In Constantinople, Heraclius had suspended servicing of the Imperial debt, and the banks were failing one after the other. Money just couldn’t be had at the legal rate of interest, and property in even the best parts of the City was going at eighteen months’ purchase. In a private letter, my banker, the Jew Baruch, was recommending against buying at any price; he doubted if the falls had reached anything like their bottom, and doubted also if there’d be any meaningful recovery in the next five years. He’d taken the liberty, he explained further, of calling in all the non-political loans I’d made, and would keep the money in plate and coin pending my own instructions.
The one patch of brightness in these narratives was that pirates had landed between Ephesus and Halicarnassus and had devastated two of the smaller cities. But this was an area where my land reforms had been in place for nearly two years. Without any help from the authorities – not that any was available – the locals had taken up arms and routed the pirates. They’d then burned the prisoners alive at a great feast in which they’d also settled a mass of outstanding boundary disputes without reference to the courts. Back in Constantinople, several members of the Council had complained about a ‘dangerous spirit of independence among the people’ – as if that weren’t the intention of the reforms. Happily, Sergius had flattened their objections with a threat of excommunication, and had got Heraclius to issue what coins he could for the whole of Asia to celebrate the victory.
It was all important – the financial news particularly so: I’d have my Jews in around the midnight hour to discuss its impact on the Alexandrian markets. But it all seemed rather distant as I lay by the pool squinting up at the sun. Uppermost in my thoughts was what to do about the piss pot. This was now the key to everything. Priscus was right: I’d have to do something about Soteropolis. It had been my intention to get the new law implemented, and then go up river with my five hundred diggers. It was plain, however, that I’d never get Nicetas to act, nor the landowners to back down, until we had the piss pot.
Whether and where it might be in Soteropolis, I was increasingly convinced, didn’t matter so much as I’d made out to Priscus. The provenance rules applied only to whatever Martin turned up here in Alexandria. In Soteropolis, I’d be in control of all appearances. My first training in Church affairs had been far off in Canterbury, where my employer, Maximin, had taught me the ways of pious fraud. Our ‘miracles’, had worked there to bring the natives over to the True Faith. I was sure I could produce something really impressive in Soteropolis. We’d dig for a few days here and there. My object, of course, would be the reserve stock. But it wouldn’t be hard to plant something in those sands at night for uncovering by day. Let me round up a dozen or so of those desert hermits. Let me spike the filth they ate with hashish or with opium – or just get them singing Hallelujahs together for a day – and they’d swear to any miracle I cared to arrange at the uncovering.
We could arrive in triumph back in Alexandria. The Patriarch would then lay on the biggest service in living memory. Priscus could bugger off in a fog of holiness. I’d get everything I wanted, and those beastly landowners could kiss my feet in gratitude for what I’d left in their possession.
Naturally, after my last trip into Egypt, security would be an issue. But that I could leave to Priscus. He needed me to find the relic. It would never do to have me other than back safely in Alexandria with him afterwards. His interests being calculated, keeping Lucas and Company away from me in Soteropolis was well within his competence.
Things weren’t turning out that badly, I thought. There may be no such thing as miracles. Even so, there are happy circumstances that, rightly used, can bring on happy outcomes. Finding that reference to Soteropolis – and with Priscus looking on – might have been one such happy circumstance. Having him around was never good news. On this occasion, though, his arrival might have complicated matters, but might well have become a means of breaking the stalemate over the land law.
I did think of sending straight off and telling him to get ready for a trip to Soteropolis. But no – this had to be done properly. If there was to be a miraculous finding of the piss pot, he’d have to be among those deceived. That required a continued show of reluctance to leave Alexandria until I’d done with following every other lead. I’d string him along until the flood waters were at their height, and until I’d got more out of Hermogenes about the probable location of Soteropolis and the reserve stock. By the time I gave in to his nagging, he’d be ready to believe anything, and disinclined to suspect I was ready to feed it to him.
I thought of the Mistress – where was she? It was over a day now since she’d vanished from the canal docks. It was surely time for the message she’d suggested would be sent. She’d come down the Nile with minimal baggage. She couldn’t have brought much cash with her. She evidently knew nothing of Alexandria, and I doubted she had any relationship with the bankers. Whatever independence she’d shown in the wilds of Egypt, she was now on my territory. If she wanted to go about as a grand lady, she’d surely have need of at least a few letters from me. Once his other business was arranged, I’d send Macarius off on a search. If anyone could find her, it was him.
I rolled over on my stomach. Thinking of the Mistress had brought on a very proud stiffy, and those clerks were still droning on beside me. A quick suck from one of the slaves was wholly out of the question. I tried to redirect myself from thoughts of those naked black bodies in her cabin and what she might look like under that veil.
‘The wife of My Lord’s secretary approaches,’ one of the clerks sang out, breaking his colleague’s flow of grain inventories. I sat up and shaded my eyes. Sveta it was, crunching loud on the gravel path, a slave holding a parasol to keep her milky skin from dropping off in the sun. Beside her, Maximin was skipping happily along, a bunch of flowers in his hand.
‘Get me dressed,’ I muttered to the slaves. It was time to do something for his birthday. ‘And bring wine and a dish of honeyed figs.’ I looked again at Sveta. ‘Make that two dishes,’ I added.
Chapter 30
It wouldn’t have been hard, but the Egyptian quarter by day was decidedly less forbidding than by night. It was still a sprawl of mostly falling-down slums. Here and there, though, you could see properties that wouldn’t have been out of place in the smarter parts of the Greek centre. I could see now that the potty man had been right. The Egyptian quarter had a decidedly alien feel about it. Even so, there was a fair bit of money this side of the Wall.
There was a stiff breeze coming in from the south. Though nothing could wholly take off the smell I’d now come across all through the Delta – of Egyptians huddled together without means of washing, or inclination to wash – I didn’t need to be so prodigal with my essence of roses. All round me, there was a sound of banging and shouting as the Egyptians went about their business. As in the centre, the streets were crowded. The guards surrounded my chair, swords drawn as they pushed our way through.
‘Oh, the care is for you, my dear boy,’ Priscus had said the day before as I settled myself for the first time into the armoured chair. ‘I’ve never been one for bodyguards myself. As you know, if there are enemies to be killed, I’ve always believed in doing it myself.’
I hadn’t bothered so far myself with guards. Even in Constantinople, after word had got round that I was the one behind cutting the bread distribution, I’d never done more than go about the streets with my sword on show and one of my larger slaves for support. Now, as I looked down from the chair at the sea of jabbering, slightly yellow faces, I was glad of the dozen guards. I was still more glad that half of them were Slavonic mercenaries. They were roughly my size and colouring. And if I paid close enough attention, I could just understand what they were saying to each other.
‘Sir,’ their officer said in the rough Latin still used in some units of the Army, ‘can I suggest a detour?’ He pointed at the narrowing street ahead. ‘I don’t like the look of those high buildings. They’re ambush ter
ritory.’
‘We’ll have to risk it,’ I said. I looked again at the directions Macarius had given me. I agreed those dark, upper windows looked dodgy. A good hail of stones from up there, and we’d be hard put to fight off a determined attack from the ground. But I also knew we’d be lost in a moment once we moved off the path laid down for us. Macarius knew these people and their part of the town. I’d have to trust his judgement of where was and wasn’t safe. I drew my own sword and laid it on the table built into the carrying chair. It had a reassuring look as it glittered in the sunlight that streamed down past the canopy over my head.
‘My Lord is earlier than expected,’ the Deacon said apologetically as the courtyard gate swung shut behind us. With two inches of wood now to muffle the sound, I could barely hear the rush and bustle of the street outside.
I nodded and stepped down from the chair. The Deacon and his secretary bowed low before me. Priests and monks scurried about their business under the colonnade. After the rising uneasiness out in the streets, it was pleasantly quiet and familiar. Except the whispered language around me wasn’t Greek or Latin, I might have been within one of the larger Church buildings anywhere in the Empire.
‘If My Lord would come this way,’ he added, motioning towards a door that led in from the colonnade.
At first, all was dark within. I bowed instinctively to avoid knocking my head on the lintel. As my eyes adjusted, I could see that, after the first two rooms, we were in a longish corridor. It must have run the entire length of the church. Again, it was all much as I’d expected. I really might have been in one of the middling churches in Constantinople. The only difference was that, mingled with the incense was the smell of something foul. It was the sort of thing you came across in hospitals or prisons.
A few yards more and I found out the cause of the smell. About halfway down the corridor, just before an icon of Saint Antony of the Desert, there was a pool of vomit. I could now see quite well in the gloom. Even so, I nearly stepped in it. The Deacon hissed something in Egyptian at one of the church slaves, who was waiting politely for us to pass. The man pulled out a large cloth and fell to his knees by the pool. As he splashed it over himself, the smell drifted up still stronger of stomach juices and rotting fish.
‘His Holiness is guarded this month by the Sisters of Saint Artemisia,’ the Deacon said as if that explained matters.
I gave him a non-committal look.
‘She was the daughter-in-law of an Emperor,’ he went on, guessing I hadn’t understood the significance. ‘It was in the time of darkness before the True Faith was established in the world. She was a beauteous yet abandoned woman, sunk in every vice of the Imperial Court. She put these things behind her when she, with her husband, was converted to the Faith. Thereafter, she grew famous throughout the still forbidden Church for the strictness of her observances. As often as she was compelled to attend the banquets of sinful luxury, she would purge herself out of solidarity with the starving poor of the Empire.
‘To this day, the Sisters of Her Order maintain the custom. They are permitted to eat only enough to maintain their efficiency. If inadvertently, or through weakness of the flesh, one morsel above this is permitted to pass their lips, they are required to purge themselves and eat no more for three days. During this time, they must abase themselves with lack of sleep and piercings of the flesh and other holy penances.’
I paid no attention to the rest of his narrative. I’d known the woman by her Latin name, and it was all coming back. She’d died in some overturning of her chair as it was carried too fast down the street. The event itself was unclear, and several mutually exclusive miracle stories had fastened themselves almost at once to it. It was a happy day for the Empire – if not for the Church, which now had to wait for Constantine to come along and convert – that her father-in-law had outlived her equally if differently insane husband.
I was seated and left alone in a small office that I supposed was near the main body of the church. The neat desk and the racks bulging with correspondence reminded me of the Dispensator’s office in Rome. Joyous times those had been – I didn’t think – when he’d called me in there to charge me with one of his ‘little missions’. They were never small, and they’d usually involved me in escapes from death by the skin of my teeth. As often as Martin could be bullied or tricked into joining me, they’d involved me in some very hard moments with Sveta. It was with one of these that he’d tricked us into the journey to Constantinople. That hadn’t ended, I thought with a smile, entirely as he’d expected. Recollections of that meeting with him on my last visit to the Lateran Place could cheer me at the lowest moments.
Deep inside the church, there was a late service still taking place. I could hear the chanted responses. They weren’t in Greek, but the translation had kept the Greek rhythms well enough for me to follow whereabouts the service had reached. Closer by, there was a Sunday school in progress. In high, clear voices, the boys all together read their lesson from the board. Again, I could just follow what they were reading. The few Greek words placed strategically, and the proper names given at the right intervals, told me it was the trial of Saint Paul from the Acts of the Apostles.
There was no wine on the tray of refreshments left beside me. Most welcome, though – bearing in mind how worn out I was feeling from all that sun – was the very hot, sweetened kava juice. I drank the liquid straight down from the jug. I went back to listening. Yes, the boys had reached what could only be the verse ‘Then said Agrippa unto Festus, This man might have been set at liberty, if he had not appealed unto Caesar.’ I might not believe a word of it. Even so, I knew my Scripture backwards.
I felt a sudden tremor of interest in learning Egyptian. It might come in handy for the journey to and my stay around Soteropolis. It couldn’t be that hard to learn. The hardest language to learn is always the second, and I was now fluent in seven. And if the Egyptian versions of Scripture were as faithful as they seemed, I’d have a wondrously smooth key to the language. I might not even need a tutor.
I drifted into thoughts of how much I could get of the language in private between now and Soteropolis. It might not do to let anyone else know what I was about. If I had to set up a miracle, it would be handy to know something of what the natives were saying to each other under my nose. I could probably get the texts I needed out of Hermogenes. I’d be seeing him anyway in the next day or so.
I twisted round and looked at the icon of Saint Mark hanging above the door. It was in exactly the same style as the one Martin had bought and set up in his office. The only difference was that the text wasn’t in Greek. A new and uneasy thought came into my mind. Back in Constantinople, Sergius and I had worked on the assumption that a settlement of the Monophysite dispute would solve most of our troubles with the non-Greek Churches in the Empire. Sitting here, I wasn’t so sure. This wasn’t like in the West, where orthodox and heretic Churches all worked in Latin, and a switch to orthodoxy meant very little in practice. The native Churches here were in worlds of their own. They didn’t know Constantinople. They didn’t need Constantinople. They were almost like ripe figs dangling from a tree. They could drop off at any moment. If they rotted where they fell, that was their problem. It might even be good for the tree.
Was Egypt a problem for the Empire, I asked myself, because it was heretical? Or was its heresy part of a deeper problem? Suppose we gave in, and accepted the whole Monophysite case: would that be an end of the matter in Egypt? Or would the Egyptians only find another trifling point of difference to justify their steady drift out of the Greek orbit? I thought of my conversations with Lucas. I’d think more about this when I wrote another of my coded reports to Sergius.
I’d just finished crunching on the residue of the smashed-up beans when the door opened.
‘Let the ground be kissed where His Holiness cares to stand,’ the Deacon called in his flat Greek.
I stood up and bowed respectfully as Anastasius, Monophysite and so-called Patriarch
of Alexandria, walked in. Still dressed in full canonicals, he’d come, I could see, straight from Sunday service.
Chapter 31
‘Do please be seated, My Lord,’ the Heretical Patriarch said once the door was closed again and we were alone. He took off the jewelled episcopal crown of a kind I’d only ever seen the Pope wearing – both Sergius and John wore rather modest copes: then again, no one doubted their status as patriarchs – and put it heavily on the desk. As he struggled to reach back for the ties securing the immense brocade of his robe, I jumped up and helped. Together, we managed to get him down to something that approached sensible clothing in this climate.
A small, bearded man of about fifty, Anastasius finally took his place behind the desk. He had none of the scowling, broody manner fashionable among priests who looked other than to Rome. His face bordering on the jolly, he might, indeed, have been a Western cleric. Untouched by the sun, his face had no more than the sallow appearance of every Mediterranean race. He looked at the now empty kava jug. Before I could speak, he leaned forward and looked closely at me.
‘I had a letter the other day from Constantinople,’ he said. ‘My dear Brother in Christ Sergius sent what I am happy to regard as friendly greetings to me, and therefore to the whole Church of Egypt.’
I didn’t bother saying that I’d been sent a copy of the letter. Certainly, I didn’t question his claim to leadership of the national Church. Back in Constantinople, Sergius had assured me – and I’d seen no reason here to correct him – that Anastasius was accepted by somewhere between a third and half of the Egyptian Monophysites. He mattered for our purposes because that included almost everyone in and around Alexandria. The further you went into Egypt, though, the crazier and more independent the heretics became.
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