The Sword of Damascus a-4

by Richard Blake

  I laughed bleakly. ‘When he gave his victory speech in the Circus in Constantinople, Heraclius departed from the text I’d written for him and referred to some prophecy a monk had jabbered down from atop a column: that before his reign ended, the Euphrates would no longer be the frontier between two empires. The man was spot-on, it turned out. Sadly, that river does now run through a single empire – it just isn’t now our Empire! Still, it might have been worse.’ I thought of those desperate holding battles we’d fought along the southern borders of our Asian Provinces. In Syria, and then Egypt, we’d lost our two richest provinces to these people. But we’d kept the rest. It might have been worse. And worse it might still be.

  But the inner gate was now opening, and fingers of black smoke drifted through. I stared a question at Karim, who looked back, trying to keep the embarrassment from his face. He got back into his chair, and the carrying slaves took hold again of the long poles to front and back.

  ‘You might ask,’ I added quickly, ‘why we didn’t put up a better fight. But, you see, the all-conquering armies of Heraclius had been paid off, and we had no money to raise more. It didn’t help that Heraclius had flooded the regained provinces with tax gatherers – though worse than that were the priests he sent in to bully everyone into the Monothelite Compromise.’ Yes, the Monothelite Compromise. Sergius and I had been very proud of that. Properly sold, that could have ended two centuries of dispute over the Nature of Christ. Trust Heraclius to try imposing it at sword point. We’d simply got three verbal farts for the theologians to cry at each other, instead of two. But I put the sad recollection from mind and carried on with the matter in hand. ‘The Saracens caught us off balance. If Heraclius had died of a seizure in that Jerusalem ceremony, I’d certainly have got young Constans to take the right action.

  ‘On the other hand, Heraclius may for once have been right when he buggered up what little resistance we could offer. When they were attacked, the Persians didn’t have our choice in the matter. For prestige reasons, they had to stand and fight. They threw everything we’d left to them at the Saracens when they invaded. They were utterly defeated, and their whole empire was swallowed up. We at least were left with the Asian Provinces, where even the common people are Greeks. It may – it really may – have been for the best.’

  The lesson was over – rather, my part of the lesson was over. The inner gate swung fully open, and we were carried swiftly forward into the capital of an empire five times larger than the one now ruled from Constantinople.

  ‘We cannot proceed along the Avenue of the Righteous War,’ Karim said hurriedly. Directly before us, the street had been blocked with large cloth screens. These were held steady by men whose bearded faces my tired eyes weren’t up to seeing in detail, but whose posture indicated nothing happy. I didn’t for a moment doubt that all this was for my benefit. I gave a friendly wave. ‘I am informed that the street has been closed for essential repairs,’ Karim went on. ‘But the Baths of Omar will surely impress My Lord. They can accommodate more people than all the public baths of Constantinople combined. If we go this way, we shall approach them from behind.’

  ‘Let it be as you wish, my dear young friend,’ I cried happily. If I cocked my good ear in the right position, I could just make out bursts of wild shouting, and perhaps a clash of arms, far behind those fluttering cloth screens. If Edward could hear anything out of the ordinary, his face said nothing. I directed his attention to the remains of a triumphal column put up in ancient times. The statue that had once topped it was long gone – perhaps it hadn’t survived the Persian occupation. The column itself was now surrounded by scaffolding, and was coming down a section at a time.

  Chapter 34

  ‘On behalf of His Majestic Holiness the Caliph, Commander of the Faithful,’ the Grand Eunuch trilled in very dramatic Greek, ‘I must announce that Your Magnificence is our most honoured guest. All that you may require, it shall be our pleasure to give.’

  I looked out of the window at the bronze pipe that was loosely held in hoops six feet apart. These, in turn, were clamped to the outer wall. I didn’t need the demonstration he’d failed to arrange. I could see that, if the animals on the ground moved fast enough, it would rotate, and water would be carried up by its internal screw to the vast copper tank that took up most of this floor of the tower. I wanted to ask how the screw would be turned that carried water from this tank to the one that must have been set into the roof of the tower. I also wondered how much noise all this would make as it grated round and round in those weather-roughened hoops. But I suspected I’d get no sense out of the creature. Better to wait and see for myself.

  ‘It is to free you from the polluted air of the city that I have given you rooms in the Tower of Heavenly Peace,’ he explained, just a hint in his voice to give the true motive. ‘You are free to come and go as you please. You merely need to have the carrying slaves summoned with your internal chair to be moved up and down, and to be taken where you will within the great space of a palace adorned by His Majestic Holiness. The servant quarters, be assured, are on the floor beneath your own. The most loving and eager slaves of His Majestic Holiness have been assigned to obey – indeed, to pre-empt – your every request.’

  I grunted and asked about my books. Looking on the bright side, the smoke of Constantinople had increasingly got on my chest. And it would be interesting to have a good view over Damascus.

  ‘They have not yet arrived,’ the answer came. ‘There was – ah – trouble on the road that has blocked communications with Beirut for anyone not guarded so well as My Lord was on his journey. But I can promise that everything will have been collected from your lodgings and sent over.’ He ushered me out of the empty room and got us all back into our carrying chairs, then set the panting slaves to continue about their business of carrying us up the long and airless, winding ramp that filled the innermost column of the tower. Except it didn’t rotate, it was a larger version of the water screw. The only light here came from bronze lamps that hung, at regular intervals, from the underside of the next upward turn of the screw. If there was a little staircase somewhere, it wasn’t evident on my first inspection.

  Our journey finished right at the top of the tower. The Grand Eunuch beckoned to one of his assistants, who produced a golden key. With a push and a gentle click, this opened a door of cedar wood set flush into the wall. I passed into a corridor lit by glazed windows in the ceiling. There’s no point giving my first impressions of the layout of my suite within the palace. After a comically tortuous route through the city, and then the interminable magnificence of my reception in the great entrance hall, I was too tired, and too bursting for another piss, to pay that much attention to my surroundings. So I’ll tell it plain. We were housed at the top of the eastern tower of what had, when we ruled, been the Governor’s residence. Now, repaired and much enlarged, and all pagan and Christian imagery doubtless removed or painted over, it was the palace from which a depressing and constantly growing fraction of mankind was ruled.

  Our rooms were wholly contained on the top floor of the tower’s big outer rim. Some of these rooms were connected to each other by doors. All could be reached by an inner corridor that hugged the cylinder of approach ramps. Though not of equal size, each room had the same depth of about thirty feet – this being the broken radius from the outer wall of the tower to the inner corridor – and, of course, had the general shape of a fan. In every room, the arc of the outer wall allowed for plenty of window space. This, plus more of those glazed ceilings, meant the whole suite was bathed in light.

  I say we were on the top floor. Beneath us were another five, and the third housed the break in the water-raising system. With the exception of this third floor, and the one directly beneath us, which housed the slaves and all the other ministers to my wants, the others had been locked, their doors secured by red seals.

  Leaving aside that we were sixty feet up, and the only access was through a door two inches thick with an outer lock, a
n emperor himself would have had trouble to complain about the arrangement and the furnishing of our accommodation. Indeed, bearing in mind that the present Caliph kept up the show of simple living that Muawiya had used as legitimising propaganda after murdering his way to the top, I may have been given the most luxurious quarters in the whole palace. And if it was ultimately a prison, what else had I expected?

  After a long and thoughtful interlude in the facilities – no shortage of running water, I could see; and there must have been a separate firehouse for us somewhere up on the roof to heat us in winter and the water all year round – I rejoined the Grand Eunuch, who’d been waiting in one of the public rooms of the suite. I knew Edward well enough now to see the rising alarm behind the impassive mask of his face. I made a feeble pleasantry about the lack of need for any of the silver lamp brackets that hung from the ceiling of every room. He smiled briefly, then went back to examining the two-foot panels of glass that were fitted together to stop up all the windows.

  The Grand Eunuch coughed slightly to regain my attention, then beamed and struck a pose of obsequious love. He pointed at a small ebony box that occupied a table all by itself near the window. I stared as the box was brought ceremoniously forward. What was this? Some piece of jewellery – more of those endless little gifts that were supposed to put me in a good mood?

  ‘It was decided a long time ago – and by no less than His Majestic Holiness,’ the creature now squawked – ‘that My Lord should be made to feel as much at home as could possibly be achieved. Beyond all else, you will surely appreciate the trouble taken by our agents at the very edge of the universe to locate this particular object.’

  It would never do for me to hurry forward for an inspection. So I motioned Edward forward to take the little box and open it. For the first time on my first day in Damascus, I gave way to completely unfeigned astonishment.

  ‘How on earth did you lay hands on those?’ I gasped. That eunuch had finally got me, and I couldn’t be bothered to hide the fact. I looked incredulously at the false teeth. I took them into shaking hands. Yes, they were mine, sure enough. One of the front ivories had been somehow chipped – as if someone had tried using them to chew on a bone. But this had been carefully filed smooth. Otherwise, the cleaning aside, they were exactly the same as when I’d reluctantly pulled them out for that bastard ship master to get me across the Channel. I pressed them lightly together, noting the tension of the springs that held them apart. I opened my mouth and slipped them in. The loss of two further upper teeth left little gaps that a goldsmith’s attention would be needed to repair. But the gold plates still fitted perfectly on to my gums. I snapped my jaws together with a gratifying click, then turned to Edward and recited two of the more complex verses from a Callimachus ode. He looked back at me, horrified fear now plain on his face. I laughed and tried out further sentences in Latin and Saracen. A shame sound has no mirror. It would have been good to hear the difference these objects made to my apparent age. Never mind the slight soreness I’d feel for a day or two – nor the endless drooling of excess saliva – as I got used to them again. It was a glorious meeting with an old friend I’d missed almost every day, and never thought I’d see again.

  I showed off my teeth with a smile at no one in particular and pretended to pay attention to the vague superlatives the Grand Eunuch gave in place of an explanation. In truth, I had no need of the details. I’d already discovered how small the world can be, given limitless money and intelligent determination. Without feeling the need to pretend helplessness, I left my stick where I’d put it and walked over to the largest of the windows. A blur of domes and minarets and scaffolding and the cheerful brown of roof tiles, Damascus lay before me. I tried to see if the largest building – it occupied the far side of the square fronted by the palace – still had a cross on its central dome. Even in the good light of the afternoon, that was beyond me. But I licked the upper plate of my falsies, and thought happily of some experiment I’d had to break off in Constantinople when I heard the Emperor’s guards were hurrying across the City for me.

  ‘I cannot begin to express the joy that His Majestic Holiness has brought me,’ I declaimed. ‘I cannot begin to express the love that your own goodness of heart has kindled within me.’ The Grand Eunuch simpered and looked at his fingernails. His main assistant went into a fit of polite giggles that he hid behind both hands. ‘One thing only I ask to make this the most perfect day of my entire life.’ I paused. He leaned forward, ready to anticipate my smallest wish. ‘I beseech you to send into my presence – tomorrow morning, if possible – three of the finest glassmakers in Damascus, together with three of the finest shapers and polishers of precious stones.’

  The Grand Eunuch now looked puzzled. But after all that bleating about hospitality, it wouldn’t have done even to ask a question. He turned to the smallest of his assistants, who took out a waxed tablet and scratched importantly away.

  ‘Do ask them to bring their tools,’ I added, ‘and do ensure that they are men of good general intelligence.’

  Chapter 35

  I splashed happily in the sun-heated pool. Once again, I wriggled free of the anxious slaves, who’d doubtless been charged, on loss of their lives, not to let an old man drown his silly self. I came up coughing and spluttering a few feet from the edge where Edward glowered down at me. I’d avoided him the night before by ordering him off to an early bed, and then withdrawing into my office with a clerk and a technical draughtsman to take my various dictations. Now, unless I wanted to spend all morning swimming up and down or playing water ball with the slaves, there was no avoiding him.

  ‘Don’t bother me with questions,’ I said firmly in English. ‘Either I can’t answer them, or I won’t.’ He hadn’t liked being shut into a gilded birdcage. But it was those teeth of mine – white and glittering in the afternoon sun – that had really set him off. Until then, he’d taken almost everything since my killing of those northerners for granted. He’d been awed by the superb self-assurance with which I’d brushed aside every difficulty and had got everyone dancing attendance on me. He’d been repeatedly overcome by the glories of the civilised world. Caesarea, Beirut, now Damascus: he’d no sooner got used to one apparently great city, than he’d been shown something greater still. And, like a child at night in the forest, clutching for safety at his father’s hand, he’d been ever beside the Great and Magnificent Alaric. At last, he’d been brought to something near a full realisation of where we stood. He might have sworn obedience to me in all things back on the Tipasa beach. That didn’t abolish his right to ask questions. I avoided the slaves again and struck out for the far side of the pool. In the warm buoyancy of the water, I might have been twenty years younger. With frantic, if silent, concern, the slaves waded after me.

  Edward was already there when I arrived. I peered at the buffed gleam of his toenails and at the blur of yellow silk that began at his knees and went up to his neck.

  ‘You told me it was the Emperor who directed your kidnapping from Jarrow,’ he snapped.

  I laughed at the hurt and faintly scared tone he couldn’t keep from his voice. ‘Correction, my dearest and most beautiful adopted son,’ I mocked back at him. ‘Since you were in no position to tell me otherwise, I assumed it was the Master of the Offices in Constantinople. Rather than vex an old man with questions now, you really should have made better enquiries of poor Hrothgar while he was in a position to enlighten you.’

  Edward knelt down and looked me steadily in the eye. ‘It must have taken months – perhaps years – to find those teeth,’ he snapped again. He was no fool. He’d seen their implication almost before I’d popped them into my mouth. ‘If it’s the Caliph who employed Hrothgar, what was Brother Joseph doing in Jarrow?’

  ‘Oh, come now, dear boy,’ I said lightly. I stood up in the pool and raised my arms. Two strong and panting slaves took hold of me and lifted me out. Muttering away in Syriac, they towelled me off and carried me to a little couch. Edward came and s
tood beside me while someone fussed with an overhead canopy to keep the main force of the sun off my shrivelled, age-spotted body. ‘Come now, my dear. Doesn’t at least Joseph make sense to you now? He was sent out from Constantinople to make sure that this Saracen plot – and you don’t keep much from the Intelligence Bureau – didn’t come to anything. Once you’d ensured his failure by that brilliant pretence of stupidity, his job was changed to making sure I never completed the voyage.

  ‘The one question I haven’t been able to answer is what our mutual friend Cuthbert was about. We both agree that he was involved in the first siege of the monastery – his eagerness to have the gate opened went beyond any common desire for martyrdom. But that’s all I can presently say. Did you never think, during those sessions of moral uplift he arranged, to take his cock out of your mouth and engage him in a little conversation?’ I’d gone too far with that sally. I had promised him that the past was blotted out. Now, I’d thrown it straight in his face. He looked away, hurt. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said gently. ‘But let me ask in a more reasonable manner – did you learn anything of Cuthbert that might indicate what he was about in the monastery?’

  Edward shook his head. ‘If Joseph was there to keep you from falling into Saracen hands,’ he asked, now moving on to the next obvious point, ‘why did he not simply kill you when he had the chance?’ I shrugged. I reached out for my teeth, put them in and flashed him a brilliant smile. I got a black look in return. ‘You might also tell me, My Lord, why the Saracens should devote years of effort to getting you here, and why the Empire should devote nearly the same – plus half its navy – to trying to stop this.’

  I rolled over on to my back and stretched out my arms for a good oiling. ‘I might tell you many things,’ I answered, now serious, ‘if I could, or if I wanted to.’