The Sunbird Read online

  Fifteen feet from the sealed mouth of the passage there was evidence of a large bonfire which had blackened the walls, roof and floor around it. A pile of charred logs still lay where the lack of air had stifled the fire when the mouth of the tunnel was sealed. This fire puzzled us until Louren reconstructed the battle for us. He paced restlessly back and forth along the passage, his footsteps ringing on the stone slabs, his shadow falling grotesque and monstrous on the stone walls.

  ‘They drove them into this place, the last of our men of Opet, a small party of the strongest and the bravest.’ His voice rang with the truth of it, like a troubadour singing the legends of the old heroes. ‘They sent in their champions to finish the slaughter but the men of Opet cut them down and the others fled. Then they drew up their archers at the mouth of the passage, and fired volleys of arrows into it. Again they went in, but the men of Opet were there waiting for them and again they died in their dozens.’

  He turned and came down the passage to stand beside me under the swaying electric bulb, and we were silent for a moment imagining it.

  ‘My God, Ben. Think of it. What a fight to end with. What glory these men won on that last day.’

  Even I, a man of peace, was stirred by it. I felt my heartbeat quicken and I turned to him like a child at story-time. ‘What happened then?’ I asked.

  ‘They were dying already, weak with a dozen wounds each. There was no strength left in them to continue and they stood shoulder to shoulder, companions in life, and now in death also, leaning wearily on their weapons, but the enemy would not come again. Instead, they built a fire in the mouth of the passage to smoke them out, and when that did not do it, they abandoned the attack and bricked up the entrance turning it into a tomb for the dead and the living alike.’

  We were all silent then, thinking about Louren’s story. It made sense, it fitted the evidence in all but one respect. I did not want to say it, did not want to spoil such a stirring tale, but Sally had no such compunction.

  ‘If that’s true, then what happened to your band of heroes - did they change into moonbeams and flit away?’ Her tone was slightly derisive, but of course she was right. I wished she was not.

  Louren laughed, a little embarrassed chuckle. ‘So you think of something better,’ he challenged her.

  Of the heroes of this ancient drama there was no trace, except that which lay at the foot of the passage below the graven sun image of Baal. It was blanketed by the thick grey dust and it was the final discovery on the archives floor. It was a battle-axe. A weapon of striking beauty and utility. When first I took it up from the paving where it had lain for almost 2,000 years, my hand closed snugly around the haft, the grooves in the handle fitted my fingers as though they had been moulded from them. A broken wrist-strap of leather dangled from the end of the handle.

  The haft was forty-seven inches long, and fashioned from lengths of rhinoceros horn that had been laminated into a solid rod of steely resilience and strength. The handle was of ivory and the whole had been bound with electrum wire to reinforce its already surpassing strength and to protect the shaft from the cuts of enemy blades. The blade was shaped like a double crescent moon, each side exposing seven and a half inches of razor edge. From its extreme end protruded an unbarbed spike twelve inches long, thus the weapon could be used on the cut as well as the thrust.

  The head was exquisitely worked and engraved, with the shapes of four vultures with wings spread, one on each side of the double blade. The birds were rendered in such detail that every feather was shown, and beyond the figures a sun rose in a burst of rays like a flower. The engravings were inlaid with electrum, an alloy of gold and silver, and from the silvery sheen of the blades it was clear that they had been tempered. The weapon was caked and dulled with what must have been dried blood, it was obviously the author of those horrible wounds that bloomed upon so many of the corpses scattered along the passage.

  Holding that beautiful weapon in my hand I was infected by a sudden madness. I was not truly aware of my own intention until the axe was flying in a wide glittering circle around my head. The balance and weight of the great axe was so pure and sweet that no effort was involved as I swung it high, and then into a long overhand killing stroke. The blade whickered eagerly at the kiss of moving air across its bright edge. The flexing of the handle seemed to bring it alive in my hand, alive again after nearly 2,000 long years of sleep.

  From some deep atavistic depths of my soul I felt a cry rising, an exultant yell which seemed the natural accompaniment to the deadly song of the axe. With an effort I checked the flight of the axe and the cry before it reached my lips, and looked around at the faces of the others.

  They were staring at me as though I had begun raving and frothing at the mouth. Quickly I lowered the axe. I stood there feeling utterly foolish, appalled at my treatment of such a rare treasure. The horn handle could easily have become brittle, and snapped at such harsh usage.

  ‘I was just testing it,’ I said lamely. ‘I’m sorry.’

  That night we pondered and puzzled the riddle of the archives until well after midnight. We found no answer and afterwards Louren walked with me to my hut.

  ‘The Lear is coming to pick me up tomorrow morning, Ben. I’ve been here two weeks already, and I just cannot stay another day. God, when I think of how I’ve neglected my responsibilities since we started on this dig!’

  We stopped at the door of my hut and Louren lit a cigar.

  ‘What is it about this place that makes us all act so strangely, Ben? Do you feel it also? This strange sense of,’ he hesitated, ‘of destiny.’

  I nodded, and Louren was encouraged.

  ‘That axe. It did something to you, Ben. You weren’t yourself for a few minutes there today ’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘I am desperate to discover the contents of the scrolls, Ben We must start on that as soon as possible.’

  ‘There is ten years’ work there, Lo. You will have to be patient.’

  ‘Patience is not one of my virtues, Ben. I was reading of the discovery of Tutankhamen’s tomb last night. Lord Carnarvon made the discovery possible, and yet he died before he could look on the sarcophagus of the dead Pharaoh.’

  ‘Don’t be morbid, Lo.’

  ‘All right,’ Louren agreed. ‘But don’t waste time, Ben.’

  ‘You get Hamilton for me,’ I said ‘We can’t do a thing without him.’

  ‘I’ll be in London on Friday,’ Louren told me ‘I’ll see him myself.’

  ‘He is a difficult old codger,’ I warned him.

  Louren grinned. ‘Leave him to me. Now, listen to me, Benjamin my boy, if you find anything else here, you let me know immediately, you understand? I want to be here when it happens.’

  ‘When what happens?’

  ‘I don’t know - something. There is something else here, Ben. I know it.’

  ‘I hope you are right, Lo.’ And he clapped my shoulder and walked away into the night towards his own hut.

  While we worked on in the archives, lifting the human remains and the piles of weapons, a construction crew arrived on the site by Dakota to erect a repository for the scrolls. This was another large prefabricated warehouse, fitted with airtight doors and a powerful air-conditioning unit to maintain the scrolls in an atmosphere of optimum temperature and humidity. A high barbed-wire fence was erected around the building for security reasons, and every precaution for the safety of the scrolls was taken.

  At the same time the construction crew erected another half-dozen living quarters for the expanded team, and the first inhabitants of these were four high officials of the Botswana Government. It was the Government who had forbidden the removal of the scrolls from the territory and made the erection of the new buildings necessary. The Government deputation stayed for two days, and left satisfied that their interests in the discovery would be adequately protected, but not before I had exacted a solemn promise of secrecy. The announcement of the site would be at my signal only.


  We began labelling and removing the pottery jars from their shelves, taking the greatest pains to record, both photographically and by written notes, the exact position of each. It seemed likely that they had been stacked in chronological order, and this would assist the work of interpretation.

  On the Monday I received a crippling blow to my plans in the form of a laconic message from Louren.

  ‘Hamilton unavailable. Please suggest alternative.’

  I was disappointed, hurt and angry. Disappointed because Hamilton was the best in the world, and his presence would have immediately given weight and authenticity to my site. I was hurt because Hamilton obviously believed my claims were spurious, my reputation had been damaged by the vicious attacks of my critics and scientific opponents. Hamilton had clearly been influenced by this. He did not want to be party to some mistaken or blatantly fraudulent discovery of mine. Finally, I was angry because Hamilton’s refusal to undertake the work was a direct insult. He had put the mark of the pariah on me and it would discourage others from giving the assistance I desperately needed. I might find myself discredited before I had even started.

  ‘He didn’t even give me a chance,’ I protested to Sally. ‘He didn’t even want to listen to me. Christ, I didn’t realize I was such a professional leper. Even talking to me can ruin a reputation!’

  ‘He’s a skinny, bald-headed old goat!’ Sally agreed. ‘He’s a lecherous old feeler of bottoms, and—’

  ‘And the greatest living authority on ancient writings in the world,’ I told her bitterly. There was no reply to that, and we sat in forlorn silence for a while.

  Then Sally perked up. ‘Let’s go and fetch him!’ she suggested.

  ‘He might refuse to see us,’ I gloomed.

  ‘He won’t refuse to see me,’ Sally assured me, and behind the words was an untold story that set my jealousy coursing corrosively through my veins. Sally had worked for him three years, and I could only console myself that her standards were high enough to exclude Eldridge Hamilton.

  Seventy-two hours later I sat in the front lounge of the Bell at Hurley with a pint of good English bitter in front of me, and watched the car park anxiously. It was only a fifteen-minute drive from Oxford and Sally should have been here long ago.

  I felt tired, irritable and depressed from that soul-destroying overnight flight from Johannesburg to Heathrow. Sally had phoned Hamilton from the airport.

  ‘Professor Hamilton, I do hope you don’t mind me phoning you,’ she had cooed.

  ‘Sally Senator, do you remember I worked under you in 1966. That’s right, Sally Green-Eyes.’ And she giggled coyly.

  ‘Well, I am on my way through England. Just here for a day or two. I felt so lonely and nostalgic - those were wonderful times.’ Her tone had a hundred intimate shades of invitation and promise.

  ‘Lunch? That’s wonderful, Professor. Why don’t I pick you up. I have a hire car.’ She gave me a triumphant thumbs-up sign.

  ‘The Bell at Hurley? Yes, of course, I remember. How could I forget.’ She made a sick face at me. ‘I so look forward to it.’

  The silver Jaguar slid into the car park, and I saw Sally at the wheel. With a scarf in her hair and laughter on her lips, she didn’t look like a girl who had sat fourteen hours in the cramped seat of an intercontinental jet.

  She slid out of the car, giving me a flash of those wonderful sun-browned thighs, and then she was coming towards me, hanging on the arm of Eldridge Hamilton, and laughing gaily.

  Hamilton was a tall stoop-shouldered man in his fifties; a baggy Harris tweed suit with leather patches on the elbows hung like a sack on his gaunt frame. His nose was beaky, and his bald pate shone in the pale sunlight as though it had been buffed up with a good wax polish. All in all he was not formidable competition, but his little eyes sparkled behind the heavy horn-rimmed glasses and his lips were slack with desire, exposing a mouthful of bad teeth, as he looked at Sally. I found it a hard price to pay for his services.

  Sally led him to my table, and he was six feet from me before he recognized me. He stopped dead, and I saw him blink once. He knew instantly that he had been taken, and for a moment the whole project hung in the balance. He could so easily have turned on his heel and walked out.

  ‘Eldridge!’ I leapt to my feet, crooning seductively. ‘How wonderful to see you.’ And while he still hesitated, I had him by the elbow in a grip like a velvet-lined vice. ‘I’ve ordered you a large Gilbey’s gin and tonic - that’s your poison, isn’t it?’

  It was five years since last we had met, and my memory of his personal tastes mollified him slightly. He allowed Sally and I to ease him into a seat and place the gin convenient to his right hand. While Sally and I bombarded him with all our considerable combined charm he maintained a suspicious silence, until the first gin had gone down. I ordered another and he began to thaw, halfway through the third he became skittish and voluble.

  ‘Did you read Wilfred Snell’s reply to your book Ophir in the Journal?’ he asked. Wilfred Snell was the most vociferous and merciless of all my scientific adversaries, ‘Jolly amusing, what?’ And Eldridge neighed like a randy stallion, and clutched at one of Sally’s beautiful thighs.

  I am a man of peace, but at that moment I was having difficulty remembering it. My expression must have been a sickly grin, my fingernails were driven like claws into the flesh of my palms as I fought down the temptation to drag Eldridge around the room by his heels.

  Sally wriggled out from his exploring hand, and I suggested in a strangled voice, ‘Let’s go through to lunch, shall we?’

  There was a quick game of musical chairs at the dining-room table, as Eldridge tried to get a seat within clutching distance of Sally and I tried to prevent it.

  We out-foxed him on a cunning double play, allowing him to settle down triumphantly beaming over the top of his menu at Sally who was backed into a corner beside him, before I cried, ‘Sally, you are in a draught there.’ And smoothly as a pair of ballet dancers we changed seats.

  Then I could relax and give the pheasant the attention it deserved, although the burgundy that Eldridge suggested was nothing if not gauche.

  With characteristic tact Eldridge brought up the subject we had all been flirting with.

  ‘Met a friend of yours the other day, big flashy chap like a cross between a male model and a professional wrestler. Accent like an Australian with the flu. Had some cock-and-bull story about scrolls you’ve found in a cave outside Cape Town.’ And Eldridge neighed again at a volume that momentarily stopped all other conversation in the room. ‘Damned man had the cheek to offer me money. I know the type, not a bean to bless himself with, and talks like he’s made of the stuff. He had “shyster” written all over him in letters two feet high.’

  Sally and I gaped at him, struck dumb by his astute grasp of the facts and his masterly summation of Louren Sturvesant’s character.

  ‘Sent him packing of course,’ said Eldridge with relish, and stuffed his mouth with breast of pheasant.

  ‘You probably did the right thing,’ I murmured. ‘Incidentally the site is in northern Botswana – 1,500 miles from Cape Town.’

  ‘Oh, yes?’ Eldridge asked, expressing disinterest as politely as one can with a mouthful of pheasant and rotten teeth.

  ‘And Louren Sturvesant was on Time Magazine’s list of the thirty richest men in the world,’ murmured Sally. Eldridge stopped chewing with his mouth ajar, and afforded us a fine view of a semi-masticated pheasant breast.

  ‘Yes,’ I affirmed. ‘He is bank-rolling my dig. He has put in 200,000 dollars already, and he has set no limit.’

  Eldridge turned a stricken face towards me. That sort of patron of scientific research was almost as rare as the unicorn, and Eldridge realized suddenly that he had been within range of one and let him escape. All the bumptiousness was gone out of Professor Hamilton.

  I signalled the waitress to clear my plate, and I swear that I felt true compassion in my heart for Eldridge as I unlocked my brief
case and took from it a cylindrical bundle wrapped in its protective canvas jacket.

  ‘I have an appointment with Ruben Levy in Tel Aviv tomorrow, Eldridge.’ I opened the canvas wrapping.

  ‘We have 1,142 of these leather scrolls. So Ruby will be pretty busy for the next few years. Of course, Louren Sturvesant will make a donation of 100,000 dollars to the Tel Aviv University Faculty of Archaeology for their cooperation, and I shouldn’t be surprised if the faculty doesn’t have some of the scrolls given to them as well.’

  ‘ Eldridge swallowed his mouthful of pheasant as though it were broken glass. He wiped his fingers and mouth with his napkin, before leaning forward to examine the scroll.

  ‘From out of the southern plains of grass,’ he whispered as he read, and I noticed the difference from Sally’s translation, ‘received 192 large ivory tusks, weighing 221 talents—’ His voice died but his lips moved as he read on. Then he began speaking again, and his voice quavered with excitement.

  ‘Punic in the style of the second century BC, do you see the use of ligatures to join the median “m”, still using the hang of the characters from the line, that’s definitely pre-first century EC. Here, Sally, do you see the archaic crossing of the “A”?’

  ‘We have over a thousand of these scrolls, preserved in chronological order - Levy is very excited,’ I interrupted this flow of technicalities with a gentle untruth. Levy didn’t know they existed.

  ‘Levy,’ Eldridge snorted, and his spectacles flashed with outrage. ‘Levy! Take him outside Hebrew and Egyptian and he’s a babe in the bloody woods!’ He had hold of my wrist now.

  ‘Ben. I insist, I absolutely insist on doing this work!’

  ‘What about Wilfred Snell’s criticism of my theories? You seemed to find it amusing.’ I had him by the ackers now, and I could afford to be a little cocky. ‘How do you feel about working with somebody whose views are so suspect?’