He paused as he unrolled a book. It was the skilled movement of one who hadn’t been brought up on the more convenient modern books of bound parchment, and the aged papyrus bent in his hands without cracking. His finger hovered over one of the columns of text. I leaned forward and tried to see upside down what he was showing. The columns were only two inches wide, and the ancient semi-shorthand would have been hard in any light. Hermogenes moved his watery eyes close to the text. Then he gave up on citation and gathered his thoughts.
‘The earliest mention of Soteropolis comes during the reign of the first King of all Egypt, whose name is rendered in Greek as Menes. This was many thousands of years ago. Soteropolis then was already very old. Its inhabitants were of conspicuously lighter appearance than the Egyptians, and they spoke a different language. No one knows their origin, but they were noted for their warlike pride and technical ingenuity, and it was only with much effort that they were reconciled to external authority.
‘Menes besieged Soteropolis for seven years, during which every effort to subdue its inhabitants was made in vain. Only after a pestilence that destroyed most of them, without communicating itself to the besiegers, did they agree to terms. These terms were that they would abandon their town and take up service directly under the King and his successors.
‘Settled by Egyptians, its name translated to their own language as ‘‘City of Salvation”, Soteropolis continued to be a place of troubles. It was said that the ghosts of the original inhabitants would venture forth when the Nile flood was below its normal level. At those times, there would be further outbreaks of pestilence. The Greeks, for whom the town was emptied of natives in the time of the third Ptolemy and renamed again, coined the phrase: “When the Nile is low, death will walk the streets of Soteropolis”.
‘The most deadly attack of pestilence occurred in the reign of Nero, when the Nile failed to rise properly for two years together. Then the people of Soteropolis, together with all their household goods, were transferred to a new foundation about five miles to the south. That was the Soteropolis that was finally abandoned in the time of Diocletian, when it was clear that the pestilence had followed the inhabitants.’
‘If it was that deadly,’ I asked, ‘why hold the Library’s reserve stock there?’
‘It was the decision,’ Hermogenes said with a shrug, ‘of Eratosthenes, the third in the line of Head Librarians. He specialised in natural philosophy, and was noted for his calculations to establish the size of the earth and to attempt to fix the distance from us of the heavenly bodies. He said an oracle had assured him that Soteropolis was a propitious location for his continued researches. It is reported that he went mad in extreme old age after digging in the foundations of a ruined temple there. To be sure, his claim that the sun is ninety-three million miles distant from us can be taken as the product of a disordered mind.
‘Whether he died of his illness, or returned to Alexandria, I cannot say. But he spent the entire annual budget of the Library seven times over in Soteropolis, and it was never thought financially possible thereafter to undo his establishment there of the reserve stock holding.’
I’d come across how Eratosthenes measured the earth a few months earlier in the writings of another mathematician. It was a brilliantly simple application of Euclid. The data from which he’d reasoned might be questioned. But the method itself was beyond dispute. The claim about the sun was another matter. A few hundred miles made more sense. Still, I decided I’d like to go myself through the man’s no doubt voluminous writings. If they rested beneath the desert I’d seen around Soteropolis, that was another reason for getting back there as soon as possible with my little army of diggers.
‘All this being so,’ Hermogenes continued, ‘the Emperor would have seen nothing on his visit but the monument that you saw some way off, whatever lavish buildings housed the reserve stock. Assuming that his poem had been written for that occasion, and not reused from somewhere else, his words about the desolation around him were not wholly inaccurate.’
‘Very well,’ I said. ‘I can have everything ready within ten days. Would you care to accompany me on the excavation?’
‘No, My Lord,’ came the answer with a sad smile. ‘I am an old man. I have never yet left Alexandria for a journey into Egypt. I do not think now is the time to travel anywhere. Nevertheless, I think I can provide you with a better map than the one I gave you on your last visit.’
He’d given me a map? I looked blankly at him.
‘You will, My Lord, surely remember the package of documents I prepared just before you left for the south?’ He raised his eyebrows and looked slightly hurt that the days of work he’d put in hadn’t been appreciated.
I did remember them now. I’d skimmed a few of them and left the others for my return. After my adventures with Lucas, they’d slipped my mind. They were still somewhere in my office.
‘You gave me a map of Soteropolis?’ I asked.
‘Not a good one,’ he conceded. ‘It gave a few of the main locations. But I think I can turn up a much better map that will give the location of the reserve stock. I hope the distances will all be relative from the monument. This being so, you will know roughly where to dig.’
‘Then I do ask for your best efforts in finding this map,’ I said. I’d have liked to spend the entire day in and around that office. Forget Soteropolis – there was no telling what treasures might be crumbling quietly away in those racks. But I had business with Nicetas that wouldn’t wait. I rose.
‘Hermogenes,’ I said, ‘I want to thank you for all the work you’ve done so far, and all that you will continue to do in the service of the Empire. I will ask again if there is any reward I can give for all this – if not for you, then for the Library.’
He smiled, and repeated not for the first time that his only reward was the knowledge that able scholars still existed elsewhere in the Empire. If he could assist their efforts to the best of his own ability, he was content.
‘Your bribe of oil has certainly lubricated the mob,’ Nicetas had said at dinner the previous evening. Everyone had laughed politely at the witticism. But he was right. For the moment, I had soothed things. My chair was carried through streets as crowded and apparently as cheerful as ever. The shops and exchanges had all reopened. I came across a couple of my Jews as I passed by the Law Courts. They touched their foreheads and bowed in their Eastern manner as I was carried past. Since we were in full public, I ignored them. I represented the Emperor himself, and there was nothing strange if people prostrated themselves in the dust before my chair.
There were still double guards on duty outside the Palace. But this was the result of orders given the previous day, not of present necessity. As usual, people were coming and going with minimal inspection of their documents.
Outside his office, the eunuchs tried to make a fuss about the book dust still clinging to me. But I was almost late, and the business I had with Nicetas was too important for delay.
I sat at my desk with a warm glow of satisfaction.
‘So he sealed the dispatch orders?’ Martin asked with a look at the leather packets neatly piled up on my left.
I thought to glower at him, but gave up at once. There was no point reopening the matter of the Leontius documents. I’d never shake his lunatic convictions. Besides, they couldn’t be that important. If they had contained evidence of treason, would they really have been left behind? At best, they might be a listing of tomb contents that stopped short of anything valuable. Tomb robbers had already seen to that back in the days of the native kings. Why else had the man been counting so much on that mysterious draft from the Saracens?
‘The fleet sails at first light tomorrow,’ I said. The grain would be with Heraclius well before the shipping lanes closed down for the winter months. I’d be in Constantinople to receive his thanks in person. No luck with the arrest and search warrants, though. I’d explained what I knew over dinner. Priscus had listened in and had joined me in urging the n
eed for immediate action. Sadly, any mention of ‘immediate action’, always had a bad effect on Nicetas. Against our advice, he’d then raised the matter in the meeting, just ended, of his full Council – only to explain why nothing could or should be done for the time being.
But I had the dispatch orders. First things first. The landowners could wait.
‘Sveta still hasn’t found that chamber pot,’ Martin said. ‘It was a valuable object, and we think it was taken by Macarius.’
I nodded. If they thought Macarius would throw up a nice position with me for the proceeds of five pounds of antique bronze, more fool them. But if that’s what they thought, I had no reason to defend the man, and every reason to leave things alone.
‘While looking in your own dressing room, though,’ he added apologetically, ‘I found this.’ He held up a sheet of papyrus, a line of Hebrew written again and again all over the good side. ‘It was concealed in the cloak you wear when you visit the – ah, the house of prostitution that you frequent. Would you like me to get it translated?’
I resisted the urge to get up and tear the sheet from his hand. I checked the sharp accusation already formed in my throat. It was Martin’s duty to go through my private things. Anger really was out of the question – and it would only have drawn attention to what I was planning. Isaac had given me a very queer look when I’d asked him for the words ‘A present to Jesus from Cousin Simon’. But he could be trusted to keep his mouth shut. All else aside, Jews had long since learned to keep out of disputes involving the Faith. But I needed Martin to remain as much in the dark as everyone else. This was troublesome, as, though I’d got the Hebrew characters well enough for what was needed, I hadn’t yet worked out how to transfer the words to hardened bronze and make it all look old.
‘Never mind that piss pot,’ I said with an easy wave. ‘Have you found the important one?’ That set Martin off on a long description of the glories he’d found that weren’t in the Patriarch’s catalogue of relics. One of these was the very pen with which Saint John the Divine had written his Revelation.
‘Excellent!’ I said, cutting off the flow of credulity. ‘Keep looking. Before I give in to Priscus and arrange his digging expedition, we need to make quite sure the relic isn’t here in Alexandria.’ Doubtless, Martin still had another fifty places to visit and inspect. But I’d tell Priscus the thing wasn’t to be found here once the grain fleet was under way. I took the sheet of papyrus from Martin and put it into one of the files regarding the canal clearance.
‘I have business tonight in the Jewish quarter,’ I said. I ignored Martin’s frown. ‘Do let it be known to anyone who asks for me that I’m visiting that brothel.’
Chapter 36
‘Wake up, Aelric – oh, for God’s sake, please wake up!’
I drew my knees instinctively up to my chin and rolled away. I’d been dreaming, and I wasn’t sure that I still wasn’t. Martin struggled again with the netting to get at me. In the dim light he’d set on the table beside my bed, I could see his ghastly face.
‘Aelric, Aelric,’ he cried despairingly, ‘get up! All the ships are on fire.’
I was aware of a faint acrid smell. There was a dim flickering against the blind pulled down on the far windows. I jumped out of the bed before gathering my thoughts. I concentrated and tried to push the heavy, delicious velvet of the opium pill from my mind. I ripped the linen of the blind from its housing and let the air play on my face. The windows all faced east – away from the Harbour. But I could see the reflected glare flickering on the higher walls of the Palace far across the central garden.
I finished pulling myself together. Now dumb, his face still terrified, Martin passed me a gown. I threw it on. We hurried out into the dim corridors and ran silently on the carpets to the stairs leading up to the roof.
There was a small crowd already gathered there. It stood on the Harbour side, silent and still, watching the horrors unfolding a quarter of a mile away.
‘Fireboats,’ Priscus said as he drew me to one side and pointed towards the Lighthouse. I followed his outstretched arm. It was light enough with the towers of flame shooting upwards in the Harbour. But it all appeared to me one great chaos of sparks and drifting smoke.
‘Someone’s had the clever idea,’ he explained, ‘of getting across to the Lighthouse island and floating boats filled with burning pitch into the Harbour. The wind has blown them straight into the grain fleet. I think only one ship is afire, but it’s a question of time before the bastards get lucky again.’
‘Nicetas!’ I said. ‘Where is he?’
‘Oh, he left just before you arrived,’ Priscus said with a cold laugh. ‘You’ll find him in his chapel praying for another downpour.’
‘I must get down there,’ I cried. This was a disaster. Those ships had sat there an age, waiting for the dispatch orders to be sealed. Now it was all arranged. Come the dawn, they should be away. This couldn’t be happening.
‘Not so fast, my lad,’ Priscus sneered, clamping an iron grip on my shoulder. ‘If you’re going anywhere, it will be with me in front of you. This is a matter for soldiers, and your military experience, I don’t like to rub it in, amounts to fuck-all. I am, I will remind you, the Empire’s most senior commander. If Heraclius has his grain fleet burned while I’m in Alexandria, I might pick up just a fragment of the blame. You leave this to me.’
As he spoke, slaves rushed puffing towards him with his sword and body armour. A eunuch turned round and started babbling something about unauthorised weapons in the Palace. If he got out a dozen words, I’d be surprised.
‘You’re lucky I’m not fully in charge here,’ Priscus hissed down at him. The creature squirmed and squealed, clutching at his smashed nose. Priscus gave him a hard kick in the stomach and stepped back to avoid the fountain of bloody vomit that gushed in the flickering light from the Harbour.
‘Well, come on, my pretty boy,’ he said, turning back to me. ‘Or do you propose to go back to bed and leave this to the professionals?’
When I’d made the exchange, earlier that night, from the chair provided by Isaac back to my own, the streets had been quiet as the grave. With their promise of food to come, it seemed the protesters had kept to their beds. No one saw me as I’d gone in through the side entrance to the brothel, and been shown out at the front to my own carrying slaves. I’d even stopped and got down from the chair on my way back to the Palace for the inspection I’d been promising myself of the obelisk. I hadn’t seen much in the light from the street lamps. But it had been nice to be able to walk again in Alexandria without having to keep looking over my shoulder.
Down by the Harbour, though, it was complete uproar. The police were doing their best to hold back the gathering crowds. They were already through the dockyard gates, and there wasn’t the manpower to force them out again. On the dockside, men ran frantically back and forth, trying to unload sacks of grain from the stricken ship, while others tried just as frantically to put out the flames. This wasn’t easy. The fireboat had been provided with long iron spikes that had fastened themselves hard to the ship, and whatever combustible material had been used burned even under water.
‘Where’s the Harbour Master?’ Priscus roared as he strode purposefully out of the crowd. ‘You!’ – he pointed at one twittery official – ‘I want whoever’s in charge here. Get him now.’
The official dropped his writing tablets and swallowed. He allowed himself one look into that terrible face and was off.
‘Still only one ship, thank God,’ Priscus shouted after a glance at the brightly lit lunacy of the dockside. And it still was only one ship – though showers of sparks were raining down unattended on the decks of the neighbouring ships. How none of them had yet caught fire was a mystery. ‘A piece of silver, from the Viceroy,’ he yelled at the dockyard slaves, ‘for every sack piled up safe over here. One piece of silver!’ The slaves had been flagging. They’d been gazing at the roaring, bubbling flames that looked set to burn the ship to the
waterline. Now they rushed back into the flames, pulling frantically at the hatches to get at the deeper sacks.
‘Silver from the Viceroy,’ Priscus shouted at the watching crowd. He took out a purse and emptied it in his hand. He held up the shining pile and, with a theatrical gesture, threw the coins into the crowd. As the cowed, silent onlookers turned into a scrambling mob, he shouted the promise again and stood back to let them past.
The Harbour Master was a fat, bleary-looking creature. He rushed up still in his nightgown and threw himself at my feet.
‘I want those ships out of the Harbour,’ Priscus shouted above the noise. He pointed over at the opening to the sea. The wind was steady in our faces. He was ordering those slow, wide-bellied ships into the wind at night. And they’d be going past the point from where the boats had been launched.
‘The Food Control Office building’s on fire,’ a police officer shouted from behind me.
I turned. He looked ready to drop with exhaustion. It was only the panic that kept him going. That building was a mile back inside the city.
‘Those old women back in the Palace can witter all they like about how the mob has risen,’ Priscus rasped at me. ‘We both know better. This is treason – and coordinated treason too.’ He looked at the Harbour exit. ‘The ships must go out now. They must go that way.’ He pointed again at the northern exit.
‘With all respect, My Lord,’ the Captain of the Fleet said, now beside me as if from nowhere, ‘I can’t risk going out that way. Without light, and into the wind-’
‘Orders,’ the Harbour Master cried, looking up from his prostration, ‘the orders are-’
‘Your orders are to get these ships out,’ Priscus shouted. I say he shouted. Looking at him, he seemed barely to raise his voice. But it cut straight through the surrounding noise as if he’d got hold of a speaking trumpet. He dragged the Harbour Master to his feet and pushed him against one of the growing piles of grain sacks. ‘Your orders are to do whatever you must to get those ships out to sea,’ he said, now menacing. He turned and fixed the Captain with his eye. ‘You do as I tell you, or your seconds in command get immediate promotion the moment I’ve had you bound and thrown into that burning hold. Do you understand me?’
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