The Sword of Damascus a-4

by Richard Blake

  I watched Meekal work himself into another frenzy of eloquence. As his voice rose, and he switched between Greek and Latin and Saracen, I shuffled carefully round to where I could flop back on to the sofa beside that discarded chronicle. I looked at Meekal and pulled off my dotted visor. It showed me too many copies, in too great clarity, of the roots of his dyed beard and the increasingly wild look in his eyes.

  ‘Oh, please, Meekal, please!’ I cried, holding up my hands for silence. ‘You’ve made your speech. Don’t spoil the effect with repetition. You tell me that, if only I join you in shitting on the Empire, we’ll have a better world out of it. If that’s your meaning, I think I’ve heard enough. You might care now to say what I can expect from a refusal to join you in this venture. Does it involve an escort back to my lodgings in Beirut?’

  That brought him back to his senses. ‘Refuse my offer,’ he said, his face pushed close to mine, ‘and I’ll kill you with my own hands. I’ll kill you as an apostate.’ He spoke slowly and with controlled fury. ‘And, before you start whining that life is nothing much to lose for a man of your age, just reflect that I know you better than any man alive. And let’s not also forget my pretty young uncle. I might – given proper reason – choose to regard him as my kinsman, and share with him under your will. Or I might spurn him as your last barbarian catamite. I could then find him a place among the Caliph’s dancing boys. Or I could have his looks prolonged with a little nip of the gelding knife, and set him to combing hair in my own harem. I might even have him taught to sing most fetchingly to my wives.

  ‘So, what is it to be, my darling grandfather? Will you join with the Faithful in spreading light over the world? Or will you die cursing the day my agents found your refuge in the West?’

  ‘My time is upon me,’ I said. ‘In other words, I need a shit. Will you have the kindness to call some slaves up to attend to me?’ I grinned and rubbed my belly. ‘Or must Meekal the Merciless soil his hands with other than blood?’

  Chapter 46

  ‘You’ll need to push your finger in to get me properly clean,’ I said, still leaning forward. ‘Mind you, be very careful. I didn’t like the look of those fingernails.’

  Grunting and now farting himself from the strain, Meekal reached down to open the valve that sent a stream of water to carry my little offering into the downpipe from the Tower of Heavenly Peace. The shitty stain in the channel beneath the ebony seat he’d leave for someone else to clean.

  ‘Ooh!’ I cried in a voice that echoed about the room, ‘you’ve a way with that oily sponge. What a bath slave the world lost when I rescued your father from outside that church in Constantinople.’ I twisted round to look up into the stony face, and wondered if he was reflecting on the deficiencies of my argument. It was hard to tell if he was thinking anything at all.

  Meekal helped me into one of the smaller sitting rooms. This looked over one of the less grand prospects of Damascus. But there was a table set with food. He took off the napkin that covered a dish of bread pulled from the inner part of a loaf, and waved at a dish of pitted olives and soft cheese. He went back along to my bedchamber and returned with the wine and the Saracen chronicle. I pulled my dotted visor down again over my eyes and looked through it. With plenty of sunlight falling on it from above, the chronicle was so clear before me that I could see small strands of papyrus where the copyist’s pen had snagged the sheet. I scrolled idly backwards, looking out for the passage where Meekal had first stood before the Caliph and called out in a great voice his profession of faith. Perhaps, after all, the writer had the makings of an historian. I looked up and smiled into the sweaty, now desperate face.

  ‘Look at this again,’ I said, holding out the visor. ‘Take it and look at it closely. When you snatched it from the hands of the man who was still finishing its ornamentation, you saw almost at once what its purpose was. And if you couldn’t by yourself reproduce the elegant workmanship that lets it balance so lightly on the face, you could easily make a functioning copy for yourself.

  ‘With the weapon I invented, it’s an entirely different matter. The combustible mixture itself is made of specific ingredients that must be combined in exactly the right proportions. It must then be matured like wine – use it too early or too late, and it will not ignite. There is then what may be called the delivery system. The bronze kettles that hold the two mixtures – yes, there are two mixtures – must be of a certain hardness. The fire that heats the kettles must do so to a precise temperature: too low, and the mixture will not boil, too high, and it will explode. The spouts through which the mixtures are forced must, for the same reason, be neither too wide nor too narrow; and the steel must be hard enough to survive the repeated variations of temperature. The fire at the end of these spouts has rules for its heat and placement.

  ‘What I’m saying, dear boy, is that the manufacture and use of Greek fire do not suggest themselves to the casual observer – though you know that already. Moreover, the business of reproducing the secret would need a cluster of skills that are beyond the abilities of any one man. If you want to make people see again, you could turn these things out by the thousand in no time – and do so without my further assistance. Or you could lock me in here and have me turn them out for you. If you want Greek fire, you need skills that I do not myself possess. And it seems that you need skills that are not possessed in Syria. You are asking me to oversee a project that would involve not so much reproduction as reinvention.’

  I turned my attention to the food, and made sure to slobber as much down my naked front as I could. All the time, Meekal stood before me breathing hard.

  ‘So you will do as the Caliph begs?’ he asked during a lull in my noisy, unmannered eating.

  ‘I thought it was you who was asking, dear boy,’ I said. ‘If it’s the Commander of the Faithful himself who begs my assistance, perhaps I should await his return from whatever war he is fighting.’

  Meekal crashed a hairy fist on to the table. There was a splash of cheesy water all over his black outer tunic.

  ‘Will you do as I ask?’ he now roared. ‘Or must I bring that fucking child in and castrate him under your eyes?’

  ‘Do that,’ I said, ‘and you can fuck yourself for the secret.’ I took a sip of wine. I raised my arms and looked at Meekal. He looked back awhile, then reached for a fresh napkin and began wiping me clean. How much had this project cost so far? How much had getting me here cost? If you’re a little person looking in, a government has unlimited resources for getting its way. But I’d been an insider too long to know other than the truth. It didn’t matter how much of his subjects’ gold the Caliph could steal from them: it always had more than one possible use. How much of this had Meekal lavished on the project? And how much of his prestige rested on the project’s complete success?

  ‘Now,’ I said, getting up and walking out of the room. I left my sheet where it had fallen off me. He picked it up and followed me into my office. I pointed him into a chair and leaned on my desk in much the same position as I’d taken with the assassin. He waved the sheet in my direction. I wrinkled my nose at the spoiled silk and looked at him. He’d seen me naked having my shit. He could carry on seeing me naked. ‘My darling Michael – or Meekal, or whatever else I’m supposed to call you nowadays – I have been made an offer I might not be able to refuse. You can bet your life I’ll not accept it, though, until I have some proper guarantees of the boy’s safety. Oh, and when I say “proper guarantees”, I don’t have your personal word in mind. The whole world knows how little that is worth.’ I stopped and pushed my visor back down to see if I could read the titles of the books shelved against the far wall.

  ‘I could adopt the boy,’ Meekal suggested with a faint smile.

  I couldn’t read the titles. But I could see my old walking stick. Still bloody, it was propped between two blocks of the shelves. I walked forward and recovered it. A shame it was ruined. I’d been so pleased when I took delivery of it in Beirut.

  ‘Mich
ael,’ I cried in a soft, menacing tone as I moved towards him. I leaned over him, lifted my visor and stared into his eyes. ‘Do you remember that time when you were a boy, and I caught you torturing a puppy? Do you also remember how I set about you with a slave whip? You may give yourself airs and graces among the darkies and anyone else who’s scared of your dungeons. So far as I’m concerned, you’re still the little shitbag I was sorry almost at once I hadn’t beaten to death.

  ‘No, shut up and listen.’ I moved my face closer to his. ‘I have read the tiresome utterances of your new Prophet. I have had their deeper obscurities explained to me by a learned Saracen. Adoption, I have no doubt you are aware, is not allowed among the Faithful. And under the Greek law that applies to me and mine within the Caliph’s dominions, Edward is already your uncle. You can no more adopt him than you can sodomise yourself.’

  Meekal had been recoiling further and further into his chair – perhaps to get away from my less than wholesome breath. I now suddenly stepped back and hit him hard on the chest with my stick. He fell backwards, and only that fancy turban he was wearing prevented his head from cracking open on the tiles. I stood over his fallen body, holding my stick like a teacher’s cane. What would the world not have given to see Meekal the Merciless reduced to tears by a silly old man? What would he have not given for it not to have happened?

  ‘Now, get out of my sight,’ I snarled. ‘Come back when you have something better to offer than a puff of oral smegma.’ I walked past him out of the room. As I was opening a window in the room next door to look properly over Damascus, I heard the main door to my suite crash shut.

  ‘It might have been the opium,’ Edward agreed.

  I nodded sympathetically. While I was asleep, the slaves had come back in. It was useful that I was woken in more clothes than I’d been wearing when I dropped off. The light was going down fast over Damascus, and, through the still open window, I could smell the palace kitchens hard at work. We sat, a concerned Karim beside Edward, in the small sitting room where I’d earlier dined. Edward tried to look brave again, but went pale instead.

  ‘You might wish to bear in mind,’ I said, ‘that to see a man flayed, after he’s been made to watch all his children roasted alive, can sometimes be too much even for the hardened spectator at these events.’ Karim raised an eyebrow, as if this were the first time he’d ever heard the point made. Edward went back to looking ashamed. Executions are a morning attraction in most cities, but I didn’t feel inclined to ask where they’d been for the rest of the day. I only hoped Karim had given Edward a better tour of Damascus than he’d so far managed for me.

  ‘So what are you both doing this evening?’ I asked. ‘You seem to have had a jolly enough day together. I imagine you’ll want to round it off with a visit to a brothel or some other place of public recourse. If so, I regret to say that Meekal has probably given orders for Edward not to be allowed again through the palace gates.’ Both faces dropped. Then Karim looked angry. I raised a hand to silence whatever outburst was coming. ‘No,’ I said, ‘you should know that you cannot possibly hope to cross a man like Meekal directly. But I am sure the palace itself affords endless opportunities for entertainment.

  ‘However, in young Edward’s case, I do suggest a break from enjoyment. The Saracen tutor I employed the other day made his first visit this morning, but was sent away. I believe he will return with the dusk. For obvious reasons, Greek will be the language of instruction.’ I saw Edward’s face cloud over. ‘Come now, my little son,’ I mocked. ‘Unlike our own English, Saracen does not allow clusters of more than two consonants. This helps give it – in the right mouth, that is – a most beautiful sound. You should learn it for its own sake, and because it is the language of your new friend Karim – and because I have never come across a language that did not turn out sooner or later to be of use. Go, then, and prepare yourself to receive your tutor. Karim, I am sure, will be happy to sit in on the lesson.’

  I sat back and looked out of the window. The day was almost over, and, if I’d seen off that turd of a grandson, I could record no other worthwhile activity. So much still to do. So little time left in which to do it. I glanced at Edward and Karim. Their combined ages probably didn’t go far beyond thirty-five. I sighed and looked again out of the window.

  ‘You look sad, My Lord,’ Edward said. ‘Shall we not sit with you awhile?’

  ‘Thank you, but no,’ I said firmly. ‘You go and get ready for that lesson. Don’t bother looking in on me afterwards. I think I will spend the evening alone with some opium. The strain of the past few nights is heavy upon me. And I have yet to recover myself from the journey to Damascus.’ I reached for my stick – no replacement had yet been supplied, so I’d washed most of the blood off the old one in the latrine – and began my weary progression back to bed.

  Karim stood up. ‘My Lord,’ he said, now in Saracen. I stopped. There was something both urgent and scared in his voice. ‘My Lord, if I could beg one more evening of you, it would be most gratefully received in certain quarters.’

  As I wondered what he could possibly mean, I heard a movement in the corridor outside. Karim coughed loudly. Without any knock, the door opened, and an elaborately dressed eunuch entered.

  ‘I come, My Lord,’ he trilled in Syriac, ‘from a person of the highest quality.’ He was followed into the room by one of the household slaves, who set up an immediate babble about my not being disturbed. Karim stood forward with a small purse. He pressed it into the slave’s hand and pushed the man from the room. The eunuch, his lead-ravaged face painted a fashionable green, smiled and bowed low. ‘I am instructed to ask that My Lord should come at once,’ he said with one of those thrilling descents of the voice that only a eunuch can manage. ‘The secrecy of my mission has required a most delicate calculation of times with the changing of the guard outside this tower. If there is any delay, the mission must be cancelled.’

  I looked at Edward, whose face was its usual blank. The conversation had been in a language he didn’t understand, and it was plain that Karim had told him nothing. Karim’s own face, if a little red, was a diplomatic blank.

  ‘Are you in a position to tell me what all this is about?’ I asked. He shook his head. I groaned, and thought of my soft bed and the still softer opium that would carry me into a night of blackness. ‘Get me ready,’ I said wearily. ‘And get me a cloak. There was a chill breeze last night that I’d not wish to expose myself to again.’

  Chapter 47

  Surrounded by a wall nearly as high as that of the main city, the palace must take up about a fifth of Damascus in size. As I’d suggested to Edward, it was a world in itself. I hadn’t been able to explore very much of it. But my own experience of the Imperial Palace in Constantinople – of which this was largely a copy – had told me what to expect. The curtained chair that carried me out of the Tower of Heavenly Peace moved briskly across the surrounding lawns and into one of the larger buildings. Through the silken meshes that allowed no one to see into the darkened interior, I peered out at my surroundings. Now at a pace deliberately slow and stately, so as not to attract notice, we passed through a set of halls, each of the most lavish magnificence. The lighting was so brilliant, I had no trouble using my visor to see around.

  In perhaps the largest and most lavish of these halls, there was an erotic dance in its early stages. A blonde girl stood naked on a raised platform. Arms and legs wide outstretched, face upturned with eyes closed, she jerked and twitched in time to the music of drums and wailing flutes that came from below. I saw the glitter of nipple rings on her large, erect breasts. On each side of her, naked boys, their bodies painted gold, hopped and gyrated in time, though with less restraint, to the music. Before her, covered all over in silver scales, a black girl knelt. I watched fascinated as, tail first, and inch by inch, she fed a live snake into the blonde girl. In and in, the thing went – a good five feet of it. Anatomically impossible! you may cry? Well, I saw it happen, and in good light. Before my chai
r had carried me too far past to see more, she’d got virtually the whole thing in. Now, her flat belly distended, the blonde girl moved more freely to the music. The snake’s head poked out like some dark, mobile penis. The boys capered and strutted, their own dance punctuated by bursts of rapid wanking. About the platform, large, bearded men sat in a semicircle. Beside each was another naked girl. I had the impression they were all drinking wine. Certainly, their growls of appreciation sounded drunken. At times, they drowned out all but the higher squeals of the flutes. Before my chair had passed completely through a gateway of polished granite, I heard a still louder roar from the men, and heard the scraping of sandals on the marble floor as if everyone was getting up to press closer about the platform. But I could now see nothing through the curtains of my chair, and we were soon passing through other, much smaller rooms.

  I saw men sitting around gambling. I saw men and girls and boys huddled together in groups, clouds all about them of smoke that smelled of burning opium. I saw conjurers and acrobats. In one room, I even saw an old man, dressed in a Greek cloak and demonstrating one of the proofs from Euclid on an immense board that filled the entire far wall. His lecture was followed by a crowd of men and boys, who scratched silently away on waxed tablets.

  Now, we were in the open again, and could move more quickly. I felt the carrying slaves jog over lawns and gravel paths and, more often, along paved routes. We skirted several large buildings on which bright torches had been fixed. We passed through another building that was internally in darkness, though, from the echo of the footsteps of the carrying slaves, was no less magnificent than the first building. I felt the rise and fall from level, and heard the dull sound of leather on wood as we passed over a long bridge. There was the sudden chill and darkness of a tunnel, then more grass and gravel. It had rained briefly while I was under cover, or there had been late watering of the gardens. I could smell the wet marble as it mingled with the shrubs and flowers about me. Though always distant, I heard competing strains of music and loud cheers. On one occasion, I heard the shrill, continuing screams as of tortured boys or women.