more than correcting my own dodgy eyes.
I can’t tell how long I sat there, playing with my lenses. But the sun had started on my left. The next time I took conscious note of its position, it was far over on my right. My legs were stiff with the strain. My cloak was ruined from the endless fires I’d started on it. I was thinking to have myself taken back up to my office, so I could start writing all this out in a way that would prompt further reflections and ideas for experiment, when a sudden shadow took all the light from my lenses. Even then, I made a fresh discovery. If I moved the lenses to the right distance from my cloak, I could see an upside-down image of a man standing over me. No – I could see two men. I looked up. One of them was Karim.
‘In view of your great age, My Lord,’ he said, ‘it would not be appropriate to ask you to stand for His Highness the Governor.’
I tried to heave myself up on to the bench, but an attack of pins and needles kept me rooted to the ground. As Karim leaned forward to help me, I peered through my lenses at the man beside him. Dressed in black, his face covered in a luxuriant growth of brown hair, the Governor stood with both hands outstretched in a gesture of respect.
‘Oh, it’s you!’ I said, not bothering to keep the disgust from my voice. I flopped on to the bench and tried to move my legs. ‘I should have recognised your foul stench the moment your men got into that monastery. Don’t preen yourself, though. I’d got a pretty clear whiff of it long before young Karim rolled up at my lodgings in Beirut.’ I winced and tried to rub some life into my left leg.
The Governor smiled and dropped his hands back to his side. ‘So, we meet again,’ he said in Greek. I ignored him. He struck a pose and raised his voice. ‘At last, the circle is complete. When we last met, you were the initiator, I the initiate. Now, I am the master.’
I looked him in the face and grimaced. ‘To see you standing there, dressed up like a bloody Saracen,’ I replied, ‘why, it would have broken your poor father’s heart.’
Chapter 39
Meekal the Merciless – once Michael, son of Maximin, now Governor of Syria – looked back at his aged grandfather and laughed.
‘Leave us,’ he said to Karim. He repeated himself in Syriac for my attendant. When we were completely alone, he sat down beside me.
‘Do I get a kiss?’ he asked in Latin.
I looked back at him. He’d aged in fifteen years. The beard was probably dyed. What might remain of the hair was hidden under the close-fitting turban of the Saracens. Between turban and beard, I saw a face now deeply lined. Only the eyes were the same as ever. Of a blue so dark it might have passed for black, they burned as if they were another of my lens experiments. I stared straight into them, unafraid.
‘Those teeth you had the kindness to recover,’ I said with a sniff, ‘they’ve a habit of playing up unexpectedly. You’re welcome to try for a kiss. But don’t complain if I accidentally bite off your nose.’
He shrugged. ‘I knew you’d survive the journey,’ he said, starting over. Though still in Latin, he dropped his voice for added safety. ‘The Caliph wouldn’t believe me at first. It took a lot, even of my persuading, to get him to allow the incredibly long chain of cause and effect that has resulted in this meeting. But here you are. And all the reports assure me you are no less the man that you were when I rode out of Constantinople.’
‘The Intelligence Bureau got wind of your scheme,’ I said.
He bared his darkened teeth in a grin. ‘So I hear,’ he said. ‘That ship we commissioned at such ruinous expense was taken by the Imperial Navy last month. Apparently, the survivors had kept alive by drinking each other’s blood. You may be pleased to know that they were blinded and stuffed down the first convenient lead mine. You will also be sure that I was ever so concerned by the news. I didn’t sleep well again until we heard that your accounts had been reactivated.
‘Oh, and I don’t doubt the Intelligence Bureau got wind of that also. We do go through the motions of keeping things under wraps. But the Empire has its agents everywhere. And, talking of these, look at that bastard Christian you had to finish off last night. It was a neat job you did on him – Karim has just shown me the body. But, to answer some of the questions you set for Karim, the man knew exactly where and how to find you because the Empire told him. And who told the Empire is a matter that I shall soon discover.’
‘I could have got you made Exarch of Italy,’ I said. ‘As it is, your brother was forced into the Church. I and my own blood only survived by reminding everyone that your father had been my son by adoption.’ There was no point in putting on a show of bitterness. But, adoptive or blood, the man had shat all over his family.
‘I know that my father worshipped you,’ Meekal replied with what may have been genuine sadness. ‘Your name was the last word he ever said. But then he was such a very good man. Without you to watch over him, he’d surely have died penniless and despised. Such a shame you had to be in Africa when the Lord Death came knocking at his door.’
One of the nice things about false teeth is that, even when they are, smiles never look natural. Mine wasn’t. We fell silent.
‘But your talk of adoption reminds me that I have a new uncle,’ Meekal said with another of his grins. ‘I can’t say where you picked him up. But Karim tells me he’s quite a stunner.’
I stared back in open hostility. To say that I feared any corruption of Edward’s morals would have been a joke. Even so, this was a family get-together I’d put off as long as I could.
Meekal leaned forward and dropped his voice still lower. ‘I say, Grandfather, would you fancy coming inside for a drink?’
I raised my eyebrows. ‘I thought that was one of the few vices you had to give up on conversion,’ I jeered.
He smiled again. ‘Not really,’ he said. ‘So long as you don’t do it in public, no one important really cares. Besides, I’m the man who broke the last stand of the rebel fire-worshippers in Persia. And in a land far beyond the knowledge of your geographers, I offered conversion or the sword to seventy-two thousand men whose brown faces were tattooed white. If the Great Meekal wants a drink after all that, no one dares object.’
‘Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven,’ I said in Greek, quoting Euripides.
‘Not Hell,’ he answered with a laugh, now back in Greek. ‘It’s anything but Hell. As for reigning – well, we shall see.’ He got up and held out his hands. ‘Now, do come inside. You look quite fagged out after a day in the sun.’ I took his hands and let him help me up.
‘Come in, dear boy,’ I said without looking up. Edward came quietly into the office and sat down on the sofa. I continued reading back the notes I’d just dictated. I finished them and put them down behind me on the desk. I put my lenses on top to keep them in order. ‘You can go,’ I said to the secretary. He got up with a bow and left the room. I stared at Edward. He looked recovered from his opium. Sadly, the weals had come up over every part of his exposed body, and he winced at every move. His lower thighs were covered in a patchwork of bruises. It would be days before he felt better. He got up and came over to kiss me on the forehead. I nodded vaguely and motioned him back into his place.
‘You are angry with me,’ he said with an anxious look.
I thought of the wine jug still in its hiding place. Edward was in no state to fish about behind the big book. I’d get up in a moment.
‘Not angry with you,’ I said. I twisted painfully round and looked again at the notes. ‘I am angry, I’ll confess, but not with you – nor over anything you might think important.’ He twisted carefully in his place and crossed his legs. I sighed. ‘Look, Edward, I’ve been fixed for years on a project of sight improvement that I’ve now come close to making effective. I made further interesting discoveries while you were asleep. Now, by yet another happy accident, I’ve discovered this.’ I reached round once more and took up a piece of parchment two inches by six. I’d dyed it black with ink, and had got one of my workmen to glue some one-inch leather studs on to it. At each end of the strip was a hole with a six-inch length of ribbon. I reached behind and tied it round my head, arranging it at the proper distance. ‘You may not see the pattern of holes where this covers my eyes. But, so long as the light continues good, I can see you almost perfectly. So long as there is any sunlight, I can read better than with those
