The Sleeping Sands (3 page)

A scream pierced through his dark and comfortable slumber. Layard awoke with a start, momentarily confused by the strange location. The sun was already high in the sky, pouring into the guest room through the window, which proved to look out onto the Colonel’s courtyard. A second scream rang out. Layard fancied that he could distinguish words.

‘Allah! Allah!’

A hubbub of voices rose from below the window. Layard looked down at a crowd of shouting and gesticulating Arabs, watched over by Egyptian soldiers with the same long whips, or courbashes, as Yusuf’s guards of the day before. In a corner of the courtyard, a particularly wild and ragged group of Arabs stood in chains, gesturing and shouting at their guards. The scream rang out again. This time there were no discernible words but rather an agonised animal yell. Even from the height of his vantage point, the smell of sweat and fear reached up to Layard from the human morass below.

Layard dressed quickly and, after making sure once more of his packs and equipment, which he had arranged to have brought to his room the night before, descended to the house.

All was bedlam. It seemed to Layard as if every corridor, room and corner of the house was filled with either Arabs or the Colonel’s soldiers, engaged in angry, frightened or pitiful exchanges. Pushing through the mass of waving arms and angry faces, Layard turned a corner to find himself in the anteroom to the Colonel’s office. In one corner of the crowded room, he spotted Antonio, his back pressed into a corner, looking around with a mixture of fear and bewilderment. Above the sea of shouts and pleading, every few moments a scream that was louder and more desperate than all the rest would echo through the house. It seemed to be coming from behind a pair of ornate doors that led from the anteroom to the Colonel’s office. Layard fought his way to the dragoman’s side.

‘Antonio, what the devil is going on? Are we lodging in a madhouse?’

Antonio winced at the sound of another shrill scream.

‘No, Effendi, these men are chieftains from some of the tribes near to Hebron. Yusuf Effendi’s men have been summoning or rounding up the headmen of villages that owe taxes to the government or who have been fined for taking part in the uprising – the uprising against the Egyptians. Some of them have to pay fines and some of them are here to be punished.’

On cue, another scream rang out.

‘What is their punishment?’ asked Layard.

‘It is the bastinado, Effendi.’

‘Damn it.’ In his anger, Layard forgot Antonio’s sensitivity. Layard belonged to a civilised European society that, aside from the gallows, the guillotine and occasional and necessary flogging had found modern justice to have no need for torture. Yet, it seemed to Layard that, as he moved further into the East, he was moving further from the nineteenth century and deeper into a world where cruelty was still the common currency of government. He had heard of the bastinado, as one of the principal means whereby the tenuous rule of law was kept in the East, but had never as yet witnessed it. He pushed open the carved doors and walked from the sunlit anteroom into a scene from a dark and medieval imagination.

Yusuf Effendi sat in a large chair, attended by a secretary with a pile of papers and a scribe, holding a brass inkwell. He watched with a businesslike and dispassionate interest as the victims of the bastinado were brought before him. As each was brought forward in turn, the secretary would shuffle his papers and inform the Colonel of the category of the prisoner. The categories appeared to be two – either those prisoners who had confessed to a crime, or else those accused who were proving recalcitrant in their confessions. Soldiers with courbashes stood ready as each accused was brought in and thrown to the ground in front of the colonel. The barefooted prisoner was then roughly grabbed by his ankles, which were passed between two loops of rope attached to a pole, held by two thickset soldiers. In twos, the waiting soldiers took turns to whip the soles of the prisoner’s feet, while a third poured water on the wounds. All the while, the colonel looked on, until he felt that the punishment matched the severity of the crime, at which point he would gesture to the soldiers to cease. The accused would then be detached from the pole and, incapable of walking, would be dragged out of the room, to be immediately replaced by the next victim.

As Layard watched with a mixture of fascination and disgust, a succession of prisoners was brought before the colonel for the tender touch of the bastinado. Some screamed in wordless fear while others pleaded to the mercy of Yusuf Effendi or Allah. Whatever the object of their prayers, they fell on deaf ears – the only reply the strokes of the soldiers’ courbashes on their tattered and bloody feet.

In the hot, windowless room, the soldiers sweated under the effort of administering the torture, relieving their fellows by rote, so that they might maintain the efficiency and momentum of their industry. Their sweating bodies shone in the light of glass lamps, which illuminated the room and cast grotesque shadows on the walls. Distorted in the lamplight the long, twisted shadows of the rising and falling whips and their inverted victim looked to Layard like the darkest scene from some Gothic depiction of Hell. He let out an involuntary gasp.

‘Mr Layard, I did not see you there.’ The Colonel nodded politely in Layard’s direction.

‘You slept late. Did you have any breakfast yet? Perhaps you might join me in a glass of tea?’

The whips continued to rise and fall, casting their macabre shadowplay across the Colonel’s face, his eyes glinting in the flickering lamplight. He gestured towards a servant, holding a tray with a silver teapot. Layard felt bile rising into his throat. He swallowed and stared back at the colonel.

‘I have no care to bide here, Sir. I shall await your pleasure outside, where I believe the air is cleaner.’

The colonel smiled and nodded politely.

‘Ah, you have no stomach for the bastinado, I fear. You must forgive me. I forgot that Franks prefer such delicate intercourses to be conducted at a distance.’ He nodded once more and returned his attention to the next prisoner.

Layard bowed and walked briskly from the room. It was only once he strode through the anteroom, past the frightened Antonio, along the corridor and out of the house into the street that he realised he was holding his breath. He gulped in the air of the town. Despite its faint smells of human and animal waste and rotting vegetables, it seemed to Layard to be as sweet as a rose garden after the stench of torture. He walked out of the town into the low hills and fruit groves, aimlessly wandering among the ancient rock tombs. At the mouth of one tomb, he found a large flat boulder, with a view across a valley filled with pomegranate trees and vines. No other living thing could be seen apart from three goats, grazing on some olive trees. There was no sound, save the slight rustling of leaves in a faint breeze and the occasional clanking of one of the goat’s bells. Layard sat on the boulder, with his back against the wall of the tomb. He drew his knees up to his chest and gazed up at the sky. It was stark, cloudless and absolute; un-tempered by even a hint of moisture or shelter from the merciless sun. It did not seem to be any sky that he had ever known. He reached into his waistcoat pocket and absently stroked his watch, feeling the slight outline of its engraving. Its familiarity and modernity drew him back to a more familiar place and his mind drifted to a few months before.

*                      *                      *

The rattle of carriage wheels and the bustle of Kensington rang in the young man’s ears as he made his way to meet an uncle he had never met and of whom he only vaguely remembered any mention. On the cold, grey November afternoon, he felt a growing sense of excitement as he sidestepped puddles, flower sellers and lamplighters on his way to the gleaming new headquarters of the Royal Geographical Society.

He had no idea why now, after all these years he had received an invitation to meet William Layard, nor the significance of meeting at the Society. All he knew, as he turned his collar against the wind and rain was that his uncle William would not summon him to the Society for any trivial matter. His mind spun with imagined possibilities. Perhaps his uncle would reveal some great new discovery, or introduce him to an eminent explorer. Perhaps there may even be the opportunity to join an expedition and get away, for a few months at least, from the stifling routine of his life in London.

London. At once a treasure house and a prison, in London, Layard had found himself stranded - a young man whose erudition and desire for adventure far outweighed his fortune. Henry Layard had been born in a hotel in Paris in 1817. Perhaps it was for this reason that he was destined to be always looking to move on; a born traveller. As a child, he had been moved around Europe by his asthmatic father’s quest for clean air and general restlessness. As well as restlessness, Layard had inherited from his father a love of art and antiquity; although he was destined to inherit none of the scarce wealth that his father had invested in pursuing this love. Surrounded by relics of the past, yet with little prospects for the future, Layard had moved in 1833 to London, where he joined the legal business of his uncle, Benjamin Austen. For the next six years his life was characterised by ill-suited clerical drudgery, brightened by the presence of his Aunt Sara, who shared his love of art, and by the family of one of the other articled clerks, Ralph Disraeli. In the Disraelis, and particularly in Ralph’s brother Ben, Layard found a kindred love of the arts, a love of adventure and desperate ambition. He became a confirmed Romantic. With the Disraelis’ encouragement Layard travelled to the Alps, then Italy and spent several months touring alone in Russia and Sweden. Through them, he found access to some of the grandest drawing rooms of fashionable London, meeting great men such as Stratford Canning, Sir John Barrow and the publisher, John Murray, who had been a friend of that greatest of Romantics, Lord Byron. In the sparkle of literary conversation and tales of travel and exploration, Layard found a welcome escape from the limbo of legal clerkdom. The handsome young man threw himself enthusiastically into these conversations and impressed both with his scholarly knowledge and seemingly fearless passion for adventure. Thanks to the influence of Mrs Austen and the friendship of the Disraelis, the restless articled clerk began to become noticed in the salons of London.

So it was that Layard found himself on the steps of the Royal Geographical Society, looking up at its grand entrance. He paused for a few heartbeats, straightened his clothes and examined himself to make sure there were no unsightly splashes of mud. Satisfied, he drew himself up and walked boldly through the door.

The attendant acknowledged him politely and informed him that Mr William Layard was expecting him. Layard moved to sign his name in the large, leather bound visitor’s book, which sat on a desk by the door, with a pen and inkwell. The attendant gently placed his own hand on Layard’s and removed the pen, informing him that it would not be necessary to sign the book. Rather, he led him through a series of corridors, past the lounge and through a narrow door, half-hidden by a large potted palm. Beyond the door was a long, thin corridor and yet another door. The attendant indicated that he should go through it and, bowing slightly, took his leave. Layard knocked gently at the door.

‘Enter,’ said a rich, deep voice.

If he had expected grandeur in the Society’s rooms, Layard was disappointed. The room he found himself in - with the exception of a mezzotint portrait of the young queen; some Staffordshire figures; an ormolu clock on a fairly plain over mantle and a few pieces of furniture of no particular note - was completely bare. Squeezed into one of the few chairs was a large, red-headed and almost completely spherical man.

‘You will forgive me if I do not rise, Sir,’ said the man. ‘Please, join me for a glass of Madeira.’ He indicated an empty seat, separated from his own by a small table upon which sat a crystal decanter and two glasses.

‘I am-‘ began Layard.

‘Yes, yes, my dear boy,’ interrupted the man. ‘There’ll be time enough for all the pleasantries. Important business first. Now - Madeira?’

He indicated the chair once more by means of lifting the decanter and removing its stopper, which he waved from Layard to the chair in a sort of pantomime. Layard sat and accepted a glass of the wine, which smelled exceptionally good.

‘That’s better. Now, you are Henry Layard, occasionally known as Austen and I am William Layard, occasionally known by names that I dare not repeat too often in civilised company.’ He beamed an enormous, toothy smile at Layard, twin points of pink illuminating his moonlike cheeks.

‘There, we have done the introductions – now, you shall taste this very fine Madeira and torture me no longer by keeping me from it with your incessant prattle.’ At which, he lifted his own glass and took a long, thirsty draught. Layard dutifully sipped his glass, savouring the sweet, luxurious taste and taking the opportunity to survey his uncle.

William Layard was an imposing figure. He was as tall as young Henry, to which he added a girth that seemed to almost match his height, inch for inch. His hair, neck and cravat were all red; as was his nose and a number of blood vessels that appeared to have randomly burst across his features. This internal map of the
bon viveur
was sister to a similar, external map of his gastronomic adventures, spread across the globe of his body. His eyes, which, regardless of his bodily preoccupations, never left their study of his nephew, twinkled with mischief. His clothes, though well-made, were old and faded, with antique stains of dubious parentage. He had a faint scar, running from the corner of his right eye to the line of his jaw, which only became visible when his face flushed in mirth, or else to splutter on an over-hasty gulp of wine. Although adipose to the point of apparent incapacity, those movements he did make seemed to possess a balletic and almost feminine grace. Layard mentally noted that he had never before seen a decanter and glass handled so adroitly, not even by the most experienced Parisian sommelier, so that not a single drop was spilled nor wasted. William Layard seemed in fact to his nephew to be a complete opposite of his other uncle, the dry, particular Benjamin Austen. While one offered a lifetime of service to the dispassionate law, the other promised a lifetime of life. William Layard seemed to delight in every word he spoke, playing with each sentence the way a cat plays with a mouse.