He quickly took stock. There were wounded soldiers among the 33rd and the sappers, men such as the officer who had been grazed by the pistol ball, but, incredibly, they appeared to have forced one of the most formidable natural fortresses ever known without suffering a single fatality. That at least was something to be thankful for. Officially, the orders to the sappers on taking Magdala were to destroy the guns, mine the gates, and burn everything that was flammable: the huts, the palaces, the storerooms, only the church to be spared. But Wood was here as a reconnaissance officer, not in charge of a sapper company, and for a few crucial minutes before the main force arrived he might be able to limit the desecration that he knew was about to happen.
He turned to the officer of the 33rd, who had come up beside him. “For the time being I’m the senior officer present, so I’m taking charge. I want you immediately to post a guard around the church to prevent looting.”
The officer nodded. “Understood. But it won’t work.”
“I’m obliged to try.”
The officer told his sergeant to take a section of eight men across the plateau to the thatched building with the cross on top visible on the far side. They left on the double, Wood and Jones following some twenty meters behind. Wood’s heart sank when he saw what transpired once they reached the church; the officer had been right, of course. The soldiers immediately stacked their arms and went inside, ignoring the remonstrations of the sergeant, who was the only one to remain at the entrance. Jones passed his rifle to Wood, ran ahead and went inside as well. Already other soldiers were spreading out over the plateau with firebrands, lighting one thatched roof after another, the flames flickering and crackling and leaping out with the wind, igniting the adjacent buildings. Wood could see that there was no way the church could escape that holocaust either, regardless of General Napier’s orders, and that attempting to save it was going to be a lost cause. All he could do now was join the melee and try to rescue what he could.
He reached the entrance, holstered his revolver and leaned Jones’s rifle against the others. Three soldiers came out carrying great handfuls of objects in gold and silver and brass: crosses and chalices, shields and crowns, vestments covered in filigree and gold. A boy stood at the entrance, weeping, seemingly not caring as the soldiers jostled him in their eagerness to get out with their booty. Wood ducked inside and immediately smelled smoke. Above him part of the thatch was already ablaze, spreading as he watched it. Some soldier had clearly been overzealous with his firebrand. He seized a handful of rolled manuscripts, passing them to another man, who rushed with them to the entrance, and then turned around looking for more. The smoke was billowing, catching in the back of his throat. One of the roof timbers crashed down on the altar, crushing a metal chest and spreading the fire to the rushes on the floor. He realized that Jones was nowhere to be seen, and then he saw that the soldiers were coming up with their booty from a hole in the ground, evidently some kind of crypt. He crouched down over it, and shouted, “Everyone out. The church is burning. Everyone out now!”
Two soldiers came struggling up the rock-cut stairs, attempting to carry a large painted triptych between them but dropping it. Another timber came down from the ceiling, bringing with it the ornate bronze cross that had stood on the roof. One of the soldiers lunged for it, but immediately sprang back, clutching his burned hand, and staggered away to the entrance, helped by the other man. Jones appeared behind them, carrying scrolls that spilled from him as he struggled up the stairs. One of the scrolls was larger than the rest, and Wood grabbed it, pulling Jones up with his other hand and pushing him toward the entrance just as another beam came crashing down.
They stumbled out into the open air, coughing, Wood still clutching the scroll and Jones a handful of others, all that he had managed to rescue. Wood picked up Jones’s rifle, the last remaining one outside the church, and pulled him farther away, well beyond the flames that were now licking off the roof. They came to a halt under a stunted acacia tree some twenty yards farther on, and both went down on their knees, coughing and catching their breath. Wood peered at the other man. “I never thought I’d say this, Jones, but I had expected you to go for the treasure, and instead you would appear to have done a selfless service for mankind.”
Jones dropped his armful of scrolls on the ground and began counting them. “It’s not quite what it seems, sir, but thanks all the same. Yesterday evening at headquarters, when our role in the storming party became known, the archaeologist, Mr. Holmes, the one who often comes and talks to you, took me into his confidence and asked whether I would rescue scrolls for him, knowing that we would be among the first to come up here. He would have asked you, but he thought you might be constrained, sir. He promised to pay me straight up, no questions asked, five shillings per scroll, no need to put them in the kitty for the drumhead auction. Twenty scrolls here, that’s five pounds, sir, not bad for a hard day’s work, wouldn’t you say? He wants them for the British Museum.”
Wood coughed, and shook his head. “Well I’m glad there’s something in it for you. It’s still a good deed you’ve done. God know how many of them have been lost in that conflagration.”
Jones gathered up his load again and stood up. “I’ve got to be going now. Two fellows from the 33rd are ahead of me, taking the other scrolls I managed to get out before you arrived. I’ve promised them both a cut of the proceeds. None of the soldiers think the old parchment and vellum is of any value, so nobody should bother them as they go down. But I need to be there to give Mr. Holmes’s name should they be in any way harassed.”
“And then you need to retrieve the camera. I want to take some pictures of the entranceway and the revetments. It’s too late for much of value to be photographed inside the citadel, with everything going up in smoke, but we’ll do what we can.”
“Sir. I’ll be at the bottom of the slope in an hour. Thank you, sir. I’ll send the money home to my poor mother in Bristol. She’ll be ever so grateful, she will.”
“Right, Jones. I’ll look forward to the postcard. And mother or no mother, you’ll have to take your rifle, otherwise you really will be in trouble.”
Jones looked at the rifle, then at the scrolls. He sighed, dropped the bundle of parchment, slung the rifle over his shoulder and laboriously gathered the scrolls up again, dropping one and nearly losing the rest as he stooped to retrieve it. Then he seemed to remember something. He stopped and turned. “Sir.”
“What is it?”
“That one you’ve got. The big one.”
Wood looked at the scroll he had picked up. “I don’t think you’ve got space for it.”
“Perhaps, sir, if you could, you might show it to Mr. Holmes? He might pay more for it, see, being bigger.”
“Don’t push your luck, Jones. Remember, what you’re doing here is actually contravening General Napier’s orders. If anyone finds out, that drumhead auction will also be a drumhead court martial for one Sapper Jones, never to be Corporal Jones or Sergeant Jones, and certainly not King Jones. Now get on with it.”
“Sir. Thank you, sir. Bottom of the slope, one hour.”
Wood watched him hurry off down the path beside other soldiers struggling with their own loot, then looked at the scroll he had kept. He could immediately see that it was not in fact a scroll but some form of tapestry. He undid the leather cord and rolled it out, holding it up under the shade of the tree so that he could see the design more clearly. It was obviously very old, the colors faded, and was an impressive antiquity, showing a scene that was perhaps biblicaclass="underline" two men carrying a shrouded box between them the size of a seaman’s chest, another behind who looked patriarchal, with a braided black beard, and then behind him a cluster of horsemen, one with a lasso or whip and long hair.