The Sword of Damascus

by Richard Blake

  ‘I wouldn’t dream of telling you your business, Karim,’ I said. ‘However, before you dictate the arrest order for all my workmen, I would ask you to look at these stains on the dead man’s clothing.’ I poked my stick between the parted legs. ‘I suggest that, rather than having come in with the others yesterday, and then hiding somewhere, it seems more likely that he climbed up the outside water screw. The window beside it was left open to bring in fresh air, and Edward found it pushed wide open. I have no doubt an investigation from the outside will confirm my belief. I do beg you not to put some very competent workmen on the rack, but instead to have bars fitted on all windows that can be reached from the outside. You might also make some enquiries within the palace to find out how the man got past the outer security, and how it was he knew where I was and how to get at me. You will agree that trousers are not commonly worn in Syria, and that those leather patches on the knees seem to make light work of climbing high metal pipes.’

  Karim’s face tightened for a moment. Then again, I was turning his easy case into a long and possibly embarrassing enquiry. But he smiled and nodded back obediently. It would all be as I asked, he assured me with florid courtesy. I took the cup of something dull that a slave was pressing on me, and wondered if my workmen were getting over the shock of hearing Karim scream threats at them. He got up, his smile now broader.

  ‘My Lord will forgive me if I take my leave of this company,’ he said gravely. ‘I have my report to complete for His Highness the Governor of Syria. I will assure you of the great interest he takes in your comfort and security. I am sure that, in view of last night’s most regrettable incident, he will wish to receive you even in advance of this evening’s banquet.’ He looked again at the corpse and frowned.

  ‘Something I shall need to cover in my report,’ he went on, ‘is the apparent delay between the time you sent this piece of meat to Hell and your call for help. Everything points to a death no later than the midnight hour. Your call was just before dawn.’

  I pulled a face. ‘I’m an old man,’ I said. ‘It took me time to recover from the ordeal. The boy and I then sat awhile looking at the smoke from the fires that were breaking out all across the city. They reminded me of riots in Constantinople.’

  Karim scowled and muttered something about Christian ingratitude for all the benefits of the Caliph’s rule.

  ‘But you really must pardon me, Karim,’ I broke in, ‘for not at first recognising you. When you told me you were the son of Malik, I thought you were related to His Present Majestic Holiness. Am I right, however, in believing that you are in fact the son of Malik al-Ashtar, companion of the Caliph Ali and his Governor of Egypt?’

  He nodded and sat down again. This time, he sat on the little sofa where – unable to follow a word of the conversation – Edward had been sitting very still.

  ‘You are indeed a master of all wisdom,’ he said. ‘Know then that my father may have died in the civil war that the Empire did so much to foment. Know also that Muawiya delighted in the removal of his rival’s main support. I am, even so, a loyal servant of the Caliph. Abd al-Malik is eager to move on from those regrettable disputes over policy. My main family in Medina has long since accepted the hand of friendship, and I rejoice in the Caliph’s fullest trust.’

  ‘I’d never have thought otherwise,’ I said with an easy wave. ‘But I did once meet your father. It was after your people had taken Syria from us. We were both part of the negotiation after the main battle for the exchange of prisoners. I found him a most brave and generous opponent. I was sorry to hear about his death.’

  Karim nodded again. He got up and crossed over to the door. As he bowed, I caught the unguarded look on his face. ‘Loyal servant of the Caliph’, my foot. The unifying bond of the Desert Faith was one matter. The bond of blood was something else. I kept a bleary, tired look on my face until the door was shut and we were alone. I reached behind one of the heavier bound volumes that was propped against the wall, and pulled out the wine jug.

  ‘That was a good meeting,’ I said, now in English.

  Edward looked up and made an effort to focus on me. He’d started to hurt rather badly once his bruises came out. In retrospect, the two drops of Jacob’s opium juice might have been more than strictly needed. He opened his mouth to speak. He shut his eyes and squeezed his fingernails hard into his palms.

  ‘Why is everyone trying to kill you?’ he asked with an effort. His face broke into a sweat and he leaned back into the soft cushions of the sofa.

  ‘I have already explained, my dear boy,’ I said patiently, ‘that these are not things for you to worry about. Besides, not everyone is trying to kill me.’ Drugged as he was, I could see the beginnings of a dark look. There was a knock on the door. I put the two brimming cups on my desk and stood in front of them. Three slaves entered with a large cloth sack. Another couple followed behind with mops and buckets of water.

  ‘Ah, come to clean up the mess, I see,’ I called briskly. ‘Well, so long as it doesn’t start to smell too bad, I can put up with a body in the library. So you take this poor boy and put him to bed. Gently with the clothes. Gentle with the sheets. Let him sleep until—’ Edward heaved himself up. He’d understood what I had in mind from my tone, and his displeasure was now obvious.

  ‘Very well,’ I said evenly. I pointed at the body and let the slaves set about their business without further interruption. I made sure to drop a large sheet of papyrus over the cups, then took Edward very gently by the shoulder. If its effects had been bleached away by the drug, the pain itself was still there. ‘Let us go next door,’ I said, ‘and see how my works progress. Indeed, since Karim has advised us not to leave the palace until further notice, there can be no shopping today. That leaves you with a choice between the long sleep that I do most urgently suggest and watching me improve my vision.’ I helped him into the corridor, and guided him through the entrance to the room where the smell of charcoal and the low fluttering of a polishing wheel spoke of much hard work.

  ‘I told you yesterday,’ I said as I got him through the door and handed him to someone just inside, ‘about the theory of vision taught by Epicurus. I find it more reasonable than the claim made by Plato that we all have an invisible light behind our eyes that illuminates objects for us alone. However, I’m still not entirely happy with Epicurus, great man though he was. I think a theory more consistent with the facts of vision is that light itself is a stream of atoms, and that vision arises from the differential absorption into or reflection from objects of this light. This explains darkness as a simple absence of light – though it does less well to explain why the perceived size of objects varies with their distance. But it still clarifies how shaped glass can deflect whatever atoms carry an image from their normal course.’

  But Edward had turned pale, and was beginning to sag between the arms of the two workmen who’d taken him from me. I had him laid on to the only sofa not covered in papyrus sheets, and waited for the slaves to come and take him to bed. I then turned to the much clearer, small lenses I’d ordered. There were still problems with the curvature of everything I tried. There really is a difference between using Apollonius to suggest varying degrees of convexity, and getting these reproduced in glass. And that leaves aside the question of what degree of convexity might be needed to correct the defects of my own vision. Nevertheless, I was now able to pick out lenses that showed writing much better than the day before, and even lenses that let me take in something of the view from the window.

  I distributed gold purses all round, and turned to a discussion of what I wanted next.

  A slight hangover coming on, I sat in one of the smaller gardens of the palace. My own Tower of Heavenly Peace was about fifty yards over on my left. While I still felt up to walking about, I’d gone over to look at the unmistakable signs of climbing on the water pipe. They started a few feet above the rotating mechanism, and went up as far as I could see with one of my pairs of lenses. There was still no guard at the foot o
f the tower, and I’d seen no evidence from within that bars were being fitted. But a palace is a notoriously slow medium for the transmission of orders. I had no doubt something would be arranged before evening.

  I handed my lenses back to the attendant who’d come out with me. Even when you haven’t seen properly in years, there is a limit to how much you want to inspect of leaves and flowers. Besides, the hangover was bringing on a headache. If it hadn’t been such a pleasant late morning, I’d already have had myself dipped into a cool bath and then put to bed until it was time to get ready for the Governor’s banquet.

  The Governor’s banquet! I groaned inwardly at the thought. It would combine the Greek inconvenience of lying on a couch all evening with the Saracen prohibition of wine. I didn’t even have the excuse that travelling through Damascus might be unsafe. This being the joint capital of Empire and Province, the Governor had his residence inside the palace. It would be a matter of being carried by chair through half a mile of crowded rooms to a stuffy hall where I’d be lucky to catch one word in two of any conversation. I took my lenses back and looked through them at the unrealistically sharp and enlarged gravel at my feet.

  It was now that I saw the double dot of intense brightness within the shadow of my lenses. The moment I saw it, I realised it shouldn’t have been any surprise. If these things could concentrate the atoms cast off – or reflected – from objects before they reached my own eyes, they could also concentrate light from the sun before it reached other objects. And it was light in itself that I was now discussing. The Epicurean theory was ingenious. But the theory of autonomous light was far more convincing. But, as said, this double light had an intensity I’d never seen before. Moving the lenses back and forth could make the size and intensity of the dots vary inversely. At the smallest, the dots were not merely bright – they could also focus heat. I watched a fallen petal smoke as a hole was burned straight through it. With shaking hand, I moved one of the lenses over a bug I saw crawling across the gravel. At first, it tried to hurry away from that intense light. But I moved with it. Finally, the thing stopped moving. Then with a loud pop and a little puff of smoke, it exploded.

  ‘Quickly,’ I said to the attendant, ‘help me down on to my knees. No – put my cloak down to cushion me. I’ll sit on the ground.’ The man came out of his reverie and looked at me as if I’d gone mad. ‘Do as you’re told!’ I snapped. ‘And tear off a strip from that book.’

  ‘Haven’t you lived long enough already?’ that fool Cuthbert had asked me back in Jarrow. The answer now was a most emphatic No! Ninety-seven years I’d been alive, and only now had I realised something I’d always been in a position to know. I’d seen the evidence almost every day. There was the reflection of concentrated sunlight from slightly irregular mirrors. There was the concentration of light through glass vases filled with water. There was even that tall story I’d read, and ignored, of how Archimedes had concentrated sunlight in a big mirror to burn the sails of a besieging fleet off Syracuse. In a flash brighter than those two dots I’d created, I saw the collected evidence of a lifetime’s unthinking observation. And, behind this, I saw the dim outlines of a theory that involved more than correcting my own dodgy eyes.

  I can’t tell how long I sat there, playing with my lenses. But the sun had started on my left. The next time I took conscious note of its position, it was far over on my right. My legs were stiff with the strain. My cloak was ruined from the endless fires I’d started on it. I was thinking to have myself taken back up to my office, so I could start writing all this out in a way that would prompt further reflections and ideas for experiment, when a sudden shadow took all the light from my lenses. Even then, I made a fresh discovery. If I moved the lenses to the right distance from my cloak, I could see an upside-down image of a man standing over me. No – I could see two men. I looked up. One of them was Karim.

  ‘In view of your great age, My Lord,’ he said, ‘it would not be appropriate to ask you to stand for His Highness the Governor.’

  I tried to heave myself up on to the bench, but an attack of pins and needles kept me rooted to the ground. As Karim leaned forward to help me, I peered through my lenses at the man beside him. Dressed in black, his face covered in a luxuriant growth of brown hair, the Governor stood with both hands outstretched in a gesture of respect.

  ‘Oh, it’s you!’ I said, not bothering to keep the disgust from my voice. I flopped on to the bench and tried to move my legs. ‘I should have recognised your foul stench the moment your men got into that monastery. Don’t preen yourself, though. I’d got a pretty clear whiff of it long before young Karim rolled up at my lodgings in Beirut.’ I winced and tried to rub some life into my left leg.

  The Governor smiled and dropped his hands back to his side. ‘So, we meet again,’ he said in Greek. I ignored him. He struck a pose and raised his voice. ‘At last, the circle is complete. When we last met, you were the initiator, I the initiate. Now, I am the master.’

  I looked him in the face and grimaced. ‘To see you standing there, dressed up like a bloody Saracen,’ I replied, ‘why, it would have broken your poor father’s heart.’

  Chapter 39

  Meekal the Merciless – once Michael, son of Maximin, now Governor of Syria – looked back at his aged grandfather and laughed.

  ‘Leave us,’ he said to Karim. He repeated himself in Syriac for my attendant. When we were completely alone, he sat down beside me.

  ‘Do I get a kiss?’ he asked in Latin.

  I looked back at him. He’d aged in fifteen years. The beard was probably dyed. What might remain of the hair was hidden under the close-fitting turban of the Saracens. Between turban and beard, I saw a face now deeply lined. Only the eyes were the same as ever. Of a blue so dark it might have passed for black, they burned as if they were another of my lens experiments. I stared straight into them, unafraid.

  ‘Those teeth you had the kindness to recover,’ I said with a sniff, ‘they’ve a habit of playing up unexpectedly. You’re welcome to try for a kiss. But don’t complain if I accidentally bite off your nose.’

  He shrugged. ‘I knew you’d survive the journey,’ he said, starting over. Though still in Latin, he dropped his voice for added safety. ‘The Caliph wouldn’t believe me at first. It took a lot, even of my persuading, to get him to allow the incredibly long chain of cause and effect that has resulted in this meeting. But here you are. And all the reports assure me you are no less the man that you were when I rode out of Constantinople.’

  ‘The Intelligence Bureau got wind of your scheme,’ I said.

  He bared his darkened teeth in a grin. ‘So I hear,’ he said. ‘That ship we commissioned at such ruinous expense was taken by the Imperial Navy last month. Apparently, the survivors had kept alive by drinking each other’s blood. You may be pleased to know that they were blinded and stuffed down the first convenient lead mine. You will also be sure that I was ever so concerned by the news. I didn’t sleep well again until we heard that your accounts had been reactivated.

  ‘Oh, and I don’t doubt the Intelligence Bureau got wind of that also. We do go through the motions of keeping things under wraps. But the Empire has its agents everywhere. And, talking of these, look at that bastard Christian you had to finish off last night. It was a neat job you did on him – Karim has just shown me the body. But, to answer some of the questions you set for Karim, the man knew exactly where and how to find you because the Empire told him. And who told the Empire is a matter that I shall soon discover.’

  ‘I could have got you made Exarch of Italy,’ I said. ‘As it is, your brother was forced into the Church. I and my own blood only survived by reminding everyone that your father had been my son by adoption.’ There was no point in putting on a show of bitterness. But, adoptive or blood, the man had shat all over his family.

  ‘I know that my father worshipped you,’ Meekal replied with what may have been genuine sadness. ‘Your name was the last word he ever said. But then he was such a very go
od man. Without you to watch over him, he’d surely have died penniless and despised. Such a shame you had to be in Africa when the Lord Death came knocking at his door.’

  One of the nice things about false teeth is that, even when they are, smiles never look natural. Mine wasn’t. We fell silent.

  ‘But your talk of adoption reminds me that I have a new uncle,’ Meekal said with another of his grins. ‘I can’t say where you picked him up. But Karim tells me he’s quite a stunner.’

  I stared back in open hostility. To say that I feared any corruption of Edward’s morals would have been a joke. Even so, this was a family get-together I’d put off as long as I could.

  Meekal leaned forward and dropped his voice still lower. ‘I say, Grandfather, would you fancy coming inside for a drink?’

  I raised my eyebrows. ‘I thought that was one of the few vices you had to give up on conversion,’ I jeered.

  He smiled again. ‘Not really,’ he said. ‘So long as you don’t do it in public, no one important really cares. Besides, I’m the man who broke the last stand of the rebel fire-worshippers in Persia. And in a land far beyond the knowledge of your geographers, I offered conversion or the sword to seventy-two thousand men whose brown faces were tattooed white. If the Great Meekal wants a drink after all that, no one dares object.’

  ‘Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven,’ I said in Greek, quoting Euripides.

  ‘Not Hell,’ he answered with a laugh, now back in Greek. ‘It’s anything but Hell. As for reigning – well, we shall see.’ He got up and held out his hands. ‘Now, do come inside. You look quite fagged out after a day in the sun.’ I took his hands and let him help me up.

  ‘Come in, dear boy,’ I said without looking up. Edward came quietly into the office and sat down on the sofa. I continued reading back the notes I’d just dictated. I finished them and put them down behind me on the desk. I put my lenses on top to keep them in order. ‘You can go,’ I said to the secretary. He got up with a bow and left the room. I stared at Edward. He looked recovered from his opium. Sadly, the weals had come up over every part of his exposed body, and he winced at every move. His lower thighs were covered in a patchwork of bruises. It would be days before he felt better. He got up and came over to kiss me on the forehead. I nodded vaguely and motioned him back into his place.