Barry Unsworth - Land of Marvels

“Yes,” Palmer said. “You can see it, can’t you? He wasn’t one to cross. The sculptor, whoever it was, must have been in fear and trembling when he made him.” He got up and took some steps farther into the chamber, toward the entrance to the larger chamber beyond, which was blocked off by double stone doors and a fall of masonry across the entrance. “If he was there, where he is now, against the wall, anyone making for the tomb would have had to cross the path of his gaze and so incur his curse. Like a kind of psychic burglar alarm.”

“His eyes are made of pitch,” Somerville said. “Like the lion’s. But they have not been touched by fire. If it was so, if Marduk was installed here as a last-ditch defense against any who would come to violate the tomb, it must have been close to the end, it must have been in the last—”

He was interrupted by a sudden exclamation. “Come and look at this,” Palmer said. He was standing close to the blocked doorway, gazing upward. Part of the wall on one side had fallen across the entrance, but the stone lintel above it was still in place, and the beam of Palmer’s torch was resting steadily on this.

“What is it?” Somerville moved to Palmer’s side and looked up at the lintel. After a moment he made out the marks of incisions on the stone. It was cuneiform script, Assyrian.

“They chiseled the signs into the stone. Pretty deep, aren’t they? They wanted the message to last.”

“Can you make it out?”

“I don’t think it’s a text, it looks like just a single name. Hang on a minute…” When he spoke again the pitch of his voice was higher, charged with a tone of protest. “Can’t be,” he said. “Must be a fake of some kind, a theft of identity. If they can borrow the power of a god, I suppose they can borrow the power of a king too.”

“What king?”

Palmer lowered the torch. “The name up there is Sin-shar-ishkun,” he said. “There can’t be any mistake. The first syllable refers to the god Sin, who appointed him shar, or king.”

“There was only one king of that name,” Somerville said. “He died in the flames when the Babylonians and Medes took Nineveh in 612 and put the city to the fire.” He made a gesture toward the doorway and the chamber beyond. “It’s in the Chaldean chronicles. Whoever is in there must be an impostor. Look, it’s getting late now, I don’t think it would be advisable to go any further today. We’ll get them to make a barrier to block off the entrance to this anteroom, keep out the light, keep people out too. Planks lashed together will do. We’ll set a guard of four men to stay at the top of the shaft. I’ll stay with them if you will send someone with provisions for me. Tomorrow morning we’ll clear the doorway and try to shift the doors. With any luck, they will still turn on their pivots. It won’t take more than two or three hours. Then we’ll see who is inside there.”

“No reason why you should do the whole night. You need sleep just like the rest of us. I’ll come to relieve you around two A.M.”

In the heightened state of his nerves—and with the knowledge that his assistant disliked any disturbance of his sleep—this offer brought a prickle of tears to Somerville’s eyes. He was reluctant to accept, however, reluctant to leave the scene even for the space of an hour. But Palmer insisted and in the end prevailed.

Manning had not told Edith the whole truth, by any means: He had limited himself to the American’s duplicity, he had naturally said nothing about his own designs once the report was secured, and he had said nothing that might cause her to suspect that Spahl was on the same quest. Such knowledge was useless to her, he had reasoned, and might even be dangerous, causing her to do or say the wrong thing. He was not a man with a great play of mind, but he had seen from the way she took the news—first the rage, then the tears—that there had been something going on between her and Elliott, that the swine had been taking advantage of her. Hell hath no fury, he had said to himself sagely, and he took care not to fan the flames.

Consequently, Edith, in deciding what to do with the papers that had been so falsely entrusted to her, had no idea that Alex was in any real danger. She wanted to show her contempt for his behavior and to make sure he understood that all was over between them. After some thought she decided to return the papers to him publicly, with as many spectators present as possible to add to his discomfiture. On the morning following the major’s revelations she rose somewhat earlier than usual and took more trouble with her toilette, arranging her hair carefully and putting some color on her cheeks. She chose a dress that she knew to be becoming, one that fitted close but not so much as to be vulgarly flaunting. When she felt sufficiently ceremonious and prepared for the scene she made her way to the courtyard, Elliott’s folder under her arm.

She found everyone but Palmer seated at the breakfast table; he was still at the site, and Patricia was proposing shortly to take him a thermos flask of tea and stay there with him until Somerville returned to relieve him. It was a good occasion, with everyone present like this; in fact during these days there had been what seemed an increased sociability among them; Elliott in particular was never seen alone but always in the company not only of the major but of the Swiss journalist.

She was put off her stride a little by the sight of her husband at the table; he was rarely at meals now, and she had somehow not envisaged him as a witness. Might he not think it strange, seeing her dressed and made up like this, seeing this rejection of Elliott’s papers along with Elliott himself? But it was too late now to hold back. Holding herself very straight, as she had been taught to do as a child when reciting poetry or acting the queen in pageants—she had always had the queen’s part—Edith walked to the place where the American was sitting and dropped the file with deliberate carelessness on the table beside him. “I have no further use for these,” she said—or for you either, her tone and looks implied.

But she had forgotten, in the hurt to her feelings, quite a number of things. She had forgotten that Elliott was still officially an archaeologist, that the major would be obliged, in company, to pretend to believe this, that the Swiss would believe it anyway, that it was important for her husband’s credit and his relations with the Turkish authorities that it should be generally believed. These things came to her, all in a rush, in the silence that followed. Elliott had not moved. She felt the color rise to her face. She looked across at her husband with a sort of entreaty, conscious suddenly of how much she cared that his name and his ambitions should be protected. But he did not meet her gaze; he seemed abstracted, hardly aware of what was happening.

It was Manning who saved the situation, for which she was always to be grateful to him. “Your notes about the Hittites, Elliott, I suppose,” he said. “Have you found any evidence of those bronze-sheathed war chariots you were talking about the other evening?”

Elliott rose from the table, keeping a loose and careless hold of the file. He did not glance at Edith but looked steadily at the major. After a moment he nodded. “There are indications,” he said. “Certainly there are indications. I am compiling a report.” A sudden smile came to his face, exuberant, full of confidence. He looked with his usual unwavering frankness at the major and Spahl, who were both now standing. “In fact,” he said, “I have already compiled it. It is on my person at present. I am proposing to carry it on me at all times—to avoid losing it, you know. When I return home, I am hoping to publish it in the American Journal of Oriental Research .” He turned toward Edith then, but still without looking directly at her. “These notes are no good to anyone,” he said. “They never were.” And as he spoke he dropped the file back on the table with a gesture very similar to hers.