He laughed gently and repeated himself: ‘We both know better than those monks and barbarians.’
With that, his eyes closed again and he drifted back into his doze. As he did so, the room began to darken and its various objects took on a weirdly translucent quality.
I snatched up the book from his lap. It fell straight through my hands as if they didn’t exist. It fell open on the floor. I dropped to my knees and tried to see what was on the pages. Written on the left page in very small and neat characters that looked like a variant on the Greek script, and on the other in something equally small and neat that contained Roman letters and might have been Latin, I wanted to look at it in better light. Particularly interesting was that the words appeared to be separated by spaces between, and there were obvious punctuation marks. But the darkness was spreading around me like a mist.
I grabbed again at the book to try to lift it. Again, my hands went through it. All I could see before the darkness became total was the separated words written in Roman letters at the head of each page:
SANCTI AELRICI DE UITA SUA DECEM LIBRI
As everything around me faded into nothingness, I could hear the faint chiming of a bell in that machine above the fireplace.
Then it was all gone.
I woke with a simultaneous contraction of every muscle. I lay naked on a bed in a room hung with yellow silk. Just out of sight, I could feel the breeze from a window, and hear the calling and fluttering of little birds. A black hand was mopping at my face with a sponge soaked in something that smelled of lemon. I sat up, but fell back again with the sudden effort. I tried to put my thoughts in order.
‘Where’s Martin?’ I cried. I tried to sit up again, but was pushed gently back by the black maidservant. She looked across me and began a twittering call to someone on the far side of the room.
‘I thought you would wake around this time,’ the Mistress said. She was perched on a little table, and had been reading from a book that she was scrolling in both hands with practised elegance. She placed a bone clip in the book to hold her place and rolled it shut. She clapped her hands, and more of the maidservants came into the room, carrying dishes.
I was still trying to get my thoughts working. Questions were pouring into my head, and I couldn’t think which ones to ask at all, and which ones first. I looked down at myself and reached feebly for the sheet that was folded away from me.
‘Dear me, Alaric.’ She laughed so that her veil shook – she was wearing one of the loose but shapely robes that covered her whole body. ‘You may be unusually pretty. But I do assure you that you have nothing I haven’t seen many times before.’ She crossed the room and sat beside me. She motioned to one of the women, who began spooning broth into me. It had a taste of menthol and of fish, over something else I couldn’t even begin to recognise.
‘Do you know what has become of Martin?’ I asked when the feeding was over.
The Mistress sat back a little and stared carefully into my face. ‘No,’ she said. ‘You made keeping up with you difficult even for me. By the time I did find you, it was only you who could be rescued.’ She put a hand up to silence me. ‘No, let me be as clear as I can be. I had a search made of the whole area. Martin was not among any of the animals who failed to get away. If your poor secretary is dead, he was not killed where he was taken.’
‘Where is this?’ I now asked. If this was another dream, I was at least with someone who seemed inclined to answer some questions. And if this wasn’t a dream, there were questions that had to be asked.
I now had an increasingly clear recall of my time in the poor district. It seemed she had turned up in time to save me from being torn apart by the mob. But how had she done that? And – I looked again at myself. I had a few superficial bruises on my chest and legs. I could move my left arm without pain. The swelling had gone from my ankle. I moved the foot. There was a slight stiffness, but nothing to stop me from walking and even running. I know that fear can magnify injuries. But the impression I’d had of those last few moments was of a brutal smashing to every part of my body not protected by the chainmail.
I did now sit up. I was weak – no doubt of that – but there was no sense of internal bruising, still less of breakages.
‘What happened back there?’ I asked. ‘How long have I been here?’
‘Taking into account the day you came here, you have been with me five days,’ the Mistress answered. ‘That makes today the festival you celebrate every seven days of Christ your Prophet and Deity.’ She’d answered my second question. The first she was unlikely to have forgotten, but showed no inclination to answer.
‘How have you escaped the rioting?’ I asked. I looked about me. ‘You’ve armed your male slaves?’
She laughed again very softly. ‘Male slaves?’ she said. ‘I have none. They displeased me shortly after my arrival in Alexandria. I had them sold to a Saracen for export to his own country. There, they will be castrated and set to guarding the harems of the great. I have no male slaves – nor desire for any.’
I sat back again and closed my eyes. I was awake. It wasn’t a matter of the surrounding normality – there was precious little of that for the moment. Nor was there much sense of continuity of space and time with what I knew had been real. But self-awareness carried the whole burden of assuring me that, somehow, I was alive and well, and still in Alexandria.
I swung round and sat on the edge of the bed. My feet brushed the cool tiles of the floor. What I wanted to ask was how the Mistress had got herself about Alexandria in the middle of a gigantic riot, without male slaves, and had rescued me from a baying mob. And since I didn’t doubt her assurance, how had she also been able to have the area searched for Martin? I’d have to do better than I had.
‘When we first met,’ she went on, ‘I reminded you of the old truth: that those who rescue strays take on further duties for their welfare. I remain firmly convinced of that truth. I only wish I could have helped Martin. To have you both here safe and well would be delightful indeed.’
She got up and motioned to the maidservants. They darted noiselessly around, clearing away various pots and boxes. Two of them went over to a cupboard and pulled out a robe of white silk. I stood carefully up as they brought it to me. Yes, the ankle was a little stiff, but I could walk on it without pain. What I’d looked like when brought here was hard to say. Since then, though, I’d been washed and shaved and anointed. I could feel that my hair would be in need of further attention. Apart from this, I was soon about as respectable to behold as anyone might have wished.
I thanked the Mistress. I’d learn more later, I resolved, about the details of how she’d saved me. The firmer my recollection, the odder it all seemed. For the moment, though, it was enough to give thanks. She acknowledged these with a nod of her veiled head. I went over to the window and looked out. So far as I could tell, we were on the upper floor of one of the palaces overlooking the Harbour. This was no longer the fashionable district it had been when the palaces were built. But it was one of the quieter parts of the centre, and it caught the sea breezes very nicely. My window looked away from the sea – it looked out over the city, or would have but for other buildings that prevented a full view. I could see one public street. It seemed completely untouched by the rioting. Slaves carried messages along it from one palace to another. I saw a fine lady being carried past in her chair – with guards, certainly, but no apparent sense of danger.
Looking up, into the distance, showed a different picture. The smoke rose in an almost continuous haze above the higher buildings. With Priscus dead, and Nicetas possibly still holed up in the Church of the Apostles, I tried to think what might have happened in the past few days. Had the rioting burned itself out? Even urban mobs eventually grow tired of murder and rape. Or had some coalition of interests formed to use what force and persuasion might be available? How much damage was there to the buildings of Alexandria? How many had died?
Above all, had the Palace remained safe throughout? I thought of Maximin. I thought of Sveta. The mob was a beast without conscience and without mercy. It chilled me to think of the baby I’d seen killed. The Palace was easily the strongest point in the city. But Nicetas had gone out with much of its garrison. I wanted to be polite to the Mistress. She had saved me. She had nursed me back to health. There was much I wanted to discuss with her. At the same time, I wanted to be back in the Palace.
I turned back to face the Mistress. She had already moved beside me.
