of me when you spoke behind me in Caesarea. When I heard about the earthquake, I understood the reason. Tell me – how serious is the breach?’
‘The walls won’t be ready to withstand another siege for at least another three years,’ Joseph said. ‘Every time we think the work is nearing completion, the engineers find more evidence of undermining. What we have was enough to stop some barbarians earlier this year. It wouldn’t stop the Saracens if they turned up in force.’ He turned to Khadija, who, now she’d removed her veil, was looking rather cowed. ‘We had no idea, My Lady, how close Meekal was to success. We only knew that a renewed attack on the city – this time with our own weapons – would be successful. We were and are grateful for your own efforts to starve him of resources. But we could not afford to let him succeed in his project.’
‘Do you mean we could attack next year and win?’ Khadija asked. She sat bolt upright. I could see her whole body shaking with the horror of what she’d just heard.
‘I mean, My Lady,’ Joseph took up, ‘that you could have attacked and won. You could have attacked next year, or the year after that, or the year after that. You could have removed Meekal, and, even under your own incompetent direction, your people could have conquered the Empire. Partly thanks to you, that is no longer possible. I have no doubt you will win a battle here and there against us. I share Alaric’s view that we neither can nor should attempt the recovery of Syria and Egypt. You are welcome to Africa. But you really have now missed your chance to destroy the Empire. The next time you are in any position to go back on the offensive, we shall be waiting for you.’ He laughed again, now with more genuine humour.
‘Really, Khadija,’ he said when her face stopped twitching as if she’d suffered a stroke, ‘you have done yourself a considerable favour. One of these days, you will stand before Saint Peter. I am sure that, in view of how you have played your own unwitting part in our plan, he will overlook your noxious heathenism.’ She now got up and paced about the room. Serves the old bitch right, I thought. But Joseph still wasn’t finished. He looked back at me.
‘And so, My Lord Alaric, the question remains of what is to be done with you.’ He paused and smiled coldly into my face. ‘You will appreciate that you cannot be left in Damascus or in any other place ruled by the Caliph. You are the most dangerous man alive. I spent yesterday looking round the site of the explosion you produced. Within what remains of those monastery walls, there is nothing but a crater twenty feet deep, and the sand there has turned to a sort of glass that cracks and splinters underfoot. We cannot afford to let you do anything like that again for the Caliph. For all the good they would then be to us, we might as well leave the walls of the city unrepaired.
‘At the same time, His Majestic Holiness has already told Eusebius that you will not be allowed to return to Constantinople. The evidence of his own senses has told him not to allow you anywhere near your old laboratories in Constantinople.’
‘So, which of you will arrange for my “accidental” death?’ I asked. Joseph and Khadija looked at each other.
‘Karim is Governor of Syria,’ Joseph replied. ‘We all have good reason not to alienate him. That means that you must be left alive until such time as God calls you to Himself. We cannot tell ourselves any longer with confidence when that might be. Even so, you are to be spared.’ He paused again and smiled. ‘Have you never missed all your dear friends in Jarrow?’ he asked.
‘Not particularly,’ I sighed. I looked about at the heavy luxury of my audience room. I thought of the delights of Beirut. I thought of dawn prayers in that frigid chapel three thousand miles away.
‘Nevertheless,’ said Joseph, ‘you leave tomorrow morning. This time, of course, you will not go without luggage. But you leave tomorrow morning.’
I pulled myself free from the renewed embrace and wiped the tears from Edward’s eyes.
‘Come, come, dear boy,’ I said, ‘this will never do.’ I stared round at Karim and the crowd of young Saracens who stood modestly back from this horribly protracted farewell. ‘You may be a regular Saracen now,’ I continued in English. ‘But do try to remember one last time what you were. You can at least try for a stiff upper lip.’
‘I shall never see you again,’ he cried disconsolately. ‘What will I do? How shall I-’
‘Oh, shut up, Edward,’ I replied with an affectionate pat on his shoulder. ‘I used you shamelessly from Caesarea onward. I’ve already explained myself at some length. Above all, I sent you and Karim racing into the desert with a pack of lies in your heads. No doubt, I saved you from what I had intended to be a suicide mission against Meekal and the Caliph and everyone else. But I sent you off as bait to draw Meekal away from my preparations. And still you cry like a little child to see me go?’
‘Everything that I now am,’ he replied with quiet ferocity, ‘you made me. You are my lord and father. Let Karim put his foot down – he’ll get all this cancelled. Won’t you, Karim?’ He turned away to Karim, who looked back and pursed his lips uncertainly.
‘No,’ I said, still firm. ‘Jarrow it must be, and Jarrow it will be. Besides, after all this excitement, you won’t grudge an old man some final peace?’ I laughed and bent forward for one last embrace. I thought my bones would crack with its force. I pulled back again. ‘Now, go,’ I said. ‘Go to your own people.’ I’d already had my farewells with Karim. We nodded to each other. He took hold of Edward and led him, still weeping, among the other Saracens. The boy turned several times and looked back. I stood watching until he was completely lost in the crowd.
Epilogue
Jarrow, Wednesday, 4 March 688
I’ll not trouble you with the details of my return. I was carried in a closed chair straight to Beirut, where an Imperial transport was already waiting. This, with its protecting fleet, carried me in reasonable haste and comfort across the Mediterranean to Caesarea, where we stopped for a few days, and I renewed an old acquaintance. From here, we made for the Narrow Straits, where a heavier ship was waiting. I was in Canterbury for Christmas, where I had to put up with an increasingly senile Bishop Theodore. I arrived back in Jarrow a day before I began the main part of this narrative. Word of my arrival had long preceded me, and the whole monastery turned out to receive me in state.
‘God has surely blessed us all!’ Benedict cried over and over as we embraced and he led me to my cell, which was crowded with various boxes that I surely had never sent on ahead. There was a whole day of quietly joyful welcoming, and then an evening of wiping away tears as I read the covering letter Edward had sent with the boxes. The following day, it was down to work.
And now the work is finished. The great stack of papyrus will soon go into its wooden box for whatever use the future may wish of it.
And, astonishingly, I’m still alive after all of it. I am undoubtedly smaller than I was the Christmas before last. But I can’t say much more than that. Unless I look about me at all the things I now have to keep me happy in this otherwise ghastly wilderness, I might almost think it had been, from first to last, some extended dream. But it wasn’t a dream. For eight glorious months, Alaric the Magnificent lived again – and once more saved the world he had for so long adorned.
This being said, I think I can risk two whole opium pills in heated cider. We’ll see what glorious dreams of the East they can produce. If I’m still alive tomorrow morning, I suppose I should start again on what I did in Athens. I do assure you – even after seventy-five years, it’s a story worth telling.
