The Blood of Alexandria a-3

by Richard Blake

  ‘Have you seen Macarius?’ I asked as we paused at the fifth flight. It took longer than I wanted for Martin, bent double, to gasp out his negative.

  ‘It doesn’t surprise me if he’s vanished again,’ he wheezed. ‘You know that antique chamber pot you gave Maximin last year – the brass one you bought in Cyprus? Well, it’s gone missing. Sveta saw it when we came back. Yesterday, she went looking and-’

  ‘Never mind,’ I said hurriedly. ‘I’m sure it will turn up in time.’ Trust Sveta to notice it was gone. I pointed at two of the slaves. They got either side of Martin and readied themselves to propel him the rest of the way. ‘I need you to arrange a meeting with the Viceroy,’ I said. ‘Before then, we’ve business in my office.’

  Chapter 33

  ‘He went out yesterday evening,’ Martin confirmed. ‘Since then, I haven’t seen him.’

  I looked again at the box of documents in Egyptian we’d lifted after Leontius had been murdered. Their content was now of some importance. If only Macarius hadn’t decided to vanish again, he’d now be with us in my office and working hard at interpreting them into Greek. He might also be able to have a go at the document in Persian – certainly with its translation in Egyptian.

  Before then, though, he’d be explaining himself. The seeds of anger planted in conversation with Anastasius had quickly grown into a mighty tree of rage. His plain job had been to keep me informed of matters that, if not common knowledge, shouldn’t have been that hard to uncover. Even a month ago – never mind when he’d first shown up in Alexandria – a set of sorcery charges would have taken Leontius straight out of action. A few quiet hints they might be implicated, and those landowners would have been queuing up to throw their title deeds at my feet. What had Macarius been about?

  I hadn’t told Martin yet about the Holy Family and Soteropolis – I needed him to keep at his relic hunt with more than a show of determination. But I had told him about the meeting with Anastasius.

  ‘You know my views on the man,’ he’d said with one of his sniffs about Macarius. I hadn’t argued. On the one hand, I didn’t want Martin dwelling too much on the alleged magical side of things. On the other, his words were running along the same course as my thoughts. There are some deficiencies too big to have been made by accident. I didn’t go so far as Martin, who was now wondering if Macarius had any tattoos on his body. But I certainly wanted an explanation.

  ‘Am I right that Sekhmet was an Egyptian goddess?’ I asked, pulling out the one sheet that we were able to read.

  ‘She is ’ – Martin corrected my tense – ‘a demon once known to the Greeks as Sacmis. Her cult was highly regarded among the old kings of Egypt. It was then believed that she was protectress of the whole land, and that the hot winds of the desert were her breath. It was further believed that her breath could strike pestilence into the enemies of Egypt. There is a story that some of her statues could be approached only by those wearing special clothing – that anyone else who laid hands on such statues would be stricken with pestilence.

  ‘When I was in Antinoopolis…’ He paused.

  I tried not to perk up too visibly at this rare mention of his time in slavery. He looked at me. The best I could manage without looking thoroughly unnatural was a weak smile. He swallowed and paused a little longer.

  ‘When I was in Antinoopolis,’ he went on at last, ‘a statue of the demon was uncovered during the laying of foundations for a church. It was in the form of a woman with a lion’s head. It was all of black granite, the head chased with gold. The farm workers who’d been brought in to do the digging set up a wail as the priest himself began prising the gold from its head.

  ‘As he attacked the last piece of gold with his hammer, the granite splintered, and a demon’s breath rushed out to kill the priest on the spot. Those who carried the statue to throw it into the Nile later sickened and died. For several days, dead fish came to the surface and floated down river of the spot where it was thrown.’

  ‘And you saw all this?’ I asked.

  ‘Not myself,’ said Martin with a defensive look. ‘But I heard it from a friend of my master as I waited at table. One of his slaves was present when the priest died.’

  ‘But surely,’ I asked again, ‘you saw the dead fish?’

  ‘No,’ he said, a slightly ratty tone coming into his voice. ‘My master ordered the household to keep away from the water. But I was anyway in no position to go and look. It was now that I had my big attack of sunburn. My skin peeled off and I was confined to bed. By the time I was recovered, my master had decided to sell me.’

  It was the sort of evidence that would never have held water in an action over a disputed will. But I’d given up for the time being on laws made by and for the sane. For the prosecutions I now had in mind, this would have done very nicely. One day, I’d get the full story of his life from the moment he was sold into slavery to when he turned up in Cyrene as a rather unlikely boy prostitute. Now, though, wasn’t the time for prying. It was probably for the best that I’d visibly annoyed him by not believing a word of his wild romance. Anger is a fine corrective for embarrassment.

  I took everything out of the box and spread the fifty or so sheets on the big table over against the external wall of my office. The sunlight that streamed in gave me an excellent view of them. A shame it needed rather more than that to understand a word of them.

  ‘These are in the pre-modern alphabet of the Egyptians,’ I said, indicating one line of papyrus, each sheet half overlapping the other. ‘These are in a script that bears some resemblance to the picture writing of the statues and temple walls, but seems to have been a simplified form used for less ceremonial purposes.

  ‘These two sheets, of course, are in the full picture script. Their somewhat weakened state indicates great age – greater even than the oldest documents in Greek you can see in the archives. These words written here and there in the modern alphabet under some of the picture signs appear to correspond with the fragmentary Greek translation. They do appear also to be in the same hand.’

  Martin took up the two sheets of picture writing. They did look old, he agreed, though the freshness of the colouring suggested they had been stored safely for much of the time they had existed. Had they been recovered from a tomb? If so, what about the other sheets in the less ceremonial old script? We moved to a discussion of what Lucas and then Anastasius had said about Leontius. Add that to the items in his house, and it was fair to say that he’d been a skilled excavator of antiquities. Martin pulled out two more of the sheets, one in the old and one in the new script.

  ‘I was thinking that,’ I said, comparing the diagrams on each, ‘the amount of material may be smaller than it seemed at first. If these diagrams are the same – and the possible copy is just a freehand sketch – everything in the old script may have been transliterated into the new.’ I looked at the original diagram. It was something between an astrological chart and a plan of some elaborate machinery.

  ‘From what you now tell me about Leontius,’ Martin said firmly, ‘these are probably all magical texts. I say we should burn them.’

  ‘Not so fast,’ I said. ‘ Some of the newer documents might be translations of the older. Some of them, though, might be evidence of treason. The document in Persian almost certainly is such evidence.’

  ‘The danger is too great,’ he said. He put down the sheet he’d been holding and wiped its dust off his hands. ‘I still say-’

  There was a knock on the door. As I called on the Head Clerk to enter, Martin and I moved back to my desk and stared at a survey map of the Upper Delta.

  ‘Put them down here, if you please,’ I said to the slaves who entered behind the Head Clerk with yet more baskets of documents for sealing. There were hundreds of them: replies to petitions and reports, letters of instruction, general correspondence. The clerks were working double shifts to keep up with me as I cleared all that had accumulated in my absence. A single ‘yes’, or ‘no’, spoken yesterday by the s
wimming pool could generate a sheet of tightly written papyrus. A marginal scrawl might come back as an entire book roll. Now, it was all coming back. It poured into my office like nothing so much as leaves in a northern autumn through an open door.

  I bent down and fished at random through one of the baskets, and then through another. From each, I pulled out three of the still unrolled sheets and put them on top of the map. The first was a conditional remission of taxes to the owner of an estate damaged for the third time in two years by locusts. I checked the wording carefully, making sure it corresponded with the instruction I’d given. I looked at the Head Clerk. He stared impassively back. No one who was on the take ever stood up long to this sort of checking. I turned to the second document, and then the third. I read all the others. All were in order.

  I looked into a different basket and pulled out one of the smaller sheets. I knew this would be the grant of something both valuable and highly complex. If ever there was an opportunity for a bribed alteration, this would be it. The Head Clerk was sweating slightly in the heat and slightly from stress – but no more than anyone would with someone of my unbounded power going through work done or checked by him. I dropped it back in uninspected and nodded approval.

  There was an aromatic smell as a junior clerk brought in the pot of bubbling wax. I took a key from my belt and opened the cupboard in the wall beside my desk. I lifted out the bag containing the Lesser Seal that let me act as Nicetas in all matters except those that just happened to be vital to my own work. I handed this to Martin, who took out the Seal and heated it.

  ‘In the Name of the Emperor, let it be so!’ he cried softly each time I pressed the Seal into the molten wax. Once only we paused. We’d come to the Leontius matter. I looked again at the wording. I held all the evidence. No one could ever dispute the form of what I was doing. I felt the Head Clerk’s stare. I looked back at him. Again, he seemed more curious than concerned. I pushed the document across to Martin, who was waiting with his spoon of wax.

  ‘In the Name of the Emperor, let it be so,’ he said emphatically. The Head Clerk took the now sealed roll of papyrus and put it carefully with the others for the wax to harden. I still had until the following morning to call it back. But it was now done, and I knew I’d let it go out.

  It was all an unwelcome break from what I wanted to be doing. But it wasn’t that long before the baskets were filled again.

  ‘Do make sure to leave that one with me,’ I said, pointing at the smallest basket. The sheets there were written in purple. ‘They must be sealed by the Viceroy in person.’ When, of course, Nicetas would set the Great Seal to them was an open question. And I’d not be pushing them at him while my own warrants were still outstanding.

  ‘If you please,’ I said of a sudden to the Head Clerk as he was following the slave and baskets from the room. I shut the door after the slave and turned back to face him. He dropped his eyes as I looked again into his face. ‘Do please remain with us,’ I said. ‘I have a matter in which you might be able to assist. Your name is Barnabas, I think.’

  He nodded.

  ‘You are also, I think, a native.’

  He looked up in surprise.

  I checked the protest I could see forming. ‘The reason I ask,’ I said, ‘is that I am in need of someone who can read Egyptian and whom I can trust. If you would come over here.’ I led him to the table and waved at the still neatly arranged sheets. On the far side of the room, Martin was mouthing negatives and shaking his head. I ignored him. He’d probably have made the same fuss if it had been Macarius I was getting in on the job.

  ‘What I want you to do,’ I said smoothly, ‘is to look at this row of newer documents. I don’t need you at this stage to do more than explain their contents. It may be that a translation will be needed of some. That being so, I-’

  ‘Don’t do this, Aelric,’ Martin said in Celtic. He crossed the room and took my arm. ‘I beg you to consider the danger of letting those documents be read by this man.’

  I looked into Martin’s sweaty, troubled face. For the first time, the Head Clerk was showing concern. He couldn’t follow the sibilant, aspirated words, but must have understood their sense.

  ‘Have you taken leave of your senses?’ I asked, keeping my voice still smooth, though now in Martin’s Celtic. You don’t show off disagreements in front of underlings. ‘Are you going to suggest I have the man hitch his robe up to see if there’s a tattoo above his arse?’

  ‘And how do you know if there isn’t?’ said Martin. ‘But these documents may be of immense and uncontrollable power. Just reading them without the right precautions might summon a demon into this room. If you want to know what’s in them, you should go back to the Heretical Patriarch. He’ll know what to do. But I really think you should let me put them into a fire.’

  Demons – yes, demons! And appearing out of a puff of smoke in my office. You know, I dearly loved Martin. Even when we were first brought together in Rome, and I was trying to show who was the master and who the borrowed slave, there had been something about his learned and competent helplessness that appealed to me. He was now the closest thing I had in the world to a friend. And there were still times when I had to resist the urge to give him a good hard punch in the stomach. But I kept my temper and continued looking calmly into his face. As I thought to turn back to Barnabas, the door opened and Priscus walked in.

  ‘Hard at work, are we, on this day of rest?’ he said with a nod at the basket of stuff for Nicetas.

  Barnabas threw himself down for a grovel. Martin bowed and stood away from me.

  ‘Maximin’s birthday was yesterday,’ I said, with an impatient glance at the heavy blue silk he was wearing. I let my mind’s eye return to those documents, so neatly and so invitingly arranged on the table behind me. All I had to do was get rid of Martin and of Priscus, and then sit down with Barnabas. ‘You’ve missed the celebration,’ I said, still looking at Priscus. I’d make sure not to be the only person in that room who was annoyed. ‘But let me give his thanks for the little whip and branding irons you sent him. He can have them when he’s older.’

  Together with all other movements, scowling is something to avoid when your face is a mask of white lead with banks of gold leaf for your eyebrows. Instead, Priscus twitched his nose, which it was clear he’d been using to sniff up whatever passed with him for lunch.

  ‘I take it, then, you haven’t noticed how no one can get into or out of this place?’ he drawled. He looked at the window. ‘I suppose not. Your office is on the far side of the building. The Egyptians are being held on their side of the Wall. But the Greek trash has turned up in force outside the Palace, and won’t go away. Apparently, some child died of starvation, and everyone’s demanding the grain ships be unloaded.

  ‘It’s at times like this that a massacre can really calm things. Sadly, Nicetas has agreed instead to meet the leaders of the mob, and he wants the pair of us on hand for moral support. Since he’s got the few slaves on duty running round like blue-arsed flies on other business, he asked me to drop in and summon you.

  ‘Any chance we could pull you away from what I’m sure is work for the highest benefit of the Empire?’

  ‘You may leave us,’ I said to Barnabas. As he scurried out, visibly glad to be off the hook, I turned to Martin. ‘Get all this packed away,’ I said, pointing at the Lesser Seal. I took the whole ring of keys from my belt and handed them to him. I might give him a good talking to later in the day. Then again, I might not. He’d only insist he’d been doing me a favour. This being Sunday, he might even call in one of his conversations with God as a defence.

  ‘If you’ll come back with me,’ I said to Priscus, ‘you might care to fill me in on what’s happening while I get myself changed.’

  As we left the room, I looked back. Martin had gathered up the whole two rows of documents and was stuffing them into the cupboard along with the Seal.

  Chapter 34

  Nicetas and most of his Council were alr
eady in place when we arrived at the Great Hall of Audience. I thought the eunuch would have a stroke as he took hold of Priscus and me and led us to our own golden stools in the gathering. This not being one of his days for secular business, Patriarch John was absent, so the pair of us were sitting beside each other just behind Nicetas. I heard the scrape as the golden easel was set up behind us for the icon of the Emperor. The eunuch gave one last pull on the wig of gold and silver threads that Nicetas was wearing. From where I sat, the shaft of sunlight sent down on us from the mirrors in the dome made his head look as if it had caught fire. I wondered if that was how it appeared from the front.

  But there was no time for wondering anything – let alone for conversation. Once we were all seated, our faces set into required expressions, the eunuch nodded to the guards at the far end of the Hall. With a loud drawing back of bolts and a whoosh of air and a flood of bright sunshine, the twin gates leading out into the square swung open, and the great unwashed of the poor districts poured in. They flowed through the gates in their hundreds and thousands, and those first through were pushed closer and closer to the front of our platform.

  I let my eyes wander over the sea of pinched, desperate faces that stretched from the double row of armed guards just below our platform right down the six hundred feet of the Hall. All that separated these creatures from the natives was a smattering of Greek and a more heterogeneous look when it came to size and colouring. But whatever their size, whatever their colouring, the urban poor are always repulsive. The reason they live in cities and are poor is because they’re trash. They’re too lazy to dig for themselves on the land, and too stupid to take advantage of the city as a market for useful services. All they contribute to city life is crime and rioting. Take that away, and the respectable can step over them as they starve in the street. But the moment they transform themselves from gathered trash into the mob, they become something professional armies might tremble to confront.