‘The answer to your question, dear boy,’ Priscus said, ‘is Nicetas. If he’d taken my advice, I’d have had half a dozen landowners into the Prefecture dungeons. A day later, none of this killing would have been necessary. As it is, however, Alexandria is pacified, and Egypt cannot be taken from us.’
We watched awhile in silence as a sponge soaked in wine was applied to the victim’s lips. The eyes fell open for a moment. Then life faded rapidly away. The police officer stood back apologetically, waiting further orders.
‘Dear me,’ said Priscus, poking at the now still body. ‘I could have sworn the creature had more capacity to bear pain.’ He sniffed and looked up at the burning sun. ‘Carry on about your business,’ he said to the police officer. We moved into another avenue of stakes. A few yards further down this one, and we’d bumped into a group of relatives weeping and praying over someone they’d eventually found.
‘What do you think about Martin’s chances?’ I asked. I could see no point in letting Priscus think other than that I wanted Martin back to the exclusion of all else.
He smiled and stopped his inspection. ‘You’ve been given twelve days to save him,’ Priscus said. ‘Let us assume you can get a digging party together and up to Soteropolis, and let us assume you can find the relic on your first dig – both rather unlikely assumptions, I must say. Let us then assume you can get it authenticated by whatever counts with these people as the appropriate religious authority. That doesn’t give you long to hurry over to the Great Pyramid and make the exchange. I’ll also ask what reason you have to trust a mad wog like your friend Lucas. Martin was alive when that ear was cut off. That doesn’t mean he’s alive now. It also doesn’t mean that either of you will be alive once the relic is in his hands.’
I steadied my features. Priscus knew what I was thinking. I knew he knew, and he knew that I knew he knew. But I’d not give him the satisfaction of seeing what I thought.
‘And if it were that I could lay hands on the relic and get there in time,’ I said, ‘and if I were sure I could get away with me and Martin in one piece – would the effective power in Alexandria allow me out through the city gates?’
‘He wouldn’t,’ Priscus said with a bright smile. ‘We can agree among ourselves that I’d sooner have a month’s rations for an army than some piss pot to send before them into battle. But now I’m here, and now that everyone else appears to want it, I do rather fancy having the thing for myself. Certainly, I’d not be keen to know it was in Brotherhood hands. And do bear in mind it would be high treason to give the Brotherhood anything that could make our position in Egypt more uncertain than it already is. The reinforcements you brought in are enough to hold Alexandria. If we send them away too soon, we risk losing Alexandria again. Even given time, there are no other forces available in the Empire to send out here. Here, as elsewhere, we rule by custom and by threats of violence we dare not allow to be tested.’
‘And if I were to go up river alone for the purpose of getting Martin back?’ I asked.
‘Then you’d be mad,’ he said. ‘I’ll not bother arguing about Martin’s actual value as a human being. He’s a good draughtsman, I’ll not deny. But he really is neither your equal nor intrinsically worth the risk of your own life. And I do think you’d be running straight into a trap. Your absence from Alexandria would be noted at once. I’ve had a few names out of the fucking snake Nicetas nursed in the bower of his secretariat. But you can be sure the whole government is riddled with traitors. Order a passport, have horses saddled or a boat readied, and there would be a messenger speeding off to Lucas before you could set eyes on the city walls.
‘We agree you can’t lay hands on the piss pot in the time specified. That means Lucas is using Martin as bait to get you into his hands, when you can be kept alive just long enough to supervise the digging in Soteropolis. For that reason alone, I’ll not allow you out of Alexandria. Besides, I need you here to help manage Nicetas when he eventually does come out from under his bed.’
‘Priscus,’ I said, speaking low. I led him into one of the denser thickets of the dead and dying. I wanted to avoid more of those shocked, silent groups of relatives. If there was anyone here able to pick up my words, he’d be in no position to pass them on. ‘You know that I’ll do whatever I must to get Martin back. You know that I can’t lay hands on the piss pot in anything like the time specified. You also know where it is, and you do have sufficient forces to stop anyone but you from having it dug out.’
‘I know what you’re saying,’ he broke in, savouring the mastery I’d given up trying not to acknowledge. If Lucas had me by the balls, so, in his own way, had Priscus. ‘But why are you saying it? Can’t you see that you’ve won? You’ve got the widest scheme of land reform even you could have wanted. You don’t need to argue with the landowners over every acre of land you want to hand over to the wogs. We’ve just confiscated half the private estates in Egypt. The only landowner you’ll be depriving is Heraclius himself. Are you seriously proposing to risk all this for some fat Celt who doesn’t know when and when not it’s permissible to fart in public?’
‘Supposing I were to die – and die perhaps in disgraceful circumstances,’ I said, ignoring an argument I could answer, though not to Priscus. ‘You wouldn’t get the piss pot, and the Brotherhood might. But my loss would change the whole balance of power in Constantinople. Heraclius, we know, is so short of anything approaching talent, that…’ I trailed off. I could tell from the smile on his face that Priscus had got there first. He’d give me what I wanted. He’d give it to me because, either way, he won.
‘If you do leave Alexandria,’ he said, ‘it will be with the full knowledge of Lucas. I could make Nicetas regard it as desertion of your post. He’ll be looking for scapegoats to cover himself, and I might not stand up for you with him, or with Heraclius. I could then be waiting to arrest you in Soteropolis, assuming you ever got there. And I can be there after the date set by Lucas. If I can’t leave now, I do expect to hand control back to the Prefecture within the next few days. If you didn’t make it there, so much the worse for you. And without you to back Sergius up, I’m sure I could get the True Cross out of the authorities in Jerusalem.
‘On the other hand, I could announce a fever brought on by exertions too soon after your escape from the mob, and I could have prayers laid on in all the churches for your recovery. That might give you a couple of days before the truth leaked out. If you got a move on, that might be enough. I could then wait for you in Soteropolis, though this time not to arrest you. If you rolled in with Martin, you’d be the hero of the day. You know what Heraclius would make of that – one of his key men, willing to risk all for a person of no consequence. That’s exactly the spirit he wants to encourage in his new Empire of Love and Justice.
‘In that case, of course, I’d regard you as duty bound to start digging with your own hands if need be to get my relic out of those sands. Can you object to that?’
We were back at the gates to the Palace. We stood on the steps up to the gate and looked back over that gigantic and level Calvary.
‘We have a deal,’ I said.
‘Then you’re a bigger fool than I ever thought you.’ He laughed. ‘I did once try telling Heraclius you were an atheist. Sadly, though he knows about heresy and apostasy to the Old Faith, he can’t get his head round the idea of belief in nothing. Watching you sweat over that flabby little Celt, anyone would think you believed all those teachings about the absolute value of every life.
‘But if God has made you a fool, who am I not to take advantage?’
It was late evening. Maximin was on my lap. Sveta had heard me out in calm silence.
‘If you are the man he’s always told me you are,’ she said, ‘you’ll get him back.’ She looked at her child and then at Maximin. ‘If you fail, though, what then?’ Good question.
‘What I’ve arranged for your safety isn’t something I’d ever consider in normal circumstances,’ I said bluntly. ‘Patriarch
John cannot protect you or the child. Don’t even ask about Nicetas. We need to trust other forces or no one. If I fail in what I’m about to try and then in what I’ve arranged, you and your child will need to face Priscus. Maximin, of course, he’ll take back and corrupt in no time at all into a younger version of himself.’
The boy looked up at me with his big, scared eyes. He couldn’t understand the details of what was happening. But he knew something was wrong.
‘What I need you to tell me is that you are willing to take that risk. If I do nothing, Martin dies for certain. But he may already be dead. If I try and fail, you and the child may die. If I do nothing, we all go back to Constantinople, where you and the child can stay in my household, or from where you can retire to some other place of comfort. I will risk myself for Martin. I must risk having Maximin grow into something evil. But I need to know what you are willing to risk. You also have a child.’
Sveta looked at the severed ear. I hadn’t wanted to show it to her. But she told me that Priscus had already been round waving it under her nose. The only reason, he’d assured her, she wasn’t already among the impaled masses outside was that he took this as evidence I was still alive. She got up and walked about the room. She seemed to be stopping by and touching every stick of furniture and every other object she and Martin had bought for themselves. She paused before the icon of Saint Mark she’d had from his office. She turned back to me.
‘God tells me you are the man Martin says you are,’ she assured me.
At any other time, I’d have laughed in her face. It was obvious that Martin’s lunacies were contagious. But I put on a solemn face and looked back.
‘You will not fail. But if you don’t come back – both of you – with Priscus from Soteropolis, neither I nor the child will be taken alive. Will you resign Maximin to me on the same terms?’
I thought hard. ‘No,’ I said. ‘Whatever Priscus tries to make of him, Maximin stays alive.’
And that was it. No tears. No recriminations. Just a calm exchange of risk assessments. Underneath her ungovernable wife act, I’d always known Sveta was made of steel. Martin had chosen well back in Rome. And I’d done well to spare him and free him and pay for the wedding.
But that wasn’t quite the end of matters. As I was kissing Maximin and preparing to leave, Sveta got up again.
‘Take this,’ she said, holding out a silver medal of Saint Peter. ‘It was blessed by the Pope himself. Martin is sure it saved the pair of you from the Lombards. It may save you now.’
It hadn’t been blessed by anyone. I’d lied about that to Martin when getting him to agree to the Lombard mission. But I took it anyway and put it round my neck. I left her with the two children. They sat silent together in the light of a single lamp.
Chapter 50
‘I want these copied by morning,’ I said to the exhausted clerks. ‘I have business with the Lord Priscus all night. Bring them to us in the Viceroy’s office. We will both seal them there.’
They bowed low and left my office. I sat alone behind my desk.
‘The Empire can’t take effective possession of it,’ Priscus had told me earlier. ‘So what if it all now goes to the wogs? I’ve told you it won’t work in Egypt. But someone has to own the land.’ He’d shrugged at my further suggestion and gone back to scanning his lists.
The minimal scheme of redistribution I’d agreed with the two patriarchs had lapsed, no one could dispute, outside the Church of the Apostles. Priscus was right. I could now have something like the maximal scheme. It was simply a matter of racing through the various drafts I’d prepared with Martin, and making sure that the innocent interests were exempted. It was easy in principle. Doing it all by myself, and at breakneck speed, had been a dreadful job. Then there had been all the supplemental work that Priscus had taken on himself when he’d lifted the Great Seal but not had ability or inclination to discharge. The loss of the only trilingual secretary in Alexandria had only made things worse.
But it was all done. Priscus would have the warrants before breakfast. I had no reason not to trust his promise to seal them without delay, nor very much to doubt that he’d tell the clerks I had been taken ill in his company. I hadn’t asked him to promise much because he’d only deliver on what struck him at the time as in his interest to deliver. But on the warrants he would deliver.
‘I shall be grateful, Barnabas, if you could stay a moment,’ I said as the Head Clerk was about to close the doors. He came back and stood before my desk. Was that a little dart of his eyes to the cupboard where Martin had locked all those documents? So what if it was?
‘Barnabas,’ I said, looking closely into his face, ‘there are some letters in this bag that I want you – and only you – to deliver. I cannot stop you from opening them and reading their contents. I cannot stop you from frustrating my intentions. But I feel that you are a man who believes in obedience, where possible, to lawful authority, and otherwise to what is right.’
He looked back in silence. I didn’t insult him with offers of gold or of preferments. I’d known the man, in a very limited degree, four months. In all this time, we’d exchanged barely a word that wasn’t connected with some aspect of official business. But I had to trust someone in this place. Isaac might be good for many things. But I’d now exhausted every possible favour with him, and the contents of those letters might easily get whoever was caught carrying them a place all by himself on an impaling stake. I had to trust someone. Without that, this whole risky scheme – risky even with that someone beyond the verge of lunacy – would fall straight to the ground. This really was one of those times when you have to step into that barrel and push yourself into the current that leads over the waterfall.
‘My Lord’s devotion to the people of Egypt,’ Barnabas said softly, ‘has been appreciated in very few quarters. Be assured, however, that the Brotherhood speaks not for the whole of Egypt.’ He took up the bag and stuffed it into his satchel of writing materials. He left without looking back.
I took up the bag of clothes and other items I’d packed earlier and looked out of my office. The junior clerks were in their copying room. Barnabas was standing by the window, looking out over the still glowing embers of Alexandria. If he had heard the gentle click of the door catch, he didn’t turn to me. I quietly crossed the room and looked out into the corridor. As usual, the lamps burned low in the silence of a Palace that – the passing visit aside of some bad Emperor – hadn’t been a place of riotous pleasure since Antony and Cleopatra had killed themselves. In bare feet, I padded across the carpeted floors to the slave staircase located in a turning-off that led nowhere.
The entrance hall had a few eunuchs fluttering about on whatever duties they had that continued by night. I evaded their attention by keeping to the wall behind the rows of statues. From behind, the statues tended to look alike – all in the same triumphant style brought in by Alexander and taken up by every ruler since then influenced by Greece and its artistic traditions. The statue of Anastasius was a wretched thing; because he’d been regarded here and in Egypt as a fellow Monophysite, it deliberately owed something to the last gasp of the native tradition. After his came Justin, and then the Great Justinian, and then another Justin, and then Tiberius, and then Maurice. Phocas was still there, though the head was broken off. Squeezed in beside him, with barely a foot between it and the gate, was Heraclius. There could have been room for another. But Nicetas had ordered something in a full return to the ancient style.
There were guards outside the Palace gates. Now the rioting was over, though, they were back to huddling in a corner with dice and wine. I stood behind the statue of Heraclius and listened to their conversation.
‘Came back here more dead than alive,’ I heard one of the Slavonics say in Latin. ‘Sure enough, though, the bawd comes knocking with a whole bloody troupe of whores swathed in black. Signed them in, signed them out, I did. Me – I’d not be up to wanking in his position.’ He giggled and went back to shaking his dice.
There was a slow reply by one of the locals in Latin. He’d picked up something about my afternoon in the poor district, and didn’t like it.
‘Oh, shut the fuck up, dark eyes,’ came the dismissive reply. ‘You’ll be saying next it was Saint George’s big toe protected the Palace, not the swords in our own hands. As for numbers, you didn’t say nothing at the time. And what would it matter – one tart more or less?’
The exchange merged into an argument over the odds someone had failed to make clear. I dodged through the open gate, and then into a dark recess.
There was a moon very dim in the sky. It was enough – the street lighting was still not back in order – to show the outline of those thousands of still bodies in the square. It was just a few yards of open square. Then I was lost within their cover, and could change quickly into my going-out clothes. Now it was night, and there was no one even to think of asking for identification, the forest of dead held quiet multitudes of the living. They darted about with dimmed lanterns and stepladders, looking for someone they’d loved. There were bodies pulled off stakes and dumped by the side, so lower bodies could be lifted off and taken away for burial. There was a continuous whisper of argument between the living over identification of the dead, and of soft weeping by women and the old.
‘Have you seen my husband Nicodemus?’ some old woman asked.
I looked up from tying my bootlaces. I told her to come back in the daylight. She’d never find anyone by herself tonight, except by a miracle.
‘He didn’t come back from buying bread,’ she added. ‘I was told that men arrested him in the street and brought him here.’ She spoke now in the confused, wandering tone of those who are beginning to outlive their faculties.
I took her gently by the shoulder and led her to the far side of the square. I told her to go home and look to her family. It was hard to read anything for sure from the silence that followed.
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