The Sword of Damascus

by Richard Blake

  The boy shook his head. He repeated that the plan had been to use the design advantages of this ship so far as possible and keep away from the shore. There was no reason why Hrothgar should have shared any more with him than I’d already been told. But I did know that, ever since we’d had to put in to gather wood for a broken mast, we’d never managed to recover the course Hrothgar had had in mind.

  ‘Do you suppose, Master, we are to be attacked?’ Wilfred asked from deep within the folds of his hood. He might have been asking if the wind was about to change.

  ‘No reasonable doubt of it,’ I said. I glanced at Edward. He at least was looking scared. ‘Do you see how the fleet is bearing down on us in that crescent formation?’ I tapped the deck with my stick to show our own position, and then traced an invisible crescent a few inches beyond to show the formation of the fifteen battle ships. ‘The idea is for the outer ships to overtake us. You see how small and light they are relative to their sails and the number of their oars? On a smoother sea than this, they can move with astonishing speed. The bigger ships in the centre don’t move so fast. But you really don’t want to come within a few hundred yards of them. The biggest ship of all will be controlling all the others – coordinating their moves into a single and quite deadly weapon. The cusps of the crescent will overtake us. The whole thing will then close in on us like some giant pincer. If we don’t surrender at once, there will be grappling hooks fired at us from the larger ships. After that, it’s boarding.’

  Wilfred calmly folded his arms and fought to suppress the renewed coughing fit. I looked round at a noise behind me. It was Edward, now carrying a spiked mace so heavy, it bumped on the deck beside him.

  ‘Will there be fighting?’ he asked, trying to look fierce.

  Where his rain-soaked clothes clung to him, he looked absolutely lush. A shame he’d not be going back to Jarrow, I thought again. I smiled.

  ‘I’m sure the crew is up to a fight,’ I said. ‘But once those grappling hooks slam into the side of this ship, it’s numbers that will count.’ Edward’s face fell again. Before I could really enjoy the sight, I sniffed at the rising wind that had brought the sound of the drums. ‘Can you smell burning?’ I asked.

  ‘There are things on the larger ships that look like big spoons,’ Edward replied. ‘Do you think they might be catapults? They’ve been loaded with what look like bundles of burning cloth.’

  I gripped the side of the ship and tried harder to see across the water. ‘Tell me,’ I asked, a cold feeling rising out of my stomach, ‘can you see bronze tubes projecting from any of those ships?’

  Edward shook his head and gave a better description of the charged catapults.

  I was only slightly relieved. Even I could see the speed at which the fleet was approaching. I’d never have thought it possible for the formation to be kept up in weather like this. No one but a fool could think this was to be a prearranged or even peaceful meeting. If orders had been given for a capture, this was an odd way to go about obeying them. This was an attack. Bearing in mind the price of those pitch bags, the catapults hadn’t been charged to scare us into surrender. It was an attack preparatory to sinking. I turned to the pilot, who was standing a few yards to my left.

  ‘Cancel the order to try going round those ships,’ I said. ‘Can we outrun them?’ I thought again of the hundred or so oarsmen aboard each of the attacking ships. I thought of them against fifty strong but semi-drunken northerners – fewer if we were to keep any fighting ability on deck.

  ‘Piece of piss!’ The man laughed. ‘But why not just ram through them?’ He cleared his throat and spat appreciatively.

  I thought about his suggestion. He knew more about his ship’s capabilities than I did. It was a heavy ship, and I had no doubt it could smash up even a big battle ship. But we’d be rowing into the wind. We were too heavy and hadn’t the oarsmen to keep up the required speed once we’d broken through the crescent. But we did have that big sail, and the wind was picking up by the moment. The battle ships, I knew, were good for sprinting and darting about. If we could get away, they didn’t have the means for extended chase. And in this sea, they’d take in a lot of water if they tried for speed over any distance.

  But the wind was blowing from the west. If we raised the sail, we’d be hurrying further into a sea that I badly wanted to leave. If we did outrun it, that fleet would still be about, potentially blocking any further attempted dart to the west. If we did manage to get past it, we might still find ourselves chased from the east by another fleet. Then we’d be fucked for sure.

  I strained to look into the dark skies to our west. That way was Richborough. All my plans had been based on a slow rowing into the wind. Once through the Narrow Straits, the northerners would be back in waters they knew and could manage with the sail. I’d been almost counting the days off to the moment when we could touch shore at Richborough and send word for Theodore to come down from Canterbury with his money bags. Now, that bastard fleet blocked the way. I sighed and nodded to the pilot. While I was helped back to my sodden daybed, the ship pitched and rolled horribly as the sail came flapping down and took the full power of the wind.

  It wasn’t before time. Even as I looked up again, I could see the bright streak of flame against the grey of the sky. As the burning pitch bag came closer, I could hear its fluttering buzz through the air. It fell short – though only by a few dozen yards. But then I felt the shudder as one of the six-foot iron-tipped arrows crashed into our side. Had I left it too late with my dithering? If we didn’t pick up speed soon enough, or if the wind dropped down, there was every chance of a lucky hit. One hole in that bulging sailcloth, and the whole would split from top to bottom. With everything wagered on the sail and its already damaged mast, we couldn’t afford a lucky hit.

  But if the ships on the arms of that pincer came closer and closer, the distance did eventually widen. Other huge arrows flew overhead or smashed into the side. More of those fiery bundles landed behind us – and I could hear the hiss as they struck the grey water. But now the great sail was filled with air as if it were an inflated bladder, and the mast held. It held for all the dubious upward looks, and for all the continued distribution of arms about the deck. One moment, the battle ships were so close that even I could see the little figures darting about on the upper decks, and the archers watching us from the rigging. Another moment, and the whole battle fleet was a receding blur.

  The crew let up a ferocious cheer. Perhaps the largest man on board sucked his moustaches in as he took a great lungful of air for shouting something long and obscene back towards the failing pursuit. Someone sat me roughly forward and patted my back until I coughed. Someone else pressed a wine cup into my hands. Whatever might be said against the notion, I was their wizard. For the second time in two days, they somehow believed I’d got them out of trouble. Whatever lay in wait at the end of this dash to the east would need more than the magic I’d shown them so far. I’d have to think of something. But that huge, articulated pincer was half a mile behind us. It could open and shut as it pleased. We were beyond its reach.

  ‘Take me to my cabin,’ I called weakly in Latin. No one came to help me to my feet. I looked over to the stern of the ship. Just beside the tiller, Edward and Wilfred were locked in what looked like a tremendous row. I strained to hear them, but the flapping of the sail overhead drowned out the snatches of shouted argument that blew towards me. I waved at them, but neither paid any attention. Wilfred suddenly gripped his chest, and I saw his body shake with coughs. But he never let up his own side of the shouted argument. I turned to the man who’d given me the wine. ‘Take me inside,’ I ordered. ‘Also, do have the pilot attend on me before the celebratory beer is handed round.’

  Chapter 14

  ‘What the fuck do you suppose you were doing?’ I snarled at the two boys. Holding on to each other against the continuous pitching of the ship, they stood before me in my cabin. Outside, the wind was raging, and great belts of spray crashed ag
ainst the walls. ‘What little control I have over these animals depends on my pretence of calm assurance. Can you imagine the effect on this pretence when the two of you start a public shouting match and nearly come to blows?’ More for warmth than any hope of a youthful appearance, I clapped the wig on my head and glared at the boys.

  A defiant look on his face, Edward stared back at me. Legs shaking from the effort of holding his place, Wilfred looked intently at a spot on the floor.

  ‘I tell you, it was him,’ Edward repeated.

  I raised a hand to silence him. ‘Very well,’ I said. ‘I discount that you’re lying to put me off any return to England. If you think you saw him, that’s good reason in itself. I won’t question the sharpness of your eyes, or your ability to recognise faces when they aren’t where they ought to be.’ And I didn’t think it worth questioning either in Edward. I looked at Wilfred. He was pale and still trembling after his attack, but otherwise holding steady. ‘You tell me, boy, why you don’t believe it was Brother Joseph.’

  His answer, if reasonable, was wholly unsatisfactory. He couldn’t deny that the man who’d stood on the prow of the battle ship, at one point not fifty yards from us, had looked like Brother Joseph. All he could say against Edward was that it couldn’t have been Brother Joseph. If we’d been discussing alleged miracles, the argument from common sense would have been decisive. But there was no need of any miracle for Joseph to have been looking at us from across the water and urging on a battle fleet that had been ordered to sink us. If we’d got this far from Jarrow, why not he also?

  Of course, I was at one with Wilfred in hoping it hadn’t been him. It wasn’t that I shared any of his sense of scandal that a man of the Church could be urging on our destruction. Rather, it was the endless range of possibilities – all equally disturbing – that would be raised from admitting that Edward might not have been mistaken.

  ‘Very well,’ I said, trying to look unrattled, ‘let us allow that it might have been Brother Joseph. I know more of his background than you do, and he would not have been out of place where Edward believes he saw him.’ I was now thinking aloud. An audience even of boys made for more connected thought than if I’d withdrawn to my cot with a flask of heated wine. I motioned them into their now usual places at the table, and closed my eyes to fight off the returning tiredness.

  ‘Edward,’ I asked, trying to sound in control of things, ‘I will ask you again if your kinsman Hrothgar told you anything about the details of my abduction. I want you to think hard and tell me anything you know. Anything – no matter how trivial you may think it – may be of use in our present circumstances.’

  ‘He wasn’t really my kinsman,’ Edward replied slowly. ‘He took me on after my parents died of the sweating pestilence.’

  I thought back. England is a wretchedly unhealthy place, and there isn’t a year without something nasty to thin the population. But the epidemic he mentioned had touched Jarrow two years earlier. That might in itself have been interesting. I sat forward. ‘Did you know him before he took over your care?’ I asked.

  The boy shook his head. Hrothgar had arrived in the village a few days after most of the people there had died. He’d carefully inspected all the surviving boys before giving food and drink to Edward alone. He’d then paid for some kind of education from a drunken hermit before pushing him in the direction of our monastery.

  ‘Would it shock you,’ I asked again, ‘if I supposed Hrothgar had chosen you for a scheme he already had in mind?’

  Again, he shook his head. Between beatings, there had been some regard between them, but no real affection. He accepted that his childhood had ended with that visit of the pestilence. From that moment, he’d been simply the instrument of a stranger’s will.

  ‘He promised me that I’d see the world,’ Edward told me. I let my face soften for a moment before pulling it back into my pitiless stare. ‘He said I’d see cities paved with gold and silver, where no rain ever fell, and where food was given to all who were hungry.’

  With the partial exception of this last, that didn’t sound like the Empire I knew. But I continued probing. Had he ever collaborated with Brother Joseph? Had he been given any indication that Joseph might be part of Hrothgar’s plan?

  ‘He beat me when I didn’t understand his triangles,’ came the reply. ‘He called me a moron, and said he’d get me thrown out of the monastery.’

  Wilfred nodded in support. Brother Joseph, he added, had believed that Euclidian geometry was not only self-evidently true, but also intuitively known – with a little beating – to anyone but the mentally deficient.

  I’d get round to asking more about Joseph. I’d often been puzzled how the most reasonable of men could turn, in front of a few dozen schoolboys, into a gloating tyrant. For the moment, it was enough to know that, if there had been more than one conspiracy afoot in Jarrow, they had been entirely separate. I’d already extracted from Edward confirmation of what I’d already guessed – that there had been two separate attacks on the monastery. Hrothgar had turned up with his own men to find others already in place. There had been an argument and then a fight in which the Chieftain had been killed. None of the survivors of the Chieftain’s band had been in the know about what was going on, and those who didn’t go back across the sea in their own boat had joined willingly enough in Hrothgar’s mission. Edward had been told nothing of any timings. His instructions were simply to wait on events. It would never do to call in the crew for questioning. In any event, they too were on a need-to-know basis. If Hrothgar had not set out with any pilot, was that because the other attack had forced him to bring everything forward? If only Edward had been able to answer my questions . . .

  That’s one of the problems of need-to-know conspiracies. The advantage is that they’re much harder to discover. You can catch the agents. Even under torture, they can generally say nothing of the principals. On the other hand, given any space of time or distance such conspiracies can turn very brittle. Here, there had been immense spaces of both, and just about everything had gone wrong.

  When the two boys were alone with each other, they might recall or infer something else. For the moment, I’d got out of them all they had to give. There was a burst of wild shouting on the deck outside, and the ship gave a sudden shudder as if it had hit something. But if the shouting continued, the ship resumed its headlong race before the still rising winds. Whatever else was happening outside, we didn’t seem likely to sink. Without thinking to point at it and look helpless, I bent creakily down and took my wine cup from where it had been rolling on the floor. I looked round for something to put in it. No luck there. I sighed, and fought to summarise our present state of knowledge.

  ‘It seems reasonable to believe,’ I opened, ‘that Hrothgar was engaged at least two years ago to supervise my abduction from the monastery. It is possible that the Master of the Offices in Constantinople was behind this. It’s the sort of coup that got him preferment in the first place. This could have run parallel with a later change of heart by Constantine himself – he did send that delegation the Easter before last with promises of full rehabilitation that I’m not inclined to disbelieve. Now that Constantine is dead – or just out of power – his heir Justinian may have decided against having me back and sent orders to have me killed. That would explain the earlier attack on the monastery that Hrothgar foiled.’

  ‘So Brother Joseph was working with the first group to have you killed?’ Wilfred asked. He ran trembling fingers through his hair and looked for a moment as if he might start vomiting blood again.

  I supposed he was still coming to terms with such enormity from a man of God. I shrugged. In truth, though, I’d had Cuthbert in mind for this. I thought again of that sealed packet of documents he’d had hidden away. I wished I’d opened it when I had the chance. Would they have explained his eagerness to get the gate open? Was he the insider for that failed attack? If so, I didn’t see any evidence for contact with Edward beyond the carnal. Nor could I th
ink of any evidence that suggested cooperation with Joseph.

  And Joseph was the hard one to explain. Hrothgar and Cuthbert made sense within the hypothesis. Each was certainly or probably attached to one of the two bands of raiders. I knew one was there to capture me. I guessed the other was there to help get me killed. But what had Joseph been up to? If Edward was right, he’d just now been trying to kill me. Yet if he’d wanted me dead in Jarrow he had only to put something in my drink, or press a folded cloth into my face as I slept.

  Of course, if there had been two conspiracies, each with different principals, there might easily have been three. And once these things came in contact, there was no predicting or even explaining their course. But this was the sort of tangled web that I’d seen long before, when Phocas was Emperor, or in the early days of Heraclius. If this was how the Imperial Secret Service worked now, it was evident that my own reforms had gone backwards since my departure.

  I took my wig off again and scratched. I noticed both boys still looking expectantly at me – as if they believed I could explain everything to them as neatly and authoritatively as I might in class with some difficulty of word order in Horace. I smiled and dabbed at my nose – thin snot, I was glad to say, not blood.

  ‘The problem with most hypotheses,’ I wearily said, ‘is the presence of facts that don’t fit within them but can’t be ignored. We could agree that Edward was deceived earlier today. And it was a time when the eye can see much that isn’t there.’ I raised a hand to silence Edward’s objection. ‘But I do think it was Brother Joseph on the deck of that Imperial battle ship. This raises difficulties that I will neither outline nor attempt to resolve. But they indicate that we must either reject our present hypothesis outright, or elaborate it to the point where it breaks down for want of further supporting evidence.’ I stopped and thought. ‘There is another possibility that I do not yet think worth exploring – though it does begin to trouble me.’ I stopped again. Yes, it was troubling. But I would have to think more about that one.