The Blood of Alexandria a-3

by Richard Blake

  Priscus was now shouting at the girl. But she’d passed out. She flopped loose in his arms. With a spluttered obscenity, he dropped her and wiped his hands in his cloak. The Ancient One had been up a while from his brazier and was shambling about. As he called something out, someone gave him a push from behind that got him sprawling over the girl. He ran shaking hands over her face and began to cry.

  I thought Priscus would set about them both with a kicking. Instead, he twisted suddenly round to floor someone who’d dared lay hands on him. He threw his cloak back to get at his sword.

  ‘My Lords, we must leave,’ Macarius cried from the corridor. He looked ghastly in the dim light. I’d seen men look more composed at their own executions.

  ‘I’ll get Priscus,’ I answered. I moved forward again. The room had dissolved into a chaos of shouting and movement. Everyone who could stand was on his feet, and holding a weapon or looking round for something to use as one.

  A man swung at me with a broken chair leg. Straight away, I had my own sword out and gave him a shallow stab in the shoulder. He went down screaming.

  ‘Keep beside me,’ Priscus said in my ear. Now controlling himself, his voice was loud but calm. ‘We back out of here together. Kill anyone who steps too close.’

  Getting out of the building was easy. We were defending a narrow front in that corridor. No one could get behind us. The problem, I knew, would come once we were back in the streets. A shame we’d not been able to bar the door from outside the room. That would have contained the danger until we were well away. As it was, we were in trouble.

  ‘You must run, My Lords,’ Macarius shouted.

  The cloud had passed by, and now the moon shone faintly on all about us. I looked at Macarius. That look of terror was now set on his face as if he’d put on a mask. I opened my mouth to speak.

  He cut me off. ‘Run for your lives,’ he said. ‘I’ll try to hold them here.’ He turned back to the doorway and shouted something in Egyptian. His sword glinted in the moonlight as he waved it at the men who were crowding the doorway. The doorman stood behind him, just into the street. He was calling out something that might have been a plea for calm or a prayer.

  ‘Go, for God’s sake!’ Macarius shouted again, his eyes glittering blankly. ‘There’s nothing you can do here.’

  I ran. Where to run was another matter. I heard a clatter of arms as I reached a street corner. Then there was a wild shouting and the padding of feet. I turned the corner and ran into the semi-darkness. It wasn’t dark enough. They were after me. With every new twist in those streets, the mob grew larger. I’d left the building with perhaps half a dozen after me. Now, there were dozens. Roaring and howling, lit torches showing their way, they raced behind me through the labyrinth of the Egyptian quarter, not more than a dozen yards behind.

  As I reached another corner, a few men jumped in front of me. I hit at one of them with the pommel of my drawn sword. He went down. I felt the other clutch at me, but I was too heavy and moving too fast for him to stop me. I ran blindly along those low, twisting streets, gauging my position less by what I thought was in front than by those terrifying sounds behind.

  I took a corner. My foot landed on something unstable. I skidded. I grabbed out at nothing in particular as I tried to right myself. I fell on one side and rolled on to my back. I wasn’t injured, and I was up at once. But those shouting voices were almost on me. They must have been just a few feet round the corner. Which way to run? I cast desperately round, and started a dash forward.

  ‘Not so fast, my pretty,’ said Priscus out of the shadows on my left. He had my arm in that iron grip of his, and pulled me roughly against the wall. Another moment, and we were squeezed into a doorway, our faces pressed hard against the wood, in our black cloaks invisible to anyone from behind.

  The mob went straight past us. I felt bodies brush against my back. But no one in that stampede could have stopped even had he thought there was reason. We waited until the shouting had lost its immediacy and until the slow and the lame had sloped past us in pursuit of the main action. Then we stepped back into the street.

  The moon shone down thin but bright. I looked at Priscus. He’d shaken his hood off and was checking that he had his sword in the right way. His face shone with the sort of exaltation you normally saw in church – or in Priscus when he was especially pleased with himself.

  ‘You saved me?’ I said. There was no doubt he had. But for him, I didn’t care to think what I’d now be having done to me.

  ‘But of course I did, my darling Alaric,’ he whispered close in my face. He stood back as if to savour the confusion the moon must have shown on my face. ‘Oh, we may have our little differences from time to time,’ he said with a careless wave upwards. ‘But we are both members of the Imperial Council. We don’t leave each other to be torn apart by the wogs.

  ‘Now, talking of wogs, where is that man of yours? That was a most shoddy holding action back there. If he were one of my soldiers, I’d have him flayed alive on the field of battle.’

  ‘I’m sure Macarius did his best,’ I said, feeling guilty again I hadn’t stayed to kill a few of the trash. ‘But I’m not sure how we can get back without him.’

  ‘Don’t you worry your little head about that one, my darling,’ said Priscus with a chuckle. ‘We simply go back the way we came. Dear me, isn’t it just plain you have no military experience? Lost, and in a shitty little dump like this? You should have been with me in the street battle I won in Amida. That was confusing!’

  He paused and gestured at a shadowy dungheap we were walking towards. It looked like any other, and I had no recollection of having seen it on our way out. In any event, I’d seen very little, and couldn’t imagine how Priscus had seen any more.

  ‘The real question I’d like answered, though,’ he went on, ‘is where is the map that slut mentioned? What do you think of those dead palms and the monument? I’m not sure if the Oracle at Delphi used to give more crooked answers.’

  ‘You’ll surely remember,’ I said, putting on a confidence I didn’t yet feel, ‘that she was speaking to me.’

  ‘You were the nearest when she spoke,’ Priscus said dismissively. ‘I was the one there with a valid question. Your heart’s content – assuming you have one – is not something it needs supernatural intervention to find.’

  I didn’t bother with a reply to that. I was beginning to wonder where the girl had learned her Greek, and why she’d brought on a riot. Had she been punishing us for making the Ancient One look stupid?

  My thoughts broke off. As we rounded another corner – Priscus assured me this was the way – we came face to face with the mob. Perhaps someone had guessed which way we’d be going. We looked into a deep mass of menacing humanity, their torches still burning bright.

  ‘Oh, shit!’ I said. As I turned to run, Priscus had hold of me again. He already had his sword out.

  ‘We stand together,’ he said, still calm and now deadly. ‘We go forward a step at a time, and we cut our way through.’ He pulled a knife from his belt. I swallowed and drew my sword. I’d never yet come seriously to grief in street fighting. But I’d never been against these odds. There must have been dozens of these people. They didn’t seem very well armed. But numbers like theirs must always count. Relying on Priscus was not something I’d ever expected. I found myself now hoping his own estimate of his military abilities was remotely close to the truth.

  I remember the flash of steel in the moonlight as we stepped into the crowd. I remember the recoil in my sword arm and screams of the men we struck. I remember feeling the wave of panic that swept through the crowd as those at the front found themselves trapped against men who were still pressing forward. I remember the shrieks of fear and sudden pain. I felt the impact of something hard on my left shoulder. I had a moment of panic as I found it hard to move my sword properly in that packed mass.

  But it was only a moment. We’d cut our way straight through. Priscus swung round and slashed at
someone who hadn’t pressed back as far as the others. With a crunch of sword on flesh and bone, the top of his head was cut as cleanly away as if it had been the shell of a soft-boiled egg. I lunged forward and stabbed at another. I think I got him in the side. He went down with a bubbling scream.

  And that was the end of the attack. As quickly as it had formed, the mob now melted away. We were alone in the dim street. It was now just the two of us and perhaps half a dozen of the dead and dying. Priscus bent down to wipe his sword on the clothing of one of the bodies.

  ‘Not a bad evening at all, my dearest Alaric,’ he said lightly. He took my arm and led me along the street. ‘After this, I’m sure you’ll agree it’s time to discuss how to end our rather sterile dispute and let young Maximin understand that he is blessed with two fathers. I suggest I should call again at the nursery-’

  There was another pattering of feet ahead of us. I hadn’t bothered sheathing my own sword. I held it up weakly, hoping Priscus wouldn’t notice how it shook.

  ‘Since the Legate of the Great Augustus is unharmed’ – Priscus nodded again in my direction – ‘I propose on this occasion to overlook your negligence in leaving us to shift for ourselves.’

  His face impassive, Macarius bowed. The police officer drew his men into single file as they passed through the doorway back into the Greek centre of Alexandria. I looked at the bright streets and at the well-dressed men who moved easily around as they passed to or from pleasure or some late business, and breathed a quiet sigh of relief. Whatever else I had to do during the time I had left in Alexandria, it would not involve being again on the other side of the Wall.

  ‘What is that chanting?’ I asked in an effort to change the subject. My voice wasn’t as steady as I’d hoped it would be.

  The police officer looked back at the now closed and barred door. Beyond it, the mob had reassembled and was back at its favourite slogan.

  ‘It’s all about some wog prophecy, sir,’ he answered. ‘They’ve been told that Greek rule over the world will end when the mummy of the Great Alexander sheds tears.’

  ‘The translation, My Lord,’ Macarius whispered in my ear, ‘is: “The tears of Alexander shall flow, giving bread and freedom.” ’

  I nodded. So the word wasn’t ‘Alexandria’, but ‘Alexander’. I wished I’d taken the trouble on arriving to start lessons in Egyptian. But how could I have known I’d be stuck here so long? I thought to ask Macarius how he’d got himself away from the mob. But the police officer was speaking again.

  ‘We would have come looking in more than one group,’ he explained, filling up the silence that resulted. ‘The problem is we’re stretched rather thin tonight, what with the commotion outside the Great Synagogue – oh, and the murder.’

  ‘Murder?’ I asked. ‘Why should that be taking up police resources?’

  ‘But, of course, you won’t have heard,’ he answered. ‘It was that big landowner – what’s his name? Leontius, I think – horribly murdered, you know. Horribly murdered, and in his own bed.’

  Chapter 14

  Priscus cocked his head to get a look at the corpse from a new angle.

  ‘Nasty work,’ he said appreciatively. ‘By the look on his face, they must have kept him alive and awake till close to the end. I’d imagine he was being questioned as well as put out of the way.’ He pointed at the screwed-up napkin. It stank of something that made my nose itch. ‘Useful as far as it goes for keeping a victim conscious. Of course, I know better mixtures for that. I could manage better all round – but I’d need leisure and skilled assistants. Nasty work,’ he said again.

  ‘You say the guts are all arranged in those pots?’ he asked the Chief of Police. He took up one of the lids and peered at the pale, slimy entrails. ‘The brains as well?’ he added, looking into another of the pots. He turned back for another inspection. ‘How were those taken without spoiling the head?’ he asked.

  ‘I think it was Herodotus who said they are pulled down the nose with special hooks,’ I volunteered. I gripped the back of a chair for support. I wondered again how much of the smell in the room was from a gutted Leontius and how much from what I’d managed to splash over myself in the Egyptian quarter.

  ‘I defer to your greater learning,’ Priscus said. ‘But are you telling me poor Leontius was killed in some parody of wog mummification?’

  ‘I’m saying no such thing,’ I said carefully. ‘In these cases, you make no inferences until all the facts available have been collected and weighed. As for your own inference, my understanding is that embalming went out of use after the Old Faith was abolished here. That doesn’t mean all knowledge of the process has disappeared, or that such knowledge might not be taken as a guide for murder.

  ‘Do have that crowd moved on,’ I said, turning to the Chief of Police. His subdued yet anxious manner was getting on my nerves. ‘I didn’t like its look as I came in.’ Indeed, I hadn’t. That combination of silence and numbers might equal trouble. I thought of the mob in the Egyptian quarter and shuddered.

  I heard a familiar voice in the hall outside. I called the Chief of Police back before he could open the door.

  ‘And do get a blanket over that thing,’ I said. ‘There’s no reason why everyone needs to look at it.’

  ‘I was told you were here,’ said Martin when the door was closed again. He looked at the large but now hidden mound of flesh. A dark stain was seeping through the blanket. He swallowed and looked away. He looked at me and also looked away.

  I rubbed at the bruise on my left shoulder. I’d be stiff for days but, all told, had nothing to complain about. I looked at the Chief of Police.

  ‘You’ll need to leave a couple of men in the street,’ I said. ‘But I see no further reason for your involvement. This is a matter for the man’s family in Letopolis.’

  A look of relief on his face, he bowed his way out, muttering something about needing to make an entry for the next public order report.

  ‘Well, my dearest,’ said Priscus as he lifted a corner of the blanket for a final look at what had been Leontius, ‘I think I’ll take that as my own invitation to retire. It’s been a glorious day, and I have so much to consider. Oh’ – he paused by the door – ‘did I overhear you back by the Egyptian quarter talking about Alexander’s mummy? Do say that I did.’

  ‘I believe it’s been in the basement of the Library since the temples were closed,’ I said. ‘So far as nothing could be uglier, I suppose it must be an improvement on Leontius.’

  ‘Decidedly!’ he said with an appreciative smack of his lips. ‘Well, I really must have a look at the great man. After all, we have so much in common, what with the Persian War and all.’

  ‘Before you go, Priscus,’ I said, ‘I’ll note that you may have been one of the last people to see Leontius alive. I hope you’ll not mind if I call on you tomorrow for a brief discussion.’

  Priscus stopped by the door and smiled. ‘My dear boy,’ he cried in mock alarm, ‘you surely can’t think I had a hand in this? I’ve told you I could have done it much better. Besides, aren’t there the little matters of means, motive and opportunity? You did give me a most interesting lecture on these things. Don’t think I ever forget a word of what you say to me.’

  I grunted and rubbed my shoulder. I couldn’t, I had to agree, think how or why Priscus might have murdered the man. But it was annoying – so much learned in one afternoon; so little hope now of following it up.

  ‘Now that you’re here,’ I said to Martin once the door was closed again, ‘I want you to help me go through the man’s papers. In particular, we need to look out for a packet that may not yet have been opened and filed.

  ‘Macarius,’ I said, turning to the figure who’d been standing silent throughout, ‘I want the entire household lined up in the big front hall. Sit them about a yard apart, and make sure they don’t speak to anyone until I’ve had each one in for questioning.’

  ‘The packet you seek, My Lord, will not be here,’ he said.

>   I gave him a hard stare.

  ‘I also observed the meeting between Leontius and his agent,’ he explained. ‘I was not so close as you were, and was not able to hear all that passed between them. However, I did follow Leontius back to this house. He was met at the city gate by another man on horseback who took delivery of the documents he had bought. I heard a reference to Letopolis, and assume from this that Leontius wanted everything taken off to his manor house in Egypt.

  ‘Certainly, I had already discovered that he was planning a trip to his estates – this despite your instruction that no one should leave Alexandria.’

  The things I wanted to ask of Macarius were beginning to accumulate like snow before an unused gate in winter. But they would need to remain unasked for the moment. He was continuing.

  ‘I must, My Lord, inform you that all the circumstances of this murder indicate involvement by the Brotherhood.’

  ‘What in God’s name are you talking about?’ I asked. Martin might have jumped as if he’d seen a ghost. I was wholly in the dark, and in no mood to be kept there.

  ‘The Brotherhood,’ Macarius answered, ‘does not usually operate in Alexandria, and prefers in general to shun the Greek regions of Egypt. But it does maintain a strong presence in the south of the country, where, indeed, it is often the effective power.’

  I took one of the entrail pots from the chair on which it had been placed and sat down. I rubbed again at my shoulder and looked round for something to drink. It was probably for the best that the only wine jug in the room was on the floor overturned.

  ‘You’d better continue,’ I sighed. ‘Since I have no choice but to investigate the murder, I’ll need to know exactly what this Brotherhood is.’

  ‘It claims to be a very old organisation,’ Macarius began. ‘The story is that it was formed nearly twelve hundred years ago, when Cambyses of Persia invaded and extinguished the last native dynasty. For the next few centuries, it operated as a resistance movement, keeping hopes alive of a national recovery and largely confining the Persians to their garrison towns.