Richard Blake - The Sword of Damascus

Oh, this was glorious stuff indeed! The only meaning of that news was that Leontius had talked his way off Constantine’s rack. I’d been thinking about him on and off ever since setting out for the West. But who else could have picked up on my idea of using quicklime as a primer? I crouched behind that curtain, sweating and trembling, my mind soaring like some enthusiast who thinks he’s heard the voice of God.

‘I must tell you then,’ Khadija said, ‘that our arrangement is at an end. It is now in our interest to keep Alaric alive. There will be no more palace gates left open for your people. If you persist in your own assassination efforts, we will, for the moment, join forces with Meekal to resist you.’

‘It is as you wish, My Lady,’ Joseph replied in a tone of gentle mockery. ‘Even so, that need not mean an end to cooperation with the Emperor in other respects. Your allowance will continue to find its way into your Medina accounts. Though imprisoned here, you need not worry that your voice will fall silent in the nativist councils of His Majestic Holiness.’

I could have sat listening to this all night. But the meeting was now at an end. I heard the scrape of Joseph’s chair, and the beginning of their elaborate partings. Time to get myself out of here. Who could say that Khadija wouldn’t walk straight through the curtain to make her own record of the meeting? That meant I had to get myself out into the antechamber before they did. I heaved myself up as noiselessly as I was able. I opened the door and pulled it to behind me. The slave girl was now sleeping. I hurried past her into the main hall.

Out in the hall, I bumped straight into the green eunuch. He’d been hovering just beyond the door with a tray in his hands. I cringed before him and made sure to look down at the ground.

‘Why is it that I’m always the last one to bed?’ he snarled. This wasn’t the obsequious creature who’d fawned before the Magnificent Alaric. I was lucky he had a tray in his hand, and not a stick. I bowed lower and mumbled something respectful. ‘If you think I’m here to fetch and carry at all hours of the night, you’re mistaken. Here’ – he thrust the tray towards me – ‘take the Mistress her sleeping draught. If she wants me, you can find me in the kitchens, fixing myself a late supper.’

As he flounced off towards another door, I looked at the tray. It had on it a lead bottle and a tiny glass cup. Was it worth getting the slave girl awake? Should I just put the tray down and shuffle away? As I stood there dithering, the latticed door opened again, and Khadija and Joseph came out into the hall.

‘ Oh fuck! ’ I thought. Trying not to shake, I held the tray up and bowed low before Khadija. She ignored me and walked right past with Joseph. They spoke softly for a moment beside the gate. Then Joseph was off into the night, and Khadija was coming back towards me. I stepped back into a shadow and bowed as low before her as my aged back allowed.

‘When I’m ready,’ she snapped, ‘you can have that brought to me in my bedchamber.’ With that, she was through the door again and disappearing into her private quarters. So long as the face under it isn’t particularly attractive, there’s so much to be said for the full Saracen veil. It restricts the vision most wonderfully. I don’t suppose, however, it was needed on this occasion. As I’ve said, no one notices a slave – not unless he’s a good deal younger and better looking than I was.

I counted to twenty and went through the door after Khadija. I left the tray beside the now snoring slave girl. Khadija had vanished deep into those parts of this building where even aged male slaves would not be allowed to follow. I’d done a brilliant job for one night. Time to get back to bed.

As I reached for the door handle, I heard Karim’s voice raised in annoyance.

‘Then get her up,’ he snapped in reply to some objection I wasn’t able to hear through the door. ‘I’m hardly an unwelcome guest in this place!’

His voice was getting louder as he approached the other side of the door. The slave girl behind me was stirring at the sudden noise. In a moment, she’d be awake and brushing the creases from her dress. I looked at the door in front of me – no going through that, not with Karim on the other side. I looked at the door to Khadija’s sitting room – no going through that either. I hurried across the floor and back into the spying room. If no one had been here to take a record of what I or Joseph had said, I was safe enough for any meeting with Karim. I flopped down again beside the curtain and controlled my wheezing as I prepared to listen. I’d rather not have been here at all. Since I had no choice, I might as well make the best of things.

I heard Karim let himself into the sitting room. I heard someone – presumably the green eunuch – go off into Khadija’s private quarters. I heard the gentle pulling of a chair as Karim sat and made himself comfortable. After this, there was a longish time of silence. I could hear my heart banging away inside my chest, and the suppressed rasp of my own breath. At last, I could feel a piss coming on. I looked round. The only container in the room was an inkwell. I’d have to contain. So long as it didn’t mean too lengthy a wait, I surely could contain.

As I sat there, my back against the wall, my good ear to the curtain, debating on how long before my bladder muscles went limp on me, I heard the usual door open. It was Khadija. I heard Karim jump up, and what may have been an embrace.

‘I spoke with him at some length,’ she said in answer to an unspoken question. ‘You can be proud of descent from such a man. If our Faith had more men of his quality – even though aged – we could rule the whole world from Medina.’

‘What did he tell you?’ Karim asked eagerly. There was a mumbled reply that I couldn’t catch. Perhaps Khadija was speaking with her face turned away. Sharper ears would have picked up her words. Sadly, I was reduced to straining and trying to guess. But Karim spoke again: ‘You’re saying he will help us?’ he asked.

‘Of course, Alaric will help us,’ she said, now clearly. ‘He has agreed to be our Sword of Damascus against the Greeks and all their friends. He will help us because he hates Meekal. Also, he will help us because I have persuaded him that we have no immediate intention of turning against the Empire. He and the Greeks in general have no faith in our ability to use their weapons against the Empire in the way that Meekal probably can. He believes that we shall only use the unquenchable fire against each other; that it will, in our own hands, be as much a weapon against us as for us. Because of that, he will work with all signs of willingness for Meekal, but ensure that the secret is handed straight over to us.’

‘But we will use it at once against the Greeks!’ Karim cried exultantly. ‘We shall pray in the churches of both Constantinople and Rome, and it will be our language and our ways – and our blood – that triumph in the world.’

‘Yes, O last and dearest son of my late husband,’ came the gloating reply. ‘Our empire will not use Greek money or the Greek language. The Greek party among us – the party that Muawiya led to victory in the civil wars – shall be destroyed.’

There was a long pause while they both doubtless thought of the approaching glories of their people. Yes – ‘their’ people! Was Karim not forgetting the little matter of his own ancestry?

‘And the Old One will be kept safe?’ he asked with a tone of concern gratifying to the Old One’s vanity. ‘We know that Meekal would kill him once the secret was in his hands – him and the boy. But we will spare them, won’t we?’