The Sword of Damascus (27 page)

‘I don’t like this sort of thing myself. But it helps keep these people off the offensive. And, bearing in mind we can’t match the armies they have to throw at us, our entire strategy is one of asymmetric warfare. It’s a matter of sea power and of new weapons, and of terror attacks. You see, they rule over a mass of Christians in these territories – not all of them reconciled to the new order of things. Except for a few merchants we allow under licence, we’ve none of their people to worry about. We win – no, we avoid losing – by doing to them what they can’t do back to us.’

But I was speaking wholly to myself. An ecstatic look on his face, Edward was staring intently down at the slaughter a few yards beneath our feet. An old man was embracing a boy and trying to divert those slashing blows on to his own body. He might as well have been trying to keep the wind at bay. He gave a final horrified scream as another blow smashed in his rib cage, and he was pulled aside to expose the boy. I shut my eyes and tried not to hear the boy’s final cry. I opened them to look at the answering cry from some people in the balcony just across the narrow street. Even had it been wise to draw attention to ourselves, there was nothing any of us could do. Dressed in dark clothing that covered them head to foot, the killers were pressing forward into the main square. They left behind them piles of the fallen. Blood glistened on the paving stones. The groans of the dying, or just the gravely injured, were a sadness to hear. But to offer active assistance so soon would have risked suicide. Until those maniac, jerking figures were well into the square, no gate in the street would open, nor any shutters go up.

I looked into the square towards the mosque. There was now a column of black smoke rising up to the sky. A dull yellow in the sunshine, flames were already darting from the upper windows. There was still no sign of the authorities, and it was most likely the nutters themselves had set fire to the place. Oh, the Angels of the Lord had struck hard this day – and, through them, so had the Empire.

I looked again at Edward, I could see he’d have loved the Circus in Constantinople – though less, perhaps, for the chariot races than for the nastier punishments we inflicted between the races on captured barbarian raiders. As it was, he’d keep those whores busy, come the evening. Soon enough, I’d have another bill on my desk for the inevitable blacked eyes and lacerated flesh.

‘I think we’ve seen quite enough up here,’ I said, not hiding my disapproval. ‘And I’m sure you wouldn’t want to keep Simonides waiting downstairs. His evocation of the boys proceeding naked through the streets of Athens has a charm even your reading is unlikely to abolish.’

Chapter 32

‘If you don’t mind my saying, I think you were mad to leave the bookseller’s shop before guards could be found.’ Edward gave me another dark stare and went back to looking nervously about the deserted street.

‘I do mind, thank you very much,’ I said primly. Perhaps we should have waited a little longer. The bookseller had objected strongly to letting his best customer leave through the back of his shop into that labyrinth of alleys. Even so, Edward had put me right out by the revelation of his inability to scan, or even hear, the difference between Sapphic and Phalaecean hendecasyllables. It had always struck me as a perfectly clear difference. If it gave him trouble, it was surely a return of the wilfulness for which I’d often flogged him in Jarrow. On the whole, I’d thought it better for my temper if we were away from the sight of books. ‘And do put that knife away,’ I snapped, wondering if we hadn’t passed this broken gate post once already. ‘The only trouble we’re likely to meet will be if the Saracen militia takes against you for it.’

He ignored me and we pressed on through the centre of Beirut. Of course, my chair had vanished at the first whiff of trouble, and I was now reduced to creeping along with my stick in one hand and Edward’s free arm in the other. Except where they were still holed up in the burning mosque, the Angels of the Lord had finished their business and been chased off by the militia. The massacre outside the bookseller’s shop had been nasty enough. But it had been a localised attack. I was hungry, and I wanted a lie down before the books I’d bought would be sent over. I needed to be rested for those. At least one of them I’d never seen before, and I’d work that secretary late into the night with reading it to me.

‘I’d like to know what we’re doing in this city,’ Edward announced in his attempt at a manly voice. He stopped and kicked at a severed hand that lay in the road before us. I poked it with my stick and bent down to see it more clearly. Hacked off at the wrist, it was a man’s right hand. Most likely, it had been holding a weapon. Its owner and the weapon were nowhere to be seen. I observed that it might have been left by one of the retreating Angels. Edward ignored me and kicked the hand into the gutter that ran down the centre of the street.

‘It must be a very recent loss,’ I added. ‘I’m surprised the dogs haven’t found it.’ Still silent, Edward pulled me back into a slow walk. I looked up at the sky. ‘We’re headed in the right direction,’ I said brightly. ‘I’m sure home is just round another corner.’

Edward stopped and looked at me. ‘Why do you persist in calling that place home?’ he demanded fiercely. ‘It’s a vulgar lodging house. Everyone else who was staying there when we arrived has now moved on. Can’t you see the owner is just waiting for you to die so he can lay hands on your movables?’

I laughed and struggled free of Edward’s grip. ‘Ha!’ I cried happily. ‘You won’t learn the middle voice in Greek, or the optative. You don’t avoid hanging nominatives. You frequently confuse the two aorists. You’ve still turned into a proper little snob. “Vulgar lodging house” indeed! I’m having a glorious time at Zakariya’s. I even managed to fuck that little dancing girl the other afternoon.’ I smiled into the scowling face. ‘But surely you aren’t worried, my dear boy – worried I’ll get her with child? I know old men can dote on their last sons. But I promise, you’ll still get place of honour in my will!’ I thought he’d start another of his arguments, and how to evade the main issue of what exactly we were doing in Beirut.

Just then, however, we turned a corner and found ourselves in a wider street. I’d have said it was lined with dwellings of the humbler merchants and craftsmen – single-storey buildings, that is, usually without courtyards. It would normally have bustled with all the usual activity of making and selling. It was now still as the alleys we had just left behind. The whole street, right down to where it terminated against the wall of a church, was littered with corpses. Mostly women and children, there must have been a hundred of the dead – possibly more. They lay among broken furniture and bedding that had been pulled out of the houses. In a few cases, the women were still clutching little cloth bundles that I didn’t care to inspect too closely. So far as I could tell, the policy had been to rape the younger women before slitting their throats. The others had been killed less systematically. The few unslit bellies were already swollen with the gases released by decay, and there was an endless buzzing of the flies who’d come to feast on the rotting flesh.

‘I’ve told you, Edward,’ I said wearily. ‘Do put that knife away.’ I waved my stick towards the men dressed in loose black robes who were silently flitting from corpse to corpse. ‘The killers are long since moved on. Those are only the tooth gatherers.’ I stood and watched the skilled use of pincers in the younger mouths. I felt Edward’s hand take hold of mine. I gave it what I hoped was a reassuring squeeze, and tried to draw his attention from the baby that had had its brains dashed out against a drain cover. ‘The roots filed off and welded into gold plates,’ I explained with a nod at the hushed, furtive creatures, who scurried about just as if they’d been crabs on a beach at low tide, ‘those teeth are worth their weight in silver. When my own first began to go, I did experiment with having new teeth pushed into the sockets. It wasn’t the success I’d hoped, and I eventually designed a replacement set entirely of gold and ivory.’ I poked my stick at the nearest of the corpses. It was an adolescent boy, perhaps a little older than Edward. He’d been castrated. It wasn’t his dying scream, though, that had pulled his jaws nine inches apart. Except for one broken incisor, all the teeth were out already. The body had been looted and abandoned, the eyes still open, the limbs stiff in their dying position.

‘It’s – it’s horrible!’ Edward breathed.

I looked at him again. I really thought he was about to vomit. He was a strange child – happy enough to watch the infliction of death, fussy only about the treatment of the dead. I sniffed very hard.

‘My last and dearest of sons,’ I said, trying for a nonchalance I didn’t feel, ‘my dear, dear boy. Dead is dead, I’ve told you many times. What happens after death is of no more importance to the dead than what happened before birth. The one objection a reasonable man can have even to eating the flesh of the dead is that it would encourage still worse behaviour to the living.’ I smiled and pointed at one of the tooth gatherers, who was looking up at us. It was now that I noticed the dogs peering warily at us from within some of the violated houses. They’d have their turn soon enough, and there would be good pickings for all of them.

‘Who did all this?’ I asked in Syriac. The man shrugged and went back to pulling one last tooth from the jaws of another adolescent boy. He wiped it clean and dropped it into the appropriate leather pouch. I unhooked the purse from my belt and tossed a couple of silver coins on to the paving stones. These were dark and sticky with blood. I looked hurriedly at my feet. I hadn’t moved far enough into the street to ruin my velvet shoes.

‘Word is,’ he said, pulling himself slowly upright, ‘it’s orders from the Governor of Syria. Apparently Meekal heard that their priest was preaching against the Established Faith. His agents couldn’t find the priest, so they made the next best example. The bodies have to lie here till the dogs have finished with them.’ He gave me a closer look and stepped forward. He reached into one of his pouches and took out a large, white incisor. He held it out to me cupped in his stained right hand.

I avoided the urge to shrink back from him and shook my head. Once I could find the right workmen, I had other ideas for my mouth. He shrugged again and put the tooth away. I had a sudden flash of imagination. I could hear the tread of soldiers marching into the street, and see the glint of suddenly drawn swords. I could hear the terrified shrieks of the dying, and the vain pleading of the women for their children. I could see the men roped together and led off for public execution. I’d seen the like any number of times. I’d just seen an actual massacre. But these visions of horror are best not encouraged. I gave Edward’s hand another squeeze and asked about the Golden Spear Inn.

‘Well,’ one of his colleagues interrupted with an oily smile, ‘if that’s where you’re headed, you shouldn’t be starting from here.’ He stood up and looked at me from within the folds of his black hood. The pinched face was glowing with some loathsome skin disease. I looked upwards and pretended not to hear Edward’s obscene mutter beside me. He’d understood enough from the name of the inn and from the tone of the reply.

‘There were men here not long ago,’ the first tooth gatherer said. He took the coins from the tooth pouch where he’d put them and looked closely at them. I ignored the hint and waited for further and better particulars. ‘They were armed,’ he added at last, ‘and they said they were looking for an old man and a blond boy.’ He pointed at the golden curls that showed beneath Edward’s hat. ‘They had a Greek look about them. If they lay hands on you, they’ll have your heads up on poles before you can say “knife”.’ He laughed again and went back about his work.

I tried not to stiffen. At once, the street had lost all its post-massacre sadness. I looked at the row of silent buildings, and at the high, blank wall of the church. How far was it back to the inn? I could hear nothing. But Edward’s ears were sharper than mine, and he was looking intently along the street. I could see he was feeling again for his knife. I put on a friendly smile and was glad I’d come out in my best silk. I held my purse up and let the coins within jingle slightly.

‘Would it trouble you, O bearer of interesting news,’ I asked, ‘if I were to beg you to hurry to the nearest main street and engage a closed carrying chair?’ He gave me a dubious look. I opened my purse and took out a half solidus. The gold gleamed bright in the sunshine.

‘It is outrageous!’ Zakariya wailed as his people helped me from the carrying chair. ‘Is there no excess beyond these dogs of infidels?’ There was a splash of blood on the lower part of his tunic, and his left arm was grazed up to the elbow. But he suddenly remembered himself, and trailed off into a long mutter about how it all reflected badly on the respectable Christians who counted among his very best friends. Without troubling myself to ask, I gathered he was referring to the later massacre outside the bookseller.

I turned and looked at the inn’s heavy gate. Though shut and barred now, it couldn’t keep out the sound of renewed shouting in the streets. Zakariya saw the questioning look on my face.

‘But didn’t My Lord hear the proclamation?’ he asked with a nasty smile.

I listened with my good ear to the undoubted screams that drifted through the gap at the bottom of the gate.

‘Well, My Lord,’ Zakariya said, ‘the news is that His Highness the Governor of Syria has decreed that any more terror attacks in Beirut are to be punished with the execution of all the Greeks. Yes, men, women, children – dragged from their homes and slaughtered in the street!’ He giggled and looked heavenwards. ‘You can be sure I’ve already done my duty.’ He pointed at the blood on his tunic. ‘That Greek filth down the road won’t be undercutting me again,’ he said proudly. ‘These Greeks, I can tell you, have met their match in Governor Meekal,’ he added in the voice he normally reserved for his sermons. ‘And it’s about time they learned their place in the new Syria. Alexander’s dead. The Romans are gone. The Empire is nothing. We talk to the tax collectors in Greek, and that’s it.