The Blood of Alexandria (65 page)

‘We’ll find nothing here,’ I eventually said. I strained for a final look across the chasm, then turned with reluctance and led the way across the floor towards those doorways into the wall.

They were tombs – that much was certain. And this made some sense of the torture entertainments so far underground. Even the dead of this perverted race were to be comforted by the agony of others. Each tomb had originally been sealed with courses of mortared stone. All had been broken into and carefully looted, which explained the broken furniture scattered about in the main cavern. The normal arrangement within each ten-foot square was a stone bench for the corpse. A few of these were still in place. Not embalmed in the Egyptian manner, they had been set there and allowed to shrivel naturally in the dry air. They’d dried out to the colour and general appearance of old leather. A few scraps of yellow hair still adhered to the scalps. Except they were much shorter, they might have been people of my own race. Whatever gold and jewellery had been placed beside them was long since gone. But, arranged into circlets closed with bronze rings, there were still a few lengths of that flexible glass sheathing in place around necks and ankles. Because worthless, these had been left in place.

‘So Lucas was right in something,’ I muttered. ‘It is jewellery after all.’ But the corpses of the great hadn’t been the only residents here. Chained together by collars, each a few feet apart, there were other bodies. The more intact tombs showed how the chained ones had been unable to reach the main bench. Their collars were fixed to the wall at a height that allowed only standing. They had been closed in with each lord and left for hunger and thirst or despair to carry them into the greater blackness of death. Most had come apart in the ages following the burial, and, headless, they were fallen into common heaps of desiccated flesh. A few still held together, and gave some idea of final agony.

‘God have mercy on them. God have mercy,’ the Bishop was muttering as he followed me from tomb to tomb. It was all utterly depressing. Not the least of it was the rising worry that there was nothing we’d found so far that seemed likely to keep Siroes happy. I went back out into the main cavern and sat down for another bite of the rough bread. While Macarius had gone ahead into another tomb, I’d taken a chance and slipped into my clothing a bronze knife no one had bothered stealing. This at least might come in useful. Something portable, with arguably magical powers, would have been really useful. I sat, staring into the lamp – which would soon need another refill – and reflecting again on the lack of wine in our supplies. If Martin himself had been in charge of the packing, more thought wouldn’t have gone into that deprivation.

‘If you please, My Lord, come in here.’

I looked up. Macarius was calling from the last of the tombs before the end of the built wall. He stood just behind one of the guardian statues. Fangs bared in the fishlike head, it seemed to laugh at me.

‘Do come over,’ he repeated, a tone of urgency in his voice.

I pulled myself up and stretched tired arms and legs. Perhaps he’d found a relatively unlooted tomb. A few ancient trinkets might inspire me to some lie back on the surface.

But this one too had been looted. Indeed, it had been cleared of everything originally placed there. I looked wearily at the desk made from reused planks and at the chair, salvaged and repaired. There were a few sheets of papyrus on the desk, together with a lamp and some metal pens. I followed the pointed finger to the things stacked on the stone slab.

‘What the fuck is this doing here?’ I whispered, looking at the wooden crate. It was three feet high and about the same square. Painted neatly on the side facing me were the Greek words
Homeric Apocrypha Box Twenty
.

Chapter 64

‘How the buggery did it get down here?’ I asked again, now louder. I rubbed my eyes just in case I was seeing things and leaned against the far wall. Ever since leaving the sunlight, we’d been in a world that seemed untouched since the dawn of our own time. Here at last was something I could recognise. If only I could also understand it. Beside it on the stone bench was a small book rack stuffed with papyrus rolls. It was something else I could recognise. It might also bring understanding.

‘What’s that?’ I said to Macarius, nodding at the glass bottle in his hand.

‘It seems to be lamp oil, My Lord,’ he said. ‘It would be useful if it were. Otherwise, we may have only enough for one lamp on our journey back to the surface.’

The Bishop gasped at these words and, in the manner of all the natives, squatted on the floor. There was nothing to fear, I assured him. I told him to remember that, so long as the lamp on the steps was still alight, we could feel our way back to the surface. But I watched with inward prayer as Macarius sniffed the contents and rubbed some between his fingers. He poured a small amount into the ancient lamp on the desk and set a flame to it. It may have had some other use when bottled. Now, it made a really superb lighting oil. It gave off an intense and bluish flame that consumed almost no wick. In this light, I took up one of the papyrus sheets that had been left on the desk. It went something as follows:

It is with reluctance, though also with the assurance that I do rightly, that I now suspend work on the project that has been the support of my final years. The degraded remnants of a once mighty race who now rest in these halls were ignorant of writing and skilled only in terror. But they carried with them images and things that allowed me to reflect and at length to dread. Call it magic – call it by some other name that is not similar to wisdom. But there are certain forces that I do not think it proper for mortals to understand
.

It once pained me how little appreciation my work received even among those whose opinion I valued. I am now glad to be regarded as a lunatic. If I were to publish my results, they would set a path – however tentative – that led surely to the displeasure of the One God who stands above those worshipped by men
.

If I were less vain – or if I had no faith whatever in the goodness and wisdom of my fellow beings – I might destroy all I have written, rather than hide it away. But hide it away I will. I might hope that these words will never be read. I can only pray that if they ever are read, my name shall not become for ever accursed
.

I write in the eightieth year of my age, and in the fortieth year since being made Chief Librarian to His Majesty
.

Eratosthenes of Cyrene

What a very queer letter! I thought. I passed it to Macarius, who read it with his usual impassivity. I got up and went to the book rack. I pulled out the largest of the book sheaths. The tag on it gave the title as
On the Fundamental Unity of Matter and Motion
. I took it out and scanned the first section. It was in a highly compressed style, and used words that may have been compounded specially for the use in hand. Generally speaking the work owed something to the physics of Epicurus, and something to the mathematics of the Platonic school. They came together in a synthesis that I’d often urged on Martin as the path to knowledge. It might, indeed, still make me a boatload of money if I’d got my Nile predictions right – and, of course, if I lived to see this. Eratosthenes was reasoning in the best Greek manner. He seemed, however, to be moving from obvious premises to outrageous conclusions. It was something that might make sense if I were to give it more time. As it was, the ratios of what seemed arbitrary units to each other struck me as madder than anything Hermogenes had mentioned back in Alexandria. Imagine the Hypostatic Union with a bit of maths thrown in, and that was how all this struck me on first inspection.

But I was wasting time. I rolled up the book and put it back in its sheath and then replaced it on the rack.

‘What makes you suppose,’ I asked of Macarius, ‘that this box contains the things we came to collect?’ I pointed at the crate. Though old, it was still solid, and it was nailed securely shut. It was too heavy for me to lift by myself. If we looked about, we might find something that could be used to force it open. I thought of the knife I’d picked up, but chose to keep that to myself.

‘It doesn’t contain anything that we were sent to bring back,’ Macarius said.

I thought of trying for a hollow laugh, but changed my mind.

‘We already have what we came to find,’ he said.

What that might be I couldn’t guess. Nor did I feel inclined to try. I rapped hard on the crate and then struck my knee against it. There were some firm wooden spars outside we could use.

But Macarius saw what I was thinking and shook his head. ‘We have what we came for,’ he repeated. ‘We carry back nothing tangible.’

There were other tombs that we still hadn’t entered. From back in the cavern, I looked at the dark gaps knocked into the stonework and sighed. Except for the one Eratosthenes had used for his office, they were much of a muchness. There was no point looking in them. I couldn’t begin to tell how long I’d been down here. But I could feel a growing weariness. If we really had found what we’d come to find, it wasn’t possible to justify staying longer. It was time to go.

From the bottom of the steps, I looked back towards the makeshift office. I couldn’t see it, though I knew where it must be. Here, the great Eratosthenes had sat day after day, surrounded by death that must have been as ancient to him as it was to us. Wherever his thoughts had led him marked him out as an equal of the great Epicurus. That – or he’d become the raving lunatic everyone then and since had taken him for.

We left the lamp still burning low on the steps. Since Macarius made it plain there would be another visit here, there was no point in cluttering ourselves. With that mineral oil left behind by Eratosthenes, the reliefs in the corridor showed brighter than before, and gave up still more of their carefully depicted horrors. But I tried not to look. I thought instead of the surface. Whatever awaited me there, this wasn’t a place for lingering.

Getting back to the surface was easy in that we knew where we were going, and there was no element of tension. It was also harder in that we were now going steadily uphill. I hadn’t fully noticed on the way down how steep the incline was. Now, we were tired, and the going was too hard to complete without longish rests.

‘My Lord,’ Macarius whispered in Latin as we reached the entrance chamber, ‘I suggest that your interests might best be served by setting your weapon down here.’

I stared at him. He continued staring back. I sniffed and took out the knife from under my tunic. For all it had given me some feeling of control, I saw no value in arguing. I put it down and kicked it against one of the walls.

It was dark in that entrance chamber, though noticeably warmer. With a shock of horror, I wondered at first if the granite covering had been screwed shut on us. But the reason we were in darkness, I soon realised, was because it was dark outside.

‘Well, hello!’ Priscus called down when I’d shouted for the second time. I saw him outlined against the opening by a torch that someone held behind him. ‘We were beginning to worry about you. I think some of the wogs were coming to the conclusion that you’d been eaten alive by demons. For myself, I was getting prepared to suggest a search party for the morning. Did you find anything useful down there?’

‘Yes,’ I lied, waiting for the ladder to come down. ‘If the Lord Siroes isn’t happy with this, he’ll find plenty more to amuse him if he goes down himself.’ And with any luck, I thought, the Bishop might prevail on the wogs to seal them all in together.

Chapter 65

‘I think the young barbarian has done us proud,’ Siroes said.

We were back in our dining tent. It was a late meal, and the food was as insipid as ever. And I felt a slight annoyance that a bloody Persian was calling me a barbarian. But I was too tired and hungry to care much about either defect. Buckets of cool water had got the dirt off my body. My clothes could dry overnight in the desert wind. For the moment, I sat wrapped in a blanket, finishing a dinner of dates and gritty bread.

‘It is,’ he went on, ‘just as the prophecy led me to suppose. I therefore believe, with more than reasonable assurance, that we in this tent constitute the supreme power in the world.’

‘Well, I might agree if he’d at least brought back a piss pot,’ Priscus muttered. He looked sourly at the notes Lucas had taken of my narrative. They filled several sheets of papyrus in a hand that showed what a clerk the world had lost when its owner chose to be Pharaoh.

‘I don’t think, my dear Priscus,’ Siroes broke in with a sneer, ‘we need concern ourselves with receptacles of human piss. I have told you repeatedly that what I came here to find had no connection with your Jewish Carpenter. I will also tell Lucas that the object we still need to recover serves none of the purposes that your late mutual friend Leontius appears to have conceived for it.