Richard Blake - The Sword of Damascus

‘How old were you when you got out of England?’ he asked.

‘I was eighteen,’ I answered, thinking back an age to King Ethelbert and his gelding knife, and good, kind Maximin who’d held him at bay by pure force of personality. ‘I was five years older than you are now.’ I smiled. He was no longer just pretty. The slow boy we’d all mocked and flogged through our various classes might have been stretched out as dead as worthless Cuthbert had been in the monastery. I was sitting now beside an entirely different young man. So far as I had any say in the matter, not dying on him might be interesting.

‘Did you ever intend coming back?’ he asked again.

‘No,’ I said. ‘As you will read of Saint Paul in Corinth, I shook the dust of England from my clothes and got on with the rest of my life. It has been a longer one than I think yours will be.’ I smiled. ‘But I suppose now is as good a time as any to begin your education.’

‘You really must both get it out of your minds,’ I said, still in lecturing mode, ‘that the Empire “fell” in any meaningful sense. There is no doubt that, several hundred years ago, our own people and their cousins invaded the Western Provinces, and that these places – partly as a result – ceased to be administered from either of the Imperial capitals. The Eastern Provinces, however, passed unscathed through that long crisis; and the remaining Emperor in Constantinople continued as head of the richest and most powerful state in the world.’

‘But, surely, Master,’ Edward broke in, ‘the Saracens are completing the work of destruction. For the East, the fall has merely been delayed?’

I thought of correcting a misused deponent, but thought better of it. If the boy’s progress in Greek had been encouraging, his Latin had really blossomed. Even before we’d put in at our first Spanish port, he’d caught up with Wilfred. Now, none of us had used English in over a month. No loss there, to be sure – who’d speak a language like that from choice?

I shifted slightly in my daybed. The sun had moved, and the canopy above me no longer kept it from shining on me. Wilfred leaned over to rearrange the blanket that covered my legs. Another few inches, and it would be in the bowl of water where I was soaking my feet. I closed my eyes for a moment, and then tried to see across the two hundred yards that separated our ship at anchor from Cartenna. It was a useless effort. I looked back at the two boys who, waxed tablets in hand, stood before me. I noticed black stains on the thumb and two main fingers of Edward’s right hand. Practising his penmanship again, I thought approvingly.

‘I wouldn’t dismiss the Empire so casually,’ I replied, coming out of my little reverie. ‘We lost Egypt and Syria, and no one nowadays expects we shall get them back. We’re losing Africa a bite at a time. When that’s been all swallowed up, I expect the Saracens will cross into Spain. But Spain isn’t our problem, and Africa has for a long time been more trouble than it’s worth. If Egypt and Syria are to be regretted, we did stop the desert whirlwind from overblowing the Asiatic Provinces. Within those, plus European Greece and its islands, we now nurse our shattered strength and await the recovery of health. I do assure you that Constantinople will not fall to the Saracens. If you think it will, you haven’t comprehended the passive strength or the long ambitions of an impersonal and regular government. You also haven’t understood how, reduced to territories almost wholly Greek in language and Orthodox in religion, the Empire has found an internal unity it had not possessed in centuries – if ever. No, young Edward, don’t suppose the Empire will go away any time soon. It certainly won’t go before you’ve had your reward out of it.’

I looked at the boy’s face. It remained impassive. Not even the repeated ‘we’ had ruffled him. Before we could continue the lesson, one of the northerners came over. Edward was wanted by the ‘Lord’ Hrothgar, he barked in his own language. That, I saw, broke through the icy calm. If only briefly, the boy’s face took on a troubled look. Well it might. Some of the beatings he’d had in private from Hrothgar had kept me up at night.

Regarding language, by the way, Benedict had been right. What these people spoke was pretty close to English. It was a matter of paying attention and listening past those horrible consonant sounds. You can be sure I hadn’t let on I could understand them. Some knowledge is not to be advertised.

‘Can you forgive me, Master,’ Edward asked with ceremonious courtesy, ‘if I take further instructions?’

I made my best effort at a gracious bow and leaned back on to the cushions. If Edward was to have the stuffing knocked out of him again just because no one on the ship seemed to have the faintest clue about navigation in these waters, that was his problem. I at least could try to make the best of things.

‘May I begin now, Master?’ Wilfred asked.

I opened my eyes again and nodded. My feet had been soaking long enough. Wilfred got down on his hands and knees and set about me with his block of pumice stone.

‘You’re a good boy,’ I said with a contented yawn. ‘Don’t spare your efforts on the left big toe. The hard skin there is beginning to hurt again.’

‘It will be as you wish, Master,’ came the obedient reply.

I looked down at the boy as he huddled over my feet. The gentler sea and the growing warmth of the February sun were doing me no end of good. If I say that twelve days in the Mediterranean had restored me to vigour, I’d be exaggerating. But there was no doubt I was feeling better than I had in several years. I wished I could say the same for Wilfred. Below that head of matted, greasy hair, he was still little more than a bag of bones.

‘Have you been here before, Master?’ he asked.

‘No,’ I said. I paused and allowed myself another sip of bad Spanish wine. ‘In all my years of service to the Empire, I made only one trip to Africa. That was about twenty years ago, when I came west with Constans. He was father of the present Emperor.’ I thought fondly of my last Lord and Master who’d really appreciated my services. Yes, he’d raped a nun in front of the Patriarch, and generally hadn’t gone out of his way to win friends and influence people. But he’d slowed the Saracens and left internal affairs to me. I hadn’t been making it up when I spoke about the Empire’s recovery of health. You can enable wonderful things with lower taxes and less control. If only his wretched successor hadn’t…

But I brought myself back to the present. ‘While he was on his looting pilgrimage in Rome,’ I said of Constans, ‘I spent a few months in Carthage trying to sort out the finances. I was so busy there, I never actually went beyond the walls. But I know Cartenna from the description of its double church. The place is a few hundred miles west of Carthage.

‘If we aren’t making direct for the capital, it may be the place has been lost to the Saracens – though, with Carthage gone, I’m not sure how anywhere else in Africa can be held. Mind you, I am assuming what is by no means beyond doubt – that these people know where they are going.’ I stopped again and thought of the rising tension aboard this big, heavy ship. In the open seas beyond the Mediterranean, I’d been impressed by how well Hrothgar and his crew of hired trash had worked the ship. Despite the endless and insane pitching, there had never seemed any chance that we’d go down. Ever since we’d entered the great, enclosed sea around which all civilisation had arranged itself, however, it had grown increasingly plain that we were lost. What could have been in Hrothgar’s mind when he’d come through the Narrow Straits without a pilot? It was almost funny that I’d been the only man aboard able to give our whereabouts as Cartenna.