The Blood of Alexandria a-3

by Richard Blake

  As if he could read my thoughts, the Bishop stood forward. He swung his relic in its bag and swallowed.

  ‘?“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,”?’ he said in Greek, ‘?“I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.” This holiest relic of Jesus Christ will keep us secure from all demons,’ he added. ‘And I am told that the medallion around My Lord’s neck was blessed by His Holiness the Patriarch of Rome.’ He paused, and then: ‘I have the highest regard for His Holiness, of course. I have long prayed that he might see through the false learning of the Greeks that has blinded him to the Unpolluted Truth of-’

  I interrupted him with thanks for his goodness and courage, and racked my brains for what I’d been told about the care of slaves in some mining venture I’d joined the previous year.

  In all work involving deep tunnels, you see, air is the limiting problem. Men use up its goodness to nourish their bodies, and lamps sensibly diminish its volume. It is gradually replenished from above, but not fast enough to allow unlimited work. I didn’t know how deep this place went. But I did know that even three men with lamps would need to move quickly. I knew Macarius was good for the job. The Bishop had the wiry look of a native from the middling classes. So long as we stayed together and kept our nerve – and so long, of course, as our luck was in – we could do our business and get out. I only hoped the place did contain something credible. Doubtless, Siroes would continue to be a harsh judge of progress. Even so, he’d boxed himself in to some extent by allowing that what we’d found did represent progress.

  ‘As I’ve told you, my dear,’ Priscus said to me while good walking shoes were laced to my feet, ‘Martin is under conditional reprieve. You just take whatever time down there you think is needed. But this is always governed by what you call the test of reasonableness. If you’re down there so long that I have reason to suppose you’ve found another way out, I shall not be happy.

  ‘Other than that, Alaric dearest, I wish you the best of luck. If there are any spirits down there, I really do hope that relic is as holy as your blackbird friend believes it to be.’

  With that, and a friendly slap on my back, Priscus stood aside to make room for the twelve-foot ladder that had now been produced. Further and further into the hole it slowly went. The men holding it sweated and trembled. One of them was obviously beseeching the Bishop not to risk himself down there. His Grace dismissed the warnings and stood forward to see how the ladder was doing. For a moment, I thought I might have misjudged the distance, and that we’d need to send for an even longer ladder, or lash two together. But it came to rest with about eighteen inches above the level of the hole.

  ‘I’ll go down first,’ I said, pushing Macarius aside. Whatever might be down there, I told myself, let no one suppose Aelric of Kent was a coward. I stepped on to the ladder and scurried down.

  Chapter 61

  The moment I was out of the sun, it turned cold. The sounds of men and animals and of the breeze that had just been all around me now came from a single point overhead. I stepped from the bottom rung of the ladder on to a floor that was, as I’d already seen, of levelled granite. I looked round. Macarius and the Bishop were still fussing beyond the entrance with their lamps. Now light was coming through the hole again without blockage, I could see a little around me. I was in a high, circular chamber several dozen feet across. It might originally have been a natural bubble in the rock. If so, it had been heavily remodelled. With its level floor and its curved walls that tapered upwards to the opening, it had the appearance of a small water cistern. It certainly had nothing about it that suggested a tomb. Other than the rubble that had fallen in from above, it was empty. There was no coffin or funeral goods. The walls looked much the same as the floor. They had no paintings or reliefs of the sort I’d read were to be found in the tombs of the Egyptian great. It might have been a cistern. The doorway, four feet or so wide and seven high, that led into complete blackness might have been an access point for water.

  I was still down there alone and without light. But my eyes were now adjusted, and the entrance above me shone with an intense, if not very effectual, brightness. Keeping a careful watch on the floor in front of me, and testing each step as I went, I moved towards the doorway. It had no door that I could see, and another loud cough told me that it went off in some direction without blockage. The cistern possibility was reducing by the moment. This was too obviously a doorway.

  Now I was standing close to it, I could see that the wall wasn’t quite the same as the floor. It was painted all over with a kind of pitch. I ran my hands over the smooth surface. I could feel indentations that might have been consistent with reliefs that had, for some reason, been covered over. I turned my attention back to the doorway. But now Macarius and the Bishop were hurrying down the ladder, and faces looking in from above blocked the light.

  ‘Is all well, My Lord Alaric?’ Siroes called down in a voice that might have been satirical – though it was always hard to tell with him. As he set his hands around the edge of the opening, he managed to knock in some loose pebbles. The sound and echo of their fall was shockingly loud.

  ‘I’ve just been eaten by fucking monsters,’ I snarled back, ‘and this is my ghost calling out from Hell. What else do you bleeding suppose?’ Like the pebbles, my voice echoed loud in the chamber. No reply. Though perfect in Greek, Siroes hadn’t shown much taste for badinage. The lamps now with me showed more of the chamber, but revealed nothing more than I’d seen already or supposed to be there. If there had been anything on the wall under that coat of pitch, it wasn’t showing in the light from the lamps. Before the smell from the lamps could permeate the room, I breathed in slowly through my nose. Except for that smell of dried wood in the sun, the air about me was sweet though pretty still. I looked at the shaft of light now coming freely again down from the entrance. It was sharp and clear.

  ‘Unless you can suggest anything else,’ I said to Macarius, ‘we go that way.’ I pointed at the still complete blackness of the doorway. There was nowhere else to go.

  He bowed silently and offered me the nicer of the two lamps he was holding.

  ‘Jesus God!’ the Bishop called softly. ‘Is this not indeed the entrance to Hell?’

  Too late to worry about that now, I thought. I took the lamp from Macarius and stepped forward into the doorway. I shivered a little from the deepening cold – and perhaps a little from fear of what lay beyond.

  I found myself in a corridor that sloped both downward and to the left with moderate sharpness. It kept about the same dimensions as the doorway, but was finished more roughly than the chamber by which we’d entered. The walls had no pitch covering on them, and I could see the reflection of our lamps on the chisel marks that showed how, with what must have been immense effort, the corridor had been carved through the solid granite. And there was little doubt that this was an artificial work. Without knowing yet how far it went, or if it deviated from what I could see, I had the impression of a spiral leading down into the earth.

  ‘We must be quick about this,’ I said to the Bishop, who seemed inclined to hang back. I explained about the air.

  He nodded. The relic bag was beginning to shake in the tightness of his grip. I put an arm round his shoulder and quoted from Scripture in my reassuring voice. He thanked me in a voice that still shook. But he quickened his pace.

  My earlier jitters now behind me, evil spirits were the last thing on my mind as I walked carefully ahead. I’ll not deny, though, I was worried. I was worried about how large this place was, about whether its layout became more complex the deeper we went into it, and – above all – about what, if anything, we’d find to take back and show to Siroes. But I could hear Macarius behind me with his usual firm step, and could hear his steady breathing. Except I’d keep a lookout for shafts or subsidence in the floor ahead of me, I didn’t plan to show the smallest concern.

  That was until we reached what may have been a co
mplete circuit on our downward path. Here, the smooth corridor came to an end. In its place was what looked a natural fissure in the rock. On the left side, it had been cut back to about the width of two men. On the right, it had been left as jagged as it must have been when found. From here, a flight of steps led sharply down into the earth. They may not have been that level when first cut. Now, they were much worn. In places, they had been chipped by the carrying of heavy objects into little more than a very steep incline. We paused. The air was still sweet, our lamps still bright. There might have been the smallest hint of a breeze coming up at us. I peered uncertainly down. The steps seemed to deviate to the left in another spiral. Or perhaps the course moved about to take advantage of the natural shape of the fissure.

  ‘We must press on,’ I said to no one in particular. These were the first words any of us had uttered since leaving the upper chamber. Apart from the scraping of our shoes, it was the first sound anyone had made. My words had a flat, echoless quality. I didn’t feel inclined to utter that many more of them.

  ‘The Lord Siroes will expect nothing else,’ Macarius said, the natural flatness of his voice emphasised by the surroundings.

  He was right. Like it or not, we had to press on. If we came to a dead-end, we’d have to reconsider. But this was simply a matter of going down some steps that may already have been a quarter-mile from the entrance hole.

  ‘This is a place of ungodliness,’ the Bishop quavered. ‘Can you not feel the evil miasma that reaches up to embrace us?’

  It was turning colder, I’d grant, and I didn’t at all like the shut-in feeling that increased with every step. But evil around us hadn’t been something I’d yet noticed. Regardless of the words, though, what I could hear was the voice of a man looking for some reason to put his lamp down and refuse to go a step further.

  ‘If you dissent from Chalcedon, Your Grace,’ I said in an attempt at the conversational, ‘I suppose direct relics of Christ are still more holy.’ I looked at the bag and pursed my lips. ‘It was, I think, the Patriarch Nestorius who asked: “How can Jesus Christ, being part man, not be partially a sinner as well, as man is by definition a sinner since the Fall?” Now, the answer that your side in the dispute gives is that His Humanity is wholly absorbed within His Divinity. This being so, the relic was possessed by an almost purely Divine Substance. For us, though they “undergo no confusion, no change, no division, no separation”, the Substance of Christ also partakes of the Human.’ I looked as far as the flickering light showed into the depths before us. If it weren’t for that bloody trio waiting far up in the sunshine for what I’d find down there, I’d have turned back myself. But we had to go further. If that meant rehearsing the debates at and after the Council of Chalcedon, it was a price to be paid.

  ‘That is, My Lord, a most just observation,’ came the reply in a suddenly firmer voice.

  I took a step forward and asked him to explain. I knew he wouldn’t be able to resist.

  ‘Let us begin with a statement from the First Council of Ephesus,’ he said, taking a step to keep up with me, ‘that I think is accepted equally by both sides of the most unfortunate dispute that has sundered the garment of Holy Mother Church.’ He closed his eyes a moment to recall the exact wording, then quoted: ‘?“The Word in an unspeakable, inconceivable manner united to Himself hypostatically Flesh enlivened by a Rational Soul, and so became Man.”?’

  I nodded reverently and, bowing to keep my head from knocking against the uncut granite, took another few steps. He followed. I kept going. So did he in both senses.

  ‘Now, My Lord,’ he said, oblivious to where he was, ‘the important question is the nature of this Union of God and Man. I do so regret the claim of the Greeks that both Natures remain distinct within the Single Personhood of Christ. This surely raises difficulties; in particular, it renders meaningless the title traditionally given to the Virgin of “God-Bearer”. For if Christ has a Double Nature, She can be so described only so far as She gave birth to the Human Nature.. .’ So he droned on and on and we continued down the steps. It was crude stuff. His Patriarch, Anastasius, could only have accepted this line of argument with endless reservations that brought him pretty close to the orthodox position of Chalcedon. Still, it was useful to hear what might be a fair sample of opinion outside Alexandria.

  Of course, it kept us moving ever down those steps. And they did seem to go on and on – sometimes winding one way, now another; sometimes going down in a straight line. Once or twice, I slipped where the steps had been worn away, and my lamp nearly went out. More often, it was just a matter of keeping my head from knocking against the unsmoothed granite of the ceiling. At last, though, we stood again on level ground. I couldn’t say how far down we were, or which way we were now pointed. I gave the job up as useless. It was impossible to estimate anything. The air continued good, the breeze now more noticeable. I forced myself not to speculate on another entrance. Those bastards still had Martin.

  Chapter 62

  We were now in another corridor, much higher and wider than the first. Much greater care had been taken with hollowing out and shaping what may also have been a natural fault in the rock. So far as I could see, this followed a more or less straight course, though there was a continued downward slope that prevented us from seeing even as far ahead as the lamps threw their light. How far from the surface were we? I kept asking myself and asking again. How much deeper must we go? No point in asking, I told myself. It went as far as it went. I held my lamp and took a firm step forward.

  As said, this was a higher and wider corridor. Its surfaces were more finely chiselled. If wondering how far it went was pointless, I couldn’t help but wonder how this had been carved. Even assuming there had been some original pathway through the rock, this was granite. The work of hollowing and smoothing with such perfection of finish, and of carrying away the rubbish, must have taken whole armies of men, slaving down here for decades. In its own way, this was no less remarkable than the Pyramids. All else aside, why had this been done?

  Again, I put the questions out of mind. I looked instead at the reliefs. This time, there was no doubt of them. They stretched along this corridor on both sides. Ugly, depressing things they were, too. They had nothing Egyptian about them. They were in a style more realistic than I’d seen from the Egyptians, though also less varied. Whatever race had produced them showed a partiality for violence and pain unusual by any standards. A recurring theme was the siege and capture of towns. Machines of great ingenuity would be employed to break down or undermine defensive walls. Once through the walls, the attackers would go into a frenzy, sparing neither children nor women and the aged. They would kill by stabbing and dismembering and cutting to pieces as if in a slaughterhouse. Their male prisoners they would take pleasure in hanging on low gallows, so that the feet touched the ground. Sometimes, they would pack straw round the feet of their victims, or wrap them entirely in straw, and then light a fire.

  For a full quarter-mile the reliefs extended. When their authors tired of siege warfare, they turned to more individual atrocities: pots filled with burning liquid placed on the heads of tied victims; women strapped on to beds of nails and ravished with immense, heated phalluses; children thrown into vats of corrosive fluid. And every few yards, in couples or trios, embracing or delicately reaching out to touch finger to finger, you could see the insanely grinning perpetrators of these horrors. How old the reliefs were I couldn’t say. They must have been thousands of years old. They might – if Lucas and his odd chronology were to be taken seriously – be tens of thousands. The granite from which they were carved was, of course, unweathered and immortal. But the paint that had once covered the whole in a coat of bright colour was long since faded. In the lamplight, it was barely more in places than a uniform brown. But every one of those mad, evil faces, I could easily see, had once been topped with a mass of golden hair.

  Onward along that silent corridor we walked. I say these things went on and on. After a while, thou
gh, I stopped looking. After what I’d seen done to living flesh in Alexandria, you might think none of this could have much effect on me. But there is a difference between what is done from some shadow of regard for the public good, and is an admitted deviation from the normal course of government, and what is gloatingly celebrated in what may be the best art of a race manifestly superior in the art of war to those attacked and conquered and eradicated for pleasure. Priscus himself might have learned something from all this. Priscus himself might even have been rattled by the immense iteration and reiteration of horrors.

  I tried to start a debate with the Bishop about the orthodox claim that ‘at no point was the difference between the Natures taken away from the Union, but rather the property of both Natures is preserved and comes together into a Single Person and a single Subsistent Being.’ He made a faint effort, and the mere sound of our voices, as we went over words traded again and again on the surface, brought some cheer in that place of dry and ever colder silence.

  We ran into trouble after perhaps half a mile of our twisting downward course. At first, it seemed we were reaching a dead-end. As we got close enough, though, for our lamps to make sense of the dim shapes outside the immediate pool of light, I could see that it was a door. Better described, it was one of those stone slabs you read about that drop from the ceiling and close off all access beyond. In Egypt – elsewhere in the Empire too in the days of the Old Faith – the rich would try endless elaborations of these things to keep their embalmed corpses and their grave goods safe. Fat lot of good it ever seems to have done: if not because of tomb raiders, why else are the antiquities markets so often glutted?