The Sword of Damascus (38 page)

‘How long have I been asleep?’ I asked. Meekal got up and paced over to the window. He stood with his back to me. ‘What day is this?’

‘If I set a task for that fool Karim beyond his abilities,’ he said without turning, ‘I am willing to blame myself. But I expected better of you than to get caught up in an Imperial terror attack – especially when this attack party had been sent specifically to murder you. That you survived last night is less down to anything you did than to the fact that God is on our side.’ He stopped and continued looking out of the window. Was that a prayer he was muttering under his breath? I couldn’t tell. If it was, though, this wasn’t the Michael I used to know. I suddenly realised that, but for him, the whole suite seemed absolutely quiet. ‘It’s Thursday,’ he said, now redundantly. ‘You’ve lost only one morning of your remaining time before you must stand before God.’

‘Where is everyone?’ I asked.

Meekal turned to face me. His beard had been waxed and pressed into something that resembled a pair of sharpened ox horns. He came back over and sat down again. He pulled his chair closer and stared at me with his freezing, dark eyes.

‘Get out,’ he said to the doctor, still in Greek. ‘But I correct myself,’ he added, sliding at once into the ceremonious politeness of the powerful, ‘let me show you out.’ He got up and pushed the man from the room.

Once alone, I lifted my arms and held them out before me. I bent my knees up and tried to touch them with my chin. With a bit of strain in my upper back, I just about managed. Still tired, and now conscious of aching all over, I settled back, reasonably content. If I really had fatally overstrained myself the night before, it didn’t show up on my own examination. I’d see what I could find on Meekal’s face when he eventually returned from his conversation with the doctor.

I sat watching the movement of a shadow cast by a chair. It moved steadily towards the edge of one of the larger floor tiles. The whole suite was creepily silent. The shadow had just crossed over to the next tile when Meekal came back in. He dumped the golden key to the whole suite on the table beside me and sat down.

‘I kicked all your shouting, messy workmen out when they downed tools for lunch,’ he said quietly in Latin. ‘How they didn’t wake you this morning is a small miracle. I cleared everyone else out with them. I understand that my pretty new uncle went off earlier in the day with Karim to watch the public executions. Had I known of this in time, I would most certainly have prevented your boy from leaving the safety of the palace. Because of his family connections, I am sadly unable to discipline Karim. But I will speak with him about this. In the meantime, your boy is safe enough. And letting him see the public executions may serve a useful purpose. We didn’t take many prisoners last night. But I think the boy will be impressed by the show we can put on here in Damascus.’

‘And now we’re alone,’ I said, trying to smile. I looked about for my teeth. But my gums were sore, and I didn’t need to stand on ceremony with Meekal. ‘I don’t suppose there’s any wine left in my office?’

‘It was my intention to let you settle into your rooms here in the palace,’ he went on, ignoring my question. ‘I was to take you on a tour of the city tomorrow, so you could see the Faithful at prayer. The day after that, we’d get down to business. However, in view of last night’s attack – coming so soon after the earlier attempt on your life, I think it appropriate to come straight to the point.’ He paused and looked at the golden key. He got noiselessly up and crossed the room to the door. He pulled it suddenly open and looked up and down the corridor outside. He closed the door and went over to the window. He shut the glazed frame, and then pulled down the silken blind. Light now came from the glazed window overhead, but this was of double glass and was already fastened. He sat down again.

‘You do know why I had you brought here, don’t you?’ he asked. ‘You know why we had you lifted from under the very noses of the Intelligence Bureau. You know why we brought you all the way back here, right through Imperial waters. I’m sure you appreciate the diplomatic triumph required to get the northern barbarians to do as we wanted. And I’m sure you appreciate how much it cost us to get that ship designed and built. So, must I spell out why you are now here, and received with such lavish honour? Why is it that we have even decided to overlook your apostasy from the conversion you made in front of the Caliph Omar himself? As you ought to know well, the punishment for apostasy is death.’

‘You tell me, my dear,’ I said, patting my nose with a corner of the white bed covering. I looked down to see if I’d been bleeding again. I hadn’t. ‘You might also tell me why you’d arranged a meeting for me at Kasos. How you’d have got a fleet there is beyond me – especially since you don’t even control the sea approaches to Beirut.’

Meekal smiled grimly. He got up and went over to a sofa that was turned to catch the light from the window. He took up a scroll and unwound it to a place already marked, then stood in a pool of sunlight that came from above.

‘I found this on your desk this morning,’ he said. ‘I didn’t expect you’d overlook anything so flattering to your own place in history – and this does flatter you, as you will agree.’ He cleared his throat, and, in a remarkably melodious Saracen, went over the passage I’d been reading the night before last. He reached the hard word that had stopped me, and went straight on:

And among the numberless ships of the Faithful sailed the five ships of al-Arik; and lo, al-Arik raised his golden sword from his place upon the walls, and the morning sun glittered on the armour of the Old One as it does upon the waters where mingle Tigris and Euphrates; and there was a sound of drums and many trumpets; and fire spat from the mouths of five pipes that were within the five ships.

And a roar of thunder was in the fire spat forth from the five ships; and like unto a spear shaft that is set alight, the fires leapt five and even seven hundred cubits across the waters of the sea, and fell upon the ships of the Faithful, and these were burned utterly to the water.

And behold, the fires shot upwards and downwards upon the water as directed; and yea, the fires were unquenched by the waters poured upon them, but burned even on the water; and the sea was set alight, and countless ships of the Faithful were caught and burned even as they fled the shafts of fire from the five ships of al-Arik; and there was great slaughter among the ships of the Faithful.

And the Greeks sent ambassadors among the Infidels of the North, and gave much gold, saying, O good men of the north, take now this money and depart from the City upon the Two Waters, lest the fire that jumps and is not quenched shall be also rained upon you; and the Infidels of the North lost heart and went from the place with much astonishment and fear.

And other ships of the Greeks now came forth and spat fire even at the Faithful who waited in armour upon the shore; and the slaughter was wicked even as the breath of the Angel that of old blasted the men of Sakkenah as they rejoiced in their moment of triumph.

And Yazid looked upon the many fires and the smoke of the fires, and cried out in a loud voice . . .

Meekal stopped reading and tossed the book unclosed back on to the sofa. The sun overhead fell on him from behind, and his face was hidden in shadow.

‘Your chronicler writes like a man who was there to see the catastrophe,’ I said.

Meekal pursed his lips and sat down again. ‘It was the greatest combined operation across those waters since Xerxes,’ he said, back in Latin. ‘We lost more men under the City walls than we sent out for the conquest of the whole Persian Empire. It had taken us five years to build that massive fleet. You burned it to the waterline in a single morning. Add to all that your harrying of the retreat. Of the armies we sent out – the flower of the Saracen youth – not three hundred broken, half-starved men made it back to Damascus. The shock killed Muawiya. Oh, he carried on another few years. But you should have seen him. No one who’d known him before could leave his presence without weeping.’

‘And I’ll bet it made you feel sick, my dear,’ I broke in. ‘You said in your parting letter to Constantine that the Empire was finished, and that you’d soon be back in the City at the head of a Saracen army. If you’ll pardon an old man’s vulgarity, you thought you’d come to piss on our corpse. Instead, we sat up and fucked you with a broom handle.’ I laughed so much at the look on his face that I went into my first coughing fit in months. It had been their first proper defeat – and it had changed the whole balance of power in the world. ‘You should have seen the service we laid on in the Great Church,’ I spluttered. ‘It went on all bloody day!’

‘We brought you here, Grandfather,’ Meekal said through gritted teeth, ‘and are loading you with honour and protecting you from the Empire, for one obvious reason.’ I smiled up at him and thought of teasing him with a pretence of senility. But he was going into one of his fierce moods, and I didn’t fancy a slap round the face. ‘We brought you here,’ he hissed, ‘so you could give us the secret of the Greek fire. Our next attempt on the City shall not be a failure. I want to know the secret of the Greek fire.’

I laughed again – not worrying if I coughed my guts out, or what tears ran down my face, nor even if he boxed my ears. I laughed and gasped and pointed at the cup of lemon water. Now alarmed, Meekal grabbed it and held it to my lips.

‘Oh, dear me, Michael,’ I wheezed. ‘You’ve got the wrong man here. If you want to know anything about Greek fire, it’s surely Callinicus you should be speaking to. All I did was recognise its potential and put up the money the man demanded. You want Callinicus for the secret itself – him or the reigning Emperor. No one else knows it.

‘But I suppose that means you’ll have to put me to death now,’ I said with a mocking parody of fear. ‘It also means you’ll need a fucking good story for when the Caliph gets back. From what you tell me, you could have gathered another siege army for the money you spent on getting me out of Jarrow.’

Meekal said nothing. He went over to the sofa once more and took up a bent strip of dark enamelled gold. It was in the shape of a hair band. He put it over his face and arranged it to cover his eyes. I saw the afternoon sun sparkle on the dozens of small perforations where the eyes would look on to the inside. He came and sat down again.

‘I took this from one of your workmen,’ he breathed very softly. ‘It is a wonderfully simple cure for bad eyes. Once you get used to looking through the many holes, reading becomes so much less of a strain. Why it wasn’t discovered many ages ago adds only to the genius of the man who at last commanded it to be made.’ He paused and took the thing off. He gave me another of his unblinking stares. ‘Now, my dear grandfather, you can stop playing with me. I know perfectly well that there is no Callinicus. There never was a Callinicus. Nor was there any body of ancient writings he may have found in Egypt. You – and you alone – are the man who made fire for the Greeks. And you are the man who will make it for us. You were the only shield Constantinople had. You will now be our own Sword of Damascus.’

Chapter 45

There were limits to how far even I could push Meekal. Rather than deny the obvious, I hugged myself and looked happily up. He stared silently back, his face a mask of greed and triumph – and also of a kind of pleading that took me back to when he was a boy and, scared of another beating from his tutors, needed help with a lesson.

‘My darling Michael,’ I cried, ‘did you work that one out all for yourself? Or did you get someone to do it for you?’

He ignored the insult, noting only the confession. His face relaxed as if after an orgasm. His lips moved in some renewed and voiceless prayer of thanks.

‘I knew on the first reports it had all been your work,’ he said. ‘Everyone else was taken in by your story of this Callinicus. But I’d spent too much of my life hearing you talk of matter and its combinations, and the benefits of its artificial combination. I only wondered why it had taken you till the last moment to save the Greeks. Was it your sense of drama?’

‘Not really,’ I said. ‘Its discovery was one of those happy accidents. I’d been looking for some while into a combination of elements that would have enough explosive force to propel a thousand arrows at a time. What I found lacked the full explosive force I needed, but had all the other properties described in your chronicle. We did try it out on some barbarians who were attempting to raid a city on the Black Sea coast. That revealed one or two errors that nearly spoiled its effect. But we’d corrected those well enough by the time Yazid ordered his big assault on the walls. Ah . . . !’ Meekal had fished once again on to that sofa, and now had a jug in his hands and two cups. ‘You always were a good lad,’ I quavered, ‘or you were whenever you weren’t being a complete bastard,’ I added more firmly. I took the offered cup and sniffed its heady contents.

Meekal leaned over me. ‘You will, of course, reproduce the Greek fire for us,’ he said. ‘You will help ensure that our next attack on the Empire will be victorious – that we can counter their fire with our fire, and that our great numerical advantage will count in full.’

I put the cup down and looked about for my teeth. One of the springs was coming loose, and now was as good a time as any for fiddling with it.

‘I’d have thought, my dear boy,’ I replied without looking up, ‘that, with all the resources of the Caliph at your disposal, preparing a very simple compound would all be in a morning’s work.’ I waited until I knew there’d be no response. ‘Well, well,’ I gently mocked, ‘the new masters of the world – and still they can’t think for themselves. Even with Syrians and Egyptians in the harem, the Saracens still can’t match the science of the West.’