before Lucas.
There was another long silence. Then Siroes got up. He brushed away more of the dust that still clung to his riding clothes and looked round.
‘Do you not agree how fine a place this world would be if only there were a little more trust among equals?’ he asked with a sigh. ‘However, it does appear that not one person in this room trusts any other person. This being so, I can only propose that we proceed as if we did trust one another. His Magnificence must be given what he demands. Once he has done what the prophecy says that only he can do, we can proceed to a discussion of what should be done next. I already feel a suggestion for compromise may be in the air. But I do beseech you all to put everything out of mind for the moment except the finding of what we are all gathered to find.’
‘Agreed,’ said Priscus. He and Siroes smiled at each other.
Lucas appeared set to speak again. But the slave was looking at him. If he hadn’t understood a word of the conversation, it couldn’t be hard to guess that Lucas had been worsted. All else aside, he was the only one of us still standing. The anger on his face was visibly giving way to dejection. Priscus put his cat down. It went and sat on one of the rugs. It looked up at me with the sort of face even his master hadn’t been able to match – not even after a lifetime of practising in front of a mirror.
‘That leaves the matter of our late supper,’ Priscus said. ‘Let us pretend it is out of friendship alone that the four of us will drink from the same cup.’
Chapter 58
We set out again at dawn, this time for Soteropolis. Priscus and Siroes rode together. Watching them talk, anyone would have thought they were bosom friends. I rode with Lucas.
‘I hope I shan’t need to remind you,’ Priscus had said as we were mounting up, ‘that His Magnificence Alaric is not a prisoner. It should be enough that we have his secretary.’ Lucas had scowled into his beard. But Priscus had started to border on the nasty, and that was the end of the matter.
It was a ride of about twenty miles through the edge of the desert. The Nile rolled by sluggishly far down on our right. I did see a few boats, though nothing that could have been useful to me, even if the wish had been there. The journey was completely without event. Lucas had put off all his antique finery and was now dressed in normal riding clothes for the desert. This meant we attracted no more attention from the few lowly travellers on the road than twenty mostly armed men always would.
Martin and I had been coming from the north when, a month earlier, we first saw the monument marking the centre of the old Soteropolis. We’d then had to go over a sand dune before we could see the Mistress and beyond her to the dead palm trees. We were now approaching from the south. The whole expanse of sand that had then seemed so desolate was now crowded with tents. They stretched all the way to the dune, and spread out right and left before then. Was this where the Brotherhood had pitched its camp? I asked myself. There could easily have been a thousand men in this temporary city. This was almost everything the camp I’d found had not been. But, no. I squinted to see better in the bright sunshine. Most of the figures darting between the tents were locals of the lowest class. As usual, burned a dark red by the sun, they ran about almost naked. These weren’t the five hundred workmen drilled and well fed I’d been thinking to divert from work on the old canal. But they would do very well for the excavations I had evidently been brought here to oversee.
As we rode into the camp, someone came running over to Lucas. He saluted and shouted something. There was a brief conversation. Lucas sounded mighty pleased with everything. He got down from his camel and disappeared among some of the minor players in the Brotherhood who had escaped the purge laid on by Priscus in Alexandria.
‘I think you’ll find everything in order, my dear,’ said Priscus as he helped me down from my camel.
I wanted to say that the tents might be covering the area under which the Library reserve stock was buried. Sadly, even a twenty-mile ride had left me bruised and stiff again. I pulled my hood back, and let the breeze rustle my hair. A few of the locals stared with dull interest at my unusual colouring. The Brotherhood people, however, let up a terrified clamour. Those who’d seen me the night before last had got almost used to the idea of having in their midst what they took for a corpse brought back to life by a sorceress. These evidently hadn’t been given prior warning. Pointing at me, and calling out an unfamiliar phrase over and over again, they shrank back. ‘My empire is of the imagination,’ the Mistress had said. I was beginning to see there might be advantages in being one of her provincial governors. I smiled back at the scared, jabbering throng.
No one could claim Priscus had been brought back from the dead. Still, he was able to cause a big commotion of his own. Here, among them, was the Hammer of the Brotherhood, the man who’d skewered so many of their Grand Masters through arse or belly and had saved Alexandria from what might otherwise have been their most spectacular success in a thousand years. I was almost forgotten in the now threatening buzz. Lucas had to come out of the tent he’d been inspecting and work hard to keep his people from butchering at least Priscus on the spot.
But the commotion was eventually settled. I still got any number of funny looks, and Priscus got worse. But the Brotherhood was again following the orders of its leaders, who now set in earnest about doing the bidding of the one Grand Master who’d not come to an end in Alexandria.
‘I was serious when I told you last night to follow my instructions,’ Priscus said softly to me in Latin as we found ourselves together in the jostling crowds.
‘No Latin!’ Lucas shouted from nowhere. He pushed his way past a couple of grooms and stood before us. ‘You will not be alone together,’ he said firmly. ‘All you have to say to each other will be in front of me and in Greek. I must remind you, Priscus, of how little loved you are among the Brotherhood. Without my protection, your safety cannot be guaranteed.’
‘Oh, Lucas, Lucas!’ Priscus said, rolling the hated name in his mouth with cheerful satisfaction. ‘I’ve given you Alaric. I’ve given you the one man all the prophecies say is the One. And I’m not the only one needing to remember that it’s thanks to me that anyone up to challenging you is now rotting in one of my mass graves. Don’t presume, Lucas dear, the pair of us to be in anything together. That would need to be a very deep plot.’
Lucas wasn’t impressed. He took me by the hand and led me up the dune to look over the monument.
‘We’ll eat,’ he said. ‘Then you will supervise the digging.’
I looked across the still clear expanse of sand that covered the centre of Soteropolis. From what I knew of his way with his beloved people, he’d have a few flogged to death if they slacked. The rest would dig as if someone had buried gold coins for them to find. Even so, it was a large area, and there was nothing at surface level to indicate street plans or other buildings. I heard Priscus following behind me.
‘I don’t think, Alaric, introductions will be in order,’ he said.
I turned. Martin stood beside him. He was manacled with eighteen inches of chain between his wrists. There was another manacle about his right leg. This was attached by another length of chain to a large iron ball that needed two hunched brown bodies to lift off the ground. Someone else held a sunshade over him.
For the first time, I lost control. I broke down at the shock of seeing him. I didn’t bother trying to hide my sobs as we embraced. He pushed me gently back.
‘Aelric, you’re a fool for coming,’ he said in Celtic. ‘I prayed you would simply light a candle for me in church and get everyone out of Alexandria.’ He sat down in the sand. The sunshade was moved to keep it in position. ‘I prayed for you to use some common sense. But I knew in my heart you wouldn’t.’
Martin hadn’t shaved, and his red beard was flecked with grey. So far as it wasn’t covered in a stained bandage, there was a haunted look on his face. Otherwise, he was in good health. I looked more closely at the bandage. Priscus caught my glance.
‘A regrettable but necessary loss,’ he said loudly in Greek. ‘But I found Martin unusually firm about signing the letter I’d had drafted for you to read. All things considered, though, has the Legate’s secretary any complaints about his treatment?’
‘No, My Lord,’ Martin said. Not bothering to look up, he stared glumly at the heavy manacle round his ankle.
‘Then let us keep it that way. Alaric,’ Priscus said, still with raised voice, ‘I must inform you of these conditions. You will supervise the digging as you see fit. You will lay hands on the relic and pass it immediately to
