The Sword of Damascus (25 page)

‘Oh,’ I added. ‘Do also arrange for a tailor to attend on us tomorrow afternoon.’ I took a sip of pale wine and closed my eyes. If I chose not to open them again, someone would be bound to come in and put me to bed.

Chapter 29

The banker and two of his clerks stood respectfully before me. After half a morning of massage, I stretched out a foot with reasonable firmness and planted it on the stool.

‘We were made aware, of course, of the confiscation decree,’ he said in coldly formal Greek. ‘However, while this applied to all monies on deposit within the Empire, it had no force within the Caliph’s dominions.’

I sniffed nonchalantly. If I hadn’t known that, I’d hardly have sent for the man. But I left him to do the talking. In particular, I wanted to know how much I was still worth. I thought of reaching for my refilled cup, but didn’t want to show that my hands were beginning to shake.

‘Matters were complicated by the restitution of your goods that followed your temporary pardon by His Late Imperial Majesty Constantine,’ the man went on. ‘Your representatives in Constantinople took advantage of this to remit several large sums to your main account in Antioch.’ He now settled into a regular drone of explanation of how this had been done. I might be aged, but I wasn’t yet senile. Yes, there was the annual tribute paid by Caliph to Emperor while the two empires were at peace – it was the price the Saracens paid for Egypt and Syria not to be raided everywhere we could float a ship. Yes, some of my money had been paid over to the Imperial Government in place of a physical shipment of gold from Damascus. In return, the Caliph had paid an equal sum to my Antioch account. Yes, I knew all this. I didn’t need any lectures on finance from someone whose grandfather had been shitting his nappies when I was already rich beyond counting. But I kept quiet.

At last, the man got to the important point. I had to pretend a coughing fit to hide the astonishment. I thought he’d slipped up on his Greek numeral adjectives. But I looked at the parchment account he’d finally handed over. Added all together, the Empire could have fought a war on two fronts with that lot. The conversation had been at a level that his own Greek didn’t reach, and Edward gave me an anxious look. He took up the cup and held it to my lips.

‘It would normally be a matter,’ the banker continued, ‘of sending to Antioch for sealed confirmation of funds. However, since the transfers were made through Beirut, and since I am personally assured that all is in order, I have decided to act in advance of formal confirmation. I have taken the liberty, therefore, of bringing over a sum that may be of use to My Lord for his daily expenses.’

One of his clerks reached forward and dumped two leather bags on the table set before my chair. There must have been four pounds of metal in each of them. I nodded to Edward, who looked about for a knife with which to cut the seals. At last, he got one of them open. He nearly fainted at the sight of the golden stream that poured through his fingers. Ignoring the main pile before me, I took up one of the new-minted coins and looked at the portrait.

‘A poor likeness of Justinian,’ I said. The banker gave me an indifferent look. If I’d mentioned the smell of the oiled leather, he’d not have been less interested. Let me see, I thought. Seventy-two solidi to the pound. Eight times that makes five hundred and seventy-six. I smiled. There’d be new silk for both of us when the tailors came round – Chinese, not Imperial – and plenty of change left over.

‘Any chance the Caliph will start minting his own coins?’ I asked, while I kept myself from jumping up for a creaky dance about the room.

‘Not so far as I have been informed,’ came the chilly answer. ‘His Late Majestic Holiness Muawiya was concerned to avoid any act that might suggest a loss of interest in the eventual movement of his capital to Constantinople. His Present Majestic Holiness Abd al-Malik has announced no change in that policy.’

No change of policy – that was interesting, assuming the banker had his finger on the right pulse. Would these people never give up? They’d lost control of the seas, possibly for ever. And if Africa was theirs for the taking, they’d have a bloody fight if they wanted another go at Asia Minor. As for Constantinople, that was surely off the agenda.

But that was other business. The business in hand was complete, and Zakariya could be glad of my custom until I decided otherwise. I motioned the banker and his clerks out of the room and snuggled back into the sofa.

‘Master,’ Edward asked when we were alone. I ignored him. ‘My Lord,’ he asked again. I smiled and opened my eyes. ‘My Lord, is all this money really yours?’ As if not daring to touch it again, he waved a hand over the shining pile that covered the table.

‘All that, and very much more,’ I said with a wave of my own. ‘I did tell you not to worry about finances.’ I reached into the pile and took a handful of coins. ‘Here, take this and hold it,’ I said. ‘Let the coins run through your fingers. This is what sets the world in motion. It’s for this that men kill and cheat and lie and steal – and sometimes do good and necessary works. It was for the promise of less than this that Hrothgar set to work. Compared with this little hill of gold, Cuthbert worked for nothing at all. Go on – take it. Hold it. Have it for yourself.’

But Edward continued standing before me, looking down at the coins. ‘If all this money really is yours,’ he said eventually, ‘why did you flee to England rather than here?’

‘That is a most interesting question,’ I said. I sat up and stretched, and reached for a date that had been preserved in honey. I popped it into my mouth and rolled it about with my tongue until it broke apart. ‘It may be that I was mistaken,’ I added indistinctly. I swallowed the sweet mass and took another sip of wine. ‘Perhaps, on reflection, Jarrow was not the best place of refuge for me. Perhaps – if unwittingly – you and your dear friend Hrothgar did me a considerable service in giving me a second chance. I doubt, all things considered, I shall have the choice. But I have no intention of seeing that dreadful monastery ever again. How about you?’

He shook his head.

‘You are a most sensible young man,’ I said with another smile. ‘It may be no bad thing that I failed to see this during the first months of our acquaintance. You are also, I might add, a young man with great expectations.’ He gave me one of his blank looks. ‘Oh, there is no exact parallel in the civilised world for our concept of fealty. But I do plan in the next few days to adopt you as my son, and to make an appropriate will.’ If I’d said there would be olive paste on bread for dinner, I might have seen more of a reaction on the boy’s face. I smiled. There was no point telling him that this wasn’t an idle whim, and that I’d made my decision on our second day out of Caesarea. No point also warning him that the terms of my will were not always couched in terms of endearing love. I changed the subject.

‘Now, dear boy,’ I said, ‘I do urge you to make yourself familiar as quickly as you can with this new and glorious world. That does mean learning proper Greek. I suppose it will also mean learning Saracen. I am already looking for instructors.’ His face clouded over at the thought of yet another new language. ‘But did you enjoy yourself in the brothel last night?’

I’d got him there; his face went a bright pink, and he stammered as he tried to come out with a polite answer.

‘Excellent,’ I said, not waiting for him to say anything. ‘You will pardon me, then, if I trouble you with some immediate advice. You can fuck any slave that takes your fancy – girls, boys, women, even full-grown men, just as the inclination takes you. The Saracens are pleasingly untouched by our modern ideas of continence. But I must warn you to keep your hands off the free women. The Saracens – and the Syrians, come to think of it – dress their women in ways that would make the fine ladies of Constantinople look indecent. They can be madly possessive, and don’t you ever forget that. Whatever may have happened back in Caesarea was an exception that I may one day explain to you. It will not be repeated here.

‘Another piece of valuable advice is to keep away from gambling. Though their faith forbids it, I’ve never yet seen a Saracen who wasn’t mad about dice. But just tell them you’re a Christian, and they’ll leave you alone. The best way, I assure you, for the inexperienced to make a small fortune from dice is to start with a big one.

‘Now, go and pull that cord over there. I saw you splashing water on yourself this morning, and that just won’t do. You can get yourself taken down to the main baths in this house – go there for a spell in the hot room and all that follows this. I, on the other hand, must content myself with a lukewarm bath in our own facilities, and then a siesta until such time as the tailors come round with their samples.’

And that should have been it. As he fiddled with the door handle and the elaborate closing mechanism behind it, Edward turned round.

‘Why do they call the Saracen King “Your Holiness?”’ he asked. ‘I thought only the Pope was called that.’

I smiled and got up. ‘The Caliph,’ I answered, ‘is not a merely temporal ruler. He is also Commander of the Faithful. He is the direct successor – though not in blood – of the Saracen Prophet. As such, he claims a status superior even to that of a Roman emperor. An emperor is to be addressed as “Your Imperial Majesty”, a caliph as “Your Majestic Holiness”. You may meet neither, but these things are worth bearing in mind.’

I sat down again. I had thought to cross the floor to help Edward with the workings of the door handle. But he’d now managed to work this out for himself. I waited for the door to close. Once I was alone, I reached forward and grasped handfuls of the coins. I let them run in golden streams through my shaking fingers. At some point on their journey from the Imperial Mint, the bags had been shaken. I held my hands up in a shaft of sunlight and looked at the specks of gold dust that now adhered to them. I rubbed them into my face. I licked my fingers. I could even feel the ghost of a stiffy coming on.

But I sat back and rested my head on the cushions of the sofa. I looked at the ceiling and laughed softly. I’d had what I thought at the time very good reasons. But it really was worth repeating Edward’s question: what had possessed me to stagger halfway across the known world to shiver in Jarrow when all this was waiting for me here?

Chapter 30

I dreamed that I was back in Jarrow on the day the northerners got into the monastery. This time, instead of lifting me, they’d killed all the monks and set fire to the place. I didn’t see the killing. I only knew that it had already happened. I stood about a hundred yards outside the main gate, and was watching as the flames licked and flickered about every upper opening. Still wearing the clothes in which he’d died, Wilfred floated just before me, about three yards above the ground. Though his lips moved frantically, I couldn’t hear a word he was trying to say. At last, he gave up on words and was reduced to pointing – now at the burning monastery, now towards the sun that was still low in the south-eastern sky. There was no solidity about his body. It was more like a mass of shaped and coloured smoke. In places, I could see straight through him to where smoke from the monastery was rising into the blue sky.

‘Go away,’ I cried at him. ‘You’re dead.’ I waved my stick at him, and, without feeling it strike on anything solid, saw it vanish into his chest before re-emerging. The boy twisted about in the air so he could look fully at me. There was the hurt look on his face that I recalled so well from whenever he thought me less enthusiastic than himself about the lunatic doctrines it had been my duty to expound to him.

As I drifted back into wakefulness, the smell of burning travelled back with me. I knew at once I was far from Jarrow. There was the soft kiss of the silk on my body where slaves had put me into my bed, and the still, warm air of a Syrian afternoon in spring. I was plainly Alaric, rich-as-Croesus, resting in the house of Zakariya. Jarrow was far off, and the monastery there could take a running jump. But there was still an omnipresent though faint smell of burning. Was the house on fire? I opened my eyes. The slave who’d sat beside me while I nodded off was gone. I sat up and cleared my throat loudly. I was alone. No point shouting for assistance. No point struggling out of bed just to pull the bell cord. I waited while my legs came back to life, and I drained the cup of fruit squash that had been placed on the table beside my bed.

My rooms were all on the first floor, and my bedroom window looked directly down into the central garden. As I got it open and looked out, I breathed in a stray gust of smoke that had drifted up from the garden. I fought to control the coughing fit and squeezed my eyes shut. I was about to push the window closed again, when I heard the voice of Zakariya from somewhere below.

‘You stupid black fucker!’ he screamed. ‘If I weren’t so bleeding soft, I’d have you strung up on the flesh hooks and branded.’ I heard the repeated sound of a stick on bare flesh and a slave’s moans of despair. I pushed the window shut and pressed the catch into place. I needed to see Zakariya. I’d evaded his obvious questions the previous evening. The sooner I got hold of him now, the better it would be. I looked about for some clothes. There was a robe of white linen laid out for me on one of the chairs. It was one of those garments with many ties that call out for assistance. But I didn’t need to impress anyone. For what I had in mind, respectability would be enough. With some groaning and wheezing, I pulled the robe over my head and tied it on me as well as I could. I stepped into a pair of slippers and made for the door.

The stairs led down to a corridor of humbler single rooms. At the end of this was a door that led into the main hall. From here, I turned left and made my way out into the garden. I bumped almost at once into Zakariya. His face had turned the colour of roof tiles, and he leaned heavily on his stick. He straightened up the moment he saw me, and pulled his face into the semblance of a welcoming smile.