The Sword of Damascus a-4

by Richard Blake

  At last, with a smell of aromatic wood smoke, and the sound of heavy bolts drawn shut behind us, we were in yet another building. We stopped in what I thought was a large entrance hall, though the light was too dim for me to see out with or without my visor. Except for the loud breathing of the slaves, there was no sound. After some time spent waiting, the eunuch who’d collected me poked his green face between the curtains.

  ‘If My Lord will consent to be helped down,’ he whispered, ‘there are strong arms to carry you into the Presence.’

  I nodded, and made sure to climb slowly from the chair all by myself. There were a few lamps carried by black girls that allowed me to see for a few yards around. Two black eunuchs, both naked but for their jewelled loincloths, bowed together and reached out their arms to take me. I waved them away and leaned hard on my stick. There was a tongueless murmuring of protest, then the green eunuch gave a halting order in some language I didn’t know. Walking slowly for my benefit, he led the way to a small latticed door at the end of the hall. As he got there and waited a moment, the door swung silently open, and we passed into a small and dimly lit antechamber with two doors in the far wall. One of these doors opened, and we were now in a small sitting room. Decorated with an almost smothering heaviness of tapestries and cushions, two chairs were set to a table where I could see and smell the pot of spiced kava. I was beckoned into one of the silk-padded chairs, and the room emptied.

  I sat in silence. I poked my tongue against the left spring of my teeth. It was beginning to annoy. Worse, it was causing me another burst of salivation. As I pushed the teeth out of contact with the sorest points on my gums, I wished I’d remembered to bring some more of the gum steeped in opium that had always served to take away the pain.

  Suddenly, I heard the door open again. I was now sitting with my back to it. I got up to turn round.

  ‘Please, My Lord,’ a woman said in Saracen, ‘there is no need to stand on my account.’

  Already on my feet, I pretended not to hear. I leaned on my stick and turned. It was a woman covered all over in black in the Eastern manner. It’s hard to tell much about a woman when she’s swathed like a corpse at a funeral. But I could see she was both fat and unusually tall. She spoke the elegant language of her nation’s higher classes, and with the unstressed firmness of one accustomed to command. But for the voice, I’d have taken her figure for a man. She hurried forward and took my hand. She raised it to the heavy black veil that covered her face, and I felt a brush of lips against my fingers.

  ‘Do, please, be seated, My Lord,’ she said softly but urgently. There being no one else to do the honours, she poured two cups of the steaming liquid with her own hands. ‘Will My Lord take sugar?’ she asked, uncovering a dish of the shining, black crystals.

  I shook my head. I’d once found it a pleasing luxury. Nowadays, though, it tended to set my gums off still worse when they were sore. We sipped awhile in silence. This was good kava – not the already powdered stuff you mostly see in Constantinople, now direct trade with the Red Sea coasts has been cut, but freshly roasted and ground. It was spiced with cinnamon and something dark that I could sense, from the slight racing of my heart, was a stimulant.

  ‘Since we have both passed the age of any reasonable temptation,’ she said, ‘and because we may be seen as related, you will surely not consider it a breach of manners if I choose to make myself comfortable.’ She reached up and pulled at her veil and head covering. I saw a mass of black hair and, below that, a faintly brown face. Though pockmarked and a little bloated, it was a good face – very regular features, and well-proportioned. She saw the look of polite confusion on my own face and laughed.

  ‘I suppose that silly boy Karim simply packed you off here without telling you anything at all,’ she said. ‘Well, let us get over the matter of introductions. You are the Senator Alaric, trusted adviser to Caesar since long before the Prophet was other than a despised preacher in Mecca. I am Khadija, widow of Malik al-Ashtar. Please accept my most respectful greetings.’

  ‘Madam,’ I said, ‘I am delighted to make your acquaintance. And, if I may be so bold as to mention it, your own fame in the world is not forgotten. Who, indeed, will ever forget the woman who, on horseback, rallied the fainting Saracens at the Battle of Ctesiphon, and led them in a charge that shattered the last regular army of the Persians? There is even an epigram in Greek on the event. I can see that Karim is blessed on both sides of his family. I must, however, wonder…’ I ran out of words. How on earth could we be related? Had she been remarried to Meekal? If so, poor woman. But she was laughing at my inability to disguise the confusion.

  ‘Dear Alaric,’ she said, ‘though I should be proud if he were, Karim is not my son. He was got by Malik on one of his secondary wives. Most sadly, she died giving birth, and I was given charge of the baby. Now, she had been a dancing girl in Jerusalem before my husband took her to his bed, and she said she had been assured that His Magnificence the Senator Alaric was her grandfather.’

  I thought back over the fifty-odd years since I’d been in Jerusalem. That had been for the Restoration of the True Cross. There was no point asking if I might have got someone with child there. I’d spent all of my five days in the city – that is, all the time I hadn’t spent telling Heraclius what to say and do – in a blur of drug-maddened sex. There was no point asking if I’d got anyone with child. The only question was which of the two or three dozen women I’d gone through had been Karim’s great-grandmother. Free? Slave? Prisoner? Wife or daughter of someone important? That was beyond me.

  ‘Of course,’ Khadija went on, ‘I was never sure how much credit to give the story. The girl was not entirely balanced, and she was given to pretending more of herself than was justified. Though Karim was told the story as a child, I also cautioned him against spreading it. I now see you in the flesh, however, and I can have no doubt but the girl was telling the truth.’

  I thought of Karim. Could I see anything of myself in him? Now I thought about it, perhaps the ears. But there was no proper resemblance that I could see. Then again, we mostly spend very little time looking at ourselves, and never see ourselves as others do. If Khadija could see a resemblance, I wasn’t ashamed to admit the relationship. But she was speaking again.

  ‘When he was chosen by Meekal to collect you in Beirut, he was convinced the mission was a sign from Heaven. He has spoken nothing to me but your praise since his return to Damascus. I will not embarrass you with what he thinks of how you killed that assassin. But his father always spoke well of you. Among much else, he said you were the only one of the Greek negotiators whose word could be trusted. And, if he never doubted it was other than in the interests of the Empire, he was mindful of the support you rendered the followers of Ali in the civil wars. If only your warning had not been intercepted, my husband would never have made his last visit to Egypt.’

  I smiled sadly. And it had been a sad loss. I’d backed Ali to the hilt. Without Malik by his side, he was no match for Muawiya, and had been swept aside in the consolidation of Saracen rule over the East. But there was no reflecting on what might have been. The question was, what did this woman want now? Anyone who believes that Saracen women are political eunuchs has never come across women of the higher classes. Come to think of it, he’s never paid much attention to eunuchs. The last thing Khadija had in mind was an evening of gossip over the kava with her stepson’s great-grandfather.

  Chapter 48

  I finished my kava. There was a time when I’d have sucked in the residue at the bottom of the cup. This I’d have crunched and sucked until there was no more of the nutty goodness to extract. I was now more concerned about abrasions to my already sore gums. I emptied the grounds into a silver bowl set before us for that purpose, and replaced the cup on the small, polished table. Khadija raised the pot and looked a question at me. I smiled and watched as she poured again.

  What did the woman want? I’d have my answer, soon enough – though not before every other s
ubject had been exhausted. This was a diplomatic meeting. There was nothing here of the perfunctory courtesies, followed by hard bargaining, I’d known with her husband. This observed all the usual courtesy of the East. We used up the whole pot of kava on long accounts of our mutual relatives by marriage. It seemed I was connected, through Karim, to all the leading families who’d stood around the Saracen Prophet, and who now were the background government of all that the caliphs had taken. I spoke at length of the son from my second marriage, who was now Bishop of Athens, and of my son-in-law, who’d scored such a notable success in fighting the wild tribes on the northern shores of the Black Sea. Thanks to him, I’d been able to make up fully for the loss of the Egyptian grain tribute with a more natural set of trading arrangements. I watched closely as she paid attention to this. I took a risk, and spoke more of the last news I’d had of the Empire’s gradual and silent victories in pacifying the northern frontiers.

  ‘Is it necessary for you to withdraw for a few moments?’ she asked delicately as I finished my last cup of the hot beverage. I smiled politely. I’d come out with an empty bladder, and I could go quite a while longer yet. She got up and went over to the door. She opened it and clapped her hands loudly. Even before she was back in her place, one of her black girls was already coming through the door with another tray of refreshments.

  ‘Do honour me by trying one of the figs,’ she urged. ‘They are grown in the most sheltered garden of the palace, and they are now at their most succulent.’

  It wouldn’t do to take my teeth out in front of her, so I put one in my mouth and, trying not to let the seeds get under my plates, pulverised it with my tongue. I washed it down with another sip of hot kava. Unless my taste was now messed up, this new pot had left out the stimulant. I sipped again less cautiously. Nevertheless, my mind was beginning to work faster, and I could feel a cold sweat in my armpits.

  ‘We have long been aware of the Empire’s recovering strength,’ she said with a change of subject and tone. ‘When the generation before my own encountered the Greek and Persian Empires, the Soldiers of the Faith advanced as if into a desert. They swept aside armies without soldiers and took cities without people. Even before the disaster of our attack on Constantinople, however, we knew well that those days were past. At first, it seemed a question of brilliant holding actions by the Empire’s generals. We thought that, if only we could throw in army after army, those hard but shallow defences would collapse. But, every time we broke through the defences, we found that provinces, devastated only shortly before, were resettled and newly prosperous. And, always, we were pushed back out by the people themselves. We were facing an empire with better ships, better military discipline, and increasingly better internal conditions than our own. Our advantages of wealth and of numbers meant nothing.’

  Khadija spoke on with coolness and general understanding that wouldn’t have been out of place in an Imperial Council at its best. What she said I mostly knew already: how the collapse of every empire and kingdom in the East was bringing problems of over-extension, with armies stretched thin and local rebellions and disloyal governors. Even without the civil war, there could be no serious renewed attack on the Empire. But it was interesting to hear it all confirmed.

  ‘Do you remember,’ she suddenly asked, ‘what you said to my husband at your last meeting?’

  She’d got me again. We’d spent days aboard a Saracen galley – it was when we still balanced each other at sea – arguing about joint control of Cyprus.

  But she was continuing. ‘You told him that, like all other barbarians, we’d have one generation of conquest, and another of greatness. By the third generation, corrupt and disorganised, we’d sink into feebleness. We are now heading towards that generation, and what you said to Malik is now something often discussed.’

  I nodded and thought of trying another of the figs. Otherwise, the soft biscuits looked interesting. Sadly, even soft biscuits had hard crumbs. There was a knock on the door and the green eunuch entered. He bowed to me and presented Khadija with a slip of parchment, folded over and sealed with wax. She broke the seal with her thumbnail and glanced at the contents. Her face tightened and she looked more closely. She looked up and smiled an apology. She rose and took the slip over to the main ring of lamps. She held it over one of the flames until it was all but a cinder, then dropped what remained into a tray of sand.

  ‘If the messenger expects an answer,’ she said coldly, ‘tell him there is none.’ The eunuch bowed to her and again to me. As he pulled the door noiselessly shut, Khadija sat back down opposite me. She composed herself with a visible effort.

  ‘Alaric, because he is a renegade,’ she resumed, ‘there are those who doubt Meekal’s loyalty to the True Faith. I do not share this vulgar prejudice. I believe his conversion was genuine. I believe that his zeal is no cover for a second treason. His conduct in holding Syria together, after Muawiya had slid into his long senility, is proof enough of that – as has been his military conduct in the East. I also trust his judgement, that the Empire must be destroyed now or perhaps never. Steadily, with every year, the balance of advantage swings against us.’

  She paused and took a long sip from her cup. She sat back and looked steadily at me through narrowed eyes. I made sure to clear my face of all expression. She continued looking at me. I broke the tension as, with a polite murmur, I finally removed my teeth and began sucking at one of the biscuits. It had a taste of nutmeg, though perhaps more of hashish.

  ‘Do you agree that Greek fire is the key to Constantinople?’ she asked suddenly. ‘Do you agree that possession of the secret will allow us to destroy the Empire?’

  I finished my biscuit. I rinsed a mouthful of kava over my gums. I replaced my teeth and smiled.

  ‘If the reforms I put to Constans had been carried fully into effect,’ I said, ‘the question would now be whether the Empire could be restrained from an offensive of its own. However, even the partial implementation of my reforms has repaired the worst damage. Give the Empire another generation, and we shall see what tribute payments are then demanded of you and enforced. For the moment, the Empire reposes in the relative calm that your civil war has imposed on you. Another attack, with all your forces, might get you once again to the gates of Constantinople. Without a Greek monopoly of the weapon you mention, you might not be so easily driven away. That being said, I still fail to see how you can get through the gates. You’ve said yourself that the Empire’s weapons are better in general than your own.’

  She smiled and leaned forward. She put a gentle touch on my right hand. ‘That is all very well,’ she said. ‘However, let me also ask how close do you think Meekal is to reproducing the Greek fire here in Damascus? He has been working on it now for eight years. The cost of the work has at times been crushing. It might have been still more if, after his last failure, steps had not been taken to limit his access to people and materials.’

  I sucked on my upper plate and thought. I’d been right that Meekal was being pressed on the financial side. And that was one of the reasons I’d been lifted from Jarrow. Whatever the cost, it had been easier than breaking through that wall of resistance from the old families who stood about the Caliph. I sucked harder on my upper plate. I got my tongue under it and licked out a crumb that wouldn’t dissolve.

  ‘How close is Meekal to success?’ she asked again.

  I shrugged and pretended not to be looking closely into her face. ‘Since I still haven’t agreed to help him,’ I said, ‘I can’t say anything at all about his progress. Surely, you’d have access to his reports.’

  Khadija smiled again and shook her head. ‘There are no written reports,’ she said. ‘As for direct inspection, Meekal has concentrated work out in the desert, twenty miles from Damascus. There, he conceals everything behind a cordon of impenetrable security. None of us knows what he is doing out there. We know about the big explosion there – indeed, we heard it here in the palace. We know the broad costs. We really know nothing else
. I was rather hoping that you would be able to enlighten me.’

  ‘My dear Khadija,’ I said with a little smile, ‘until – rather unless – I agree to help him, I shall be in no position to enlighten anyone.’ A most interesting turn things were taking; all this talk of ‘we’ and ‘us’ was hardly accidental.

  ‘You will not be aware, My Lord,’ she said with another change of tone, ‘of the earthquake of three years ago that levelled part of the sea wall of Constantinople. I only heard of it myself from a Syrian monk who was there for this year’s Easter festival. This was a breach easily repaired. However, in the course of repair, it was discovered that much of the land wall was also on the point of collapse. Two entire miles of the wall must be taken down in sections and rebuilt. Though every monk in the City was pressed into the work, the Empire has neither money nor labour to complete the rebuilding to the quality needed until next year. This surely puts your confidence about the Empire’s security in a different light.’

  It certainly did. If Meekal got his way, nothing would keep him from riding into Constantinople. I took my teeth out again and looked at the chip in the ivory. It was beginning to annoy my tongue. I’d have it repaired sooner than planned.

  ‘Madam,’ I said, ‘I think you are now asking me to set to work on a project that is more assured of success than I had thought. What makes you think I will assist in the destruction of the Empire that I served for so long?’

  ‘Because it is the will of God that you help us,’ she said, with another interesting emphasis on the ‘us’. ‘It is our destiny to replace all other kingdoms and empires with our own, and to replace all other faiths with our own. And you must realise how God has brought you here to help in the work. When Meekal suggested his plan to the Caliph, there were those who laughed even to his face. Yet here you are. The Imperial Navy could not stop you. The Angels of the Lord tried twice to kill you, and failed. In all the adventures of your journey, God has preserved your life. God has preserved you in health and strength. You surely must see the reason.’