‘You join us at a most opportune moment,’ Siroes said, speaking loud above the incomprehensible shouts and squeals of the debate in progress. I think he also was trying not to laugh at Lucas. ‘There is immediate business of which you may be aware. If you serve me well enough in that, I may see fit to put in a word for you with the Great King. You see, our Christian minority speaks well of you for the tolerance of their heresy you have urged within the Empire. We might spare you as a token of our mercy in victory.’
‘Your goodness of heart robs me of normal speech,’ I said.
Siroes touched his forehead again. He even smiled. It was now that Lucas, who’d restored a sullen order among his men, butted in with a gloating and self-important speech about my function as finder of the piss pot of Jesus Christ. It seemed this really had been on the agenda the last time I was taken. This time, he said, I’d be under closer watch.
‘No one will save you now,’ he said. ‘Not the Greeks in Alexandria, nor, I think, the sorceress whose concern for your safety has surely not outlived her better acquaintance with you.’
‘That’s all very well,’ I said. I paused and waited while the whole headdress was stabilised again. ‘However, I do represent His Majesty the Emperor, and I think that entitles me to supper.’
We set out from the camp just after dawn, and were soon headed south-east along a rough trail through this borderland of the desert. There was no camel for me now. Instead, I was tied into the chair that I supposed had been made available to the Persian Envoy. Muttering away in his own language, Siroes looked on.
‘With the deepest respect, Your Majesty,’ he said once Lucas had come over, ‘I do suggest that, as a person of quality, His Magnificence should not be bound – not, at least, with common rope.’
‘You will understand, my dear Lucas,’ I added, ‘if I agree with the Lord Siroes. If you were the low bandit that I at first took you for, common rope would be appropriate. However, you are in rebellion – even if not with much success – against the Empire, and I do represent His Imperial Majesty. I would suggest golden fetters or nothing at all.’
Siroes nodded gravely and seemed inclined to add another of his own protests. More to the point, some of the Brotherhood men who’d survived the rising in Alexandria were drifting over and looking mutinous again. Lucas swore softly and twisted with rage, but came forward and shouted for the procession to stop. He took out a knife and cut the ropes.
‘If you so much as move from this chair,’ he hissed into my face, ‘I will personally cut off your feet at the ankles.’
‘God’s tits!’ I gasped, pulling myself back from the filthy gust of his breath. ‘I know your rules demand celibacy after you’ve produced two sons. If you won’t take a little guidance on oral hygiene, you’ll remain celibate before then as well.’
Lucas gave up trying to look majestic. ‘I will also tell you this,’ he continued, keeping his face close. ‘If you do somehow manage to escape again, I will lay hold of your secretary and personally stitch his testicles into his mouth. Don’t deny any interest in his fate. There is no other reason for your being here – and so many days before anyone would have thought it possible for you to get here from Alexandria.’
‘Is it true,’ I asked loudly, ‘that the old kings of Egypt used to strip off once a year and have a public wank into the Nile?’
He stared at me a moment. He swallowed, plainly thinking of some response that would crush me. Then, with a scowl, he was off, shouting at everyone to get under way again.
‘Not like a horse, is it?’ I said brightly.
Siroes stared down at me. He’d put off the fussy robes of the night before. Now, he was in the local riding costume. Like all Persians, he was probably an accomplished horseman. Camels, as I don’t need to keep saying, are not the same as horses.
‘The less time I spend seated on this beast,’ came the reply, ‘the happier I shall be. I am assured that, if all goes as planned, I shall require neither chair nor camel for my return.’
I shifted position. The chair was big and comfortable. Even if the sun hadn’t yet acquired its full power, I was glad of the shade from the canopy overhead. I yawned and stretched my legs.
‘Oh, you expect me to dig out your piss pot,’ I said. ‘Do you suppose it will let you grow wings and fly back? If so, it must be ever so powerful.’
Siroes gave me a sour look and twisted in his saddle.
‘Do tell me, though, Siroes,’ I said with a change of subject, ‘you really can’t be serious about leaving Egypt to the wogs. Whoever controls Egypt and its corn is in a position to control the world.’
‘We are perfectly determined,’ he said with a shade too much emphasis, ‘to reorder the world on a basis of equality between peoples.’
‘And you really mean to set up Lucas here as Pharaoh?’ I asked. I could hear him far off, close to the front of our procession. Something or someone had upset him, and he was screaming again like a steward over a broken vase.
‘Our mutual friend,’ he answered ‘– let us call him Lucas: it is less of a mouthful than the other name he has tried to teach me – is a man of just the qualities we need in a ruler of Egypt. However, let us discuss your own interesting position. When I spoke last night about your death, I think we should take that as a statement of possibility rather than of intention.
‘We are expecting to bring an end to the war between our two empires some time in the next six months. It will be an unconditional surrender on the Greek side. I am already considering how what remains of the Greek Empire is to be ruled. I could speak at great length of nothing very important. But I will avoid doing so and simply ask if you would like to be the next emperor? You would, I must clearly state, be an emperor under our complete protection. We would even station forces in Constantinople to ensure the safety of your reign.’
‘Once more, your goodness of heart astonishes me,’ I said with a little nod. ‘But let us leave aside the question of how someone like me could rule the Empire except as a Persian satrap. What interests me more is how you can be so certain the war will soon end. Granted, it’s been going on for the past ten years, and hasn’t gone our way. But you’ve not yet made a breakthrough. Cappadocia was hardly a catastrophic loss. And we are aware in Constantinople of the strain the war has put on your own resources. What makes you suppose we are anywhere close to suing for peace – let alone on the terms you mention?’
Siroes smiled and turned his attention to the camel. I thought he’d be diplomatic about this. Not so. He looked back at me, his smile now become a broad grin.
‘My dear young Alaric,’ he said, ‘how right you are when you say that whoever controls Egypt is in a position to control the world. If only we had known properly a thousand years ago what we think we know today, Alexander would never have taken Egypt from us. Nor would he have conquered us. Our archives earlier than some four hundred years ago are fragmentary. Indeed, we must often rely on Greek sources for our history before then. But some records have survived. The Great King is advised that Egypt contains a prize that brings control of the whole world. I am here to ensure that he gets it.’
‘You know about this prize from records that predate the conquests of Alexander?’ I asked.
Siroes nodded.
‘Yet Alexander died some three hundred and twenty years before the birth of Christ.’
‘I fail to see what the Jewish Carpenter has to do with this,’ he said, giving me a funny look.
‘And what does the Great Pharaoh up ahead think of this prize?’ I asked after a moment’s thinking. ‘If he knows about it what you claim to know, why should he be so willing to hand it over to the Great King?’
‘I think this conversation has continued long enough,’ Siroes said with a grave nod. ‘We shall speak again when the time is right.’ He eased his camel out of the procession and stopped while the sweating, almost naked carriers took my chair past him.
We continued on our slow but steady way. The sun rose higher
in the sky and I began to swelter in my chair. I could see the trail of camels in front of me and hear them behind me. I could hear the tramp of feet following. My carriers grew sweatier and were taking regular drinks from bottles strapped to their waists. How, in that heat, they didn’t die from exertion might have been worth asking if I hadn’t already known the limitless capacity of their sort to do as they were told and only die later on. They staggered a few times, but never let up their pace. Once or twice a young man pulled up beside me on his camel and made elaborate gestures that always ended with the sign of the Cross. As often as he began some whining chant, I’d bare my teeth and claw at him like a cat. That would get rid of him for a while. If the natives chose to think I was some kind of monster, that might have its uses.
At last, Lucas came beside me and tried for a conversation. He’d put away his regal finery for a huge black robe that must have been still hotter for him than the chair was for me. Since I had nothing I wanted to say to him, I pretended to doze off. And that, after a long swig of the local finest, plus another mile of swaying about in the heat, is what I eventually did. Whatever was coming next, a good rest would do me no harm at all.
Chapter 56
I’ve only seen the Pyramids twice. My first view of them, I’ll assure you, was from exactly the right direction at exactly the right time of day. It was coming on for late afternoon, and the shadows cast by every jagged rock and every pile of sand were lengthening around me. We were coming out of the desert from the north-west. They must have been about five miles off when I drifted awake, and I didn’t notice them at first. I was thirsty and my wrists were hurting. Looking ahead, I seemed only to see more of the endless heat haze that obscured the horizon.
Then I saw them: three vast and regular mountains that shone a dazzling white as they caught the rays of the sun. I didn’t know where Siroes had gone. But no one around me paid the slightest attention. They’d seen it all so often, they hardly noticed how wonderful it was. My carriers didn’t once look up as they trudged ever onwards. Of course, Lucas had to be different. He bounced up again beside me, pointing and jabbering about his ‘ten thousand years’. I did think of starting another argument over his beloved Egypt, this time sneering at his idea of its antiquity. But I grunted at him and pretended to be still half asleep.
In truth, I was privately willing those carriers to go faster. I badly wanted to get as close alongside the Pyramids as I could before night fell. They were a wonderful sight. Nothing I’d read in Herodotus or Strabo or the other historians had prepared me for how they actually were. According to Herodotus, the biggest of the three took a hundred thousand workers twenty-six years to complete, and its function was to serve as the tomb for some megalomaniacal king. Manetho gives a different account, more flattering to its builder. But no one disagrees on its size. It is seven hundred and fifty feet long on each of its four sides, and around five hundred high. It is a huge structure. You could pack the Great Church inside it several times over, and still have room for some of the other sights of Constantinople. The two pyramids beside this one are also very big, but are dwarfed in comparison.
We came at last to the flat expanse of rock on which the Pyramids are built. In or out of flood, this is far above the level of the Nile, and there are still miles to go before the edge of the black land is reached. Even so, the plateau is crowded with buildings. At this time of year, it was naturally the home of those displaced by the floods. But there is a dense network there of ruined and semi-ruined temple buildings. And there may be dozens of monasteries dotted about, these obviously in continuous occupation.
There had been some kind of market all day when we arrived at a small town. But I paid no attention to the mud-brick buildings and the brown, shouting lower orders of Egypt. I’d long since given up concealing my interest in the Pyramids. The Great Pyramid must still have been a good mile distant. But it loomed over everything. The light around us was fading fast away, but the Pyramid still shone white as if it had been a mountain of snow. I believe the inner part is of granite blocks arranged round a core of rock. But the exterior of each of the pyramids is one smoothness of white limestone.
‘So, Alaric,’ Lucas said as he came yet again beside me, ‘are you willing to agree now that the Greeks have nothing to set beside this?’
‘Get enough men together,’ I sniffed, ‘and work them long enough, with just the right touch of the whip when they get uppity, and I’ve no doubt anyone could put up this sort of thing. The question is who else would have thought it worth the effort?
‘Any chance of another drink?’ I asked, cutting short my paraphrase of Herodotus. The wine flask he’d reluctantly handed over was long since empty, and my tongue was getting ready to stick to the roof of my mouth. I pretended not to notice the flies, which, with the fading light, had begun buzzing about in predatory manner.
Lucas got off his camel and began walking beside me. I was in no mood for a laugh, but the long account he began of the Pyramids as a love gift from the people of Egypt to their kings was absurd both in itself and in its earnest narrating. In its own way, it was more absurd than any miracle of the Church. Those usually involve a deviation from the normal course of things as a result of God’s commanding. This farrago didn’t so much deviate from as suspend the normal course of things. But I did get a full cup of water pushed at me. It was now evening, and we were approaching the centre of this town that huddled so inconsequentially at the foot of the Great Pyramid.
We stopped in a central square that served during the day as a market. I stumbled from the chair and stretched my arms and legs. I looked round. It was rather like Letopolis, but without the appearance of better days past. It might have been far older as a settlement. It might have dated back to the building of the Pyramids. But the jumble of narrow streets that led off from the square in which we’d come to rest looked about as tempting as turd pie.
Lucas snarled something at the carriers that didn’t sound particularly worthy of any love gift at all. They bowed and padded off somewhere.
‘If your people haven’t stolen all the cash I brought with me,’ I said, ‘I think I could stand you a dinner somewhere. I don’t suppose you’ll find anywhere about that’s fit for a king – not even a pretend king like you. But you might care to point me in the direction of an inn that won’t give us the shits.’
Avoiding a pile of rotting filth that I could more smell than see, I walked away from him and stood looking up at the Great Pyramid. Its lower parts were now buried in the advancing gloom of evening. Its topmost twenty or thirty feet, though – just below the stained apex, where some ornamentation of bronze, or perhaps even of gold, had once been – still shone bright in the rays of the departing sun. Even as I looked, the line of shadow moved rapidly higher, until only the very apex remained. For a moment, the apex alone glowed. It was as small and as bright as some object in the darkening sky. Then it too was gone. As a result, there was no longer any contrast in the light, and I could now see the whole bulk of the Pyramid outlined against the ever darkening sky.
I turned back to face Lucas. His torchbearers were picking their way towards him. Until they got closer, I’d not be able to see his face. But I could feel the disapproval radiating from him. And my perception of his mood was as cheering as a cup of really good wine.
‘So which establishment in this probably nameless dump is up to serving persons of our quality?’ I asked, taking up the last subject.
‘Are your bodily needs all that concern you?’ Lucas hissed at me.
The torchbearers had now arrived, and I could see the insanity blazing from his eyes.
‘Do you expect a visit to the town brothel once you’ve stuffed your belly?’
‘Oh, not at all, dear Lucas,’ I said, speaking brightly and loud. Several passers-by stopped and looked in my direction. I doubted if they understood me, but I carried on as if I had an audience. ‘If Egyptian women smell anything like the men, I’d have vomited on them long before I’d lost
any mess inside them. Dinner will be quite enough – oh, and a little wine.’
I watched Lucas while various passions battled for control of his mind. There was outrage at the affront I’d offered him. There was his evident need to keep me in one piece and undamaged until further notice. As his fists unclenched and his face relaxed, he smiled and motioned me towards a large building almost next door to the main church.
I stopped for a moment at the open gate. I put a smile on my face and turned to Lucas with another witticism. But for the first time, I was seriously scared. Of course, I’d been in his power an entire day. At any time since I’d stepped out of the shadows, he could have had me strung up on hooks, or staked out naked under the burning sun. He could have done as he pleased. His people wouldn’t have lifted a finger. Siroes was rather stuffy about the proprieties and needed me alive until I’d turned up his piss pot. But unless he was serious about putting me up for emperor, we might be talking of days. And how much control did he really have over Lucas? Now, as I looked through that black entrance to who knows what, my stomach turned over. I stopped at the threshold and found I couldn’t go further.
‘Come now, Alaric – do you need a formal invitation?’ Lucas breathed behind me. He’d perked up since our last exchange. Worse, he was beginning to sound horribly gloaty again.
‘Not at all, Your Majesty,’ I jeered. ‘I’m just wondering how much nastier the inside of this place smells than the street.’ I thought I’d get a push from behind if I didn’t move soon. That was too much. Lucas might play at being Pharaoh. I was the Emperor’s Legate. If I was now to be put out of the way, blubbing at the doorway wasn’t likely to change matters. I might as well go out with a ‘Fuck you, arsehole!’. I bit my lip and stepped forward.
The Blood of Alexandria Page 41