‘God have mercy on them. God have mercy,’ the Bishop was muttering as he followed me from tomb to tomb. It was all utterly depressing. Not the least of it was the rising worry that there was nothing we’d found so far that seemed likely to keep Siroes happy. I went back out into the main cavern and sat down for another bite of the rough bread. While Macarius had gone ahead into another tomb, I’d taken a chance and slipped into my clothing a bronze knife no one had bothered stealing. This at least might come in useful. Something portable, with arguably magical powers, would have been really useful. I sat, staring into the lamp – which would soon need another refill – and reflecting again on the lack of wine in our supplies. If Martin himself had been in charge of the packing, more thought wouldn’t have gone into that deprivation.
‘If you please, My Lord, come in here.’
I looked up. Macarius was calling from the last of the tombs before the end of the built wall. He stood just behind one of the guardian statues. Fangs bared in the fishlike head, it seemed to laugh at me.
‘Do come over,’ he repeated, a tone of urgency in his voice.
I pulled myself up and stretched tired arms and legs. Perhaps he’d found a relatively unlooted tomb. A few ancient trinkets might inspire me to some lie back on the surface.
But this one too had been looted. Indeed, it had been cleared of everything originally placed there. I looked wearily at the desk made from reused planks and at the chair, salvaged and repaired. There were a few sheets of papyrus on the desk, together with a lamp and some metal pens. I followed the pointed finger to the things stacked on the stone slab.
‘What the fuck is this doing here?’ I whispered, looking at the wooden crate. It was three feet high and about the same square. Painted neatly on the side facing me were the Greek words Homeric Apocrypha Box Twenty.
Chapter 64
‘How the buggery did it get down here?’ I asked again, now louder. I rubbed my eyes just in case I was seeing things and leaned against the far wall. Ever since leaving the sunlight, we’d been in a world that seemed untouched since the dawn of our own time. Here at last was something I could recognise. If only I could also understand it. Beside it on the stone bench was a small book rack stuffed with papyrus rolls. It was something else I could recognise. It might also bring understanding.
‘What’s that?’ I said to Macarius, nodding at the glass bottle in his hand.
‘It seems to be lamp oil, My Lord,’ he said. ‘It would be useful if it were. Otherwise, we may have only enough for one lamp on our journey back to the surface.’
The Bishop gasped at these words and, in the manner of all the natives, squatted on the floor. There was nothing to fear, I assured him. I told him to remember that, so long as the lamp on the steps was still alight, we could feel our way back to the surface. But I watched with inward prayer as Macarius sniffed the contents and rubbed some between his fingers. He poured a small amount into the ancient lamp on the desk and set a flame to it. It may have had some other use when bottled. Now, it made a really superb lighting oil. It gave off an intense and bluish flame that consumed almost no wick. In this light, I took up one of the papyrus sheets that had been left on the desk. It went something as follows:
It is with reluctance, though also with the assurance that I do rightly, that I now suspend work on the project that has been the support of my final years. The degraded remnants of a once mighty race who now rest in these halls were ignorant of writing and skilled only in terror. But they carried with them images and things that allowed me to reflect and at length to dread. Call it magic – call it by some other name that is not similar to wisdom. But there are certain forces that I do not think it proper for mortals to understand.
It once pained me how little appreciation my work received even among those whose opinion I valued. I am now glad to be regarded as a lunatic. If I were to publish my results, they would set a path – however tentative – that led surely to the displeasure of the One God who stands above those worshipped by men.
If I were less vain – or if I had no faith whatever in the goodness and wisdom of my fellow beings – I might destroy all I have written, rather than hide it away. But hide it away I will. I might hope that these words will never be read. I can only pray that if they ever are read, my name shall not become for ever accursed.
I write in the eightieth year of my age, and in the fortieth year since being made Chief Librarian to His Majesty.
Eratosthenes of Cyrene
What a very queer letter! I thought. I passed it to Macarius, who read it with his usual impassivity. I got up and went to the book rack. I pulled out the largest of the book sheaths. The tag on it gave the title as On the Fundamental Unity of Matter and Motion. I took it out and scanned the first section. It was in a highly compressed style, and used words that may have been compounded specially for the use in hand. Generally speaking the work owed something to the physics of Epicurus, and something to the mathematics of the Platonic school. They came together in a synthesis that I’d often urged on Martin as the path to knowledge. It might, indeed, still make me a boatload of money if I’d got my Nile predictions right – and, of course, if I lived to see this. Eratosthenes was reasoning in the best Greek manner. He seemed, however, to be moving from obvious premises to outrageous conclusions. It was something that might make sense if I were to give it more time. As it was, the ratios of what seemed arbitrary units to each other struck me as madder than anything Hermogenes had mentioned back in Alexandria. Imagine the Hypostatic Union with a bit of maths thrown in, and that was how all this struck me on first inspection.
But I was wasting time. I rolled up the book and put it back in its sheath and then replaced it on the rack.
‘What makes you suppose,’ I asked of Macarius, ‘that this box contains the things we came to collect?’ I pointed at the crate. Though old, it was still solid, and it was nailed securely shut. It was too heavy for me to lift by myself. If we looked about, we might find something that could be used to force it open. I thought of the knife I’d picked up, but chose to keep that to myself.
‘It doesn’t contain anything that we were sent to bring back,’ Macarius said.
I thought of trying for a hollow laugh, but changed my mind.
‘We already have what we came to find,’ he said.
What that might be I couldn’t guess. Nor did I feel inclined to try. I rapped hard on the crate and then struck my knee against it. There were some firm wooden spars outside we could use.
But Macarius saw what I was thinking and shook his head. ‘We have what we came for,’ he repeated. ‘We carry back nothing tangible.’
There were other tombs that we still hadn’t entered. From back in the cavern, I looked at the dark gaps knocked into the stonework and sighed. Except for the one Eratosthenes had used for his office, they were much of a muchness. There was no point looking in them. I couldn’t begin to tell how long I’d been down here. But I could feel a growing weariness. If we really had found what we’d come to find, it wasn’t possible to justify staying longer. It was time to go.
From the bottom of the steps, I looked back towards the makeshift office. I couldn’t see it, though I knew where it must be. Here, the great Eratosthenes had sat day after day, surrounded by death that must have been as ancient to him as it was to us. Wherever his thoughts had led him marked him out as an equal of the great Epicurus. That – or he’d become the raving lunatic everyone then and since had taken him for.
We left the lamp still burning low on the steps. Since Macarius made it plain there would be another visit here, there was no point in cluttering ourselves. With that mineral oil left behind by Eratosthenes, the reliefs in the corridor showed brighter than before, and gave up still more of their carefully depicted horrors. But I tried not to look. I thought instead of the surface. Whatever awaited me there, this wasn’t a place for lingering.
Getting back to the surface was easy in that we knew where we were going, and there was n
o element of tension. It was also harder in that we were now going steadily uphill. I hadn’t fully noticed on the way down how steep the incline was. Now, we were tired, and the going was too hard to complete without longish rests.
‘My Lord,’ Macarius whispered in Latin as we reached the entrance chamber, ‘I suggest that your interests might best be served by setting your weapon down here.’
I stared at him. He continued staring back. I sniffed and took out the knife from under my tunic. For all it had given me some feeling of control, I saw no value in arguing. I put it down and kicked it against one of the walls.
It was dark in that entrance chamber, though noticeably warmer. With a shock of horror, I wondered at first if the granite covering had been screwed shut on us. But the reason we were in darkness, I soon realised, was because it was dark outside.
‘Well, hello!’ Priscus called down when I’d shouted for the second time. I saw him outlined against the opening by a torch that someone held behind him. ‘We were beginning to worry about you. I think some of the wogs were coming to the conclusion that you’d been eaten alive by demons. For myself, I was getting prepared to suggest a search party for the morning. Did you find anything useful down there?’
‘Yes,’ I lied, waiting for the ladder to come down. ‘If the Lord Siroes isn’t happy with this, he’ll find plenty more to amuse him if he goes down himself.’ And with any luck, I thought, the Bishop might prevail on the wogs to seal them all in together.
Chapter 65
‘I think the young barbarian has done us proud,’ Siroes said.
We were back in our dining tent. It was a late meal, and the food was as insipid as ever. And I felt a slight annoyance that a bloody Persian was calling me a barbarian. But I was too tired and hungry to care much about either defect. Buckets of cool water had got the dirt off my body. My clothes could dry overnight in the desert wind. For the moment, I sat wrapped in a blanket, finishing a dinner of dates and gritty bread.
‘It is,’ he went on, ‘just as the prophecy led me to suppose. I therefore believe, with more than reasonable assurance, that we in this tent constitute the supreme power in the world.’
‘Well, I might agree if he’d at least brought back a piss pot,’ Priscus muttered. He looked sourly at the notes Lucas had taken of my narrative. They filled several sheets of papyrus in a hand that showed what a clerk the world had lost when its owner chose to be Pharaoh.
‘I don’t think, my dear Priscus,’ Siroes broke in with a sneer, ‘we need concern ourselves with receptacles of human piss. I have told you repeatedly that what I came here to find had no connection with your Jewish Carpenter. I will also tell Lucas that the object we still need to recover serves none of the purposes that your late mutual friend Leontius appears to have conceived for it.
‘The object’s location and its correct use, I will say, are matters known only to me. My information so far has been absolutely correct. I have no doubt this will continue to be so. Let it be enough for the moment that I have no interest in holy relics. Nor, let me say for the avoidance of doubt, do I care for the ravings of some long dead philosopher. In this, as in so many other concerns, the Greeks have nothing to offer. The object I seek gives access to a power that comes from the ability to inflict death without hope of escape or vengeance.’
‘I suppose you could frighten someone to death with it – assuming you ever do lay hands on it,’ said Priscus with yet another of his mirthless smiles. He stroked the moulting fur of his cat, then wiped his hand on a napkin. ‘Of course, we already have one dead wog. Show a few of those statues Alaric describes, and I’ve no doubt we could improve on that.’
There was a movement of the tent flaps and Macarius entered the room. It was a hot night, and my clothes had dried faster than expected. He laid them out on an empty chair. He looked briefly at me, and then at the heap of notes. I ignored him. Priscus stopped him as he was about to leave.
‘Do have more water sent in,’ he sighed. ‘And do have the bowl filled to the brim this time. It’s been a fucking hot day waiting out there by that opening, you know. A bit of haste on your young friend’s part wouldn’t have been unwelcome.’
Macarius bowed and went silently out.
Priscus tugged slyly on one of the cat’s whiskers. He looked up again. With a faint snort, he pushed the notes across the table in my direction. ‘I’ve heard more profitable narratives in church,’ he said.
‘I find your lack of faith disturbing,’ Siroes replied. ‘Sitting round this table, we have a king of Egypt, which is or could be the richest country in the world. We have the cousin and grandson of a great king of Persia. And we have the descendant of at least one Roman emperor. Believe me that we have the means to make ourselves masters in our own right of half the world. And believe me that we shall soon have the means to bring the other half very speedily under our control. It is a matter of one repaired bridge to the unvisited side of that cavern, and of a little willingness to work thereafter as one.’
‘There is something over on the other side,’ I broke in with a show of eagerness. ‘I just couldn’t see it in the light we had.’ I hadn’t for a moment been taken in by all that guff about the ‘perfect equality of peoples’. It didn’t surprise me now if Siroes had dropped it like a hot brick. But it was at least slighting that his talk of dignitaries had left no room for Legates Extraordinary – still less for England. I’d been well and truly demoted from His Magnificence to barbarian youth. ‘We explored perhaps only a fraction of the whole complex,’ I added, keeping my face heroically straight. ‘Moreover, even if they weren’t on your list of things to find, the writings of Eratosthenes were highly suggestive of what might be achieved by following his own lead.’
‘So you tell us, dear boy,’ Priscus said with another of his smiles. ‘So you said. We don’t disbelieve a word of your story of the marvels deep underground. Indeed, while you were cleaning up, we – or at least Siroes – decided we were so intrigued that nothing would keep us from making our own inspection first thing tomorrow morning. Because of the great love we bear each other, and as a sign of our complete unity of will, we have decided to go down there together, drawing lots to see who should go first through that hole. We must rely on the popularity Lucas has among his own people that all three of us – plus you, of course – are not sealed in the moment we are at the foot of the ladder.’
The tent flaps opened again and the usual serving man came in with a pitcher of water. While Priscus watched intently, he poured a cup for himself and drank. We waited. Priscus nodded and the man filled the bowl up past the two-thirds mark. I dipped my own cup into the bowl. As I was about to set it to my lips, the tent flaps opened yet again. Macarius entered, now with a jug of wine. Things were looking up. I set my cup on the table and waited. Macarius turned and rasped an order. Through the still open tent flaps Martin now was pushed in among us. His fetters had been taken off, and he’d been allowed a wash – though still not a shave. His bandage had been replaced with something smaller and cleaner.
‘Ah, little Martin!’ Priscus cried, rising and making an ironic bow. ‘You come at a most opportune moment. You will have heard already from His Grace of Letopolis that young Alaric is alive and well. You will surely wish to volunteer for another trip underground with us. I hope Alaric’s description of the narrow steps is accurate in its dimensions. It would never do to have you trapped there by your own belly.’
‘It is as you wish, sir,’ Martin said in a flat voice. He looked at me and swallowed.
I could see how baggy his face had become under the ginger bristles. Well past any desperation, his eyes were dead. I smiled weakly at him. Things might easily be worse. He still had his right ear.
‘So we are agreed?’ Siroes asked. ‘We are agreed on a permanent alliance of our three crowns – an alliance to take what is ours by right, and to take what ought to be ours by means of the force prophesied to us?’
‘Let it be as you suggest, my dear Brother in Purpl
e,’ said Lucas.
I’d been glancing at his face while Priscus and Siroes were talking. He hadn’t yet spoken much. But he was looking at his notes with a mixture of awe and cunning. He was visibly thinking how not to be other than last to go down that hole – and how long before its covering slab might safely be lifted again.
‘We may be agreed, my dear fellow,’ Priscus said wearily. ‘But I’d be grateful for some explanation of how we are to translate possession of this object that so excites you into shared dominion over all the nations. I can’t say it wouldn’t please me to watch Heraclius devoured by hyenas in the Circus in Constantinople. But the prospect won’t excite me until I’ve been given some indication of the means.’
Siroes smiled. ‘I understand that you retain command of all the military forces in and around Alexandria,’ he said.
Priscus nodded. If Nicetas really had recovered from his fright, that wouldn’t be technically correct. Even so, the men might follow Priscus rather than him. Setting them to an easy massacre, with rape and plunder for dessert, is the quickest way to a soldier’s heart.
‘Good,’ Siroes continued. ‘Then we will march on Alexandria just as soon as our business here is finished. From there, we will send letters to Heraclius and to Chosroes. We will invite both to come in person to Daras on what is still more or less the border between our two empires. There, I will recite the words that only I know, thereby combining what I have with what we shall jointly acquire tomorrow into a demonstration of the power that we have. I do not expect any difficulty beyond that. We shall take power by acclamation. If there is any delay, we shall simply have to see one or both capitals go up in a fire that cannot be quenched.’
‘Before we both declare ourselves traitors,’ Priscus replied, ‘and that might well bring on the truce Heraclius has been begging for these past two years, I think it would be best if we could all be sure that the power you promise really is what you believe it to be. I might add that, if this is a power that still requires some armed support, it might not be what you would have us believe. I suggest a prior demonstration for our own benefit. Whatever you are planning for Daras might be tried first in Alexandria. Nicetas can stand in perfectly well for Heraclius in this as in all other respects.’
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