The Sword of Damascus (18 page)

The guard came over to us and leaned hard on the wooden bar. It groaned beneath the weight, and the folds of his belly not contained within the breastplate wobbled with every breath.

‘That’s a sick lad you have there,’ he agreed with a look at Wilfred, who, covered with his faded robe against the sun, slept fitfully in the wheelbarrow. Sleep had suppressed the coughing attacks. Now, it was a matter of how long he could keep up the shallow gasps of his breathing. ‘I suppose it was the doctors got him this way. They always do in my experience. You’d better get him to the saint before it’s too late. Hard journey along the road?’ he added with a nod at my clothing.

I thought of the brown stain and smiled. ‘We fell among thieves,’ I said. ‘They stripped us of our possessions. But my healthy grandson fought like a desert lion, and put the thieves to flight.’ Edward nodded vigorously in agreement and held up the knife. ‘I now beg at the gates of this most opulent and well-protected of cities for entry. We cannot face another night on the road. All else aside, I must have a bed for the sick child.’ The guard continued looking for a while at nothing in particular. I raised my arms in supplication. I began to wonder if it was worth the risk of falling to my knees. Perhaps I could spare a few coins. But the guard eventually heaved himself upright and fiddled with the bronze hoop securing the bar.

‘Mind you,’ he said as the bar went up, ‘you’ll get nothing within unless you’ve managed to keep a little money in your own hands. More important, that knife stays with me. City ordinances don’t allow no weapons. This is a peaceful place. No weapons for nobody – just the authorities.’ It took a surreptitious but hard jab with my stick before Edward handed the knife over.

There was a time – perhaps not that long before – when Caesarea had been one of the most elegant cities on the African shore. Coming through that heavy gateway, you’d have found yourself in a long, wide street that passed right along to the central square, around which the churches and the main public buildings were arranged to avoid the full power of the sun. Each side of the street would have been lined with a colonnade. Behind this, about four feet above street level, the pavements would have allowed pedestrians to move back and forth, safe from the dust or any filth cast up by the wheeled traffic. Running parallel with each colonnade, long granite basins would have splashed and sparkled from a dozen fountains that cooled the hottest day.

That was before the long tide of African prosperity had finally withdrawn, and Caesarea became the last refuge of a dozen other cities. Now, the colonnades had been closed up with crude brickwork, the pavements behind made into habitations for the poor. The fountains were dry and the basins choked with rubbish. Every ten yards or so, the ancient statues – some dressed in all the opulence of merchants made good, some nude – still held their plinths. Whatever paint and gold leaf had been applied to heighten their semblance to the living was gone. It was replaced by the grime of many open fires and by white streams of shit from the birds. The nudes had been disfigured to accord with modern ideas of propriety. But they all still looked from their sightless eyes on the broken-down jumble their city had become.

I picked my way carefully across the uneven and impacted dust that now coated the paving stones of the long street. Its smooth line had been broken by a row of makeshift houses that wandered down the centre and forced all traffic into six-foot passageways on either side. By much shoving and bumping, Edward was able to force the wheelbarrow through the crowded ways.

The central square was an improvement on Cartenna. At least all the buildings were still standing, and there were a few signs of a more organised civic life. Looking at the shabby crowds, though, it was plain that the public baths hadn’t been open for some while past. I rather think that, of all the hundreds there who pushed and shouted as they went about their business, we were the cleanest.

‘Don’t look at those young men with your mouth open,’ I whispered at Edward. ‘You’re supposed to be from Carthage. It doesn’t do to behave like some barbarian in a border fort.’ But, since Cartenna didn’t really count, this was the first city he’d ever seen. To me, it was just another disappointing slum, interesting only for a spot of highly selective viewing of ancient sights. There was, for example – or once had been – a column put up by Hadrian with a trilingual inscription that might say something about Punic. If, however, I thought myself behind his eyes, I could see how it appeared to Edward. The largest human settlement he’d probably seen didn’t contain more than a few hundred people or above one brick building, if that. For him, this place was everything Hrothgar had promised him when he’d been forced to hand over all direction of his life for purposes he wasn’t given to understand. He stared round and round at the people in their mean finery, and looked at the huge, solid buildings that had come down to us from better days. And – fair’s fair – clean up both people and buildings, forget the surrounding streets, and the place wouldn’t have looked half bad.

‘I think we should try again to force some water into poor Wilfred,’ I suggested.

Edward nodded and reached for the water skin. He was paying rather less attention to us, though, than to a couple of the local whores who’d drifted over for a look at the newcomers. To me, every bloated wrinkle screamed contagion. But, again, I was a jaded old me. They doubtless appeared otherwise to a boy who hadn’t managed sex with anyone but himself in over two months. I thought of the money hanging from his belt and decided to take charge.

‘Come, Edward,’ I said firmly. ‘There’s no good served in dawdling here. If we don’t get him under cover soon, poor Wilfred will dry up in this sun.’ I turned to someone close by who was trying to sell dried fruit from a bag.

‘I shall be grateful,’ I said in my assumed accent, ‘to know the whereabouts of the Jewish district.’

The man scowled and spat. Then he pointed at the largest church in the square.

Silly me! I thought. Of course, the Jews would be clustered behind the main church. It was the best place for bribing the priests when the mob turned ugly. I peered in the dazzling sun for evidence of an alley or some other exit from the square.

Chapter 22

When I began frequenting them as a very young man, I always used to find Jewish districts alien. I suppose that sounds rich coming from someone who was a barbarian until he was nearly twenty, and who never quite fitted into the ways of the Empire. But if I didn’t believe in either, I’d come to regard the Christian Faith and the Old Faith that preceded it as inseparable from civilisation. The churches, the crosses, the statues, the converted temples – they were all part of the furniture of everyday life. It was a shock to find that the Jews had none of these things. More than this, though, it was the dark eyes and the darker beards, the words and gestures that might have one meaning for outsiders and another between the Jews themselves. And even when long familiarity and the joint acquisition of wealth had made them almost normal, I could never forget, as a servant of the Empire, that I was dealing with a people who were in the Empire, but who could never regard themselves entirely – not, at least, since Christianity was established – as of the Empire.

Stepping into the Jewish district of Caesarea was in one sense a homecoming. In another, the long absence from any Jewish place of residence brought back that early feeling of its being a world parallel to but separate from the one that had been mine.

If hardly spotless, though, this place was a sight better than the streets we’d now left. There was no longer need to look out for pyramids of dog shit or puddles of congealed saliva, or for the omnipresent cutpurses. The streets here were decidedly quieter. But what had brought me here? I told myself for the dozenth time that I was mad. I hobbled forward, Edward pushing the wheelbarrow and himself behind me. He was a strong boy – no doubt of that. However, even he was now wilting in the powerful noonday sun.

Then, as we turned a corner, I came upon an old man. He couldn’t have been my age, or anything approaching that. But he was old and shrivelled. Sitting in the middle of the street, surrounded by boys of about Edward’s age, he was scowling into a linen roll he’d arranged on his lap, and droning away at them in one of the Eastern languages. I stopped and leaned against one of the high, blank walls of the houses. I listened hard. I’d thought at first it was Hebrew. But this old Jew wasn’t so learned in his people’s ancient language. It was Aramaic, and he was reading out something nonsensical from one of the more recent prophets. It was no worse than anything you hear in church every Sunday. But even if you aren’t a believer, foreign religions always sound more stupid than your own.

No one noticed me, and I stood there quite a while, trying to keep a smile off my face as the boys repeated the bottom-wiping instructions one phrase at a time, and copied the gestures that accompanied them. Then, without waking, Wilfred moved slightly in the wheelbarrow and groaned. The old man looked up and glared at us.

‘Your sort isn’t allowed in here!’ he cried indignantly in Latin. He stood up and clutched the roll to his chest. ‘Get out now, or we’ll have the magistrates on you.’ He bent slowly down, his hand reaching for a stone.

‘I’ll go where I fucking please, you bag of
apikoros
dirt!’ I replied in Aramaic.

He shrank back as if I’d thrown lime in his face. I don’t know if it was because I’d spoken in his own language, or because I’d used the worst insult one Jew can give another – as if, mind you, calling someone a follower of the Great and Wondrous Epicurus, Master of All Wisdom, can be other than a compliment. But I’d shut the old man up. He glanced nervously down at his linen roll, and crushed it harder against his chest.

I stepped forward and beat the ground with my stick. ‘I need help,’ I said. I was glad Wilfred wasn’t awake to see this. It wouldn’t do much for his faith in my ability to come up with plans if they involved begging off old Jews chosen at random in the street. But, if there are times when you’re given one, there are times when you have to take a chance.

‘Help you?’ the old man gasped. ‘Some piece of pork-chewing Nazarene shit?’

‘Better that than a baldy-cock Christ killer,’ I answered without a pause.

‘Jesus sodding Christ?’ came the inevitable reply. ‘Jesus sodding Christ? Some “Son of God” he was, I can tell you! Mary was a whore. Joseph was a fool for believing her.’ He waved the linen roll at me, the beginnings of a smile on his face.

I heard a gentle scrape as Edward moved the wheelbarrow out of the sun. What he thought of two old men obviously swapping insults in an unknown language I didn’t bother wondering. He wasn’t Wilfred.

‘So, will you help me?’ I asked again.

The old man came closer and looked carefully into my face. ‘I guessed it was you when you first came in sight,’ he said. ‘I saw you once when you were ruling in Carthage. You do know this entire coast is buzzing with rumours of your return? Do you know what is being offered, no questions asked, for your head?’

‘Less than it’s worth, I’ll be bound,’ I said. We looked at each other. I smiled and leaned back against the wall. ‘I can see you’re a man who doesn’t forget injuries to your people. Are you as keen to remember favours? Will it count for nothing now that I spent sixty years not enforcing the penal laws against your faith?’

There was a long silence. Then: ‘What’s wrong with the boy?’ the old man asked.

I looked down at the sleeping face and the pale, cracked lips. ‘It’s a consumption of the lungs,’ I said, trying to keep my voice from shaking. ‘I did hope he’d pull through this attack. That doesn’t seem likely at the moment.’

The old man looked up and down the street. Except for us, it was empty. He pulled at his untidy beard and rolled his eyes. He bent down and gathered the coins they’d earlier left at his feet, and waved the boys about their business.

‘You’d better come quickly,’ he said with a resigned shrug.

I stared at the house of old Ezra. Nowhere that Jews live is ever made to appear prosperous from the outside. My friend Simon of Magnesia was an exception. But he, of course, had lent money to emperors. And he’d made his youngest son convert so he could become Bishop of Nicosia. By and large, though, Jews don’t live in palaces and flaunt their gains. But if those outer walls could have done with a lick of whitewash, it was plain that selling old clothes to finance his work as a rabbi had been a thoroughly profitable line for Ezra, son of David.

After a few hard taps with his stick, the door opened and, with a last look round the empty street, he ushered us in. I found myself in semi-darkness, under an arch that led from the gate right under the upper floors of the house to a central garden. I looked along the ten yards of brick archway to the greens and yellows of the garden. I thought I could hear the splashing of a fountain.

‘Welcome to the impoverished hovel that I must call home,’ he whispered in a weak attempt at irony. ‘Normally, I’d have my lazy bitches of granddaughters come down and wash your feet. Then we’d have all the ritual bits of hospitality to keep us going till dinner. In view of the circumstances, you will forgive me for hurrying you all into my counting house. No one dares disturb me there.’ From inside one of the doors that led on each side of the arch into the house came a sound of sandals flopping on stone. Ezra pulled me into the opposite door, and ordered his doorman to lift Wilfred out of the wheelbarrow and then carry him.

‘We’d better hurry,’ he said. ‘All my children live here with their families. My wife’s father has rooms straight across the courtyard. Until he gets really drunk, as opposed to just pissed, he can be a right nosy sod. We can save introductions till later. For the moment, let’s keep things private.’