The Sleeping Sands (42 page)

Layard stared at the man, exhausted and uncomprehending in the heat.

‘I was able to recover these as well,’ continued the man, producing the leather wallet that contained Layard’s notes and journal. ‘They will prove most useful when we are researching the tablets. I am sure that you don’t mind our borrowing them for a while? They will be returned to you in due course, albeit with one or two details edited.’

He rode a pace or two closer to Layard and leant forward in his saddle, smiling in a conciliatory manner.

‘Of course you will agree that certain aspects of this episode are best handled discreetly,’ he said.

‘But people need to know,’ protested Layard, ‘the stone tablets – the thing in the tomb-‘

‘What happened in the tomb was extraordinarily unfortunate,’ confessed the man. ‘It was a highly unusual but eminently explainable localised seismic phenomenon; fascinating, no doubt, to geographers and geologists alike. However, it really would be of no benefit to Anglo-Persian relations were the circumstances of the Governor of Isfahan’s demise to be widely known. There simply would be too many difficult questions. I think you’ll agree that it would be best to let the matter drop. I expect to see no mention of it in your official account.’

He waved the wallet merrily.

‘Ah,’ he continued, ‘my Lurs have finished packing. They are most efficient fellows. Well, I can tarry no longer, I am afraid, Mr Layard. It was a pleasure seeing you again.’

Without a word, he turned and, accompanied by the Lurs, now mounted on their own horses, rode away, leading Layard’s horses behind him. As the red sun began to dip towards the mound of Susa, Layard watched the lengthening shadows of the party as they rode towards the South.

‘Infidel dogs,’ hissed a voice behind him.

Layard turned. Crawling out from behind a patch of dry scrub, his head bandaged in a bloodstained silk rag, was Abd’ul Nebi.

‘I should never have agreed to bring you here,’ he spat, ‘you and your fellow foreigner have destroyed the tomb of Nebbi Daniel.’

The dervish stood, swaying before Layard. He was pale and visibly weakened, his body covered in scratches, cuts and bruises.

‘Abd’ul Nebi! I thought you were dead,’ cried Layard. ‘Here you must sit and drink this.’

He handed the canteen to the dervish, who gulped hungrily at it.

‘I survived, but no thanks to you,’ he growled. ‘I clambered up from the gorge and saw it all. I saw your accomplice ride up with his Lurs and watched as they cut the throats of the Matamet’s men. I saw the tomb fall and knew that you must have taken out the black stones. I saw him enter the tomb and come out with the stones. I saw him talking with you, carrying your notes. You knew him. You had arranged to meet him here. You broke our agreement, infidel.’

‘You must believe me,’ he sighed, ‘that man is no friend of mine. I had no idea that he would be here.’

‘So you had never seen him before?’ asked the dervish.

‘No, I mean yes – well, perhaps,’ stammered Layard. ‘That is to say, I had never spoken to him. I may have seen him once before. A long time ago and far away.’

‘I saw him once before too,’ said the dervish. ‘Ten years ago. It was he who I found skulking around Susa with his gang of Arabs. No doubt it was he who broke the stone in the first place.’

‘You must believe, me, he is no friend to me,’ insisted Layard. ‘I sought the tomb only for the sake of knowledge.’

‘Friend or not,’ snarled the dervish, ‘it matters not. You infidels are all the same – sick with your lust to carve up and destroy the land. You claim to come in the name of knowledge but all you bring is sickness and death. You have emptied the land and called up foul things to roam upon it. I will have nothing more to do with you.’

So saying, Abd’ul Nebi snatched up the canteen and strode off along the path towards Susa, his ravaged form disappearing from sight in the dying light. As the air cooled, the buzzing of flies around the four corpses slowly faded. The evening became still and quiet save for the faintest sound of running water in the stream far below.

Layard watched the spot where the dervish had vanished, listening to the stream. At last, he sighed and turned to the East. He stared into the gloom. Somewhere among the mountains that were being swallowed by the night, the last of the Bakhtiari were camped. Somewhere in that darkness, Ali Naghi Khan’s group would be huddled around their campfires, softly singing songs of heroes, while brave little Lady Moon marched to and fro among them. If the Matamet had been telling the truth when he said that he had sent men to the Boheramedi to arrest the Khan’s family; then somewhere out there too was the path that his men would have to follow on their return to Shuster. If Khatun-Jan and Khanumi were alive, then that was the path they would be on. Somewhere out there too, was Saleh. Layard had little doubt that the resourceful Lur would never let himself be taken by the Matamet’s ferrashes.

A sudden cold breeze blew tingling across the back of Layard’s neck. A little way off, in the gorge below, some disgruntled night bird cackled. Layard realised that, whilst he had stood watching the mountains, the sky had become full of stars. He realised too that it had become too dark to attempt to navigate the steep gorge. No matter. In the morning, he knew which road he must take.

Austen Henry Layard stood alone among the desolation and waited for the sunrise.

E
PILOGUE

T
HE
T
OWER

I
T SEEMED THAT AS LONG AS THE MAN COULD REMEMBER
the tower had been a forsaken and lifeless place. As a boy, he had hear stories of its grizzly origins; the old men competing to outdo each other with a gruesome re-telling of how it had been built by an evil Governor long ago. With the other children, he had crept up to the pile of weathered stones that marked the ancient tower and squealed with horrified delight as they would scare each other by pretending to see a skull or a thighbone among the rubble. Yet, while the others had been genuinely scared by the place – claiming it to be haunted by all sorts of evil spirits – the man had never found it to be truly frightening; even as a young child.

Often, when he had roamed among the hills as a boy, he would find himself drawn back to the tower. It was rough and modest compared to the grandiose ruins nearby that attracted a steady stream of scholars and sightseers. However, there was something about the place that the man had always found strangely attractive. He would watch the small groups of people in the distance, picking their way among the ruins, never once sparing a second look for his little pile of white stones.

So it was that, over time, he became something of a self-appointed guardian for the tower. Taking any opportunity to come back and lie down among its now grassy rubble, sheltering from the hottest midday sun in the shade of an ancient twisted pine tree. His friends would laugh at him for spending so much time at the tower. They could not think what it would be about the place that could keep him from their games or, as he grew older from the other pursuits of young men.

He knew, though and, if anyone would ever have taken the time to ask him, would have answered.

It had peace.

N
AMED
C
HARACTERS IN
THE
S
LEEPING
S
ANDS

B
ELOW IS A LIST OF THE VARIOUS PEOPLE NAMED IN
THE
S
LEEPING
S
ANDS
. Because of the many cultural variations in the conventions relating to names and titles, all names are presented in simple alphabetical order of their first word (whether personal or family name or honorific). Of those characters listed below who survived their encounter with Layard, many went on to achieve greatness or infamy following the events described in the book. However, their achievements or station are only described below as they were known at the time of our story.

Abd’ul Nebi;
a Persian dervish of ancient Egyptian ancestry, guardian of the tomb at Shush

Abd-ullah Khan;
chief of the Boheramedi tribe, an ally of Mehemet Taki Khan

Ahmed Saleh;
an Arab guide and mule-driver

Ali Khan;
father of Mehemet Taki Khan, deposed by his treacherous brother, Hassan, who handed him to the Shah’s forces, who blinded him

Ali Naghi Khan;
a Bakhtiari chieftain, brother to Mehemet Taki Khan, tending to a somewhat dissolute character

Antonio;
a young Christian Arab acting as servant and dragoman (or interpreter and guide) to Henry Layard

Au Isfendiar;
a veteran Bakhtiari warrior in the service of Mehemet Taki Khan

Au Kelb Ali;
a Bakhtiari chieftain, brother to Mehemet Taki Khan, a shrewd politician, plagued by ill-health

Au Kerim;
a Bakhtiari chieftain, brother to Mehemet Taki Khan, a powerful and fearless fighter

Au Khan Baba;
a Bakhtiari chieftain, brother to Mehemet Taki Khan, a fierce warrior and accomplished military commander

Au Mohammed Zamaun;
a Shusteri chieftain charged with holding Bakhtiari hostages for the Matamet

Austen Henry Layard;
more commonly known as Henry Layard (having adopted the ‘Austen’ as a gesture towards his Uncle), an adventurer and archaeologist

Awad;
a Kalikat Arab tribesman, guide to Henry Layard

Baron Clement de Bode;
a French émigré nobleman, of British and German ancestry, acting as an intelligence agent of the Russian government, under the guise of a cavalry instructor in the Matamet’s army

Benjamin Austen;
a solicitor, Henry Layard’s uncle by marriage and erstwhile employer

Benjamin Disraeli;
friend of Henry Layard, a romantic, author and failed newspaper publisher, with extensive political ambitions

Caliph Umar Ibn al-Khattab;
a companion of the Prophet and a powerful Caliph in the late 6
^th
century, celebrated by Sunni Muslims as a great ruler and jurist and despised by Shi’ite Muslims as a usurper of Ali

Charles Wherry;
British Consul at Damascus

Colonel Hemmell;
commander of the garrison at Karak, formerly in charge of the British mission at Bushehr

Colonel Yusuf Effendi;
a senior official representing Ibrahim Pasha’s interests in Hebron

Count Alexander Khristoforich Benkendorf;
the Tsar’s Chief of Gendarmes and head of the Third Section of His Imperial Majesty’s Chancellry, Russia’s most powerful spymaster

Doctor MacKenzie;
a Scottish doctor assigned to the British garrison at Karak

Edith Walmington;
a traveller, antiquarian and astrologer

Edward Mitford;
traveller and companion to Henry Layard

Elias;
a Christian resident of Hebron, known for keeping open house for travellers

Eugene Boré;
a Frenchman, resident in Julfa, an agent of the Royal Geographical Society

Ghûlam Imaum Verdi Beg;
a Persian officer, mehmandar, or official escort, to Henry Layard

Hassan Khan;
a Bakhtiari, former chief of the Char Lang tribe, assassinated by his nephew, Mehemet Taki Khan in revenge for Hassan’s betrayal of Ali Khan to the Persian government

Haym;
a Polish-born Jew, resident in Tiberias

Hussein Kuli;
eldest son of Mehemet taki Khan and Khatum-Jan Khanum

Ibrahim Pasha;
Ottoman conqueror of Syria, the adopted son of Muhammed Ali Pasha of Egypt

Ibrahim;
a Christian Arab, resident in Kerak

John Murray;
influential London publisher and member of the Royal Geographical Society

Khanumi;
a Lur princess, sister to Khatum-Jan Khanum

Khatum-Jan Khanum;
the principal wife of Mehemet Taki Khan, a shrewd political tactician

Lady Moon;
a young daughter of Ali Naghi Khan (‘Lady Moon’is a translation of her Bakhtiari name, Bibi Mah)

Lieutenant Selby;
British naval officer, commanding the steamer
Nitocris

Lord Palmerston;
British Foreign Secretary

Manuchar Ali Khan;
a Georgian-born eunuch, Governor of Isfahan, known as the Mu’temedi-Dowla (the One upon Whom the State Relies), commonly rendered in the vernacular to ‘Matamet’

Matamet, the;
see Manuchar Ali Khan

Mehemet Taki Khan;
chief of the Char Lang tribe and tribal overlord of the Bakhtiari, with territories and subjects extending across large parts of the province of Isfahan, often referred to as the Great Khan

Michael Sola;
guide and interpreter assigned to the British Consul in Damascus

Mirza Aga Baba;
personal physician to the Shah of Persia

Mujelli, the;
chief of the Arab tribes in the vicinity of Kerak

Mullah Feraj;
a Bakhtiari chieftain on the Mal Emir plain

Mullah Fezi;
a Bakhtiari chieftain, commanding an impenetrable mountain castle

Mullah Mohammed;
a Bakhtiari chieftain on the Mal Emir plain

Musa;
a Kalikat Arab tribesman, guide to Henry Layard

Mustafa Kuli Khan;
a Persian, resident in Dizful, with a reputation for hospitality

Ralph Disraeli;
solicitor’s clerk in Benjamin Austen’s office and brother to Benjamin Disraeli

Saleh the Lur;
a servant to Baron de Bode and companion of Henry Layard

Sara Austen;
socialite and patron of the arts, Henry Layard’s aunt