Richard Blake - The Sword of Damascus

I shook my head. ‘The demonstration, I promise, will be a complete success,’ I said. ‘It will be everything you could ever expect. I only ask you to remember your promise.

‘But you’d better go,’ I said wearily. ‘You can imagine the sort of day I’ve had out in the desert. And I need somehow to get through tomorrow. Yes, go – just go.’

For the first time in ages, I didn’t bother with opium that night. I let the slaves get me to bed. As ever, I said I’d have no one to sit beside me. While someone got up on a stool to put out the lamps, I looked up at the fresh plaster above my bed, and breathed in its damp smell. It reminded me of the house I’d once bought in Rome. I’d been only twenty then. I’d lived for months surrounded by that smell. It was something I’d ever since associated with hope and youth. I’d laughed at the suggestion of a move to some other room. I took a sip of water and wished a good night to the slaves. I then lay back and closed my eyes. It was like falling in darkness into a bath of exactly blood heat.

I was back on my diverted ship to Athens. The Captain had told me we were now just a day from Piraeus, and a shift in the autumn winds meant we’d be approaching through the Saronic Gulf from the west. That meant I’d be able to see the place where, over a thousand years before, the Athenians had surprised and sunk the Persian fleet.

‘What do you suppose would have happened had the Athenians lost?’ I asked of Martin. He leaned beside me on the side of the ship, looking over the flat waters of an early morning. They had a surprisingly dark, oily sheen about them. ‘I mean, suppose the Persians had brought all their superiority to bear, and the Athenian fleet had been routed. In the short term, the Persians would have finished conquering Greece. Xerxes would have gone home in triumph. And what would that have meant for the whole subsequent history of the world?’

I’d often had these ‘what if?’ conversations with Martin, and I expected him now to insist that the Athenian victory was the work of God. How otherwise would the Greeks have spread their language and ways over the world, and then had this fixed and preserved after their own conquest by Rome? Since the result was the stage on which was played out the drama of the Gospels, it had to happen. To suppose otherwise was inconceivable. However, he didn’t rise to the bait. Instead, he let go of the rail, and, surprisingly stable for him, walked a few paces back along the deck.

‘I’ve been waiting for you a very long time,’ he said from behind me. I turned and frowned at him. ‘Everyone else I knew, and so many I never knew, have gone before you. I have given up wondering when I shall really see you again.’

I wanted to ask what he was talking about. But there was a jumble of thoughts glowing feebly away at the back of my mind. As I was still trying to choose the right words, Martin turned away from me and walked steadily across the deck to the stairs that led down to our living quarters.

I was alone on the deck – not a sailor in sight. Even Priscus, with his vomiting and his bag of drugs, would have been preferable to the deep silence that lay about me in all directions. There were no seabirds crying out, no fluttering of sails in any breeze. I heard not so much as the lapping of water against the keel of the ship. I gripped the rail and looked hard in the direction of where Athens surely lay.

The sun was now lifting itself above the line of clouds that fringed the eastern horizon. I squinted as I looked into its growing brightness, and raised my arms to take in its first warmth.

So it had always been. So it would always be.

The day of testing had arrived. Locking the gates behind them, all the workmen and all the guards had come out from the monastery. They took their places on the sand before the high wooden platform that had only just been completed. Mounted and fully armed, my own little army of guards kept a quiet but intent watch over the sands that led to the distant hills.

‘You’ve chosen a nice day for the demonstration,’ I said with an irrelevant look at the sky. Meekal said nothing. He’d varied his normal black with a green and purple turban to show his own exalted office. ‘So, when does the Caliph put in his appearance?’ I asked. ‘Any news yet that he’s left Damascus?’

‘What’s in that box?’ Meekal asked.

I looked down at the lead canister I’d been holding to my chest. I’d now put it down on the sand, and someone had put a jug of fruit squash on top of it. I sat down on my stool and waited for the slave to arrange the sunshade over my head.

‘Oh, that’s a token of my thanks to His Majestic Holiness,’ I said easily. ‘I’ve so enjoyed his hospitality these past few months. I hope to enjoy rather more of it in the coming months. I’m told Damascus can be delightful in the autumn.’

He grunted and took a slip of papyrus from an attendant who’d just come over beside him. He stared at it and frowned.

‘You’ll be interested to know,’ he sneered in Latin, ‘that Karim was spotted this morning in Damascus. He was buying bread.’ I raised an eyebrow and gave him an artless smile. ‘I said I wouldn’t chase either of them. But if they now throw themselves into my hands, who am I to refuse any gift that God may send? You can watch the boy die in one of my dungeons. Karim I’ll have punished as befits an enemy of God. Unless you appear set to outlive me, however, I’ll allow you to live out your natural term. I think you’ll find it interesting.’

‘You really are too good to me, Michael,’ I replied. With a scrape of boots on sand, he turned and was away. He took his place among a group of bowing secretaries and put his mind to dealing with official duties. I thought I could make out the word ‘burning’ a few times. To be sure, I heard one mention of beheading. There’s nothing like clearing your accounts when out of sorts with the world. I leaned back and rested against the firm chest of a slave who knelt behind me.

It had been a busy morning, and the one stimulant draught Meekal had allowed me was wearing off. I looked up at the network of polished bone that kept the fabric of the shade in place. Where bone and fabric were joined with fine threads, little beads of sunshine gleamed like the lamps at a palace banquet. I listened idly to the droning voices of the secretaries a few yards away. I listened to the grating but quiet responses with which Meekal punctuated the droning. I didn’t recognise any of the names I managed to catch. But it was obvious he’d been busy all night with foiling the Khadija conspiracy. Now, unless I’d lost track of the time, he was pronouncing an unusual number of death sentences. Did even persons of quality not get a trial nowadays in Syria? I hadn’t bothered attending it, of course. But I’d at least been given one in Constantinople.

The best thing to do with tiredness in this heat is give way to it. The Caliph wasn’t due for ages yet. Why Meekal had got everyone out so absurdly early, to swelter away in this sun, and without adequate shade, was anyone’s guess. I pulled my visor properly down – less to see clearly than to block out some of that dazzling light – and leaned harder against the slave. I felt the blackness sweep over me now in earnest. Soon, I was deep into another dream. I had now arrived in the Athens of my youth. I was walking briskly past the roofless shell of Hadrian’s Library, while Martin prattled on about nothing in particular. I think I’d made some money down in Piraeus or at dice, and I was looking for some way to get rid of Martin, so I could go about my proper business of celebrating in a brothel.

I woke with a sore neck and spent some while trying to work out where I was, and why I was beginning to feel my innards twitch with nervous strain.