Richard Blake - The Sword of Damascus

‘What did it all mean?’ he asked. He squeezed his eyes tight shut.

I laughed softly. ‘The corpse-fucking we can take as an act of superstitious blasphemy,’ I said. ‘It’s the sort of thing people did on the quiet, back in the days of the Old Faith, before committing an act of the most desperate treason. There are varying explanations of its meaning. But the most reasonable is that it’s an act of ritual defilement, followed by cleansing. You say Meekal wheeled round and round at the end of his dance, then tossed the head into some bushes. I think you’ll find that he threw it in exactly the direction of the rising sun. The idea is that the thing takes on all the sins and general worthlessness of the killer’s life to date. All this is then communicated to the first person who touches the head when the sun is risen. The body can be dismembered and buried wherever may be convenient. I don’t suppose any of the parts will be discovered. In any event, one more body in a place like this won’t raise many eyebrows.’ Oddly enough, Edward seemed to find some comfort in my conjectural explanation. But, if this wasn’t the first time I’d tried lecturing him out of belief in it, he’d grown up – rather as I had – in a world where magic and divination were taken for granted.

‘That being said,’ I mused, ‘while you really can fuck anything once, twice indicates a disturbing partiality.’ I thought briefly how, just that afternoon, one of Meekal’s fingers had been pushed up my bum. I shuddered. I’d not be repeating that experience in a hurry. But it was time to draw Edward’s attention from horror back to simple mystery. ‘I wonder,’ I continued, ‘what Meekal could have been doing with Joseph – in full view, and inside the palace. That is worth considering, don’t you think? I’ll bet you thought you’d seen the last of him when he was trussed up back in Jarrow. You never thought he’d follow us all over the world.’ I tried for a laugh. Just then, though, as if some invisible attendant had withdrawn his supporting arms, the stimulants suddenly wore off. I sat down heavily in my chair and fought off a fainting attack. I put up a hand to my nose, and looked at the dark stickiness on my fingers.

‘Whatever the case,’ I said with much labour, ‘we are where we are. If you find everything over your head, that’s just too bad. All else aside, your life now hangs on my cooperation.’ Edward looked up. I did now manage a laugh, even if it wasn’t a very pleasant one. ‘Oh, it’s all wickedly ironic,’ I said with a tired wave. ‘You forced me out of that monastery by threatening to slice up poor Wilfred. Now he’s dead, you’ve taken his place with Meekal. One day, I’ll get round to reciting the whole of one of those sicko plays Seneca wrote as entertainments for the court of Nero. I can think of one passage in particular that fits our situation. For the moment, we pretend none of this happened. We must simply hope that no one saw either of us.’

I got up and tried to stretch. It wasn’t my most successful move of the day. I let my arms fall limp. Was that more blood I could feel running down my chin? I pulled myself together. I leaned hard on my stick and moved towards the door.

‘I’ll see you to bed,’ I told the boy. I picked up the key to the main door as I passed the table on which I’d dropped it. ‘Yes, I’ll unlock,’ I said firmly. ‘If Meekal wants to send men in to throttle us while we sleep, some silly lock won’t keep them out. It will simply mean no one can get in to serve breakfast. Just as if nothing had happened, I’ll leave the door unlocked and the key in the outside lock. That’s what Karim bribed the slaves into accepting.’

‘Then, please, Master – don’t make me sleep alone,’ Edward asked. He jumped off the sofa and almost knocked me over with his scared embrace. I felt his warm body next to mine. I was so knocked out, it might have been a bag of warmed bricks. I put a hand on one of the unmarked areas of his back.

‘I suppose it has been a difficult couple of days,’ I said in what I hoped was a reassuring tone. ‘Oh, come with me,’ I said, dropping all pretence of emotion. ‘It’s not as if there was a shortage of space in the bed.’

I woke in Jarrow from another of my dozes. I looked up into the leaden greyness of the sky. It was coming on to rain again. I’d have to drag myself back inside if I were to avoid getting wet as well as cold. I looked over at the gate that led back into the monastery. While I slept, a layer of oak planks had been nailed over it, hiding the weathered cross. I tried to think and to remember. But there was nothing clear in my head. It was as if I’d finally had the stroke people had been warning me against for years. I stopped and began counting slowly backwards in Greek, trying desperately to remember anything at all. I managed the counting. But each time I thought I’d grasped something solid among the contents of my mind, it seemed to shrivel then vanish in my hand.

I said I’d have to drag myself inside. But was I up to doing anything for myself? More jumbled fragments of memories. I gave up on thinking and looked down. I was sitting on a wooden chair with arms each side. Hadn’t this once been Abbot Benedict’s chair? If so, all the biblical imagery that had once covered the arms was now cut away or rubbed smooth. My legs were buried under a loose packing of blankets against the chill. I tried to move my right foot. There was a slight tingling, I thought. Perhaps there was a slight movement. It was hard to say.

I looked over to my left. I was sure this had once been the patch of grass where the boys would kick a ball about between lessons. But it all seemed so long ago. Again, the curtain came down between me and what I knew had once been a perfect memory. I shouted at everyone to go inside. No one looked round. No one got up from his place. Seated on the damp grass, the boys looked steadily forward. I tried to focus on the teacher. For some reason, this was a regular lesson – but in the open of a Northumbrian spring or autumn or summer. I willed myself to hear their chanted responses to the teacher’s lesson. But my hearing was no longer even what it had once been. It all sounded like a vague mumbling. But I tried harder. Now, I could hear something. Yes – it really was quite clear after all:

La ilah illa Allah: Mohammed Rasul Allah. Allahu Akbaru. Allahu Akbar.

This they chanted over and again in their flat northern voices. I thought that I might once have been able to understand the words. But understanding even of words was also long since gone. At every pause in the chanting, however, Meekal – yes, he was there at the head of the class, scowling and pointing at the boys – would repeat his interpretation into English:

‘ La, “no”, “not”, “none”, “neither”; ilah, a “god”, “deity”, “object of worship”; illa, “but”, “except” (the word is a contraction of in-la, meaning “if not”); Allah, “Allah”. You, boy – yes, you – come to my office after the lesson…’

I opened my mouth to shout that a whole storm was coming on, and everyone would get soaked. But, even as I took in the breath, I was interrupted by the call from above. It came from the now white-painted bell tower:

Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar Ashadu an la ilaha Allah Ashadu an la ilaha Allah Ashadu anna Mohammedan rasulah

…

Where the bell had been, there was now a platform. There, in the highest place of what had, in ancient times, been the monastery, sat Brother Cuthbert. The once shaven face was now covered with a beard of red and grey. The tonsure was hidden beneath a turban. Arms upheld, he summoned the Faithful to prayer in a menacing drone. Twenty feet below him, Wilfred scurried about like a lizard on the wall. I think he was trying to reach the platform. But Cuthbert’s words seemed to present a barrier to further progress up the wall. Despairingly, the boy looked down at me. As in Cartenna, the teeth were long and white. They projected far over the full, dark lips. All this I could somehow see very clearly. I could even see the pattern of the tower’s stonework as it showed through the insubstantial body.