of shimmering orange silk. His eyes flickered briefly over Martin and Macarius. I nodded at them. As the door closed behind them, Priscus threw himself into the chair just in front of my desk and grabbed at the wine jug.
‘You know, my dear boy,’ he sighed, ‘until I actually met Nicetas, I could never work out how Heraclius won the race from Carthage to Constantinople and became Emperor. Mind you, the quality of everyone else in the government here leaves much to be desired. I’m astonished the wogs didn’t kick us out centuries ago.
‘It may have been the Brotherhood,’ he conceded, noticing the look I gave the gash on his forehead. Now he’d taken off the lead paint and replaced it with a green wash to set off the robe, the gash showed again. ‘Bear in mind that I only heard of this movement when I got back to Alexandria. But I do think it was bandits. I kept one of them back for questioning. Despite my very best endeavours’ – he smiled, giving his face a less lugubrious appearance – ‘I was unable to persuade the piece of filth to say a word of Greek. If it was the Brotherhood that waylaid me, it might have been to hold me to ransom as well. But as we both know, only you can lead anyone to the piss pot.
‘And this brings me to the main subject in hand. What progress can you report?’ He sniffed at my explanation of what I’d set for Martin. ‘The little slut in the Egyptian quarter referred to a place in Egypt,’ he reminded me.
‘Until we know which place,’ I said emolliently, ‘we search for leads in Alexandria. You know perfectly well now that Egypt is rather large. When you came in, I was about to begin my own search. Bearing in mind its nature, it isn’t something I thought suitable for Martin or anyone else outside the governing class. Since you’re here, though, it might be something for us to share.’
‘I’d be delighted to assist,’ he said. He sniffed at the wine. ‘You know,’ he added thoughtfully, ‘this stuff smells and tastes just like a poison I’ve often used called Tittymilk of Hera. Shall I tell you what it does?’ He sat watching my face change colour several times, then laughed.
‘Oh, my dearest, darling Alaric,’ he said, dabbing at his eyes, ‘if it really were Tittymilk of Hera, we’d both be twitching on the floor. I just couldn’t resist the look on your face. Welcome to the grown-up world where every cup and every corner is suspect, and where every bed is one in which you might never wake. Now, let’s have another cup of this doubtful but probably not deadly vintage, and then proceed with the search you mentioned.’
Chapter 28
With a very correct bow to me and to the seal, the Keeper of the Archive handed me back the original of my commission from Heraclius.
‘My Lords will forgive the long wait,’ he said apologetically, ‘but this is our second most restricted file. Copies must be taken of all application documents.’
‘It’s beastly hot down here,’ Priscus complained as the man went back into his office to fuss with a box of lead seals. He took up a sheet of papyrus and fanned himself. ‘Do I guess right that the heating is on – at this time of year, and in Alexandria?’
‘The archives don’t just cover the ground floor of the Palace,’ I answered. ‘There’s also a labyrinth of rooms in the basement underneath. I’ve never been down there, but I understand they reach under the whole of the central gardens. There’s special heating all year to keep off any damp from the cisterns.’
Priscus grunted and pulled at the gold threads to loosen his collar. The green wash was beginning to migrate on to his chest. I explained again about the effect of damp on papyrus, and that it was through the records contained here that Egypt had, since the first Ptolemy, been governed often against the settled will of the natives, but always unshakeably – and always could be, despite the best efforts of fools like Nicetas.
‘I must ask My Lord,’ said the Keeper, coming back from his office, this time with the file, ‘not to go to your usual seat in the colonnade. This file can only be taken into the glazed viewing room, and I regret to say that I must observe you at all times. I must also insist on your leaving all writing materials with me.’
‘So how did you discover this?’ asked Priscus as we took our seats in the glass box.
‘I came across references to it while looking up something else,’ I answered. ‘As you know, they fled to Egypt after the birth. Like most Jewish immigrants, they ended up in Alexandria. They were then caught up in the arrests that followed the uncovering of yet another Jewish sedition.’ I positioned the overhead mirror to shine more light on to the table. There was adequate lighting, but only from a row of lamps placed in holders on the outside walls of the box. Beyond these, the Keeper watched us very carefully. ‘I had been intending to have a look at the arrest file. You can see, though, the trouble involved. And I didn’t feel there’d be much here of interest for an idle viewing.
‘The official report of the Trial and Crucifixion, of course, would be interesting. But Constantine was in Italy when he established the Faith, and he was able to lift these records from the Jewish War section of the archives in Rome. I’m told he then destroyed them.’ I untied the boards of the file and spread the pages on to the table.
‘But this is the original document?’ Priscus asked with a catch of his breath.
‘No,’ I said. I pointed to the wording at the head of each page. ‘Constantine got his hands on this one as well. But he wasn’t personally in Alexandria, and the archivists were able to insist on the normal practice of taking a full copy. I suppose the compromise he had to make was restricted access for ever.’ Hands shaking, Priscus lifted one of the pages close to his face and read. For the first time, I noticed that, like me, he read silently and without moving his lips. I followed his rapid scanning of this page, and then of another.
‘Nothing here,’ I said, ‘to shock the most scrupulous orthodoxy. Nothing here, indeed, to shock anyone – except those inclined to doubt whether Christ existed. And there aren’t many of those, now the schools in Athens have all been closed down. Still, I can see why the file is restricted. If the heretics can twist any meaning they like into the Plain Word of Scripture, there’s no telling what they might do with a set of semi-literate police reports.’
Yes, I know, irony on these matters could be unwise, even with Priscus. But the irony was lost on him. In his position, I wouldn’t just doubt if there was a God: I’d be desperately hoping there wasn’t one. With what he’d been up to these past forty-odd years, there’d be a whole section of the Lake of Black Fire cordoned off and waiting. Yet here he was, desperate to lay hands on the smallest contact with the Prince of Peace.
‘It’s not an original,’ he muttered, ‘but I do know the rules. Anything that has touched anything holy becomes holy itself.’
It would have been easy to agree with him. With this in his hands, he might have been persuaded to forget the piss pot and bugger off to Syria. There, he could have tied the file to his lance and ridden straight – I could hope – to his death. But if not the Patriarch himself, there was any number of experts to put him right on this one.
‘Afraid not quite, Priscus,’ I said. ‘If you can prove beyond reasonable doubt that Joseph touched the original statement when signing it, and that the original document was brought into contact with the copy by an authorised person, you’d have one of the most powerful relics there can be in your hand. But, you see, there’s no evidence that Joseph knew any Greek or was able to sign his own name. He’d have made the statement in Aramaic, and then assented to it without touching the written translation. Beyond that, the clerks used for the copy back in the time of Constantine wouldn’t have been Christians, let alone ordained; and the chancery practice, as I’ve seen it here, is for one clerk to read and another to copy. Beyond saying it’s a first copy, this has no more potency as a relic than your own copy of the Scriptures.
‘Oh’ – I pointed at the purple seal at the foot of each page – ‘I think this means that nothing can be taken away except by the Emperor in person, and then with the correct requisition order witnessed by a Patriarch. There’s an autograph letter of Saint Paul,’ I explained, ‘in Constantinople with something very like that seal.’
I moved to a brief commentary on why the document authorising Joseph’s release from custody might have been copied in two hands, each separated in style by about fifty years. When you’ve spent as much time as I already had in libraries and archives, these are points you pick up and use as clues to a fuller understanding. But Priscus wasn’t listening.
‘I can’t find the Inventory of Goods,’ he said. We rearranged all the pages on the table and turned them over one at a time, to see if what we wanted had been copied on the reverse. But Priscus was right – no inventory.
‘Perhaps the Holy Family was too poor to make any inventory worth the effort,’ I suggested. ‘Joseph must have come here with his wife and the three children, and precious little else.’
‘Doesn’t matter,’ Priscus insisted. ‘When I ran the Treason Police under Phocas, we always took an inventory. If it’s just their clothes, even the poor have something worth confiscating.’ He looked up wistfully as he spoke of his days as Torturer-Judge Extraordinary when his father-in-law was Emperor.
