I looked steadily back in silence. Benedict and the other monks stood outside for a long time, crossing themselves and praying as they watched our departure. At last, they went slowly back inside. Once I’d seen the heavy gate swing shut behind them, I slumped back on to the rough, charcoal-warmed cushions and breathed more easily. Whatever was to happen with me – whatever was to become of my little Wilfred – the monastery stood, and its precious work of civilisation could continue. It wasn’t work as I’d have arranged it. But it was the best that England was likely to get, and it hadn’t yet gone up in smoke.
I tried to ignore the smell of wet embers as we passed by what had been the village. I listened instead to the thin calls of the winter birds. Northumbria isn’t blessed with the kind of scenery that anyone would wish to look on before leaving for ever, so I turned my attention to the contents of the larger bag that had been dumped beside me.
‘Should I compliment you,’ I asked Edward, ‘on the appositeness of your packing the Acts of the Apostles in Greek? It does contain the best account I’ve ever seen of a shipwreck. Or was this a random selection?’
He gave me a thin smile. ‘You poked me hard with your stick when I suggested in class I might wish to learn Greek,’ he said. ‘You told me a scarecrow would sooner pass into your world of light than I could. Taking me there can now be the project that keeps you from more desperate thoughts.’
‘So you have a very long journey in mind?’ I asked with mock earnestness. Except for the hands, he was a pretty boy. One unbiased look at those regular features and the very blond hair, and it wasn’t hard to see why Cuthbert had fancied the arse off him. Twenty years – no, ten years – earlier, and I’d have been up to making a pass of my own.
‘How old were you when you got out of England?’ he asked.
‘I was eighteen,’ I answered, thinking back an age to King Ethelbert and his gelding knife, and good, kind Maximin who’d held him at bay by pure force of personality. ‘I was five years older than you are now.’ I smiled. He was no longer just pretty. The slow boy we’d all mocked and flogged through our various classes might have been stretched out as dead as worthless Cuthbert had been in the monastery. I was sitting now beside an entirely different young man. So far as I had any say in the matter, not dying on him might be interesting.
‘Did you ever intend coming back?’ he asked again.
‘No,’ I said. ‘As you will read of Saint Paul in Corinth, I shook the dust of England from my clothes and got on with the rest of my life. It has been a longer one than I think yours will be.’ I smiled. ‘But I suppose now is as good a time as any to begin your education.’
Chapter 7
‘You really must both get it out of your minds,’ I said, still in lecturing mode, ‘that the Empire “fell” in any meaningful sense. There is no doubt that, several hundred years ago, our own people and their cousins invaded the Western Provinces, and that these places – partly as a result – ceased to be administered from either of the Imperial capitals. The Eastern Provinces, however, passed unscathed through that long crisis; and the remaining Emperor in Constantinople continued as head of the richest and most powerful state in the world.’
‘But, surely, Master,’ Edward broke in, ‘the Saracens are completing the work of destruction. For the East, the fall has merely been delayed?’
I thought of correcting a misused deponent, but thought better of it. If the boy’s progress in Greek had been encouraging, his Latin had really blossomed. Even before we’d put in at our first Spanish port, he’d caught up with Wilfred. Now, none of us had used English in over a month. No loss there, to be sure – who’d speak a language like that from choice?
I shifted slightly in my daybed. The sun had moved, and the canopy above me no longer kept it from shining on me. Wilfred leaned over to rearrange the blanket that covered my legs. Another few inches, and it would be in the bowl of water where I was soaking my feet. I closed my eyes for a moment, and then tried to see across the two hundred yards that separated our ship at anchor from Cartenna. It was a useless effort. I looked back at the two boys who, waxed tablets in hand, stood before me. I noticed black stains on the thumb and two main fingers of Edward’s right hand. Practising his penmanship again, I thought approvingly.
‘I wouldn’t dismiss the Empire so casually,’ I replied, coming out of my little reverie. ‘We lost Egypt and Syria, and no one nowadays expects we shall get them back. We’re losing Africa a bite at a time. When that’s been all swallowed up, I expect the Saracens will cross into Spain. But Spain isn’t our problem, and Africa has for a long time been more trouble than it’s worth. If Egypt and Syria are to be regretted, we did stop the desert whirlwind from overblowing the Asiatic Provinces. Within those, plus European Greece and its islands, we now nurse our shattered strength and await the recovery of health. I do assure you that Constantinople will not fall to the Saracens. If you think it will, you haven’t comprehended the passive strength or the long ambitions of an impersonal and regular government. You also haven’t understood how, reduced to territories almost wholly Greek in language and Orthodox in religion, the Empire has found an internal unity it had not possessed in centuries – if ever. No, young Edward, don’t suppose the Empire will go away any time soon. It certainly won’t go before you’ve had your reward out of it.’
I looked at the boy’s face. It remained impassive. Not even the repeated ‘we’ had ruffled him. Before we could continue the lesson, one of the northerners came over. Edward was wanted by the ‘Lord’ Hrothgar, he barked in his own language. That, I saw, broke through the icy calm. If only briefly, the boy’s face took on a troubled look. Well it might. Some of the beatings he’d had in private from Hrothgar had kept me up at night.
Regarding language, by the way, Benedict had been right. What these people spoke was pretty close to English. It was a matter of paying attention and listening past those horrible consonant sounds. You can be sure I hadn’t let on I could understand them. Some knowledge is not to be advertised.
‘Can you forgive me, Master,’ Edward asked with ceremonious courtesy, ‘if I take further instructions?’
I made my best effort at a gracious bow and leaned back on to the cushions. If Edward was to have the stuffing knocked out of him again just because no one on the ship seemed to have the faintest clue about navigation in these waters, that was his problem. I at least could try to make the best of things.
‘May I begin now, Master?’ Wilfred asked.
I opened my eyes again and nodded. My feet had been soaking long enough. Wilfred got down on his hands and knees and set about me with his block of pumice stone.
‘You’re a good boy,’ I said with a contented yawn. ‘Don’t spare your efforts on the left big toe. The hard skin there is beginning to hurt again.’
‘It will be as you wish, Master,’ came the obedient reply.
I looked down at the boy as he huddled over my feet. The gentler sea and the growing warmth of the February sun were doing me no end of good. If I say that twelve days in the Mediterranean had restored me to vigour, I’d be exaggerating. But there was no doubt I was feeling better than I had in several years. I wished I could say the same for Wilfred. Below that head of matted, greasy hair, he was still little more than a bag of bones.
‘Have you been here before, Master?’ he asked.
‘No,’ I said. I paused and allowed myself another sip of bad Spanish wine. ‘In all my years of service to the Empire, I made only one trip to Africa. That was about twenty years ago, when I came west with Constans. He was father of the present Emperor.’ I thought fondly of my last Lord and Master who’d really appreciated my services. Yes, he’d raped a nun in front of the Patriarch, and generally hadn’t gone out of his way to win friends and influence people. But he’d slowed the Saracens and left internal affairs to me. I hadn’t been making it up when I spoke about the Empire’s recovery of health. You can enable wonderful things with lower taxes and less control. If only his wretche
d successor hadn’t . . .
But I brought myself back to the present. ‘While he was on his looting pilgrimage in Rome,’ I said of Constans, ‘I spent a few months in Carthage trying to sort out the finances. I was so busy there, I never actually went beyond the walls. But I know Cartenna from the description of its double church. The place is a few hundred miles west of Carthage.
‘If we aren’t making direct for the capital, it may be the place has been lost to the Saracens – though, with Carthage gone, I’m not sure how anywhere else in Africa can be held. Mind you, I am assuming what is by no means beyond doubt – that these people know where they are going.’ I stopped again and thought of the rising tension aboard this big, heavy ship. In the open seas beyond the Mediterranean, I’d been impressed by how well Hrothgar and his crew of hired trash had worked the ship. Despite the endless and insane pitching, there had never seemed any chance that we’d go down. Ever since we’d entered the great, enclosed sea around which all civilisation had arranged itself, however, it had grown increasingly plain that we were lost. What could have been in Hrothgar’s mind when he’d come through the Narrow Straits without a pilot? It was almost funny that I’d been the only man aboard able to give our whereabouts as Cartenna.
As I opened my mouth to try for a bitter laugh, Wilfred dropped his pumice stone and gripped hard for a moment on my left foot. I took hold of the daybed and pulled myself forward to see him. He’d let go of my foot and was now huddled into a tight ball on the deck. His body shook with suppressed coughing. Then, with a soft groan, he opened his mouth for another long vomit. There was no retching this time. It was just a mass of clotted blackness that stank of blood. I pushed him with the head of my stick so he wouldn’t collapse into it, and got myself upright.
‘Drink this,’ I said with soft yet urgent authority. I’d got myself down on to my knees and was trying to straighten the boy. Even I was able to hold his head and shoulders up in one arm as, with the other, I held my cup to his lips. ‘Drink and look hard up at the sky,’ I commanded. I dipped the sleeve of my outer robe in the wine and dabbed at the bloody froth on the grey, bloodless lips. He clutched at his stomach with shaking hands and squeezed his eyes shut.
‘Open your eyes, Wilfred,’ I commanded in my firmest voice. ‘Open your eyes and look at that rope swinging from the front mast. Have you never noticed how often I’ve sat here looking at it? Have you never noticed how, whatever the distance it covers, each motion back and forth takes the same time? There is an inverse relationship between speed and distance. Think how there is an order in the world about us, and how this can be explained in mathematical terms.’ I’d got the boy’s attention. While he looked at the rope held taut along its length by the block of wood at its bottom, I repeated myself and elaborated on a set of ratios you’ll not find anywhere in the writings of that fool Aristotle.
‘It is proof of God’s providence,’ he gasped at length. That wasn’t quite how I saw it. But this was more a distraction than a lesson, and I nodded eagerly. ‘It is a sign of God’s boundless love for the world,’ he added. I painted on a smile of agreement, and cast round for some appropriate text from Scripture. ‘But, Master, surely God has abandoned me,’ he wailed, going straight off the path I’d appointed for him.
I sighed. Unless I could think of something fast, we’d be back to the confused ramblings of our journey through the grey, mountainous waters that lay beyond the Narrow Straits. Then, barely noticing myself, I’d forced him into my own heated cot, and plied him with soup and encouraging words, as he’d snivelled on about the torments that surely waited for him beyond the grave. Edward hadn’t been at all pleased: I, after all, was the one who had to be kept alive. In truth, I’d been pretty pissed off at times. I didn’t fancy any return to that.
Chapter 8
I was saved from having to deliver another lecture on theodicy and teleology by a loud crash over on the right. Someone had cut another of the dangling ropes, and the block it was supporting now fell heavily on to the deck. His spasm over, his reflections on the coming fires of Hell forgotten for the moment, Wilfred sat up and looked round. That was my chance. I got my arms about his chest and dragged him to his feet. I guided him over to the side of the ship and got him to breathe in and out. In and out, in and out, he breathed. I could feel the return of his limited strength. Relieved, I looked over at the shore.
And this was Cartenna. I could have no doubts of that. I shaded my eyes and again tried to look through the glare of the morning sun to see the details of the place. There were a few trading ships in the harbour, and I could see the two churches. I could say nothing beyond that. The city might still be a busy port. Just as easily, it might be as derelict and as empty of people as everywhere else we’d touched on this voyage.
‘Look, Master!’ Wilfred cried weakly.
I followed his shaking finger. Fifty yards over on the right from the direction I’d been looking, there was the rowing boat the northerners had seized during one of their supply raids on the French coast. With a couple of the biggest northerners to pull on the oars, Edward and Hrothgar had set out for the shore. Edward sat very still, his body radiating sullen hostility. Hrothgar’s voice had its slurred, nagging tone about it. I couldn’t hear what he was saying. But I had no doubt there’d be another beating tonight. Bad luck, Edward, I thought complacently. Still, until he faded to a blur, Edward looked most fetching in his white tunic. It wasn’t just his Latin that had blossomed since leaving Jarrow. In that fairly short time, he’d grown from pretty boy into a rather scary beauty.
And I wasn’t the only one who’d noticed. It didn’t take perfect vision to see how the northerners currently on deck had left off their work and were leaning over the side, the lust plain on their horrid faces. Forget the lack of any pilot, I told myself: this alone would be trouble for Hrothgar. None of it, sadly, would be of my making. When I was younger, I believed the conventional wisdom that lust is abolished by age. I then found that, if lust may be dulled, all that really goes is the ready means of satisfying it.
‘I suppose we need more supplies,’ I said, trying not to sound as morose as I suddenly felt. ‘Since it’s just the two of them, we can assume some intention to pay. I wonder why we’ve anchored so far out, rather than gone in to dock?’ I looked again into the harbour. If the exchange was to be made here, I was surely worth a convoy for taking back to Constantinople. There wasn’t so much as a single Imperial galley moored against the docks. It probably was just a matter of supplies.
But I pulled myself together. I plucked at Wilfred’s sleeve. I tried to ignore how loose it hung on his arm. If possible, he might have been still smaller now than he’d been three years before, when he’d been sent to me with Bede to improve his Latin. I pointed at my slippers that I’d left beside the bowl, and waited for him to struggle back to his knees and get them on to my feet. We were going on another of the slow circuits of this ship that served for my daily exercise. Since the boards were new and not properly planed, I had no wish to pick up any more splinters.
‘Listen,’ I said, ‘this is our first proper time alone in over a month. It may well be our last. There are things we need to discuss. It’s pretty obvious I’ve been lifted by the Emperor, and we’re on our way to Constantinople. What will happen there with me is impossible to say. But the moment we dock and the palace officials take charge of me, your own value as a hostage will be at least diminished. When that happens, I want you to grab the first excuse for a getaway. This time, I rather hope you’ll be a little faster than you were in Jarrow. I want you to get yourself to the Nunnery of the Blessed Theodora. It’s where the main wall joins the Golden Horn. The Abbess there is the great-niece of someone I knew well in the old days. Tell her I sent you. She’ll see you come to no harm. Whether you see Jarrow again, or even Rome, is another matter. But that much I can do for you.’
‘Surely, Master,’ came the predictable reply, ‘surely, I shall never see Constantinople or anywhere else. Long before the
n, I shall be paying for my sins.’
I thought of bringing him to his senses with a hard poke in the chest. But that might easily have knocked him to the deck. Besides, his face was taking on a more cheerful look.
‘And,’ he began again, ‘I remember how, the Easter before last, we were visited in the monastery by the Emperor’s representatives. You told me then that they had made fair promises. Whatever refusal you made at the time, I cannot see how the objective circumstances will have changed. Your state of health could not be known in Constantinople. If you are wanted for punishment, it would make better sense to have killed you in Jarrow. If you are now going back, therefore, it is unlikely to be for punishment.’
It was a fair point. I thought again of that clerical shitbag Alexius. Silly of me to have supposed he was the last I’d hear from the Empire. Certainly, if I’d paid attention to him then, we’d not be here now. I stopped and took hold of the ship’s rail. We hadn’t gone far from my daybed. Now, guessing my wishes, Wilfred went back for my cup. He brought it back invitingly full. Sadly, it carried more promise of cheer than performance – one part wine, three of water. I pulled a face. Edward was far more generous about refills. But I smiled and looked into the bright if sunken eyes.
The Sword of Damascus Page 5
