In my dream, I was back in Constantinople. It must have been just after our triumphant return from the Persian War. I was looking down over the Circus from my seat in the Imperial Box. We were in one of the intervals between races. Certainly, the racetrack was deserted. Behind me, the Great and Ever-Incompetent Heraclius was seated on his throne. If I glanced left, I could see one of his jewelled slippers where he sprawled, characteristically bored by anything that wasn’t a church service. Far below, on the great oval that surrounded the racetrack, an impossibly large number of human faces looked expectantly up at us. Nothing unusual in that, I suppose. In a moment, the chanted request would start – for a free bread distribution, perhaps, or for one of the finance ministers to be put to death. If I had any say in the matter, the answer would be a firm no to either. But my gaze was drawn to the Senatorial Balcony, about twenty feet below my own level. I could see the bare heads of the hundred and fifty leading men of the city. I could see the backs of their gorgeously embroidered white and purple robes. All would have been as it should have been – only there was an empty place. It was about the middle of the front row. I tried to remember who was missing and why. And I struggled to tell myself why it was so desperately important to me that the ivory stool was vacant.
As I began to dift back into the present. I suddenly realised it wasn’t Heraclius behind me, but his grandson, Constantine. And it wasn’t after the Persian war, but some other more recent conflict. Yet, if times and persons were altered, that ivory stool remained solidly vacant . . .
‘We thought you had died, Master,’ Wilfred said, his head just blocking the sun.
Edward had put his arms behind me and was trying to raise me. There was a smell of heat and dust and of all the other things you never miss until you’ve been long at sea. Wilfred bent down closer and set a cup of dark, brackish water to my lips.
‘Die, my dear young boys?’ I said at last in a surprisingly firm voice. ‘Dying is not something for those who still have work to do.’ Clutching at Edward’s shoulder, I pulled myself to my feet. We’d by now shipped so much water that the boat hardly trembled under the shifting of weight. Working together, the two boys lifted me over the side of the boat so that I could stand on the white beach where we’d finally come in to shore. I looked down at the dull eyes of the big man I’d killed. The Imperial scout ship nowhere to be seen, I looked at the vanishing bulk of the ship that had, since England, been both home and prison. I turned and took a confident and unaided step on the beach towards the remains of the Tipasa docks.
‘Well, come along, my pretties,’ I said without looking back. ‘I really could do with something to eat.’
Dear me! Dear me! Keep a cool head on your shoulders, and something always does turn up. What to do with it was something I’d consider as and when.
Chapter 19
I sat in the smooth, natural bowl the brook had, in its ages of spring flooding, carved out of the rock, and splashed happily in the water. If it had seemed a little chilly at first, I’d soon grown used to that. The afternoon sun was at its welcome best. I glanced at my moderately clean robe where Wilfred had hung it up to dry. I was hungry. As I’d expected, Tipasa was completely abandoned – not so much as one God-bothering hermit living in the ruined houses of what had, just a hundred years before, been a flourishing centre of the trade in fish sauce. Darting here, darting there – almost glowing with admiration of my double kill – Edward had gone all over the city while I rested with Wilfred in the shade. All the public buildings remained in good repair, he’d reported back, but the private houses had no roofs, and there was grass growing undisturbed in all the main streets.
Now, we were back where we’d first come ashore. We’d found a rocky inlet two hundred yards or so across the dazzling sands from where our boat seemed immovably stuck. Some fifty yards further on to the land, an ancient monument had sunk deep into its foundations. The rigid, almost incompetent statue still looked down from an odd angle. The inscription on its base was almost effaced by time. In any event, being in Punic, I couldn’t read a word. It had once been the centre of an older city. The one built as part of our own civilisation had been centred further along the shore – I supposed, on weak evidence, because of the sands that had shifted within the harbour all through history. We were alone, but for the birds and various small animals that scurried unseen in the undergrowth where the shoreline ended. I was about to mention what would soon become the pressing matter of food. But Edward was peering into the water.
‘What is wrong with your – your’ . . . He struggled to find the Latin word before lapsing into the English ‘cock’.
I took a deep breath and dipped my head under the water again. It was making my bad ear hurt, but the delicious cool of the water was too much to resist. I came up and rubbed my eyes. I looked blearily down at the sad remnant of an organ that had, for so many years, served me so well. I smiled and looked into Edward’s eyes.
‘The word you seek,’ I said gravely, ‘is mentula. Mine is disfigured by an operation anciently required of the Jews and Egyptians, and now of those who convert to the faith of the Saracens.’
Edward nodded. I’d answered his question. Wilfred’s face, though, took on its sour expression. He still hadn’t been parted from his own robe. It was as much as he could do to look with half-closed eyes at my own naked body. At Edward’s he hadn’t once dared to look. I put my head back and stretched lazily in the water. If, even now, Wilfred couldn’t overcome his horror of nudity, that would have to be his problem. Where Edward’s nudity was concerned, it was also his sorry loss.
‘Oh, don’t suppose I believe in the claims made by their false prophet,’ I said with an easy laugh. ‘But an apparent conversion was politically useful once for the Empire. It also helped me recover monies that would otherwise have been lost when the Antioch banks all failed at the same time.
‘But do observe,’ I continued, ‘the two white scars at the base of the glans. You may not be able to see them through the water. They are there, even so. I will warn you now, should you ever feel inclined to turn to the satanic Faith of the Desert, that circumcision can radically diminish feeling in the organ of increase. This may have advantages for some purposes – and there are those who swear that it prolongs and enhances the act of love – but it was never wholly to my taste. However, the circumcised races go far to compensating for the diminished sensation by piercing the organ and fitting a curved golden rod with little balls at each end. I wore this with much pleasure until, together with my gold and ivory teeth, I had to trade it for what I thought would be my final passage across the sea to Richborough.’
I ignored Wilfred’s passable imitation of a death rattle. I took another deep breath and went under again. I came up with a mouthful of water. I made a little fountain with it, and splashed hard on the surface. I looked down happily as the reflection of the overhead sun broke up into sparkling fragments and then reformed. Though tired, I was feeling justifiably pleased with myself. Most people who reach my age don’t do much at all. I’d just killed two men in short order. I hadn’t acknowledged Edward’s breathless praise. But I certainly deserved it.
‘Why is the city deserted?’ Wilfred asked.
I looked at his face and noticed how the sun had turned it the colour of an Egyptian mud brick. That’s what happens if you must dress up all year in heavy black. Except where he’d kept some clothes on aboard the ship, and where he was still getting over his stay in Cartenna, Edward had the nice golden tone that the sun can give to young northern skin. But this was no time for feasting my vicious old eyes. Wilfred had asked a rational question – even if it was to take me off a matter that he plainly found unwelcome – and he deserved a rational answer.
‘After Scipio had taken and destroyed it in ancient days,’ I began, once more in lecturing mode, ‘the city of Carthage was refounded by Julius Caesar. From a heap of uninhabited ruins, it grew within a hundred years into a city of half a million. It was the biggest city in
the West after Rome itself. The whole Province of Africa, of which it was capital, became the richest province in the West. After the Empire was divided, it was Africa that supplied Rome with seven million bushels of corn every year, Egypt being now reserved for the feeding of Constantinople. This whole shore was crowded with cities, great and small. The Punic heritage was eventually swept far out of sight. In its place arose a school of Latin and specifically Christian literature. You will recall that both Tertullian and Augustine were Africans. Cyprian, the first bishop to be martyred, was also an African.
‘The bad times began just under three hundred years ago. The province was conquered by a race of Germanic barbarians called the Vandals who had swept through Spain. They were unsystematic in their oppression. But what they did coincided with an advance of the desert and of the desert races that swallowed up formerly wealthy regions. If you go fifty miles south of here – perhaps less now – you’ll find great cities abandoned in the desert. When built, they were surrounded by the richest farming land in the West.’
‘But, Master, these cities on the coast,’ Wilfred broke in, ‘surely they should still be rich?’
I ignored him. I was thinking of the long memorandum I’d written for Constans when he demanded more taxes out of Africa. Was it misrule that had destroyed the interior? Or was it some autonomous change in the climate? It did seem part of the world had grown colder since ancient times. Certainly, grapes grew no more in Jarrow. Was it the colder weather – and not Imperial decadence – that had brought our ancestors out of their northern forests? Assuming, as Eratosthenes had, that the sun was an inconceivably large ball of fire millions of miles away, could there be some periodic change in the heat that it issued? If so, how could a cooling in the north be accompanied by a heating in the south to turn black land into dust? But I pulled myself back to the present.
‘The plague depopulated Africa worse than any other region,’ I said. ‘Our tax demands didn’t help. Until I abolished them as useless, there were emigration controls to keep people from escaping to Spain and France and other regions beyond the reach of the tax gatherers. Tipasa was just a little too small to survive the depopulation. The silting up of the harbour didn’t help. I imagine the population shrank and shrank over about two hundred years. You’ve seen how some of the old fortifications were taken down to build another wall around the centre. As time went by, the population must have fallen below the point where city life is viable. At that point, the survivors would have moved twenty miles along the shore to Caesarea.
‘What you see all round you is a great void. The multitudes who once swarmed along these shores are long since passed away. In Constantinople, we still translate the laws for our last substantial province where Latin is spoken. But there is hardly anyone left to read or obey them. Africa pays no net taxes. If we do a little here and there to slow the Saracen advance west from Egypt, it is for the sake of prestige. Quietly, we are glad of the diversion of their strength from the Imperial heartland.’
I made an effort to stand, but the bottom of the pool was slippery. ‘Come,’ I said with a change of tone, ‘help me out of here.’ Once I was standing on the hot, smooth sand, I pointed for my stick. As Edward handed it to me, I looked again at his perfect young body. When I’d finished giving my undeniably wicked eyes their most gorgeous feast since the last one, I rammed the stick hard into his stomach. As he went down spluttering, I kicked him hard in the balls, and gave him a few hard blows to his shoulders. Knees drawn up to his chest, hands covering his face, he cowered whimpering at my feet.
‘Master, Master!’ Wilfred cried behind me. ‘Have you lost your senses? Master, I beg you—’
I wheeled round and cut off the complaint with a poke into his own chest. That had him straight down on the ground, gasping for breath.
‘Don’t you ever presume to question what I do,’ I blazed at the boy. He tried to get up, but fell down again and crawled before me on all fours. I breathed in and then out and counted the beats of my heart. ‘Go back over there,’ I said heavily, ‘and get my clothes ready for when I want them.’
With a frightened wail, Wilfred crawled off to where he’d hung up our clothes to catch the sun. I turned back to Edward, who hadn’t moved.
‘You little snake!’ I snarled softly. I looked down for some conveniently unprotected soft area I could go at again with my stick. He squealed something I didn’t catch and began to cry. ‘You treacherous bag of shit!’ I added, with a hard whack to his buttocks. He screamed with the sudden pain and curled harder into a ball. There were some vicious little stones on this part of the beach, and they were doing to his underside what I was to the exposed areas. With every jerk of his body, he screamed at the double pain. ‘If that soft bugger Hrothgar had known half as much about you as I do, he’d have left you alone in your village to starve – or to drag yourself up into the churl that nature surely intended you to become.’
‘Master, I must insist.’ It was Wilfred again. He’d recovered his nerve and was now pushing himself between me and the terrified Edward. I struck at his face with my free hand. He winced at the pain, but now took hold of both my hands. ‘Put that stick down, Master,’ he insisted with quiet force. ‘You’ll give yourself a seizure.’ He pushed me gently but firmly down on to a convenient boulder and took the stick from my hands.
I did think to knock him aside and set about Edward again. But there was no resisting that unexpected strength, and I could see I’d already produced the effect I wanted. Letting the rage continue would be a waste of effort – and Wilfred might be correct about my own state of health. Already, I had a nosebleed starting. I wiped the blood with a piece of cloth he handed me. I took the cup he’d carried from the boat and drank down the fresh water. I looked again at Edward. He was staring up at me from between spread fingers. I took deep breaths and waited for my heart to stop banging like a smith’s hammer.
Chapter 20
‘Behold our Judas and our double Judas!’ I said ironically to Wilfred. I stared down at Edward, who’d uncoiled and, whimpering, now looked up at me like a beaten dog. ‘Hrothgar saved him. Hrothgar gave him bread. Hrothgar bought him an education. Hrothgar took him away from a land that offered him nothing. At his first opportunity, he got Hrothgar hanged.’
Edward uncoiled slightly and began some attempt at objection.
I silenced him with a cold look and continued. ‘Oh, I’ll grant I have no evidence that he’s the one who got Hrothgar into that gibbet. But I do know that he took a written statement ashore at Cartenna, informing the authorities that His Magnificence Alaric of Britain was on board the ship.
‘Isn’t that so, Edward?’ I asked, with a brief lurch into the direct mode of address. ‘You weren’t happy with promises of your share of the reward when Hrothgar eventually and somehow got the ship to Kasos. You wanted it all for yourself. And you wanted it at the first port of call within the Empire. Isn’t that so?’ I stretched out a foot and kicked him lightly in an exposed part of his belly. He said something muffled that sounded less like a denial than a plea for mercy. But I found that I was overbalancing, and being caught and set right again by Wilfred took away both opportunity and inclination to go beyond my own guesses.
‘The problem with this act of treachery,’ I continued, ‘was that his note wasn’t passed to the right authority until it was too late to do the little rat any good. When I gave him the choice between joining our escape and staying behind to explain what he might have been able to deliver, he chose to stick with us.
‘Even so, he didn’t like that he hadn’t stepped into Hrothgar’s shoes. He hadn’t realised that I’d be the one who took over, and that I’d insist on a fast return home. So, as they worked themselves up into whatever frenzy we’ve just escaped, he made a deal with the northerners. I don’t know what its nature was – brokering my head to the Imperial Government? Promising his arse to whoever might be big enough to save him from the others? I don’t know and don’t care. But we can both be sure he
knew what was coming on that boat journey, and it wasn’t his wish to be there with us.
‘Double Judas! And let’s not overlook his treason against Benedict, who took him in, no questions asked, to study in the world’s finest school west of Ravenna. Treble Judas! And, if we include the little matter of Cuthbert, quadruple Judas! And how many others has the boy fucked over in his short life?’
I leaned back into Wilfred’s arms. My nose was bleeding more, and I felt ready to drop. In one day, I’d gone far beyond the limits anyone might have thought my age allowed. Now, it was time to pay the debt incurred and all the heavy interest.
‘Set me on the ground over there,’ I said, pointing to where some rocks made a shadow on the sand. ‘Put me there and get my clothes ready for when I can stand again.’
‘I’d already guessed the same, Master,’ Wilfred said quietly as he tucked my now dry robe about my legs. ‘Edward has grievously sinned. But all we can do now is ask him to repent. I might also suggest’ – he paused and looked for his words – ‘that the text “Let he who is without sin, cast the first stone” might have some value here.’
The Sword of Damascus Page 12