‘Once more, your goodness of heart astonishes me,’ I said with a little nod. ‘But let us leave aside the question of how someone like me could rule the Empire except as a Persian satrap. What interests me more is how you can be so certain the war will soon end. Granted, it’s been going on for the past ten years, and hasn’t gone our way. But you’ve not yet made a breakthrough. Cappadocia was hardly a catastrophic loss. And we are aware in Constantinople of the strain the war has put on your own resources. What makes you suppose we are anywhere close to suing for peace – let alone on the terms you mention?’
Siroes smiled and turned his attention to the camel. I thought he’d be diplomatic about this. Not so. He looked back at me, his smile now become a broad grin.
‘My dear young Alaric,’ he said, ‘how right you are when you say that whoever controls Egypt is in a position to control the world. If only we had known properly a thousand years ago what we think we know today, Alexander would never have taken Egypt from us. Nor would he have conquered us. Our archives earlier than some four hundred years ago are fragmentary. Indeed, we must often rely on Greek sources for our history before then. But some records have survived. The Great King is advised that Egypt contains a prize that brings control of the whole world. I am here to ensure that he gets it.’
‘You know about this prize from records that predate the conquests of Alexander?’ I asked.
Siroes nodded.
‘Yet Alexander died some three hundred and twenty years before the birth of Christ.’
‘I fail to see what the Jewish Carpenter has to do with this,’ he said, giving me a funny look.
‘And what does the Great Pharaoh up ahead think of this prize?’ I asked after a moment’s thinking. ‘If he knows about it what you claim to know, why should he be so willing to hand it over to the Great King?’
‘I think this conversation has continued long enough,’ Siroes said with a grave nod. ‘We shall speak again when the time is right.’ He eased his camel out of the procession and stopped while the sweating, almost naked carriers took my chair past him.
We continued on our slow but steady way. The sun rose higher in the sky and I began to swelter in my chair. I could see the trail of camels in front of me and hear them behind me. I could hear the tramp of feet following. My carriers grew sweatier and were taking regular drinks from bottles strapped to their waists. How, in that heat, they didn’t die from exertion might have been worth asking if I hadn’t already known the limitless capacity of their sort to do as they were told and only die later on. They staggered a few times, but never let up their pace. Once or twice a young man pulled up beside me on his camel and made elaborate gestures that always ended with the sign of the Cross. As often as he began some whining chant, I’d bare my teeth and claw at him like a cat. That would get rid of him for a while. If the natives chose to think I was some kind of monster, that might have its uses.
At last, Lucas came beside me and tried for a conversation. He’d put away his regal finery for a huge black robe that must have been still hotter for him than the chair was for me. Since I had nothing I wanted to say to him, I pretended to doze off. And that, after a long swig of the local finest, plus another mile of swaying about in the heat, is what I eventually did. Whatever was coming next, a good rest would do me no harm at all.
Chapter 56
I’ve only seen the Pyramids twice. My first view of them, I’ll assure you, was from exactly the right direction at exactly the right time of day. It was coming on for late afternoon, and the shadows cast by every jagged rock and every pile of sand were lengthening around me. We were coming out of the desert from the north-west. They must have been about five miles off when I drifted awake, and I didn’t notice them at first. I was thirsty and my wrists were hurting. Looking ahead, I seemed only to see more of the endless heat haze that obscured the horizon.
Then I saw them: three vast and regular mountains that shone a dazzling white as they caught the rays of the sun. I didn’t know where Siroes had gone. But no one around me paid the slightest attention. They’d seen it all so often, they hardly noticed how wonderful it was. My carriers didn’t once look up as they trudged ever onwards. Of course, Lucas had to be different. He bounced up again beside me, pointing and jabbering about his ‘ten thousand years’. I did think of starting another argument over his beloved Egypt, this time sneering at his idea of its antiquity. But I grunted at him and pretended to be still half asleep.
In truth, I was privately willing those carriers to go faster. I badly wanted to get as close alongside the Pyramids as I could before night fell. They were a wonderful sight. Nothing I’d read in Herodotus or Strabo or the other historians had prepared me for how they actually were. According to Herodotus, the biggest of the three took a hundred thousand workers twenty-six years to complete, and its function was to serve as the tomb for some megalomaniacal king. Manetho gives a different account, more flattering to its builder. But no one disagrees on its size. It is seven hundred and fifty feet long on each of its four sides, and around five hundred high. It is a huge structure. You could pack the Great Church inside it several times over, and still have room for some of the other sights of Constantinople. The two pyramids beside this one are also very big, but are dwarfed in comparison.
We came at last to the flat expanse of rock on which the Pyramids are built. In or out of flood, this is far above the level of the Nile, and there are still miles to go before the edge of the black land is reached. Even so, the plateau is crowded with buildings. At this time of year, it was naturally the home of those displaced by the floods. But there is a dense network there of ruined and semi-ruined temple buildings. And there may be dozens of monasteries dotted about, these obviously in continuous occupation.
There had been some kind of market all day when we arrived at a small town. But I paid no attention to the mud-brick buildings and the brown, shouting lower orders of Egypt. I’d long since given up concealing my interest in the Pyramids. The Great Pyramid must still have been a good mile distant. But it loomed over everything. The light around us was fading fast away, but the Pyramid still shone white as if it had been a mountain of snow. I believe the inner part is of granite blocks arranged round a core of rock. But the exterior of each of the pyramids is one smoothness of white limestone.
‘So, Alaric,’ Lucas said as he came yet again beside me, ‘are you willing to agree now that the Greeks have nothing to set beside this?’
‘Get enough men together,’ I sniffed, ‘and work them long enough, with just the right touch of the whip when they get uppity, and I’ve no doubt anyone could put up this sort of thing. The question is who else would have thought it worth the effort?
‘Any chance of another drink?’ I asked, cutting short my paraphrase of Herodotus. The wine flask he’d reluctantly handed over was long since empty, and my tongue was getting ready to stick to the roof of my mouth. I pretended not to notice the flies, which, with the fading light, had begun buzzing about in predatory manner.
Lucas got off his camel and began walking beside me. I was in no mood for a laugh, but the long account he began of the Pyramids as a love gift from the people of Egypt to their kings was absurd both in itself and in its earnest narrating. In its own way, it was more absurd than any miracle of the Church. Those usually involve a deviation from the normal course of things as a result of God’s commanding. This farrago didn’t so much deviate from as suspend the normal course of things. But I did get a full cup of water pushed at me. It was now evening, and we were approaching the centre of this town that huddled so inconsequentially at the foot of the Great Pyramid.
We stopped in a central square that served during the day as a market. I stumbled from the chair and stretched my arms and legs. I looked round. It was rather like Letopolis, but without the appearance of better days past. It might have been far older as a settlement. It might have dated back to the building of the Pyramids. But the jumble of narrow streets that led off from the square in whi
ch we’d come to rest looked about as tempting as turd pie.
Lucas snarled something at the carriers that didn’t sound particularly worthy of any love gift at all. They bowed and padded off somewhere.
‘If your people haven’t stolen all the cash I brought with me,’ I said, ‘I think I could stand you a dinner somewhere. I don’t suppose you’ll find anywhere about that’s fit for a king – not even a pretend king like you. But you might care to point me in the direction of an inn that won’t give us the shits.’
Avoiding a pile of rotting filth that I could more smell than see, I walked away from him and stood looking up at the Great Pyramid. Its lower parts were now buried in the advancing gloom of evening. Its topmost twenty or thirty feet, though – just below the stained apex, where some ornamentation of bronze, or perhaps even of gold, had once been – still shone bright in the rays of the departing sun. Even as I looked, the line of shadow moved rapidly higher, until only the very apex remained. For a moment, the apex alone glowed. It was as small and as bright as some object in the darkening sky. Then it too was gone. As a result, there was no longer any contrast in the light, and I could now see the whole bulk of the Pyramid outlined against the ever darkening sky.
I turned back to face Lucas. His torchbearers were picking their way towards him. Until they got closer, I’d not be able to see his face. But I could feel the disapproval radiating from him. And my perception of his mood was as cheering as a cup of really good wine.
‘So which establishment in this probably nameless dump is up to serving persons of our quality?’ I asked, taking up the last subject.
‘Are your bodily needs all that concern you?’ Lucas hissed at me.
The torchbearers had now arrived, and I could see the insanity blazing from his eyes.
‘Do you expect a visit to the town brothel once you’ve stuffed your belly?’
‘Oh, not at all, dear Lucas,’ I said, speaking brightly and loud. Several passers-by stopped and looked in my direction. I doubted if they understood me, but I carried on as if I had an audience. ‘If Egyptian women smell anything like the men, I’d have vomited on them long before I’d lost any mess inside them. Dinner will be quite enough – oh, and a little wine.’
I watched Lucas while various passions battled for control of his mind. There was outrage at the affront I’d offered him. There was his evident need to keep me in one piece and undamaged until further notice. As his fists unclenched and his face relaxed, he smiled and motioned me towards a large building almost next door to the main church.
I stopped for a moment at the open gate. I put a smile on my face and turned to Lucas with another witticism. But for the first time, I was seriously scared. Of course, I’d been in his power an entire day. At any time since I’d stepped out of the shadows, he could have had me strung up on hooks, or staked out naked under the burning sun. He could have done as he pleased. His people wouldn’t have lifted a finger. Siroes was rather stuffy about the proprieties and needed me alive until I’d turned up his piss pot. But unless he was serious about putting me up for emperor, we might be talking of days. And how much control did he really have over Lucas? Now, as I looked through that black entrance to who knows what, my stomach turned over. I stopped at the threshold and found I couldn’t go further.
‘Come now, Alaric – do you need a formal invitation?’ Lucas breathed behind me. He’d perked up since our last exchange. Worse, he was beginning to sound horribly gloaty again.
‘Not at all, Your Majesty,’ I jeered. ‘I’m just wondering how much nastier the inside of this place smells than the street.’ I thought I’d get a push from behind if I didn’t move soon. That was too much. Lucas might play at being Pharaoh. I was the Emperor’s Legate. If I was now to be put out of the way, blubbing at the doorway wasn’t likely to change matters. I might as well go out with a ‘Fuck you, arsehole!’. I bit my lip and stepped forward.
As we went through the usual gateway leading to a central garden, there was a left turn into the building. All was dark at first, though not smelly in the least. If anything, the place was rather pleasant. With Lucas to guide me, though without any lamp, I passed through a series of interconnecting rooms, each unlit and stuffed with furniture. We turned right into another stretch of the building. There were more rooms, again all in darkness. In still more complete darkness, we went up a staircase, our feet scraping on the rough brick of the stairs. There was a short corridor at the top. This terminated in a door, light pouring out from underneath to show the dull roughness of the floor.
‘You go in alone,’ Lucas whispered with what sounded like a suppressed snigger. I said nothing. He knocked briefly, then pushed the door open and stood back for me to go in. I stepped forward, my mind a deliberate blank, and rubbed my eyes in the sudden brightness. Except for a couple of chairs and a little table over by one of the walls, the room was unfurnished. In one of these chairs, his back to me, a man was sitting. He twisted round and looked at me.
‘Ah, Alaric,’ he said, ‘I’ve been expecting you.’
Priscus stood up and advanced towards me across the room. He had that bastard cat of his in his arms. As he got within a few feet of me, the thing hissed and raised one of its paws at me.
Chapter 57
‘Oh go on, my blonde little darling,’ Priscus said, returning to his theme, ‘just admit you’ve been had.’ He rocked back on his chair and raised his cup in a mock toast. He hadn’t bothered in this heat with cosmetics, but he did have on the robe of an Imperial Council member. ‘Yes, it is the piss pot. I was telling the truth when we first spoke in Alexandria, and a lie when we last spoke. You may have given our friend the Pharaoh the slip more than once. But when Uncle Priscus sets his trap, no one escapes.’
‘So tell me, Priscus,’ I asked with a sneer, ‘when did you turn traitor and throw in your lot with a bunch of wog rebels? Was it on your trip to Siwa? Or was it as late as your improbably lucky escape from the mob?’
He put his cup down and rubbed his face into the cat’s fur. ‘I don’t think I need explain the details of what I’m about,’ he said. ‘Besides, the story is both long and a touch improbable.’ He now put the cat down and reached for his satchel of drugs. He was about to make a selection when Lucas grew tired of lurking and walked into the room.
‘Lucas, how delightful to see you again,’ he said. ‘Would you be a dear and arrange for another jug of wine? You might also care to bring a cup for young Alaric here. I’m sure he could do with refreshments after his dash here through the desert.’
‘My name is not Lucas,’ came the chilly reply. ‘You call me “Your Majesty” or by the name my people have urged upon me.’
Priscus sighed. ‘My dear boy,’ he said with a tired wave, ‘this night is far too hot for unpronounceable and unmemorable wog names. Your real name is Gregory. You are the son of a customs clerk in Naucratis. You have a warrant still pending there for defacing a statue of Septimius Severus while drunk and disorderly. Unless you really want me to call you Gregory, you’ll have to settle for Lucas. Let’s face it, if you don’t like the name, you should have found a better one when you introduced yourself to Alaric. It’s too late now to change things. Now, go and get more wine – and be quick about it.’ Priscus mopped at his face and motioned me into the one other chair in the room.
Looking several inches shorter than when he’d come in, Lucas turned and went out.
Priscus waited until the door was pulled to. ‘You left Alexandria almost before I’d noticed,’ he said. ‘How you got here so fast is quite beyond me. You will surely rejoice when I tell you, though, that Nicetas remains out of action, and Alexandria is in most capable hands of my own choosing.’
‘You’re feeling sure of yourself,’ I said. ‘Where is Martin? I suppose you told me the truth in Alexandria about his being alive.’
‘I told you, my love,’ Priscus said, ‘that he was alive when the ear was sliced away from his head. I made no warranties regarding his continuation in this w
orld. However, he is alive, and you will see him soon enough.’ He switched into Latin and dropped his voice. ‘It goes without saying that you will do exactly as I tell you if the pair of you want any chance of getting out of this in one piece.’
The door opened again. Lucas walked in, a slave carrying wine behind him. Priscus smiled and waved at the table against the wall.
‘I think His Magnificence the Legate may feel obliged to give up his chair,’ Lucas said in a tone that hovered between the mad and the plain nasty. ‘We do have another guest whose status may be taken as higher than that of a mere commoner.’
There was a long moment of silence as Priscus and Siroes looked at each other. Their faces would have been a scream in better circumstances. But persons of quality don’t allow their composure to slip in front of people like Lucas. After the first shock of recognition, and the first apparent realisation that things were not as they’d agreed, they both recomposed their faces.
‘Siroes, what a delightful surprise, and after so many years,’ Priscus cried. He got up and hurried across the room.
Siroes opened his arms, and there was a most convincing reunion of old friends.
‘And do tell me,’ Priscus asked after some endless reminiscing over a work of nastiness they’d played on a barbarian king back in the days of Maurice, when the two empires had been at peace, ‘how is Roxana doing? And the children?’
From the brief answer, I gathered the woman had been taken as one of the Great King’s concubines, and the children had been smothered. Priscus squeezed his face into an expression of sympathy, and the conversation moved to less personal matters. I noticed that Siroes continued looking downcast.
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