‘Madam,’ I said, ‘these men surely mean you no harm. If you would only start again on your journey—’
Cutting off my words, the voice gave curt orders in that unknown language. Two of the attendants drew the curtains aside. Another produced a little sunshade and positioned herself.
Covered from head to toe in white silk, her face covered with a white veil, the owner of the chair stepped delicately on to the sand. I heard it crunch beneath the fine leather of her sandal. From habit, and exactly as if we were outside one of the Constantinopolitan churches, Martin and I bowed as she stepped past us. The robe of the maidservant who carried the sunshade brushed against my bowed head.
The owner of the chair stopped at the foot of the dune. From her general manner behind the curtains, I’d expected someone at least of middle years. Yet what I could see of her trim figure, and her firm tread on the sand, showed a woman barely older than me. She looked up, her veil fluttering in the gentle breeze that had come on suddenly. There was a long silence. Lucas stared back at her and then at me. There was an odd look on his face. Then one of the camels beside him made a spitting noise as its rider wheeled it round. From further along the line of silent riders, there was another movement. I heard the rustle of hastily disturbed sand on the other side. In an instant, Lucas alone was looking down at us.
The owner of the chair raised her arms towards him. It might have been in supplication or in mockery – when you can see neither face nor body, motions are hard things to gauge. Lucas stared back a moment longer. Then, with a snort of his own camel, he too had wheeled round and was gone.
The afternoon was pressing on. The sun was no longer so high above us. There was now a soft moan of the rising desert winds. In the midst of all this, we stood alone.
There were further orders to the maidservants, who now began fussing with one of the camels. The owner of the chair turned to me. I’ll swear I felt the long look she gave me through her veil. I felt Martin’s hand reaching nervously from beside me. I took it in my own. I suddenly noticed how cold my hand had become.
‘It is, you will agree, a universal custom,’ the owner of the chair said with slightly suppressed amusement, ‘that those who rescue strays take on further duties for their welfare. You will not, therefore, refuse my offer of dinner, nor of safe conduct tomorrow morning to the nearest town.’ She pointed over to some dead trees in the middle distance. The water hole that had once sustained them was long since dried up. But the shelter would be useful.
‘Your name, madam, would be most welcome,’ I said, remembering my manners.
‘My name is not important,’ came the reply. ‘Most who have reason to address me, though, call me the Mistress.’ Without another word, she turned and began walking towards the two nearest of those dead palm trees.
Chapter 23
I finished stirring at the cold ashes. A slave took the charred stick from me and wiped my hand with a piece of clean linen.
‘It was still smouldering when I arrived,’ Macarius said. ‘The locals identified some of the household. The others were too badly burned even to show if they had also been tortured.’
All told, it hadn’t been a very productive trip up river. The Brotherhood had been ahead of us at every step. I bent again and took up a scrap of charred papyrus. I thought at first it was in Greek. A closer look showed it was in Egyptian. I let it fall and stood back on to a less cluttered part of what had been the dining-room floor.
‘Then I suppose we’d better start back for Alexandria,’ I said bleakly. Whatever documents Leontius had kept here were now either one with the general wreckage of his house or irretrievably in the wrong hands.
‘If the past few days are any guide to how fast the Brotherhood moves,’ I said after a pause, ‘I imagine word of our escape will be in Alexandria long before we arrive. Even so, I can order an investigation as to who grassed me to these people. We might at the least be able to save on a few salaries and pensions.’
A voice broke in.
‘If you are using an official transport, I will accompany you. I have business of my own in Alexandria.’
I kept myself from frowning. It was the Mistress who’d spoken. Though I was curious to see more of what lay under those white robes, I was decreasingly pleased by her determined and thoroughly masculine way with those around her. Wherever she came from, it seemed that women there had little notion of how to conduct themselves in public.
I’m not saying I wasn’t grateful. Somehow, she’d scared off Lucas and his friends. She’d then got us directly to Letopolis, where I’d discovered Macarius hard at work on making sense of the devastation of nearly all that Leontius had once owned and that the receivers of his bankruptcy would never now be able to touch.
The Mistress had joined in my enquiries, Macarius answering her pointed questions as if they were from me. Now, one of her maids holding up a sunshade, she stood on the cleanest part of the floor. Her right foot was slightly forward, and I could see the large emerald that adorned the ring on one of her toes. It was, bearing in mind what I’d read about the heat of Abyssinia – never mind what lay beyond – an astonishingly white foot. Again, I wondered how and why she could have made her home in so strange and distant a place.
‘Our boat is, of course, at your disposal,’ I said, trying to sound as if I were making the invitation. It was reasonable to suppose there weren’t many shops as far south as she lived. I’d at least have the joy of silencing her with the range and quality of the frocks and cosmetics on sale in Alexandria.
‘I hope My Lord will not be offended if I touch on the unwisdom of leaving Alexandria. I do hold myself responsible, however, in that I left without telling you my business.’
I grunted and made what I thought might pass for a non-committal wave. Macarius had finally managed to get hold of some opium in town, and this had almost restored my mood. And though I remained aware of the sunburn and the raw patches, the pain was largely bleached out.
We stood in one of the few streets in Letopolis that was now inhabited. Before us, the church rose from the ruins of an old temple. Behind us was the dilapidated block that served as the administrative building. I turned and looked at the place again. An old woman hurried past us, a bundle of mouldy reeds on her hunched back. She crossed herself and looked away as we drew level. Once she was a few yards behind me, I heard a clearing of aged throat and the spatter of flob on the crooked pavement.
‘You will understand,’ Macarius added, ‘that I am breaking a confidence if I say that the Honourable Mayor’s illness is entirely diplomatic. In part, he is embarrassed that his Greek is not sufficient for receiving an official of My Lord’s station. While there is no one else qualified to replace him, he fears that a report of his inability to do more than write set sentences in the official language might count against him in Alexandria.
‘In part, he fears the effect it might have on the Brotherhood if it were known he had rendered you active assistance.’
‘So who is this Lucas?’ I asked. I looked at the low mounds of what may once have been the bathhouse. Yes, it must have been that: you could see the remains of the water cistern that had supplied it.
‘He goes under so many names,’ the answer came, ‘that you might as well call him Lucas. The real Lucas, I have no doubt, will by now have been found outside Bolbitine with his throat cut. News of your evident hurry must have been leaked from the government, and this would have been regarded as justifying the risk of discovery.
‘But you ask about the man who called himself Lucas. His position in the Brotherhood is officially rather low. His energy and ambition, however, have made him its effective leader in much of Egypt. In this respect, if you will pardon the comparison, he is not unlike My Lord. He is even about the same age.’
‘I did at first think,’ I said, ‘that his purpose was to trade me to Nicetas for some of the cash I inadvertently took from his people.’ Macarius stood awhile in silence. That had made sense, I thought. Very lit
tle of the gold the Brotherhood had been leaching out of Alexandria could have been needed to keep a dozen scabby priests in whatever slops their faith allowed them to eat. But for raising and keeping in being the sort of conspiracy I’d brushed against, it wasn’t gold that could easily be replaced by a tithe on the starving people of Egypt.
‘However,’ I said as we arrived at the top of the street where it simply ran into the desert, and turned back to the centre, ‘he echoed Leontius in saying that my real value lay in my ability to lead whoever controlled me to something important.’ I wondered if it might be worth sitting on one of the stone benches that had, back in the days when Letopolis was a populous commercial and administrative centre, been set before the church. But this was the only clean robe anyone had been able to set hands on that came near to fitting me.
‘I am not entirely sure of his intentions in this respect,’ Macarius said at last. ‘A ransom might have come into it. But I have thought much since our last meeting beside the body of Leontius regarding the Brotherhood’s interest in My Lord.’ He paused again to collect his words.
I raised my eyebrows and tried to look quizzical. I was still slightly rattled by the stupidity I’d shown in putting myself into the hands of the Brotherhood. Now I was back in control of events around me, I was determined to avoid any show of an unseemly curiosity. I waited for Macarius to begin again.
‘Even before the late disaster in Cappadocia,’ he said, ‘news had spread through all Egypt of the Persian military successes. This revived hopes that the empire established here by Alexander and renewed by Augustus might be coming to an end. It was believed within the Brotherhood that My Lord’s arrival – on a mission from Caesar himself – had less to do with changes to the ownership of land than with the search for a very powerful object. This connects with a prophecy that the object will be uncovered by a man from the West fitting your appearance.’
‘Now might that happen to be the first chamber pot of Jesus Christ?’ I asked with an attempt at a grim smile. This couldn’t have anything to do with Priscus. News of his own interest wouldn’t yet have spread far within Alexandria, let alone through Upper Egypt. But he’d assumed my interest in diverting those five hundred workmen from digging out the old canal was to do with the piss pot. It was perhaps only natural the Brotherhood – and Leontius – had made the same mistake.
‘It might, My Lord,’ Macarius answered. ‘The object is said to be of the highest potency. In Imperial hands, it could be used to turn the tide of war against the Persians. In Egyptian hands, it could be turned against the Empire and, at the least, drive the Greeks from Egypt.
‘This may have prompted Lucas to his daring attempt on My Lord. Doubtless, however, there were other motives. You might have been held to ransom. Of course, the Brotherhood has every reason to fear the results of any redistribution of land; and the moral disgrace of your capture might have added to the already considerable difficulties of implementing the new law. Otherwise, the approaching end of Greek dominion might have been advertised by showing off its most eminent representative in a cage. It might also have been hoped that torture would prompt the appropriate words of support.
‘But I also believe that the Brotherhood is under the impression that you know, or are on the verge of discovering, the whereabouts of this most powerful object. This, I am sure, is what weighed heaviest in the calculations that Lucas made. To have achieved any of the other purposes would have raised him higher within the Brotherhood. Taking possession of the object in question would have established his complete supremacy.’
‘Is it because of this,’ I asked, ‘that you paid off the old fraud and his daughter back in Alexandria?’
‘My Lord is well informed,’ Macarius said with a respectful bow. ‘I knew that His Lordship the General was making enquiries of his own. It struck me that it would complicate your own operations if the Lord Priscus were able to disturb the peace of the city with his continued enquiries.’
‘I haven’t seen any of the other landowners in this district,’ I said, changing the subject. ‘Not all of them can be in Alexandria.’
‘Indeed not, My Lord,’ he said. ‘They keep to their own fortified manor houses. Though useful politically, Leontius was a man of evil reputation in these parts. His neighbours consider his death and the effacement of his estate as no loss to their order. Otherwise, they are guided by the same considerations of embarrassment and fear as the Honourable Mayor. They will not come out unless commanded.’
‘You say there is a boat touching in here tomorrow morning?’ I asked. I’d seen enough of Egypt for the moment. Since it meant skipping dinner with them, I’d ignore the insult from what passed for the local persons of quality.
‘There will be a postal vessel on its way down to the coast,’ Macarius said. ‘It will be fully suitable to carry My Lord and his party.’
The door of the little church opened and Martin put his head out. He’d seen us, but his face carried the abstracted, holy look that I knew indicated a wish to be ignored. We carried on past him, to look over the lower and uninhabited part of town. Much of this was now under at least a few inches of the flood waters. Earlier floods had eaten away the mud bricks of the houses, and only the broken line of the city wall could now be made out.
‘What can you tell me about this woman who calls herself the Mistress?’ I asked, changing the subject again. The fact that she’d got so far without molestation – and had even scared off Lucas and Company – indicated she was of high status. I’d got bugger-all out of her, though, in the way of hard fact during the few days it had taken us to get here. How she’d acquired such excellent Greek – even better in some respects than my own – was one mystery. How she’d managed this with so hazy a knowledge of anything that had happened since the establishment of the Faith was another.
‘The Mistress,’ said Macarius, slowly choosing his words, ‘travels from regions unknown even to the Egyptians of the south. Her purpose in travelling is not for me to say. I only know that she rendered valuable assistance to My Lord when it was needed, and that she will now continue, as an honoured guest, to Alexandria.’
Somewhere behind us, I could hear children at play. They sounded like children everywhere, and their shouted calls to each other were the jolliest thing I’d heard in days. No point in going back to look at them, though. One sight of me and, like everyone else, they’d be scuttling for cover.
I let the matter drop. Macarius had always struck me as a man of strong common sense. This being said, I preferred not to discuss the details of how and where I’d come across the Mistress in any conversation that referred back to what that girl had said in Alexandria. The faintest tinge of superstition was enough to connect the most disparate facts into a seamless narrative of the miraculous.
I looked silently over the waters. I didn’t want to think of Lucas or cages or piss pots. All I wanted at this moment was the nearest approach to normality possible in this flyblown dump of a town. So I looked over the waters and forced my thoughts into the course I wanted. Varying between two and eight feet below these waters lay some of the richest land in the world. Some of this had been owned by Leontius. Over much else he’d had secondary and often still valuable rights. Not all had gone up by any means in the flames of his manor house.
‘Macarius,’ I said in my briskest and most irresistible tone, ‘I want you to arrange a meeting with the local Mayor. Tell him I’m not interested in the possible deficiencies of his Greek. If it is as defective as you indicate, you will have to interpret.
‘His main duty is to ascertain the land boundaries once the flood has receded. Since I control the central records in Alexandria, he might care to make one or two adjustments to the survey reports . . .’ Not being quite a creditor – and certainly not a preferred creditor – I might be about to take a hit on the contracts I’d made indirectly with Leontius. Now, Macarius listened intently as I outlined my scheme to offset what would otherwise be a considerable loss.
&n
bsp; Chapter 24
I was a child again in Richborough. I think I was about ten. I huddled on my bed of filthy straw in the corner of the building where King Ethelbert had dumped us all after killing my father. On my right, just out of reach, my two younger brothers lay sleeping in each other’s arms. Over in the far corner, my little sister – my half-sister, that is, got by Ethelbert – lay sleeping with my mother. Through the unshuttered window and the unrepaired hole in the roof crept a dim light that heralded the coming of the dawn. With it came the sound of winds and the heavy crash of Channel waves on the nearby shingle.
I was cold. Even huddled as I was, I couldn’t pull the thin blanket over my head without uncovering my legs. I was hungry, and my belly ached with the habitual pain of those who live on the edge of starvation.
I sat up and looked at the outline of things. There was the water jug with the broken handle. There was the pile of wooden slats on which I was being taught my letters by the renegade monk Auxilius. There was the workbox where my mother stored the things she used when mending clothes for the few people who lingered in what had, before the coming of our people, been the main gateway to the Province of Britain.
It was all as I remembered it. Or did I need to remember it? I was a child and I was there. Everything was as it ought to be. There were things at the fringes of consciousness that I knew I should call into full understanding. But, try as I might, they remained on the fringes – a blur that confused without abolishing my sense of being in a perfectly natural present.
I lay back in the straw and squeezed my eyes shut. I was hoping for sleep. But I was now too aware of the cold and hunger. I looked into the darkness of the roof timbers. Everything would brighten soon enough, and then we could all get up. The sun might shine this day. There might even be a scrape of fatty gruel for breakfast.
The Blood of Alexandria Page 17