The Sword of Damascus (54 page)

With a shout of rage, Meekal plunged his arms into the bath and searched round for the plug.

‘You’ll find that it’s all controlled by that lever just above my feet,’ I said helpfully. He got hold of the lever and twisted it up until it came off in his hands. ‘Oh dear!’ I cried. ‘Do you know the price of good plumbing repairs? That will be another bill for the auditors to wave under your nose.’ I raised my arms and waited for Meekal to control himself sufficiently to help me out of the tub. He stood in grim silence as I rubbed the water off my body and got myself into a sleeved robe. Taking care not to slip on the tiles, I walked slowly over to the door. I led him into one of the sitting rooms and arranged myself on a sofa that faced towards the window. The sun had now gone entirely down. Fortunately, the lamps were already lit.

‘Now do sit down and join me in a little drink,’ I said in a re­­­assuring tone. I pointed at a low armchair with its back to the window. ‘Let’s have a quiet rest and wait for some glimmer of common sense to light up your rage-blackened mind.’ I pointed at a closed cupboard that had, the last time I opened it, contained a sealed jar of wine and some cups. I waited for Meekal to calm himself with a few cups. I did think of some fulsome praise for the palace maintenance people who’d done such an excellent job on the repairs. Except for some building dust that hadn’t yet been swept away, you’d never have guessed what effort had been put in during the day. But Meekal
was
calming down, and it wouldn’t do to set him off again with irrelevant chatter. I sat quietly with my cup of wine and the few private thoughts I permitted myself.

‘Have I not played fair with you?’ he asked eventually. ‘I’ve played fair with you, and more than fair. Why are you shitting on me now?’ I finished my own cup and lay back on the soft cushions of the sofa. I hadn’t dried myself properly, and was beginning to feel slightly chilly. ‘Since it’s plain you won’t tell me anything at all,’ Meekal said, getting up, ‘I see no point in prolonging this conversation. I’m going out into the desert to see that all really is arranged for tomorrow. If it isn’t as I expect, I’ll impale everyone in sight, and be back here before morning.’ He pushed his face close to mine. ‘Haven’t I played fair with you?’ he asked again.

‘You’ve never played fair with anyone,’ I sneered, now switching into Saracen. ‘However, don’t accuse me of shitting on you. If you promise to be a good boy, I’m inclined to do you a bigger favour than you deserve.’ I waited till he’d controlled himself again, and pointed to the back of the window seat. ‘I suggest you pull off the fine silk of that upholstery. Go on,’ I urged, ‘get over there and rip it all away. I’m sure it will make many things clear.’

Uncertainly, Meekal walked over to the seat and pulled at the silk backing. As it came away in his hands, the wood panelling of the wall showed – together with an eighteen inch by nine hole in the wood. Meekal looked at this a moment. Biting on suddenly white lips, he turned back to me.

‘So far as I can tell,’ I said, ‘there’s one of these in every room. I think you go two – or perhaps three floors down from here: it’s a few months since I got myself down there, and I’m hazy about how many turns in that ramp I had to make. But one of the sealed doors shows evidence of regular tampering. Why don’t you go down and take a look of your own?’

I stretched full out on the sofa and stared at the ring of lamps that hung from the ceiling. I counted to a hundred, then opened my mouth and recited in my loudest and most sarcastic voice: ‘
quo usque tandem abutere Catilina patientia nostra? quam diu etiam furor iste tuus nos eludet? quem ad finem sese effrenata iactabit audacia?
’ I broke off with a laugh and called out in Saracen; ‘Have you killed anyone yet, dearest Meekal?’ I laughed again. Now choking back the laughter, I continued this most wonderfully apposite recitation of Cicero: ‘
nihilne te nocturnum praesidium Palati nihil urbis uigiliae nihil timor populi nihil concursus bonorum omnium nihil hic munitissimus habendi senatus locus nihil horum ora uoltusque mouerunt? patere tua consilia non sentis constrictam iam horum omnium scientia teneri coniurationem tuam non uides? quid proxima, quid superiore nocte egeris, ubi fueris quos conuocaueris quid consili ceperis quem nostrum ignorare arbitraris?
’ I had my mouth open for the ‘
O tempora o mores!
’ when Meekal came back into the room.

‘So, those birds also were flown,’ I said, still in Latin, with a nod at the unbloodied sword he carried in his hand. He threw the sword down with a clatter and sat back in the armchair. I got slowly up and poured him another drink. Silly of the man, when you think about it. After all, he’d spent much of his childhood in the Imperial Palace, which is riddled with these channels for carrying sound from one place to another. He should have taken it for granted that nowhere in this palace would be any more secure. But he sat there, utterly crushed. I refilled my own cup and sat back on the sofa. I picked up a cushion and threw it at the hole in the panelling. By a stroke of luck that looked exactly like a skill retained into old age, I got the thing right into the hole. I lifted my cup in a toast to myself and looked at Meekal.

‘Who was listening?’ he asked simply.

‘That old bitch Khadija,’ I said. ‘Why must you trouble me with asking?’

‘Because it saves me the trouble of asking her myself,’ came the answer. ‘So she’s heard everything said within these walls. And that would explain the source of all the information the auditors had in their files earlier today.’ He sat upright and reached for his sword. ‘Since you’ve been good enough to tell me this much, I hope you will agree there is no point in holding back on the rest. Any chance of telling me what the fucking cow is up to now?’

‘Gladly,’ I said. ‘Can you imagine that she tried to have me killed in these very rooms just a few months ago? I think that abolishes any duty of confidentiality. I’ll tell you the lot – on
one
condition.’ Meekal sat forward. ‘I want the boys to go free,’ I said. ‘Call off your dogs.’

He laughed. ‘Karim is no loss to anyone,’ he said. ‘Alone in that desert, he’d dry up in the sun like a slug. Your boy will probably get him to safety. As for the boy, would you believe me if I said I never had any intention of breaking my oath?’ I smiled and shook my head. Perhaps he was telling the truth. The problem all villains face sooner or later, though, is that no one believes them when they do tell the truth. ‘Whatever the case,’ he said, ‘you get your assurance. I have no “dogs” out looking for them. Now, tell me everything.’

And so I did tell him everything. I told him as much as I’d heard and guessed. Oh, very well – I didn’t tell him
everything
. Except perhaps with you, dear Reader, I never do that. But I did tell him as much as I cared to let him know, which was quite a lot. ‘Just you threaten that head eunuch of hers with the rack,’ I ended, ‘and he’ll confirm the whole story. He’ll confirm her dealings with the Intelligence Bureau. I strongly suspect he’ll also confirm her dealings with the rebels in the civil war.

‘Now, do you need a list of the names I’ve given you? Personally, I’d rather keep it verbal.’

Meekal shook his head. He’d nearly burst with joy as I’d recited the names Karim had given me. Every one of them was his sworn enemy in the Council. Every one of them, he promised me, would be waiting his turn on the rack once he’d denounced them to the Caliph.

‘It is surely redundant to ask,’ he said with a nasty smile, ‘whether you have taken up Karim’s suggestion of a failure for tomorrow’s demonstration.’

I shook my head. ‘The demonstration, I promise, will be a complete success,’ I said. ‘It will be everything you could ever expect. I only ask you to remember your promise.

‘But you’d better go,’ I said wearily. ‘You can imagine the sort of day I’ve had out in the desert. And I need somehow to get through tomorrow. Yes, go – just go.’

For the first time in ages, I didn’t bother with opium that night. I let the slaves get me to bed. As ever, I said I’d have no one to sit beside me. While someone got up on a stool to put out the lamps, I looked up at the fresh plaster above my bed, and breathed in its damp smell. It reminded me of the house I’d once bought in Rome. I’d been only twenty then. I’d lived for months surrounded by that smell. It was something I’d ever since associated with hope and youth. I’d laughed at the suggestion of a move to some other room. I took a sip of water and wished a good night to the slaves. I then lay back and closed my eyes. It was like falling in darkness into a bath of exactly blood heat.

I was back on my diverted ship to Athens. The Captain had told me we were now just a day from Piraeus, and a shift in the autumn winds meant we’d be approaching through the Saronic Gulf from the west. That meant I’d be able to see the place where, over a thousand years before, the Athenians had surprised and sunk the Persian fleet.

‘What do you suppose would have happened had the Athenians lost?’ I asked of Martin. He leaned beside me on the side of the ship, looking over the flat waters of an early morning. They had a surprisingly dark, oily sheen about them. ‘I mean, suppose the Persians had brought all their superiority to bear, and the Athenian fleet had been routed. In the short term, the Persians would have finished conquering Greece. Xerxes would have gone home in triumph. And what would that have meant for the whole subsequent history of the world?’

I’d often had these ‘what if?’ conversations with Martin, and I expected him now to insist that the Athenian victory was the work of God. How otherwise would the Greeks have spread their language and ways over the world, and then had this fixed and preserved after their own conquest by Rome? Since the result was the stage on which was played out the drama of the Gospels, it
had
to happen. To suppose otherwise was inconceivable. However, he didn’t rise to the bait. Instead, he let go of the rail, and, surprisingly stable for him, walked a few paces back along the deck.

‘I’ve been waiting for you a very long time,’ he said from behind me. I turned and frowned at him. ‘Everyone else I knew, and so many I never knew, have gone before you. I have given up wondering when I shall really see you again.’

I wanted to ask what he was talking about. But there was a jumble of thoughts glowing feebly away at the back of my mind. As I was still trying to choose the right words, Martin turned away from me and walked steadily across the deck to the stairs that led down to our living quarters.

I was alone on the deck – not a sailor in sight. Even Priscus, with his vomiting and his bag of drugs, would have been preferable to the deep silence that lay about me in all directions. There were no seabirds crying out, no fluttering of sails in any breeze. I heard not so much as the lapping of water against the keel of the ship. I gripped the rail and looked hard in the direction of where Athens surely lay.

The sun was now lifting itself above the line of clouds that fringed the eastern horizon. I squinted as I looked into its growing brightness, and raised my arms to take in its first warmth.

So it had always been. So it would always be.

Chapter 63

The day of testing had arrived. Locking the gates behind them, all the workmen and all the guards had come out from the monastery. They took their places on the sand before the high wooden platform that had only just been completed. Mounted and fully armed, my own little army of guards kept a quiet but intent watch over the sands that led to the distant hills.

‘You’ve chosen a nice day for the demonstration,’ I said with an irrelevant look at the sky. Meekal said nothing. He’d varied his normal black with a green and purple turban to show his own exalted office. ‘So, when does the Caliph put in his appearance?’ I asked. ‘Any news yet that he’s left Damascus?’

‘What’s in that box?’ Meekal asked.

I looked down at the lead canister I’d been holding to my chest. I’d now put it down on the sand, and someone had put a jug of fruit squash on top of it. I sat down on my stool and waited for the slave to arrange the sunshade over my head.

‘Oh, that’s a token of my thanks to His Majestic Holiness,’ I said easily. ‘I’ve
so
enjoyed his hospitality these past few months. I hope to enjoy rather more of it in the coming months. I’m told Damascus can be delightful in the autumn.’

He grunted and took a slip of papyrus from an attendant who’d just come over beside him. He stared at it and frowned.

‘You’ll be interested to know,’ he sneered in Latin, ‘that Karim was spotted this morning in Damascus. He was buying bread.’ I raised an eyebrow and gave him an artless smile. ‘I said I wouldn’t chase either of them. But if they now throw themselves into my hands, who am I to refuse any gift that God may send? You can watch the boy die in one of my dungeons. Karim I’ll have punished as befits an enemy of God. Unless you appear set to outlive me, however, I’ll allow you to live out your natural term. I think you’ll find it interesting.’

‘You really are too good to me, Michael,’ I replied. With a scrape of boots on sand, he turned and was away. He took his place among a group of bowing secretaries and put his mind to dealing with official duties. I thought I could make out the word ‘burning’ a few times. To be sure, I heard one mention of beheading. There’s nothing like clearing your accounts when out of sorts with the world. I leaned back and rested against the firm chest of a slave who knelt behind me.

It had been a busy morning, and the one stimulant draught Meekal had allowed me was wearing off. I looked up at the network of polished bone that kept the fabric of the shade in place. Where bone and fabric were joined with fine threads, little beads of sunshine gleamed like the lamps at a palace banquet. I listened idly to the droning voices of the secretaries a few yards away. I listened to the grating but quiet responses with which Meekal punctuated the droning. I didn’t recognise any of the names I managed to catch. But it was obvious he’d been busy all night with foiling the Khadija conspiracy. Now, unless I’d lost track of the time, he was pronouncing an unusual number of death sentences. Did even persons of quality not get a trial nowadays in Syria? I hadn’t bothered attending it, of course. But I’d at least been given one in Constantinople.