The Blood of Alexandria (34 page)

‘I was thinking that,’ I said, comparing the diagrams on each, ‘the amount of material may be smaller than it seemed at first. If these diagrams are the same – and the possible copy is just a freehand sketch – everything in the old script may have been transliterated into the new.’ I looked at the original diagram. It was something between an astrological chart and a plan of some elaborate machinery.

‘From what you now tell me about Leontius,’ Martin said firmly, ‘these are probably all magical texts. I say we should burn them.’

‘Not so fast,’ I said. ‘
Some
of the newer documents might be translations of the older. Some of them, though, might be evidence of treason. The document in Persian almost certainly is such evidence.’

‘The danger is too great,’ he said. He put down the sheet he’d been holding and wiped its dust off his hands. ‘I still say—’

There was a knock on the door. As I called on the Head Clerk to enter, Martin and I moved back to my desk and stared at a survey map of the Upper Delta.

‘Put them down here, if you please,’ I said to the slaves who entered behind the Head Clerk with yet more baskets of documents for sealing. There were hundreds of them: replies to petitions and reports, letters of instruction, general correspondence. The clerks were working double shifts to keep up with me as I cleared all that had accumulated in my absence. A single ‘yes’, or ‘no’, spoken yesterday by the swimming pool could generate a sheet of tightly written papyrus. A marginal scrawl might come back as an entire book roll. Now, it was all coming back. It poured into my office like nothing so much as leaves in a northern autumn through an open door.

I bent down and fished at random through one of the baskets, and then through another. From each, I pulled out three of the still unrolled sheets and put them on top of the map. The first was a conditional remission of taxes to the owner of an estate damaged for the third time in two years by locusts. I checked the wording carefully, making sure it corresponded with the instruction I’d given. I looked at the Head Clerk. He stared impassively back. No one who was on the take ever stood up long to this sort of checking. I turned to the second document, and then the third. I read all the others. All were in order.

I looked into a different basket and pulled out one of the smaller sheets. I knew this would be the grant of something both valuable and highly complex. If ever there was an opportunity for a bribed alteration, this would be it. The Head Clerk was sweating slightly in the heat and slightly from stress – but no more than anyone would with someone of my unbounded power going through work done or checked by him. I dropped it back in uninspected and nodded approval.

There was an aromatic smell as a junior clerk brought in the pot of bubbling wax. I took a key from my belt and opened the cupboard in the wall beside my desk. I lifted out the bag containing the Lesser Seal that let me act as Nicetas in all matters except those that just happened to be vital to my own work. I handed this to Martin, who took out the Seal and heated it.

‘In the Name of the Emperor, let it be so!’ he cried softly each time I pressed the Seal into the molten wax. Once only we paused. We’d come to the Leontius matter. I looked again at the wording. I held all the evidence. No one could ever dispute the form of what I was doing. I felt the Head Clerk’s stare. I looked back at him. Again, he seemed more curious than concerned. I pushed the document across to Martin, who was waiting with his spoon of wax.

‘In the Name of the Emperor, let it be so,’ he said emphatically. The Head Clerk took the now sealed roll of papyrus and put it carefully with the others for the wax to harden. I still had until the following morning to call it back. But it was now done, and I knew I’d let it go out.

It was all an unwelcome break from what I wanted to be doing. But it wasn’t that long before the baskets were filled again.

‘Do make sure to leave that one with me,’ I said, pointing at the smallest basket. The sheets there were written in purple. ‘They must be sealed by the Viceroy in person.’ When, of course, Nicetas would set the Great Seal to them was an open question. And I’d not be pushing them at him while my own warrants were still outstanding.

‘If you please,’ I said of a sudden to the Head Clerk as he was following the slave and baskets from the room. I shut the door after the slave and turned back to face him. He dropped his eyes as I looked again into his face. ‘Do please remain with us,’ I said. ‘I have a matter in which you might be able to assist. Your name is Barnabas, I think.’

He nodded.

‘You are also, I think, a native.’

He looked up in surprise.

I checked the protest I could see forming. ‘The reason I ask,’ I said, ‘is that I am in need of someone who can read Egyptian and whom I can trust. If you would come over here.’ I led him to the table and waved at the still neatly arranged sheets. On the far side of the room, Martin was mouthing negatives and shaking his head. I ignored him. He’d probably have made the same fuss if it had been Macarius I was getting in on the job.

‘What I want you to do,’ I said smoothly, ‘is to look at this row of newer documents. I don’t need you at this stage to do more than explain their contents. It may be that a translation will be needed of some. That being so, I—’

‘Don’t do this, Aelric,’ Martin said in Celtic. He crossed the room and took my arm. ‘I beg you to consider the danger of letting those documents be read by this man.’

I looked into Martin’s sweaty, troubled face. For the first time, the Head Clerk was showing concern. He couldn’t follow the sibilant, aspirated words, but must have understood their sense.

‘Have you taken leave of your senses?’ I asked, keeping my voice still smooth, though now in Martin’s Celtic. You don’t show off disagreements in front of underlings. ‘Are you going to suggest I have the man hitch his robe up to see if there’s a tattoo above his arse?’

‘And how do you know if there isn’t?’ said Martin. ‘But these documents may be of immense and uncontrollable power. Just reading them without the right precautions might summon a demon into this room. If you want to know what’s in them, you should go back to the Heretical Patriarch. He’ll know what to do. But I really think you should let me put them into a fire.’

Demons – yes, demons! And appearing out of a puff of smoke in my office. You know, I dearly loved Martin. Even when we were first brought together in Rome, and I was trying to show who was the master and who the borrowed slave, there had been something about his learned and competent helplessness that appealed to me. He was now the closest thing I had in the world to a friend. And there were still times when I had to resist the urge to give him a good hard punch in the stomach. But I kept my temper and continued looking calmly into his face. As I thought to turn back to Barnabas, the door opened and Priscus walked in.

‘Hard at work, are we, on this day of rest?’ he said with a nod at the basket of stuff for Nicetas.

Barnabas threw himself down for a grovel. Martin bowed and stood away from me.

‘Maximin’s birthday was yesterday,’ I said, with an impatient glance at the heavy blue silk he was wearing. I let my mind’s eye return to those documents, so neatly and so invitingly arranged on the table behind me. All I had to do was get rid of Martin and of Priscus, and then sit down with Barnabas. ‘You’ve missed the celebration,’ I said, still looking at Priscus. I’d make sure not to be the only person in that room who was annoyed. ‘But let me give his thanks for the little whip and branding irons you sent him. He can have them when he’s older.’

Together with all other movements, scowling is something to avoid when your face is a mask of white lead with banks of gold leaf for your eyebrows. Instead, Priscus twitched his nose, which it was clear he’d been using to sniff up whatever passed with him for lunch.

‘I take it, then, you haven’t noticed how no one can get into or out of this place?’ he drawled. He looked at the window. ‘I suppose not. Your office is on the far side of the building. The Egyptians are being held on their side of the Wall. But the Greek trash has turned up in force outside the Palace, and won’t go away. Apparently, some child died of starvation, and everyone’s demanding the grain ships be unloaded.

‘It’s at times like this that a massacre can really calm things. Sadly, Nicetas has agreed instead to meet the leaders of the mob, and he wants the pair of us on hand for moral support. Since he’s got the few slaves on duty running round like blue-arsed flies on other business, he asked me to drop in and summon you.

‘Any chance we could pull you away from what I’m sure is work for the highest benefit of the Empire?’

‘You may leave us,’ I said to Barnabas. As he scurried out, visibly glad to be off the hook, I turned to Martin. ‘Get all this packed away,’ I said, pointing at the Lesser Seal. I took the whole ring of keys from my belt and handed them to him. I might give him a good talking to later in the day. Then again, I might not. He’d only insist he’d been doing me a favour. This being Sunday, he might even call in one of his conversations with God as a defence.

‘If you’ll come back with me,’ I said to Priscus, ‘you might care to fill me in on what’s happening while I get myself changed.’

As we left the room, I looked back. Martin had gathered up the whole two rows of documents and was stuffing them into the cupboard along with the Seal.

Chapter 34

Nicetas and most of his Council were already in place when we arrived at the Great Hall of Audience. I thought the eunuch would have a stroke as he took hold of Priscus and me and led us to our own golden stools in the gathering. This not being one of his days for secular business, Patriarch John was absent, so the pair of us were sitting beside each other just behind Nicetas. I heard the scrape as the golden easel was set up behind us for the icon of the Emperor. The eunuch gave one last pull on the wig of gold and silver threads that Nicetas was wearing. From where I sat, the shaft of sunlight sent down on us from the mirrors in the dome made his head look as if it had caught fire. I wondered if that was how it appeared from the front.

But there was no time for wondering anything – let alone for conversation. Once we were all seated, our faces set into required expressions, the eunuch nodded to the guards at the far end of the Hall. With a loud drawing back of bolts and a whoosh of air and a flood of bright sunshine, the twin gates leading out into the square swung open, and the great unwashed of the poor districts poured in. They flowed through the gates in their hundreds and thousands, and those first through were pushed closer and closer to the front of our platform.

I let my eyes wander over the sea of pinched, desperate faces that stretched from the double row of armed guards just below our platform right down the six hundred feet of the Hall. All that separated these creatures from the natives was a smattering of Greek and a more heterogeneous look when it came to size and colouring. But whatever their size, whatever their colouring, the urban poor are always repulsive. The reason they live in cities and are poor is because they’re trash. They’re too lazy to dig for themselves on the land, and too stupid to take advantage of the city as a market for useful services. All they contribute to city life is crime and rioting. Take that away, and the respectable can step over them as they starve in the street. But the moment they transform themselves from gathered trash into the mob, they become something professional armies might tremble to confront.

Our trouble here was that these weren’t transforming themselves into anything. Even without the revelation I’d had in the Egyptian quarter, this was plainly a directed crowd. I could see the directing agents. They took care not to stand together at the front, but were dispersed among the crowd. Even so, they were dead easy to spot – taller, cleaner, better dressed. Leontius might be dead. His idea of ‘Success in Unity’, brought about by a coalition of both sides of the mob and the possessing classes lived on. And why not? Use the grain fleet to raise the mob: scare Nicetas enough – and I could wait like a poor litigant in court for those warrants.

With three loud blows on a gong behind us, the Hall fell silent. The herald stood forward. He turned and bowed to Nicetas and the whole Council. As the local custom required, we made no acknowledgement of his bow, but sat still and silent as statues. Except we existed in three dimensions, we might as well have merged into the frieze of Augustus that stretched all round us on the walls. The herald turned away from us again to face the main body of the Hall and took in a deep breath.

‘You have been called into the presence of His Imperial Highness Nicetas,’ he began in his measured, impossibly loud voice, ‘Viceroy to His Imperial Majesty Heraclius, Caesar, Augustus, Ever-Victorious Apostle of God, that your grievances may be discussed, and that you cease to disturb the order of our city.’

As the herald finished his greeting, and a single blow on a gong confirmed its ending, there was a general coughing and shuffling at the front as the crowd parted. At the apex of the resulting gap, a big man stood, his bearded head pressed tragically down on to a bundle that he held against his chest. There was a gentle push from behind and what might have been a muttered order. Slowly, he walked forward, stopping just short of the guards. He raised his head and looked round, and then looked straight at Nicetas.