The Blood of Alexandria (45 page)

I got no further. With a yell of terror, Martin was running towards me. There was no point asking how he’d abandoned a position from which a crippled child couldn’t have been dislodged. No point, either, in asking about the sword. I ran over to the edge of the roof and looked down. It must have been a forty-foot drop. Jumping would simply have saved anyone the trouble of throwing us down.

But no, there was a bronze downpipe to carry water from the roof. Like others in the more unsafe parts of Alexandria, it would have stopped eight or even ten feet above the ground. But it was a way off the roof.

‘This way,’ I shouted as I dragged Martin over and pointed at the downpipe.

He shook his head and shouted something back that I somehow couldn’t understand.

‘I don’t care,’ I shouted again. ‘Get down – just go!’ Shaking and twitching with the accumulated strain of at least that morning, I waited while Martin finished his dithering fit and climbed slowly over the parapet.

I snatched up what looked like a long broom handle and ran at the one man who’d come in sight over the vaulting. He opened his mouth to shout something, but I had him over before he could get anything out. Some twenty yards behind him, other men were climbing on to the roof. As yet, they had their backs to me, and I managed to jump back before anyone could see me. I skipped down to the edge of the roof and heaved myself over on to the downpipe. It creaked and shuddered. With a snapping of the aged spikes that held it against the wall, it moved a foot backwards.

For a moment, I swung helplessly, my feet treading on air alone. Then, with a fraying of skin, my hands were dragged by my enhanced weight diagonally down the pipe until I felt my knees crash against the wall. I got myself against the still firm next stretch and slithered down.

‘Let go,’ I snarled as my feet knocked against Martin’s head. He’d reached the bottom of the downpipe, and had both hands clamped hard about the thing. How he managed to hold his weight up was another mystery. There was no doubt he was in my way.

‘Jump, for God’s sake,’ I roared down at him. ‘Jump!’ I looked up. About twenty feet above me, a single face, framed against the perfect blue of the sky above, grinned down at me. Another joined it. The downpipe was too damaged at the top for anyone to follow us. But there was plenty of loose junk up there to throw down on us. First came part of the rope ladder. It missed. Another part followed. That gave me a glancing but unimportant blow to the head. It was only a question of waiting there for more substantial objects to come our way.

I kicked savagely at Martin’s hands. They might have been iron clamps. I’d have to get down to his level and somehow make him let go. I swung out and prepared to hold him in an embrace as I got level. I may have got my knees level with his chest. Just then, a very long stretch of the rope ladder hooked itself about my neck, and we fell with a tremendous, bruising thud the last three or four yards on to the pavement.

At least no one could follow us down, I remember thinking. I rolled over and prodded at Martin, whose face had gone a pale shade of green. I looked round. From above, this part of the church surroundings hadn’t been empty. As I’ve said, the whole concourse was packed. But there’s a difference between active troublemakers and those who come along to a riot to watch or for a bit of looting. The first were still making a tremendous racket over on our right. But that was now a good hundred yards away. Here, it was spectators and looters.

A few scrawny creatures hurried up to us as we rolled about on the dusty pavements. One of them spoke to me in a language that wasn’t Greek and that didn’t sound Egyptian. But I had my knife out, and he went back sharpish about his own business. I stood up and prepared to drag Martin to his feet. I fell straight down, white flashes of agony blanking out all thought of what to do next.

Chapter 44

‘Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!’ I gasped, clutching at my ankle. I’d twisted the sodding thing as I fell, and somehow hadn’t noticed until trying to stand on it. For all I knew, I’d broken it. I rocked back and forth, cradling it as I tried to force the pain to the back of my mind. The last thing I needed was to show weakness. Looters and even spectators can be dangerous to the injured. We needed to get away. That meant getting as quickly as possible out of this vast semicircular junction with its lack of cover, and into the streets and side streets beyond.

‘Let me help you,’ Martin said. He’d got up, apparently uninjured, and was pulling at me. ‘We can’t stay here,’ he added. As he spoke, the rest of the rope ladder landed beside us. It was followed by a selection of objects taken from the roof. I looked up. There were more faces looking down. To be sure, the top of the downpipe was bent too far back from the wall, and was too loose, to let anyone follow us down. Sooner or later, though, they’d start throwing down heavier stuff and to better effect.

Carrying himself in armour, and supporting something like half my own weight, wasn’t something I’d expected Martin could do at all without a heart attack. In the event, he got the pair of us across the concourse with surprising speed and without more than the occasional glance from the moderately dense crowds that moved back and forth. A hundred yards over on the right, there was what – with the wild shouting and clash of weapons – sounded a regular battle. Back here, it might have been a market day. We dodged round a thicker than usual cluster of what may have been Greeks or Egyptians – it was hard to tell, and made no present difference to us – and got ourselves into one of those wide streets leading back to the centre.

I hadn’t discussed with Martin where we were going. At first, it had been enough to get away from the church, and then as far away as we could from the main action of the rioting. I’d picked up a wooden spar, and this was letting me move forward at a reasonable speed. The pain in my ankle was getting steadily worse, and my breath was beginning to come in ragged gasps. But I was moving. We were heading in the general direction of the Palace. There might be some effort there to keep order. We might be able to get in through the main gates. If not, it wasn’t far to the Harbour or to the wooded central parks. We needed to get out of sight and stay out of sight.

On a casual glance, if choked with rubbish and piles of booty, the street seemed pretty well empty. In fact, it was so long and so densely packed with shops and other businesses that it had absorbed a mob and a half like water into a sponge. The shopkeepers had based their defences on the assumption that the police would be round before things turned really nasty. But there were no police any more, and these competing groups of Greeks and Egyptians amounted to a plundering army. They’d managed to pull all the wooden screens off those shops that had windows. Some of the buildings were already on fire. All along, we could hear breaking glass and the screams of those who’d made their homes behind or above their shops. The looters were mostly interested in laying hands on whatever might be valuable and could be carried away. But any living creature they stumbled over in their search was fair game for them. Then, it was a matter of maiming and dismemberment, of roasting and of rape. The lucky ones died soon. The bodies and parts of bodies that littered the carriage tracks and the paved area under the central colonnade were a grim sight.

‘Keep going,’ I’d said several times to Martin. ‘We can’t afford more trouble.’ He’d nodded. He only slowed down when it was a matter of helping me over the more chaotic piles of smoking rubble and pieces of smashed furniture.

Over on my left, a woman screamed. It was close, and it stood out from the background cries of pain and terror. I tried hard to follow my own advice. But the scream came again and was closer. I heard a broken sob and looked left. I should have looked away at once and pressed on along the street. Instead – for just a moment – I stopped. A woman had broken free from whatever place of horror had been her home. Naked, her body a mass of cuts and burns, the place between her legs visibly a swollen mush, she staggered towards me. I didn’t think at first she’d seen me or anyone or anything else. It was the fixed stare about her eyes. She screamed not at me, it seemed, but to take her own attention from what she’d seen or experienced. I was wrong.

She caught me as I tried to hurry past. She took hold of my arm and almost had me over. She pushed the bag at me she’d been carrying. It was a large thing, and heavy. There was something in it that moved feebly. She pushed it firmly and even desperately into my hands. I tried to think of words. I couldn’t think of anything to say. Perhaps there was nothing I could say that would have made sense to her, let alone have brought the comfort I felt I was expected to give. I looked round for some piece of cloth or other covering among the rubbish.

‘Oho, running off, eh?’ a voice called from behind her. He was a big man, with a face too scarred to carry much of a beard. For what it mattered, he was probably a Greek. There were five or six other men still further behind. They swayed drunkenly on the threshold of the smashed-up building the woman had just left. They laughed noiselessly, pointing at the woman as she fell down and then avoided me as I tried to help her to her feet. The big man had straightened up on seeing me. Now, he had a sword in his hand. He waved it at me and laughed loudly.

‘Get behind me,’ I said to the woman. I put the bag carefully down beside me and reached for my knife.

‘Take him!’ she screamed at me. ‘Take him!’

I felt the bag pushed back into my hand. I tried to grab her again, but she lurched out of reach, and I was in no position to dance after her. With a wild, chilling wail, she was rushing back at the big man. She picked her way over the heaps of rubbish, and ran unsteadily across the clear stretches of pavement. She opened her arms as she got close. But for that nightmarish cry, it was as if she were rushing to meet her lover.

He cut her down with an incompetent slashing stroke at her neck. Still screaming, she fell to the ground. She tried to clutch hold of his legs as he advanced. He finished her with another blow to the neck that did more to smash the vertebrae than separate them. Waving his sword again, he ran at me. He turned once to call his friends into the battle. For the moment, they chose to watch things from where they were. I had my knife out. I held it at waist level and tried to look able-bodied.

‘Not so fast, my fine little lord!’ he rasped. He jumped off a heap of stones dug out of the road and smiled and went at me.

If you can imagine it, I held fast to my walking staff while going into some kind of fighting position. In the normal course of things, this scarred, shambling item of trash wouldn’t have dared give someone like me a second look. Now, it was as if he’d smelled blood. I barked at Martin to keep moving on.

As he came at me, he discovered to his cost that there was more to fighting with a sword than waving it like a cudgel. Watching more of his incompetent slashing, I gave up on the knife and went at him with my staff. He did succeed in dodging back. But I got him now with a lunge hard forward into his crotch. He fell screeching backwards on to the cobblestones.

That would have been the end of him, if I hadn’t fallen as well. I’d put my full weight on to the bad ankle, and I went straight down with the agony. I breathed deep in and out, and fought to regain control. It was only a few moments before I had my eyes open again and was pulling at my knife. But it was already over for him. Martin had finished the creature for me. He’d done it from behind with a cobblestone the size and shape of a loaf. Looking at the splashed red and grey all over his face, Martin had no need of a second blow.

The big man hadn’t meant much, it seemed, to his friends. By the time I’d got his sword in my own hand, and was testing its weight, they’d vanished back inside the building.

‘What is it?’ I asked, pushing the sword clumsily into my scabbard, where it was a very bad fit. It was a redundant question. Martin had already tugged at the restraining straps of the bag. So far as I could tell, the baby was about six months old. He should normally have been screaming his head off. But if somewhat bashed about, he seemed to be in good shape.

‘Oh, bring him along,’ I groaned. The mother – assuming that had been her – was dead. It was an easy guess what had become of the rest of the family. We couldn’t stop here much longer. Nor could we leave the boy behind. If we got through this, I could see, I’d have another adopted child. But there was no time for the formalities of acceptance. We had to keep moving. Already, we were attracting more than passing looks. Half-cut, bleary-eyed men were staggering together in the street as if from nowhere. There were still things to steal, and rapes and murders to be committed. But we looked interesting, and might not be able to run away. Though ragged and filthy, my clothes put me obviously into the higher classes. Though I had a sword again, it was plain I was injured.

We got another fifty yards along the street, then swung left into a side turning. I was desperate for water and any kind of a rest. And further on, there was what we agreed was an unpleasantly tight grouping of men sitting under the colonnade. Most of them lounged in the shade. A few of them were standing. They were all staring in our direction with what struck me as more than passing interest. We turned in, and then turned again, and then again. We were now in one of the narrow, airless streets common to poor districts in every city. The differences between this and what I’d seen of the Egyptian quarter would have been hard to list. I’d never been here in any of my wanderings through Alexandria. The sunlight was blocked by the upper storey of the buildings on either side, and it was impossible to know which way we were going. But we were alone. And this was the last place mobs bent on blood and plunder were likely to frequent.