Chapter 39
‘If you won’t let the doctors in, my poor young fellow,’ Priscus drawled as my own so far unpersuasive flow of reasoning came to another halt, ‘that will soon need to come off.’
Nicetas groaned feebly as he shifted position again. Since our last meeting his leg had swelled up to twice its normal size, and there was no end to the pus now oozing from the sores.
‘The head of Saint Mark is being taken specially from its golden case,’ he said in Latin, the pain having taken his Greek away. ‘Prayers are being ordered in every church for the moment when I feel its healing touch.’
‘All the more reason, then, Nicetas dear,’ Priscus added as he went back to the matter in hand, ‘not to interfere with the arrests. I do assure you that, if we don’t have everyone under lock and key by tonight at the latest, Alexandria will go up in flames, and then we lose Egypt. Even if this latter doesn’t worry you, the former might get in the way of your church services.’
‘Let me repeat,’ I added, ‘we have five hundred men under arms to control a city of five hundred thousand. I’ve taken the liberty of sending for reinforcements to every place within a two-day return journey. Even so, I’m not sure it will be enough to put down an insurrection.’ I looked again at the warrants sealed earlier at the Prefecture. They were scattered loosely on a table Nicetas had beside his daybed. Every one of them had been heavily scored through in purple ink.
Nicetas followed my glance and frowned at me. ‘You had no authority,’ he said with an attempt at sternness. ‘All security matters that touch the higher classes of any community are for me and for me alone.’ He beckoned one of his monks over again. He cried out with pain as the man lifted his leg and dropped it down like a slab of butcher’s meat.
‘With all respect, Nicetas,’ I said, ‘my commission gives me full authority to take such actions as I deem necessary for implementation-’
‘Your commission,’ he snarled back at me, ‘gives you no right to take men from their houses when I’ve spent two years buttering them up. It certainly gives you no right to put their sons on the fucking rack. Can the pair of you begin to understand what you’ve done?’
He winced and his whole body shook as the monk poked a finger into one of the larger sores and clapped on what looked like a shrivelled scalp. Priscus and I fell silent during the prayers and application of holy water.
‘I think you need to understand,’ Priscus opened again, ‘that this is a matter of treason. What you call possible rioting Alaric and I know is planned insurrection. We are to lose Alexandria to a coalition of the possessing classes and the joined mob. At the same time, there is to be a Persian attack on Egypt from across the Red Sea. If we lose Egypt, the Empire starves. Before then, Syria will be attacked on two fronts. Do you want to go down in the history books as the man who wrecked the Empire?’ He held up the two sets of confessions that Martin had neatly copied out. ‘We also have the evidence of your own secretary. He confessed without any pressure. He confirmed-’
He stood back as Nicetas picked up a case of waxed writing tablets. He howled something that wasn’t in Greek or even Latin, but might have been Berber, and swung round viciously with them and caught the monk straight in the face. The man took his hands off the leg and stood calmly back to continue his praying.
‘Now look what you’ve made me do!’ Nicetas cried accusingly. He called the monk forward for an embrace and apologies. He’d do penance, he swore, for this. In the meantime, he’d bear up under the healing ministrations of the Church.
Ignoring the trickle of blood down his cheek, the monk looked pleased with himself and went back to his probing and kneading of the sores.
‘I’ve already had my secretary released,’ Nicetas gasped with a nasty look at Priscus. ‘Do you know how difficult it is to find trilingual secretaries in Alexandria?’
‘I believe the first one you had was poisoned,’ I said. ‘I think that is a matter that bears reopening.’
‘And I suppose you are the expert,’ Nicetas jeered, ‘when it comes to finding an assistant isn’t all you thought he was.’
I fell silent at the reference to Macarius and looked at the icon of Heraclius hung where everyone coming into the office could see it glowering down. It was one of the lush productions we’d ordered for sending out to the provinces. It showed Heraclius in full regalia, Christ and the Virgin standing behind him. I’d wondered for a while which of the two cousins was worse when it came to getting anything done. Nicetas had won the contest within my first month. This was just the presentation of the olive garland.
‘My dear fellow,’ Priscus said, his face turning darker and darker with suppressed rage, ‘I will remind you once again that we have a city of five hundred thousand ready to go off beneath us like a volcano, not to mention a Persian attack by sea. We need those traitors out of circulation, and we need an immediate show of force using the men we have.’
‘But it won’t be five hundred thousand all rioting together,’ Nicetas replied. He covered his eyes as he tried to blot out the pain of the latest ministrations. ‘If it’s five thousand who riot, that will be the limit,’ he said at last. ‘And I won’t remind you that the Greek and Egyptian mobs are just as likely to turn on each other as on us.’
‘We’re looking at mobs, each one five or ten times that size,’ Priscus said. He was breathing heavily as he repeated the obvious for perhaps the third time. ‘The Greek trash is already gathered on our side of the Wall. The Palace approaches are all blocked. Alaric and I pushed our way through on foot with drawn swords. There’s an unverified report that the Master of the Works was torn from his chair and disembowelled as he tried to get in to the Palace.’
‘And the mobs are being directed,’ I said. ‘They are being directed on both sides of the Wall. If they are allowed to come within sight of each other, they will combine.’
‘If you were that concerned about the mob,’ Nicetas asked suddenly, ‘why did you let the grain fleet go? Everything was fine before you bullied me into sealing those orders. Are you trying to tell me that if I don’t seal everything else you push under my nose, things will get worse?’
I thought Priscus might explode. But if I still hadn’t discovered any infallible way of making this bloody Viceroy take action, I did know how to make him not act at all.
‘We have clear proof,’ I said, pointing at the confessions that Priscus was still clutching, ‘that fourteen of the lesser land-owners have been engaged in a treasonable correspondence with the Brotherhood, which is, in turn, allied with the Persians. We know further that the traitors have sent hired agitators to stir up sedition among both main communities in Alexandria. And we know that all the deliberations of your Council have been passed to these people by your own secretary. Where treason is concerned, we have an overriding duty of care to the Emperor. I know that he will be most concerned if Alexandria and Egypt are endangered by any conspiracy that might have been avoided.’
‘And why has everyone turned traitor?’ Nicetas howled. As if he were now being threatened with the rack, his voice echoed about the high room. ‘If you hadn’t come here, demanding what I’m sure Heraclius, given proper advice, would never have intended for Egypt, would there have been this “treasonable correspondence”? If you hadn’t discovered it and insisted on arrests, would there now be paid incitements to rioting? I don’t think so. All my troubles began that day when you showed up here with your schemes of “improvement”.
‘I even think you brought on my bad leg. I was ever so healthy before you began making trouble. I think you’re just jealous because you’re a barbarian and I’m not.’
‘Alaric and I are both members of the Imperial Council,’ Priscus said through gritted teeth. ‘If, in our joint written opinion, you are unfit to perform your duties, it is within our power to-’
‘Don’t you presume to threaten me!’ Nicetas roared.
I shuffled a little to my right so he had his back to me. I tried mouthing warnings to Priscus to drop this line at once. It was too late.
‘Don’t you dare threaten me,’ he went on, his voice cracking into a scream. ‘I don’t like to remind you, Priscus, but, whatever your actual reason for being here, you are out of your area without permission. You have only so much position in Alexandria as I allow you. As for you, Alaric, you may represent the Emperor. But I am the Emperor here in every sense that matters. Your power of deposition applies to provincial governors, not the Viceroy of Egypt.’
He shut up and gave us both fierce looks. I glanced at the window. Though shuttered, and though positioned
