The Blood of Alexandria a-3

by Richard Blake

‘I don’t believe that,’ I said, turning to face him. He’d cut himself shaving. I suppressed the urge to frown at him. ‘According to Colotes,’ I went on instead, ‘it’s the rains that fall every summer on the mountains where the Nile starts – the Mountains of the Moon. These swell the river and carry down the silt that refreshes the land. You’ll surely agree, this is a more credible explanation.’

  Martin smiled faintly at the appeal to the scientific followers of Epicurus. He might have asked who had ever seen these Mountains of the Moon. But we’d been arguing about the Epicureans for so long now, he’d not be rising to this challenge. The sun now full in my eyes, I squinted to see how far into the distance the canal might be visible.

  ‘They are now gathered, Aelric,’ Martin reminded me, a polite urgency in his voice. He would have said more, but he’d seen the burned-out lamp poking from my bag of notes. If this was a place from which the whole city could be seen, it was also a place that could be seen by those able to understand the signs.

  ‘He got in again, past the guards?’ Martin asked, his voice now sharper.

  I nodded. ‘You know these people make an art of going everywhere without ever being noticed,’ I said. I poked the lamp deeper into the bag and pushed the leather flaps together. I turned back to the window, wondering how long it might be before my instructions had their effect.

  Now obviously impatient, Martin coughed again.

  ‘They’ve been gathered since the spring,’ I replied, switching from Latin into the privacy of Martin’s native Celtic. ‘If things had gone as planned, it would have been a matter of reading out the law and then taking questions about implementation. Thanks to the sodding Viceroy…’

  I trailed off bitterly, thinking about those endless delays, delays, delays. Waiting for the Nile to rise was nothing like waiting for a decision from Nicetas; indeed, there was less doubt the Nile would eventually rise.

  ‘You’ve seen the newsletters drifting in from Constantinople,’ I went on, ‘and I don’t think we’ve intercepted half of them. Everyone’s had time to know what’s in the law, and to spend every evening arguing and plotting against it.

  ‘If I go in there now or after lunch, it’s pretty much the same. I’ll be facing down an assembly of factions, most of them immovably hostile.’

  Martin looked quietly down. I turned back again to the window. Above Lake Mareotis, a flock of birds was wheeling and darting. I counted twelve of them. If I’d believed in the Old Faith, I might have called this a good omen. But I didn’t believe. If Martin had brought in the orthodox and the heretical patriarchs of Alexandria, together with His Holiness himself from Rome, it would have done nothing more to lift my spirits. There was no recapturing my earlier peace of mind.

  ‘Oh, what’s the point in keeping them still further?’ I sighed. ‘Do go ahead, Martin. Prepare the way as best you can. I’ll be down in a moment.’

  The Great Hall of Audience was an obvious addition to the Palace. It had its own gated entrance from the square outside, and a fortified entrance into the Palace itself. I think it had been put up by Cleopatra when the Romans were making life hard for her and she found it necessary to suck up to the natives. Whatever the case, it had been extensively remodelled by the first Imperial governors so it would project the New Order of Things. This remodelling had included a thirty-foot-high frieze running all round the place. It showed Augustus making his deal with the Senate that had finished off the Republic except in form.

  Done in the Greek style of their best age, the frieze showed him as first among equals among the senators. There was no hint of the universal barbarian custom of making the ruler look bigger than his subjects. Submission here was conveyed by facial expression and downcast eyes. Augustus wasn’t even in the absolute centre. That was given over to the various nonentities he hadn’t thought it worth murdering before he’d got himself declared Father of the People. Only on the outer fringes, far down the Hall, could you see his family. They jostled at the back of the admiring crowd, most of them not even in full view. You did manage to see the whole of his ghastly wife. She stood in the gallery of the Senate House, looking almost maternal as she leaned over the children Cleopatra had borne to Antony. The deposed couple, you could be sure, were nowhere in evidence. Nor was the child she’d borne to Caesar. Like his mother, he’d not lived to see the New Order of Things.

  Yes, the New Order of Things. It was now six and a half centuries old. And still it continued, in an unbroken and apparently unbreakable sequence of governors and prefects and dukes, and, more recently, of viceroys. And here I was from Constantinople to bring the glad tidings of its renewal.

  The chair that had collected me on the roof, then carried me down the paved ramps that connected the floors of the Palace, paused as the double doors into the Hall were silently opened. As they closed behind us, one of the eunuchs who’d tagged along gave a gentle cough. Ten feet above, on the platform that blocked my view of the Hall, we were at last in business.

  ‘All rise for His Magnificence Alaric, Senator, Count of the Most Sacred University, Legate Extraordinary from His Imperial Majesty to His Imperial Highness the Viceroy.’

  Even before the echo faded of Martin’s voice, there was a scraping and shuffling as a hundred and seventy well-fed bodies heaved themselves up and then pitched forward for the required prostration. As the echo did fade, Macarius preceded me to the top of the stairs leading up to the platform. I followed, still carried in my chair. Following me were a couple of black slaves to fan me with ostrich feathers.

  As the prostration ended, the hundred and seventy called into my presence looked up to see me already sitting on a high chair of ebony and ivory. I sat in the beam of sunlight ever directed on this point from the mirrors set in the domed roof high above. The frieze of Augustus and friends was behind me. Against the wall to my left stood a colossal statue of Augustus. Over on my right stood one of the Great Alexander. Of exactly equal height, each looked across the Hall at the other, ambiguously soft approval on their faces. On a golden easel just behind me on the platform, an icon of the Emperor kept watch on the proceedings. Before me, presiding over my silver inkstand of office, Martin sat on a low stool, his eyes cast reverently down to a heap of papyrus rolls.

  In that vast floor space, and with a hundred and fifty feet of ceiling height above us, it hardly mattered with what magnificence we’d arrayed ourselves. For that reason, I’d decided against the gold leaf and cosmetics. I’d chosen instead to rely on the natural gold of my hair and from the smooth regularity of my still clean-shaven face. As for the robe, it was mostly white, though with a good third dyed purple. Normally, the heavy Corinthian silk would have shouted wealth and taste and, above all, power beyond anything the grandest man in my audience could ever hope to match. Not here. The statued past and the architectural ever-present alike dwarfed us all.

  As the slaves, now standing on each side of me, set up an almost imperceptible breeze, Martin rose and stretched a hand out to the audience. With a chorus of relieved grunts, the hundred and seventy sat back into their own chairs.

  I sipped at the cooled, well-watered wine before handing back the goblet to Macarius. It did nothing to settle my nerves. I looked at the sweating, slimy faces of the Egyptian landed interest. In silence, they looked back at me. I looked briefly up to my left at the curtained-off gallery: was that a gentle tug on the painted silk? Or was it a stray morning draught? I took a deep breath; and thus, as Homer says, the great consult began.

  Chapter 2

  ‘Gentlemen, friends, lords of the Egyptian soil,’ I said in a voice that carried to every corner of the Hall, ‘I am come before you to speak the will of Caesar. I speak with the permission and full knowledge of the Viceroy Nicetas, his cousin. Though it is not required by protocol, I am instructed to take reasonable questions at the end of what I have to say.’

  And there’d be plenty of those, I could see. I cursed Nicetas again. Given half a say in the matter, I’d have had him shipped in chai
ns to Constantinople, there to answer for a stupidity and cowardice indistinguishable in their effects from outright treason. But I continued.

  ‘It is a fact well-known to Caesar that the Egyptian land taxes have been short since the time of His Imperial Majesty Maurice of sad memory. We are aware of the representations made by your agents in Constantinople, that the late tyrant Phocas was kept deliberately short of revenue. We are also aware of the material help you provided during the late revolution. You, however, will be aware that your taxes were due not to the tyrant but to the Empire itself.

  ‘You cannot also deny that, during the two years since the revolution, the shortfall has grown still worse. In more settled times, Egypt contributes around a third to the Imperial revenues. At the moment, even though other provinces have been wasted by the barbarians or occupied by the Persians, Egypt contributes barely one-fourth.

  ‘This is surely insupportable. Heraclius is acknowledged, by Church and by Army and by Senate, as legitimate Emperor. The taxes he is owed – for his own reign and for those of Maurice and of the tyrant – are his by law, and, I will say, by nature.’

  For all the law was known in outline, there was a ripple of nervous shuffling throughout the Hall. Perhaps I’d come on a little strong with that nonsense about a government’s natural right to taxes. I smiled and managed a perfect fall from the hieratic tone in which I’d begun.

  ‘But gentlemen,’ I said, ‘I come before you not as the representative of a tyrant, eager to plunder you of your goods. I represent Heraclius, the Lord’s Anointed, the Thirteenth Apostle, whose reign is and ever shall be known as the restored Golden Age of Love and Justice.

  ‘Know, therefore, the will of Caesar.’

  Deep under the folds of my robe, I moved my leg to give Martin an imperceptible kick. He opened the first and biggest papyrus roll to the marked place and read in his loudest, flattest voice.

  Back in Constantinople, I’d counselled against the switch of official language from Latin to Greek. Bearing in mind the weight each had for many years had in the Empire, it made sense to have all communications from the government in the language best known to the educated classes. What had concerned me, though, was the greater chance of ambiguity and therefore of chicanery provided by the very riches of Greek.

  Listening again to the marvellous clarity of the new land law, it was obvious I’d been wrong. Sadly, though, I don’t think my assembly of landowners cared one way or the other about the style. What they hated was the content. Martin was barely halfway through the reading before the murmurs broke out. As I said, they’d had time to know exactly what was coming. But there were certain motions that had to be gone through. When Martin came to the rights and obligations of the enfranchisees, the shouting got really under way.

  ‘Are you telling us,’ one of the fattest in the assembly bawled, all thought of my position absent from his outraged mind, ‘that, in return for letting us off a few taxes, we’re to give our best land to the wogs? And do I hear right that you’re even planning to arm them?’

  As the horrified babble rose higher, I leaned slightly forward.

  ‘Get that man’s name,’ I said to Martin, trying not to move my lips. He’d been one of the latecomers. I’d not had time to try sucking up to him; and he seemed genuinely not to have known the details of the law. ‘Put him on the red list for the apportionment of lands.’

  Martin nodded.

  I wanted to single out another of the dissenters, but Apion was now trying to make himself heard.

  ‘There is no alternative,’ he was saying. ‘The scheme has already been tried in the Asiatic provinces. Already, it has increased the revenues and ended brigandage.’

  My biggest ally was Apion. If Nicetas had been wasting my time, I hadn’t. I’d been hard at work on lobbying of my own. Apion had the biggest estates in Egypt. A few assurances about his own interests, plus the promise of a governorship for the nephew he’d sent off to study in Constantinople, and he’d come neatly on side. Now, he was doing his best to rally support beyond the richer landowners who, comparatively speaking, had less to lose from the reforms.

  ‘You mark my words,’ the fatty broke into the emollient flow, ‘you give land to the wogs, and they’ll let it go to waste. They’ll be putting up heretical churches while they’ve money to spend. When that’s run out, they’ll turn up here in Alexandria. Give them arms – why, they’ll cut the throat of every honest Greek in Egypt.’

  The man had the nerve to put his hat on in my presence. He sat back in his chair and glared openly at me. All round him, the roar of approval grew in volume. Apion looked nervously at me for support.

  If I hadn’t been long in Alexandria, I’d managed to learn one important truth. This was that the less Greek someone looked, the louder he damned the natives. This creature’s ancestors might well have bought a pedigree showing descent from the Macedonian settlers called in by the first Ptolemy. His dark eyes and swarthy face told a different story. Indeed, when not twisted in almost apoplectic rage, his lips had a slight touch of the Ethiopian about them.

  But so it was with most of them. Their Greek was barely less harsh than that of the natives who spoke it as a foreign language. In private, their customs differed hardly at all. Even so, they had their Greek names and Greek robes, and they clung – at least in public – to the Orthodox Faith laid down at Chalcedon. They called themselves a Greek ruling caste in the country. And they didn’t care to learn they might have to behave otherwise.

  I held up my arms for silence. No one paid attention. I nodded to one of the guards at the back of the Hall. He drew his sword and beat hard against his shield.

  That brought them all to order. There was a flicker from overhead as the sun moved round to be caught by another of the mirrors.

  ‘Gentlemen,’ I said, ‘I must remind you that I am not here to negotiate with you, but to inform you of the settled will of Caesar himself. My Lord Apion has already told you that this is the law not merely for Egypt, but for the Empire as a whole. I will, however, do you the honour of explaining the purpose of the law.

  ‘For the past three hundred years, the Imperial government has generally had one response to each successive crisis of the state. This has been to ensure continued production by tying the cultivators of the soil ever more firmly to the soil, and putting them under the dominion of the great landowners.

  ‘This may, in each case, have given a temporary respite. In the long term, it has reduced the bulk of the population from free citizens to something approaching slaves. It has also reduced the numbers of the population.

  ‘I understand that this process was completed somewhat earlier in Egypt than elsewhere in the Empire. Indeed, it predates the entry of Egypt into the Imperial system.’

  Well, that was certain truth. If you’ve ever seen those repulsive wall carvings put up by the kings here before any foreign conquest, you’ll know just how exalted every ruling class has made itself since time immemorial.

  But, again, I continued: ‘Whatever the case, the effect has been the same in all places. The Empire is fighting desperately for life on every frontier. You all know of our losses to the Persians. You may not be aware that, in the past year alone, we have lost our last part of Spain to the Visigoths; and our losses in Italy to the Lombards have put Rome itself under almost continual siege. But for the efforts of His Holiness the Universal Bishop, Rome would long since have fallen.

  ‘We need soldiers to defend the Empire, and we need taxes to pay them. That means we must give the cultivators of the soil ownership of the soil they cultivate. Only then will they produce. Only then will they pay taxes. Only then will they lift a finger in defence of the Empire.

  ‘As My Lord Apion has also said, there is no alternative. If the landed interest in every part of the Empire will not give up part of what it has, all of it will finally be taken away under the rule of barbarian and Persian invaders who care nothing for established orders.

  ‘We have heard it said
that native landowners will squander what they are given and settle in Alexandria. This has not been our experience elsewhere. The land grants and duties of military service will be inalienable. I do assure you, the natives will be tied more firmly to the land by interest than they ever have been by law.

  ‘If this Empire is to survive, it must become, more than it has in recent centuries been, one of farmers and soldiers. Only those cities shall survive that have trade or manufactures to support them – and only so far as trade or manufactures can support them.’

  I sat down to a deathly silence. Perhaps I’d been carried away when I dropped that little hint about ending the bread dole. I don’t suppose anyone there gave a damn for the poor of Alexandria who lived or died by the free bread we handed out. But it was unexpected news that they’d have to feed their domestics out of their own pockets.

  And no – it still wasn’t finished. Leontius had now broken cover. He was, I knew, the real leader of the resistance. He’d arrived in town almost before the wax had set on the writs of summons I’d squeezed out of Nicetas. For months now, he’d been slipping from dinner to dinner, getting up a regular party of opposition. I was surprised he hadn’t spoken already. Perhaps he was waiting to see what, if any, concessions I’d been authorised to make by Heraclius. He’d only speak after I’d done half the work for him.

  ‘Your Magnificence, My Lord Al-ar-ic,’ he began, dripping contempt for a name that, Latin or barbarian, was still from the West. A good thing I’d long since given up, except with Martin, on my English name: he’d have had fun with that opening diphthong.

  ‘My most Magnificent Lord,’ he went on, the flab around his neck wobbling as he shifted about for the right oratorical pose, ‘the will of Caesar is, of course, our command. If it is his will that we resign the lands from which we have always fed the great city of Constantinople, and before then Rome, what is there for us to do other than bow and go quietly into the dark? If we are told that the natives to whom our dominion must be transferred will thereby be raised from their so far eternal vice and degradation to become like the great men of Rome who, in olden times, fought and tilled until they had conquered the whole world, who are we to disagree?