I gave what I hoped was a casual sniff, and looked harder at Cartenna. I couldn’t tell for sure, but there seemed to be movement of some kind on shore. I leaned forward and held up a hand to shade my eyes. It might have been a boat. Or it might have been something else. I looked back down at the deck. Without Hrothgar to nag, of course, nobody had seen fit to clean up Wilfred’s vomit from the day before. Though dry, it was beginning to attract flies from the shore.
‘We must pray for Edward, and I suppose for Hrothgar,’ Wilfred elaborated. ‘But I fear the time has come to pray for ourselves. I have sins that I wish I had been able to confess.’
I ignored him, hoping he wouldn’t get back on to that worthless subject. I turned my head slightly, wondering if a new angle of vision might bring some improvement. It didn’t. I tried to think of something witty. I did better with keeping the wine cup from spilling its redness all down my chest. At least no one would think I was either palsied or cold inside from the fear. If I couldn’t be bothered with twisting round to look, I could plainly hear the muttering on the deck behind me.
‘Do tell me,’ I asked calmly, ‘if we are just to be thrown overboard, or if the crew proposes to carve us up first.’
‘I think it will be the latter,’ came the infinitely sad reply. ‘The weapons they carry would be superfluous for the former.’
I tried not to laugh. This was, after all, a crisis. ‘Oh dear,’ I said. I took another sip and put my wine down very carefully. ‘Have the kindness, dear boy, to help me round so that I can face these people.’
It may be that familiarity had blunted the horror of their appearance. Or it may be that Hrothgar had done outstandingly well in transforming them from a pack of beer-demented barbarians to a crew of cut-throat pirates. Whatever had been the case, though, they weren’t now an encouraging sight. They looked pretty much as they had on their first appearance in Jarrow – only there was no monastery wall this time to keep us apart. They stood in a closely packed rabble a couple of yards from my daybed. One of them leaned forward and jabbered something I couldn’t catch. Someone at the back began making weird animal noises. How Hrothgar had kept them in any line at all said much for his skills as a leader. How he’d dared trust them unsupervised on board was a mystery. Now he was gone, and might not be back, they were all reverting by the moment. I clutched for my stick and got unsteadily to my feet.
‘Gentlemen,’ I said in my best approximation to their own language. No one seemed surprised I could speak it. ‘Dear friends.’ I smiled and held out my free arm in a gesture of regard and affection. ‘I appreciate your concerns for what may have happened ashore. But I do suggest that a day is not long enough for drawing untoward conclusions. Let us wait until evening. If nothing has happened by then, let us consider returning to England – where I can promise a generous reward from the Lord Bishop of Canterbury for my safe return.’
‘We want our men back,’ someone shouted.
‘You’ve fucking stitched them up with the Greeks,’ someone else added with a certain want of reasonableness. There was a general humming of assent.
I didn’t bother with probing. It was plain that ‘our men’ covered the two oarsmen alone. Edward and Hrothgar could be written off as lost. My stick wobbled with a slight motion of the ship, and I had to grab hold of Wilfred to stay on my feet. Since he was clutching at me for the same reason, it was almost a wonder we didn’t hit the deck together. As it was, I was able to carry on with my probably useless oration.
‘You must consider,’ I said, ‘that I have no knowledge of conditions on shore. You surely know that I am a prisoner on this ship, and have no contact with anyone. If your friends are in trouble there, I cannot help them. All I can do is repeat my promise of reward for my safe return to England.’
‘You’ll get them back,’ the man at the front shouted again. ‘You’ll get them back – or the boy dies!’
Against my better judgement, I laughed. I thought raiding undefended towns was their job, not mine. What did these creatures now expect of me – that I’d swim ashore in the absence of another boat, and then back with an oarsman under each arm? They might as well butcher us on the spot. I sat quickly down and fussed with my blanket.
‘Master,’ Wilfred whispered in my ear, ‘I’ve often heard them talking about you. They are all convinced you are a wizard of great power. They really believe you can help them. And I also want you to go ashore. If we must die together now, I am prepared to watch your own ascent to Heaven. But you might be able to save us both. All else aside, why should both of us die when one of us has the chance of escape?’
‘Don’t be stupid, boy!’ I snapped. Evidently, he’d been too impressed by stories of my past life to realise how long ago all that had been. ‘Give me another moment, and I’m sure I can think of something else to offer these animals. Perhaps they could deliver us to one of the bishops in France before negotiating our ransom with Theodore…’
But if they were still sufficiently collected not to commit any actual violence, nothing I offered was enough to stand them down. I did think of putting the eminently reasonable argument that if I had magical powers sufficient to get their men back, I’d hardly have been their helpless prisoner since Christmas. But there’s no reasoning with the barbarian mind. You’ll get more sense out of women or idiot children. One way or another, at least one of us was going over that side. I took off my hat and scratched my scalp. My thoughts raced as, like a failing litigant in court, I tried to think of some other argument that would turn things in my favour. But nothing came.
‘Wilfred,’ I asked, ‘can you tell me what is going on ashore?’
‘There is a boatload of armed men setting out,’ he said.
Interesting, I thought, and potentially useful. I’d said that something always turned up. Perhaps it just had. Without being able to see more than a blur at this distance, I couldn’t tell how many armed men there were. From the manner of the crew, however, I could guess they weren’t enough to raise any alarm here. I thought hard again. I shrugged. I turned and pointed at the more presently alarming crew members.
‘I want you all below,’ I said firmly. ‘I want just three of you on deck when that thing comes in hailing distance. You will treat me with exaggerated respect.’
‘The boy stays with us,’ the man at the front said. ‘We give you until dusk.’
‘You are under arrest,’ the senior official rasped at me in Latin as the little boat docked. ‘You will order your crew to surrender.’
‘On the contrary,’ I replied in Greek, as smoothly as my remaining teeth would allow, ‘you will send news to His Excellency the Prefect that I should be received with all respect due to the Emperor’s servant.’
He looked down at the shrivelled creature swathed in dirty rags who’d addressed him from the boat. His mouth fell open.
‘You will also provide me with a covered carrying chair. I don’t at all fancy those stairs up to the main square.’
As I’d half expected, Cartenna was largely derelict. With the decline of population, it’s much the same everywhere in Africa. All the buildings on the west side of the main square were already in ruins. On the other three sides, they were, so far as I could tell, mostly empty. There were a few stalls set out to sell food, and there was a weak apology for a slave market in progress. I could see a couple of naked, half-dead blacks prodded into dancing by the Berbers who’d brought them in for sale. No one was bidding for them. No one seemed to notice they were for sale. About a dozen children played in the dust. There were a few looks in my direction as I was carried past. No doubt, the big and decidedly odd ship moored outside the harbour had been the main talking point in town. There didn’t seem to be enough people for a mob of the curious to gather round me. But there were curious looks. I sat in my chair, trying to pretend I looked other than an old beggar. The smells were comforting, though – the familiar mix of early flowering shrubs and of broken sewers.
‘Who are you, that you presum
e to dirty our waters with your presence?’ the Prefect asked in laboured Greek. ‘This is a peaceful place. We’ll have no trouble here.’
From his accent and his faintly Germanic appearance, I guessed he was a local man. He was also very young. If he was twenty, I’d have been surprised. This had its advantages. A sharp little Greek seconded from somewhere that mattered might have been more sceptical. The hall of audience had been piled high with smashed furniture, so I was being received in the man’s office. I pointed at the water jug and sat myself unbidden on the other side of his desk. A dark slave looked at the Prefect. There was a moment of uncertainty. Then he nodded. I drained the cup and put my hands together on the stained wood.
‘I am on a mission from the Emperor himself,’ I opened. ‘It brooks no delay.’ I stared into the man’s confused face. Keeping a strongly Greek accent, I switched into Latin and repeated myself. ‘I think you have the Captain of my ship. If so, I need him back at once.’ While the Prefect took this in, I glanced about the room. Plaster had come off the upper reaches of the wall behind him, showing the remains of a mosaic. Over on my left was a filing rack that contained perhaps a dozen dust-covered circular letters. With a little shock, I found myself looking at the icon of the Emperor. This wasn’t in its proper place on an easel beside him. It was instead propped against the far wall.
So, Constantine is out! I thought. Imperial images are never true to life, and the face that looked stiffly back at me might have been of almost anyone. But it wasn’t of Constantine: I’d commissioned that portrait myself. Most likely, this one was of his boy, Justinian. He must now be only seventeen, I calculated. Still, he was no fool. More to the point, unless all his tutors had been changed after my fall, he’d not be so hostile as his father had been to finishing off the old nobility and handing out their land to the people who actually defended the Empire.
‘The Augustus Justinian is not a man who tolerates interference in his business,’ I said with more confidence. ‘You have held me up outside your harbour for an entire day. Do therefore release my men and ensure that we have the supplies needed for an immediate departure.’
The Prefect glanced uncertainly at his secretary, who pulled a face and shrugged. I didn’t like the look of him. He was probably a Greek. Though not bloated, he might have been a eunuch. His face streamed suspicion. There was a long silence as they looked at each other. While I drank again, the secretary scribbled a note and brushed it in front of the Prefect. He read it and sat in silence a while longer.
‘Your orders,’ he said eventually. ‘I shall need to see your orders.’ I could feel the tremor going out of my hands. Whatever else he’d been made to say, at least Edward hadn’t shared anything material in Cartenna.
‘My orders are here,’ I said haughtily, tapping my head. ‘Your orders are to follow my instructions without further question.’
There was another long silence. I sat placidly while the Prefect stared at nothing in particular and his secretary scratched away at another note.
‘Your name at any rate,’ he stammered.
‘There is no need for you to know that,’ I said. I had turned over various possibilities. Leontius of Smyrna had seemed a good idea before I’d seen the Imperial icon. But when a new emperor comes in, you never know what names might have found their way on to the list of the purged. I’d been out of things too long. Who could tell if some Leontius wasn’t on the list that would have been transmitted to every provincial authority? I glanced again at the filing rack. If any of those circular letters had been consulted in a year, I’d have been surprised. I looked up at the tatty, smoke-darkened ceiling. I gave a bored yawn and looked at my fingernails. I’d forgotten how shameful they were and put my hands hurriedly down.
‘Look, my dear young fellow,’ I drawled, ‘there really are just two possibilities. One is that I’m a pirate chief masquerading as a rather aged Greek of the higher classes. The other is that I’m telling the truth. I’ll leave it to you to decide which is the case. But please don’t spend too long about it. The Saracens are planning a raid on your city. Only I can stop this.’
Anyone with an ounce of imagination could have raised several other possibilities. But this was a prefect with no imagination at all.
‘You will excuse me a moment, My Lord,’ he said. He got up and bowed and led his secretary over beside the icon. I couldn’t hear any of their whispered conversation. But it was easy to guess its frantic course. Every so often, they’d turn and give me a suspicious or merely frightened look. The wine I’d finished on board to steady my nerves now decided to announce its presence in my bladder. I left the remains of my water cup untouched. I wiggled my toes and wondered how long all this would take.
It wasn’t that much longer. I could see the secretary was still for demanding further and better particulars. The Prefect, though, had decided his best course of action was to get rid of me at the earliest moment. He sat down opposite me again and smiled nervously.
‘You must appreciate that I don’t have responsibility for every detail of the administration,’ he said, speaking fast. ‘I will, of course, order a full enquiry. Even if it will report after your departure, I promise it will spare no one if guilt is to be laid on any individual. If there are lessons to be learned…’ He spluttered on more about the independent enquiry he’d order and how no one would be spared.
What was the wanker about to tell me? I went cold all over. I set my face into a mask of bureaucratic immobility and stared straight at him.
‘You see,’ he continued, ‘your men came ashore yesterday morning. They didn’t come here to give their purpose, but went straight to the market. There was some – there was some altercation. The reports didn’t tell me exactly what happened. But it seems that one of your men was hanged yesterday afternoon. The others are in prison awaiting my justice.’
‘You hanged one of my crew?’ I asked once I was able to trust my voice. Never mind the piss I was increasingly desperate to have – I nearly shat myself. ‘This may be a serious matter. Are you able to tell me which of the four you hanged?’
‘You will appreciate, My Lord,’ he said, now blustering again, ‘that one shouting barbarian is very like another. It required five men to get his neck into the rope. As it was, he nearly tore down the gallows.
‘Would you like to see the body?’ he asked suddenly. ‘It’s still hanging. I think the birds…’ He trailed off.
Sixty-odd years of dealing with higher level administrative trash than this had left me in no doubt of how to put the frighteners on. I kept up the look of chilly distaste and thought frantically. If they hadn’t hanged Edward – and, even if he were the most expendable of the four, I was relieved about that – there was a two in three chance that Wilfred would be in the clear back on board the ship. If it were Hrothgar, though… I trailed off myself. Wilfred would assure me it was all in the hands of God. As for me, I’d find out soon enough.
‘I will sign an immediate order for your men to be released,’ the Prefect said after another whispered row that I hadn’t been able to follow. ‘Sadly, it may not be until mid-afternoon that they are released. You see, the gaoler is a most devout man. Every morning, he goes off to pray before the shrine of the Blessed Rugosius, and takes the keys with him. Until he returns, you must regard yourself as our guest.’
‘Very well,’ I said briskly. ‘I want them out of prison at the earliest.’ I looked closely at the secretary. There was something unpleasantly thoughtful about his face. ‘In the meantime, I shall be grateful for a bath and a change of clothes. Get me something plain but respectable. Your secretary can take down a list of other items that I want and you may have available here. Oh, and for the avoidance of any doubt, I will be staying for dinner.’
Chapter 10
Even in early February, the sun hadn’t been kind to Hrothgar. His gibbet swung gently in the breeze, flies crawling in and out of the open mouth. I shrugged and looked down again at Edward, who’d taken the hint and was now
kissing my slippered feet. There were some nasty bruises on his arms. His tunic was ripped, showing on his back the cuts and bruises that come from being dragged across a rough surface. What wasn’t ripped was still soaked in the foul-smelling mud that I’ve only ever come across in prisons. What I’d caught of his face as he emerged from the gloom was puffy with repeated crying. If you can imagine anything beyond their normal appearance, the two oarsmen looked probably worse. Covered in bruises where they’d been clubbed into submission, wrists chafed from endless struggle with the manacles that had kept them in submission, they’d emerged blinking into the bright sunshine. Credit where due, though, they’d taken the hint even sooner than Edward. Cowed and respectful, they knelt in silence beside him.
‘Their weapons will be returned on your departure,’ the secretary explained in answer to my unvoiced question. ‘As His Excellency said, this is a peaceful place.’ He gave me an openly hostile look, and then bowed ironically. Plainly, he thought the prison traffic he’d been ordered to oversee should have been in the other direction.
I smiled at him and raised my arms. The slaves stood obediently forward and lifted me back into the carrying chair.
‘The Lord Perfect will surely not object if I continue the boy’s education with a tour of your beautiful city,’ I announced. ‘I, for one, shall be grateful of the exercise before dinner.’
The secretary pulled a face that might have curdled milk and muttered something about supervising the gathering of stores. I watched as he went back over to the gaoler and rapped a few quiet instructions. Holding himself steady against the gatepost, eyes bleary from his ‘devotions’, the gaoler bowed at every pause. As the slaves got my chair aloft, and I leaned forward to poke my cane into the back of their leader, I saw the gaoler produce a sheet of what may have been folded parchment – hard to say with my wretched eyes. Without looking at it, the secretary stuffed it into a satchel before disappearing back in the direction of the Prefecture Building.
The Sword of Damascus a-4 Page 6
