feel a growing weariness. If we really had found what we’d come to find, it wasn’t possible to justify staying longer. It was time to go.
From the bottom of the steps, I looked back towards the makeshift office. I couldn’t see it, though I knew where it must be. Here, the great Eratosthenes had sat day after day, surrounded by death that must have been as ancient to him as it was to us. Wherever his thoughts had led him marked him out as an equal of the great Epicurus. That – or he’d become the raving lunatic everyone then and since had taken him for.
We left the lamp still burning low on the steps. Since Macarius made it plain there would be another visit here, there was no point in cluttering ourselves. With that mineral oil left behind by Eratosthenes, the reliefs in the corridor showed brighter than before, and gave up still more of their carefully depicted horrors. But I tried not to look. I thought instead of the surface. Whatever awaited me there, this wasn’t a place for lingering.
Getting back to the surface was easy in that we knew where we were going, and there was no element of tension. It was also harder in that we were now going steadily uphill. I hadn’t fully noticed on the way down how steep the incline was. Now, we were tired, and the going was too hard to complete without longish rests.
‘My Lord,’ Macarius whispered in Latin as we reached the entrance chamber, ‘I suggest that your interests might best be served by setting your weapon down here.’
I stared at him. He continued staring back. I sniffed and took out the knife from under my tunic. For all it had given me some feeling of control, I saw no value in arguing. I put it down and kicked it against one of the walls.
It was dark in that entrance chamber, though noticeably warmer. With a shock of horror, I wondered at first if the granite covering had been screwed shut on us. But the reason we were in darkness, I soon realised, was because it was dark outside.
‘Well, hello!’ Priscus called down when I’d shouted for the second time. I saw him outlined against the opening by a torch that someone held behind him. ‘We were beginning to worry about you. I think some of the wogs were coming to the conclusion that you’d been eaten alive by demons. For myself, I was getting prepared to suggest a search party for the morning. Did you find anything useful down there?’
‘Yes,’ I lied, waiting for the ladder to come down. ‘If the Lord Siroes isn’t happy with this, he’ll find plenty more to amuse him if he goes down himself.’ And with any luck, I thought, the Bishop might prevail on the wogs to seal them all in together.
Chapter 65
‘I think the young barbarian has done us proud,’ Siroes said.
We were back in our dining tent. It was a late meal, and the food was as insipid as ever. And I felt a slight annoyance that a bloody Persian was calling me a barbarian. But I was too tired and hungry to care much about either defect. Buckets of cool water had got the dirt off my body. My clothes could dry overnight in the desert wind. For the moment, I sat wrapped in a blanket, finishing a dinner of dates and gritty bread.
‘It is,’ he went on, ‘just as the prophecy led me to suppose. I therefore believe, with more than reasonable assurance, that we in this tent constitute the supreme power in the world.’
‘Well, I might agree if he’d at least brought back a piss pot,’ Priscus muttered. He looked sourly at the notes Lucas had taken of my narrative. They filled several sheets of papyrus in a hand that showed what a clerk the world had lost when its owner chose to be Pharaoh.
‘I don’t think, my dear Priscus,’ Siroes broke in with a sneer, ‘we need concern ourselves with receptacles of human piss. I have told you repeatedly that what I came here to find had no connection with your Jewish Carpenter. I will also tell Lucas that the object we still need to recover serves none of the purposes that your late mutual friend Leontius appears to have conceived for it.
‘The object’s location and its correct use, I will say, are matters known only to me. My information so far has been absolutely correct. I have no doubt this will continue to be so. Let it be enough for the moment that I have no interest in holy relics. Nor, let me say for the avoidance of doubt, do I care for the ravings of some long dead philosopher. In this, as in so many other concerns, the Greeks have nothing to offer. The object I seek gives access to a power that comes from the ability to inflict death without hope of escape or vengeance.’
‘I suppose you could frighten someone to death with it – assuming you ever do lay hands on it,’ said Priscus with yet another of his mirthless smiles. He stroked the moulting fur of his cat, then wiped his hand on a napkin. ‘Of course, we already have one dead wog. Show a few of those statues Alaric describes, and I’ve no doubt we could improve on that.’
There was a movement of the tent flaps and Macarius entered the room. It was a hot night, and my clothes had dried faster than expected. He laid them out on an empty chair. He looked briefly at me, and then at the heap of notes. I ignored him. Priscus stopped him as he was about to leave.
‘Do have more water sent in,’ he sighed. ‘And do have the bowl filled to the brim this time. It’s been a fucking hot day waiting out there by that opening, you know. A bit of haste on your young friend’s part wouldn’t have been unwelcome.’
Macarius bowed and went silently out.
Priscus tugged slyly on one of the cat’s whiskers. He looked up again. With a faint snort, he pushed the notes across the table in my direction. ‘I’ve heard more profitable narratives in church,’ he said.
‘I find your lack of faith disturbing,’ Siroes replied. ‘Sitting round this table, we have a king of Egypt, which is or could be the richest country in the world. We have the cousin and grandson of a great king of Persia. And we have the descendant of at least one Roman emperor. Believe me that we have the means to make ourselves masters in our own right of half the world. And believe me that we shall soon have the means to bring the other half very speedily under our control. It is a matter of one repaired bridge to the unvisited side of that cavern, and of a little willingness to work thereafter as one.’
‘There is something over on the other side,’ I broke in with a show of eagerness. ‘I just couldn’t see it in the light we had.’ I hadn’t for a moment been taken in by all that guff about the ‘perfect equality of peoples’. It didn’t surprise me now if Siroes had dropped it like a hot brick. But it was at least slighting that his talk of dignitaries had left no room for Legates Extraordinary – still less for England. I’d been well and truly demoted from His Magnificence to barbarian youth. ‘We explored perhaps only a fraction of the whole complex,’ I added, keeping my face heroically straight. ‘Moreover, even if they weren’t on your list of things to find, the writings of Eratosthenes were highly suggestive of what might be achieved by following his own lead.’
‘So you tell us, dear boy,’ Priscus said with another of his smiles. ‘So you said. We don’t disbelieve a word of your story of the marvels deep underground. Indeed, while you were cleaning up, we – or at least Siroes – decided we were so intrigued that nothing would keep us from making our own inspection first thing tomorrow morning. Because of the great love we bear each other, and as a sign of our complete unity of will, we have decided to go down there together, drawing lots to see who should go first through that hole. We must rely on the popularity Lucas has among his own people that all three of us – plus you, of course – are not sealed in the moment we are at the foot of the ladder.’
The tent flaps opened again and the usual serving man came in with a pitcher of water. While Priscus watched intently, he poured a cup for himself and drank. We waited. Priscus nodded and the man filled the bowl up past the two-thirds mark. I dipped my own cup into the bowl. As I was about to set it to my lips, the tent flaps opened yet again. Macarius entered, now with a jug of wine. Things were looking up. I set my cup on the table and waited. Macarius turned and rasped an order. Through the still open tent flaps Martin now was pushed in among us. His fetters had been taken off, and he’d been allowed a wash – though still not a shave. His bandage had been replaced with something smaller and cleaner.
‘Ah, little Martin!’ Priscus cried, rising and making an ironic bow. ‘You come at a most opportune moment. You will have heard already from His Grace of Letopolis that young Alaric is alive and well. You will surely wish to volunteer for another trip underground with us. I hope Alaric’s description of the narrow steps is accurate in its dimensions. It would never do to have you trapped there by your own belly.’
‘It is as you wish, sir,’ Martin said in a flat voice. He looked at me and swallowed.
I could see how baggy his face had become under the ginger bristles. Well past any desperation, his eyes were dead. I smiled weakly at him. Things might easily be worse. He still had his right ear.
