The Blood of Alexandria (59 page)

Chapter 58

We set out again at dawn, this time for Soteropolis. Priscus and Siroes rode together. Watching them talk, anyone would have thought they were bosom friends. I rode with Lucas.

‘I hope I shan’t need to remind you,’ Priscus had said as we were mounting up, ‘that His Magnificence Alaric is not a prisoner. It should be enough that we have his secretary.’ Lucas had scowled into his beard. But Priscus had started to border on the nasty, and that was the end of the matter.

It was a ride of about twenty miles through the edge of the desert. The Nile rolled by sluggishly far down on our right. I did see a few boats, though nothing that could have been useful to me, even if the wish had been there. The journey was completely without event. Lucas had put off all his antique finery and was now dressed in normal riding clothes for the desert. This meant we attracted no more attention from the few lowly travellers on the road than twenty mostly armed men always would.

Martin and I had been coming from the north when, a month earlier, we first saw the monument marking the centre of the old Soteropolis. We’d then had to go over a sand dune before we could see the Mistress and beyond her to the dead palm trees. We were now approaching from the south. The whole expanse of sand that had then seemed so desolate was now crowded with tents. They stretched all the way to the dune, and spread out right and left before then. Was this where the Brotherhood had pitched its camp? I asked myself. There could easily have been a thousand men in this temporary city. This was almost everything the camp I’d found had not been. But, no. I squinted to see better in the bright sunshine. Most of the figures darting between the tents were locals of the lowest class. As usual, burned a dark red by the sun, they ran about almost naked. These weren’t the five hundred workmen drilled and well fed I’d been thinking to divert from work on the old canal. But they would do very well for the excavations I had evidently been brought here to oversee.

As we rode into the camp, someone came running over to Lucas. He saluted and shouted something. There was a brief conversation. Lucas sounded mighty pleased with everything. He got down from his camel and disappeared among some of the minor players in the Brotherhood who had escaped the purge laid on by Priscus in Alexandria.

‘I think you’ll find everything in order, my dear,’ said Priscus as he helped me down from my camel.

I wanted to say that the tents might be covering the area under which the Library reserve stock was buried. Sadly, even a twenty-mile ride had left me bruised and stiff again. I pulled my hood back, and let the breeze rustle my hair. A few of the locals stared with dull interest at my unusual colouring. The Brotherhood people, however, let up a terrified clamour. Those who’d seen me the night before last had got almost used to the idea of having in their midst what they took for a corpse brought back to life by a sorceress. These evidently hadn’t been given prior warning. Pointing at me, and calling out an unfamiliar phrase over and over again, they shrank back. ‘My empire is of the imagination,’ the Mistress had said. I was beginning to see there might be advantages in being one of her provincial governors. I smiled back at the scared, jabbering throng.

No one could claim Priscus had been brought back from the dead. Still, he was able to cause a big commotion of his own. Here, among them, was the Hammer of the Brotherhood, the man who’d skewered so many of their Grand Masters through arse or belly and had saved Alexandria from what might otherwise have been their most spectacular success in a thousand years. I was almost forgotten in the now threatening buzz. Lucas had to come out of the tent he’d been inspecting and work hard to keep his people from butchering at least Priscus on the spot.

But the commotion was eventually settled. I still got any number of funny looks, and Priscus got worse. But the Brotherhood was again following the orders of its leaders, who now set in earnest about doing the bidding of the one Grand Master who’d not come to an end in Alexandria.

‘I was serious when I told you last night to follow my instructions,’ Priscus said softly to me in Latin as we found ourselves together in the jostling crowds.

‘No Latin!’ Lucas shouted from nowhere. He pushed his way past a couple of grooms and stood before us. ‘You will not be alone together,’ he said firmly. ‘All you have to say to each other will be in front of me and in Greek. I must remind you, Priscus, of how little loved you are among the Brotherhood. Without my protection, your safety cannot be guaranteed.’

‘Oh, Lucas, Lucas!’ Priscus said, rolling the hated name in his mouth with cheerful satisfaction. ‘I’ve given you Alaric. I’ve given you the one man all the prophecies say is the One. And I’m not the only one needing to remember that it’s thanks to me that anyone up to challenging you is now rotting in one of my mass graves. Don’t presume, Lucas dear, the pair of us to be in anything together. That would need to be a very deep plot.’

Lucas wasn’t impressed. He took me by the hand and led me up the dune to look over the monument.

‘We’ll eat,’ he said. ‘Then you will supervise the digging.’

I looked across the still clear expanse of sand that covered the centre of Soteropolis. From what I knew of his way with his beloved people, he’d have a few flogged to death if they slacked. The rest would dig as if someone had buried gold coins for them to find. Even so, it was a large area, and there was nothing at surface level to indicate street plans or other buildings. I heard Priscus following behind me.

‘I don’t think, Alaric, introductions will be in order,’ he said.

I turned. Martin stood beside him. He was manacled with eighteen inches of chain between his wrists. There was another manacle about his right leg. This was attached by another length of chain to a large iron ball that needed two hunched brown bodies to lift off the ground. Someone else held a sunshade over him.

For the first time, I lost control. I broke down at the shock of seeing him. I didn’t bother trying to hide my sobs as we embraced. He pushed me gently back.

‘Aelric, you’re a fool for coming,’ he said in Celtic. ‘I prayed you would simply light a candle for me in church and get everyone out of Alexandria.’ He sat down in the sand. The sunshade was moved to keep it in position. ‘I prayed for you to use some common sense. But I knew in my heart you wouldn’t.’

Martin hadn’t shaved, and his red beard was flecked with grey. So far as it wasn’t covered in a stained bandage, there was a haunted look on his face. Otherwise, he was in good health. I looked more closely at the bandage. Priscus caught my glance.

‘A regrettable but necessary loss,’ he said loudly in Greek. ‘But I found Martin unusually firm about signing the letter I’d had drafted for you to read. All things considered, though, has the Legate’s secretary any complaints about his treatment?’

‘No, My Lord,’ Martin said. Not bothering to look up, he stared glumly at the heavy manacle round his ankle.

‘Then let us keep it that way. Alaric,’ Priscus said, still with raised voice, ‘I must inform you of these conditions. You will supervise the digging as you see fit. You will lay hands on the relic and pass it immediately to the three other principals in this endeavour. Once you have done so, you and Martin will be taken to Letopolis and sent in a postal boat safely back to Alexandria. Siroes, Lucas and I will swear later this day in public to keep our word. The Bishop of Letopolis will witness our swearing, and you must rely on his influence with virtually the entire Brotherhood and all the local population to ensure that we keep our word.

‘If you have not located the relic within fourteen days, you and Martin will be put to death. Be assured that I would give you longer than this. However, Siroes has been privately advised that the only auspicious time for locating the relic will soon pass. I cannot dispute his advice, and so must bow to his insistence.

‘There is one further point to these conditions. We are in a hurry, and wish to make it clear that seven days mark the reasonable limit of our patience. Today is nearly half gone, and so does not count. Tomorrow is a Sunday, and I have already been worsted in an argument over that. I will give you one day beyond that. Three days, I hope, will be sufficient for you to do your work. However, if you have uncovered nothing that I find interesting by noon on Tuesday, I will have Martin’s other ear sliced off. If you have uncovered nothing by the noon following, I will have the little finger of his left hand cut off. We shall then proceed by such stages as I think suitable until Friday, which is the twenty-seventh day of the month of Mechir that Lucas specified in his letter. At midnight, I shall have Martin blinded or perhaps castrated. Enough of him will survive the full time specified either to be sent back with you to Alexandria, or to be put to death with you in such manner as we shall find appropriate. Do you understand me?’

I nodded. Forget the fourteen days. We had three. Martin was taken back to wherever he was kept. I sat down to lunch with the other persons of quality. From where I sat between Lucas and someone who kept quietly farting, I could hear Priscus and Siroes toasting each other and refighting the Battle of Daras. They used cups and pieces of bread to show the various dispositions of forces. I ate in silence. I kept wondering if Martin hadn’t been right. I’d been so sure of myself in Alexandria. Even since giving myself to Lucas, things hadn’t gone so badly. I now realised I was fixed in a timetable over which I had no control and from which there was no obvious escape. Thanks to me, four people might now die instead of one. And what of Maximin? What if Isaac hadn’t been able to get him out of Alexandria? At best, he’d be brought up as a cross between Priscus and that bloody cat.

‘If you need anything not already provided,’ Lucas told me as we stood in the shade of the monument, ‘you will ask me. For the simple relaying of orders to the diggers, you will use my assistant. I believe you have already met. This being so, you can trust his skills as an interpreter.’ I’d already seen Macarius during lunch. Lucas had got up several times from his place to give instructions. Macarius had taken these with his usual impassive look and bowed. There was no element of surprise when he now stepped forward. I’d long since guessed he was serving more than one master. Still, I went through the motions of showing disgust.

‘Fucking wog traitor!’ I snarled.

Macarius bowed gravely and looked back as impassively as if I’d been complaining about the flies.

I now put myself to the matter in hand. The more detailed map Hermogenes had promised before the rioting had somehow arrived in my tent. I unrolled it and oriented it with the monument and the sun. The street plan was vague and perhaps even conjectural. Its indication of where the Jewish quarter had been was at best unreliable. Looking straight ahead was the big dune on the other side of which the Brotherhood tents were pitched. Under that may have been the reserve stock. Then again, from what Hermogenes had told me, the place had never been large, and was a building by itself. Digging for it would need, at the very least, to wait. The city centre was around the monument. The most reasonable place to start the digging was about five hundred yards north of the monument.

I paced out the distance. I didn’t look round, but I knew Macarius and one of the big armed men would be close behind me. I stopped and again unrolled the map. I looked back at the monument. This was a fairly level expanse of sand, and it may have been only a little higher than the sand around the monument. I waved around me and looked now straight at Macarius.

‘I want that lot uncovered,’ I said. ‘I want it uncovered as far down as it takes.’

‘How is it going?’ Priscus asked.

I looked up from the ruins of a cook shop. We were moving fast into the evening of the second day. I’d consented to release the whole workforce for a big Sunday service. I could have kept the diggers going in relays. I’d even been thinking how long I could keep them all going until they really did start dropping from exhaustion. I’d been getting increasingly funny looks as I made my rounds. Word had spread, it seemed, from the Brotherhood to the diggers. As hoped, this had kept everyone in awe of my word. But there is a limit to what even Egyptian muscle can achieve with a spade.

‘You will be happy to know that another delivery has just been made of pitch for night digging,’ Lucas added.

They stood together in the doorway of the building. I’d now had the whole area excavated down to pavement level, and had spent much of the afternoon having the interiors of the buildings cleared of sand.

‘So what have you found?’ Priscus asked again.

‘Soteropolis is turning out to be larger than expected,’ I replied. And so it was. Everything I’d seen about it in Alexandria indicated a smallish city. Now that I’d widened the area of excavation into the centre, I could see how large it had been. It didn’t help that digging below the level of the Greek city had turned up foundations of earlier buildings that may have been as massive as anything in Constantinople.

‘I’ve said you can’t have any more people,’ Lucas said hurriedly. ‘I’ve given you every able-bodied man in the area. You have nearly all the women and children to carry baskets of sand. I’m flooded with complaints about essential work to dykes that has been disrupted.’