The Blood of Alexandria a-3

by Richard Blake

  Oh, if only Emperor Phocas hadn’t been a complete duffer, he’d still be boiling his victims alive in the Circus, and I’d be back in Rome, playing the markets and sending books to Canterbury. As it was, we had Heraclius; and if his personal body count was much lower, he was proving still less effective at holding the Empire together.

  I unrolled the letter again. We both served Heraclius. That brought certain duties – even to Priscus.

  ‘I’ll put in a word to Nicetas about the money,’ I said. ‘Gold can always be found if the need is pressing. I stand by what I said about the corn, though. Until the next harvest comes in, there’s a shortage we daren’t risk adding to.’

  ‘Thank you, Alaric,’ he said. Unlikely words, these, from Priscus – and they even sounded genuine. He finished the cup and refilled it.

  ‘There is one other thing not on my list,’ he said, starting over with an echo of his old bounce. ‘The Patriarch of Jerusalem turned nasty when I asked for a loan of the True Cross. You see, soldiers won’t gather unless you pay or feed them or both. They won’t fight – and certainly won’t die – unless you give them something more. Have you heard about the first piss pot of Jesus Christ?’ he asked.

  ‘Er – no,’ I said.

  ‘Well’ – Priscus smiled weakly and reached again for the jug – ‘you know that when Herod had all those boys killed, the Holy Family came to Egypt and remained some years in safety?’

  I nodded. I was already beginning to guess what would come next.

  ‘The child Christ,’ he went on, ‘had a piss pot. After He returned to Palestine, this remained in Egypt. It is, I’m told, a relic of the highest power. You see, it received His excrements while His Human Nature was still undeveloped, but His Divine Nature was already perfect. The True Cross, by comparison, was in contact with a body that was fully half human.’

  ‘My dear Priscus,’ I said, trying hard not to burst out laughing, ‘I don’t think this heresy’s been advanced even in Alexandria. What you are saying is that had Christ died as a baby, the Monophysites would be broadly correct. If, on the other hand, he’d made it to fifty, the true orthodoxy would be Nestorian. How lucky for the majority at the Council of Chalcedon that he died at thirty-three, when His Nature was a perfect balance of God and man conjoined in one substance!’

  Priscus shrugged. ‘How the priests sort these things out is their business,’ he said. ‘My business is to raise another army and lead it into battle with a relic beside me the men would run through fire not to lose.’

  ‘I’ve not heard of this relic,’ I said, ‘and I’ve been here for months now, and spoken to hundreds of people. Where do you suppose it might be kept?’

  ‘I believe it’s secreted in the base of the Great Pyramid,’ came the reply. ‘I looked around for this as I entered the city. Perhaps it’s smaller than I was told.’

  I did laugh now. I really couldn’t keep it back. I laughed until tears began to run down my cheeks. The thought of Priscus, wandering round Alexandria like a barbarian pilgrim in Rome, no guidebook in hand, looking for the Pyramids!

  I got up and moved to the north window. I pulled back the blind and looked out past the Lighthouse to the calm, sparkling waters of the Mediterranean. I turned back to Priscus, whose face, I could see, had gone puce under the make-up.

  ‘You must forgive me, Priscus,’ I said, ‘but the Pyramids are three days up river – five if the winds are against you. And you need to add a day for the sea voyage from here to Bolbitine, or half that if you’re willing to take the Nile from Canopus. And though I haven’t seen them, it’s my understanding that the Great Pyramid was last opened three thousand years ago. No entrance has ever been found since then, assuming, that is, the thing isn’t just solid stone. Christ lived here about six hundred years ago. You’d need a miracle to get the poor man’s piss pot inside the Pyramid, another to let anyone know it was there, and another for no one in Alexandria to know what your doubtless very holy informant in – in Syria? – has told you.

  ‘If you want relics, I’ll get you an appointment with the local Patriarch. He might be more accommodating than His Holiness of Jerusalem. I believe Alexandria has the head of Saint Mark, both feet of John the Baptist, and three right hands of Saint John the Divine. But there’s no holy piss pot that I know about – not of Jesus Christ, nor of anyone else likely to inspire your men.’

  ‘My sources are confidential,’ Priscus snapped, ‘but I have it on good authority the relic is where I’ve said.’

  I changed the subject. ‘Have you any soldiers with you?’ I asked. An interesting thought had come into my mind. I’d rather Priscus had been stuck in a tent somewhere close by Armenia. Since he wasn’t, I might as well find some use in him.

  But he shook his head. He’d come alone and in secrecy.

  ‘Never mind,’ I said. ‘You are Commander of the East, and I doubt if any of the notables here have been introduced to a military dignitary close to your exalted status. You must allow yourself to be guest of honour at tonight’s dinner. All the big men of Egypt will be there. And I think I can promise the Viceroy for you to sit beside.’

  I took up the little bell from my desk and rang it.

  ‘Ah, Martin,’ I said as the door opened. ‘The Lord Caesar Priscus will be in Alexandria for at least the next few days. Please ask Macarius to make all necessary preparations in the Palace.’

  Martin bowed. He let his fingers rasp ever so lightly on the papyrus sheet he was carrying.

  ‘A productive afternoon with our friend?’ I asked.

  Martin nodded.

  I ignored Priscus and his unspoken query. ‘That is excellent. My compliments to the pair of you.’

  Again to Priscus: ‘When my steward arrives, you will surely do me the honour of letting me accompany you to your suite. If I’m not mistaken, one of your rooms will be the office where Cleopatra killed herself.’

  Chapter 6

  I was awake. At first, all was silent in the darkness around me. I was alone in bed. That much I knew even as my head cleared. With the Patriarch scowling away through dinner, there had been no dancing girls. And, out of respect, we’d used the older serving boys.

  I’d come to bed alone. So why was I awake? Instinctively, I reached under the pillow. Then the tiny voice spoke out of the darkness: ‘Daddy!’

  I relaxed and focused on the dim shape. ‘Maximin,’ I said. I reached out and took his hand. As he clutched at me, I took him into my arms. There was no point in trying to get any sense out of him. I knew at once it had been another of his nightmares. With ‘uncle’ Priscus in town, it was hardly surprising. The man gave me bad dreams.

  Now he was pushing two, the boy was finally growing bigger. Even so, he remained against my big barbarian chest and arms what that puppy was to him. Whispering comfort, I rocked him gently until he was asleep again. I thought to put him into bed with me and go back to sleep. But it would only have set the nursery maids into another panic when they finally woke. I waited until his breathing was completely regular, then slid out of bed and put on a gown.

  The lamps burned low in the airless corridors. Night had brought no let-up in the baking heat, and the slightest movement had me dripping sweat. Maximin was normally light enough to carry, but holding him away from the furnace of my body was a strain that did nothing for my temper.

  ‘I thought I’d made it clear to lock the nursery at night,’ I hissed at the chief maid when I’d gently kicked some life into her. She opened her mouth to reply. I raised my hand for silence. ‘We’ll discuss this tomorrow,’ I said.

  I watched her tuck the child back into his bed and arrange the netting above him, and waited until it was clear he’d sleep without break until morning.

  Was that a flash of light?

  I went softly over by the window. But it looked into a courtyard. Far overhead, the stars burned steadily down. I stretched out for a better view. I could see the reflected glare of the half moon on an area of roof tiles. There was nothing oth
erwise to be seen from here. Leaving the shutters open, I gently pulled down the reed blinds.

  Outside again in the corridor, I waited until I heard the faint click of the door lock. Going back towards my bedroom, I reached one of the corridor junctions. Turning left would take me straight back to bed. Right would lead me out of the wing of the Palace assigned to me and my household. I thought briefly. About a hundred yards to the right, I recalled there was a staircase going up.

  The inspection rooms had the advantage of greater height. In this sweltering heat, though, I preferred the openness of the main roof. Its flat span interrupted by the various courtyards and by the big central garden, this covered most of the Palace area and was mostly paved. It was sometimes used for theatrical performances, though more often for transacting business where much light was needed. It might now catch the occasional breeze.

  I leaned on the rail that separated paved from tiled areas. I was on the seaward side of the Palace, and stood looking roughly north over the Harbour. Over to my left, the Lighthouse shone brightly, its curved mirrors taking and concentrating light from the burning oil in ways that no one nowadays had been able to explain to me. Because of its much greater height, its beams would reach beyond any horizon visible from where I stood.

  Or they normally would. Tonight, there was a storm far out to sea. Those repeated and intense if irregular flashes left no doubt what was happening. Far out, beyond my horizon, the sea and the wind would be running wild. No ship that had dared a night voyage would ever get out of that howling chaos. We’d skirted a few storms on our crossing here from Constantinople. If they’d been nothing like this must be, they had almost made me reconsider my prejudice against long journeys by road.

  But if a great storm, it was far out. Here on land, there was scarcely a gust of wind. It was enough to scatter the reflection of a few stray lamps on the Harbour, but no more than that. Down in the parks that fringed the Harbour, the palm fronds hung still on the trees. Around me, the dust lay still on the moonlit pavements. Suffused with the aromatic scent of the shrubs dotted in bronze pots over that roof, the air lay about me with the hot stillness of a bathhouse.

  What the bloody hell was I doing here? I asked myself. And I wasn’t asking why I was out of bed. This whole way of life wasn’t anything I’d once have chosen for myself.

  Yes, I had power. Priscus hadn’t been far off the mark when he said I ran Egypt. In the sense that I could squeeze any function of state into my commission, I was limited only by the time I could get with Nicetas to sign the required documents. But what is the use of power? If you stand outside government and look at all those levers and pulleys, you can imagine the good or evil that power enables. From the inside, all you really know is impotence. Either those ropes and pulleys are too immovable, or they pull easily enough, but aren’t attached to anything that produces the desired effect.

  Look at me with the new law. I had the Word of Caesar behind me. I could in theory have any one of those landowners taken up and flogged. In the event, I was reduced to negotiating with them from a position of structural weakness.

  It was the same even at the top. Phocas had killed his way to the Purple, and had killed and killed and killed to stay there. In the end, he’d still been dragged out of that monastery to serve as first public victim of the new reign. And before that end, it was a quiet day when he wasn’t signing begging letters to the Pope for money, or promising money he didn’t have to barbarian raiders he hadn’t the means to drive off by force.

  I wasn’t powerful enough as Imperial Legate to do what I needed to save the Empire. Even if he’d wanted and had known how to act, Heraclius was in no better position.

  So here I was, wasting time that would never come again. I was giving up all but the most hasty pleasures of youth. I was giving up the more solid pleasures of learning in what had once – Athens always excepted – been the university town of mankind, and pre-eminently its museum and laboratory. If I’d read and was using those mathematical writings Hermogenes still had in his basement, how much more might they give up if I weren’t spending so much of my waking time on that bastard commission of Heraclius?

  I turned from looking over that boundless moonlit sea and walked back across the paved expanse. My sandals flopped loud on the marble. There might be a few guards on sentry duty far below at the gates who weren’t dozing. Otherwise, I must be the only person awake in the Palace. How they could all be asleep on such a night escaped me.

  But were they all asleep? I stopped and listened hard. Nothing. Night can deceive the senses, I told myself. I took another few steps, then stopped again. I wasn’t alone up here. There was someone else on the roof.

  I wouldn’t call it chanting. I’d have heard that at once. It was more a sort of broken, rhythmical whispering. If I couldn’t make out the words, I knew for sure it was in the native language of the Egyptians. Being in Alexandria, I hadn’t bothered learning any of it. But the pattern of guttural, short sounds was unmistakable. It came from the far side of the roof. Because of a parapet wall that closed off one of the smaller courtyards, I couldn’t see the far side from where I was standing. Moving softly now, I took myself over against the wall and moved round.

  Long and thin, the moonlight gleaming on his scalp, someone leaned far over the rail, as if bowing through the gloom over Lake Mareotis at something in the vastness of the Egypt proper that lay beyond.

  ‘Macarius?’ I said hesitantly. There was little doubt who it could be. No one else I’d ever seen in the Palace matched that shape and size.

  ‘So you can’t sleep either?’ I asked, trying to sound natural. He straightened and turned. The moon was behind him, so I couldn’t see his face. But I could feel the close stare he gave me. He stood awhile in the confused silence of one surprised. I was preparing another comment to break the silence.

  Then: ‘The night, My Lord, is made more oppressive by the storm.’ He pressed his shaking hands hard into the folds of his robe.

  ‘Oppressive is just the word,’ I said, stepping over beside him. ‘I believe the nights grow more endurable from October.’ My voice sounded loud. I dropped it to match the semi-whisper Macarius had used. ‘This one is certainly bad.’

  We stood looking over Lake Mareotis. The moon stood high above, and shone back at us from the perfectly smooth waters. Beyond was the dull gloom. Whatever Macarius might think he could see, I saw nothing.

  ‘The storm will be with us by morning,’ he said.

  As if in response, there was another flash. It still came from beyond the horizon. We crossed the roof to the shore view from the Palace.

  Was that a very faint rumbling I could hear? Hard to say. Macarius was speaking again.

  ‘When these things blow up,’ he continued, an abstracted, slightly annoyed tone to his voice, ‘there can be an end for days to all contact with the world.’

  I ignored his remark. If he thought at all as the other natives, he’d care nothing for the disrupted sea lanes. So long as the causeways into Egypt remained unsubmerged, Alexandria would not be entirely a place where Greeks looked outwards to the Mediterranean. I thanked him for his advice regarding that temple.

  ‘I understand that My Lord’s secretary was able to have the subsidy traced,’ he said, now himself again. His face showed in the moonlight. It had its usual bland expression. Though fluent enough, Macarius spoke the flattened Greek of the natives, and it could be hard to tell between a statement and a question.

  I took this as a question and nodded. ‘The subsidy was hidden away in the military pensions budget,’ I explained. ‘It seems to have been that way for three generations. But for Leontius, it might have continued another three.’

  ‘And I understand the Viceroy sealed your proclamation,’ Macarius said, ‘and this will be published tomorrow.’

  I nodded again. Dinner had been a ghastly affair. It had begun with a reading from Saint John Chrysostom on the horrors of gluttony, and then proceeded, to an accompaniment of loud, tw
anging music, through about fifty inedible courses. It had culminated with the mice in lead sauce that had been the last year’s fashion in Constantinople. Missing out on the wine had been a bitch. But I’d sat beside the Patriarch, and had used the opportunity to match him in refusing all but bread and water.

  To my annoyance, Priscus had struck up an immediate friendship with Leontius. They’d sat together deep in conversation as they drank their way through about a gallon each of wine. Afterwards, arm-in-arm, they’d staggered off together, doubtless to carry on till morning. So much for hoping the man might put the frighteners on Leontius!

  Still, I’d got the proclamation out of Nicetas. Martin had brought it in, neatly written in perfect imitation of the local chancery style. Nicetas had sealed it without reading, then returned to pestering me and the Patriarch about the location of the soul between death and the Second Coming. It would be on the streets at dawn. Shortly after, it would be on a fast boat up river as close to Philae as could safely be reached.

  If, shortly after, it might be floating back towards us, ripped and covered in shit, that was not a problem for me. All that mattered was the appearance of action here in Alexandria with the landed trash of Egypt. On the other hand, I’d seen to it that this Temple of Isis wouldn’t get another clipped copper out of the taxpayers.

  ‘Of course,’ I went on, ‘there’ll be no investigation. But it would be interesting to know how the subsidy continued so long without comment. And it would be most useful to know how Leontius came to hear about it – and how no one else in that assembly appeared to have known about it.’

  I looked at Macarius. I wondered again how old he might be. Fifty? Seventy? It was hard to tell from those shrivelled features. He’d probably looked much the same since he was my age.

  ‘Did you not once tell me,’ I asked, ‘that you lived awhile in the south?’