He looked up, seeing that the boy who had been at the entrance to the church was watching him, standing by the tree. Perhaps he was the son of the priest, someone who might know the significance of this scene. Perhaps, indeed, this might be one for Holmes, for the British Museum. Holmes had become something of a friend on the occasions over the last weeks when Wood had been able to come down from the forward party and spend time with the headquarters staff of the expedition. It was he who had inspired Wood to think of planning his own archaeological expedition into Central Asia, something that he now had firmly in mind for his next furlough, an expedition for once without the dismal context of war and death and destruction, but purely for knowledge and gratification and discovery.
He turned from the boy and began to roll up the tapestry. As he did so, he saw the diminutive figure of Stanley coming up the path toward him, his pith helmet askew, clutching his notebook and pencil. “Mr. Stanley,” he said. “We meet again. You have seen the body of Theodore? He took his own life. I saw it myself.”
Stanley was covered in dust and looked shaken, pale. “There is nothing redeeming in what has happened here. Nothing redeeming at all.”
Wood thought for a moment, and gestured at Stanley’s notebook. “It will make a good story. Your readers will lap it up. That’s all.”
The acrid smell of burning thatch was beginning to disguise the reek of squalor and death that had pervaded this place. Soon, once the regiments of the expedition had returned to their stations in India, the proceeds of all that loot would be squandered in the way of soldiers, in the brothels and taverns of Mhow and Nowshera and Peshawar, drained away as if it had never existed. Well before then, a few hours from now, the smoldering remains of Magdala would be quenched by the torrential rains of the late afternoon, and the place would appear cleansed, the memory of this day swept down the eroded channels of the hillsides, flushed down the ravines to the sea.
Wood took out his handkerchief and rolled the tapestry inside, careful not to get any of it dirty. Looking down, he saw that his tunic was splattered with blood, and realized that it must have been Theodore’s. He squinted up at the sun, seeing the curious brown corona still there, ominous and looming, and remembered what Theodore had said about his greatest treasure, wondering what he had meant. He tucked the tapestry under his arm; at least he had managed to save something. He took one last look at the burning church, seeing the black smoke twisting and writhing up toward the corona, then nodded at Stanley and turned to go.
18
A little over twenty-four hours after leaving Louise in the nursing home, Jack stood on the plateau of Magdala in the central Ethiopian highlands, the site of King Theodore’s last stand against the British in 1868. Earlier in the afternoon he had scoured the saddle in front of the plateau for evidence of the battle, finding three corroded Snider — Enfield cartridges where the British line had stood their ground; further up the slope he had discovered the broken tip of a bayonet where the Abyssinians had been forced back by the British charge.
It was a beautiful summer day, the plateau and the ravines green with the vegetation that had not yet sprouted in the month of the 1868 siege, making it difficult to marry what he had seen with the bleak landscape in the photographs taken by the Royal Engineers just before the assault. But what had brought home the reality of the siege for him was the seven-ton bronze monster in front of him now, the mortar that Theodore had dubbed Sevastopol after the Crimean War battle of the previous decade. It had never been fired, and had remained on the plateau ever since, half buried and nearly forgotten. It was a reminder that Theodore, too, had engaged in a Herculean undertaking to get here, dragging this behemoth all the way into the mountains, cutting the road ahead of him as he struggled to reach Magdala before the British arrived. Reading the accounts from 1868, it had almost seemed as if some supernatural force had been attempting to prevent both sides from reaching the plateau, but having been here now himself and experienced the terrain, Jack knew that this was no more than the overwhelming challenge posed by nature, a catalog of physical obstacles that would make retracing either expedition a monumental enterprise even today.
“Jack. The Patriarch is ready to see you now.” A lean, wiry man wearing a shirt with the IMU logo over the breast pocket came up to him carrying the large picture-frame-sized package that Jack had brought with him from England. Zaheed was IMU’s representative in the Horn of Africa, an archaeologist trained in Britain who had worked in Egypt with Maurice and Aysha, excavated extensively at the ancient site of Axum in Ethiopia, and recently relocated to Mogadishu to help get the Somali national museum back on its feet after years of civil war. Jack had only met him briefly before, but had warmed to him greatly on their two-hour helicopter flight from Addis Ababa into the mountains that morning. He was earnest and enthusiastic, with a deep-rooted love of his country and many contacts that had facilitated not only this encounter at Magdala but also the next stage in the trip, one that should see them meet up with Costas at Mogadishu airport that evening and then travel on to the Somali naval headquarters the next day. It was a tight schedule, with Deep Explorer now approaching Somali territorial waters, but the chance presence of the Patriarch of the Orthodox Church of Ethiopia at Magdala on a routine visit had meant that this was an opportunity not to be missed, particularly given the extraordinary item in the package that Jack had been able to bring with him.
He took a final photo of the mortar, focusing on the founder’s mark near the breech. The verdigris on the bronze made him think of the incredible image Maurice had sent him of Lanowski with the Ba’al sculpture at the bottom of the trench at Carthage, something that Jack had been unable to get out of his mind since they had spoken on the phone outside the nursing home; the gorilla skin was even more astonishing. Then he put his camera away in the old khaki bag that he had slung over his shoulder and followed Zaheed along the path toward the church.
He was thrilled that there had been time to trace Captain Wood’s movements in the final hours of the assault on that day in 1868. While Zaheed had hurried ahead to announce their arrival to the Patriarch, Jack had followed his path more slowly, making his way from the ledge where the helicopter had landed across the battlefield and up the boulder-strewn track, beside the precipice where the executed Abyssinian hostages had been found. At the ruined entranceway, the Koket-Bir, he had passed the place where Private Bergin and Gunner Magner had won their Victoria Crosses, the walls still pocked with bullet holes, and on the plateau itself he had found the stone that marked the spot where Theodore had shot himself and the British had cremated his body after pillaging all they could from his citadel and its churches.
Wood’s diary had remained unopened since it had been brought back to England by Jack’s great-great-grandfather in the 1880s, and discovering it in the family archive had been a huge excitement. After reading it, Jack had pieced together what he could of Wood’s life in the years after Abyssinia, up to his sudden death from cholera in 1879; he had been particularly fascinated to read Wood’s book on the expedition he had undertaken in 1875 with the Russian Prince Constantin down the River Oxus to Lake Aral, making archaeological discoveries on the way that Jack intended to follow up when he had time. The box in the archive contained one other extraordinary item, something that had stunned Jack when he had first unrolled it. He had taken it straight to the IMU conservation department and had received it back from them stabilized and framed just before leaving for his flight. It was that item that had made the presence of the Patriarch here so opportune, and that made Jack’s pulse quicken as he followed Zaheed toward the circular thatched building with the cross on it at the western end of the plateau.