Brotherhood.
Added was some romance about my attempt – successful, by the way – to throw the Brotherhood off the trail of the first chamber pot of Our Lord and Saviour. The idea had come to me, I implied without actually stating, in a vision sent by Saint Mark himself. Anyone with an ounce of common sense would have rejected this new connecting thread out of hand. For minds nurtured, though, on the lives of the desert saints, it managed just the right note. Nicetas believed me. The Patriarch believed me. Whatever they might prefer to think, or might suspect, the landowners had joined in the chorus of holy praise. If anyone in the public baths dared say otherwise, he really could go fuck himself.
‘Whatever the case, we must have it,’ Priscus struck up. ‘We can’t have a relic of such holy importance in the hands of this wog conspiracy.’ Someone nodded and stroked the heavy gold crucifix about his neck. Nicetas looked set to start babbling nonsense again. But Priscus wasn’t paying attention.
‘We must have it,’ he repeated, now looking down. ‘Isn’t that so, my little Margarita?’ He pulled the cat towards him and buried his face in the horrid thing’s fur.
‘No, my sweet pretty,’ he went on, ‘Daddy can’t have it in wog hands, can he? It’s too good for unholy trash like that. It’s for him – all for him so he can fuck the Persians over.’ I thought Priscus would drift off into a reverie of smiting in the Service of the Lord. Instead, he picked up the cat and held it out before him at arm’s length. ‘But what is Daddy doing?’ he asked in a tone of shocked horror. ‘Pussy’s had no lunchy munchie yet. Oh, wicked, neglectful Daddy!’
Setting the cat down again, Priscus reached under the table and pulled up a small lead box. Opening it carefully, he took out a mouse. There was a gasp further down the Council table. The Patriarch, sitting beside Nicetas, stood suddenly up. Quite understandable, this – mice can be a great embarrassment if you never wash and insist on going round in this climate wrapped in about fifty yards of heavy cloth. But Priscus had the creature firm in his grasp. Holding it in his right hand by the tail, he pinched a back leg hard between his left forefinger and thumb. The mouse must have dragged itself barely nine inches over the table before the cat was upon it. There was the usual dabbing and biting while Priscus cooed on his encouragement. As if frozen, the rest of the Council looked on in silence.
‘If it may please Your Imperial Highness,’ I said, when the cat had finished walking up and down the table, a mouse tail hanging from its mouth, ‘now that the main business of the meeting is over, there is the matter of the grain fleet that awaits your permission to leave for Constantinople. His Magnificence the Commander of the East and I have taken the liberty of discussing this at some length. We defer absolutely to your greater knowledge of circumstances in Alexandria. But it does seem to us that the continued presence, down in the Harbour, of the fleet is an excuse for disorder among the lower classes.’
‘Indeed,’ Priscus said, looking up from an embrace of his now purring cat. Except for the spot of blood on the whiteness of his painted face, he might once again have been gracing the Imperial Council back home. ‘I must concur with His Magnificence the Imperial Legate. I too have little knowledge of the particular circumstances here. But I do have much experience of city disturbances. Given the evident paucity of forces in Alexandria-’
‘But Priscus,’ Nicetas broke in, as moved by this suave formality as by my own, ‘you claim ill of yourself by speaking so low of your abilities. Though your right to sit in this Council is of some ambiguity, it would be a crime against the good of the Empire if we were to do other than take advantage of your wisdom and experience. Isn’t that so?’
There was a buzz of agreement through the room as Nicetas threw the discussion open. As it faded away, the Trade Commissioner coughed and tapped significantly on the pile of documents he’d been fidgeting with all through our discussion of the piss pot and associated matters. The Master of the Works got as far as opening his mouth to speak. But this was it. Even before a couple of monks were shown in for Nicetas, one with a stack of icons, the other with a bandage, it was plain the meeting had broken down into a series of conversations.
Slumped at my desk, I stared blearily up at Martin and Macarius. The padded door of the office was shut, all the slaves on its other side. Macarius looked less than his usually composed self. Martin shuffled nervously. I took a sip of the second lot of wine I’d had sent in and grimaced. I put the cup straight down. Not a big one, I reflected, but another annoyance, this, to add to all the others. I screwed my eyes shut and opened them. I sat up and spread my hands on the cool wooden surface.
‘Well, Martin,’ I asked, ‘any messages from God about this? The Patriarch knows nothing. How about you?’
‘If I might be so bold,’ Macarius answered for him, ‘did the Lord Priscus receive any guidance from the Monks of Saint Antony? Their desert monastery is of the highest repute.’
‘He did,’ I snapped. ‘He was granted forgiveness for all his sins – and a confession of those would explain why he was away almost as long as we were. Otherwise, he was told to follow “the Light from the West”. Sadly, he took that as another invitation to get me on the job.’
I looked at the bronze bust of Alexander my Jewish agents had hurriedly sent over after I’d finished shouting at them about their negligent near breach of confidence. It was a pretty object, and there was every reason to believe the claims that it was made by Lysippus himself as the draft of one of his full statues. If it was genuine – and it probably was: a dealer had confirmed it from the casting method – it would be the most valuable single object I owned. If I’d been asked to give that up in exchange for the genuine piss pot of Christ, I’d have had to think hard. Anything else, though, I’d gladly have given up at that moment.
‘We are required,’ I said, pulling myself into a more positive mood, ‘to find a relic that nobody appears to have known about before this year, and that therefore may not exist. If it does exist, nobody appears to have seen it or to know where it is. However, both Priscus and the Brotherhood believe that I am able to find it, and have been competing in their own ways to secure my assistance. Priscus has now won, and I am not able to doubt that giving him the first chamber pot of Jesus Christ would serve every interest with which we are connected.
‘Consider’ – getting into my stride, I held up one finger as I made each point – ‘whatever good it may do Priscus against the Persians, the thing can do the Empire endless harm if the Brotherhood gets to it first. At the least, we’ll never get the redistribution law implemented if the people can be brought over to back the landowners. If we get it first, on the other hand, the Brotherhood will have suffered a moral defeat, and our own credit will go through the roof. In return, I already have that promise of help from Priscus. He’s even said he’ll put up with having Sveta in the room when he visits Maximin.’
I might have added that I did owe Priscus something for having spread just the right mix of vague and solid untruth for me to complete. But I’d said enough. What I had now to do was find something that looked like a piss pot and that I could squeeze through those bastard provenance rules.
‘Macarius,’ I said, sniffing again at my cup, ‘do make sure the next wine you have sent in here is imported. I’m not too drunk to notice the taste of river mud in this stuff.’
Macarius bowed stiffly and turned to leave the room. I raised my hand to keep him. I had work for him yet.
But first – ‘Martin, as you often used to tell your students, when there’s no short cut to be had, you start at the beginning. I want you to draw up and seal a request from me to the Patriarch, giving you unlimited access to every collection of relics in Alexandria. You may care to begin with looking through the catalogue. His Holiness may insist that our relic isn’t mentioned there. I’ll believe those words more when I’ve heard them from you. In any event, please arrange for a physical inspection of everything. A catalogue that size is unlikely to be wholly accurate. Alexandrian scholarship isn’t what it was, and our relic may turn out to be hanging beside the altar of the Patriarch’s own chapel.’
Martin nodded, an exalted look coming over his face. Able to pass days and days, going from one object of the utmost holiness to another – if this didn’t lift the burden of his sins, I could see him thinking, nothing would. Good luck to him, I thought. For myself, I could find better uses for time than looking at several thousand pickled body parts and bloodstained implements of torture.
‘Macarius,’ I said, taking up a letter I’d written in my own hand early that morning, ‘I want you to deliver this in person.’
He looked at the tag on the sealed boards enclosing the papyrus and raised his eyebrows.
‘Deliver it in person,’ I repeated, ‘and wait for a reply.’
As I stood up, there was a knock on the door.
‘The Lord Priscus begs a moment of your time,’ the secretary called out, omitting his bow.
As he stood away from the door, Priscus walked in. He’d left his cat behind this time, and had put on a robe
