The Sword of Damascus (14 page)

‘Will you be coming with me to get supplies?’ Edward asked as he came up beside me.

I frowned at the boy and pointed back to the top of the mast. He was better employed in looking out for more of those occasional but still distant sails than in assuming any part in the running of the ship. One of the northerners laughed unpleasantly at him as he walked with head bowed over to the mast. Another made a strange cooing sound. I pretended not to notice and sat back on to my daybed. The northerner who’d laughed leaned forward to arrange the cushions and then handed me a cup of what might once have been fairly decent beer. I looked at the brown scum on the browner liquid and put the cup down on the table beside me.

‘I do urge you to see the reason behind my plan,’ I said, now back in the language of the northerners. ‘As in Cartenna, it would not be wise to put into the dock – not until we know the place is safe. This being so, four of you should go with Edward. He can interpret. You can see that he comes to no harm and help with loading whatever he buys into the boat.’

It was a reasonable plan. But I’d already guessed they would have none of it. The two biggest and nastiest of the northerners stood before me on the deck. It was only because we were now down to barely another day of water that they’d consented to putting in at a city, rather than row along the African shore in search of an unguarded river mouth. For all we were growing desperate, though, they were now scared stiff of the cities. And I hadn’t disabused them of the notion that Tipasa was a fully occupied city. I made another effort, this time suggesting that Wilfred and Edward should go with them. Still no success. A small crowd had now gathered on the deck, and there was a low muttering that I couldn’t catch. I sighed and held up my arms. Two pairs of hands helped me gently back to my feet.

‘Very well, gentlemen,’ I said with a look of slight annoyance. ‘We can’t afford to wait around arguing. At the same time, we must at least have water. As I’ve said, we will anchor a few hundred yards from the shore. I will then go ashore myself. I shall need two rowers for the boat. I shall also need both boys with me if I’m to cut any decent figure on land. Everyone else will remain on board and out of sight, but fully armed and in full readiness to row back out into the wind if required. If five of us wave from the docks, the ship will put in. If we don’t all appear on the dock within a reasonable time, I leave further action to the discretion of those still on board. Do I make myself clear?’ I asked firmly.

There was a renewed buzz of low and now sinister muttering as my words were discussed. But there was no active disagreement. Then someone laughed and said it was all as the gods desired. There was an outbreak of vigorous nodding. A voice at the back of the crowd burst into the refrain of a song, telling how a wizard on dry land was twelve times more powerful again.

Once more, I pretended not to notice. I held up a hand for silence. ‘Excellent,’ I said with my best effort at briskness. ‘I will gather my pitiful strength while the boat is being prepared. This time, I must insist on no weapons for the rowers.’

I went back alone into the cabin. I sat down and poured out the remains of the wine. It was vile stuff, but I drained the cup in a single motion. If there had been more, I’d have had that too. I took off my wig and patted the hairs back into shape. As I was finishing, there was a gentle knock at the door.

‘Come!’ I cried. I’d expected the pilot, sidling back for another argument about our position. But no, it was Wilfred. ‘We are indeed going ashore,’ I said with a smile when he’d finished his question. ‘I think this will be your first touching on foreign soil.’ I cut off his reply. ‘Do run along and find Edward,’ I said, clutching the table as I got up. ‘Tell him what’s been decided, and see if he still has that tunic he outgrew.’

Wilfred sat down and coughed. He coughed again. As he wiped his mouth, I saw specks of blood on the cloth. At least he wasn’t vomiting. If he’d sunk still further since his last attack, there hadn’t yet been another. He ignored the blood and looked at me.

‘I’ve just come from Edward,’ he said, dropping his voice so I had to turn my good ear in his direction. ‘He was talking with some of the northerners. They all shut up when I approached. He told me that you and I should go alone in the boat. He will stay and manage things in your absence.’

I sat down again and fussed a little more with the wig. I might look better if I wore it backwards. A shame we had no mirror.

‘Go and tell the little fool,’ I said eventually – I’d surely lay hands on a mirror somewhere in Tipasa – ‘that I expect to find him waiting in the boat when I eventually step out on deck. Remind him that I’m not a man who welcomes contradiction. And I’m not talking about my classroom in Jarrow. Tell him all that in clear English. There is a chance the northerners will understand. I don’t think they will countenance disobedience to the Old Wizard.

‘Now, whatever the case with how he chooses, do go and see about that spare tunic of Edward’s. You really would stick to the wall in what you’re wearing. Keep your outer robe with you in case we need to stay ashore into the evening. You may need it against the chill. Otherwise, I want you in something light that will let you have what goodness you can get of the sun.’

Once the door was closed, I settled down to some hard racking of my memory for that letter I’d been given so many years before in Carthage by the citizens of Tipasa. I’d been in no position then to reduce their tax assessment in light of its contents. If I could recall its precise details now, it might help me.

Down below, the chanting had started up again.

Back on deck, I smiled benignly at the assembled company. Most of the northerners bowed. A few sank to their knees. I waited for someone to take my arm and hobbled slowly over to the side. Wearing a grubby tunic that showed flesh the colour of aged parchment everywhere it didn’t cover, Wilfred sat calmly at the stern of the rowing boat. A look of sulky ill-humour spread over his face, Edward sat beside him. He’d combed his hair very nicely, and the sparkling reflection from the sea sent little flashes of silver across his face. If he hadn’t looked so dejected – and so nervous too – he’d have been almost as beautiful as I was at his age.

‘I still have a bruise from my last entry into that boat,’ I quavered at the northerner who’d taken my arm. ‘I trust you will show more care on this transfer.’

He bowed and pointed to an elaborate harness of ropes that had been put together for that purpose. I smiled again and stepped back into the outstretched arms that were already waiting to put me into the thing.

‘So we have the same oarsmen as in Cartenna,’ I said as I was placed with great gentleness on to the arrangement of rather damp cushions at the prow. The men grinned back at me and took up the oars. ‘I will think more of our escape than of your problems there,’ I continued happily, ‘and regard this as a good omen. Edward, have you brought all the money with you?’

He looked up and nodded blankly, then went back to a close inspection of the dirty planks at his feet. How they were already wet was an oddity. Perhaps the boat’s long spell out of the water had caused some of the planks to shrivel. Well, they’d surely soon expand again. Edward misunderstood my stare and nodded again.

‘Then let us be away,’ I said. I looked up at the ship’s deck. Two dozen nasty faces grinned down at me. ‘Do please remember my instructions,’ I called up at them. ‘Stay out of sight, and don’t think of approaching the docks until we’ve all assured you that it’s safe to do so.’ I might have spoken Latin for all the effect my words had. But I smiled again and waved at the oarsmen. With a few heavy grunts and a splash of oars, we were under way.

‘You know, my dear boys,’ I said, speaking past the silent oarsmen to the boys huddled at the far end of the boat, ‘that the African sea is always a delight.’ I stretched down with my right hand and patted the broken smoothness of the water. It was as warm as any noon-day bath. Of shimmering green, the sea bottom was refracted to look no deeper than six feet – though it must have been thirty. ‘I won’t remind you of how Jarrow must be at the moment. But can you believe that Rome is probably now so cold that people have to smash through the ice to get water from the Tiber? In Constantinople, I have no doubt there is a foot of snow in all the side streets. Indeed, it was at this time of year once that we had to put up wooden partitions along the Colonnade of Maurice so the beggars could huddle there and not freeze to death in the February cold.’ That was true enough, though the ‘we’ was more collective than personal. It was that worthless toad Croesus who’d bent the ear of the Imperial Council for that waste of timber – less, I might add, out of charity than to curry favour with the mob. My own view had been that, with the Saracens at the gate, the fewer idle mouths we had to stuff with bread, the better it would be for the rest of us. But no matter that. It was a lovely day. The ship lay perhaps fifty yards behind us. In a moment, I’d twist round for a look at the silent, ruined docks of Tipasa.

‘Mind you,’ I went on, ‘the sun can be a terrible trial come July. It’s then that, in the old days, persons of quality would pack up and move for a few months to the more temperate climate of Sicily.’ The boys seemed as if they were shrivelling into themselves. Edward’s mood had communicated itself to Wilfred, who looked ready to start coughing again. I glanced back at the ship. The chanting had resumed almost the moment we were off. Now, I could hear a regular beating of cooking pots. If I strained, I could make out the blurred figures on deck as they danced about to the rhythm. I smiled again and patted my wig. ‘I was in Sicily for about a month, when Constans had his court there,’ I said, pointedly ignoring the breach of my orders. ‘I’ll grant that Syracuse can be as hot as Carthage on a bad day. But if you go up into the mountains, you can easily imagine yourself much further north. In a single day, given the proper relays of carrying slaves, you can pass from the palm trees of Syracuse and Catania to the chilly cover of the pine forests that fringe the craters of Mount Etna.’

As I spoke, all noise and movement back on the ship ceased. One moment, I was raising my voice to compete with the din that drifted across the widening distance from the ship. Another, and we were alone but for the regular splashing of oars on the warm African sea.

And then the oarsmen stopped rowing. One of them slithered round in his seat to face me.

Chapter 17

‘Is it to be thus?’ I asked of the oarsman who’d dropped me in Cartenna. Already, Wilfred had started another of his calm prayers. Edward was clutching himself and beginning to rock backward and forward. I paid them no attention. ‘You’re scared of my ghost if you do the work on board the ship. Isn’t that it? And you don’t believe that I can be killed at all on land.’

No reply from that sweating, yellow-bearded face. His colleague sat still, his back to me. Of course, I didn’t need any answer. When you’ve spent as much of your life as I have dissecting the various modes of superstition that complicate the politics of mankind, nothing is a mystery, nothing a surprise.

‘So how is it to be done?’ I asked again. ‘Will it be the cutting off of my head? Is that to be thrown into the sea, and my body left on land for the wild animals to devour? Or is it to be drowning?

‘Oh – and which one of you gets first crack at Edward’s arse?’ The boy looked up at that. His face was pleasingly scared and miserable. I grinned and went on. ‘I don’t know about you, but a pretty face doesn’t mean much when you’re at the back of the queue for a gang rape. You get more friction if you cut a hole in a dead pig and try fucking that.’

The oarsman who’d dropped me in Cartenna got unsteadily to his feet. Then he braced himself against the rocking of the boat and reached down for me. He carefully avoided looking into my eyes. The knife he held at the end of his outstretched arm was as much an iron charm to protect against anything I might do to him as the weapon with which he was to dispatch me. I uncrossed my legs and looked up at him.

‘You do realise,’ I said, with an easy wave over the sea, ‘that, without me as your leader, you’ll be stuck in this sea. You’ll move about at random until the Imperial battle fleet catches up with you. I imagine you’ve seen men flayed alive. But I’ll bet you haven’t seen the finesse that the Imperial Government can bring to the operation. Heavens, my dear fellow, I’ve seen a man kept alive for days, quite screaming mad from the pain as blood oozed slowly from every inch of his peeled body. Lay hands on me, and that’s what you’ll get – though only if you’re lucky. You won’t believe what torments have been perfected over the centuries for those who try crossing the Empire, or its servants.

‘But enough of unpleasantness. Come, come, my fine young fellow – if you’ll only proceed on our supply gathering mission and return me safe to the ship, I can promise you gold as big as your fist once we’re back in England. It really is an offer you’d be silly to refuse.’

Of course, it wasn’t an offer he or any of the other dear fellows would dream of accepting. Their god Yadina wanted my blood. Nothing I could offer in its place would do for getting them back home. But I thought it worth going through the motions. The man reached down and took hold of me by the stiff brocade of my Cartenna robe. With a single hand, he pulled me to my feet and kept hold as, with an expectant look back at the ship, he held his knife about a foot in front of me. All at once, the pots began their clatter again, and – now as triumphant as the psalm at a victory celebration in church – the chanting rolled at us in swelling waves of sound across the water.

The man opened his mouth for some gibberish of his own, and held up the knife for what I guessed would be a downward stroke between my collar bones.