Richard Blake - The Blood of Alexandria

‘If you want relics, I’ll get you an appointment with the local Patriarch. He might be more accommodating than His Holiness of Jerusalem. I believe Alexandria has the head of Saint Mark, both feet of John the Baptist, and three right hands of Saint John the Divine. But there’s no holy piss pot that I know about – not of Jesus Christ, nor of anyone else likely to inspire your men.’

‘My sources are confidential,’ Priscus snapped, ‘but I have it on good authority the relic is where I’ve said.’

I changed the subject. ‘Have you any soldiers with you?’ I asked. An interesting thought had come into my mind. I’d rather Priscus had been stuck in a tent somewhere close by Armenia. Since he wasn’t, I might as well find some use in him.

But he shook his head. He’d come alone and in secrecy.

‘Never mind,’ I said. ‘You are Commander of the East, and I doubt if any of the notables here have been introduced to a military dignitary close to your exalted status. You must allow yourself to be guest of honour at tonight’s dinner. All the big men of Egypt will be there. And I think I can promise the Viceroy for you to sit beside.’

I took up the little bell from my desk and rang it.

‘Ah, Martin,’ I said as the door opened. ‘The Lord Caesar Priscus will be in Alexandria for at least the next few days. Please ask Macarius to make all necessary preparations in the Palace.’

Martin bowed. He let his fingers rasp ever so lightly on the papyrus sheet he was carrying.

‘A productive afternoon with our friend?’ I asked.

Martin nodded.

I ignored Priscus and his unspoken query. ‘That is excellent. My compliments to the pair of you.’

Again to Priscus: ‘When my steward arrives, you will surely do me the honour of letting me accompany you to your suite. If I’m not mistaken, one of your rooms will be the office where Cleopatra killed herself.’

I was awake. At first, all was silent in the darkness around me. I was alone in bed. That much I knew even as my head cleared. With the Patriarch scowling away through dinner, there had been no dancing girls. And, out of respect, we’d used the older serving boys.

I’d come to bed alone. So why was I awake? Instinctively, I reached under the pillow. Then the tiny voice spoke out of the darkness: ‘Daddy!’

I relaxed and focused on the dim shape. ‘Maximin,’ I said. I reached out and took his hand. As he clutched at me, I took him into my arms. There was no point in trying to get any sense out of him. I knew at once it had been another of his nightmares. With ‘uncle’ Priscus in town, it was hardly surprising. The man gave me bad dreams.

Now he was pushing two, the boy was finally growing bigger. Even so, he remained against my big barbarian chest and arms what that puppy was to him. Whispering comfort, I rocked him gently until he was asleep again. I thought to put him into bed with me and go back to sleep. But it would only have set the nursery maids into another panic when they finally woke. I waited until his breathing was completely regular, then slid out of bed and put on a gown.

The lamps burned low in the airless corridors. Night had brought no let-up in the baking heat, and the slightest movement had me dripping sweat. Maximin was normally light enough to carry, but holding him away from the furnace of my body was a strain that did nothing for my temper.

‘I thought I’d made it clear to lock the nursery at night,’ I hissed at the chief maid when I’d gently kicked some life into her. She opened her mouth to reply. I raised my hand for silence. ‘We’ll discuss this tomorrow,’ I said.

I watched her tuck the child back into his bed and arrange the netting above him, and waited until it was clear he’d sleep without break until morning.

Was that a flash of light?

I went softly over by the window. But it looked into a courtyard. Far overhead, the stars burned steadily down. I stretched out for a better view. I could see the reflected glare of the half moon on an area of roof tiles. There was nothing otherwise to be seen from here. Leaving the shutters open, I gently pulled down the reed blinds.

Outside again in the corridor, I waited until I heard the faint click of the door lock. Going back towards my bedroom, I reached one of the corridor junctions. Turning left would take me straight back to bed. Right would lead me out of the wing of the Palace assigned to me and my household. I thought briefly. About a hundred yards to the right, I recalled there was a staircase going up.

The inspection rooms had the advantage of greater height. In this sweltering heat, though, I preferred the openness of the main roof. Its flat span interrupted by the various courtyards and by the big central garden, this covered most of the Palace area and was mostly paved. It was sometimes used for theatrical performances, though more often for transacting business where much light was needed. It might now catch the occasional breeze.

I leaned on the rail that separated paved from tiled areas. I was on the seaward side of the Palace, and stood looking roughly north over the Harbour. Over to my left, the Lighthouse shone brightly, its curved mirrors taking and concentrating light from the burning oil in ways that no one nowadays had been able to explain to me. Because of its much greater height, its beams would reach beyond any horizon visible from where I stood.

Or they normally would. Tonight, there was a storm far out to sea. Those repeated and intense if irregular flashes left no doubt what was happening. Far out, beyond my horizon, the sea and the wind would be running wild. No ship that had dared a night voyage would ever get out of that howling chaos. We’d skirted a few storms on our crossing here from Constantinople. If they’d been nothing like this must be, they had almost made me reconsider my prejudice against long journeys by road.

But if a great storm, it was far out. Here on land, there was scarcely a gust of wind. It was enough to scatter the reflection of a few stray lamps on the Harbour, but no more than that. Down in the parks that fringed the Harbour, the palm fronds hung still on the trees. Around me, the dust lay still on the moonlit pavements. Suffused with the aromatic scent of the shrubs dotted in bronze pots over that roof, the air lay about me with the hot stillness of a bathhouse.

What the bloody hell was I doing here? I asked myself. And I wasn’t asking why I was out of bed. This whole way of life wasn’t anything I’d once have chosen for myself.

Yes, I had power. Priscus hadn’t been far off the mark when he said I ran Egypt. In the sense that I could squeeze any function of state into my commission, I was limited only by the time I could get with Nicetas to sign the required documents. But what is the use of power? If you stand outside government and look at all those levers and pulleys, you can imagine the good or evil that power enables. From the inside, all you really know is impotence. Either those ropes and pulleys are too immovable, or they pull easily enough, but aren’t attached to anything that produces the desired effect.

Look at me with the new law. I had the Word of Caesar behind me. I could in theory have any one of those landowners taken up and flogged. In the event, I was reduced to negotiating with them from a position of structural weakness.

It was the same even at the top. Phocas had killed his way to the Purple, and had killed and killed and killed to stay there. In the end, he’d still been dragged out of that monastery to serve as first public victim of the new reign. And before that end, it was a quiet day when he wasn’t signing begging letters to the Pope for money, or promising money he didn’t have to barbarian raiders he hadn’t the means to drive off by force.