The Sword of Damascus a-4

by Richard Blake

  I sat down in the chair that had been placed behind me, and felt very weary. Meekal strutted about the kettles, looking at them, testing their still great heat with the tip of a finger.

  ‘Congratulations, then, my Sword of Damascus,’ he said, now in Saracen. ‘God has brought your labours to a fine conclusion.’ He dropped his voice and went back into Latin. ‘Does it not disappoint you, though?’ he crooned. ‘You spent my childhood lecturing me how the application of reason to the natural world could improve human life without limit. Yet your greatest demonstration of this reason has only been to destroy life – to create a weapon of massive destructive power. I wasn’t there to see it used outside Constantinople. But I saw the burns on some of the few who survived.’

  I looked about for my wig. It must have fallen to the ground behind the wall when I’d got up.

  ‘When I used the words “complete success”,’ I said, ‘I meant complete success this far. We still haven’t seen a demonstration of the main weapon. The mixture we’re brewing needs much more pressure. We still don’t know how the kettle joints will stand up to that. Still, I do rather think you’ll have a fine show to put on for the Commander of the Faithful.’ I paused. ‘I must ask myself, though, how he’ll take it when you tell him that you are to be the only person, outside the Imperial Palace in Constantinople, who has the secret of the Greek fire.’ I hid behind my visor and watched his face carefully. He smothered a smile and muttered something about revealing the secret when the time was right.

  I would have pushed my luck a little further. At this moment, though, the gate opened over on my left, and one of the guards came slowly towards us back first. He turned as he reached us and looked steadily at the ground. Two men on horseback had been sighted, he told Meekal. They’d been watching the monastery for some while from a little hill a quarter of a mile to the north.

  ‘They’ll see fuck all from out there!’ Meekal said, still in Latin. He laughed. ‘No action for now,’ he said to the guard in Saracen. ‘My compliments to General Hakim, though. Ask him to get his men quietly ready to face an attack.

  ‘We’re safe enough,’ he explained to me once the man had withdrawn. ‘Those Cross-Worshipping bandits aren’t up to regular fighting. Besides, I’ve left orders in Damascus that, if we aren’t back by tomorrow morning, an army of ten thousand is to be sent out to relieve us.’

  ‘It seems the Mighty Meekal thinks of everything,’ I said drily. ‘Your real grandfather might have been impressed – assuming, that is, he could have overlooked your treason. Old Priscus was capable of many things. But, if always in his own manner, he was loyal to the Empire.’ That wiped the smile from his face. Yes – dear old Priscus! If he’d lived to see it, he’d have died of envy at what I eventually did to the Persians. Given half a chance, he’d have bullied Heraclius into a last desperate stand against the Saracens when they took Syria, and we’d have folded like the Persians. But, if he wasn’t ultimately the second Alexander he always fancied himself to be, he never betrayed the Empire. I looked over at my own work, still embedded in the sandbags. I got up and stretched my legs.

  ‘Get that lot sorted,’ I said to the workmen. ‘I want those kettles better secured for my next visit.’ To Meekal: ‘I’ve seen enough for today.’ I glanced over at my carriers. Still blindfolded, they’d now got themselves off the ground, and were coming out of their shaking fits from the noise of the experiment. Their bodies had turned white where dust had stuck to the sweat.

  ‘Get them properly rested and fed,’ I ordered no one in particular. ‘It’s a long trek back to Damascus in this heat.’ I turned back to Meekal. ‘I need to spend much of the afternoon in the records building,’ I said. ‘As ever, I suppose, I’ll have to write up my own notes. This time, though, I want to go again over the records of the works before the big explosion. I doubt I shall copy the mistakes made then. But, if you’re now forcing the pace, I need to make sure of certain things. You’re welcome to sit in there with me. You might even be useful for reading some of the more charred records. But, if you’d rather be off and torture someone, I’ll not hold it against you.’ I dug my stick into the sand and began to move towards the gate into another of the zones.

  Karim said nothing, but looked like a man who tries not to show that he’s recently shat himself from terror. Edward was shouting away in fluent Saracen to anyone who’d listen.

  ‘They scarpered like wild pigs in the hunt,’ he said. He took out his little sword and waved it in the sun. ‘As we came closer, I thought they’d stand and fight like men.’ He paused, then spat melodramatically. ‘But, like all the other unbelievers, they were just cowardly pigs!’

  I looked at Meekal with raised eyebrows. He shrugged. I wondered if Edward wasn’t growing a little too close to his new friends. But there could be no doubt he was their young hero. The other Saracens stood round him, calling out his praises and giving him little hugs.

  ‘While he is your hostage,’ I said quietly, ‘you really should consider keeping him safer than you do.’

  Meekal scowled and said he’d speak with General Hakim about the breach of his orders.

  ‘You can tell me the whole story over dinner,’ I said in English. ‘I don’t suppose you’ll be passing up yet awhile on the wine.’

  ‘It will be as My Lord wills,’ Edward replied in Saracen. His face shone with the happiness of the fool who’s just nearly got himself killed for nothing. He helped unfold the seat of the carrying chair into a daybed before racing back within the mass of grinning, bearded faces. How long, I wondered, before even his Latin went? How long before his English? Did the boy so much as dream nowadays about the soaking mists of Northumbria? If I were his age now, though, would I be any different?

  I rested back against the cushions. I fished into the luggage compartment for my lead box of opium. I removed my teeth and sucked thoughtfully on the resin.

  Dreaming of my mother, and of my father, whose face I barely remembered, I slept right through the attack on us that left fifty men dead on the road and another hundred injured. Karim told me about it afterwards. Through chattering teeth, he described the wild rush of the mountain tribesmen as we passed a high ridge of sand. They’d swept down with a battle roar that almost knocked him off his horse. The horsemen weren’t up to making any impression on the Saracen guards. It was the hail of arrows that caused the real damage. Meekal had gone wild with alarm, and had darted about, screaming at the guards to cover me with their shields. No prisoners had been taken this time. It had been a matter of getting me and my remaining carriers as fast along that exposed road as men could run. Even so, an arrow had embedded itself in the carrying chair not a quarter-inch from my throat.

  I came to as the light was fading in my bedchamber. I’d been put into a cool bath to stabilise my temperature from the heat of the day and from the opium, and then wrapped up in bed like an infant. Before I opened my eyes, I heard Edward’s anxious voice, asking again and again if I would ever wake up again. Karim was beside him, urging that I’d surely be fine. I could tell that the hand feeling about my wrist belonged to a doctor. I opened my eyes and waited for the riot of fading colours to resolve into a picture of my surroundings. Meekal was looking out of the window, hands clasped tight behind his back. The boys sat together, looking earnestly into my face. I stared back and smiled.

  ‘Not dead yet?’ I croaked. The doctor held a cup to my lips, and I gagged at the extreme bitterness of its contents. I waved it away. I struggled to sit up, but the combination of opium and immense weariness kept me on my back. ‘Any chance of some of the local red?’ I asked feebly.

  A thoroughly nasty look on his face, Meekal turned and came to lean over me. ‘The doctor says – and I agree – that you should give up that shitty opium,’ he said. ‘And the wine too. If you carry on like this, you won’t see another spring.’

  ‘I’m a free man,’ I snarled back at him. ‘I’ll put what I like into my body and cry “fuck off!” at anyone who dares tell me othe
rwise. And don’t any of you ever forget that!’ I made a better effort and now did sit up. The doctor fussed about with pillows. Edward stuck a cool sponge on my forehead.

  ‘What’s that bandage doing on your arm?’ I asked. Edward opened his mouth to speak, but was nudged silent by Karim. ‘Did you come off that bleeding horse?’ I asked again.

  There was a noise in Meekal’s throat that might have been a laugh, or might just have been another of his prayers to the Almighty. He took hold of Edward’s good arm and pushed the boy closer to me.

  ‘The deal is,’ he snarled, ‘that you give me what I want, and the boy comes to no harm. Will you threaten me with a lawyer if I choose to regard your sudden death as a breach of contract?’

  ‘Fuck you!’ I snarled. I struggled out of the cushions and sat fully upright. Everyone stood back. ‘I’m hungry,’ I added in a more reasonable tone. ‘More to the point, I need a piss – I need one badly.’ I looked defiantly about the room. ‘Well, go on,’ I said loudly, ‘get out of here. Since Edward’s right arm is otherwise occupied, the doctor can stay and do me the honours.’ I reached over to get at my water cup. I overbalanced and nearly came off the bed. Meekal kept me from hitting the tiles. He lifted me as if I’d been a bag of twigs – had I lost weight in the past few months? I wondered – and sat me on the side of the bed. I scowled everyone else out of the room, and prepared myself for a consultation with the doctor.

  Chapter 57

  ‘The world must be seen as it is,’ I said, ‘not as we’d like it to be. One of these days, I shall fall down dead. Or perhaps I just shan’t wake up one morning. Until then, I plan to carry on as normal.’

  I sucked on a boiled chicken leg and washed the meat down with a cup of water into which Edward had dropped wine with all the stingy care of an apothecary. Karim muttered some piety about how God would deal justly with me. I decided against the obvious witty riposte. It would only make Edward unstopper those tears again. Meekal had gone off about his official business, and I’d told the doctor where to take his pessimistic ambiguities. Now, we were at dinner. Since the most convenient language was Saracen, I’d had the slaves all cleared out and the main door locked from our own side.

  ‘But do tell me again, Edward,’ I said brightly. ‘Do you really think you cut off that man’s nose as he came at you?’ He did. So did Karim. I lifted my cup in a toast that left plenty of room for a refill more to my taste. I was about to reach for my teeth so I could begin a long anecdote about Karim’s father after the Battle of Antioch. But Edward interrupted.

  ‘I was looking at your clothes this morning,’ he said, pulling the conversation back on his chosen track. ‘They are all too big for you.’

  ‘Listen, boy,’ I sighed, ‘I agree that I’m not getting any younger. Even so, I have, for the past few months, been working like a maniac for Meekal. Have you noticed any advance of senility? Do I walk about any the less easily? I’ve lost some weight. That’s all. Now, do you recall that tomb we passed on the road to Caesarea? It was the one put up for a man who died at a hundred and ten. If you can think of one reason why I shouldn’t match that, do tell me now. Otherwise, don’t spoil dinner.’ I managed to reach the wine jug. That cheered me no end.

  ‘Did either of you hear the demonstration?’ I asked with a final change of subject. Edward hadn’t – he’d been too wrapped up in shouting at the retreating spies. Karim, though, had heard the explosion, and looked back in time to see the fountain of steam and water that, however briefly, had risen high over the walls of the monastery.

  ‘Was all the work before you came for nothing?’ he asked.

  I looked at Karim. There was a depth of knowledge behind the question. But this didn’t surprise me. Did it merit an answer? Probably not. Still, I wanted that tearful look off Edward’s face, and the wine was lifting my spirits by the moment.

  ‘Not really,’ I said. ‘Eight years of lavish funding by the richest power in the world were unlikely to get nowhere. If it might have taken another eight years of trial and error to reproduce the mixture itself, the basic problems of casting and welding had been settled. Indeed, some of the work your people did on the containment of extreme pressure was news to me. The real problem was the big explosion of two – no, three – years ago. Someone got it into his head that the mixture was a powder, not a liquid. What he then produced was highly unstable, and should never have been heated, let alone heated under pressure. The result was an explosion that killed just about everyone who’d got the project going. But for that, I’d have been more useful than critical. As it is, the research notes survived; and it really would have been another few years at most before all the lost ground was recovered. Still, I can’t deny that bringing me in to supervise them has brought things very quickly to the edge of success.’

  ‘Then, we shall destroy the Greeks?’ Edward asked.

  I smiled at his sudden fierceness. ‘Yes,’ I said quietly, ‘I suppose you will. Am I right to suppose that you’ll be attending Friday prayers tomorrow?’ The boy didn’t answer, but looked down. ‘Well, it’s none of my business if you do. And, if it helps keep you safe from that fucking nephew of yours, I can’t say you’re making a poor choice. Yes – you stick with your great-nephew, Karim. He’ll see you right. Isn’t that so?’ Karim nodded. Of course, the moment Edward got up in that mosque and uttered the irrevocable words, the relationship that Greek law had created between the pair of us would fall to the ground. The bond of fealty, of course, nothing could break. But he’d now be Karim’s brother in the Faith, and there would be none of that joking insistence on being called ‘Great-Uncle Edward’.

  ‘Will everything be ready for demonstration to the Caliph?’ Karim asked with another revelation of knowledge.

  I nodded. ‘You’ll understand that a complete prior demonstration would be helpful,’ I explained. ‘I still don’t know if the kettles will stand up to the full pressure, and it would never do for the Commander of the Faithful to lose his eardrums. But I don’t think we’ll have time. We must all hope that today’s experiment was the success I declared it to be.

  ‘Oh,’ I said with a sudden change of tone, ‘do tell Meekal when you see him tomorrow that I’ll need another visit to the monastery before the next demonstration. I want another look at those research notes. There was something there that might be useful. Also, I’ll need authority to be taken into every one of the closed zones. When the Caliph does go out to inspect our efforts, we can’t afford any mistakes.’ Karim nodded again.

  ‘And’ – I wasn’t finished: I looked about for a sheet of papyrus on which I’d been working before dinner – ‘I’ll need all these things brought in here.’ Karim looked at the sheet and frowned. ‘Oh, you’ll get everything here in Damascus,’ I said with airy reassurance. ‘I’ve seen the observatory from one of the windows here that looks over the main city. I would go there myself, if it didn’t mean travelling outside the palace. As Edward can tell you, my researches into the theory of light have reached the point where I need proper instruments. You get me everything on that list, and I’ll see to its positioning up on the roof.’ I finished my wine and looked about the table to see if there was anything left that didn’t require teeth. I reached forward for some olive paste and took up a spoon. I put it down again. I still wasn’t finished.

  ‘Now,’ I said firmly, ‘while I have no intention of dying in the near future, I do think the time has come for me to finalise a few arrangements that have been in the making for some while.’ I motioned Edward to a wooden box over by the window. I waited for him to open it and take out the two sealed sheets of parchment. ‘I made a new will in Beirut. I see, however, that circumstances have changed. In light of these, I have decided to make over the bulk of my estate while I am still alive. These deeds make the pair of you very rich men.’ While I waited for both seals to be broken, I put my teeth back in and prepared to flatten all objections by clothing myself in the formality of His Magnificence the Senator Alaric. ‘The transfer deeds ar
e made under Imperial law. Regardless of my somewhat doubtful religious status, I remain a citizen of the Empire, and my intentions will be recognised by the Syrian courts under the Ordinance of Omar. They are drawn in a form that makes them irrevocable by any third party – short, that is, of gross despotism. You will both need to add your signatures of acceptance. These can be witnessed when I call in my Greek secretary. Because of his evident youth, there is a rider to Edward’s deed, in which he must certify that he has reached both puberty and the age of fourteen. While he is not entirely sure when he was born, no one is in any position to object if I declare, as his adoptive father, that Edward was fourteen on the 20th April.

  ‘No’ – I raised a hand to cut off the protests I could see rising – ‘this is my considered intention, and I shall think hard of anyone who objects to it. I fail to see how, for a man of my age, such wealth can be other than an inconvenience. I retain a seventh part of my estate for my own uses. This should be more than adequate. I have given instructions for its disposal in another will that I signed yesterday. You are named as joint executors, and I do ask you to comply with the requirements of the trust I have created. The money is to be used for the purchase and release of slave secretaries who have reached the age of fifty. I have always accepted that an institution so deeply embedded in the life of men as slavery cannot be abolished by positive legislation. Even so, the procedural changes I persuaded Heraclius to make after the Persian War have moved the Empire a reasonable distance towards its effective extinction. I can have no such influence on the laws of the caliphs – especially when their conquests have given such life to the slave markets. But I can hope that a fortune often acquired by dubious means will be put to the service of humanity when I am dead, and that my act can serve as an example to the faithful of every religion.’