And, for the moment at least, I was the youngest member of the Imperial Council in living history – ‘not since Caligula made a consul of his horse’ Priscus had sneered when the appointment was published. On and off, I’d been brooding on that ever since. Not bad, though, for someone who, just three years before, had been a native clerk helping his boss fake miracles in Canterbury. I was number four or five in the Imperial pecking order, and if I was currently stark naked from my swim, I had the robes to prove it.
‘I fail to see why we couldn’t have taken the land route,’ Priscus groaned as he looked up from another of his vomits over the side. ‘I did tell you more than once that I had work to do in Syria.’
I sat up in my chair and stretched my arms. I took another sip of wine and gave the cup back to the bearer. As another slave rearranged the cushions behind me, and yet another began fanning me a little harder, I smiled for the first time that day.
‘I don’t recall, Priscus dear, insisting that you should accompany us,’ I said smoothly. My one joy of this voyage had been the discovery of his seasickness. In the two years or so I’d known him, this was the first human weakness I’d seen. At first, he’d tried concealing it. Then he’d worked heroically on mixing powders from his box of mood-altering substances. When those failed him, he’d tried praying before an icon of Saint Demetrius. I’d have been quite put out had that worked. Of course, it hadn’t. I looked steadily into his withered face. With all the retching, patches of white lead had come off, revealing the true greenish tinge beneath. ‘I told you I wanted the sea passage for speed and because of all the luggage. Besides, I don’t trust the Persians not to be sniffing round Jerusalem. I’ve had enough of falling into enemy hands.’
‘I can’t recall how often I’ve told you, my lad,’ Priscus said with another queasy look over the side, ‘that hostilities ceased on the eastern front in June, and won’t pick up until spring. I do know what I’m talking about.’
‘All the more reason, My Lord Priscus,’ I said straight back, ‘for the Commander of the East to be inspecting the Syrian defences, and not taking his ease with a purely civilian minister of the Great Augustus.’ As he turned to make yet more of those wonderfully disgusting noises over the side, I got up and walked down the length of the Imperial transport I’d commandeered. I’d made sure to arrange my quarters as far away from Priscus as was consistent with my own exalted status. I was still stuck with him as often as I ventured out and he wasn’t groaning in his bunk. But this latter hadn’t so far been a common occurrence.
‘Something you must bear in mind, Alaric, is that we did save Egypt.’ Priscus was hurrying beside me. There was an urgency in his voice that had nothing to do with the slight pitching of the ship. ‘Even Heraclius accepts in his heart that there was nothing I could do to save Cappadocia. Oh, he’s given me the blame because it’s the only way he can get it off his own useless shoulders. But there’s a limit to what he can say in the Council. There’s no doubt, though, that we saved Egypt. Take that away – rob us of its corn – and the Empire disintegrates.
‘Yes, whatever else can be said, we did save Egypt.’
I stopped and took a hard look at the ravaged face. So he’d also been reflecting on our less than glorious time in Egypt, and how to gloss over its details in Constantinople. He sat down on a handy coil of rope and groaned. But for that, I’d never have noticed the slight gust that was rippling the otherwise loose sails. He clutched at his stomach. I stood back in case there was anything left in there to bring up on deck. But the spasm passed.
‘And don’t forget, dear boy – I did save your life.’
I shifted position to steady myself as the ship moved slightly. Overhead, the sailors were now padding about on the masts. Far below, there was a tightening of the drum beat to keep the slaves rowing in time. I heard the lash used a few times and a muffled scream. I stared down at the shivering wreck that Priscus had become the moment Alexandria dropped below the horizon.
‘My own recollection, dear friend, is that you got me out of one scrape that you wholly engineered, and chose not to murder me in Soteropolis when you’d decided I might be more useful alive than dead. Unless there are facts about our doings in the south that still haven’t come to my attention, saving my life is the last description I could make of your behaviour.’ I stared pitilessly down at Priscus.
Of course, none of this was relevant. We’d feed Heraclius a version of the truth so tarted up, it would amount in places to a pack of lies. But however incredible it might sound in places, none of it could be properly shaken so long as we both swore to its truth and didn’t try bitching behind each other’s back. Because he was the Emperor’s cousin, there was a limit to what we could say openly about him. But we’d left Nicetas behind in Alexandria. It therefore stood to reason that everything was his fault. He was the one who’d let the mob get out of hand. He was the one who’d ensured there had to be twenty thousand bodies rotting in mass graves outside Alexandria, and a heap of burned-out ruins in much of the centre. He was the one who’d abandoned Upper Egypt to the Brotherhood, and who’d failed to stop the Persians from coming close to stealing the whole country from us. Certainly, he was the one who’d blocked the land reform law all the time I’d been there to get it implemented; and it was he who’d cancelled the implementation warrants Priscus had sealed in his own moment of power. We’d get the man recalled in well-merited disgrace – though not before we’d done a thorough job of shuffling our own failures on to his shoulders.
I was searching for something friendly to say when Martin came on deck. Like Priscus, he wasn’t taking the voyage particularly well. He clutched at the doorway that led into the cavernous depths of the ship and, with a look up at what he plainly still thought the blistering sun, adjusted the two-foot brim of his hat.
‘The cook is asking if you’d like boiled chicken for lunch,’ he said. ‘Since we’ll be putting into Cyprus before long, he suggests we might as well finish the Alexandrian supplies.’
I nodded. Now the subject was mentioned, I was feeling rather peckish. Ducking and diving to avoid the motions of fifty heavy oars was all the exercise a man could need. And it had set me up nicely for lunch. Priscus forgotten, I looked round for the cup bearer. Priscus, though, wasn’t to be forgotten. He dragged himself upright and took a tight grip on the rail.
‘Ah, little Martin,’ he cried with an attempt at jollity, ‘I see the bandage is off.’
Martin put up a hand to where his left ear had been before it suited Priscus to have it sliced off. ‘I thank My Lord for his concern,’ he said stiffly. ‘And I am most grateful for the recommendation of the man in Constantinople who can fit a leather prosthesis.’
‘Think nothing of it,’ Priscus said, now almost cheerful. ‘Indeed, you could go for a ginger wig as well. That would hide the baldness as well as the retaining straps.’ He took a step forward. But there was another slight pitch as the wind shifted direction, and he was back with both hands clamped on the rail. ‘How did you manage the sea crossing from Ireland?’ he asked.
I looked at the sorry couple and sniffed at the smell that was drifting up from the kitchens. It was a question I’d thought of asking – but, in deference to Martin’s reluctance to talk about his past, hadn’t. There was a feeble mutter about how he’d been too young to be troubled by the mountainous waves of the ocean that swelled and raged at the ‘edges of the world’. But Priscus wasn’t listening.
‘Is it true,’ he asked, with a change of tone, ‘that the Irish are the Britons who could swim when young Alaric’s ancestors turned up to steal their country? If so, could we describe the remaining Britons as the Irish who couldn’t swim?’
Under the comical brim of his hat, I could see Martin’s face flush so that the freckles all but disappeared. I had the first few words out of a sneer at the modern Greeks, when there was a shout from overhead.
‘Ship on the starboard bow!’
By the time we’d worked out which way to look, it was above our own horizon.
‘A trading ship,’ I ventured.
‘Too small,’ said Priscus. ‘Pirates more likely.’ He took both hands off the rail for a moment and looked almost cheerful.
Martin sat heavily on the vacated coil of ropes and looked set to cry. But the Captain was now at hand.
‘I think My Lords will find that it is an Imperial dispatch vessel,’ he said.
I squinted and looked hard across the bright waters. How anyone could tell what it was at this distance defeated me. But I was willing to take the Captain’s word.
‘It’s coming our way,’ he added.
Priscus looked again at the seal on the letter – as if the thing weren’t unquestionably genuine.
‘What I’d like to know,’ I said, replying to his own question, ‘is how Heraclius could have known we were travelling together by sea. We must surely have outrun the fastest messenger from Alexandria. And then there’s the matter of getting an intercept from Constantinople to Cyprus.’
