The Sword of Damascus (26 page)

‘We have some business to discuss,’ I said shortly. Trying not to look as curious as I felt, I ignored the black smoke that was coming from behind some bushes.

Now in his little office, Zakariya restrained himself just in time from biting one of the coins. Instead, he gave me a repeat of his welcoming oily smile. I let him refill my cup. I leaned back into my chair and looked a while at the closed window.

‘What is that smell of burning?’ I asked, not caring if it meant any loss of face.

‘After his long decline, my father has finally died,’ came the answer.

I thought of the vicious dotard who’d presided over things during my earlier stays in the house, and marvelled at the triumph of a good constitution over a bad heart and clouded mind. If he’d only just died, he must have made it almost to my age. I made a vague expression of sympathy and told myself not to ask if cremation had suddenly come back into fashion. I sniffed again. No, that wasn’t quite human flesh. Besides, when had cremation
ever
been the fashion in Syria? Zakariya mistook my silence for something else, and smothered a giggle and bowed.

‘My father was to the end an obstinate Cross Worshipper,’ he explained. ‘I have now ordered his collection of books to be destroyed. Where they contradict the true Word of God, they are blasphemous. Where they support it, they are superfluous. In either case, let them be consumed.’ He bowed again, then looked up, obviously pleased at his attempted witticism. I acknowledged it with a wave of my cup.

‘But, surely,’ I said mildly – not that I imagined the world would lose much from the burning of a few dozen ranting supports of the Monophysite heresy – ‘that is not a Saracen position. Did not the Caliph Omar himself order the preservation of all Christian and Jewish writings that came into the hands of the Faithful?’ I might have looked into the eyes of a dead fish.

But Zakariya stared again at the three coins I’d set out on the table. He gave me another of his smiles. ‘With all respect, My Lord . . .’ Without asking leave, he sat down opposite me. I looked into my cup and said nothing. ‘With all respect, My Lord, this is the beginning of times. God sent Jesus – peace be upon Him – to be His Prophet. His teachings were immediately corrupted by the Greeks. Now, God has sent Mohammed – peace be upon Him – as His last and greatest Prophet. His teachings cannot be corrupted. And they have wiped the slate of history. Those who accept them are no longer Syrians or Egyptians or Saracens – or even Greeks. They are the Faithful. All that went before is of no value. My sons shall learn the Holy Book by heart, and blend into the Community of the Faithful. I am the last of my blood whose first language must be Syriac, the last who was ever deceived by the muddy reason of the Greeks and of those who argued against the Greeks from within Greek premises. There is no God but Allah, and Mohammed is His Prophet,’ he ended in a Saracen more piously than correctly voiced.

‘Then the boy and I must change lodgings,’ I said with mock earnestness, ‘if we are to continue going to church.’ Of course, I had no intention of visiting any place of worship. I’d wasted enough time already in these places, and had reached an age that gave me the perfect excuse for not wasting any more. But I’d hit just the right tone to get the man’s face working.

‘“Let there be no compulsion in matters of faith,”’ he said hurriedly with another glance at the coins. ‘Those are the words of the Prophet.’

And so they are. If he’d said nothing beyond that, I’d have thought better of the Saracen Prophet. However, you don’t push someone too far when he’s taken up a new religion. Those born in the Faith could take a relaxed view of its harder precepts. That didn’t include Zakariya. If he’d gone out and spat on his father’s grave, it wouldn’t be much worse than he was now doing. And you don’t argue with a man in that position – even when you are paying wildly over the going rate for his hospitality.

‘Would it offend My Lord if I asked how long these miserable rooms should be reserved?’ he asked. He now gave way to compulsion and picked up one of the coins. He rubbed it hard between forefinger and thumb, and his face took on its first genuinely peaceful look since I’d caught him finishing the holocaust of his father’s library.

‘Until further notice,’ I said. I thought of adding some rider to this, but instead repeated myself: ‘Until further notice. I will let you know of any change of plan. In the meantime, please attend on me every Tuesday morning to receive another advance payment of your rent.’

His mouth nearly fell open. He was on his feet again, bowing and bringing his right hand again and again against his forehead. It would be all as I asked, he assured me. Within that house, I might as well be the King of Beirut.

As the promises and boasts poured from his lips like water through a clock, I looked up at the ceiling and thought once more of the golden mass locked within the cupboard beside my bed. When Zakariya did finally shut up, I might think it worth ordering tuna fish baked in honey for dinner.

Chapter 31

You may often have heard it proclaimed that money doesn’t buy you happiness. I can understand that the rich have generally tried to impose, and the poor have too often taken comfort in, the belief that three meals a day, plus the chance of living past thirty-five, are to be pitied rather then envied. But I see no reason whatever for sharing the belief. Anyone who’d last seen poor, dirty old Brother Aelric brooding over a cup of beer in the cold wastes of Northumbria wouldn’t have recognised the frail but hearty grandee carried about the streets of Beirut. Indeed, so long as the sun wasn’t too close to the vertical, I was perfectly up to walking about the streets.

It was Friday, 26 April 687. I’d been here a month, and Jarrow was a fading dream. Its only active reminder came when Edward forgot himself and lapsed into English. The following day would be my ninety-seventh birthday – not a day I was planning to celebrate, or even mention to Edward. But the fact that I’d made it this far, in such good shape, and despite several thousand attempts during the better part of a century to keep me from living another day, was beginning no end to cheer me. If I could carry on like this till the full century, I’d have no reason to complain. Indeed, I had bugger all reason right now. The day had started well, and was growing progressively better.

Cup in hand, I was sitting in the back room of a bookshop just off the main square. The owner brushed more of the congealed papyrus dust from his face and bowed apologetically.

‘The problem is, My Lord,’ he said again, ‘that nobody wants any of this stuff nowadays. I think I’m the only one left who sells anything but Syriac and Saracen – and that’s my real business, you know.’

I ignored him and looked again at the walls, lined, as they were, with row upon row of crumbling leather volumes. I couldn’t see the parchment labels on the spines, which meant I could hope they were other than still more worthless discourses on the Nature of Christ. I breathed in slowly to feed the hope, and savoured a smell that had given me comfort since I was barely older than Edward. It wasn’t a pleasure he seemed inclined to share. Sitting on a low stool before me, he was trying, without much success, to wipe the brown dust from his hands. I breathed out and coughed, and waved at the crate that two sweating assistants had finally carried up from the basement.

‘That one,’ I said, pointing at one of the older and more stained rolls. ‘Remember that papyrus rolls aren’t like a modern book. Try not to break this one.’

Edward fumbled with the protective leather band. Once more, it was perished, and it came apart in his hands. I sniffed, but said nothing. He tugged on the protective outer sheet as if it had been a bale of cotton cloth.

‘Oh, give it here,’ I said, now with genuine impatience. ‘Let me show you again how to read in the ancient manner.’ I took the roll from him into my right hand. Holding it lightly in the middle, I pulled gently with my left hand on the outer sheet. As I rolled this neatly around the outer spindle of the book, I slowly let out more of the long papyrus strip with my right hand. ‘Look, Edward, the secret is to keep your arms at a fixed distance from each other and from your body. You then keep up a light tension: too much, and you’ll pull the gummed sheets apart, or break one; too little, and the sheet will buckle, and then you’ll have trouble reading the text.’ I unrolled the book all the way to the end. I then repeated myself in reverse. I gave the reclosed book back to Edward and watched as, clumsily, and with much swearing under his breath, he got it open again to the first two-inch column of text.

‘Come on, then,’ I encouraged. ‘You don’t expect me to bugger what’s left of my sight on that worn-out script.’ He screwed up his face into a vision of heroic concentration and read me the opening to the fourth volume of Simonides. I put up with his reading until he’d reached the end of the dedication to Hipparchus, then stopped him. ‘Have I not repeatedly told you,’ I sighed, ‘that proper Greek makes a distinction between long and short syllables? Forget what others may do, especially in Syria. Have you ever heard
me
fail to mark the distinction? It is exactly the same as in Latin – and perhaps still more important, bearing in mind the probable change of the accent since ancient times. Listen to me recite the piece, and try to follow the text as I go.’ I sat back and began on the long and graceful epigram I’d first read seventy-five years earlier in the University Library in Constantinople.

‘But, My Lord, if you already know the piece, why must I read it to you?’ Edward asked. For all he was trying, he couldn’t keep the annoyance out of his voice. ‘You remember everything you’ve ever read, and you’ve read everything.’ I thought of explaining myself with a hard poke of my stick in his chest. But it wouldn’t have done in front of the bookseller. Sadly, Edward
was
in need of more explanation. ‘This Greek is even worse than Latin,’ he said, now with open annoyance. ‘It’s nothing like the language that people speak. Don’t they ever write anything except in a language last spoken thousands of years ago?’

‘
One
thousand years ago,’ I corrected him with even menace. ‘The modern language has fallen away from its old perfection. But educated men try to keep both versions balanced yet separate in their minds. We, who come to both as outsiders, have an advantage here. Regardless of that, it is an effort worth making. What the Greeks achieved in their day of glory may not have been repeated. It is certainly not to be forgotten. Now, take up and read again. And do try, this time, to mark the distinctions of length.’

I was thinking of the great ode on the Panathenaic Festival that followed the one we’d just read, when I heard the first screams out in the street.

‘Dear me, what is that?’ I asked. ‘I really thought Beirut was too small for a riot.’

The bookseller’s face tightened, and he rubbed the papyrus dust from his hands with a dirty cloth. We listened to the rising volume of sound. It was a terrified screaming of women and adolescent boys. Among it all were manly bellows of rage, or perhaps also of fear. The bookseller ran into the front room of the shop and shouted at his assistants to get the stock inside and the shutters down. I pulled a face. This was a bloody nuisance. The day really had been going so well.

‘Help me upstairs, Edward,’ I commanded. ‘There’s a balcony from which we can look over the street.’

When we entered the shop, the street had been empty. The main square, though, had been crowded with Saracens and their local converts, all waiting to get into what had been the Church of Christ the Redeemer for the prayers of their holy day. The street was now a mass of running people.

‘Is that blood on those men?’ I asked, peering uncertainly at the rapidly moving blurs beneath where we stood.

Edward nodded. He took my arm and turned me to the right, in the direction of the mosque. We couldn’t see the entrance. It was plain, though, that the crowds were trying to get away from the place.

I shut my eyes and rubbed them. I looked harder – and I wondered how thick the shutters were of this shop. ‘Is that not a banner, hanging down,’ I asked now, ‘with a cross painted on it?’

Edward nodded again. ‘Can you see the men standing on the roof above the banner, waving severed heads?’ he asked.

Perhaps, if I’d looked harder, now I knew what was there, I’d have seen it all for myself. But the screaming grew suddenly more intense on our left. The crowds that had been running and pushing madly to get away were now jostling their way back towards the square.

‘Christ is my Saviour! My Saviour is Christ!’ came the repeated shout in Syriac. I saw the flash of steel about thirty yards along the street. I couldn’t see those who had the swords. But it wasn’t hard to work out what was happening. Soon enough, there would be the soft clatter of hooves on paving stones, as the Saracen guards made their way in to restore order. Any prisoners they took would come smartly enough out of their hashish fit once they felt the hooked gloves dragged through their flesh. In the meantime, it was bloody murder in the streets.

‘It’s people from the mountain tribes,’ I said, speaking partly to myself. ‘When there’s a war on, we smuggle weapons to them and small amounts of money. For the outlay involved, you can sometimes get a big return. During the last war, we staged a big attack in Damascus. We took out twelve of the Saracen religious leaders as they were working themselves up to lead the Faithful into battle against us. The Caliph had his ambassadors straight off to Constantinople with offers of a renewed tribute.