‘It is sad news for the household that My Lord carries,’ came the reply.
I darted a look at Martin’s scared face. I took another sip of wine, and asked about general conditions in Letopolis.
‘Though I have, in the absence of your slaves,’ Lucas answered, ‘undertaken to interpret for you, I can assure you that Greek remains well enough known in and around the city. I do not suppose that my services will be required for any confidential dealings.’
I nodded and chewed hard on my bread. To keep the conversation going, I asked if it was true that no one had Greek any more as a first language south of Oxyrhynchus.
‘My Lord and his secretary speak the language to each other,’ he answered, ‘but neither of you, I think, is Greek?’
‘A Greek,’ I said firmly, ‘is anyone who speaks the language and follows the ways of the Greeks.’
‘Or whose ancestors began to do so long enough ago for the taint of wogitude to be forgotten,’ Lucas added with a smile.
‘There was a time,’ he went on, ‘when the Greeks came upon Egypt like the Nile flood. Then, they went where they pleased and were irresistible. But their flood has for many generations now been ebbing. And, again as with the Nile, the ebb exposes more and more of the hidden land of Egypt. It is, perhaps, a land enriched by the Grecian flood. The Greeks leave us the Christian Faith, and their alphabetic writing, and the concept they took, I think, from the Latins of a determinate and written law. But it will be Egyptian land.’
He put his hand up to refuse the wine I was offering. Most natives, I’d found, would drink anything offered them that wasn’t actually poisonous. Many, though, were oddly abstemious. Lucas, I realised, was one of these. The evening before, I might have sent Martin to dig out some of my kava beans. I’d brought them along, though hadn’t managed an infusion since leaving Alexandria. But it was the present evening, and I decided to leave them packed away.
‘So, you think the Greeks will eventually lose Egypt?’ I asked, drinking the wine myself.
‘To every nation is appointed one day of glory,’ Lucas said. ‘The Jews and Latins each had theirs. Whoever and wherever they be, your people may, in some future age, have theirs. It is obvious that the day of the Greeks is now coming to its end.
‘To every nation is appointed one day of glory. To some, God allows a second. Such is the case with the Persians. Who can tell if such is not also the case with Egypt?’ He rose, saying there was much to be done if we were to sail through the night for a morning arrival.
Martin clutched at the little silver cross Heraclius had given him as a coronation present. I stirred honey into the wine and drank deep from the jug.
Chapter 19
As I’d expected, they came for us around the midnight hour. There was no point resisting. I could have cut a few of them down. But the numbers were against us, and we were on their territory. Martin would never have dared follow me into the Nile – not that I thought those dark, infested waters were any safer than giving in quietly.
‘I didn’t notice any odd tattoos on your men,’ I said, trying to keep some air of normality to the proceedings. ‘But I might more usefully have examined your own body back in Bolbitine than your documentation.’
Lucas smiled grim in the moonlight. He gave another order to his men, who now began pulling in earnest on their ropes. I felt the boat slow and then turn towards the left bank.
‘There are many things of which you know nothing,’ he said.
‘I think it reasonable to assume,’ I said, holding up my bound wrists, ‘that you were ordered simply to deliver us to your masters. You could have killed us at any time after yesterday afternoon. Instead, you’ve waited until we are almost at Letopolis. I take it you know who I am, and why I was sent to Alexandria?’
‘We have, of course, been watching you since you arrived,’ said Lucas. ‘Perhaps you suppose your mission will have endeared you to the children of the soil. Do not suppose, however, it has endeared you to their legitimate representatives. Had he not overreached himself by revealing what should not have been revealed, our favour would still have extended to Leontius, your leading opponent.’
‘I see,’ I said drily. ‘Where you people are concerned, “worse is better and better worse”.’
‘Euripides was a fine poet,’ came the acknowledgement of the quotation; we might, for that moment, have been back in Constantinople, playing at who was most learned. At least it wasn’t some low cutpurse of a wog who’d taken me in. ‘You will have noticed, though, that, like all other Greeks who are to be admired, he died a long time ago. But you are right,’ he added. ‘We are not interested in reforms that will only sweeten the gall of foreign domination.’
‘So,’ I asked with a look at the fast approaching left bank, ‘is it worth asking what’s to be done with us?’ I didn’t think it worth asking what he’d meant about Leontius. A few words had clarified all that hadn’t made sense when I was sitting beside the body. The temple at Philae was funding the Brotherhood. Leontius knew this because he was with the Brotherhood. He was killed for revealing its secrets.
‘Yes,’ I repeated, ‘what is to be done with us?’
‘That is a question you should consider saving for later,’ Lucas said. ‘According to Leontius – and according to someone else of whom I will not speak for the moment – you possess information that is of the highest value to the cause of our independence. And you should also work to ensure that your answers will be in order.’ He raised the lid of one of my boxes. One of the crew stood forward with a lamp so he could make out my scrawled note on one of the sheets.
‘Is there anything confidential in here?’ he asked. ‘You will appreciate that lying would not be in your interests at this stage.’
I sniffed and looked up at the now almost full moon. I couldn’t be bothered to explain it was all routine stuff. A shame, though, it would pass out of my hands. I’d put a great deal of effort into making sense of it.
We were now only a few dozen yards out. Over on the bank, the lights that had guided us in were still bobbing about. We were beginning to pass under the blanket of heat that covered the land. After so long on those foul waters, the land had a dry and bitter smell.
‘Do exactly as they say,’ I whispered to Martin in Celtic. ‘At the same time, try to stay as close by me as you can.’ I’d seen sheep on their way to slaughter with less apathetic faces. In his position, I’d have thought very ill of the man who’d got him into this. Being Martin, he was probably recalculating his tariff of sins and wondering if they only merited Purgatory, and, if so, how long there.
The crew stayed behind with the boat. But they were obviously sailors and of no use on the land. Lucas came along with us, now with about a dozen big, rough-looking men. The moon shone on what showed of their faces above the beards. Dressed in dark clothing against the sun and the desert winds, they bowed low before him, and a rapid conversation started up. There were looks in our direction and more bowing. Then they set us – still bound – on camels. Since the Nile was on our right, we were heading back north along the military road that ran above the highest flood point.
I’d seen camels before. That was in Constantinople. There’d been a parade of them in the Circus when Priscus had his Triumph after the previous year’s successes. The things are best described as resembling a misshapen horse. They’re rather bigger, with a tall hump on the back. They terrify real horses and smell like death. Their big advantage is that they don’t need the same watering as horses, and so are ideal for desert terrain.
They don’t ride much like horses. Even without being tied at the wrists, it would have been hard enough to keep hold. As it was, we had to be tied to the harness to keep us from falling off. I could hear Martin behind me. When not gasping from the pain of bruised haemorrhoids, he was praying softly in Celtic. I’ll not say I felt calm inside. There was no telling what this wog Brotherhood had in mind for me. But the mention of ‘information’, had made it hard to believe we’d be done over straight away like Leontius.
As the sun came up, I looked around. Not much chance of escape that I could see. The Nile rolled massively by a hundred yards to our right. There were a few boats out there, but nothing with the slightest military look about it. Immediately on the left, patches of low, broken rock stretched up a slight incline to the reds and yellows of the boundless desert. The men before and after us on the road might have been born on camel back. Even if they were the bound ones and we the free, they’d have been able in no time to outride us.
