the garrisons against the Yellow Barbarians, Khadija will have an offer made of private funding to complete the project. We are thinking of another successful demonstration in the early autumn. Can you play along with this?’
‘When Edward becomes one of the Faithful,’ I asked with another of my toothless grins, ‘I suppose he will pass under your complete protection? And that will mean the full protection of Khadija and all her friends?’
Karim nodded, giving me something from his people’s Holy Book about the Brotherhood of the Faith.
‘Then it will all be as you ask,’ I said. ‘I am curious, though, why Khadija is so confident that she can finally get Meekal put out of the way. Are finances really as tight as you indicate? Does this mean the civil war is going worse than the palace heralds keep saying? Have there been more reverses in the war with the Empire?’
‘You’ll need to speak with Khadija about that,’ came the evasive reply. I lifted my arms in front of me and sank under the water. I felt Karim’s hands close on my shoulders and pull me back up. I rubbed water from my eyes and smiled into his scared face. ‘Don’t do that again – please,’ he begged. He looked at the wet sleeves now clinging to his forearms.
‘What you’re asking me,’ I said, ‘involves risks in which none of you people will share. If I don’t give Meekal the show he’s expecting, it may be enough to discredit him. On the other hand, he may tough out the Council meeting. If he does that, he’ll not be pleased with me or mine. Can you oblige me with the names of Khadija’s friends in the Council? I need to be sure this is a regular conspiracy and not some half-baked palace intrigue got up by women and eunuchs.’ I looked closely into the now plainly terrified face. ‘I want the full names and offices of the conspirators. And don’t trouble me with making up the details. Over the past three generations, I’ve developed a crap-detection sense that many judges might envy.’ I gripped the sides of the bath and kicked my feet up and down. I listened with lazy contentment as water gurgled down the lead overflow pipe.
‘And do open that cold lever a little. I’m beginning to feel as a lobster must.’
Chapter 59
‘You know,’ I said brightly, ‘it looks so much different, even from another fourteen feet higher.’ The foreman muttered something about the breeze and gently led me back from the edge of the roof. The sun was now fully up, and I could feel a trickle of sweat from under my wig. But if it was unlikely to carry me over the edge, the breeze was most welcome. ‘I hadn’t realised that the Spice Market had a double vault to its roof,’ I said. ‘I’ve been looking at it for months. But I suppose fourteen feet does make a difference.’
The foreman sighed and went back to his explanation of the roof – and he was in a position to lecture me on the thing, as he’d helped lay it the previous Ramadan. It was a marvel of two-inch-thick cedar boards, each cut into a gentle fan and laid with barely a gap from the centre of the tower to its outer edge. Over these was a layer of pitch, then of canvas, and then an outer covering of lead.
‘Admirable, most admirable,’ I said. ‘However, even if the boards are supported along their lengths, I do still urge two further layers of ten-foot boards, each at a right angle to the other. That should spread the load without any further worry.’ The foreman bowed and made some marks on his waxed tablet. It would all be as I desired. I looked again at the half ton of brass that sat before me, gleaming in the sun. The young man who’d so far stood silent before me, hands folded across his breast, would soon explain the use of those dials and levers.
I was thinking also of an awning to keep the sun off me. I’d be up here several days running, sometimes through the hottest hours. As I was deciding between silk and linen, the foreman and everyone else threw themselves down for a long grovel.
‘Ah, Meekal,’ I said without turning, ‘I was wondering when you’d put in an appearance.’ Even my defective hearing wasn’t enough to blot out the sound of his breathing: I might have had an angry bull behind me. I turned and made the feeblest pretence of a bow.
‘What is the meaning of this?’ he said with the sort of quiet menace that can swell very fast into hysterical screaming. He waved at the half-dozen large astronomical instruments.
‘I’m a newcomer myself to solar observations,’ I said with a bright smile. ‘Until that young man cowering at your feet enlightens me, it’s all a bit of a mystery. However, I do think that big machine over there with the electrum plates is used for finding the angle of separation between two stars. I’m sure I’ll find it useful for something.’
Meekal put his head down and walked a few paces along the roof.
‘Have you any idea,’ he said, turning back to me, ‘how much these devices cost?’
I held my arms wide out and pulled the appropriate face. ‘It isn’t my concern either,’ I added. ‘The deal is that I ask for whatever I need. The funding is your problem.’
Meekal pushed his face close to mine. ‘The deal is that you complete my project,’ he hissed, now in Latin. ‘From what little sense I’ve had from Karim, these are for your private researches.’
I sat down and stared at Meekal. I picked up a fly whisk and waved it vaguely about my head. Everyone else was still clutching the ground, as still as in death.
‘Then, if you’ll pardon me for saying,’ I sneered, still in Syriac, ‘you’re a right barbarian. We aren’t talking here about a recipe for fish sauce. I need complete freedom to research as I see fit. Do you want the Caliph to stand up and cheer when I set those kettles off? Or do you want to offer him an unusually vigorous steam bath?’
‘I have just finished a meeting with the Caliph,’ came the response in a voice that really did remind me of one of my kettles. ‘He was accosted on his return to the palace by the Director of the observatory you had just plundered. His Majestic Holiness was not pleased.’
I got up and laughed. I walked close to the edge of the roof and rapped hard with my stick on a bronze adjustment bar.
‘So that’s how it is,’ I cried in a loud voice. The breeze had dropped down again, and my voice was flat but clear. I made sure to keep in Syriac. ‘When the Commander of the Faithful is away, you’re top dog. When he’s back, you answer to his finance clerks. And to think you betrayed your family, your country, your religion for this. I could have got you made Exarch of Italy. Why, you’d have had more authority as Prefect of Cartenna!’
Meekal glanced down at the carpet of grovelling bodies. ‘Get off this roof – all of you!’ he snarled softly. He waited until everyone had darted through the hatchway in the centre of the roof that led down to the access ramps. He kicked the hatch closed and came back to me. I was back in my chair, and was pretending to inspect the handle of my fly whisk. He stood over me. His black robes heaved in time with his breathing. ‘If you cannot do so in private, I do suggest, for your own good, that you show some respect in public.’
‘Fuck you, Michael!’ I answered in Greek. I looked up at the cloudless sky. My left leg was hurting, and I could feel the need for a piss coming on.
‘Is there one reason,’ he asked slowly and with much effort, ‘why I shouldn’t have these things collected at once and taken back to where they belong?’
As I was wondering how he’d react to my standing up and pissing close to his feet, I heard the first scrape of the water screw. It was over on the far side of the tower. But, without the insulation of walls and glazed windows, the laboured, squealing, grating sound was unpleasant on the ear. I clutched hold of a brass lever and pulled myself up. I held out my arm for Meekal to take. Together, we made our way across the roof to where the covered water tank was placed. For the moment, the noise came from below, as water was pushed up the rotating lower screw to the tank within the tower. Then, with a more continuous and still louder screech of bronze pipe within bronze hoops, the upper screw began to rotate. At first, it was just a shuddering movement of weather-corroded metal. Then, with a loud splutter, the first bright splash of water jumped on to the collection pan and was channelled into the lead tank. It was like watching a giant, if sluggish, ejaculation as the tank was slowly filled. Far below – perhaps right on the ground, perhaps within the tower itself – there came the higher sound of a whip and a suppressed cry. Someone laughed unpleasantly, and there was another crack of the whip.
‘You know,’ I said, speaking as best I could above the noise, ‘I’ve been wondering ever since I came here if some arrangement of gears wouldn’t cut out the need for a break into the pipe.’ I waited for the puzzled look on Meekal’s face to pass. I waited in vain. I shrugged and let him help me on to the low stool he’d carried across with us. Water was now running back down the pipe, and this was lubricating its movement within the hoops. The noise had changed to a dull, continuous grating of metal on metal. ‘It’s about seventy feet from here to the ground. There’s no reason why a single pipe of that length can’t be made. Each of the two existing lengths was cast in
