‘Hunting, Mr Layard?’ The pasha of Mosul absent-mindedly scratched at a smallpox scab on his cheek. His face was as ugly as his soul. One ear had been torn off and the eyelids flapped loosely over the empty socket of his left eye.
‘Here are my letters of permission from the supreme sultan in Constantinople and from the British ambassador, Sir Stratford Canning.’
‘I am of course, the servant of the supreme sultan, but does he know what you are hunting?’
In the streets outside the palace, guns fired and people screamed. The pasha’s soldiers were once again on a killing spree, punishing ‘tax evaders’.
The pasha belched softly. ‘Our friends, the French, beat you in the race to find Nineveh. And our good friends, the French, have also won our licences to dig in other Assyrian cities.’
Behind the throne, the new French vice-consul smiled coldly at Austen. Since Paul Botta had been sent home in disgrace, the French had begun digging at fifteen more archaeological sites in Iraq. Austen missed the friendly rivalry with Botta, who still sent letters insisting he was owed those twenty bottles of shiraz.
The pasha’s fingernail picked off the smallpox scab on his cheek and he examined it. ‘You, Mr Layard, have our permission to hunt gazelles and other game at Nimrud. You do not have our permission for hunting of another kind. Beware of my wrath.’