Bilal nodded. ‘The caliph is eager to see them. He has ordered me to escort you up the river to al-Qahira.’ He looked around. ‘Your ship is magnificent, but she will not manage the bends and shallows of the Nile. You will come in my barge.’
We left the comforting bulk of our ship behind and rowed across the lagoon. The shores drew closer and began to pinch together, though if you looked ahead they never seemed to join. At some point I suppose we must have entered the mouth of the river, though there was nothing obvious to define it: the land off our beams was still as distant as ever, far wider than the Bosphorus at Constantinople. I looked out across the brown waters, curious to see something of this fabled land, but all I saw was water and reeds.
We spent two days and two nights on the Egyptian barge. It was an eerie voyage, more like a dance: we often turned where no turn seemed necessary, so many times around that sometimes the current seemed to be pushing us upstream. I pitied the men on the oars. As the river banks drew closer I began to make out the features of the landscape: a dirty brown soil bristling with the stalks of harvested crops, and divided by low ridges like causeways through the desert. Sometimes, where they intersected, I saw villages, though many were in ruins and I spied few inhabitants.
‘What are they for?’ I asked Bilal, pointing at the ridges. They seemed too regular and evenly spaced to be natural.
‘When the river floods, they are the only way to travel the land. Every year, the Nile bursts its banks and waters the fields enough to sustain a whole year’s crops.’
‘And when does that happen?’
Bilal scowled. ‘August.’
I looked back at the fields. Even from that distance I could see that they were the pale brown colour of clay, not the rich black of wet soil. A skein of cracks had shattered the hard earth, and nothing grew save a few strands of wild grass. Above us, the sun burned down from the cloudless mid-September sky.
‘Sometimes the floodwaters come late,’ said Bilal, unconvincingly.
On the third day, the river widened again as several strands of its delta came together. Just beyond, on the eastern bank, a host of towers rose straight against the desert sky, so many that they clustered together and almost became a perfect whole. White triangles of sail flapped beside wharves that bustled with commerce, and columns of dust billowed up from the heavy-laden roads.
‘Is that. .?’
‘Al-Qahira,’ said Bilal, and the sounds took on a deep and savage mystery in his voice. ‘Or, as your Roman ancestors called it, Babylon.’
10
Until then, I had always imagined ambassadors to be like angels. They were higher beings, of less substance and greater power than mere mortals, flitting about the world impervious to threats of harm. There in Egypt, I realised the truth: ambassadors were little better than prisoners. The moment we set foot on the wharf we were hurried to a caravan of litters borne by bare-chested Nubian slaves, who carried us in curtained blindness to a secluded courtyard, and then up a stair to the quarters appointed to us. There were three interconnecting rooms, spacious and airy and lavishly furnished. But the ornate screens that curved and twined across the windows were iron, and when the caliph’s attendants left us alone I heard the door lock from the outside.
The next day, almost before dawn, a slave arrived to announce that the Fatimid king, the caliph himself, would give us an audience that very morning. I had been lying on my mattress, savouring the feeling of solid ground beneath me and watching the sun stream through the iron screens over the window; with reluctant speed, I rolled out of bed and rummaged through my belongings for my cleanest tunic. Only when I had pulled it on, splashed some water from a bronze basin over my face and ploughed a comb through my hair did I notice Nikephoros. He was sitting on a divan in a plain white under-tunic, while one slave held a mirror in front of him like a votive offering and another trimmed his hair and beard. He was perfectly still, his face a passive mask, yet even that somehow conveyed scorn for the bustle and haste around him.
Thinking perhaps he had not heard the slave’s message, I repeated it. The corner of his mouth turned upward in a sneer.
‘When you have spent more time in palaces, you will realise that courtiers treat hours as you would treat minutes. There is no hurry.’
He kept his head still as he spoke, careless of the sharp razor darting around near his ear. I guessed the slave knew what would befall him if he cut his master’s precious skin.
Without seeming to look at me, Nikephoros added, ‘But if you do intend to be ready, you might dress in something that befits the occasion. I do not want the caliph to think that the emperor Alexios has sent a delegation of slaves and mercenaries to dishonour him.’
His words were cruel and true — it was the truth that stung more. I bit back an instinctive retort and said humbly, ‘I have nothing better.’
‘My attendants will find you something.’ Nikephoros looked in the mirror. ‘I cannot have the caliph judging the emperor by your shortcomings.’
All that morning I experienced the strange urgent indolence that is the lot of ambassadors. Every fifteen minutes another Fatimid messenger would bustle into our rooms to announce, either in broken Greek or by elaborate hand gestures, that the great moment for our audience was nigh, but even after Nikephoros had been shaved, dressed, oiled and perfumed with deliberate care by his slaves, we remained waiting in our quarters. After the first two hours, we learned to ignore the announcements. I stood by the window to breathe what little air blew through it, trying to see something of the surrounding palace and city. The iron screen cut the view into a mosaic of a thousand disjointed fragments: I could see high domes and minarets, corners of courtyards shaded with plane trees, but without any sense of how the pieces joined together. The sun rose high, and the tenor of the messages became more apologetic: the caliph was exceedingly busy, he wanted nothing more than to greet his friends from Byzantium but there was urgent court business he had to attend to; he would certainly see us in the next half an hour, perhaps sooner.
At last, when even Nikephoros’ patience must have worn bare, Bilal appeared. We had not seen him all day, though we had sometimes heard his voice in the passages beyond our room. He strode through the double doors, pushing them back with such force that the dust in the air was swept into great swirling vortices. He wore a ceremonial coat of armour whose silver scales were edged in gold, with a chain mail coif draped over his shoulders like the folds of a cowl. Strange designs were embroidered on the hem of his cloak, jagged lines that cut across the fabric like wounds. I had never seen anything like them, and they only served to heighten his dazzling barbarity.
‘Come,’ he said simply.
Bilal led us through a succession of gates and tiled courtyards to a stifling anteroom where he left us for some minutes. Nikephoros paced the small room without bothering to hide his impatience, and when one of his Patzinak guards ventured a question he snarled his reply. At one point his gaze settled on me, and I quailed, but it was only to bark a reminder: ‘Heed everything the caliph says, and remember it faithfully.’
I nodded. Whatever calm I had found in the broad waters of the sea had boiled away in our confinement, leaving only sharp crystals of misgiving. I longed for this audience to be over so that I could return to Antioch and see Sigurd and Anna — but that was too much to think about now. I squirmed under the unaccustomed weight of the robes Nikephoros had lent me: I could not understand why they should feel heavy, for they were lighter than the armour I had worn often enough. Unease magnified the discomfort. They were too large for me and too grand, though shabby enough to Nikephoros’ eyes, and I felt absurd.
Bilal returned. Without a word, he led us back out through the door, down a short corridor, and into the caliph’s audience room.
I had seen ambassadors received with the full ceremony of the imperial court in Byzantium: I suppose I should not have been overawed by the ritual of a lesser, pagan king. But in Constantinople I had watched from a distance, secure in the knowledge that every piece of pageantry and theatrical trickery only emphasised the grandeur of the Byzantine emperor and — by reflection — his people. Here I stood on the opposite side, and it was
