I might have added that I did owe Priscus something for having spread just the right mix of vague and solid untruth for me to complete. But I’d said enough. What I had now to do was find something that looked like a piss pot and that I could squeeze through those bastard provenance rules.
‘Macarius,’ I said, sniffing again at my cup, ‘do make sure the next wine you have sent in here is imported. I’m not too drunk to notice the taste of river mud in this stuff.’
Macarius bowed stiffly and turned to leave the room. I raised my hand to keep him. I had work for him yet.
But first – ‘Martin, as you often used to tell your students, when there’s no short cut to be had, you start at the beginning. I want you to draw up and seal a request from me to the Patriarch, giving you unlimited access to every collection of relics in Alexandria. You may care to begin with looking through the catalogue. His Holiness may insist that our relic isn’t mentioned there. I’ll believe those words more when I’ve heard them from you. In any event, please arrange for a physical inspection of everything. A catalogue that size is unlikely to be wholly accurate. Alexandrian scholarship isn’t what it was, and our relic may turn out to be hanging beside the altar of the Patriarch’s own chapel.’
Martin nodded, an exalted look coming over his face. Able to pass days and days, going from one object of the utmost holiness to another – if this didn’t lift the burden of his sins, I could see him thinking, nothing would. Good luck to him, I thought. For myself, I could find better uses for time than looking at several thousand pickled body parts and bloodstained implements of torture.
‘Macarius,’ I said, taking up a letter I’d written in my own hand early that morning, ‘I want you to deliver this in person.’
He looked at the tag on the sealed boards enclosing the papyrus and raised his eyebrows.
‘Deliver it in person,’ I repeated, ‘and wait for a reply.’
As I stood up, there was a knock on the door.
‘The Lord Priscus begs a moment of your time,’ the secretary called out, omitting his bow.
As he stood away from the door, Priscus walked in. He’d left his cat behind this time, and had put on a robe of shimmering orange silk. His eyes flickered briefly over Martin and Macarius. I nodded at them. As the door closed behind them, Priscus threw himself into the chair just in front of my desk and grabbed at the wine jug.
‘You know, my dear boy,’ he sighed, ‘until I actually met Nicetas, I could never work out how Heraclius won the race from Carthage to Constantinople and became Emperor. Mind you, the quality of everyone else in the government here leaves much to be desired. I’m astonished the wogs didn’t kick us out centuries ago.
‘It may have been the Brotherhood,’ he conceded, noticing the look I gave the gash on his forehead. Now he’d taken off the lead paint and replaced it with a green wash to set off the robe, the gash showed again. ‘Bear in mind that I only heard of this movement when I got back to Alexandria. But I do think it was bandits. I kept one of them back for questioning. Despite my very best endeavours’ – he smiled, giving his face a less lugubrious appearance – ‘I was unable to persuade the piece of filth to say a word of Greek. If it was the Brotherhood that waylaid me, it might have been to hold me to ransom as well. But as we both know, only you can lead anyone to the piss pot.
‘And this brings me to the main subject in hand. What progress can you report?’ He sniffed at my explanation of what I’d set for Martin. ‘The little slut in the Egyptian quarter referred to a place in Egypt,’ he reminded me.
‘Until we know which place,’ I said emolliently, ‘we search for leads in Alexandria. You know perfectly well now that Egypt is rather large. When you came in, I was about to begin my own search. Bearing in mind its nature, it isn’t something I thought suitable for Martin or anyone else outside the governing class. Since you’re here, though, it might be something for us to share.’
‘I’d be delighted to assist,’ he said. He sniffed at the wine. ‘You know,’ he added thoughtfully, ‘this stuff smells and tastes just like a poison I’ve often used called Tittymilk of Hera. Shall I tell you what it does?’ He sat watching my face change colour several times, then laughed.
‘Oh, my dearest, darling Alaric,’ he said, dabbing at his eyes, ‘if it really were Tittymilk of Hera, we’d both be twitching on the floor. I just couldn’t resist the look on your face. Welcome to the grown-up world where every cup and every corner is suspect, and where every bed is one in which you might never wake. Now, let’s have another cup of this doubtful but probably not deadly vintage, and then proceed with the search you mentioned.’
Chapter 28
With a very correct bow to me and to the seal, the Keeper of the Archive handed me back the original of my commission from Heraclius.
‘My Lords will forgive the long wait,’ he said apologetically, ‘but this is our second most restricted file. Copies must be taken of all application documents.’
‘It’s beastly hot down here,’ Priscus complained as the man went back into his office to fuss with a box of lead seals. He took up a sheet of papyrus and fanned himself. ‘Do I guess right that the heating is on – at this time of year, and in Alexandria?’
‘The archives don’t just cover the ground floor of the Palace,’ I answered. ‘There’s also a labyrinth of rooms in the basement underneath. I’ve never been down there, but I understand they reach under the whole of the central gardens. There’s special heating all year to keep off any damp from the cisterns.’
Priscus grunted and pulled at the gold threads to loosen his collar. The green wash was beginning to migrate on to his chest. I explained again about the effect of damp on papyrus, and that it was through the records contained here that Egypt had, since the first Ptolemy, been governed often against the settled will of the natives, but always unshakeably – and always could be, despite the best efforts of fools like Nicetas.
‘I must ask My Lord,’ said the Keeper, coming back from his office, this time with the file, ‘not to go to your usual seat in the colonnade. This file can only be taken into the glazed viewing room, and I regret to say that I must observe you at all times. I must also insist on your leaving all writing materials with me.’
‘So how did you discover this?’ asked Priscus as we took our seats in the glass box.
‘I came across references to it while looking up something else,’ I answered. ‘As you know, they fled to Egypt after the birth. Like most Jewish immigrants, they ended up in Alexandria. They were then caught up in the arrests that followed the uncovering of yet another Jewish sedition.’ I positioned the overhead mirror to shine more light on to the table. There was adequate lighting, but only from a row of lamps placed in holders on the outside walls of the box. Beyond these, the Keeper watched us very carefully. ‘I had been intending to have a look at the arrest file. You can see, though, the trouble involved. And I didn’t feel there’d be much here of interest for an idle viewing.
‘The official report of the Trial and Crucifixion, of course, would be interesting. But Constantine was in Italy when he established the Faith, and he was able to lift these records from the Jewish War section of the archives in Rome. I’m told he then destroyed them.’ I untied the boards of the file and spread the pages on to the table.
‘But this is the original document?’ Priscus asked with a catch of his breath.
‘No,’ I said. I pointed to the wording at the head of each page. ‘Constantine got his hands on this one as well. But he wasn’t personally in Alexandria, and the archivists were able to insist on the normal practice of taking a full copy. I suppose the compromise he had to make was restricted access for ever.’ Hands shaking, Priscus lifted one of the pages close to his face and read. For the first time, I noticed that, like me, he read silently and without moving his lips. I followed his rapid scanning of this page, and then of another.
‘Nothing here,’ I said, ‘to shock the most scrupulous orthodoxy. Nothing here, indeed, to sho
ck anyone – except those inclined to doubt whether Christ existed. And there aren’t many of those, now the schools in Athens have all been closed down. Still, I can see why the file is restricted. If the heretics can twist any meaning they like into the Plain Word of Scripture, there’s no telling what they might do with a set of semi-literate police reports.’
Yes, I know, irony on these matters could be unwise, even with Priscus. But the irony was lost on him. In his position, I wouldn’t just doubt if there was a God: I’d be desperately hoping there wasn’t one. With what he’d been up to these past forty-odd years, there’d be a whole section of the Lake of Black Fire cordoned off and waiting. Yet here he was, desperate to lay hands on the smallest contact with the Prince of Peace.
‘It’s not an original,’ he muttered, ‘but I do know the rules. Anything that has touched anything holy becomes holy itself.’
It would have been easy to agree with him. With this in his hands, he might have been persuaded to forget the piss pot and bugger off to Syria. There, he could have tied the file to his lance and ridden straight – I could hope – to his death. But if not the Patriarch himself, there was any number of experts to put him right on this one.
‘Afraid not quite, Priscus,’ I said. ‘If you can prove beyond reasonable doubt that Joseph touched the original statement when signing it, and that the original document was brought into contact with the copy by an authorised person, you’d have one of the most powerful relics there can be in your hand. But, you see, there’s no evidence that Joseph knew any Greek or was able to sign his own name. He’d have made the statement in Aramaic, and then assented to it without touching the written translation. Beyond that, the clerks used for the copy back in the time of Constantine wouldn’t have been Christians, let alone ordained; and the chancery practice, as I’ve seen it here, is for one clerk to read and another to copy. Beyond saying it’s a first copy, this has no more potency as a relic than your own copy of the Scriptures.
‘Oh’ – I pointed at the purple seal at the foot of each page – ‘I think this means that nothing can be taken away except by the Emperor in person, and then with the correct requisition order witnessed by a Patriarch. There’s an autograph letter of Saint Paul,’ I explained, ‘in Constantinople with something very like that seal.’
I moved to a brief commentary on why the document authorising Joseph’s release from custody might have been copied in two hands, each separated in style by about fifty years. When you’ve spent as much time as I already had in libraries and archives, these are points you pick up and use as clues to a fuller understanding. But Priscus wasn’t listening.
‘I can’t find the Inventory of Goods,’ he said. We rearranged all the pages on the table and turned them over one at a time, to see if what we wanted had been copied on the reverse. But Priscus was right – no inventory.
‘Perhaps the Holy Family was too poor to make any inventory worth the effort,’ I suggested. ‘Joseph must have come here with his wife and the three children, and precious little else.’
‘Doesn’t matter,’ Priscus insisted. ‘When I ran the Treason Police under Phocas, we always took an inventory. If it’s just their clothes, even the poor have something worth confiscating.’ He looked up wistfully as he spoke of his days as Torturer-Judge Extraordinary when his father-in-law was Emperor.
‘Well, fancy that!’ I said, changing the subject. Having been very nearly one of his victims, my own recollection of the dungeons under the Ministry were less rosy. I held up a half sheet of papyrus. It had stuck itself to the underside of one of the denunciation letters, and had stayed there during our first sort through of the pages. Now, it had suddenly dropped free on to the desk. It was dated four years after the closing of the case. The Child should then have been about seven.
‘It’s a request from Joseph for a passport to settle in Soteropolis. There had been a plague there,’ I summarised, squinting at the writing too small for Priscus to follow in the light we had now the windows were beginning to steam up. ‘The Jewish community was in need of skilled craftsmen, and was offering to guarantee his support for the first year. The request was refused, but upheld on appeal.’
‘Is Soteropolis close by the Pyramids?’ Priscus asked. He was all eagerness again. It was obvious what he had in mind.
With a stab of annoyance, I told myself I should have kept my mouth shut.
‘It’s five, maybe ten miles distant,’ I said, trying to sound casual. ‘Rather, it may have been, as the city no longer exists, and there is some doubt as to its location. The most certain guess I can make is that the place is somewhere between the Pyramids and Letopolis – where Leontius had his estate.’ I hesitated, then explained something of my plans regarding the excavation of the Library’s reserve stock.
‘Come now, Priscus,’ I sighed as he gave me another of his suspicious looks. ‘You must accept that, until our agreement of yesterday evening, I hadn’t the faintest interest in your piss pot. Until you rolled up here, I really hadn’t even heard of the thing.’
‘But Soteropolis is surely where we look,’ he insisted.
‘Perhaps it is,’ I agreed; a denial would only have made him worse. ‘But we still need more information than we have. Look, Soteropolis may not have been very big. But imagine that Alexandria should one day be in ruins. Imagine even that part of it fell into the sea. It would be very hard for anyone in the future to identify any of the main places.
‘Soteropolis was continuously occupied for three hundred years after the Holy Family must have left. It can’t ever have had that many Christians. The Jews would have had no reason to preserve any objects left behind by the family of what they regarded as a renegade and traitor. Going up there now with what little we have, we’d need a miracle before we knew exactly where to dig.’
‘I would remind you, my dear,’ Priscus said with one of his thin smiles, ‘that we have had a miracle – two, if you consider what’s turned up in this file. And you won’t have forgotten the clear directions that slut gave you.’
‘They weren’t that clear,’ I said, emollient again. I fought to suppress that renewed uneasy feeling: you don’t let the contents of your mind be arranged on the basis of coincidences. ‘But if you want to go off looking for Soteropolis, you’re welcome to the workmen I’ve commandeered. I’ll join you there in due course.’
‘No good,’ he said. ‘It’s you who found this file, and you who found the hidden sheet about Soteropolis. You were the one the slut was talking to. You are the one who must go looking, because you are the one chosen to find.’
‘Priscus,’ I said, gathering the pages back into the file, ‘let’s discuss this again when I’ve finished with whatever leads I can find here in Alexandria.’ I did my best to sound as annoyingly neutral as I normally would have been. A little thought was stirring in my mind. Finding that reference to Soteropolis and then blurting it out might not have been such rotten luck after all.
‘For the moment, I’m hungry,’ I added. ‘And I don’t know about you, but I’m ready to melt in this box. It can’t be much cooler than the oven you have in mind for Martin and his family.’
‘One step closer,’ Priscus said defiantly as we were finally signed out of the archives.
‘A quarter step, if that,’ I replied. Perhaps five whole steps, I thought.
Chapter 29
I was free. Rather, Priscus had gone off to play with his cat, and there was no immediate claim on my time. I swam for a while in the pool set behind some trees in the Palace gardens. Because it was looking increasingly likely that there’d be another trip into Egypt, I decided to have the canopy taken off so the sun could get at me. Afterwards, I lay in the sun, drowsing while the clerks read to me.
I’d not been away that long from Alexandria. But the administrative mill I’d constructed had continued in my absence to grind out reports and correspondence. There was now a mountain of stuff to be processed. There were the usual survey abstracts, plus all the other matters th
at had been insensibly diverted to my attention the moment it was realised that I was the only person around able to get Nicetas to listen to anything at all and take any action at all. It didn’t help that the posts were in from Constantinople again, and there was a great stack of newsletters and official bulletins to hold back or to let through censored.
Birds twittered in the trees, and slaves rubbed oil on me as often as I shifted position. It was something of the same delicious feeling as when I took just the right dose of opium. The only difference was that the sun was giving me a slight stiffy. I decided it wouldn’t do to attend to this with so many relative strangers looking on. I would contain myself until the evening. Then, I’d look to Luella for the usual relief.
‘Cut out all reference to the Jewish disturbances in Antioch,’ I said lazily as the clerk who was reading finished one of the newsletters. ‘Fill up the gap by transferring the story from Ravenna of the stolen jewels and their miraculous return.’
The clerk made a note on one of his waxed tablets. He bowed and took up another newsletter.
The news was generally disastrous. There was nothing on the Persian front. It seemed Priscus had been right about the zone of starvation he’d inflicted on the provincials of Cappadocia; that would keep things quiet until the spring. But it was bad on every other front. Rome was under siege again by the Lombards. There could be no help from the Exarch, as Ravenna was also blockaded by land. The Danubian provinces were effectively lost to the Avars; and the Slavs had now taken everything north of Corinth except Athens. There was renewed piracy in the whole Mediterranean. Communications with Carthage were intermittent, and about a third of the taxable land over which it ruled had been definitely written off as claimed by the desert.
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