Lady of Embrace and Spear’s Thrust
Not all Englishmen survived Mesopotamia
I cannot claim the gathering dusk caught me unaware; indeed, I had planned it this way. The natives had run away the day we had hurriedly dug up the corner of her temple, breaking the clay relief of her winged self and the leashed lion.
For four consecutive nights, one of my gentleman companions disappeared from the camp until only I was left. I surmise that only a brilliant campfire kept the moving patch of the night at bay, yet the flames invariably waned past the dead of night and in the morning a fresh dragging trail led into the desert.
I am destitute and parched, hiding during Sun’s reign in the shade of our largest spoil heaps. But I will go out on my terms, my glinting six-shot pepper-box revolver firm in my hand.
The light has finally failed, to be replaced with a deathly breeze. The Western ruby-tipped ridgeline dissolves into a violet-black canvas of stars shimmering in the cooling air.
She approaches as a stern shadow, breast heaving, hair flowing in the oppressing draught, her eyes an angry hint.
“Halt, my Lady, or I shall be forced to discharge my sidearm!” I cry.
She tilts her head and speaks with the voice of a thousand women, bringing me to my knees.
“Do you know your offence?”
“Yes! It is the greed of the people who sent us here to plunder and our shallowness to be bought to do their bidding!”
The wind dies, and I can hear the laughter of a city in the darkness beyond and the sound of river in the dried-up ancient channel of the Euphrates.
The Deity grins.
“Rise to and accompany me. I like a man who is not afraid to attack me and is brave enough to tell the truth.”
I stumble to my feet, and she catches my elbow, frightfully strong, sublimely sensuous. She takes me with her.
The Kaymakam’s Aide arrived with half a dozen soldiers and the chief of the nearest village at the dig site and the scattered remains of the Englismen’s campsite. They found two pairs of bodies a kilometre out; their throats ripped out, eye-sockets empty save for flies, but no earthly sign of the draughtsman, the Earl’s youngest son.
When asked, the headman pointed to the broken clay slab of Inanna, Goddess of Love and War, and said that she sometimes acquires young men she fancies, to whisk them to her kingdom. The Ottoman soldiers laughed, but the Kaymakam’s Aide ordered the camel train to move out before nightfall.
He reburied the two pieces of the tablet himself, apologising profusely.
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