not returned with the others. But an hour or so later he had come back alone, this time without the knapsack or the belt or revolver. So Somerville had been unwilling to leave the site. Was it possible they only had one revolver between them? Since Elliott had let fall the fact that he was carrying the report on him, the major had become absorbed to the point of obsession in surmising the motives of everyone as well as observing everyone’s movements, as if something missed might give Elliott a crucial advantage. The American was cunning, as criminals often were; he might have made that declaration at breakfast with the idea of acting as a decoy, getting them to track him to some preselected place where he could lie in wait and ambush them; the major included Spahl in these speculations because though not on the same side they were on the same quest. Or then again he might have said it to make them suspect that very thing and slow them down, whereas his real aim was simply to make a run for it at the earliest possible opportunity.

  Elliott had kept to his room after luncheon. But now, shortly before, he had suddenly emerged in shirtsleeves, with a towel over his shoulder and made his way across to one of the two bathhouses, which were in the far corner of the courtyard on the side farthest from the gate. Before setting off, Manning noted, he checked his window fastenings and locked his door, slipping the key into his trouser pocket. He was followed almost at once by a house servant carrying two buckets of water from which a thin steam rose and lingered in the windless air.

  The bathhouses were in an awkward place; it was only possible for Manning to keep them under surveillance by leaning well out of his window. He saw the houseboy return without the buckets; then he sat back to await the American’s return.

  But the next person to come to Elliott’s door was not Elliott but the Arab who acted as his interpreter. This man knocked repeatedly on the door and called, “Mr. Elliott, sir!” several times, getting no answer.

  Manning emerged from his room and walked over to him, “No use knocking,” he said, “he’s having a shower.” But even as he spoke a terrible suspicion came to him. He went quickly across to the bathhouse Elliott had entered and pushed the door open. There was no one there. The two buckets, still faintly steaming, stood on the wooden boards. He ran back to the interpreter, who was still calling, “Mr. Elliott, sir!” He saw Palmer and Mrs. Somerville emerge from their separate rooms to see what the disturbance was.

  “Two months’ wages!” the interpreter said. “He has gone without paying me.” It was clear from his voice and his face that he was close to tears. “He took me from my home and my family,” he said. “What shall we do now? How shall I feed my children?” He spoke English well, with an American accent.

  “He can’t get far,” Manning said. “Not on foot and dressed like that.”

  “He can get far, sir, he can get very far. One of the horses, the one he uses, is missing.”

  Manning fought down his agitation, summoning his military training to his aid. Assess the situation; ascertain the direction of enemy fire; issue your orders. The bathhouse was in that part of the courtyard farthest from the gate, nearest the stockade where the horses were kept. This stockade was not visible from his room. The horse would have been already prepared and saddled, ready to be led quietly away, just in those few minutes, as he had sat back and waited. Elliott would have known he was not being watched; he would have seen I was not leaning out . . . It was quite in keeping with the blackguard’s character that he should decamp without paying his dues. To cheat a servant like this! It was late, darkness would fall before very long, but Elliott could not be far ahead, not more than ten minutes.

  ______

  Spahl, who also kept his window open, had heard this knocking and calling, had seen Manning emerge from his room and question the man at Elliott’s door. He knew the man for Elliott’s interpreter, knew that he slept in the servants’ quarters and accompanied Elliott on his expeditions. He had heard almost everything the man said, as he had spoken in loud and tearful tones. Manning had said little, but Spahl had noted his haste to get out one of the horses.

  He would follow, at some distance, keeping Manning in sight. He was a colder-blooded man than the major, less nervy, and he had been on missions of a similar sort before. He knew his duty, but it was more of the bureaucratic than the patriotic sort. The one who lay third alway
s had the advantage. He would let Manning bear the brunt. If the Englishman came off worse, Spahl was confident he could still deal with Elliott at either long range or short; if, on the other hand, Manning succeeded, he could kill him and so obtain the report. If Elliott escaped them both, it would represent a failure and it would go against him. But life was a mixed bag of failures and successes after all. The main thing was to come out with a whole skin.

  When, as expected, Spahl had set off after Manning, Alawi waited some minutes, then went to join Elliott, who was comfortably seated in the space between the rear side of the bathhouse and the stockade wall, quite invisible to view. Night was not far off now; the brief Mesopotamian dusk would soon be upon them. Their horses, already saddled by Alawi and loaded with the things they would need for the journey, were waiting beyond the gate, on the side away from the track to the mound. Alawi had advised the major to take this track. Being alone, he had said, Elliott would risk the open country as little as possible; he would make for the Khabur River and hire a boat to take him down to the Euphrates. When they had discussed the way they would go back to Aleppo when the work was done, this was the route they had planned to take. They had planned it, he said, and now this man he had trusted had treated him thus.

  Manning followed this advice and Spahl followed Manning. Meanwhile the man they were hunting, with his friend and associate at his side, the report securely buttoned in the breast pocket of his shirt, was heading in quite the opposite direction.

  Somerville had not wanted to leave the site or even to move away from the burial chamber. He had not wanted to return to the house for long enough to put the money together to make the advance payment Jehar had asked for—one-half of the total. He had given him only what he had in his pocket, twelve gold pounds in coin and a handful of gurush. Jehar had been magnanimous; he had found it an occasion to show greatness of soul. He knew the khwaja was a man of honor, a man of his word; was he not an English lord? Jehar was content to wait for the money. He had promoted himself on the spot; it was an agreement between gentlemen.