calculations that Lucas made. To have achieved any of the other purposes would have raised him higher within the Brotherhood. Taking possession of the object in question would have established his complete supremacy.’
‘Is it because of this,’ I asked, ‘that you paid off the old fraud and his daughter back in Alexandria?’
‘My Lord is well informed,’ Macarius said with a respectful bow. ‘I knew that His Lordship the General was making enquiries of his own. It struck me that it would complicate your own operations if the Lord Priscus were able to disturb the peace of the city with his continued enquiries.’
‘I haven’t seen any of the other landowners in this district,’ I said, changing the subject. ‘Not all of them can be in Alexandria.’
‘Indeed not, My Lord,’ he said. ‘They keep to their own fortified manor houses. Though useful politically, Leontius was a man of evil reputation in these parts. His neighbours consider his death and the effacement of his estate as no loss to their order. Otherwise, they are guided by the same considerations of embarrassment and fear as the Honourable Mayor. They will not come out unless commanded.’
‘You say there is a boat touching in here tomorrow morning?’ I asked. I’d seen enough of Egypt for the moment. Since it meant skipping dinner with them, I’d ignore the insult from what passed for the local persons of quality.
‘There will be a postal vessel on its way down to the coast,’ Macarius said. ‘It will be fully suitable to carry My Lord and his party.’
The door of the little church opened and Martin put his head out. He’d seen us, but his face carried the abstracted, holy look that I knew indicated a wish to be ignored. We carried on past him, to look over the lower and uninhabited part of town. Much of this was now under at least a few inches of the flood waters. Earlier floods had eaten away the mud bricks of the houses, and only the broken line of the city wall could now be made out.
‘What can you tell me about this woman who calls herself the Mistress?’ I asked, changing the subject again. The fact that she’d got so far without molestation – and had even scared off Lucas and Company – indicated she was of high status. I’d got bugger-all out of her, though, in the way of hard fact during the few days it had taken us to get here. How she’d acquired such excellent Greek – even better in some respects than my own – was one mystery. How she’d managed this with so hazy a knowledge of anything that had happened since the establishment of the Faith was another.
‘The Mistress,’ said Macarius, slowly choosing his words, ‘travels from regions unknown even to the Egyptians of the south. Her purpose in travelling is not for me to say. I only know that she rendered valuable assistance to My Lord when it was needed, and that she will now continue, as an honoured guest, to Alexandria.’
Somewhere behind us, I could hear children at play. They sounded like children everywhere, and their shouted calls to each other were the jolliest thing I’d heard in days. No point in going back to look at them, though. One sight of me and, like everyone else, they’d be scuttling for cover.
I let the matter drop. Macarius had always struck me as a man of strong common sense. This being said, I preferred not to discuss the details of how and where I’d come across the Mistress in any conversation that referred back to what that girl had said in Alexandria. The faintest tinge of superstition was enough to connect the most disparate facts into a seamless narrative of the miraculous.
I looked silently over the waters. I didn’t want to think of Lucas or cages or piss pots. All I wanted at this moment was the nearest approach to normality possible in this flyblown dump of a town. So I looked over the waters and forced my thoughts into the course I wanted. Varying between two and eight feet below these waters lay some of the richest land in the world. Some of this had been owned by Leontius. Over much else he’d had secondary and often still valuable rights. Not all had gone up by any means in the flames of his manor house.
‘Macarius,’ I said in my briskest and most irresistible tone, ‘I want you to arrange a meeting with the local Mayor. Tell him I’m not interested in the possible deficiencies of his Greek. If it is as defective as you indicate, you will have to interpret.
‘His main duty is to ascertain the land boundaries once the flood has receded. Since I control the central records in Alexandria, he might care to make one or two adjustments to the survey reports…’ Not being quite a creditor – and certainly not a preferred creditor – I might be about to take a hit on the contracts I’d made indirectly with Leontius. Now, Macarius listened intently as I outlined my scheme to offset what would otherwise be a considerable loss.
Chapter 24
I was a child again in Richborough. I think I was about ten. I huddled on my bed of filthy straw in the corner of the building where King Ethelbert had dumped us all after killing my father. On my right, just out of reach, my two younger brothers lay sleeping in each other’s arms. Over in the far corner, my little sister – my half-sister, that is, got by Ethelbert – lay sleeping with my mother. Through the unshuttered window and the unrepaired hole in the roof crept a dim light that heralded the coming of the dawn. With it came the sound of winds and the heavy crash of Channel waves on the nearby shingle.
I was cold. Even huddled as I was, I couldn’t pull the thin blanket over my head without uncovering my legs. I was hungry, and my belly ached with the habitual pain of those who live on the edge of starvation.
I sat up and looked at the outline of things. There was the water jug with the broken handle. There was the pile of wooden slats on which I was being taught my letters by the renegade monk Auxilius. There was the workbox where my mother stored the things she used when mending clothes for the few people who lingered in what had, before the coming of our people, been the main gateway to the Province of Britain.
It was all as I remembered it. Or did I need to remember it? I was a child and I was there. Everything was as it ought to be. There were things at the fringes of consciousness that I knew I should call into full understanding. But, try as I might, they remained on the fringes – a blur that confused without abolishing my sense of being in a perfectly natural present.
I lay back in the straw and squeezed my eyes shut. I was hoping for sleep. But I was now too aware of the cold and hunger. I looked into the darkness of the roof timbers. Everything would brighten soon enough, and then we could all get up. The sun might shine this day. There might even be a scrape of fatty gruel for breakfast.
‘Aelric. Aelric,’ the voice called. I’d been aware of it for some time. But, as with the breaking of day, it was one of those things that is already known before it is noticed. I held my breath and strained to hear what was, as a cause of distress, overtaking that unease about who and where and when I was.
‘Aelric. Aelric,’ the voice called. I heard it clearly. It was a woman, her voice soft and long and hypnotic. She sounded my name twice each time, before pausing, and then – after just long enough to make you think it was all over – starting again. Her voice came from a distance, though it seemed also to come from nowhere in particular. And with each repetition of the call, I had a feeling that the distance was growing smaller.
‘Aelric. Aelric,’ it came again. It was louder. I looked over to the right. The younger of my brothers had his face towards me. Eyes shut, he was breathing gently through his mouth. If the call really was growing louder – or was even there – I alone could hear it.
I sat up again and pressed myself against the wall behind me. I pulled the blanket to my face. The faint smell of piss was oddly comforting. Without lifting my face, I looked up at the still and familiar things around me. They were exactly as they were. They always had been so. They always would be so.
But they weren’t the same – not quite. There was a new shadow. Confused as I still was, I knew the pattern of light and shadow in that room at every time of the day or night. This was a new patch of darkness in the room. About eighteen inches from my sleeping mother, it had no obvious relationship with any other object. Still not lifting my face, I looked and looked. Like a spreading stain, the shadow grew. And insensibly, as it grew, it was changing shape, and acquiring substance as it changed. It seemed a puff of smoke. It seemed a ball of dark wool. It grew and changed and took on substance. And all the time, I sat on my bed of filthy straw, my lower face pressed into the blanket.
‘Mother!’ I wanted to call. But I had no voice. I could move my uplifted eyes from one place in the room to another. Otherwise, it was as if I’d been turned to stone. The mass of blackness was finishing its transformation, or perhaps its arrival. Without seeing eyes, I felt the close inspection. I felt the cold menace. In a weak, hesitant step towards me, it moved.
