Barry Unsworth - Land of Marvels

He caught his wife’s eye and saw something in her expression, something of admonition or reproof. He had spoken to their guest with a lightness that was sardonic, almost gibing, a tone that he knew had become more common with him of late, as his worries accumulated. It made him disliked; Manning didn’t like him, he knew that, though without much caring.

The very fact of the major’s presence among them was proof that a language less vague was being spoken elsewhere. Manning spoke Arabic, he had an escort of armed Shammar tribesmen, he had traveled on camelback through the regions west of the Tigris and southward across al-Jazirah. After some days of ranging about among the headwaters of the Khabur he was leaving for Damascus next morning, a journey that would involve crossing the northern part of the Syrian Desert. The reason given out for these extensive travels was the need for reliable survey maps, and in fact Manning did occupy himself with these. But his main employment—Somerville knew this from Jehar, who sometimes, in the hope of baksheesh, included such items of information in his news of the railway line—was speaking to tribal leaders, offering rewards in the name of King George for promises of allegiance in the event of war, seeking to determine the number of friendly rifles. It was an enterprise that had caused a good deal of mirth to Palmer when he had heard of it. To take the trouble to record this information and transmit it to military intelligence in London for future reference in the event of war, when it was known on every hand that the promises of the sheikhs shifted with the desert breezes…

“Rapidly approaching,” the major said now, pointedly looking away from Somerville. “Those were the words used.”

A silence followed this, broken by Patricia, not out of tact so much as out of impatience with people who got so huffy over what was after all only a form of words. “Too many prophecies flying around, royal and otherwise,” she said briskly. “It’s dead easy to make prophecies, you can always adapt them to events and pretend you meant something different.”

It was a presumptuous thing to say, in Edith’s view, improper too, unwomanly, trying to tell the men their business. Seeing the way Palmer smiled and nodded in full approval, she felt an increase of contempt for him. She noted the steady, unabashed regard of the girl’s gray eyes, the delicate flush of the complexion, the mouth still childlike in its softness. To have studied modern history at Cambridge was all very well, but women should behave as women, not try to talk about politics on equal terms with the men. The girl was so heedless, so inviolable in her self-absorption… Edith drank some coffee, thought it needed more sugar, reached for the bowl.

“The only important commercial interest that is approaching rapidly is a German one.” Somerville at once regretted this remark. He had not mentioned the news of the bridge, held back by an instinct of secrecy betrayed by his words now, he felt, and absurd in any case since everyone at the table must know he was referring to the Baghdad Railway. This great project, financed by the Deutsche Bank, was designed to link Constantinople to the Persian Gulf. It was not the fact of it he had wanted to disguise, but his own private belief, gaining on him daily in spite of his efforts to resist it, that it was aiming at him.

He had risen as he spoke as if to forestall any further talk of the line, and he now smiled around the table in farewell. “I’d better walk over and see how things are going,” he said. And then, to Palmer: “Shall we have another look at that piece of ivory first?”

Palmer got to his feet, though it seemed with a certain unwillingness to leave Patricia’s side. Together the two men made their way to the large stone-flagged room opening onto the courtyard, where most of the work of restoration was carried out.

The ivory lay flat on one of the small tables, resting on a thick bed of black felt. Patricia had been eager to be given the task of preliminary cleaning, and Palmer had wanted to please her, so Somerville, after some hesitation, had agreed. It had meant no more than removing the marks of clay on the surface by means of a soft brush with wetted bristles, but he was obliged to admit that she had done it well. It was possible to see now that the background consisted of a pattern of lilies and papyrus flowers and that the tight curls of the victim’s head were not carved in the block but made up of a number of very small pegs with rounded heads that had been fashioned separately and inserted with astonishing skill. There were still some traces of the gold that had been used to highlight these curls, traces too on the victim’s skirt.

Somerville took from his pocket a small magnifying glass he always carried with him. “There is quite a bit of clay still in the eyes,” he said, after some moments of scrutiny. “But the eyes themselves are made of pitch. The lion’s, I mean. It has run a little as if the lion were weeping. And there is what looks like compacted ash in some of the incisions.” He passed the glass to Palmer. “What would make the bitumen run like that?”

“It must have melted,” Palmer said. “Must have been in a fire, or pretty close to one. Hard to know what else but heat would do it, the stuff sets like a rock and lasts forever. And then these traces of ash, if that is what they are.”

“If so, the fire must have been here. No one would have brought a fire-damaged ivory plaque to this place with him. There was probably an inlay once, here in the arches formed by the lily petals.”

There was nothing left of the stones they had used for this, cornelian or lapis lazuli, whatever it had been, but there were traces of some vitreous powder here and there that could have been part of the original cement. Once again it came to Somerville, as he continued to look closely down, that the victim was somehow collaborating in his fate, supporting himself on his arms, holding his face upward, offering his throat. This was no ravening spring of the beast on its prey. There was something stately and ceremonious in the inclined head of the lion, the enclosing grip of the paws as it held the man in its embrace and took the last of his ebbing life. It was power that was being celebrated here, power absolute and unquestioned. But whose?

“It has something in common with a few of the ivories found at Nimrud in the 1850s,” he said. “Those they found in the fortified palace built by Shalmaneser. No one has yet established where they came from.” In the interest of the object before him, as the dim notion came to him that with luck he might add something to this debate, even finally settle it, he felt the rush of an emotion like relief; the specter of defeat, so close to him lately, shrank away, receded. “That would put it somewhere in the middle of the ninth century,” he said. “Getting on for three thousand years ago.”

“If it was made for him,” Palmer said. “But it could be quite a bit earlier. The Assyrian kings of the period brought back booty from all over. A lot of it was someone else’s booty first.”

“Or else tribute from subject peoples, more or less the same thing. A luxury product in any case.” Somerville straightened up from his examination and smiled suddenly. Smiles were rare with him, but they were attractive when they came, narrowing his eyes and bringing something youthful and almost reckless to his face. “No telling, not for the moment anyway,” he said. “But you can be sure this bit of ivory has seen a thing or two in its time.”

“Starting with the beast they took it from. Can’t have been much fun for the elephant with the weapons they disposed of then.”

On this note they parted, Palmer to resume the study of some cuneiform inscriptions that had been found on fragmented clay tablets at a depth of twenty feet, Somerville to return to the tell and see how the work was going. Before setting off, however, he looked in on his wife, who, together with Patricia, was busy in the smaller, adjoining workroom. They were occupied with assembling and trying to fit together some sizable fragments of pottery that had been found lying close together not far below the surface. It was Islamic ware, dating to the period of domination by the Seljuk Turks and beautiful in its coloring, with an opaque bluish and green glaze that had stayed fresh through the eight hundred years or so of its life. For Somerville it was too recent to be of great interest, medieval, in fact. Such pieces were common throughout the area; you sometimes kicked against them as you walked, the pots having been made in considerable quantities not far away, at ar-Raqqah, a prosperous trading center until it was destroyed in the Mongol invasions of the thirteenth century.