The Blood of Alexandria a-3

by Richard Blake

  I continued looking at the horizon. Soon, the light would dazzle and I’d have to turn away. I was thinking of what Priscus had told me in the street outside the Prefecture: Do ask yourself how an empire survives without men like me. It needs heroes to found it, and poets and artists and philosophers to make it noble. And it needs someone to direct the rack if it’s to be kept in order. But why think of this now? I wondered. There were other words that were more relevant. You will know what to do, I’d been told back at the oasis. I looked away from the rising sun and straightened myself.

  ‘We’re going back to Soteropolis,’ I said quietly. ‘Do please arrange an escort if possible. Otherwise I have no doubt the Sisterhood will be more than a match for what little remains of the Brotherhood.’

  Chapter 68

  ‘Can you not feel the evil down here?’ Martin asked with a dramatic shiver. ‘It radiates as from a second, dark sun.’

  I looked up from the fifth scroll of Eratosthenes. The words might have had more impression had I not been hearing their like for the second time in two days. ‘Not really,’ I said. I leaned back in the rickety chair and took a deep breath. Still watching me, Martin stood in the doorway of the converted tomb. ‘You must bear in mind,’ I added, ‘I have already been down here in far gloomier circumstances.’ To say the cavern was now ablaze with light would be an exaggeration. It was, even so, far better lit than on my first visit. And the screams and trills of the Sisters as they went about their business completed my impression of a very different place. ‘Such evil as was here,’ I said, now reassuring, ‘was brought to an end many ages ago. We are here today only to exorcise its memory.’

  I suppose I was stretching things with the word ‘we’. In truth, while I was the one to explain matters to him, Anastasius was the guiding force down here. He was the one who supervised the clearing of the tombs and the gathering up for burning of the rubbish that littered the cavern floor. He was the one who directed the sweating, joyously shouting Sisters as, inch by inch, they dragged the local representation of Moloch to the chasm edge. I was here, and not in bed, only because Macarius had been insistent again that I was needed – and because I wanted to see if those books were quite so lunatic as I’d at first thought them.

  My short answer is that they weren’t. What inspiration old Eratosthenes claimed to have found here left no evidence in his text, which, as said, was solidly Epicurean in its approach. The main difference, its numerical basis apart, was that Eratosthenes had taken what for Epicurus were fundamentals and resolved them into different expressions of something more fundamental yet. It was fascinating, and I was glad I’d made for the book rack just as soon as I could convince Anastasius that his own work was a matter for the Church alone, and just as soon as I could give Macarius the slip.

  ‘My Lord.’

  Damn! It was Macarius: he must have read my mind.

  ‘My Lord, the preparations are now complete. Your own presence has become essential.’

  I scowled, but checked my temper. Though I could feel the tiredness trying to claw its way back into my attention, the return of all Lucas had confiscated after my surrender meant I once again had the means to keep tiredness at bay. I’d never match Priscus when it came to mixing drugs. But half a pinch in wine of dried Lazarus weed, and I was as perky as anyone could wish to be.

  ‘Will you also be taking these books and the box of stones?’ I asked. I twisted round and nodded to the now open Library crate. One of the Sisters had smashed it open for me. It had been filled with stones wrapped in lead.

  Macarius gave me one of his blank looks. ‘Is My Lord asking,’ he replied, ‘for the various effects of Eratosthenes to be carried back to the surface?’ He spoke in a tone presaging an argument.

  I grinned and rolled the last book shut. I had not been asking that. But I felt no obligation to explain myself to Macarius. He hadn’t really betrayed me to Lucas – or even to Priscus. At the same time, he’d not served me with anything approaching devotion. ‘I think they can stay here for the moment,’ I said. I carefully replaced the book in its place and followed him out into the main cavern. The Sisterhood had done a fine clearing-up job. The place was swept clean of shrivelled flesh and broken wood. Everything movable was heaped up close by the edge of the chasm. The statue itself was only kept from falling straight into it by a web of ropes ultimately attached to the stone bollards that also held the bridge.

  This was all a hundred and fifty yards from where Eratosthenes had made his office. But we stood now only in gloom rather than in punctuated darkness. With Macarius leading the way and Martin hurrying after, I made my now confident way across the floor towards Anastasius. Dressed in their filthy cowls, the less emaciated – and presumably the younger – of the Sisters shuffled about me, gathering up any small objects that had escaped their main sweep. As I approached him, Anastasius bowed deeply.

  ‘On behalf of His Majesty the Emperor,’ Anastasius asked loudly in Greek, ‘will his Magnificence the Legate resign these objects of the Old Faith to Holy Mother Church?’

  As I stopped before him, unknown hands – possibly it was Macarius – reached from behind and pulled off my cloak, revealing the best approximation we’d managed to the robe of an Imperial Councillor.

  ‘In accordance with the law made in the seventh year of the Great Theodosius of blessed memory,’ I responded just as loudly, ‘these accursed objects, already confiscated to the Sacred Treasury, I hereby resign to the disposal of Holy Mother Church.’ I bowed low before him, making sure to keep off my knees; whatever the circumstances might require, however convincingly he might be dressed, Anastasius still wasn’t the Orthodox Patriarch. ‘Let their fate be oblivion.’

  Anastasius lapsed into Egyptian, now walking about the piles of accumulated rubbish to shake holy water over them. At last, it was done. With a dramatic gesture to the Sisters, he stepped back. Again bowing to me and receiving my own response, he stood beside me about six feet from the chasm. Two of the Sisters pushed everything over the edge. There was nothing ceremonial in the motions. The ritual was over. I walked to the edge and looked over. I heard things knock against the walls of the chasm. Once again, I heard no final impact.

  Attention had now shifted to the statue, still suspended on the brink. There was the same committal in Greek from Empire to Church, and the same endless chanting in Egyptian. Then this too went over the edge. The Patriarch himself achieved this with a sharp little axe that he took to the retaining ropes. I heard the rush of air as the thing fell and gathered speed. I heard it knock once or twice against the wall. Yet again, there was no final crash. I ignored Martin’s whisper about the Pit of Hell. The chasm was deep, I’d allow, but I’d probably seen deeper in the mountains inland from Ephesus.

  ‘It is time now for My Lord to act,’ Macarius prompted.

  I smiled and took from beneath my robe the sheet of parchment Siroes had brought all the way from Persia. I had skimmed it in the sunshine above. It was just as Macarius had paraphrased it. All I could add was a knowledge of scribal fashions and of how ink and parchment blended together over time. I could tell from this that the document was very old – it might have been contemporary with Eratosthenes: it might have been older still.

  ‘Does My Lord act in this of his own free will?’ he asked.

  ‘I do,’ I said. Anastasius was watching with surprise as we made up another ceremony on the spot. I tried not to giggle as I went through the responses. When these were over, I looked round for something heavy. All I could see was the topmost nine inches or so of the stone erection. Somehow, this had broken off the statue as it was dragged over to its committal and somehow had escaped the last clearing up. I now lifted it, then wrapped about it the sheet of parchment, securing all with a leather office band Macarius produced as if out of nowhere. I stood on the edge, waiting for every eye in the room to settle on me.

  ‘There is a story,’ I said loudly in Greek – if the Sisters didn’t understand, there were three men with
me who could at least understand the words – ‘of a Syrian trade expedition to my own country. This was after my people had displaced the original Celtic inhabitants and before the arrival of the Faith. The Syrians went ashore with strings of coloured glass beads. They returned with pearls of jet black and, where these had been insufficient, with the fair-headed children of their customers.’ I paused and looked appreciatively at the two baffled male faces about me. To call Macarius baffled would be saying too much. He just looked stiffer than usual.

  ‘Each side, I have no doubt,’ I continued, ‘bade farewell to the other in the assurance that it had driven the harder bargain. We know who truly gained and who lost. It is a sure sign of barbarism not to understand the true value of things.’ I held up the package of stone and parchment. I waited until even the Sisters had their eyes turned to it. With a contemptuous gesture, I tossed it over the edge. Without bothering to see how it fell, I turned and walked back to where the statue had stood. I stopped here and looked again towards the chasm. I stared at Macarius and pointed at the rope bridge. ‘I’ve done all that was required of me,’ I said, now in Latin. ‘The rest you can do by yourself.’ I watched as he took hold of one of the torches set into the portable brackets, and then as he walked with it over to where the bridge stretched deceptively across the chasm. He held it up and threw it hard towards the middle of the bridge.

  I heard the ‘whizz’, of fire through the air. I heard its soft impact on the wooden planks. I shaded my eyes to avoid the short but intensely bright flare as dry rope and wood turned into ash and took their place in that bottomless chasm. I stared hard with all the concentration I could manage. It was for the shortest moment of which human senses can take account, and it was too brief a moment for me to give any close description of what I saw. But the impression I had was of immense and metallic instruments of torture. They were to the instruments I had seen in Alexandria, or even in Constantinople, as the light in that cavern was to the sunshine far above. If no one ever throws another bridge across the chasm that completes their separation from the world, humanity will not be the loser.

  ‘You may not choose to share it with me,’ I said to Macarius as he came and stood beside me, ‘but is there anything about this place or these objects that I have not been able to work out for myself? What is it that prompted Leontius and Siroes, and perhaps any number of others down the ages, to risk and to lose all?’

  ‘Why must you always assume,’ Macarius replied, ‘that, if only it can be clearly asked, every question has an answer?’

  ‘Because it has.’ I smiled. ‘Every question has an answer. There are no mysteries for those who know where and how to look.’ As we walked back to the steps that led to the upper corridor, I looked over to the right. There a single lamp burned brightly in the tomb where Eratosthenes had for seven years looked unblinkingly into the nature of things. He’d been dismissively called the second greatest mind of his age in all that he attempted: the second best mathematician, the second best geographer, the second best general scholar, and so on. I’d held in my hand the crowning achievement of his life. It may have revealed him as an inspired lunatic, or as by far the greatest mind of his age after all – perhaps the greatest of all the Greeks. And my decision had been to leave it where I’d found it. Yes, I’d leave the fruits of his labour in there. If Macarius had insisted, I’d have let him add it to the rubbish thrown into the chasm. But he hadn’t, and I wouldn’t. Neither, though, would I take them with me. I thought again of Priscus in the dungeon, gloating as he gave his instructions for the use of the rack. I couldn’t take thought for those hundreds of the impaled or thousands and tens of thousands of the indiscriminately slaughtered. It was like trying to pay attention to a single flake in a field of snow. But I could think of that boy who’d been broken up and then violated till he died.

  ‘Let the world have liberty,’ I said aloud, ‘before it steps from the shadows.’ I followed the Sisters up the steps. I stopped and turned back. For the first time in five months, I saw Martin and Macarius in an earnest if whispered conversation. I laughed and beckoned them up behind me.

  Dirty from the cavern, we emerged blinking into the sunshine of an Egyptian high afternoon. The captain of the guards whom Priscus, it had turned out, had ordered to the right Soteropolis saluted me as I climbed through the entrance and turned back to help Martin. He’d told me of the verbal orders given for my death in whatever skirmish there might be with the Brotherhood. Live rescued captives are better than dead. But Priscus, being Priscus, had wanted to make sure no one could challenge whatever story he eventually made up for Heraclius.

  ‘My son, would you care to witness the final interment?’ Anastasius asked.

  I nodded. Taking up another pose in robes that, even without the dirt, looked far less impressive in the natural light, I watched as he made his arrangements. The remnants of the Brotherhood were no longer to be seen. Those inclined to lurk behind dunes and heaps of rubbish after the Imperial forces had moved in had run off at the first sound of female battle cries. There was no chance of a counter-attack. Broken in Alexandria, the Brotherhood had been killed off in Soteropolis. The locals drafted in to do the digging were now willing and eager, under the direction of their Patriarch, to undo all that they’d been terrorised into doing.

  It took much washing and oiling of granite to get the plug free of sand and tightly back in place. But it was done. As men frantically shovelled sand back into the crater, Anastasius stood over them, pronouncing what he later told me was the most horrifying curse on the place even the heretical Church of Egypt could manage. As if by an afterthought, the bodies of Lucas and of Siroes were thrown into the crater. Siroes was nothing to me. He was just a lesser Priscus; and, because lesser, he’d perished in the contest with Priscus. For Lucas, though, I did feel a certain pity. The man had been a dangerous lunatic. He’d been delighted to think I was dying from the very poison that had instead killed him. If he had made it to Pharaoh, he’d have done no better for the Egyptian people than any other of the native kings had managed. He might easily have been worse. But was it wholly bad that he’d worked – with whatever self-delusion and lack of judgement – for the liberty of his people from an empire that had, since time out of mind, shorn them like a flock of sheep? Whether the questions Macarius had asked of me about my own reaction in like circumstances were serious was of no importance. They were certainly worth considering. We buried Lucas face down, his body – rigid as a wooden statue – still twisted in its death agony.

  The crater was filled in. Time and the desert winds could be trusted to restore the obliteration of Soteropolis as a whole. I thought of that girl back in the Egyptian quarter. It was here that she’d assured me I’d find my ‘heart’s desire’. Well, if it was here, the reserve stock would be underneath the city of tents the other side of the big dune. Since I imagined the whole area would be taken as subject to the Patriarch’s curse, getting any of the locals here again with a shovel was out of the question. One day, perhaps, I’d make a second journey – this time with an army of diggers from elsewhere in Egypt, and a regular army of Greeks to make sure the locals didn’t make a fuss. But this was it for the moment. All had ended as well as might have been expected in the circumstances. Even so, it wasn’t wholly to my taste.

  ‘Come on, Martin,’ I said once the crater was filled in. ‘I need a good, long drink.’

  ‘Why did she have to do it in this way?’ I asked Macarius. ‘The lack of simplicity robs her entire work of elegance.’

  Macarius turned back from examining his saddlebags. He looked at me and actually smiled. ‘What makes you assume she had any direction of what has now passed?’ he asked in turn. ‘You have called all this a game. Except where they have constrained your own actions, you are ignorant of its rules. Is it not conceivable that even the Mistress herself is constrained? You will have noticed how little control she had over you. Is it not possible that she must answer to powers far greater than her own?’

>   ‘Will I see her again?’ I asked.

  ‘Is there any reason why you should?’ came the answer. ‘You have acquitted yourself just as was hoped. I do not think you will ever tell the story now ended exactly as it happened. Certainly, no one would believe you if you tried. But I know you well enough to believe you will take the more credible fragments and work them into a narrative from which you emerge with shining credit. Is that not always the case?’

  He climbed onto the camel. I watched him as he rode out to the south. I watched him a long time, until, far distant, he vanished over a sand dune. Being Macarius, he never looked back.

  ‘I knew you’d see reason, my dearest,’ Priscus said with one of his brilliant smiles.

  We were in my office back in the Palace in Alexandria. On the other side of the closed door, I knew without being able to hear that Martin was fussing over some dereliction of filing that had accumulated in his absence. Priscus sat on the edge of my desk, his legs swinging back and forth.

  ‘I told you it was a simple matter of explaining things clearly to Nicetas,’ he continued. I looked at the heap of papyrus he’d dumped in front of me. ‘You’ll now have to trust me that I didn’t have copies made of all this. Forgery of a public document to enrich yourself at the Treasury’s expense is not something even Heraclius could overlook in your case. Then there’s the matter of your consorting with an obvious sorceress. I’d not be able to prove that in Constantinople. But you know it would come out soon enough in any enquiries made on the spot.

  ‘As my friends in the Intelligence Bureau often say, “There’s dirt on everyone, if you only look hard enough”.’

  I ground my teeth.

  ‘You’re a fucking beast and murderer,’ I said flatly. ‘When I look at you, I’m reduced to wishing, if not perhaps believing, that there is a Final Judgement.’