The Blood of Alexandria (55 page)

She’d gone. When she had gone I couldn’t tell. Where wasn’t worth asking. But she had gone. And I didn’t believe she’d be back. Naked, I went over and washed myself by the pool. The water had been warm enough last night. Now, it felt chilly. My clothes had been hung up where they’d catch the first rays of the sun. They were completely dry. I dressed with slow deliberation. The tunic had shrunk a little, and some of its colour had gone in the wash. But it was good to be clean and to wear clean clothes.

Finally, I went over to my camel and picked up the folded sheet of papyrus I’d seen even before realising I was alone. It was taken from
The Trials of Penelope
, cut carefully from the front of the roll to avoid any further loss of the main text. She’d written on the rather stained outer side with a burned twig from the fire.

‘I have brought you as far as is required of me,’ the message went. ‘The Brotherhood camp where Martin was taken is twenty miles due south of here. You will know what to do.’

You will know what to do
, she was telling me! It was a good joke, and I made sure to sit down and have a good laugh over it. But the camel looked back at me, and the sun was rising higher. Oh, I’d conceived a general plan of action back in Alexandria. When it came to details, though, I hadn’t the foggiest what I was supposed to do. I’d have to start rather earlier than expected on settling the details as and when required.

I went and stood on the outer edge of the oasis – right on the eighteen-inch border within which the tangled green sustained by the pool and shaded by itself gave way to the yellow sand. I looked out over the sands that stretched like the sea on and on up to the horizon. Had the Mistress run off, I asked myself, because we’d spent half the night fucking? Or had we spent half the night fucking so she could be sure I’d sleep through her getaway? The latter struck me as more likely – even if it supposed that she’d seen me watching her in the temple. Why, then, had she run off? Was she punishing me for having watched her? Was she working with the Brotherhood, and was this the trap from which I’d be collected? Was she a fraud? She might have certain healing and persuasive abilities. But going against the Brotherhood on its own territory might be far outside those abilities.

I asked these and other questions. I didn’t get very far with answering them. I regretted saying goodbye to the fraud theory. But – with all the reservations already made – I had no doubt she could avoid any direct confrontation with the Brotherhood, and could win in any confrontation that she cared to allow. Her decision to clear out was part of some design that I hadn’t means of explaining.

Still keeping to the green side of the border, I sat and thought, and I thought harder, and I went back on my thoughts, and I thought again from fresh. I can’t say I reached any conclusions that advanced beyond any that I’d already formed in Alexandria. But it was reassuring that, after all I’d been expecting, whatever I now did would be at my own direction. Whether it would work was another matter that might best be left unconsidered.

I had a late breakfast. I refilled the water skins. I attended as best I could to the camel. I sat down in the shade and commanded myself to sleep. My body obeyed me this time. I woke again as the sun was heading into the west. I felt rested and relaxed. If the Brotherhood really were twenty miles due south, now seemed a fine time to be setting out.

Chapter 54

At least I’d got my timings right. I arrived at the Brotherhood camp just as the sun was dipping below the western horizon. The sandy ocean was at my back, and I was once more in one of the rocky zones separating this from the black land. I got the camel to kneel down at the far side of a cluster of rocks behind a small hill that overlooked the camp. Tethering it to anything that would keep it from running off like the last one had was out of the question. Leaving it there was yet another risk I’d have to take.

I had rather expected this to be the main Brotherhood camp. I’d hurried through the last miles of desert with another old temple in mind – something high and solid, with a continual stream of animal and human traffic. Banners and rebuilding works had also featured in my imagination. What I’d found was a disappointment. If it held more than a few dozen men, I’d have been surprised. It was just a collection of tents made from woven papyrus, grouped round a couple of mud-brick buildings that looked about to fall down. There was no outer wall or other protection. The only men I saw had on the loincloths of the lowest grade of Egyptian. Nothing had kept the sun off their upper bodies all through the day. I didn’t suppose they’d have anything to put on against the cold of the night. With no appearance of urgency, they slouched between the tents and the buildings with various jars and packages.

I’d almost missed it at first. Having seen it, I’d come close to dismissing it as the place I was looking for. It was only because there was nothing else in sight for miles around that I’d bothered with a second look. It was then, however, that I’d seen the covered pen filled with camels, and the heaps of spears and shields between the buildings.

This couldn’t be the main camp of the Brotherhood. But it was the place where the Mistress had wanted to send me. The closer I’d approached, the more I’d been thinking about whether I was going straight into a trap. After all, who was the Mistress? What was her interest in me and my concerns? Questions it had been so easy to settle or dismiss back in the oasis wouldn’t stop coming into my head. But I could see that no one here was expecting to be disturbed. It made sense. It would take days longer to get a body of armed men through the desert, and they’d surely be seen long in advance. As for the Nile approach, all landing places would be covered as a matter of course.

The last time I’d done anything like this was with the Lombards, back in Italy. Then, it had meant getting close to King Agilulf in the middle of his army. And I’d known Agilulf was on to me, and had put the managers of his torture garden on alert. But Pavia was nothing compared with this. Then, I was on terrain that I understood. I could dress as a Lombard and, so long as I didn’t try for extended conversations, be taken for one. Above all, I’d known what I was looking for and where to get it.

Keeping my head low, I looked down again at the camp and watched until the darkness had thickened and a few fires were lit. This was nothing compared to the Lombards – except it seemed impossibly harder. But here I was, and the quicker I was about my business, the better it might be. I looked up at the brightening stars to get some bearings. It would be at least an embarrassment if I somehow managed to lift Martin out of there, only to have mislaid the bloody camel.

I crept down to the outer limits of the camp. I crouched suddenly behind one of the larger rocks as two men wandered by. It wasn’t a big rock, and if they’d taken the trouble to look in the right direction, they might have seen me. But they were lost in some animated conversation. I listened hard, but could hear nothing I recognised. If only they’d been Lombards, or from some other race of Germanics, I could have tried jumping them. Armed, and with all the surprise of darkness, I could have killed one and pulled the other one over somewhere quiet for questioning at leisure. But these really were Egyptians of the lowest class. If those settled in Alexandria didn’t learn Greek, what reason had I to hope better of these? I let them go, and hurried forward to take more shelter from what looked and smelled like a low shithouse.

Sure enough, a shithouse it was. There were more men inside, straining and gasping as they squatted low together on the ground. What they said in between made about as much sense as anything else I’d heard. I can’t have been above ten yards from the nearest of the brick buildings. If Martin was here at all, shut inside one of these places seemed his most likely whereabouts. Between me and the building, though, a fire was being lit. The lighter had his back to me, and wasn’t having the best of luck with his dried reeds. But he would get there in the end. If I didn’t hurry forward, I might as well dart back to the outer limits. Soon, the moment I stepped beyond the shadow of the shithouse, I’d be in full view.

I looked left and right. No one was about or looking this way. The firelighter was still cursing away with his back turned. I took a risk and raced across to the building. In dark clothes, facing outwards, I pressed against a dark wall. If I now went left, I’d leave the firelighter far over on my right. There was no entrance on the wall where I was pressed. It might be on any of the other three. I might as well start by looking round the corner to my left.

I was about to put my head round the corner to see if all was clear, when I heard more voices. They were loud, and they were coming my way. Another moment and they’d be level with me from round the corner. I looked back along the wall. It wasn’t far to get round the other corner. But the firelighter was getting up to turn, and he’d be less likely to see me still against the wall than running along it. Uncertain, I froze. I could see the approaching glare of torches. They made the corner of the building throw a diminishing shadow as the torchbearers came on ahead of the voices.

With a shock, I suddenly realised that the voices were in Greek.

‘I must confess, Your Majesty,’ one of them was saying in good if accented Greek, ‘that I have been impressed by all you have shown me so far. I think I can accurately predict that my cousin will be highly pleased by the report I will make to him on my return to Ctesiphon.’

The torchbearers came level with the corner. One of them stopped and turned and then stepped backwards. He now stood just in front of me and was looking forward. He had his left side to me. If I’d wanted to reach out and touch his shoulder, I’d not have needed to bend forward. If he so much as glanced left, he’d see me. At least this hid me from the firelighter, who’d now come forward to prostrate himself on the ground. All I had to do was not breathe or make any other movement. Given luck, he’d wait for the two speakers to catch up with him, and then move on. Without moving my head, I looked left at the two men, who’d now come into sight and also stopped.

It was Lucas and the man who’d been speaking. I paid no attention to the second of these. He would normally have been uppermost in my thoughts: what was a kinsmen of the Persian King doing so deep within the Empire? But there was nothing remarkable about his appearance. He had the beard and slightly fussy dress of a rich Syrian, or perhaps an Armenian. Like every diplomat, he’d have passed anywhere without remark. My whole attention went to Lucas. He was now done up in the complete finery of the old kings of Egypt. As in Alexandria, he was wearing the crinkled linen robe. But he now had a false beard tied over his real one, and a headdress so elaborate it almost put to shame those I’d seen in the ancient reliefs. Indeed, the reason he and everyone else had stopped right next to me was that parts of the thing kept falling off at every turn of his head, and one of his flunkies was fully employed in keeping it in place.

‘My dear Siroes, you will surely not object if I ask when more substantial help will be forthcoming,’ he said. ‘If we are now to finish the work of clearing the Greeks out of Egypt, we shall need more than fine words. My letter did specify arms and military advisers.’

‘Your Majesty’s letter did specify these,’ the Persian Envoy said, now in the friendly tone used by diplomats who are about to say no. ‘However, Alexandria is the key to Egypt, and I deeply regret the failure of your uprising there. You told me yourself that your whole organisation there has been torn up by the roots.’

‘A purely temporary reverse,’ said Lucas. He stopped and swore as the big white crown right on top of his headdress pitched over into the dirt. He squatted down so it could be put back on. He raised his own hand to hold it in place as he stood again. His massive collar of gold and lapis lazuli glittered in the torchlight – not ten feet from where I was standing. I breathed softly in and tried to disappear into the wall.

‘One useful outcome of the rising, however,’ he continued, trying to keep his head absolutely level as he spoke, ‘was that the other leaders of my Brotherhood were caught up in the reprisals. I do not know if anyone escaped. If any did, it doesn’t alter the fact that I am now the supreme power in the Brotherhood.’

‘That is most useful, I agree,’ the Envoy said, still friendly. ‘You will appreciate, though, that now the rising has failed no invasion across the Red Sea can be considered. All effort, then, must be devoted to the march on Syria. Once we are in Antioch and the Empire is cut in half, we shall be better placed to open a second front in Egypt. I might also touch on the matter we have been discussing for much of today. Whether or not we arrive in Antioch within the year, there is very substantial assistance that
you
can provide.

‘And I can assure you that His Majesty is entirely of one mind with you as regards the future settlement of the world. We have no territorial demands that go beyond the core territories snatched from us by Alexander. This means the whole of Asia Minor, but no more than that. The Greeks may keep the territories they so ably defended from the invasion by Xerxes. Since it is their modern capital, they may even keep Constantinople – though whatever emperor it pleases Chosroes to place there will be required to swear fealty to him and to his successors for ever.