The Blood of Alexandria a-3

by Richard Blake

  ‘Our boat is, of course, at your disposal,’ I said, trying to sound as if I were making the invitation. It was reasonable to suppose there weren’t many shops as far south as she lived. I’d at least have the joy of silencing her with the range and quality of the frocks and cosmetics on sale in Alexandria.

  ‘I hope My Lord will not be offended if I touch on the unwisdom of leaving Alexandria. I do hold myself responsible, however, in that I left without telling you my business.’

  I grunted and made what I thought might pass for a non-committal wave. Macarius had finally managed to get hold of some opium in town, and this had almost restored my mood. And though I remained aware of the sunburn and the raw patches, the pain was largely bleached out.

  We stood in one of the few streets in Letopolis that was now inhabited. Before us, the church rose from the ruins of an old temple. Behind us was the dilapidated block that served as the administrative building. I turned and looked at the place again. An old woman hurried past us, a bundle of mouldy reeds on her hunched back. She crossed herself and looked away as we drew level. Once she was a few yards behind me, I heard a clearing of aged throat and the spatter of flob on the crooked pavement.

  ‘You will understand,’ Macarius added, ‘that I am breaking a confidence if I say that the Honourable Mayor’s illness is entirely diplomatic. In part, he is embarrassed that his Greek is not sufficient for receiving an official of My Lord’s station. While there is no one else qualified to replace him, he fears that a report of his inability to do more than write set sentences in the official language might count against him in Alexandria.

  ‘In part, he fears the effect it might have on the Brotherhood if it were known he had rendered you active assistance.’

  ‘So who is this Lucas?’ I asked. I looked at the low mounds of what may once have been the bathhouse. Yes, it must have been that: you could see the remains of the water cistern that had supplied it.

  ‘He goes under so many names,’ the answer came, ‘that you might as well call him Lucas. The real Lucas, I have no doubt, will by now have been found outside Bolbitine with his throat cut. News of your evident hurry must have been leaked from the government, and this would have been regarded as justifying the risk of discovery.

  ‘But you ask about the man who called himself Lucas. His position in the Brotherhood is officially rather low. His energy and ambition, however, have made him its effective leader in much of Egypt. In this respect, if you will pardon the comparison, he is not unlike My Lord. He is even about the same age.’

  ‘I did at first think,’ I said, ‘that his purpose was to trade me to Nicetas for some of the cash I inadvertently took from his people.’ Macarius stood awhile in silence. That had made sense, I thought. Very little of the gold the Brotherhood had been leaching out of Alexandria could have been needed to keep a dozen scabby priests in whatever slops their faith allowed them to eat. But for raising and keeping in being the sort of conspiracy I’d brushed against, it wasn’t gold that could easily be replaced by a tithe on the starving people of Egypt.

  ‘However,’ I said as we arrived at the top of the street where it simply ran into the desert, and turned back to the centre, ‘he echoed Leontius in saying that my real value lay in my ability to lead whoever controlled me to something important.’ I wondered if it might be worth sitting on one of the stone benches that had, back in the days when Letopolis was a populous commercial and administrative centre, been set before the church. But this was the only clean robe anyone had been able to set hands on that came near to fitting me.

  ‘I am not entirely sure of his intentions in this respect,’ Macarius said at last. ‘A ransom might have come into it. But I have thought much since our last meeting beside the body of Leontius regarding the Brotherhood’s interest in My Lord.’ He paused again to collect his words.

  I raised my eyebrows and tried to look quizzical. I was still slightly rattled by the stupidity I’d shown in putting myself into the hands of the Brotherhood. Now I was back in control of events around me, I was determined to avoid any show of an unseemly curiosity. I waited for Macarius to begin again.

  ‘Even before the late disaster in Cappadocia,’ he said, ‘news had spread through all Egypt of the Persian military successes. This revived hopes that the empire established here by Alexander and renewed by Augustus might be coming to an end. It was believed within the Brotherhood that My Lord’s arrival – on a mission from Caesar himself – had less to do with changes to the ownership of land than with the search for a very powerful object. This connects with a prophecy that the object will be uncovered by a man from the West fitting your appearance.’

  ‘Now might that happen to be the first chamber pot of Jesus Christ?’ I asked with an attempt at a grim smile. This couldn’t have anything to do with Priscus. News of his own interest wouldn’t yet have spread far within Alexandria, let alone through Upper Egypt. But he’d assumed my interest in diverting those five hundred workmen from digging out the old canal was to do with the piss pot. It was perhaps only natural the Brotherhood – and Leontius – had made the same mistake.

  ‘It might, My Lord,’ Macarius answered. ‘The object is said to be of the highest potency. In Imperial hands, it could be used to turn the tide of war against the Persians. In Egyptian hands, it could be turned against the Empire and, at the least, drive the Greeks from Egypt.

  ‘This may have prompted Lucas to his daring attempt on My Lord. Doubtless, however, there were other motives. You might have been held to ransom. Of course, the Brotherhood has every reason to fear the results of any redistribution of land; and the moral disgrace of your capture might have added to the already considerable difficulties of implementing the new law. Otherwise, the approaching end of Greek dominion might have been advertised by showing off its most eminent representative in a cage. It might also have been hoped that torture would prompt the appropriate words of support.

  ‘But I also believe that the Brotherhood is under the impression that you know, or are on the verge of discovering, the whereabouts of this most powerful object. This, I am sure, is what weighed heaviest in the calculations that Lucas made. To have achieved any of the other purposes would have raised him higher within the Brotherhood. Taking possession of the object in question would have established his complete supremacy.’

  ‘Is it because of this,’ I asked, ‘that you paid off the old fraud and his daughter back in Alexandria?’

  ‘My Lord is well informed,’ Macarius said with a respectful bow. ‘I knew that His Lordship the General was making enquiries of his own. It struck me that it would complicate your own operations if the Lord Priscus were able to disturb the peace of the city with his continued enquiries.’

  ‘I haven’t seen any of the other landowners in this district,’ I said, changing the subject. ‘Not all of them can be in Alexandria.’

  ‘Indeed not, My Lord,’ he said. ‘They keep to their own fortified manor houses. Though useful politically, Leontius was a man of evil reputation in these parts. His neighbours consider his death and the effacement of his estate as no loss to their order. Otherwise, they are guided by the same considerations of embarrassment and fear as the Honourable Mayor. They will not come out unless commanded.’

  ‘You say there is a boat touching in here tomorrow morning?’ I asked. I’d seen enough of Egypt for the moment. Since it meant skipping dinner with them, I’d ignore the insult from what passed for the local persons of quality.

  ‘There will be a postal vessel on its way down to the coast,’ Macarius said. ‘It will be fully suitable to carry My Lord and his party.’

  The door of the little church opened and Martin put his head out. He’d seen us, but his face carried the abstracted, holy look that I knew indicated a wish to be ignored. We carried on past him, to look over the lower and uninhabited part of town. Much of this was now under at least a few inches of the flood waters. Earlier floods had eaten away the mud bricks of the houses, and only the broken line of
the city wall could now be made out.

  ‘What can you tell me about this woman who calls herself the Mistress?’ I asked, changing the subject again. The fact that she’d got so far without molestation – and had even scared off Lucas and Company – indicated she was of high status. I’d got bugger-all out of her, though, in the way of hard fact during the few days it had taken us to get here. How she’d acquired such excellent Greek – even better in some respects than my own – was one mystery. How she’d managed this with so hazy a knowledge of anything that had happened since the establishment of the Faith was another.

  ‘The Mistress,’ said Macarius, slowly choosing his words, ‘travels from regions unknown even to the Egyptians of the south. Her purpose in travelling is not for me to say. I only know that she rendered valuable assistance to My Lord when it was needed, and that she will now continue, as an honoured guest, to Alexandria.’

  Somewhere behind us, I could hear children at play. They sounded like children everywhere, and their shouted calls to each other were the jolliest thing I’d heard in days. No point in going back to look at them, though. One sight of me and, like everyone else, they’d be scuttling for cover.

  I let the matter drop. Macarius had always struck me as a man of strong common sense. This being said, I preferred not to discuss the details of how and where I’d come across the Mistress in any conversation that referred back to what that girl had said in Alexandria. The faintest tinge of superstition was enough to connect the most disparate facts into a seamless narrative of the miraculous.

  I looked silently over the waters. I didn’t want to think of Lucas or cages or piss pots. All I wanted at this moment was the nearest approach to normality possible in this flyblown dump of a town. So I looked over the waters and forced my thoughts into the course I wanted. Varying between two and eight feet below these waters lay some of the richest land in the world. Some of this had been owned by Leontius. Over much else he’d had secondary and often still valuable rights. Not all had gone up by any means in the flames of his manor house.

  ‘Macarius,’ I said in my briskest and most irresistible tone, ‘I want you to arrange a meeting with the local Mayor. Tell him I’m not interested in the possible deficiencies of his Greek. If it is as defective as you indicate, you will have to interpret.

  ‘His main duty is to ascertain the land boundaries once the flood has receded. Since I control the central records in Alexandria, he might care to make one or two adjustments to the survey reports…’ Not being quite a creditor – and certainly not a preferred creditor – I might be about to take a hit on the contracts I’d made indirectly with Leontius. Now, Macarius listened intently as I outlined my scheme to offset what would otherwise be a considerable loss.

  Chapter 24

  I was a child again in Richborough. I think I was about ten. I huddled on my bed of filthy straw in the corner of the building where King Ethelbert had dumped us all after killing my father. On my right, just out of reach, my two younger brothers lay sleeping in each other’s arms. Over in the far corner, my little sister – my half-sister, that is, got by Ethelbert – lay sleeping with my mother. Through the unshuttered window and the unrepaired hole in the roof crept a dim light that heralded the coming of the dawn. With it came the sound of winds and the heavy crash of Channel waves on the nearby shingle.

  I was cold. Even huddled as I was, I couldn’t pull the thin blanket over my head without uncovering my legs. I was hungry, and my belly ached with the habitual pain of those who live on the edge of starvation.

  I sat up and looked at the outline of things. There was the water jug with the broken handle. There was the pile of wooden slats on which I was being taught my letters by the renegade monk Auxilius. There was the workbox where my mother stored the things she used when mending clothes for the few people who lingered in what had, before the coming of our people, been the main gateway to the Province of Britain.

  It was all as I remembered it. Or did I need to remember it? I was a child and I was there. Everything was as it ought to be. There were things at the fringes of consciousness that I knew I should call into full understanding. But, try as I might, they remained on the fringes – a blur that confused without abolishing my sense of being in a perfectly natural present.

  I lay back in the straw and squeezed my eyes shut. I was hoping for sleep. But I was now too aware of the cold and hunger. I looked into the darkness of the roof timbers. Everything would brighten soon enough, and then we could all get up. The sun might shine this day. There might even be a scrape of fatty gruel for breakfast.

  ‘Aelric. Aelric,’ the voice called. I’d been aware of it for some time. But, as with the breaking of day, it was one of those things that is already known before it is noticed. I held my breath and strained to hear what was, as a cause of distress, overtaking that unease about who and where and when I was.

  ‘Aelric. Aelric,’ the voice called. I heard it clearly. It was a woman, her voice soft and long and hypnotic. She sounded my name twice each time, before pausing, and then – after just long enough to make you think it was all over – starting again. Her voice came from a distance, though it seemed also to come from nowhere in particular. And with each repetition of the call, I had a feeling that the distance was growing smaller.

  ‘Aelric. Aelric,’ it came again. It was louder. I looked over to the right. The younger of my brothers had his face towards me. Eyes shut, he was breathing gently through his mouth. If the call really was growing louder – or was even there – I alone could hear it.

  I sat up again and pressed myself against the wall behind me. I pulled the blanket to my face. The faint smell of piss was oddly comforting. Without lifting my face, I looked up at the still and familiar things around me. They were exactly as they were. They always had been so. They always would be so.

  But they weren’t the same – not quite. There was a new shadow. Confused as I still was, I knew the pattern of light and shadow in that room at every time of the day or night. This was a new patch of darkness in the room. About eighteen inches from my sleeping mother, it had no obvious relationship with any other object. Still not lifting my face, I looked and looked. Like a spreading stain, the shadow grew. And insensibly, as it grew, it was changing shape, and acquiring substance as it changed. It seemed a puff of smoke. It seemed a ball of dark wool. It grew and changed and took on substance. And all the time, I sat on my bed of filthy straw, my lower face pressed into the blanket.

  ‘Mother!’ I wanted to call. But I had no voice. I could move my uplifted eyes from one place in the room to another. Otherwise, it was as if I’d been turned to stone. The mass of blackness was finishing its transformation, or perhaps its arrival. Without seeing eyes, I felt the close inspection. I felt the cold menace. In a weak, hesitant step towards me, it moved.

  But it had moved too soon. It was like smoke again in its partial disintegration. It paused. Now, I could feel the impatience of something forced to wait for what had been thought so easy.

  Still soft, the voice was urgent now. Its steady pulse of calling and then silence hadn’t broken or altered in any way. Yet between two beats of this pulse that, if far apart, were not that far apart, the Dark Thing had managed its entire appearance out of nothing – and had done so in what seemed a very long time. It was as if I were within two distinct streams of time, each moving at its own speed.

  The voice came now from behind me. Between each call, I could hear breathing. It was a long, soft rising and falling of breath. My back was pressed hard against the wall. It was a wall built in the old days by men of the race we’d driven out. Through those courses of stone and brick and stone again, you don’t hear anything. Yet I could hear breathing from behind me. I wanted to jump up and run. I wanted to run to my mother. Or I just wanted to run. The Dark Thing was moving again. It was a shuffling but now confident motion as it closed the distance to where I sat. Still, though, I had no strength to uncurl my legs from under me.

  There was a fla
sh of light above and behind me. Suddenly, I could at least move my head. I looked up. Without any breach in those courses of brick and stone, a woman’s arms – bare and white – had come straight through the wall. It might have been mist for all the resistance it gave. There was no head or body. It was just the arms, and they shone white as if bathed in the glare of the moon at its fullest. At first, they moved around over my head as if feeling for something. At last, they found me, and fingers that were ice-cold and unyielding fluttered over my face, and began closing themselves round my throat and pulling me back through the wall.

  The Dark Thing was itself reaching out to me as I felt my head bump against the hardness of the wall. Then the hardness yielded, and, as if through honey, I was passing through the wall into – into I woke screaming. I screamed until my throat was raw and my voice cracked. As I fought to control the terror, some inner cordon snapped, and it came back into my understanding that I wasn’t Aelric any more, dispossessed starveling in England, but Alaric, Legate Extraordinary of His Imperial Majesty. The familiar things of the dream had been dispersed four years ago following my mother’s death. My brothers had been dead for years. My little half-sister – what had become of her was a question I couldn’t begin to answer, never having seriously asked it. And it had all been a dream. I wasn’t back in Richborough, some little child waiting to mature into the most literate bandit Kent had ever known. I was in Egypt, where my word was often close to law.

  But I still wasn’t in my own bed in the Letopolis administrative building, or in any other place where I was in control. I was in motion. Beneath the hard, wooden surface on which I lay, there was the rumble of wheels on a paved surface. Close by was a hubbub of voices, all speaking Egyptian. I flexed myself to sit up. My head banged hard on the wooden boards as I fell back. As on that journey into the desert, I was bound again at the wrists.