Watson, Ian - Novel 16 (37 page)

 
          
‘Ah,
the Lord Gibil who built the pyre?'

 
          
‘The
same, sir.’

 
          
‘And
you would have sacrificed your life to stop a mad beast from spoiling this
ceremony . . . What shall I give you in return? Ask anything.' As Muzi
hesitated, the king added, ‘You must ask. Modest refusal will only anger me.'

 
          
Muzi
scratched his neck, then pointed at Alex and the officer. ‘Well, sir, your man
there seems to have grabbed a slave of mine. I would like to have my slave
back.’

           
‘This man’s in custody, Majesty,’
protested Alex’s captor. But already Aristander had turned away, distancing
himself from events.

 
          
The
king flushed. ‘Is that your request?’ He scrutinized Alex, pursed his lips. ‘A
slave, a one-time runaway, whom you already own?’ The king’s gaze lingered
long.

 
          
‘I
may own him, sir, but right now your man has him. He’s my wife’s favourite
slave. That’s my request, Great King.’

 
          
‘What
did the slave do?’ asked Alexander. But before the officer could answer the
King held up his hand. ‘No! That doesn’t matter. The request is granted. The
slave is pardoned. Release him.’ And the king turned away.

 
          
‘You
lucky bastard,’ hissed the officer, before propelling Alex briskly at Muzi.

 
          
Muzi
said nothing till they were midway through the throng between the dead elephant
- with its own little funeral pyre now guttering on its back - and the place
Alex had been abducted from.

 
          
Then
he halted Alex forcibly. ‘So why did I help you out - when you’re screwing my
wife?’

 
          
‘Master?’

 
          
‘Think
I’m a fool? Not as big a fool as you imagine. Let me tell you something, boy. I
saved your bacon from whatever roasting it was gonna get because I’ve been
studying Thessany and you. Oh, I’ve seen her attitude to you: all this pretence
of couldn’t-care-less, and you’re-just-a-menial. I’ve seen through it. But
more, I’ve been studying
her
ways -
with quite a lot of admiration, I might add. Then there’s my dad, who admires
her too. He wants you to screw her, doesn’t he? That’s what all this dragging
you around with us was really about. You’re my dad’s insurance policy to keep
Thess satisfied.

           
‘Well, I’m damned if I’m going to
screw up this little game - ’cos I’m learning games now, and I want Thess to
play this one just as far as she pleases. Surprised you, eh? This game for sure
has one thing going for it: it lets me take off hunting with the boys. But that
ain’t the most important. The most important is, it amuses Thessany - and I’d
hate for her to be bored or unhappy. I sincerely mean that. I guess my dad
feels that way too, specially now that he’s getting such hot business tips from
her.

 
          
‘Listen:
one day Thess is gonna learn to love me, in
her
way. Then she’ll realize that I knew all about this caper; and she’ll love me
twice over.

 
          
'Nor
am I kicking up any piles of shit
while she’s pregnant. But I’ll tell you one thing, fellow.’ Muzi held Alex by
the throat, firmly though not too constric- tively. ‘If anything goes wrong for
Thess or my dad, or if that Indian fakir or you create any smartass
Marduk-style capers which drop shit on our house, then I’ll strangle you
personally. Yeah, capers like whatever prompted that officer to collar you; and
what was all that about, eh?’

 
          
‘A
misunderstanding,’ croaked Alex.

 
          
‘You
can dip your cock - till the day comes when Thess admires me sufficient that I
can cut it off of you. But you’ll keep your nose clean in other respects. Got
it?’ “

 
          
Alex
gurgled, ‘Yes.’

 
          
‘Listen:
I just became a guy of some note by giving that old elephant a fatal headache.
The king might have been a bit put out that I didn’t ask for a title or
something. But
now
he knows me. I
intend to keep his respect, honourably.’

           
Muzi released Alex. ‘Right oh,
slave; back to your mistress/

 
          
How
right Muzi was; and at the same time how wrong. Right about the lovers; wrong
about Lord Gibil knowing. Right about a conspiracy; wrong about a Marduk plot. Wrong
about the family honour when his own dad was about to rob . . . correction,
about to clean up gold which would otherwise have gone to waste.

 
          
In
a way the situation was pathetic. Here was Muzi trying to join in on intrigue,
as he viewed it. Instead he produced a parody of intrigue. He was an oaf of
honour.

 
          
Yet
for the first time Alex felt respect for Muzi; respect mixed with fear, not
least fear of where the clumsy apprentice subtleties, the would-be guile of an
honourable man, might lead.

 
          
Really,
this was all Gibil’s fault for the way he had let his son grow up: as a sort of
mental virgin, a worthy innocent. Maybe that was because Muzi was indeed rather
stupid; if brave-hearted. Unfortunately he wasn’t sufficiently stupid to
survive unscathed and unbewildered. He had begun to think for himself.

 
          
Or
maybe it was Gibil’s fault that his son’s initiation into the business of life
was so long overdue; because he had treated Muzi in this manner not out of
indulgence, nor even out of contempt at the contrast between father and son,
but so that the son should
redeem
the
father. Muzi should be exempt from the finaglings which had brought Gibil
riches; the family heir should not inherit wickedness (or its kid brother,
unscrupulousness). Yet without a certain wicked streak, how could Muzi ever
steer the family fortune? So therefore he had to be initiated. This process had
been left far too late. In the matter of the proposed robbery Muzi’s education
was still being neglected.

           
The money baron required a prince
with unsoiled paws to succeed him. That was the real reason why Gibil had
readily agreed that Muzi should be excluded from the scheme to steal the gold.
Gibil had decided that his daughter-in-law was perfect for the role of wicked
anti-conscience to his son.

 
          
Alas,
Muzi already possessed a conscience and a sense of destiny of his own.

 
          
Or
did he? Was that really so? Perhaps Muzi’s wish for princely respect was
precisely what his own father had implanted in him.

 
          
And
maybe this whole sorry imbroglio was Thessany’s fault for playing lioness games
with her young husband’s emotions.

 
          
Thessany,
Gibil, Gupta and Alex revisited the scene of the cremation late the following
afternoon, by which time the brick core would have cooled.

 
          
Gibil
drove the party out in a big four-wheeled carriage. As procurer of the pyre
Lord Gibil had a perfect and logical excuse to inspect for any structural
damage which the intense heat might have caused that core, which was going to
be clad in white marble to the eternal memory of Hephaestion. Equally, Lord
Gibil must needs dissociate himself utterly from any pilferage, should Gupta be
caught staggering away with ingots of gold. This might present a problem, given
the involvement of Gibil’s own daughter and his daughter’s slave . . .

 
          
Gupta
pointed out reassuringly that no one else - save for the bribed architect -
knew anything about ingots being there. Maybe there weren’t any! Or not as many
as expected. Maybe the gold had been vaporized by the furnace heat and
deposited as faint gilding on the city wall and adjacent rooftops.

 
          
If
caught, said Gupta, they should swear that all along they had been intending to
return the gold secretly to the palace, as a loyal gift of which the king must
never hear; but hadn’t wanted to raise false expectations at the Treasury. The
treasurer would surely be delighted and relieved; and wouldn’t blab.

 
          
When
they arrived, by way of the Marduk Gate, they found perhaps a score of
sightseers ambling in the vicinity of the blackened ziggurat, its tiers
amorphous with drifts of carbon. Soldiers stood guard. Other soldiers might be
sleeping in several military tents nearby, where the standard of King Alexander
flew: a simple purple pennant on a spear stuck in the ground, the butt a carved
pomegranate.

 
          
On
Gupta’s instructions Gibil brought the horses round in a circle and halted them
so that the carriage was just out of sight of the soldiery round the corner of
the eastern wall. Alex hammered in a peg for the reins, and the four
accomplices walked boldly to watch from the corner.

 
          
Soon
they had mapped out the routine of the soldiers. At each corner of the extinct
pyre a guard was stationed. Every three or four minutes a soldier would set out
for the next corner clockwise, taking about a minute to reach it. For thirty
seconds or so there would be two guards on that corner and none on one of the
other three. Then the ‘relieved’ guard would proceed onward, clockwise; and so
forth.

 
          
Gupta
drew a grid in the sandy dirt and x-ed in different combinations of single
soldiers, couples, and empty stations. He stared for a while, then stood and
erased the pattern.

 
          
‘Better
than I hoped for! We should have regular blind spots. Rotating the guard
doesn’t keep the chaps on their toes at all. It accustoms them to novelty. Let
us proceed.’

 
          
Lord
Gibil sauntered off, swinging a walking stick pompously to distract attention.
He headed for the remains of the elephant, a hummock of huge bones and torn
hide which several cats and curs and carrion birds were quarrying. The good
meat and offal had already been carted off.

 
          
Thessany,
being in an advanced state of pregnancy, would stay with the cart. Alex took a
couple of leather bags. Gupta donned a many-pocketed patchwork coat of
nondescript confusing monochrome materials - he looked like a mass of clotted
cobwebs. He and Alex wandered idly towards the ex-pyre.

 
          
The
south face was in shadow; that was where the different ducts debouched into
brick moulds, hidden behind what one hoped were still loose bricks.

 
          
Gupta
halted, close by the city wall, and with his heel carved a circle in the soil.
‘Here’s the psychological boundary point - between guards ignoring you, and
feeling curious. Don’t pass beyond. When I go, sit down in the circle with your
back to the pyre.’

 
          
The
westering sun was dazzling except in the immediate lee of the blackened brick
mass. (Gibil had suggested an approach under cover of darkness, but Gupta had
poured scorn. What would they be doing lurking outside the walls by night?)

 
          
The
soldier at the south-east corner left his station and headed for the south-west
corner. Gupta jigged his limbs and his coat of confusion, dislocatingly, and .
. . what did he do next? What did he become? His shadow flitted away from Alex,
who quickly sat down facing the opposite way.

 
          
Minutes
passed: ten, fifteen, an age.

 
          
Then:
‘Open a bag!’

 
          
Ingots
descended.

 
          
‘Now
the other.’

 
          
More
bars of gold.

 
          
‘Go;
and come back.’

           
Scrambling up, Alex heaved a bag in
each hand towards the carriage as fast as he could. He tumbled the contents in
for Thessany to cover with straw.

 
          
Three
trips later, Gupta’s voice said, ‘Don’t come back.’

 
          
This
time Alex simply dumped the bags in the carriage, then unpegged the horses and
climbed aboard.