around that office. Forget Soteropolis – there was no telling what treasures might be crumbling quietly away in those racks. But I had business with Nicetas that wouldn’t wait. I rose.
‘Hermogenes,’ I said, ‘I want to thank you for all the work you’ve done so far, and all that you will continue to do in the service of the Empire. I will ask again if there is any reward I can give for all this – if not for you, then for the Library.’
He smiled, and repeated not for the first time that his only reward was the knowledge that able scholars still existed elsewhere in the Empire. If he could assist their efforts to the best of his own ability, he was content.
‘Your bribe of oil has certainly lubricated the mob,’ Nicetas had said at dinner the previous evening. Everyone had laughed politely at the witticism. But he was right. For the moment, I had soothed things. My chair was carried through streets as crowded and apparently as cheerful as ever. The shops and exchanges had all reopened. I came across a couple of my Jews as I passed by the Law Courts. They touched their foreheads and bowed in their Eastern manner as I was carried past. Since we were in full public, I ignored them. I represented the Emperor himself, and there was nothing strange if people prostrated themselves in the dust before my chair.
There were still double guards on duty outside the Palace. But this was the result of orders given the previous day, not of present necessity. As usual, people were coming and going with minimal inspection of their documents.
Outside his office, the eunuchs tried to make a fuss about the book dust still clinging to me. But I was almost late, and the business I had with Nicetas was too important for delay.
I sat at my desk with a warm glow of satisfaction.
‘So he sealed the dispatch orders?’ Martin asked with a look at the leather packets neatly piled up on my left.
I thought to glower at him, but gave up at once. There was no point reopening the matter of the Leontius documents. I’d never shake his lunatic convictions. Besides, they couldn’t be that important. If they had contained evidence of treason, would they really have been left behind? At best, they might be a listing of tomb contents that stopped short of anything valuable. Tomb robbers had already seen to that back in the days of the native kings. Why else had the man been counting so much on that mysterious draft from the Saracens?
‘The fleet sails at first light tomorrow,’ I said. The grain would be with Heraclius well before the shipping lanes closed down for the winter months. I’d be in Constantinople to receive his thanks in person. No luck with the arrest and search warrants, though. I’d explained what I knew over dinner. Priscus had listened in and had joined me in urging the need for immediate action. Sadly, any mention of ‘immediate action’, always had a bad effect on Nicetas. Against our advice, he’d then raised the matter in the meeting, just ended, of his full Council – only to explain why nothing could or should be done for the time being.
But I had the dispatch orders. First things first. The landowners could wait.
‘Sveta still hasn’t found that chamber pot,’ Martin said. ‘It was a valuable object, and we think it was taken by Macarius.’
I nodded. If they thought Macarius would throw up a nice position with me for the proceeds of five pounds of antique bronze, more fool them. But if that’s what they thought, I had no reason to defend the man, and every reason to leave things alone.
‘While looking in your own dressing room, though,’ he added apologetically, ‘I found this.’ He held up a sheet of papyrus, a line of Hebrew written again and again all over the good side. ‘It was concealed in the cloak you wear when you visit the – ah, the house of prostitution that you frequent. Would you like me to get it translated?’
I resisted the urge to get up and tear the sheet from his hand. I checked the sharp accusation already formed in my throat. It was Martin’s duty to go through my private things. Anger really was out of the question – and it would only have drawn attention to what I was planning. Isaac had given me a very queer look when I’d asked him for the words ‘A present to Jesus from Cousin Simon’. But he could be trusted to keep his mouth shut. All else aside, Jews had long since learned to keep out of disputes involving the Faith. But I needed Martin to remain as much in the dark as everyone else. This was troublesome, as, though I’d got the Hebrew characters well enough for what was needed, I hadn’t yet worked out how to transfer the words to hardened bronze and make it all look old.
‘Never mind that piss pot,’ I said with an easy wave. ‘Have you found the important one?’ That set Martin off on a long description of the glories he’d found that weren’t in the Patriarch’s catalogue of relics. One of these was the very pen with which Saint John the Divine had written his Revelation.
‘Excellent!’ I said, cutting off the flow of credulity. ‘Keep looking. Before I give in to Priscus and arrange his digging expedition, we need to make quite sure the relic isn’t here in Alexandria.’ Doubtless, Martin still had another fifty places to visit and inspect. But I’d tell Priscus the thing wasn’t to be found here once the grain fleet was under way. I took the sheet of papyrus from Martin and put it into one of the files regarding the canal clearance.
‘I have business tonight in the Jewish quarter,’ I said. I ignored Martin’s frown. ‘Do let it be known to anyone who asks for me that I’m visiting that brothel.’
Chapter 36
‘Wake up, Aelric – oh, for God’s sake, please wake up!’
I drew my knees instinctively up to my chin and rolled away. I’d been dreaming, and I wasn’t sure that I still wasn’t. Martin struggled again with the netting to get at me. In the dim light he’d set on the table beside my bed, I could see his ghastly face.
‘Aelric, Aelric,’ he cried despairingly, ‘get up! All the ships are on fire.’
I was aware of a faint acrid smell. There was a dim flickering against the blind pulled down on the far windows. I jumped out of the bed before gathering my thoughts. I concentrated and tried to push the heavy, delicious velvet of the opium pill from my mind. I ripped the linen of the blind from its housing and let the air play on my face. The windows all faced east – away from the Harbour. But I could see the reflected glare flickering on the higher walls of the Palace far across the central garden.
I finished pulling myself together. Now dumb, his face still terrified, Martin passed me a gown. I threw it on. We hurried out into the dim corridors and ran silently on the carpets to the stairs leading up to the roof.
There was a small crowd already gathered there. It stood on the Harbour side, silent and still, watching the horrors unfolding a quarter of a mile away.
‘Fireboats,’ Priscus said as he drew me to one side and pointed towards the Lighthouse. I followed his outstretched arm. It was light enough with the towers of flame shooting upwards in the Harbour. But it all appeared to me one great chaos of sparks and drifting smoke.
‘Someone’s had the clever idea,’ he explained, ‘of getting across to the Lighthouse island and floating boats filled with burning pitch into the Harbour. The wind has blown them straight into the grain fleet. I think only one ship is afire, but it’s a question of time before the bastards get lucky again.’
‘Nicetas!’ I said. ‘Where is he?’
‘Oh, he left just before you arrived,’ Priscus said with a cold laugh. ‘You’ll find him in his chapel praying for another downpour.’
‘I must get down there,’ I cried. This was a disaster. Those ships had sat there an age, waiting for the dispatch orders to be sealed. Now it was all arranged. Come the dawn, they should be away. This couldn’t be happening.
‘Not so fast, my lad,’ Priscus sneered, clamping an iron grip on my shoulder. ‘If you’re going anywhere, it will be with me in front of you. This is a matter for soldiers, and your military experience, I don’t like to rub it in, amounts to fuck-all. I am, I will remind you, the Empire’s most senior commander. If Heraclius has his grain fleet burned while I’m in Alexandria, I might pick up just a fragment of the blame. You leave this to me.’
As he spoke, slaves rushed puffing towards him with his sword and body armour. A eunuch turned round and started babbling something about unauthorised weapons in the Palace. If he got out a dozen words, I’d be surprised.
‘You’re lucky I’m not fully in charge here,’ Priscus hissed down at him. The creature squirmed and squealed, clutching at his smashed nose. Priscus gave him a hard kick in the stomach and stepped back to avoid the fountain of bloody vomit that gushed in the flickering light from the Harbour.
