The Sleeping Sands Read Online Free

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