where my employer, Maximin, had taught me the ways of pious fraud. Our ‘miracles’, had worked there to bring the natives over to the True Faith. I was sure I could produce something really impressive in Soteropolis. We’d dig for a few days here and there. My object, of course, would be the reserve stock. But it wouldn’t be hard to plant something in those sands at night for uncovering by day. Let me round up a dozen or so of those desert hermits. Let me spike the filth they ate with hashish or with opium – or just get them singing Hallelujahs together for a day – and they’d swear to any miracle I cared to arrange at the uncovering.
We could arrive in triumph back in Alexandria. The Patriarch would then lay on the biggest service in living memory. Priscus could bugger off in a fog of holiness. I’d get everything I wanted, and those beastly landowners could kiss my feet in gratitude for what I’d left in their possession.
Naturally, after my last trip into Egypt, security would be an issue. But that I could leave to Priscus. He needed me to find the relic. It would never do to have me other than back safely in Alexandria with him afterwards. His interests being calculated, keeping Lucas and Company away from me in Soteropolis was well within his competence.
Things weren’t turning out that badly, I thought. There may be no such thing as miracles. Even so, there are happy circumstances that, rightly used, can bring on happy outcomes. Finding that reference to Soteropolis – and with Priscus looking on – might have been one such happy circumstance. Having him around was never good news. On this occasion, though, his arrival might have complicated matters, but might well have become a means of breaking the stalemate over the land law.
I did think of sending straight off and telling him to get ready for a trip to Soteropolis. But no – this had to be done properly. If there was to be a miraculous finding of the piss pot, he’d have to be among those deceived. That required a continued show of reluctance to leave Alexandria until I’d done with following every other lead. I’d string him along until the flood waters were at their height, and until I’d got more out of Hermogenes about the probable location of Soteropolis and the reserve stock. By the time I gave in to his nagging, he’d be ready to believe anything, and disinclined to suspect I was ready to feed it to him.
I thought of the Mistress – where was she? It was over a day now since she’d vanished from the canal docks. It was surely time for the message she’d suggested would be sent. She’d come down the Nile with minimal baggage. She couldn’t have brought much cash with her. She evidently knew nothing of Alexandria, and I doubted she had any relationship with the bankers. Whatever independence she’d shown in the wilds of Egypt, she was now on my territory. If she wanted to go about as a grand lady, she’d surely have need of at least a few letters from me. Once his other business was arranged, I’d send Macarius off on a search. If anyone could find her, it was him.
I rolled over on my stomach. Thinking of the Mistress had brought on a very proud stiffy, and those clerks were still droning on beside me. A quick suck from one of the slaves was wholly out of the question. I tried to redirect myself from thoughts of those naked black bodies in her cabin and what she might look like under that veil.
‘The wife of My Lord’s secretary approaches,’ one of the clerks sang out, breaking his colleague’s flow of grain inventories. I sat up and shaded my eyes. Sveta it was, crunching loud on the gravel path, a slave holding a parasol to keep her milky skin from dropping off in the sun. Beside her, Maximin was skipping happily along, a bunch of flowers in his hand.
‘Get me dressed,’ I muttered to the slaves. It was time to do something for his birthday. ‘And bring wine and a dish of honeyed figs.’ I looked again at Sveta. ‘Make that two dishes,’ I added.
Chapter 30
It wouldn’t have been hard, but the Egyptian quarter by day was decidedly less forbidding than by night. It was still a sprawl of mostly falling-down slums. Here and there, though, you could see properties that wouldn’t have been out of place in the smarter parts of the Greek centre. I could see now that the potty man had been right. The Egyptian quarter had a decidedly alien feel about it. Even so, there was a fair bit of money this side of the Wall.
There was a stiff breeze coming in from the south. Though nothing could wholly take off the smell I’d now come across all through the Delta – of Egyptians huddled together without means of washing, or inclination to wash – I didn’t need to be so prodigal with my essence of roses. All round me, there was a sound of banging and shouting as the Egyptians went about their business. As in the centre, the streets were crowded. The guards surrounded my chair, swords drawn as they pushed our way through.
‘Oh, the care is for you, my dear boy,’ Priscus had said the day before as I settled myself for the first time into the armoured chair. ‘I’ve never been one for bodyguards myself. As you know, if there are enemies to be killed, I’ve always believed in doing it myself.’
I hadn’t bothered so far myself with guards. Even in Constantinople, after word had got round that I was the one behind cutting the bread distribution, I’d never done more than go about the streets with my sword on show and one of my larger slaves for support. Now, as I looked down from the chair at the sea of jabbering, slightly yellow faces, I was glad of the dozen guards. I was still more glad that half of them were Slavonic mercenaries. They were roughly my size and colouring. And if I paid close enough attention, I could just understand what they were saying to each other.
‘Sir,’ their officer said in the rough Latin still used in some units of the Army, ‘can I suggest a detour?’ He pointed at the narrowing street ahead. ‘I don’t like the look of those high buildings. They’re ambush territory.’
‘We’ll have to risk it,’ I said. I looked again at the directions Macarius had given me. I agreed those dark, upper windows looked dodgy. A good hail of stones from up there, and we’d be hard put to fight off a determined attack from the ground. But I also knew we’d be lost in a moment once we moved off the path laid down for us. Macarius knew these people and their part of the town. I’d have to trust his judgement of where was and wasn’t safe. I drew my own sword and laid it on the table built into the carrying chair. It had a reassuring look as it glittered in the sunlight that streamed down past the canopy over my head.
‘My Lord is earlier than expected,’ the Deacon said apologetically as the courtyard gate swung shut behind us. With two inches of wood now to muffle the sound, I could barely hear the rush and bustle of the street outside.
I nodded and stepped down from the chair. The Deacon and his secretary bowed low before me. Priests and monks scurried about their business under the colonnade. After the rising uneasiness out in the streets, it was pleasantly quiet and familiar. Except the whispered language around me wasn’t Greek or Latin, I might have been within one of the larger Church buildings anywhere in the Empire.
‘If My Lord would come this way,’ he added, motioning towards a door that led in from the colonnade.
At first, all was dark within. I bowed instinctively to avoid knocking my head on the lintel. As my eyes adjusted, I could see that, after the first two rooms, we were in a longish corridor. It must have run the entire length of the church. Again, it was all much as I’d expected. I really might have been in one of the middling churches in Constantinople. The only difference was that, mingled with the incense was the smell of something foul. It was the sort of thing you came across in hospitals or prisons.
A few yards more and I found out the cause of the smell. About halfway down the corridor, just before an icon of Saint Antony of the Desert, there was a pool of vomit. I could now see quite well in the gloom. Even so, I nearly stepped in it. The Deacon hissed something in Egyptian at one of the church slaves, who was waiting politely for us to pass. The man pulled out a large cloth and fell to his knees by the pool. As he splashed it over himself, the smell drifted up still stronger of stomach juices and rotting fish.
‘His Holiness is guarded this month by the Sisters of Saint Artemisia,’ the Deacon said as if that explained matters.
I gave him a non-committal look.
‘She was the daughter-in-law of an Emperor,’ he went on, guessing I hadn’t understood the significance. ‘It was in the time of darkness before the True Faith was established in the world. She was a beauteous yet abandoned woman, sunk in every vice of the Imperial Court. She put these things behind her when she, with her husband, was converted to the Faith. Thereafter, she grew famous throughout the still forbidden Church for the strictness of her observances. As often as she was compelled to attend the banquets of sinful luxury, she would purge herself out of solidarity with the starving poor of the Empire.
