only the tooth gatherers.’ I stood and watched the skilled use of pincers in the younger mouths. I felt Edward’s hand take hold of mine. I gave it what I hoped was a reassuring squeeze, and tried to draw his attention from the baby that had had its brains dashed out against a drain cover. ‘The roots filed off and welded into gold plates,’ I explained with a nod at the hushed, furtive creatures, who scurried about just as if they’d been crabs on a beach at low tide, ‘those teeth are worth their weight in silver. When my own first began to go, I did experiment with having new teeth pushed into the sockets. It wasn’t the success I’d hoped, and I eventually designed a replacement set entirely of gold and ivory.’ I poked my stick at the nearest of the corpses. It was an adolescent boy, perhaps a little older than Edward. He’d been castrated. It wasn’t his dying scream, though, that had pulled his jaws nine inches apart. Except for one broken incisor, all the teeth were out already. The body had been looted and abandoned, the eyes still open, the limbs stiff in their dying position.
‘It’s – it’s horrible!’ Edward breathed.
I looked at him again. I really thought he was about to vomit. He was a strange child – happy enough to watch the infliction of death, fussy only about the treatment of the dead. I sniffed very hard.
‘My last and dearest of sons,’ I said, trying for a nonchalance I didn’t feel, ‘my dear, dear boy. Dead is dead, I’ve told you many times. What happens after death is of no more importance to the dead than what happened before birth. The one objection a reasonable man can have even to eating the flesh of the dead is that it would encourage still worse behaviour to the living.’ I smiled and pointed at one of the tooth gatherers, who was looking up at us. It was now that I noticed the dogs peering warily at us from within some of the violated houses. They’d have their turn soon enough, and there would be good pickings for all of them.
‘Who did all this?’ I asked in Syriac. The man shrugged and went back to pulling one last tooth from the jaws of another adolescent boy. He wiped it clean and dropped it into the appropriate leather pouch. I unhooked the purse from my belt and tossed a couple of silver coins on to the paving stones. These were dark and sticky with blood. I looked hurriedly at my feet. I hadn’t moved far enough into the street to ruin my velvet shoes.
‘Word is,’ he said, pulling himself slowly upright, ‘it’s orders from the Governor of Syria. Apparently Meekal heard that their priest was preaching against the Established Faith. His agents couldn’t find the priest, so they made the next best example. The bodies have to lie here till the dogs have finished with them.’ He gave me a closer look and stepped forward. He reached into one of his pouches and took out a large, white incisor. He held it out to me cupped in his stained right hand.
I avoided the urge to shrink back from him and shook my head. Once I could find the right workmen, I had other ideas for my mouth. He shrugged again and put the tooth away. I had a sudden flash of imagination. I could hear the tread of soldiers marching into the street, and see the glint of suddenly drawn swords. I could hear the terrified shrieks of the dying, and the vain pleading of the women for their children. I could see the men roped together and led off for public execution. I’d seen the like any number of times. I’d just seen an actual massacre. But these visions of horror are best not encouraged. I gave Edward’s hand another squeeze and asked about the Golden Spear Inn.
‘Well,’ one of his colleagues interrupted with an oily smile, ‘if that’s where you’re headed, you shouldn’t be starting from here.’ He stood up and looked at me from within the folds of his black hood. The pinched face was glowing with some loathsome skin disease. I looked upwards and pretended not to hear Edward’s obscene mutter beside me. He’d understood enough from the name of the inn and from the tone of the reply.
‘There were men here not long ago,’ the first tooth gatherer said. He took the coins from the tooth pouch where he’d put them and looked closely at them. I ignored the hint and waited for further and better particulars. ‘They were armed,’ he added at last, ‘and they said they were looking for an old man and a blond boy.’ He pointed at the golden curls that showed beneath Edward’s hat. ‘They had a Greek look about them. If they lay hands on you, they’ll have your heads up on poles before you can say “knife”.’ He laughed again and went back about his work.
I tried not to stiffen. At once, the street had lost all its post-massacre sadness. I looked at the row of silent buildings, and at the high, blank wall of the church. How far was it back to the inn? I could hear nothing. But Edward’s ears were sharper than mine, and he was looking intently along the street. I could see he was feeling again for his knife. I put on a friendly smile and was glad I’d come out in my best silk. I held my purse up and let the coins within jingle slightly.
‘Would it trouble you, O bearer of interesting news,’ I asked, ‘if I were to beg you to hurry to the nearest main street and engage a closed carrying chair?’ He gave me a dubious look. I opened my purse and took out a half solidus. The gold gleamed bright in the sunshine.
‘It is outrageous!’ Zakariya wailed as his people helped me from the carrying chair. ‘Is there no excess beyond these dogs of infidels?’ There was a splash of blood on the lower part of his tunic, and his left arm was grazed up to the elbow. But he suddenly remembered himself, and trailed off into a long mutter about how it all reflected badly on the respectable Christians who counted among his very best friends. Without troubling myself to ask, I gathered he was referring to the later massacre outside the bookseller.
I turned and looked at the inn’s heavy gate. Though shut and barred now, it couldn’t keep out the sound of renewed shouting in the streets. Zakariya saw the questioning look on my face.
‘But didn’t My Lord hear the proclamation?’ he asked with a nasty smile.
I listened with my good ear to the undoubted screams that drifted through the gap at the bottom of the gate.
‘Well, My Lord,’ Zakariya said, ‘the news is that His Highness the Governor of Syria has decreed that any more terror attacks in Beirut are to be punished with the execution of all the Greeks. Yes, men, women, children – dragged from their homes and slaughtered in the street!’ He giggled and looked heavenwards. ‘You can be sure I’ve already done my duty.’ He pointed at the blood on his tunic. ‘That Greek filth down the road won’t be undercutting me again,’ he said proudly. ‘These Greeks, I can tell you, have met their match in Governor Meekal,’ he added in the voice he normally reserved for his sermons. ‘And it’s about time they learned their place in the new Syria. Alexander’s dead. The Romans are gone. The Empire is nothing. We talk to the tax collectors in Greek, and that’s it.
‘Yes, Governor Meekal doesn’t put up with no crap. He’s just the man to drive through change – but then, My Lord will surely know all about that!’ he ended with a repeat of his nasty smile.
I ignored him and looked at Edward. I could see he’d heard the commotion outside clearer than I had. But, not knowing more than a few words of Syriac, he’d have no excuse to run upstairs for another balcony inspection of the bloodshed.
‘My Lord will forgive me, though,’ Zakariya said, pulling himself completely back into order. ‘You have a visitor. He’s been waiting in your audience room since shortly after you went out this morning.’
I nodded. I’d already seen the horse and grooms being hurried through the side entrance. I left Edward to pay off the chairmen. My stick made a slow tapping on the tiles as I went on alone towards my suite. I’d manage the stairs by myself.
The young man rose politely as I walked into the room.
‘Peace be upon you, My Lord,’ he said, bowing low. ‘I am Karim, son of Malik.’
A most well-proportioned young man – perhaps barely into his twenties – he spoke Saracen with the graceful fluency of a native. I thought quickly, trying to recall who Malik might have been. But I’d known too many of them. Still, the emblem on his gold headband told me who had sent Karim.
‘And may the blessing of our Common Father descend upon you,’ I replied in his own language. He’d stretched a point by addressing me as another of the Faithful – unless my ancient dealings with Omar were now being taken more seriously than I’d ever intended them to be. Just to be on the safe side, I’d meet him more than halfway. I sat down and rebalanced my going-out wig. I waved him back into his own chair. He smiled at me, his teeth a dazzling white against the brown of his face. He smiled – and, at the same time, was looking very oddly at me. I wondered for a moment if I’d put my wig on the wrong way again. But Edward would surely have pointed that one out to me.
‘I trust My Lord was not inconvenienced by the troubles that afflicted our streets this afternoon,’ he asked, now in a stilted Greek.
I tried to work out his position from the cut of his clothes. However, while the better class of Saracens hadn’t yet given up on their desert clothing, they were moving increasingly to the same grade of white silk and the same close fitting. I smiled my thanks for his enquiry as to my safety.
