The Blood of Alexandria (60 page)

‘Oh, is
that
what they’re all moaning about,’ Priscus said satirically. ‘I was beginning to think they were frightened of something.’

Lucas scowled and looked away. Priscus stepped in through the doorway and straightened up. He beckoned Lucas in behind him. We all stood for a moment looking at a tiled floor I’d recently had cleared of sand. I’d been hoping there might be a hatchway to a cellar.

‘My dear Lucas,’ he said, the beginnings of a stern look on his face. ‘We are for the moment partners in this venture, and I expect to be kept informed of all relevant circumstances. It isn’t because their dykes are crumbling that your wogs have been in and out of the shithouses all day, squirting and jabbering. They’re frightened of something. Now they’ve seen him shitting and being rubbed with oil for his sunburn, it isn’t young Alaric who’s the cause of their terror. They’re frightened of something else – and they’re frightened of whatever that thing is almost as much as they are of you. Any chance of telling me what it might be?’

Lucas scowled again and muttered something about tales told to children by the old.

Priscus snorted. ‘Then you’d better just make sure your wogs remain more frightened of you than they are of ghosts,’ he said flatly. ‘So far as I’m concerned, if Alaric asks for women and children to
dig
the sand, I suggest you find more shovels. In the meantime, I suggest you get that Bishop to lay on more services. He might also be persuaded to consider an exorcism.’ He turned back to me. ‘Now, Alaric, I’ll ask again – what have you found?’

The shortest and most truthful answer was nothing. This particular Soteropolis had been vacated with careful deliberation. It wasn’t like Richborough, where decline had been gradual, or other cities back in Kent that had been taken by storm and burned with the corpses of all the slain. There, you could dig down a few feet and find any number of treasures: bronze pens, lead cooking pots, even the occasional handful of unlooted cash. Soteropolis had been systematically stripped of everything that could be moved. Even roof tiles from the more expensive buildings had been carefully pulled off.

I’d worked several thousand men through the better part of two days and a night. We’d uncovered two acres of city, bleak and skeletal in its ruination. We’d turned up broken pottery. We’d turned up broken furniture. We’d turned up a few sets of bones – probably of sick, and therefore unwanted, slaves knocked on the head and left behind in the move. Much earlier in the present day, I’d smashed open a large crate, only to find it filled with packets of nails that may have been brought in from Smyrna. In general, we’d exposed enough of the street plan to suggest what I’d said about the size of the city. Beyond that, we’d found nothing.

‘I have a feeling that the collapsed wall over there’ – I pointed to the edge of the excavated area: it was a length of mud brick that vanished into a sloping cliff of sand – ‘is part of the synagogue. If you put some broken stones together, they may show Hebrew writing. If it is, we’ve found the Jewish quarter. Once I’m sure that is what we’ve found, I’ll have the courtyard gardens dug up as well. There will be objects there concealed or simply lost before the evacuation.’ What I didn’t say was that the Jewish quarter may have been close to the walls. Outside those, there would be graveyards and grave goods.

‘And you suppose Jews would leave even their toilet scrapings behind?’ Lucas asked with a laugh. ‘I would remind you,’ he said to Priscus, ‘that it’s only Siroes who says this relic shall be uncovered by a blonde man from the West. Before he got in touch with Leontius, the story was very different. If only you hadn’t killed Leontius . . .’

‘You were pleased enough when I did kill him,’ Priscus snapped.

Again, I wanted to ask how he’d done it. He had been with me – so had Macarius – the whole evening of the murder. If Macarius had disappeared for a while, it wasn’t anything like long enough to get out of the Egyptian quarter, commit that lovingly slow murder, and then get back to meet us near the Wall of Separation. And it wasn’t Macarius, but Priscus who was claiming responsibility for the killing. Given time, I’d have sat down and gone through the evidence again. But there was no time. As if he’d read my thoughts, Priscus pointed up at the setting sun.

‘You have until the day after tomorrow, Alaric,’ he said. ‘I may have broken more promises than I can remember, but I’ve always been punctilious about delivery when it comes to hurting people. You just think on that – and keep digging.’

Chapter 59

It was dawn the following day. I stood on the top of the sand dune, looking down over the excavated area. The diggers on the morning shift were being pushed away from their earnest conversations with the night diggers. Some of them were looking up at me.

‘What do you suppose is frightening them?’ I asked.

Martin looked down at the cluster of humanity nearest the foot of the dune. A couple of the Brotherhood guards were clubbing one of the diggers to pulp. He wasn’t screaming. No one was intervening on his behalf. Martin swallowed and looked away.

‘His Grace the Bishop comes and speaks to me now and again,’ he said. ‘He’s a native and a convinced Monophysite. But his Greek is good, and he means well. He tells me the diggers can feel they are being watched by night. Some have seen things they can’t describe. There are stories – stories that I don’t think you want to hear . . .’

I sighed. Reports of ghosts were the last thing we needed. For sure, it had been a difficult night. Every time the wind shifted, men had been throwing their shovels down and trying to run away. I had managed some sleep, though only after being kept awake by thoughts of a strike – or even a mass walkout.

I thought of asking Martin about the Bishop. He’d been brought in to supervise a thoroughly shifty oath regarding our safety. If he couldn’t lift a finger to save us in the event of failure, I didn’t see how he could insist on our release if we did find the thing. Having him turn up with his Gospels in Egyptian and his relic of Saint Antony was the best I could get. But I didn’t think it that good. Now, he seemed permanently on call about the camp. If he and Martin were starting up a friendship, it might come in handy.

My trail of thought came to an end. Lucas had now staggered from his tent. He stood about ten yards down from us, straining to watch the clubbing. It didn’t seem to concern him that he’d soon be minus yet another of his loving subjects. Since we were at one in wanting these poor buggers to work their guts out, I wasn’t inclined to think ill of his methods. I looked again over the excavated area. The sun was behind me to my right, and was still casting long shadows from the ruined walls. Nevertheless, it was possible to see the scale of what had already been achieved. We were nowhere close to uncovering the whole city; even at this frenzied pace, that would take nearly a month. But the whole centre was now exposed, and much of what had undoubtedly been the Jewish quarter.

‘You were a fool to come looking for me,’ Martin said again, now in Celtic. He was less bitter than sad. ‘It should have been obvious you were walking straight into a trap. You had one miracle in Alexandria. Don’t suppose you’ll get another one out here.’

We turned from looking over the broken ruins of Soteropolis and looked towards the sun. The dead trees were still there in the distance. They marked the limit to the city of tents called into being by the excavation – a city of tents that was now packed with shuffling, unwashed humanity.

‘Did you speak with Sveta?’ he asked. ‘Did she agree to your coming?’

I nodded.

‘With all respect, My Lord,’ Macarius broke in, ‘I have already told you both that Greek is the only language in which you are permitted to communicate. If you cannot keep to His Majesty’s rules, I am firmly instructed to have your secretary shown back to his place of confinement.’

‘His Majesty, my arse!’ I snapped in Greek. His back to me, Lucas stiffened and broke out in the little twitches of someone who wants to join in a conversation, but fears for the loss of dignity. ‘Isn’t it enough that you come before me again as a traitor? Must you show yourself a fool as well?’

Macarius shrugged and turned to an inspection of Soteropolis. The diggers were now setting to work. I was having them concentrate on the courtyard gardens in the Jewish quarter. He looked back and smiled weakly.

‘My Lord is from a place that was removed from the Empire two centuries ago,’ Macarius said. ‘Your secretary is from a place that was always beyond the frontiers. Let me ask what would be your opinion of the Greeks if their tax gatherers were stripping your people naked, and if their priests were calling your people heretics?’

‘That’s beside the point,’ I sniffed. ‘Your loyalty was to me personally, not to the Greeks. I suppose you forged the letter of introduction from my banker?’

‘If I might be so bold – Your Lordship has notions of personal duty more fitting to a Western barbarian than to a citizen of the Empire. I might also note that Jews have been given little reason to love the Empire.’

‘Fuck you!’ I snarled. And that was the only answer he’d get from me. At least Martin had other things on his mind than to glory in having been right all along.

‘Martin,’ I said, still in Greek, ‘I want you to know – and always to know – that friendship is a duty beside which all others are secondary. I believe this is one of those points on which Epicurus and your Gospels are in agreement. You must have known I’d come looking for you – whatever the risks. And if there is a God, there will surely be a miracle.’

I’d said my piece. I’ve never been one for showing my feelings when they can possibly be controlled. Forget all other evidence. It was their stiff upper lip that showed the old Romans weren’t native to the Mediterranean. Like me, they came from the North. Besides, I wasn’t giving that swine Lucas the joy of seeing me break down again and weep like Martin – not a man of the North, whatever his complexion said to the contrary.

I’d like to have asked when Martin had been taken out of Alexandria. Had he spoken first with Priscus? Had he any information about when the snake had joined up with Lucas? But there was nothing more to be said in front of Macarius. And the sun was getting stronger. Unlike me, Martin hadn’t the right clothes for keeping most of it off his skin.

‘It looks, my dear fellow, as if your celebrated luck is still holding,’ Priscus said.

We stood just outside the low walls that remained of what might once have been a carpenter’s workshop. It was probably within the Jewish quarter, though I was the only one able to comment on the geography of Soteropolis. The diggers held up the shapeless lead container.

‘It might have been a piss pot,’ he said. He stepped back to avoid contact with it. ‘And that is undoubtedly Jewish writing on the side.’

‘Don’t you think the writing looks rather fresh?’ Lucas asked. He wasn’t afraid of contact, and he snatched it from the digger. He held it up in the sunlight. His eyes took on their mad look and he raised his voice. ‘The Prophetess told me,’ he said in a tone of rising triumph, ‘that the twenty-third day of Mechir would bring glad tidings for all who fight against subjugation by light-eyed foreigners. This
may
be it.’ He looked closely at the lead container.

I couldn’t deny that the writing looked very fresh. On the other hand, who was I to argue with the Prophetess?

‘Your Majesty will surely know,’ the Bishop said in his heavy accent, ‘that from the moment it becomes holy, a relic never ages.’

That was a new one to me, but I’d not be the one to correct him. With shaking hands, he took the thing from Lucas. He began a dialogue with the digger who’d pulled it from the loose sand he’d been clearing from the courtyard. I didn’t need Macarius to interpret. The holy looks and upstretched arms were enough. I sat on a pile of mud bricks and kept my face non-committal. There was a sneering laugh behind me. I turned. Siroes was looking down from the level of the uncleared sand on the far side of the building.

‘I suppose I shall have to tell you till I’m quite black in the face,’ he said to Priscus, ‘that we are
not
looking for a chamber pot – nor anything else associated with Jesus Christ. I agree that it must be found by someone matching Alaric’s description. But I have not travelled all the way here – in considerable discomfort, and at some personal risk, I might add – to be palmed off with a piece of tat fished out of a rubbish dump.’

‘But, My Lord,’ the Bishop exclaimed, ‘you are looking at the first chamber pot of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. It is a relic of the highest—’

‘For all I care, it could still be full of his piss,’ Siroes said with rising impatience. ‘Priscus, if I find that you are trying to swindle me, you know perfectly well that—’