The Blood of Alexandria (43 page)

There was a long pause while Nicetas digested this question and cast round for some kind of answer. Standing a few steps down from me, the Master of the Works didn’t seem to move so much as a hair, while somehow getting himself visibly ready for a dash inside the church.

‘Tell them that bit about my leg,’ Nicetas finally said. ‘Tell them it’s my birthday. Also, remind them of the bread distribution that was supposed to be today, and still might be. Yes, promise the amnesty if they’ll all go peacefully home.’

The herald did a fine job on the leg. Even without understanding the words, the tragic tone and gestures carried all the meaning anyone could have needed. He paused for a response. The mob looked up at us in stony silence. He might have suppressed the birthday notice. If so, his next comment about the bread was followed by a burst of satiric laughter. Whatever he said next was drowned out in a massive roar of displeasure. It sounded like the Circus protests in Constantinople over the cut in the bread ration. Then, we’d had to face the mob from an Imperial Box thirty feet above anyone else, and with an escape behind straight back into a fortified palace. Here, the screaming and shaking of fists and waving of severed heads began three paces in front of us.

It was a massive roar. As yet, though, it was the overall effect of individual cries. Then, imperceptibly – as gusting breezes give way to a settled wind – the shouting resolved itself into an orderly and repeated chanting. What this was at first I didn’t know, and the herald had given up on interpreting. But I did recognise the Tears of Alexander chant. As ever, it was the mob’s favourite. Again and again, it rolled towards us, like thunder across water. It was deafening. It flattened all intention of reply with its massive loudness. The mob – and it was now worth regarding it as that – rippled forward, pushing its closest members up the first couple of steps towards us. Those shining, hate-contorted faces now almost within touching distance, I reached slowly under my cloak and gripped my sword.

They had ignored their part of the agenda. It was now our turn. With a cry of pain and annoyance and a clutching at his walking stick, it was now that Nicetas stood up. He heaved himself to his feet, and, his stick wobbling as it held him up, he looked out over the sea of faces.

All of a sudden, there was silence. Every movement ceased. If Christ Himself, surrounded by Angels, had stepped out of the sky, I’m not sure if the effect would have been greater than Nicetas produced by standing up. He raised his arms for a hearing. There was a collective gasp of shock. It rippled back through the Egyptians, and was taken up by the Greeks. It wouldn’t have surprised me if it was fifty thousand jaws that fell open and a hundred thousand eyes that widened. The Viceroy had moved. Worse, the Viceroy had stood up and was now continuing to move. From far out in the hush came the occasional cry of astonishment and even horror. For the first time in living memory – for the first time, perhaps, in centuries – the people were seeing their ruler move in the execution of his duties. Someone a few yards along from me sat hurriedly down on the steps. Someone else appeared to be struggling with a fainting attack.

‘This has all gone too far,’ Nicetas shouted in Latin. ‘Tell these people that the Empire is ordained of God, and will never – not until the Last Day – evacuate Egypt or anywhere else. The Empire will – and must – last until the end of time. Tell them to go home before God smites them all with a pestilence to add to the other sufferings their disloyalty has brought upon them.’

The herald looked back confused. He knew Greek, and he knew Egyptian. Latin wasn’t a language he’d been taken on to handle. From some parts of the mob, there was what sounded like an attempt at interpreting what had just been said. I relayed the words to the herald in Greek, pausing at each phrase so he could shout them in Egyptian in the appropriate form.

‘Alexander cannot weep,’ Nicetas went on, his voice cracking with the unaccustomed strain. ‘To say otherwise is treason against the Emperor, and blasphemy against the Decrees of God – who will never work a miracle through any object dear to the Old Faith.

‘Behold! I will show you these “Tears of Alexander”.’ Again taking care not to move his bad leg, he wheeled round to face the open door of the church. He beckoned wildly. From somewhere far inside the darkness of the church there was a scraping and then the banging of something heavy that had been dropped.

Chapter 42

‘Oh fuck!’ I said, realising what he was about. Nicetas hadn’t just moved – he’d also planned ahead. And as the horror grew within me of what he’d planned, I nearly shat myself.

Since the Viceroy himself had given up on playing at statues, I saw no reason why I should stand rooted to my spot under the portico. I’d turned sharp right and was watching the wooden box as it was carried out into the light. Like the moon against the darkest night sky, Martin’s face peered out from the interior of the church. To say it looked scared gives no fresh information. I pulled a face at him, mouthing that he should get back inside. He ignored me and came fully out and took up a position just to the right of the doorway. I turned back to Nicetas.

‘Please,’ I said quietly, ‘this really isn’t a good idea.’

‘I think I shall be the best judge of that,’ he snapped back at me. He motioned the four slaves forward with their burden and pointed at a spot a yard away from the front line of the still hushed mob. Incredulity and outrage blazing through the paint on his face, Priscus watched the unfolding of this new lunacy.

For me, it was very like that afternoon at the Circus in Constantinople. I’d been chewing dried
ganjika
resin to support myself through the tedium of an epic poem Heraclius had commissioned about himself and then ordered to be read out before the races. I’d mistimed the dose, however, and had sat wincing through every inflated image and false quantity. It had hit me during the races, just as two chariots crashed into each other on the final lap. Time had suddenly slowed down, and it was an age for me within which the splintering of wood and upward motion of the thrown racers played itself out to the inevitable end.

So it almost was now. The box seemed smaller and more faded than it had in the basements under the Library. Its colour was bleached out by the sun. Its handles gleamed as it was carried slowly past me. The mob shrinking back to make room, the slaves put it carefully down at the foot of the steps. They stood back from it and bowed low before it.

‘You’re bloody mad, Nicetas,’ Priscus rasped in Latin. ‘You’ll get us all killed.’

Nicetas must have heard, though he paid no attention. He turned back to face the mob. Then, doing his best to keep the pain from his face, hobbled, one step at a time, down to stand beside the box. There was another small commotion as the mob tried to shrink still further back. Nevertheless, if I couldn’t see properly from where I was standing, I believe the hem of his robe was close enough to brush against some of those now scared faces.

‘Get it open,’ he said to the slaves.

Unfamiliar with the locking mechanism, they struggled a while with the lid. Eventually, by twisting, and partly by main force, they pulled it loose. As it came off, there was a strange, collective sigh from the mob. Several people at the front fell to their knees. With his back to the mob, Nicetas ordered the slaves to get the mummy out and hold it up for all to see. With hands shaking but infinite tenderness, they did as they were told. Slowly, the stiffened, black remains were lifted out of their box. Turned upright, they were held up for all to see.

All notion of protocol forgotten, Priscus and I hurried down the steps to look at the Great Alexander in the full light of day.

Except he looked smaller and still more frail, he was as we’d left him. His eyes stared sightlessly forward. The gold ring still shone where it had stuck in the depression between his ribs. The scars shone lighter than they had under the lamps. It was hard to say with any surety after so long. But I thought I could see a faint patterning of tattoos on his upper right arm. It made sense. For all his boasting about Greek culture and Greek blood, Alexander was a Macedonian. That placed him barely two generations from the semi-barbarian.

Now, a thousand years after his death, the remote posterity of those he had conquered looked down at his body, within the city he had founded though never seen, and that had ever since then borne his name.

‘Behold the Great Alexander,’ Nicetas shouted again. This time, his voice gave out under the strain.

The herald took up the theme for himself, improvising loudly and at great length. Whatever he said was having its effect. With a slow wave, spreading ever further back among the mob, people were falling to their knees and then forward in full prostration, and calling out in reverent tones the glorious name of Alexander in Egyptian. The cries fell to whispers, and then to silence – and still the prostration continued.

It was as if someone had flown overhead and scattered some sleeping potion that had rapid effect. One moment, I was ready to pull out my sword and make a fighting retreat. Another, and it was like staring over a carpet of sleeping woodlice. I could have stepped forward and walked, passing from sloping back to sloping back, all the way over to the guards and to the Greeks beyond – the Greeks who were themselves standing silent with arms upraised as if in prayer.

‘I think he’s done it,’ I whispered to Priscus. Incredulous, we looked at each other and then out again across the concourse. The herald never let up his sonorous improvising. Though I could hear it was beginning to fray, his voice had taken on an almost musical quality.

Nicetas pointed at the slaves, who, with equal tenderness, replaced the mummy in its box. Then, each arm supported by one of the slaves, Nicetas moved back to take his place on the golden chair.

It was a matter of getting ourselves back into position before everyone looked up again. And then of jollying them along a while longer. We’d mention the bread distribution again. We might throw in a few prayers. After that, the Egyptians could be shepherded back through the gate. So long as the Greeks gave us no trouble, it would be back to the Library for Alexander, and back for the rest of us to the Palace – where I, for one, was intending to get quickly and totally drunk.

‘Hello, Alaric. We do seem to meet in the strangest circumstances.’

I looked to my left. Lucas was dressed in the white, elaborately folded linen the ancient kings of Egypt wore in some of the friezes I’d seen. His beard had been oiled and plaited into a further imitation of the ancient kings. He must so far have been standing round the corner, where he’d have been facing the main flight of steps up to the portico. Now, he’d been able to take advantage of the sudden peace to move round to where things were happening.

‘You’d surely not attack an unarmed man?’ he asked, nodding to where my sword hand had moved. He smiled as he threaded his way closer through the motionless, prostrated mass of his people. ‘You are the first who would call it unfair,’ he said. ‘Besides, it would break the mood none of us believed His Highness the Viceroy would ever be able to manage. Now, you’d not want that – would you?’

There was a lot I might have said back to the man. But he was right. I didn’t want to break the mood of that crowd. Once all this was over, I told myself, I’d put up his weight in silver as prize to have him delivered to me in chains. For the moment, I did my best to ignore him.

‘Who, in God’s name, is
this
?’ Priscus asked. He’d let go of his own sword. Now, just as helpless, he stood beside me, clenching and unclenching his fists. I tried to think of an answer. It would have to wait.

‘I thought you’d see reason,’ Lucas added with a smile any onlooker would have thought friendly. You’d never have believed what a raving lunatic he was behind that bright, casual exterior. ‘I, of course, feel no obligation to see reason,’ he said.

Before even finishing his words, he leaned forward under my very nose. I nearly retched at the sudden smell of his breath. I stepped back out of his way. He reached into the box containing Alexander’s mummy. He put one hand each side of the head. With a smooth, practised motion, he twisted. As of dried twigs, there was a gentle snapping of bones. Before I could move forward again a single step – before I could so much as lift a finger – he’d raised the withered head above his own and was walking calmly back into the crowd.

‘I’m going to tell them how it weeps,’ he called happily back. ‘Just you see how they believe me.’

‘You’ll fucking bring that back!’ Priscus shouted as he recovered from the shock of what we’d just seen. ‘You’ll show some bloody respect.’ He jumped off the lowest step and moved between the prostrate bodies.

Still smiling, Lucas moved further back. He began calling out in Egyptian. It was a high-pitched, sneering sound, the name of Alexander in every burst of the calling. He waved the head and twisted it in his hands. All around, the slumbering mob was coming back to life. Men were looking up. At first uncomprehending of what had been done, then terrified by it, then with a range of emotions that lay between relief and exultation, every face was turned to Lucas and the head of Alexander. With every repetition of his words, Lucas was raising more men to their feet. Radiating outward from him, and soft at first, the chanting had started up again: ‘The tears of Alexander shall flow, giving bread and freedom.’