Richard Blake - The Sword of Damascus

In perhaps the largest and most lavish of these halls, there was an erotic dance in its early stages. A blonde girl stood naked on a raised platform. Arms and legs wide outstretched, face upturned with eyes closed, she jerked and twitched in time to the music of drums and wailing flutes that came from below. I saw the glitter of nipple rings on her large, erect breasts. On each side of her, naked boys, their bodies painted gold, hopped and gyrated in time, though with less restraint, to the music. Before her, covered all over in silver scales, a black girl knelt. I watched fascinated as, tail first, and inch by inch, she fed a live snake into the blonde girl. In and in, the thing went – a good five feet of it. Anatomically impossible! you may cry? Well, I saw it happen, and in good light. Before my chair had carried me too far past to see more, she’d got virtually the whole thing in. Now, her flat belly distended, the blonde girl moved more freely to the music. The snake’s head poked out like some dark, mobile penis. The boys capered and strutted, their own dance punctuated by bursts of rapid wanking. About the platform, large, bearded men sat in a semicircle. Beside each was another naked girl. I had the impression they were all drinking wine. Certainly, their growls of appreciation sounded drunken. At times, they drowned out all but the higher squeals of the flutes. Before my chair had passed completely through a gateway of polished granite, I heard a still louder roar from the men, and heard the scraping of sandals on the marble floor as if everyone was getting up to press closer about the platform. But I could now see nothing through the curtains of my chair, and we were soon passing through other, much smaller rooms.

I saw men sitting around gambling. I saw men and girls and boys huddled together in groups, clouds all about them of smoke that smelled of burning opium. I saw conjurers and acrobats. In one room, I even saw an old man, dressed in a Greek cloak and demonstrating one of the proofs from Euclid on an immense board that filled the entire far wall. His lecture was followed by a crowd of men and boys, who scratched silently away on waxed tablets.

Now, we were in the open again, and could move more quickly. I felt the carrying slaves jog over lawns and gravel paths and, more often, along paved routes. We skirted several large buildings on which bright torches had been fixed. We passed through another building that was internally in darkness, though, from the echo of the footsteps of the carrying slaves, was no less magnificent than the first building. I felt the rise and fall from level, and heard the dull sound of leather on wood as we passed over a long bridge. There was the sudden chill and darkness of a tunnel, then more grass and gravel. It had rained briefly while I was under cover, or there had been late watering of the gardens. I could smell the wet marble as it mingled with the shrubs and flowers about me. Though always distant, I heard competing strains of music and loud cheers. On one occasion, I heard the shrill, continuing screams as of tortured boys or women.

At last, with a smell of aromatic wood smoke, and the sound of heavy bolts drawn shut behind us, we were in yet another building. We stopped in what I thought was a large entrance hall, though the light was too dim for me to see out with or without my visor. Except for the loud breathing of the slaves, there was no sound. After some time spent waiting, the eunuch who’d collected me poked his green face between the curtains.

‘If My Lord will consent to be helped down,’ he whispered, ‘there are strong arms to carry you into the Presence.’

I nodded, and made sure to climb slowly from the chair all by myself. There were a few lamps carried by black girls that allowed me to see for a few yards around. Two black eunuchs, both naked but for their jewelled loincloths, bowed together and reached out their arms to take me. I waved them away and leaned hard on my stick. There was a tongueless murmuring of protest, then the green eunuch gave a halting order in some language I didn’t know. Walking slowly for my benefit, he led the way to a small latticed door at the end of the hall. As he got there and waited a moment, the door swung silently open, and we passed into a small and dimly lit antechamber with two doors in the far wall. One of these doors opened, and we were now in a small sitting room. Decorated with an almost smothering heaviness of tapestries and cushions, two chairs were set to a table where I could see and smell the pot of spiced kava. I was beckoned into one of the silk-padded chairs, and the room emptied.

I sat in silence. I poked my tongue against the left spring of my teeth. It was beginning to annoy. Worse, it was causing me another burst of salivation. As I pushed the teeth out of contact with the sorest points on my gums, I wished I’d remembered to bring some more of the gum steeped in opium that had always served to take away the pain.

Suddenly, I heard the door open again. I was now sitting with my back to it. I got up to turn round.

‘Please, My Lord,’ a woman said in Saracen, ‘there is no need to stand on my account.’

Already on my feet, I pretended not to hear. I leaned on my stick and turned. It was a woman covered all over in black in the Eastern manner. It’s hard to tell much about a woman when she’s swathed like a corpse at a funeral. But I could see she was both fat and unusually tall. She spoke the elegant language of her nation’s higher classes, and with the unstressed firmness of one accustomed to command. But for the voice, I’d have taken her figure for a man. She hurried forward and took my hand. She raised it to the heavy black veil that covered her face, and I felt a brush of lips against my fingers.

‘Do, please, be seated, My Lord,’ she said softly but urgently. There being no one else to do the honours, she poured two cups of the steaming liquid with her own hands. ‘Will My Lord take sugar?’ she asked, uncovering a dish of the shining, black crystals.

I shook my head. I’d once found it a pleasing luxury. Nowadays, though, it tended to set my gums off still worse when they were sore. We sipped awhile in silence. This was good kava – not the already powdered stuff you mostly see in Constantinople, now direct trade with the Red Sea coasts has been cut, but freshly roasted and ground. It was spiced with cinnamon and something dark that I could sense, from the slight racing of my heart, was a stimulant.

‘Since we have both passed the age of any reasonable temptation,’ she said, ‘and because we may be seen as related, you will surely not consider it a breach of manners if I choose to make myself comfortable.’ She reached up and pulled at her veil and head covering. I saw a mass of black hair and, below that, a faintly brown face. Though pockmarked and a little bloated, it was a good face – very regular features, and well-proportioned. She saw the look of polite confusion on my own face and laughed.

‘I suppose that silly boy Karim simply packed you off here without telling you anything at all,’ she said. ‘Well, let us get over the matter of introductions. You are the Senator Alaric, trusted adviser to Caesar since long before the Prophet was other than a despised preacher in Mecca. I am Khadija, widow of Malik al-Ashtar. Please accept my most respectful greetings.’

‘Madam,’ I said, ‘I am delighted to make your acquaintance. And, if I may be so bold as to mention it, your own fame in the world is not forgotten. Who, indeed, will ever forget the woman who, on horseback, rallied the fainting Saracens at the Battle of Ctesiphon, and led them in a charge that shattered the last regular army of the Persians? There is even an epigram in Greek on the event. I can see that Karim is blessed on both sides of his family. I must, however, wonder…’ I ran out of words. How on earth could we be related? Had she been remarried to Meekal? If so, poor woman. But she was laughing at my inability to disguise the confusion.