Meekal stopped reading and tossed the book unclosed back on to the sofa. The sun overhead fell on him from behind, and his face was hidden in shadow.
‘Your chronicler writes like a man who was there to see the catastrophe,’ I said.
Meekal pursed his lips and sat down again. ‘It was the greatest combined operation across those waters since Xerxes,’ he said, back in Latin. ‘We lost more men under the City walls than we sent out for the conquest of the whole Persian Empire. It had taken us five years to build that massive fleet. You burned it to the waterline in a single morning. Add to all that your harrying of the retreat. Of the armies we sent out – the flower of the Saracen youth – not three hundred broken, half-starved men made it back to Damascus. The shock killed Muawiya. Oh, he carried on another few years. But you should have seen him. No one who’d known him before could leave his presence without weeping.’
‘And I’ll bet it made you feel sick, my dear,’ I broke in. ‘You said in your parting letter to Constantine that the Empire was finished, and that you’d soon be back in the City at the head of a Saracen army. If you’ll pardon an old man’s vulgarity, you thought you’d come to piss on our corpse. Instead, we sat up and fucked you with a broom handle.’ I laughed so much at the look on his face that I went into my first coughing fit in months. It had been their first proper defeat – and it had changed the whole balance of power in the world. ‘You should have seen the service we laid on in the Great Church,’ I spluttered. ‘It went on all bloody day!’
‘We brought you here, Grandfather,’ Meekal said through gritted teeth, ‘and are loading you with honour and protecting you from the Empire, for one obvious reason.’ I smiled up at him and thought of teasing him with a pretence of senility. But he was going into one of his fierce moods, and I didn’t fancy a slap round the face. ‘We brought you here,’ he hissed, ‘so you could give us the secret of the Greek fire. Our next attempt on the City shall not be a failure. I want to know the secret of the Greek fire.’
I laughed again – not worrying if I coughed my guts out, or what tears ran down my face, nor even if he boxed my ears. I laughed and gasped and pointed at the cup of lemon water. Now alarmed, Meekal grabbed it and held it to my lips.
‘Oh, dear me, Michael,’ I wheezed. ‘You’ve got the wrong man here. If you want to know anything about Greek fire, it’s surely Callinicus you should be speaking to. All I did was recognise its potential and put up the money the man demanded. You want Callinicus for the secret itself – him or the reigning Emperor. No one else knows it.
‘But I suppose that means you’ll have to put me to death now,’ I said with a mocking parody of fear. ‘It also means you’ll need a fucking good story for when the Caliph gets back. From what you tell me, you could have gathered another siege army for the money you spent on getting me out of Jarrow.’
Meekal said nothing. He went over to the sofa once more and took up a bent strip of dark enamelled gold. It was in the shape of a hair band. He put it over his face and arranged it to cover his eyes. I saw the afternoon sun sparkle on the dozens of small perforations where the eyes would look on to the inside. He came and sat down again.
‘I took this from one of your workmen,’ he breathed very softly. ‘It is a wonderfully simple cure for bad eyes. Once you get used to looking through the many holes, reading becomes so much less of a strain. Why it wasn’t discovered many ages ago adds only to the genius of the man who at last commanded it to be made.’ He paused and took the thing off. He gave me another of his unblinking stares. ‘Now, my dear grandfather, you can stop playing with me. I know perfectly well that there is no Callinicus. There never was a Callinicus. Nor was there any body of ancient writings he may have found in Egypt. You – and you alone – are the man who made fire for the Greeks. And you are the man who will make it for us. You were the only shield Constantinople had. You will now be our own Sword of Damascus.’
Chapter 45
There were limits to how far even I could push Meekal. Rather than deny the obvious, I hugged myself and looked happily up. He stared silently back, his face a mask of greed and triumph – and also of a kind of pleading that took me back to when he was a boy and, scared of another beating from his tutors, needed help with a lesson.
‘My darling Michael,’ I cried, ‘did you work that one out all for yourself? Or did you get someone to do it for you?’
He ignored the insult, noting only the confession. His face relaxed as if after an orgasm. His lips moved in some renewed and voiceless prayer of thanks.
‘I knew on the first reports it had all been your work,’ he said. ‘Everyone else was taken in by your story of this Callinicus. But I’d spent too much of my life hearing you talk of matter and its combinations, and the benefits of its artificial combination. I only wondered why it had taken you till the last moment to save the Greeks. Was it your sense of drama?’
‘Not really,’ I said. ‘Its discovery was one of those happy accidents. I’d been looking for some while into a combination of elements that would have enough explosive force to propel a thousand arrows at a time. What I found lacked the full explosive force I needed, but had all the other properties described in your chronicle. We did try it out on some barbarians who were attempting to raid a city on the Black Sea coast. That revealed one or two errors that nearly spoiled its effect. But we’d corrected those well enough by the time Yazid ordered his big assault on the walls. Ah…!’ Meekal had fished once again on to that sofa, and now had a jug in his hands and two cups. ‘You always were a good lad,’ I quavered, ‘or you were whenever you weren’t being a complete bastard,’ I added more firmly. I took the offered cup and sniffed its heady contents.
Meekal leaned over me. ‘You will, of course, reproduce the Greek fire for us,’ he said. ‘You will help ensure that our next attack on the Empire will be victorious – that we can counter their fire with our fire, and that our great numerical advantage will count in full.’
I put the cup down and looked about for my teeth. One of the springs was coming loose, and now was as good a time as any for fiddling with it.
‘I’d have thought, my dear boy,’ I replied without looking up, ‘that, with all the resources of the Caliph at your disposal, preparing a very simple compound would all be in a morning’s work.’ I waited until I knew there’d be no response. ‘Well, well,’ I gently mocked, ‘the new masters of the world – and still they can’t think for themselves. Even with Syrians and Egyptians in the harem, the Saracens still can’t match the science of the West.’
‘We have been trying ever since it was first used against us to reproduce your compound,’ Meekal said. ‘Every attempt has been a failure. Our most hopeful effort, some while ago, resulted in the death of five hundred irreplaceable craftsmen. It’s only because of God’s most infinite mercy that we didn’t lose the whole programme.’ He put a hand on the bedclothes over my knees. ‘Grandfather,’ he asked earnestly, ‘Great and Mighty Alaric, we need your help. Will you help us?’
‘And what reason can you give me,’ I asked, ‘for doing as you ask?’ I moved my knees from under his hand.
‘I could remind you that you are an honoured guest of the Caliph,’ came the reply.
‘And I could remind you that I was abducted by agents of the Caliph,’ I said.
‘That doesn’t count,’ said Meekal. ‘You escaped and then came here of your own free will.’
‘The only reason I’m not snug in my English monastery,’ I snapped, ‘is because you abducted me in the first place. Besides, I went to Beirut, and was living there quite happily on my own means. I’m in Damascus simply because you sent Karim with an invitation it would have been unwise to reject. Don’t deny that I’m your prisoner. And don’t wave your supposed hospitality in my face when you want me to commit treason.’ I took hold of the bed sheet with both hands and pulled it up to my neck. I looked at Meekal and sucked my lips over the toothless areas of my gums.
He looked back, the prongs of his beard quivering with suppressed emotion. Then, he relaxed and smiled.
‘You speak of treason, O Great and Magnificent Alaric,’ he said. ‘You have been condemned already as a traitor in the Empire. You are an outlaw there. Its agents have tried to murder you twice in the past few days. Can you still think yourself bound by any duty towards the Empire?’
‘Possibly,’ I said, ‘possibly not. I am mindful, however, that, with or without me, the Empire is the only power in the world able to look you people in the face. Destroy the Empire, and there will be no stopping you from going
