I saw the scale of the devastation as we turned right into the wide street that led from the docks to the Central Forum. Buildings – whole blocks of buildings – had been razed to piles of smoking rubble. Banks, exchanges, warehouse buildings, shops, palaces, churches, schools, baths, monasteries: they had gone. Street frontages that had shown a thousand years of continuous development were now swept away. The fires still burned in places. Front elevations still leaned inwards, not yet pulled down or ready by themselves to collapse. But the work of ruin was done. When it came to ruination, Alexandria didn’t compare with Rome – still less with Ephesus or Corinth. But a good third of the centre was gone. And how, in the straitened circumstances of the present, it was ever to be rebuilt as other than a patched-up slum wasn’t something I could say.
The destruction had barely started when I was taken out of things. There could be no doubt, though, that it was over. The impaling stakes removed any doubt that order had been fully restored. A section of the better classes in Alexandria, assisted by the mob, had challenged the might of the Empire. Now, after a struggle that I had largely missed but that gave every appearance of the colossal, the Empire had triumphed, and the impaling stakes were an outward symbol of the restoration of order.
About eight feet high and twenty yards apart along both sides of the street, each of the stakes had been set into one of the stone gratings beneath which the flood waters rushed and gurgled. Each of them carried at least two bodies. The two lower bodies had been impaled through their stomachs. Blackened, already putrefying in the sun, they hung as they’d died, the lower one brushing arms and legs on the pavement. Flies buzzed and swarmed and settled on the dead. Carrion birds perched along the tops of every high place, calling out and fluttering their wings. Some of them – not vultures: I was surprised by how pretty they often were – were braving the crowds of onlookers to fly down and peck at the eyes. Stray dogs licked at the pools of blood, or slaves outside the better class of shops that remained fussed about with brushes and buckets of water.
Where a third body had been added, the impaling was generally, though not universally, done upright – through the anus. Those were a ghastly sight. The faces looked straight back at any onlooker, twisted with agony beyond describing and with eyes pecked out. Flies crawled in and out of the slack mouths. The sun had already brought the faces out in black patches.
I watched one of these executions. My chair had reached a pile of rubble that blocked half the width of the street. There was no way through the crowd, and I had no means of giving precise instructions to the chair carriers. I started at the back of the crowd. One further sign, though, of restored order was that everyone else no sooner saw me seated than they got smartly out of my way, and the women moved me forward right to the front. Bound and already naked, the victim was twisting about and squealing for mercy even before he was pulled from the closed, slave-drawn carriage. I saw the crazed look on his face and the glistening of tears. I saw him clutch and unclutch his hands in supplication. It took three men, all wearing Prefecture uniforms, to heave him up into position, the sharpened tip of the stake between his legs. A fourth stood before him, quietly and rapidly reading something off a sheet of papyrus.
With a start, I realised that he was the potty man. I hadn’t recognised him at first because he was naked. The pinched, wiry look of the lower classes has little individuality. But the face I’d have recognised anywhere. ‘Me – I don’t never mix with wogs,’ he’d said, which seemed so very long ago, while wiping Martin’s bum. Perhaps he’d broken his rule. More likely, it didn’t really matter what he’d done or not done.
At last, the reading finished. The jabbered supplication didn’t let up. It was a waste of breath, and – so far as it mattered at this late stage – it showed a want of dignity. No one paid attention. The fourth Prefecture man nodded to the others. With a count of ‘One, two, three!’ they let go of him, and then held him again as his weight took the stake deeper into his body. Once he was firmly on, they cut his bonds and stood back. The crowd had let up a great cheer as he was dropped on to the stake. Now, it was fallen silent, and nothing covered the shrill, incredulous screaming as the man took the stake into his body. I had thought it would be a quick slide down and then silence. However, the stake was of a thickness, and was so notched at intervals, that the descent was agonisingly slow. He reached down with his arms, desperately trying to hold himself up. He hugged himself, and covered his eyes. He pressed on his stomach. He waved about like one of the more inebriated dancing girls. It all had no effect on the slow progression of the stake through his body – tearing or displacing organs, snapping bones, making every moment an infinity of pain and horror-stricken fear.
At last, his legs straddled the lower bodies, and the tip of the stake emerged from his mouth. There was another cheer from the crowd, and men held up their little children to see the bloody froth dribble off his chin. No longer jerking about, he twitched for longer than I’d have thought possible. His eyes fluttered in little spasms. Clouds of flies buzzed madly about, waiting for all to be still again.
Their faces showing utter exhaustion, the men from the Prefecture sat down in a clean patch beside the stake and called across the road for a jug of wine. They leaned forward to stretch their tired muscles, then sat back to rest in the sun. As the crowd parted and let me through, I was carried close by the carriage. I heard the desperate, terrified cries of those still waiting for their end. Maddened eyes stared out from behind the closely set bars. A hand was pushed through and raised as if for mercy as I was carried past. I raised a cloth soaked in lemon scent to block the sudden smell of shit and vomit from within.
I wasn’t able to count how many other carriages were being trundled up and down the road. Nor could I count the number of bodies, already swollen by the gases of their internal corruption, that had been stacked out of the way in side streets. Their faces covered by spiced cloths, slaves struggled with the carrion birds and ravening dogs to pull the bodies out and pile them into carts for carrying away. Much longer, I knew, and the internal corruption would generate the seeds of a pestilence to sweep away further multitudes.
The Palace square was a forest of the dead and dying. The sudden shock of seeing it stopped my breath. I wanted to poke at the maidservants and have them carry me round to one of the other entrances. But I sagged back in my place, unable to move, and those women carried me steadily forward with no more feeling than if we were entering a garden. Every stone grating had been put to use, and I could see for the first time why they had been placed in their otherwise inexplicable pattern. Longer stakes had been used here, and each one held up to six bodies, all impaled with some of ingenuity. I saw men impaled through their stomachs and out through their bottoms. I saw men impaled in the other way. I saw men impaled in ways that may have let them stay alive all morning, and that might not kill them until after darkness had fallen. All around me, the cries of those who still lived mingled with the calling of the carrion birds and the swarming of the flies.
‘Where’s your ticket?’ a voice screamed beside me.
I looked round. It was an armed man. He had the look of a cavalry soldier, though he had no horse. So, the reinforcements I’d ordered in had eventually arrived, I thought.
‘Where’s your fucking ticket?’ he screamed again. He waved a long cavalry sword at me.
The chair shook as every one of its female carriers cried out in a unison of terror.
‘I am,’ I replied, ‘the Senator Alaric, Legate Extraordinary from His Imperial Majesty to His Imperial Highness the Viceroy.’ I stepped unsteadily down from the chair and tried to breathe through my mouth. I didn’t know how to tell the women to go back to the Mistress, but expected they’d get the idea. ‘Do not presume to ask me for identification,’ I said with a look down my nose.
The soldier opened his mouth for what I had no doubt would be a stream of very ripe abuse. Before he could spew any of it my way, however, someone else came running over
.
‘My Lord! My Lord!’ he cried happily in Latin. ‘We’d heard you were dead. It is a true delight to see you in such good health.’ He was one of the Slavonic guards. He had a bandage round his left arm, and didn’t look as if he’d shaved or even washed in days. He waved the cavalry soldier away and led me through the Palace gates.
As I walked into the entrance hall, I could hear my name passing from voice to voice. There was a crowd about me before I’d got halfway across the floor. Faces bobbed in and out of my sight, calling my name. Hands stretched out to touch my robe. I’d never thought I was so popular. Even the eunuchs looked happy. I had no choice but to stop and give a little speech of thanks to God for my preservation, and of thanks to everyone else for being pleased I had been preserved. There’s a big difference between a cheering crowd and one that wants to rip you apart. But, if the Mistress assured me I was well, I could feel my legs trembling. All I wanted now was a long drink and maybe an opium pill or two.
Chapter 48
‘So how did you get out alive?’ I asked Priscus a second time.
He looked up from the list of names placed before him on the Viceroy’s desk and laughed. ‘My dearest Alaric,’ he said, ‘did you really think I could be killed by a handful of wogs? I don’t think I ever told you about my part in the loss of Serdica. That was back in the early days of Maurice, when I was just a staff officer. It was all rather boring at first. Then, one night, ten thousand savages – every one of them as big and blonde as you, and every one of them fighting mad – came pouring over the wall. The whole garrison was put to the sword. I was the only one not to be—’
He broke off as a secretary knocked and came in with a sheaf of documents. As Priscus arranged them on the desk, I saw that every sheet was another list of names. Priscus looked briefly down the columns. A couple of times, he took up a pen and crossed out some of the names. Once or twice, he added others from memory.
‘These ones,’ he said, holding up one of the more crowded sheets, ‘I want impaled. For all these’ – he signed his name on one of the smaller sheets – ‘the punishment is blinding and confiscation of property. For all the others, it’s burning. Do make sure to tell me if we run short of timber from the demolished buildings. In view of the Patriarch’s message, we’ll hold all further executions over till tomorrow. As for the blindings’ . . . He paused and measured out a spoonful of one of his powders. He tapped the shaft of the pen on his teeth and thought. ‘As for the blindings, cancel them. I hereby degrade everyone on that list to the class of the freeborn poor and sentence them all to the galleys.’
‘How is Nicetas?’ I asked when we were alone again. I had thought of asking about Alexander. But then I’d seen the splintered box lying in a corner of the office. It still contained an entire leg and some larger fragments of the trunk. Of the head I saw no sign.
Priscus refilled my cup and pulled over a candle to heat his powder. ‘Resting,’ he said after another long pause.
I’d not expected any other answer from the moment I saw Priscus sitting so firmly at his desk. ‘Once I found the mob couldn’t get in,’ he went on, ‘and wasn’t doing much to cut through the lead on the roof, I decided to leave him for a day and a half in the Church of the Apostles. When I did eventually have him let out, he was more dead than alive. All that had kept him going, I am told, was repeated cups of communion wine. He had the priest bless every mouthful.’ He paused again, and breathed in the fumes of his evaporated powder. He pitched forward, banging his head up and down on the desk.
Nothing could kill Priscus. Nothing could harm Priscus. I’d known him too long now even to hope otherwise. I refilled my cup and drank deeply.
Getting sense out of the clerks in my office had taken an age. In the end, though, I’d heard how Priscus had somehow made his way back to the Palace and taken charge of affairs. No one could accuse him of irresolution. He hadn’t waited for the reinforcements. Instead, he’d lined up all that remained of the Palace garrison and led it out in person to a massacre of everyone who didn’t run for cover. He’d cut his way to the Prefecture and recruited every one of the quaking officers to his little army. With them puffing up his numbers, he’d slaughtered until the streets ran with blood and until every one of the rioters lucky enough to survive had burrowed his way back into the filthy slums from which he had issued. Now, order was fully restored, and it was time to punish all those who’d called the mobs into being before losing control of them.
‘Have you ever seen a man eaten to death by maggots?’ Priscus asked heavily. He looked up at me, tears carrying the mascara down his face in green rivulets.
I shook my head.
‘Then remind me in six days’ time, and I’ll take you back under the Prefecture. You’ll find the Viceroy’s secretary in a cell of his own. He came the high and mighty official when I staggered in here more dead than alive. Of course, I beat him to pulp when he tried to stop me from laying hands on the Great Seal. His death sentence was for treason. The manner of his death is for pissing me off.’
He sat up again, his mood brightening. He reached into a drawer and pulled out the Great Seal. Every one of my own intrigues since arriving here had been connected with getting Nicetas to use this as I desired. I’d never thought of just taking it. So long as Nicetas lay sobbing in his bed, surrounded by priests, Priscus was the supreme power in Alexandria and for as deep into Egypt as Imperial rule might still reach.
‘My darling Alaric,’ he said with one of his more charming smiles, ‘if I seemed less than overjoyed when you walked in, that is because I already knew that you were still alive.’ He reached into another drawer and took out a leather packet. From this he took out a folded sheet of papyrus. ‘This was waiting for you two evenings ago, when I got back from burning the poorer half of the Egyptian quarter. I hope you’ll not mind that I opened it in your absence. It does answer a question I know has been hanging on your lips ever since you walked in here.’ He pushed the folded sheet across the desk.
I took it up and unfolded it.
‘From the second and greater Pharaoh Meriamen Usermaatre Setepenre,’ it began, ‘to Alaric, Legate of the Greek Emperor – greetings and congratulations.’
‘I assume he’s the wog fucker who took Alexander’s head,’ Priscus broke in.
I nodded. He scowled and went back to scanning his death lists. I looked closely at the sheet. It had a few crossings-out and changes that made it pretty clear Lucas had written this by himself. It was good Greek and in a good hand. He must once have had the choice to be Greek or Egyptian. Why he’d not chosen the Greeks continued to astonish me.
Anyway, the congratulations were on my escape from his people. Apparently, they’d exceeded their instructions, and those ‘still in need of punishment’, would receive it from his own hands. He explained how the purpose of the attack had merely been to take me prisoner, ‘so that we might continue the business you cut so painfully short last month’. After much elaborations on his admiration for me, and his personal desire to continue ‘our most interesting discussions’, – I shuddered at that one – he got to the point:
You have, or are in a position to obtain, a relic of the Faith that we regard as of the highest value to the freedom of the Egyptian people. You will hand this to us – together with attestation from the appropriate religious authorities – at the midnight hour on the twenty-seventh day of the month of Mechir. For this purpose, you will attend on us in the market square of the town that sits in the shadow of the Great Pyramid.
You may bring armed men sufficient for your protection, and these will guarantee your safety when you meet with us. Do not presume to think your forces will be sufficient to overwhelm us. You will be on our territory. Do not presume to think we shall not observe your every move from the moment you leave the Royal Palace in Alexandria.
If you fail to attend on us in the place and at the time specified, I regret that we shall need to kill your servant Martin in a most unpleasant and prolonged manner. I
have no doubt – bearing in mind your opinion of Martin and of the Faith – that you will do your utmost to comply with our wishes. The relic is as worthless to you as it is valuable to us. My only doubt is that you will believe Martin still to be alive. Since he has refused to write in his own hand to confirm this, I enclose evidence that you will surely regard as final.
The letter continued in a recitation of his praises for me, and of repeated promises for my own safety. I looked across the desk to Priscus, who’d gone back to chewing his pen.
‘Quite mad,’ he said. ‘Quite mad in all respects. By the way, dear boy, I’ve had the Egyptian date explained to me. Their calendar, I’m told, has no leap year, and so their dates and ours never line up in the same way. But this year, the date given is the 15th September.’
‘That’s twelve days from now,’ I said. ‘What is this “evidence” that Martin is still alive?’ I kept my voice neutral. I didn’t want it seen how my heart had leapt at the mere claim that Martin was still alive. Of course, I’d get him back. But it wouldn’t do to have this out with anyone – certainly not with present company.
Priscus smiled again, and reached back into the leather packet. He took out something rolled into a linen cloth, and passed it across to me.
‘You can trust me without hesitation, Alaric, that this was cut from a living body. You should know that I’m an expert in these matters.’
The Blood of Alexandria Page 35