The Sword of Damascus a-4

by Richard Blake

  As I spoke, all noise and movement back on the ship ceased. One moment, I was raising my voice to compete with the din that drifted across the widening distance from the ship. Another, and we were alone but for the regular splashing of oars on the warm African sea.

  And then the oarsmen stopped rowing. One of them slithered round in his seat to face me.

  Chapter 17

  ‘Is it to be thus?’ I asked of the oarsman who’d dropped me in Cartenna. Already, Wilfred had started another of his calm prayers. Edward was clutching himself and beginning to rock backward and forward. I paid them no attention. ‘You’re scared of my ghost if you do the work on board the ship. Isn’t that it? And you don’t believe that I can be killed at all on land.’

  No reply from that sweating, yellow-bearded face. His colleague sat still, his back to me. Of course, I didn’t need any answer. When you’ve spent as much of your life as I have dissecting the various modes of superstition that complicate the politics of mankind, nothing is a mystery, nothing a surprise.

  ‘So how is it to be done?’ I asked again. ‘Will it be the cutting off of my head? Is that to be thrown into the sea, and my body left on land for the wild animals to devour? Or is it to be drowning?

  ‘Oh – and which one of you gets first crack at Edward’s arse?’ The boy looked up at that. His face was pleasingly scared and miserable. I grinned and went on. ‘I don’t know about you, but a pretty face doesn’t mean much when you’re at the back of the queue for a gang rape. You get more friction if you cut a hole in a dead pig and try fucking that.’

  The oarsman who’d dropped me in Cartenna got unsteadily to his feet. Then he braced himself against the rocking of the boat and reached down for me. He carefully avoided looking into my eyes. The knife he held at the end of his outstretched arm was as much an iron charm to protect against anything I might do to him as the weapon with which he was to dispatch me. I uncrossed my legs and looked up at him.

  ‘You do realise,’ I said, with an easy wave over the sea, ‘that, without me as your leader, you’ll be stuck in this sea. You’ll move about at random until the Imperial battle fleet catches up with you. I imagine you’ve seen men flayed alive. But I’ll bet you haven’t seen the finesse that the Imperial Government can bring to the operation. Heavens, my dear fellow, I’ve seen a man kept alive for days, quite screaming mad from the pain as blood oozed slowly from every inch of his peeled body. Lay hands on me, and that’s what you’ll get – though only if you’re lucky. You won’t believe what torments have been perfected over the centuries for those who try crossing the Empire, or its servants.

  ‘But enough of unpleasantness. Come, come, my fine young fellow – if you’ll only proceed on our supply gathering mission and return me safe to the ship, I can promise you gold as big as your fist once we’re back in England. It really is an offer you’d be silly to refuse.’

  Of course, it wasn’t an offer he or any of the other dear fellows would dream of accepting. Their god Yadina wanted my blood. Nothing I could offer in its place would do for getting them back home. But I thought it worth going through the motions. The man reached down and took hold of me by the stiff brocade of my Cartenna robe. With a single hand, he pulled me to my feet and kept hold as, with an expectant look back at the ship, he held his knife about a foot in front of me. All at once, the pots began their clatter again, and – now as triumphant as the psalm at a victory celebration in church – the chanting rolled at us in swelling waves of sound across the water.

  The man opened his mouth for some gibberish of his own, and held up the knife for what I guessed would be a downward stroke between my collar bones.

  Now, my dear Reader, do you recall that vicious little knife that Joseph had given me far back in Jarrow to sharpen my pens? When Benedict had finally got me to my feet the next day to go and face whatever grim fact awaited me in the hall, I’d stuffed the thing out of habit into a fold of my clothing. No one had thought it worth bothering to search a poor old creature like me, and I’d ever since then been carrying the knife in its leather sheath next to my skin. To be sure, I hadn’t known how or when it might come in handy. But no one with any pretensions to calling himself a free man should go out – not even in the most civilised place – without some means of defending his life, liberty and property.

  There was a time when, no matter how small the blade, I’d have carved the fucker’s head off. But ninety-six is ninety-six. Even so, if age had withered my muscles, it hadn’t dulled my wits. That two-inch gash, in just the right place on his neck, and he was down like something slaughtered in a butcher’s market. I fell on top of him and gasped in the joy of looking close into those horrified, fast-dulling eyes. I felt the warm blood splashing in diminishing bursts on to my chest and face.

  It was all very quick, and I was back on my cushions before the other oarsman had so much as turned to see what could have gone wrong. I held up the dripping blade and smiled at him. Over on the ship, the clattering and chanting had given way to a wail of most gratifying terror. If there hadn’t been the other oarsman to deal with, I’d have staggered up and blown them a kiss. But there was outstanding business on the boat that was unlikely to wait.

  ‘You want some of this?’ I snarled, holding up the little blade. ‘Just you come and get it, you piece of barbarian trash! Come on, then, shit for brains – don’t just sit there with your mouth open.’ With the first oarsman, I’d had the advantage of complete surprise. It really had been as if a sheep had turned and savaged the wolf that was about to eat it. This one couldn’t so easily be tricked. That didn’t mean I proposed to sit there, waiting for the beast to fall on me and complete the work of freeing his band from the evil fortune or whatever that had brought them all into the enclosed sea. Shouting with rage and fear, he was on his feet and screaming at me. He pulled out his own knife, and stepping carefully to avoid the still twitching corpse that lay between us, took a step forward.

  You can be sure it was his last step. I’d been sitting with my back against the prow of the boat. I now reached both arms behind me and clamped myself as best I could to the one place where even I could make a difference. I threw my weight to the left. As the boat returned to balance, I threw myself to the right. It was a feeble rocking. The difference between my own effort and its results might have been comical had it not been so depressing a reminder of the obvious. But it was enough. The oarsman tried to drop to his hands and knees. He tried too late. With a heavy splash, he was straight over the side. He surfaced about six feet from us. Like every other seaman I’ve encountered, he’d never bothered with swimming lessons. For all it could help him, six feet out might as well have been sixty yards out. And the smooth African sea might as well have been the northern sea in a storm. He surfaced with a frightened gasp. He splashed ineffectually about. He sank again. He came up a few more times before he finally disappeared. But I’d already seen enough. Without bothering to wait for his end, I leaned forward and picked up my fallen wig.

  ‘Don’t just sit there,’ I said to the confused, silent boys. ‘This boat won’t row itself ashore.’ I looked over at the ship. Though not yet to much purpose, figures were already running about on deck and shouting. We needed to get inside the safety of the little harbour. If, by the time of Constans, gradual silting really had reduced the draught to about a yard, the ship could never follow us in. With no boat for a pursuit, I doubted anyone would want the risk of wading ashore. Until we were within the harbour, though, it was just a matter of turning the ship about and getting the oars in time with each other. Even scared barbarians were good for that. ‘Come forward, turn about and take an oar each,’ I urged the boys. To emphasise my words, I shook my wig at them.

  An idiot expression on his face, Edward looked away from the dying but still occasionally surfacing oarsman, and stared down at the bloody streaks I’d splashed all over his tunic.

  It was now that I actively noticed the inch or so of bloody sea water that was sloshing round my feet. Al
l boats let in water. Perhaps the timbers of this one really had shrunk. But even without the pint after pint of lifeblood that had dyed it bright red, this wasn’t the sort of leakage you’d expect in a boat so small – nor after so short a journey in calm water.

  Chapter 18

  I dumped the wig with a dull splash into the filthy waters and leaned back. I could now see that I was myself covered in blood. It was all over my hands, and soaked into my robe. It must have covered my face. I could feel it dribbling down the back of my neck. So much for wanting to look my best for whoever still scratched a living in Tipasa! I laughed weakly and pointed again at the ship. It was all panic on deck now. Men were pulling frantically on ropes and tripping over each other. I could see the uncoordinated swirl of oars. The sound of almost insane shouting drifted across the several hundred yards of water that separated us.

  ‘Look, my dear boys,’ I said, now very feeble after the excitement of the kill, ‘I really can’t row this thing by myself. I’ve done what I can for our common salvation. I really do urge you to consider taking up these oars and putting your scared little backs into getting us inside the harbour.’ I was looking for words to describe what would happen to us if we were overtaken by the ship that would provoke a response other than scared paralysis. But Wilfred had twisted round to his left and was silently pointing.

  I peered dubiously into the horizon. No point asking if that was a sail perhaps five miles off. Now I look the trouble to look at the ship without the obvious preconception, it was clear that we weren’t the object of the panic. If the northerners were getting ready for a pursuit, it was with them as the pursued.

  ‘What is the ratio of the sail height to the perceived length of the ship?’ I asked in my best classroom voice. That brought Wilfred at least to order. From his answer, I could guess that we had a scout ship in sight. It was just the one ship, so far as he could see. This would never be up to taking on something as large and well-manned as our ship. Its function was to dart quickly back and forth across the seas, to pick up and to relay information to a main fleet that might be half a day or even more over the horizon. Ignorant of Imperial battle tactics, the northerners were behaving as if already under attack. We were forgotten in the panic to get out of the calm. Our own oars trailing loose in the water, held only by their leather retaining straps, we drifted in the calm waters and watched the chaotic movement of the ship outwards to where the breeze blew strongly from the west.

  ‘Can you please take up those fucking oars?’ I tried again with the boys. There was no danger now of being overtaken and recaptured. If we ever saw that departing ship again, it would be a matter of bad luck. All we needed now was to be out of sight. Anyone looking in our direction from the scout ship would have the sun almost directly in his face. It would be unusual if we’d been spotted from that far off. And that was how it had to be left. We had to get out of all possible sight. So long as they kept up some basic standard of seamanship, and so long as the wind held, those northerners could outrun almost anything sent against them. If the Imperial authorities could keep believing I was in it, and so long as there was water taken on from somewhere, the ship could disappear right off to the coast of Egypt or even of Syria. That would give me time to consider what to do next. And I’d need plenty of time to think my way out of this one.

  I looked down at my feet. They, plus ankles – plus calves halfway to my knees – were now hidden by the warmth of the bloodied sea water. There was no doubt we were sinking. I could see one of the arms of the dead oarsman moving slightly as each heavy motion of the boat lifted it in the water.

  But Edward was now stretching into the water on his side of the boat to try to pull the oar into his hands. After some pained looking about, Wilfred was making less determined efforts of his own. Setting two jittery boys of uneven weakness to a job that really needed two big men didn’t make for a fast or even a direct journey to the shore. But foot by foot, and with much drift towards the more ruined end, we did at last make our way into the harbour. My last view of the open sea, as we disappeared behind a rock, showed our ship, now quickly disappearing into the east, and the scout ship in cautious pursuit.

  ‘Anyone waiting for us on the docks?’ I asked, feeling the need with ever greater urgency for a long doze. I believed Edward’s impression, and my own memory of its circumstances, that Tipasa was pretty well abandoned. Still, it would never have done to put in with a fresh corpse at our feet, and me looking like something from one of the flagellation ceremonies we used to put on when another province fell to the Saracens, and no reasonably convincing excuse for these facts.

  No answer. Edward’s face was straining like some overburdened athlete as he tried to pull effectively on his oar. Wilfred was far advanced into a dry coughing attack. The boys weren’t ignoring me. They just hadn’t heard me. I might have been sad Tithonus, whose lover, the Dawn, asked Zeus for him to be immortal without asking also for him to keep young and beautiful. At last, when loathsome age had leaned full upon him, the goddess locked him away in a cupboard. There, the ancient poets sang, he was left for ever, sounding like a cicada, to babble his senile nonsense. So I might have been as I leaned back against the prow and looked up into the bright sky. The sun was beating down on me with full strength. Tired out by the excitement of the kill, I closed my eyes. The muttering away in English of two incompetent, frightened boys, and the gentle lapping of the sea against the sides of the boat blended together and became more and more distant.

  In my dream, I was back in Constantinople. It must have been just after our triumphant return from the Persian War. I was looking down over the Circus from my seat in the Imperial Box. We were in one of the intervals between races. Certainly, the racetrack was deserted. Behind me, the Great and Ever-Incompetent Heraclius was seated on his throne. If I glanced left, I could see one of his jewelled slippers where he sprawled, characteristically bored by anything that wasn’t a church service. Far below, on the great oval that surrounded the racetrack, an impossibly large number of human faces looked expectantly up at us. Nothing unusual in that, I suppose. In a moment, the chanted request would start – for a free bread distribution, perhaps, or for one of the finance ministers to be put to death. If I had any say in the matter, the answer would be a firm no to either. But my gaze was drawn to the Senatorial Balcony, about twenty feet below my own level. I could see the bare heads of the hundred and fifty leading men of the city. I could see the backs of their gorgeously embroidered white and purple robes. All would have been as it should have been – only there was an empty place. It was about the middle of the front row. I tried to remember who was missing and why. And I struggled to tell myself why it was so desperately important to me that the ivory stool was vacant.

  As I began to dift back into the present. I suddenly realised it wasn’t Heraclius behind me, but his grandson, Constantine. And it wasn’t after the Persian war, but some other more recent conflict. Yet, if times and persons were altered, that ivory stool remained solidly vacant…

  ‘We thought you had died, Master,’ Wilfred said, his head just blocking the sun.

  Edward had put his arms behind me and was trying to raise me. There was a smell of heat and dust and of all the other things you never miss until you’ve been long at sea. Wilfred bent down closer and set a cup of dark, brackish water to my lips.

  ‘Die, my dear young boys?’ I said at last in a surprisingly firm voice. ‘Dying is not something for those who still have work to do.’ Clutching at Edward’s shoulder, I pulled myself to my feet. We’d by now shipped so much water that the boat hardly trembled under the shifting of weight. Working together, the two boys lifted me over the side of the boat so that I could stand on the white beach where we’d finally come in to shore. I looked down at the dull eyes of the big man I’d killed. The Imperial scout ship nowhere to be seen, I looked at the vanishing bulk of the ship that had, since England, been both home and prison. I turned and took a confident and unaided step on the beach towards th
e remains of the Tipasa docks.

  ‘Well, come along, my pretties,’ I said without looking back. ‘I really could do with something to eat.’

  Dear me! Dear me! Keep a cool head on your shoulders, and something always does turn up. What to do with it was something I’d consider as and when.

  Chapter 19

  I sat in the smooth, natural bowl the brook had, in its ages of spring flooding, carved out of the rock, and splashed happily in the water. If it had seemed a little chilly at first, I’d soon grown used to that. The afternoon sun was at its welcome best. I glanced at my moderately clean robe where Wilfred had hung it up to dry. I was hungry. As I’d expected, Tipasa was completely abandoned – not so much as one God-bothering hermit living in the ruined houses of what had, just a hundred years before, been a flourishing centre of the trade in fish sauce. Darting here, darting there – almost glowing with admiration of my double kill – Edward had gone all over the city while I rested with Wilfred in the shade. All the public buildings remained in good repair, he’d reported back, but the private houses had no roofs, and there was grass growing undisturbed in all the main streets.

  Now, we were back where we’d first come ashore. We’d found a rocky inlet two hundred yards or so across the dazzling sands from where our boat seemed immovably stuck. Some fifty yards further on to the land, an ancient monument had sunk deep into its foundations. The rigid, almost incompetent statue still looked down from an odd angle. The inscription on its base was almost effaced by time. In any event, being in Punic, I couldn’t read a word. It had once been the centre of an older city. The one built as part of our own civilisation had been centred further along the shore – I supposed, on weak evidence, because of the sands that had shifted within the harbour all through history. We were alone, but for the birds and various small animals that scurried unseen in the undergrowth where the shoreline ended. I was about to mention what would soon become the pressing matter of food. But Edward was peering into the water.