what I was looking for and where to get it.
Keeping my head low, I looked down again at the camp and watched until the darkness had thickened and a few fires were lit. This was nothing compared to the Lombards – except it seemed impossibly harder. But here I was, and the quicker I was about my business, the better it might be. I looked up at the brightening stars to get some bearings. It would be at least an embarrassment if I somehow managed to lift Martin out of there, only to have mislaid the bloody camel.
I crept down to the outer limits of the camp. I crouched suddenly behind one of the larger rocks as two men wandered by. It wasn’t a big rock, and if they’d taken the trouble to look in the right direction, they might have seen me. But they were lost in some animated conversation. I listened hard, but could hear nothing I recognised. If only they’d been Lombards, or from some other race of Germanics, I could have tried jumping them. Armed, and with all the surprise of darkness, I could have killed one and pulled the other one over somewhere quiet for questioning at leisure. But these really were Egyptians of the lowest class. If those settled in Alexandria didn’t learn Greek, what reason had I to hope better of these? I let them go, and hurried forward to take more shelter from what looked and smelled like a low shithouse.
Sure enough, a shithouse it was. There were more men inside, straining and gasping as they squatted low together on the ground. What they said in between made about as much sense as anything else I’d heard. I can’t have been above ten yards from the nearest of the brick buildings. If Martin was here at all, shut inside one of these places seemed his most likely whereabouts. Between me and the building, though, a fire was being lit. The lighter had his back to me, and wasn’t having the best of luck with his dried reeds. But he would get there in the end. If I didn’t hurry forward, I might as well dart back to the outer limits. Soon, the moment I stepped beyond the shadow of the shithouse, I’d be in full view.
I looked left and right. No one was about or looking this way. The firelighter was still cursing away with his back turned. I took a risk and raced across to the building. In dark clothes, facing outwards, I pressed against a dark wall. If I now went left, I’d leave the firelighter far over on my right. There was no entrance on the wall where I was pressed. It might be on any of the other three. I might as well start by looking round the corner to my left.
I was about to put my head round the corner to see if all was clear, when I heard more voices. They were loud, and they were coming my way. Another moment and they’d be level with me from round the corner. I looked back along the wall. It wasn’t far to get round the other corner. But the firelighter was getting up to turn, and he’d be less likely to see me still against the wall than running along it. Uncertain, I froze. I could see the approaching glare of torches. They made the corner of the building throw a diminishing shadow as the torchbearers came on ahead of the voices.
With a shock, I suddenly realised that the voices were in Greek.
‘I must confess, Your Majesty,’ one of them was saying in good if accented Greek, ‘that I have been impressed by all you have shown me so far. I think I can accurately predict that my cousin will be highly pleased by the report I will make to him on my return to Ctesiphon.’
The torchbearers came level with the corner. One of them stopped and turned and then stepped backwards. He now stood just in front of me and was looking forward. He had his left side to me. If I’d wanted to reach out and touch his shoulder, I’d not have needed to bend forward. If he so much as glanced left, he’d see me. At least this hid me from the firelighter, who’d now come forward to prostrate himself on the ground. All I had to do was not breathe or make any other movement. Given luck, he’d wait for the two speakers to catch up with him, and then move on. Without moving my head, I looked left at the two men, who’d now come into sight and also stopped.
It was Lucas and the man who’d been speaking. I paid no attention to the second of these. He would normally have been uppermost in my thoughts: what was a kinsmen of the Persian King doing so deep within the Empire? But there was nothing remarkable about his appearance. He had the beard and slightly fussy dress of a rich Syrian, or perhaps an Armenian. Like every diplomat, he’d have passed anywhere without remark. My whole attention went to Lucas. He was now done up in the complete finery of the old kings of Egypt. As in Alexandria, he was wearing the crinkled linen robe. But he now had a false beard tied over his real one, and a headdress so elaborate it almost put to shame those I’d seen in the ancient reliefs. Indeed, the reason he and everyone else had stopped right next to me was that parts of the thing kept falling off at every turn of his head, and one of his flunkies was fully employed in keeping it in place.
‘My dear Siroes, you will surely not object if I ask when more substantial help will be forthcoming,’ he said. ‘If we are now to finish the work of clearing the Greeks out of Egypt, we shall need more than fine words. My letter did specify arms and military advisers.’
‘Your Majesty’s letter did specify these,’ the Persian Envoy said, now in the friendly tone used by diplomats who are about to say no. ‘However, Alexandria is the key to Egypt, and I deeply regret the failure of your uprising there. You told me yourself that your whole organisation there has been torn up by the roots.’
‘A purely temporary reverse,’ said Lucas. He stopped and swore as the big white crown right on top of his headdress pitched over into the dirt. He squatted down so it could be put back on. He raised his own hand to hold it in place as he stood again. His massive collar of gold and lapis lazuli glittered in the torchlight – not ten feet from where I was standing. I breathed softly in and tried to disappear into the wall.
‘One useful outcome of the rising, however,’ he continued, trying to keep his head absolutely level as he spoke, ‘was that the other leaders of my Brotherhood were caught up in the reprisals. I do not know if anyone escaped. If any did, it doesn’t alter the fact that I am now the supreme power in the Brotherhood.’
‘That is most useful, I agree,’ the Envoy said, still friendly. ‘You will appreciate, though, that now the rising has failed no invasion across the Red Sea can be considered. All effort, then, must be devoted to the march on Syria. Once we are in Antioch and the Empire is cut in half, we shall be better placed to open a second front in Egypt. I might also touch on the matter we have been discussing for much of today. Whether or not we arrive in Antioch within the year, there is very substantial assistance that you can provide.
‘And I can assure you that His Majesty is entirely of one mind with you as regards the future settlement of the world. We have no territorial demands that go beyond the core territories snatched from us by Alexander. This means the whole of Asia Minor, but no more than that. The Greeks may keep the territories they so ably defended from the invasion by Xerxes. Since it is their modern capital, they may even keep Constantinople – though whatever emperor it pleases Chosroes to place there will be required to swear fealty to him and to his successors for ever.
‘And Egypt will be absolutely free – on that you have my unforced word. It was a mistake of Cambyses to try incorporating Egypt the last time we were powerful in this region. Once we have succeeded in placing you on your rightful throne – in Memphis or perhaps in Alexandria – we shall, of course, withdraw all our advisers and such other persons as we may send for the purpose of your liberation.
‘Be assured, Your Majesty, we are determined that the age of universal empire is past. Darius and Alexander and Caesar are all dead. There will be no other. Our new order of things will be based on justice among peoples freely covenanting together.’
I say I was trying not to breathe. After all this, it was hard not to gasp – or just burst out laughing. Here was someone talking, at the end of a thousand years, about repeating the work, while avoiding the mistakes, of Cambyses, Darius and Xerxes. And he was doing it in Greek to someone who should have thought himself a Greek, but was instead prancing about in stuff that could only have been snatched by Leontius in one of his tomb-raiding sprees.
‘Your words fall on my ears like music,’ Lucas said earnestly. ‘You will be aware of the treason of the National Church of Egypt, which has objected to my coronation in Memphis next month. If you could prolong your stay, it would be highly symbolic of the new order that we both ardently desire if you were the one to place the double crown formally upon my head.’
‘Oh, Your Majesty,’ the Envoy cried, ‘nothing would do me greater honour. And, of course, I will prolong my stay with you. There is, after all – and do forgive my raising this yet again – the matter of the object that is part of the reason why the Great King sent me to you.’
‘Yes, the object,’ Lucas said with a hint of impatience. ‘You shall have your object. That I can promise. But we both know the prophecy. Until the One Who Shall Find can himself be found, we have a probem.’
‘That, Your Majesty, is most regrettable,’ Siroes drawled. ‘When I took ship from Jedda, I left seven hundred men behind me. There was no point in bringing them to Egypt. But they were sorely pressed by a tribe of Saracens Nicetas had bribed into hostility. I came here myself at great personal risk. It would be most helpful if I could have
