The Sword of Damascus (40 page)

‘I could adopt the boy,’ Meekal suggested with a faint smile.

I couldn’t read the titles. But I could see my old walking stick. Still bloody, it was propped between two blocks of the shelves. I walked forward and recovered it. A shame it was ruined. I’d been so pleased when I took delivery of it in Beirut.

‘Michael,’ I cried in a soft, menacing tone as I moved towards him. I leaned over him, lifted my visor and stared into his eyes. ‘Do you remember that time when you were a boy, and I caught you torturing a puppy? Do you also remember how I set about you with a slave whip? You may give yourself airs and graces among the darkies and anyone else who’s scared of your dungeons. So far as I’m concerned, you’re still the little shitbag I was sorry almost at once I hadn’t beaten to death.

‘No, shut up and listen.’ I moved my face closer to his. ‘I have read the tiresome utterances of your new Prophet. I have had their deeper obscurities explained to me by a learned Saracen. Adoption, I have no doubt you are aware, is not allowed among the Faithful. And under the Greek law that applies to me and mine within the Caliph’s dominions, Edward is already your uncle. You can no more adopt him than you can sodomise yourself.’

Meekal had been recoiling further and further into his chair – perhaps to get away from my less than wholesome breath. I now suddenly stepped back and hit him hard on the chest with my stick. He fell backwards, and only that fancy turban he was wearing prevented his head from cracking open on the tiles. I stood over his fallen body, holding my stick like a teacher’s cane. What would the world not have given to see Meekal the Merciless reduced to tears by a silly old man? What would he have not given for it not to have happened?

‘Now, get out of my sight,’ I snarled. ‘Come back when you have something better to offer than a puff of oral smegma.’ I walked past him out of the room. As I was opening a window in the room next door to look properly over Damascus, I heard the main door to my suite crash shut.

‘It might have been the opium,’ Edward agreed.

I nodded sympathetically. While I was asleep, the slaves had come back in. It was useful that I was woken in more clothes than I’d been wearing when I dropped off. The light was going down fast over Damascus, and, through the still open window, I could smell the palace kitchens hard at work. We sat, a concerned Karim beside Edward, in the small sitting room where I’d earlier dined. Edward tried to look brave again, but went pale instead.

‘You might wish to bear in mind,’ I said, ‘that to see a man flayed, after he’s been made to watch all his children roasted alive, can sometimes be too much even for the hardened spectator at these events.’ Karim raised an eyebrow, as if this were the first time he’d ever heard the point made. Edward went back to looking ashamed. Executions are a morning attraction in most cities, but I didn’t feel inclined to ask where they’d been for the rest of the day. I only hoped Karim had given Edward a better tour of Damascus than he’d so far managed for me.

‘So what are you both doing this evening?’ I asked. ‘You seem to have had a jolly enough day together. I imagine you’ll want to round it off with a visit to a brothel or some other place of public recourse. If so, I regret to say that Meekal has probably given orders for Edward not to be allowed again through the palace gates.’ Both faces dropped. Then Karim looked angry. I raised a hand to silence whatever outburst was coming. ‘No,’ I said, ‘you should know that you cannot possibly hope to cross a man like Meekal directly. But I am sure the palace itself affords endless opportunities for entertainment.

‘However, in young Edward’s case, I do suggest a break from enjoyment. The Saracen tutor I employed the other day made his first visit this morning, but was sent away. I believe he will return with the dusk. For obvious reasons, Greek will be the language of instruction.’ I saw Edward’s face cloud over. ‘Come now, my little son,’ I mocked. ‘Unlike our own English, Saracen does not allow clusters of more than two consonants. This helps give it – in the right mouth, that is – a most beautiful sound. You should learn it for its own sake, and because it is the language of your new friend Karim – and because I have never come across a language that did not turn out sooner or later to be of use. Go, then, and prepare yourself to receive your tutor. Karim, I am sure, will be happy to sit in on the lesson.’

I sat back and looked out of the window. The day was almost over, and, if I’d seen off that turd of a grandson, I could record no other worthwhile activity. So much still to do. So little time left in which to do it. I glanced at Edward and Karim. Their combined ages probably didn’t go far beyond thirty-five. I sighed and looked again out of the window.

‘You look sad, My Lord,’ Edward said. ‘Shall we not sit with you awhile?’

‘Thank you, but no,’ I said firmly. ‘You go and get ready for that lesson. Don’t bother looking in on me afterwards. I think I will spend the evening alone with some opium. The strain of the past few nights is heavy upon me. And I have yet to recover myself from the journey to Damascus.’ I reached for my stick – no replacement had yet been supplied, so I’d washed most of the blood off the old one in the latrine – and began my weary progression back to bed.

Karim stood up. ‘My Lord,’ he said, now in Saracen. I stopped. There was something both urgent and scared in his voice. ‘My Lord, if I could beg one more evening of you, it would be most gratefully received in certain quarters.’

As I wondered what he could possibly mean, I heard a movement in the corridor outside. Karim coughed loudly. Without any knock, the door opened, and an elaborately dressed eunuch entered.

‘I come, My Lord,’ he trilled in Syriac, ‘from a person of the highest quality.’ He was followed into the room by one of the household slaves, who set up an immediate babble about my not being disturbed. Karim stood forward with a small purse. He pressed it into the slave’s hand and pushed the man from the room. The eunuch, his lead-ravaged face painted a fashionable green, smiled and bowed low. ‘I am instructed to ask that My Lord should come at once,’ he said with one of those thrilling descents of the voice that only a eunuch can manage. ‘The secrecy of my mission has required a most delicate calculation of times with the changing of the guard outside this tower. If there is any delay, the mission must be cancelled.’

I looked at Edward, whose face was its usual blank. The conversation had been in a language he didn’t understand, and it was plain that Karim had told him nothing. Karim’s own face, if a little red, was a diplomatic blank.

‘Are you in a position to tell me what all this is about?’ I asked. He shook his head. I groaned, and thought of my soft bed and the still softer opium that would carry me into a night of blackness. ‘Get me ready,’ I said wearily. ‘And get me a cloak. There was a chill breeze last night that I’d not wish to expose myself to again.’

Chapter 47

Surrounded by a wall nearly as high as that of the main city, the palace must take up about a fifth of Damascus in size. As I’d suggested to Edward, it was a world in itself. I hadn’t been able to explore very much of it. But my own experience of the Imperial Palace in Constantinople – of which this was largely a copy – had told me what to expect. The curtained chair that carried me out of the Tower of Heavenly Peace moved briskly across the surrounding lawns and into one of the larger buildings. Through the silken meshes that allowed no one to see into the darkened interior, I peered out at my surroundings. Now at a pace deliberately slow and stately, so as not to attract notice, we passed through a set of halls, each of the most lavish magnificence. The lighting was so brilliant, I had no trouble using my visor to see around.

In perhaps the largest and most lavish of these halls, there was an erotic dance in its early stages. A blonde girl stood naked on a raised platform. Arms and legs wide outstretched, face upturned with eyes closed, she jerked and twitched in time to the music of drums and wailing flutes that came from below. I saw the glitter of nipple rings on her large, erect breasts. On each side of her, naked boys, their bodies painted gold, hopped and gyrated in time, though with less restraint, to the music. Before her, covered all over in silver scales, a black girl knelt. I watched fascinated as, tail first, and inch by inch, she fed a live snake into the blonde girl. In and in, the thing went – a good five feet of it. Anatomically impossible! you may cry? Well, I saw it happen, and in good light. Before my chair had carried me too far past to see more, she’d got virtually the whole thing in. Now, her flat belly distended, the blonde girl moved more freely to the music. The snake’s head poked out like some dark, mobile penis. The boys capered and strutted, their own dance punctuated by bursts of rapid wanking. About the platform, large, bearded men sat in a semicircle. Beside each was another naked girl. I had the impression they were all drinking wine. Certainly, their growls of appreciation sounded drunken. At times, they drowned out all but the higher squeals of the flutes. Before my chair had passed completely through a gateway of polished granite, I heard a still louder roar from the men, and heard the scraping of sandals on the marble floor as if everyone was getting up to press closer about the platform. But I could now see nothing through the curtains of my chair, and we were soon passing through other, much smaller rooms.

I saw men sitting around gambling. I saw men and girls and boys huddled together in groups, clouds all about them of smoke that smelled of burning opium. I saw conjurers and acrobats. In one room, I even saw an old man, dressed in a Greek cloak and demonstrating one of the proofs from Euclid on an immense board that filled the entire far wall. His lecture was followed by a crowd of men and boys, who scratched silently away on waxed tablets.

Now, we were in the open again, and could move more quickly. I felt the carrying slaves jog over lawns and gravel paths and, more often, along paved routes. We skirted several large buildings on which bright torches had been fixed. We passed through another building that was internally in darkness, though, from the echo of the footsteps of the carrying slaves, was no less magnificent than the first building. I felt the rise and fall from level, and heard the dull sound of leather on wood as we passed over a long bridge. There was the sudden chill and darkness of a tunnel, then more grass and gravel. It had rained briefly while I was under cover, or there had been late watering of the gardens. I could smell the wet marble as it mingled with the shrubs and flowers about me. Though always distant, I heard competing strains of music and loud cheers. On one occasion, I heard the shrill, continuing screams as of tortured boys or women.

At last, with a smell of aromatic wood smoke, and the sound of heavy bolts drawn shut behind us, we were in yet another building. We stopped in what I thought was a large entrance hall, though the light was too dim for me to see out with or without my visor. Except for the loud breathing of the slaves, there was no sound. After some time spent waiting, the eunuch who’d collected me poked his green face between the curtains.

‘If My Lord will consent to be helped down,’ he whispered, ‘there are strong arms to carry you into the Presence.’

I nodded, and made sure to climb slowly from the chair all by myself. There were a few lamps carried by black girls that allowed me to see for a few yards around. Two black eunuchs, both naked but for their jewelled loincloths, bowed together and reached out their arms to take me. I waved them away and leaned hard on my stick. There was a tongueless murmuring of protest, then the green eunuch gave a halting order in some language I didn’t know. Walking slowly for my benefit, he led the way to a small latticed door at the end of the hall. As he got there and waited a moment, the door swung silently open, and we passed into a small and dimly lit antechamber with two doors in the far wall. One of these doors opened, and we were now in a small sitting room. Decorated with an almost smothering heaviness of tapestries and cushions, two chairs were set to a table where I could see and smell the pot of spiced kava. I was beckoned into one of the silk-padded chairs, and the room emptied.

I sat in silence. I poked my tongue against the left spring of my teeth. It was beginning to annoy. Worse, it was causing me another burst of salivation. As I pushed the teeth out of contact with the sorest points on my gums, I wished I’d remembered to bring some more of the gum steeped in opium that had always served to take away the pain.

Suddenly, I heard the door open again. I was now sitting with my back to it. I got up to turn round.

‘Please, My Lord,’ a woman said in Saracen, ‘there is no need to stand on my account.’

Already on my feet, I pretended not to hear. I leaned on my stick and turned. It was a woman covered all over in black in the Eastern manner. It’s hard to tell much about a woman when she’s swathed like a corpse at a funeral. But I could see she was both fat and unusually tall. She spoke the elegant language of her nation’s higher classes, and with the unstressed firmness of one accustomed to command. But for the voice, I’d have taken her figure for a man. She hurried forward and took my hand. She raised it to the heavy black veil that covered her face, and I felt a brush of lips against my fingers.

‘Do, please, be seated, My Lord,’ she said softly but urgently. There being no one else to do the honours, she poured two cups of the steaming liquid with her own hands. ‘Will My Lord take sugar?’ she asked, uncovering a dish of the shining, black crystals.

I shook my head. I’d once found it a pleasing luxury. Nowadays, though, it tended to set my gums off still worse when they were sore. We sipped awhile in silence. This was good kava – not the already powdered stuff you mostly see in Constantinople, now direct trade with the Red Sea coasts has been cut, but freshly roasted and ground. It was spiced with cinnamon and something dark that I could sense, from the slight racing of my heart, was a stimulant.