water that the boat hardly trembled under the shifting of weight. Working together, the two boys lifted me over the side of the boat so that I could stand on the white beach where we’d finally come in to shore. I looked down at the dull eyes of the big man I’d killed. The Imperial scout ship nowhere to be seen, I looked at the vanishing bulk of the ship that had, since England, been both home and prison. I turned and took a confident and unaided step on the beach towards the remains of the Tipasa docks.
‘Well, come along, my pretties,’ I said without looking back. ‘I really could do with something to eat.’
Dear me! Dear me! Keep a cool head on your shoulders, and something always does turn up. What to do with it was something I’d consider as and when.
Chapter 19
I sat in the smooth, natural bowl the brook had, in its ages of spring flooding, carved out of the rock, and splashed happily in the water. If it had seemed a little chilly at first, I’d soon grown used to that. The afternoon sun was at its welcome best. I glanced at my moderately clean robe where Wilfred had hung it up to dry. I was hungry. As I’d expected, Tipasa was completely abandoned – not so much as one God-bothering hermit living in the ruined houses of what had, just a hundred years before, been a flourishing centre of the trade in fish sauce. Darting here, darting there – almost glowing with admiration of my double kill – Edward had gone all over the city while I rested with Wilfred in the shade. All the public buildings remained in good repair, he’d reported back, but the private houses had no roofs, and there was grass growing undisturbed in all the main streets.
Now, we were back where we’d first come ashore. We’d found a rocky inlet two hundred yards or so across the dazzling sands from where our boat seemed immovably stuck. Some fifty yards further on to the land, an ancient monument had sunk deep into its foundations. The rigid, almost incompetent statue still looked down from an odd angle. The inscription on its base was almost effaced by time. In any event, being in Punic, I couldn’t read a word. It had once been the centre of an older city. The one built as part of our own civilisation had been centred further along the shore – I supposed, on weak evidence, because of the sands that had shifted within the harbour all through history. We were alone, but for the birds and various small animals that scurried unseen in the undergrowth where the shoreline ended. I was about to mention what would soon become the pressing matter of food. But Edward was peering into the water.
‘What is wrong with your – your’… He struggled to find the Latin word before lapsing into the English ‘cock’.
I took a deep breath and dipped my head under the water again. It was making my bad ear hurt, but the delicious cool of the water was too much to resist. I came up and rubbed my eyes. I looked blearily down at the sad remnant of an organ that had, for so many years, served me so well. I smiled and looked into Edward’s eyes.
‘The word you seek,’ I said gravely, ‘is mentula. Mine is disfigured by an operation anciently required of the Jews and Egyptians, and now of those who convert to the faith of the Saracens.’
Edward nodded. I’d answered his question. Wilfred’s face, though, took on its sour expression. He still hadn’t been parted from his own robe. It was as much as he could do to look with half-closed eyes at my own naked body. At Edward’s he hadn’t once dared to look. I put my head back and stretched lazily in the water. If, even now, Wilfred couldn’t overcome his horror of nudity, that would have to be his problem. Where Edward’s nudity was concerned, it was also his sorry loss.
‘Oh, don’t suppose I believe in the claims made by their false prophet,’ I said with an easy laugh. ‘But an apparent conversion was politically useful once for the Empire. It also helped me recover monies that would otherwise have been lost when the Antioch banks all failed at the same time.
‘But do observe,’ I continued, ‘the two white scars at the base of the glans. You may not be able to see them through the water. They are there, even so. I will warn you now, should you ever feel inclined to turn to the satanic Faith of the Desert, that circumcision can radically diminish feeling in the organ of increase. This may have advantages for some purposes – and there are those who swear that it prolongs and enhances the act of love – but it was never wholly to my taste. However, the circumcised races go far to compensating for the diminished sensation by piercing the organ and fitting a curved golden rod with little balls at each end. I wore this with much pleasure until, together with my gold and ivory teeth, I had to trade it for what I thought would be my final passage across the sea to Richborough.’
I ignored Wilfred’s passable imitation of a death rattle. I took another deep breath and went under again. I came up with a mouthful of water. I made a little fountain with it, and splashed hard on the surface. I looked down happily as the reflection of the overhead sun broke up into sparkling fragments and then reformed. Though tired, I was feeling justifiably pleased with myself. Most people who reach my age don’t do much at all. I’d just killed two men in short order. I hadn’t acknowledged Edward’s breathless praise. But I certainly deserved it.
‘Why is the city deserted?’ Wilfred asked.
I looked at his face and noticed how the sun had turned it the colour of an Egyptian mud brick. That’s what happens if you must dress up all year in heavy black. Except where he’d kept some clothes on aboard the ship, and where he was still getting over his stay in Cartenna, Edward had the nice golden tone that the sun can give to young northern skin. But this was no time for feasting my vicious old eyes. Wilfred had asked a rational question – even if it was to take me off a matter that he plainly found unwelcome – and he deserved a rational answer.
‘After Scipio had taken and destroyed it in ancient days,’ I began, once more in lecturing mode, ‘the city of Carthage was refounded by Julius Caesar. From a heap of uninhabited ruins, it grew within a hundred years into a city of half a million. It was the biggest city in the West after Rome itself. The whole Province of Africa, of which it was capital, became the richest province in the West. After the Empire was divided, it was Africa that supplied Rome with seven million bushels of corn every year, Egypt being now reserved for the feeding of Constantinople. This whole shore was crowded with cities, great and small. The Punic heritage was eventually swept far out of sight. In its place arose a school of Latin and specifically Christian literature. You will recall that both Tertullian and Augustine were Africans. Cyprian, the first bishop to be martyred, was also an African.
‘The bad times began just under three hundred years ago. The province was conquered by a race of Germanic barbarians called the Vandals who had swept through Spain. They were unsystematic in their oppression. But what they did coincided with an advance of the desert and of the desert races that swallowed up formerly wealthy regions. If you go fifty miles south of here – perhaps less now – you’ll find great cities abandoned in the desert. When built, they were surrounded by the richest farming land in the West.’
‘But, Master, these cities on the coast,’ Wilfred broke in, ‘surely they should still be rich?’
I ignored him. I was thinking of the long memorandum I’d written for Constans when he demanded more taxes out of Africa. Was it misrule that had destroyed the interior? Or was it some autonomous change in the climate? It did seem part of the world had grown colder since ancient times. Certainly, grapes grew no more in Jarrow. Was it the colder weather – and not Imperial decadence – that had brought our ancestors out of their northern forests? Assuming, as Eratosthenes had, that the sun was an inconceivably large ball of fire millions of miles away, could there be some periodic change in the heat that it issued? If so, how could a cooling in the north be accompanied by a heating in the south to turn black land into dust? But I pulled myself back to the present.
‘The plague depopulated Africa worse than any other region,’ I said. ‘Our tax demands didn’t help. Until I abolished them as useless, there were emigration controls to keep people from escaping to Spain and France and other regions beyond the reach of the tax gatherers. Tipasa was just a little too small to survive the depopulation. The silting up of the harbour didn’t help. I imagine the population shrank and shrank over about two hundred years. You’ve seen how some of the old fortifications were taken down to build another wall around the centre. As time went by, the population must have fallen below the point where city life is viable. At that point, the survivors would have moved twenty miles along the shore to Caesarea.
‘What you see all round you is a great void. The multitudes who once swarmed along these shores are long since passed away. In Constantinople, we still translate the laws for our last substantial province where Latin is spoken. But there is hardly anyone left to read or obey them. Africa pays no net taxes. If we do a little here and there to slow the Saracen advance west from Egypt, it is for the sake of prestige. Quietly, we are glad of the diversion of their strength from the Imperial heartland.’
I made an effort to stand, but the bottom of the pool was slippery. ‘Come,’ I said with a change of tone, ‘help me out of here.’ Once I was standing on the hot, smooth sand, I pointed for my stick. As Edward handed it to me, I
