The Sword of Damascus a-4

by Richard Blake

  One of his clerks reached forward and dumped two leather bags on the table set before my chair. There must have been four pounds of metal in each of them. I nodded to Edward, who looked about for a knife with which to cut the seals. At last, he got one of them open. He nearly fainted at the sight of the golden stream that poured through his fingers. Ignoring the main pile before me, I took up one of the new-minted coins and looked at the portrait.

  ‘A poor likeness of Justinian,’ I said. The banker gave me an indifferent look. If I’d mentioned the smell of the oiled leather, he’d not have been less interested. Let me see, I thought. Seventy-two solidi to the pound. Eight times that makes five hundred and seventy-six. I smiled. There’d be new silk for both of us when the tailors came round – Chinese, not Imperial – and plenty of change left over.

  ‘Any chance the Caliph will start minting his own coins?’ I asked, while I kept myself from jumping up for a creaky dance about the room.

  ‘Not so far as I have been informed,’ came the chilly answer. ‘His Late Majestic Holiness Muawiya was concerned to avoid any act that might suggest a loss of interest in the eventual movement of his capital to Constantinople. His Present Majestic Holiness Abd al-Malik has announced no change in that policy.’

  No change of policy – that was interesting, assuming the banker had his finger on the right pulse. Would these people never give up? They’d lost control of the seas, possibly for ever. And if Africa was theirs for the taking, they’d have a bloody fight if they wanted another go at Asia Minor. As for Constantinople, that was surely off the agenda.

  But that was other business. The business in hand was complete, and Zakariya could be glad of my custom until I decided otherwise. I motioned the banker and his clerks out of the room and snuggled back into the sofa.

  ‘Master,’ Edward asked when we were alone. I ignored him. ‘My Lord,’ he asked again. I smiled and opened my eyes. ‘My Lord, is all this money really yours?’ As if not daring to touch it again, he waved a hand over the shining pile that covered the table.

  ‘All that, and very much more,’ I said with a wave of my own. ‘I did tell you not to worry about finances.’ I reached into the pile and took a handful of coins. ‘Here, take this and hold it,’ I said. ‘Let the coins run through your fingers. This is what sets the world in motion. It’s for this that men kill and cheat and lie and steal – and sometimes do good and necessary works. It was for the promise of less than this that Hrothgar set to work. Compared with this little hill of gold, Cuthbert worked for nothing at all. Go on – take it. Hold it. Have it for yourself.’

  But Edward continued standing before me, looking down at the coins. ‘If all this money really is yours,’ he said eventually, ‘why did you flee to England rather than here?’

  ‘That is a most interesting question,’ I said. I sat up and stretched, and reached for a date that had been preserved in honey. I popped it into my mouth and rolled it about with my tongue until it broke apart. ‘It may be that I was mistaken,’ I added indistinctly. I swallowed the sweet mass and took another sip of wine. ‘Perhaps, on reflection, Jarrow was not the best place of refuge for me. Perhaps – if unwittingly – you and your dear friend Hrothgar did me a considerable service in giving me a second chance. I doubt, all things considered, I shall have the choice. But I have no intention of seeing that dreadful monastery ever again. How about you?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘You are a most sensible young man,’ I said with another smile. ‘It may be no bad thing that I failed to see this during the first months of our acquaintance. You are also, I might add, a young man with great expectations.’ He gave me one of his blank looks. ‘Oh, there is no exact parallel in the civilised world for our concept of fealty. But I do plan in the next few days to adopt you as my son, and to make an appropriate will.’ If I’d said there would be olive paste on bread for dinner, I might have seen more of a reaction on the boy’s face. I smiled. There was no point telling him that this wasn’t an idle whim, and that I’d made my decision on our second day out of Caesarea. No point also warning him that the terms of my will were not always couched in terms of endearing love. I changed the subject.

  ‘Now, dear boy,’ I said, ‘I do urge you to make yourself familiar as quickly as you can with this new and glorious world. That does mean learning proper Greek. I suppose it will also mean learning Saracen. I am already looking for instructors.’ His face clouded over at the thought of yet another new language. ‘But did you enjoy yourself in the brothel last night?’

  I’d got him there; his face went a bright pink, and he stammered as he tried to come out with a polite answer.

  ‘Excellent,’ I said, not waiting for him to say anything. ‘You will pardon me, then, if I trouble you with some immediate advice. You can fuck any slave that takes your fancy – girls, boys, women, even full-grown men, just as the inclination takes you. The Saracens are pleasingly untouched by our modern ideas of continence. But I must warn you to keep your hands off the free women. The Saracens – and the Syrians, come to think of it – dress their women in ways that would make the fine ladies of Constantinople look indecent. They can be madly possessive, and don’t you ever forget that. Whatever may have happened back in Caesarea was an exception that I may one day explain to you. It will not be repeated here.

  ‘Another piece of valuable advice is to keep away from gambling. Though their faith forbids it, I’ve never yet seen a Saracen who wasn’t mad about dice. But just tell them you’re a Christian, and they’ll leave you alone. The best way, I assure you, for the inexperienced to make a small fortune from dice is to start with a big one.

  ‘Now, go and pull that cord over there. I saw you splashing water on yourself this morning, and that just won’t do. You can get yourself taken down to the main baths in this house – go there for a spell in the hot room and all that follows this. I, on the other hand, must content myself with a lukewarm bath in our own facilities, and then a siesta until such time as the tailors come round with their samples.’

  And that should have been it. As he fiddled with the door handle and the elaborate closing mechanism behind it, Edward turned round.

  ‘Why do they call the Saracen King “Your Holiness?”’ he asked. ‘I thought only the Pope was called that.’

  I smiled and got up. ‘The Caliph,’ I answered, ‘is not a merely temporal ruler. He is also Commander of the Faithful. He is the direct successor – though not in blood – of the Saracen Prophet. As such, he claims a status superior even to that of a Roman emperor. An emperor is to be addressed as “Your Imperial Majesty”, a caliph as “Your Majestic Holiness”. You may meet neither, but these things are worth bearing in mind.’

  I sat down again. I had thought to cross the floor to help Edward with the workings of the door handle. But he’d now managed to work this out for himself. I waited for the door to close. Once I was alone, I reached forward and grasped handfuls of the coins. I let them run in golden streams through my shaking fingers. At some point on their journey from the Imperial Mint, the bags had been shaken. I held my hands up in a shaft of sunlight and looked at the specks of gold dust that now adhered to them. I rubbed them into my face. I licked my fingers. I could even feel the ghost of a stiffy coming on.

  But I sat back and rested my head on the cushions of the sofa. I looked at the ceiling and laughed softly. I’d had what I thought at the time very good reasons. But it really was worth repeating Edward’s question: what had possessed me to stagger halfway across the known world to shiver in Jarrow when all this was waiting for me here?

  Chapter 30

  I dreamed that I was back in Jarrow on the day the northerners got into the monastery. This time, instead of lifting me, they’d killed all the monks and set fire to the place. I didn’t see the killing. I only knew that it had already happened. I stood about a hundred yards outside the main gate, and was watching as the flames licked and flickered about every upper opening. Still wearing the clothes in which he’d
died, Wilfred floated just before me, about three yards above the ground. Though his lips moved frantically, I couldn’t hear a word he was trying to say. At last, he gave up on words and was reduced to pointing – now at the burning monastery, now towards the sun that was still low in the south-eastern sky. There was no solidity about his body. It was more like a mass of shaped and coloured smoke. In places, I could see straight through him to where smoke from the monastery was rising into the blue sky.

  ‘Go away,’ I cried at him. ‘You’re dead.’ I waved my stick at him, and, without feeling it strike on anything solid, saw it vanish into his chest before re-emerging. The boy twisted about in the air so he could look fully at me. There was the hurt look on his face that I recalled so well from whenever he thought me less enthusiastic than himself about the lunatic doctrines it had been my duty to expound to him.

  As I drifted back into wakefulness, the smell of burning travelled back with me. I knew at once I was far from Jarrow. There was the soft kiss of the silk on my body where slaves had put me into my bed, and the still, warm air of a Syrian afternoon in spring. I was plainly Alaric, rich-as-Croesus, resting in the house of Zakariya. Jarrow was far off, and the monastery there could take a running jump. But there was still an omnipresent though faint smell of burning. Was the house on fire? I opened my eyes. The slave who’d sat beside me while I nodded off was gone. I sat up and cleared my throat loudly. I was alone. No point shouting for assistance. No point struggling out of bed just to pull the bell cord. I waited while my legs came back to life, and I drained the cup of fruit squash that had been placed on the table beside my bed.

  My rooms were all on the first floor, and my bedroom window looked directly down into the central garden. As I got it open and looked out, I breathed in a stray gust of smoke that had drifted up from the garden. I fought to control the coughing fit and squeezed my eyes shut. I was about to push the window closed again, when I heard the voice of Zakariya from somewhere below.

  ‘You stupid black fucker!’ he screamed. ‘If I weren’t so bleeding soft, I’d have you strung up on the flesh hooks and branded.’ I heard the repeated sound of a stick on bare flesh and a slave’s moans of despair. I pushed the window shut and pressed the catch into place. I needed to see Zakariya. I’d evaded his obvious questions the previous evening. The sooner I got hold of him now, the better it would be. I looked about for some clothes. There was a robe of white linen laid out for me on one of the chairs. It was one of those garments with many ties that call out for assistance. But I didn’t need to impress anyone. For what I had in mind, respectability would be enough. With some groaning and wheezing, I pulled the robe over my head and tied it on me as well as I could. I stepped into a pair of slippers and made for the door.

  The stairs led down to a corridor of humbler single rooms. At the end of this was a door that led into the main hall. From here, I turned left and made my way out into the garden. I bumped almost at once into Zakariya. His face had turned the colour of roof tiles, and he leaned heavily on his stick. He straightened up the moment he saw me, and pulled his face into the semblance of a welcoming smile.

  ‘We have some business to discuss,’ I said shortly. Trying not to look as curious as I felt, I ignored the black smoke that was coming from behind some bushes.

  Now in his little office, Zakariya restrained himself just in time from biting one of the coins. Instead, he gave me a repeat of his welcoming oily smile. I let him refill my cup. I leaned back into my chair and looked a while at the closed window.

  ‘What is that smell of burning?’ I asked, not caring if it meant any loss of face.

  ‘After his long decline, my father has finally died,’ came the answer.

  I thought of the vicious dotard who’d presided over things during my earlier stays in the house, and marvelled at the triumph of a good constitution over a bad heart and clouded mind. If he’d only just died, he must have made it almost to my age. I made a vague expression of sympathy and told myself not to ask if cremation had suddenly come back into fashion. I sniffed again. No, that wasn’t quite human flesh. Besides, when had cremation ever been the fashion in Syria? Zakariya mistook my silence for something else, and smothered a giggle and bowed.

  ‘My father was to the end an obstinate Cross Worshipper,’ he explained. ‘I have now ordered his collection of books to be destroyed. Where they contradict the true Word of God, they are blasphemous. Where they support it, they are superfluous. In either case, let them be consumed.’ He bowed again, then looked up, obviously pleased at his attempted witticism. I acknowledged it with a wave of my cup.

  ‘But, surely,’ I said mildly – not that I imagined the world would lose much from the burning of a few dozen ranting supports of the Monophysite heresy – ‘that is not a Saracen position. Did not the Caliph Omar himself order the preservation of all Christian and Jewish writings that came into the hands of the Faithful?’ I might have looked into the eyes of a dead fish.

  But Zakariya stared again at the three coins I’d set out on the table. He gave me another of his smiles. ‘With all respect, My Lord. ..’ Without asking leave, he sat down opposite me. I looked into my cup and said nothing. ‘With all respect, My Lord, this is the beginning of times. God sent Jesus – peace be upon Him – to be His Prophet. His teachings were immediately corrupted by the Greeks. Now, God has sent Mohammed – peace be upon Him – as His last and greatest Prophet. His teachings cannot be corrupted. And they have wiped the slate of history. Those who accept them are no longer Syrians or Egyptians or Saracens – or even Greeks. They are the Faithful. All that went before is of no value. My sons shall learn the Holy Book by heart, and blend into the Community of the Faithful. I am the last of my blood whose first language must be Syriac, the last who was ever deceived by the muddy reason of the Greeks and of those who argued against the Greeks from within Greek premises. There is no God but Allah, and Mohammed is His Prophet,’ he ended in a Saracen more piously than correctly voiced.

  ‘Then the boy and I must change lodgings,’ I said with mock earnestness, ‘if we are to continue going to church.’ Of course, I had no intention of visiting any place of worship. I’d wasted enough time already in these places, and had reached an age that gave me the perfect excuse for not wasting any more. But I’d hit just the right tone to get the man’s face working.

  ‘“Let there be no compulsion in matters of faith,”’ he said hurriedly with another glance at the coins. ‘Those are the words of the Prophet.’

  And so they are. If he’d said nothing beyond that, I’d have thought better of the Saracen Prophet. However, you don’t push someone too far when he’s taken up a new religion. Those born in the Faith could take a relaxed view of its harder precepts. That didn’t include Zakariya. If he’d gone out and spat on his father’s grave, it wouldn’t be much worse than he was now doing. And you don’t argue with a man in that position – even when you are paying wildly over the going rate for his hospitality.

  ‘Would it offend My Lord if I asked how long these miserable rooms should be reserved?’ he asked. He now gave way to compulsion and picked up one of the coins. He rubbed it hard between forefinger and thumb, and his face took on its first genuinely peaceful look since I’d caught him finishing the holocaust of his father’s library.

  ‘Until further notice,’ I said. I thought of adding some rider to this, but instead repeated myself: ‘Until further notice. I will let you know of any change of plan. In the meantime, please attend on me every Tuesday morning to receive another advance payment of your rent.’

  His mouth nearly fell open. He was on his feet again, bowing and bringing his right hand again and again against his forehead. It would be all as I asked, he assured me. Within that house, I might as well be the King of Beirut.

  As the promises and boasts poured from his lips like water through a clock, I looked up at the ceiling and thought once more of the golden mass locked within the cupboard beside my bed. When Zakariya did finally shut up, I might thi
nk it worth ordering tuna fish baked in honey for dinner.

  Chapter 31

  You may often have heard it proclaimed that money doesn’t buy you happiness. I can understand that the rich have generally tried to impose, and the poor have too often taken comfort in, the belief that three meals a day, plus the chance of living past thirty-five, are to be pitied rather then envied. But I see no reason whatever for sharing the belief. Anyone who’d last seen poor, dirty old Brother Aelric brooding over a cup of beer in the cold wastes of Northumbria wouldn’t have recognised the frail but hearty grandee carried about the streets of Beirut. Indeed, so long as the sun wasn’t too close to the vertical, I was perfectly up to walking about the streets.

  It was Friday, 26 April 687. I’d been here a month, and Jarrow was a fading dream. Its only active reminder came when Edward forgot himself and lapsed into English. The following day would be my ninety-seventh birthday – not a day I was planning to celebrate, or even mention to Edward. But the fact that I’d made it this far, in such good shape, and despite several thousand attempts during the better part of a century to keep me from living another day, was beginning no end to cheer me. If I could carry on like this till the full century, I’d have no reason to complain. Indeed, I had bugger all reason right now. The day had started well, and was growing progressively better.

  Cup in hand, I was sitting in the back room of a bookshop just off the main square. The owner brushed more of the congealed papyrus dust from his face and bowed apologetically.

  ‘The problem is, My Lord,’ he said again, ‘that nobody wants any of this stuff nowadays. I think I’m the only one left who sells anything but Syriac and Saracen – and that’s my real business, you know.’