He said nothing more, and indeed there was nothing more to be said. Jehar turned and left, confirmed in his antipathy, nursing murder in his heart. The uncle had as good as called him a thief, a gross insult, not to be borne. And what kind of man was it who would sell his own niece to someone whose honesty he doubted?
He thought of crossing the yard and looking in at the doorway of the kitchen in the hope of seeing Ninanna. But as he passed the company drawing office he saw one of the Germans emerge bareheaded and go around the side of the building. He did not lock the door; it was obvious that he was not intending to be away long. Gone around to the privy at the back, Jehar thought. He drew nearer. There was no one else in the office and no one nearby. The work of a moment to mount the wooden steps, enter, sweep together the several papers on the desk, clutch them in one quick handful, and leave as he had come.
For the work on the eastern side of the mound Somerville had decided on a method first used by Flinders Petrie at Lachish in Palestine twenty-five years before. Petrie’s mound had been steeper sided than this one of his, but that made no difference as far as he could see. A line was marked from the summit, and a shallow trench was begun, following this line of descent. Groups of six, each consisting of a pickman, a spademan, and four basketmen, were set one below the other three yards apart and, working from within the trench, told to cut a horizontal step. The objects found by each gang were to be kept separate and recorded separately. In this way, working in narrow shafts, he hoped to establish an exact chronological sequence.
On the seventh day, working at about twenty-three feet from the summit, one of the pickmen came upon the traces of a wall six or seven inches high. Somerville was called for and crouched for two hours, first with a small trowel and then with a narrow-bladed pocketknife, carefully scraping at the accretion of clay that obscured the base. At the end of this time he sat back on his heels. The habit of restraint in the presence of the workpeople, assumed for the sake of authority, kept his face impassive, gave no hint of the elation that filled him. The base was of stone, cut and shaped; the layer of bricks that surmounted it had kept their form, even under the weight of masonry piled upon them to make new foundations for building. They were not like the disintegrated remains they had found so far, made of compacted mud and dried in the sun: These bricks had been fired in a kiln. Only the rich and powerful had such walls built for their dwellings—and for those of their gods.
The import of this flooded his mind. He felt the need to be alone, apart from others, so as to be able to think calmly. He told the group they would all be remembered when the time for baksheesh came, instructed the pickman to follow the line of the wall with due care, and called for Elias to come and keep an eye on things. Then he made his way a little higher up, beyond the line of the new trench. From here he could look down at the railway buildings and beyond them at a vast and barren expanse marked by long rises of rock and gravel and the ridges of ancient canal embankments and silted irrigation ditches. In the days when that wall was built this land had been well watered, fertile, and prosperous. Always precarious, of course, for the people who worked on the land, because the season of floods was unpredictable and capricious. But for the rulers a green and pleasant land. He knew it as he stood there; this had been more than a stop on a trade route, more than a frontier post on borders contested by warring imperial powers. Higher than the delta lands to the south, cooler in summer, probably well timbered once, freshened by the streams between the two tributaries of the Euphrates. In their great days of empire the Assyrians held undisputed sway over all this ground. Could Tell Erdek once have been a summer resort for their kings, a place of rest and repose after the campaigning, after the washing away of the blood? If so, what more natural than they should have brought here things that they treasured or that held some particular meaning? That would explain the ivory plaque, perhaps even the guardian spirit…
“Noble lord, I have a paper for you to see.”
Engrossed in his thoughts, with the sound of voices and of metal striking on stone not far away, Somerville had heard no steps approach behind him. Turning, he saw Jehar standing at a respectful distance, holding a square sheet of grayish paper in his hand. “What is it?” he said. “What have you got there?”
Taking the question for encouragement, Jehar advanced and handed him the sheet. After a moment he saw that it was a map, carefully drawn by hand on graph paper. There was a dotted red line that crossed diagonally to the northwest, dipping slightly as it crossed the Khabur River, then rising again northward. There were contour lines indicating the steepness of the gradients, and at certain points a small black triangle had been drawn, with the altitude in meters beside it. He saw Zeharat al-Bada, 423, el-Muelehat, 411. These were the rises he had just been looking at. Following the red line to the edge of the paper, he saw that before reaching this edge it passed through the town of Ras el-Ain, a three-hour ride away. It was here that Fahir had his quarters. It took him a moment or two longer to realize that if the red line touched this town, approaching as it would between the hills and the eastern branch of the river, it must come very close indeed to the mound on which they were standing.
“It is the railway,” Jehar said softly, choosing the moment to speak when he saw comprehension come to the other’s face. “I did not want to show Your Excellency this very important document at a time when others were close by. I have traveled dangerously, without the men who should have accompanied me. The cowards deserted me, left me alone. Now, if they saw us, they would try to claim some credit for the obtaining of this map. They are liars from infancy. They would even ask Your Excellency for a reward, whereas it was I alone and unaided that obtained it.”
Even in the stress of the moment Somerville found himself struck once again by the ornately phrased, unfaltering speech. Jehar had probably never attended any sort of school in his life and almost certainly could not read or write and would not be capable of fabricating such a map, though Somerville had been briefly prey to this suspicion. It was as if some angel of eloquence had befriended him. Or demon, he thought suddenly—Jehar was the perpetual bearer of bad news. He felt a sudden throb of pain at his temples. Between the hills and the marshes, through his mound, through his prospects, through five thousand years of human life and death…
He was aware of Jehar’s gaze upon him with its usual blend, which he had always found unsettling, of intensity and simplicity. The gaze of a savage. He strove to let nothing show on his face; from obduracy, from the long habit of restraint; the other would know he had dealt a blow, but he would see no evidence of it, gain no advantage. “This is a survey map, drawn to scale,” he said. “Where did you get it?”
Jehar had been expecting this question and had prepared an answer that he thought would produce the best result. At first he had been inclined to tell the truth and describe how he had stolen it from the survey office. It was an exploit of which he felt proud and would have made a gripping and dramatic story, the adroitness and boldness of it, a miracle of timing. But in the end, not being sure the khwaja would appreciate how brilliant he had been, the risk of detection and punishment that the theft had involved, he had decided on a different answer.