The Sword of Damascus (44 page)

You don’t like a woman like Khadija. But you do have to admire her. In her youth, she’d led the Faithful into battle. Now, a gentle prisoner in the Caliph’s palace, she’d do battle for the same cause with bribery and fraud. The only criticism I might have of the woman was her crap security. But wasn’t that really how Muawiya had done over her husband and his boss Ali in the civil wars? Wasn’t that how the Empire was doing the Saracens over in general? My reforms of the Intelligence Bureau had been one of the best uses I’d made of the Imperial taxpayers’ money. No wonder we were always a step ahead of these people. It was a matter of learning their language and its various nuances – and then of waiting for them to sit back and spill the contents of their minds as if they’d been so many drunks with overfilled cups. For all we’d destroyed them utterly, the Persians had never been this careless.

I had no idea what time it was. I hadn’t seen a water clock all evening. I hadn’t seen the sky in ages. Those stimulants had taken away all internal sense of time. It must have been approaching the midnight hour. It might easily have been some while later. The single lamp in the room had long since gone out, and there was no light but a dim reflection of the moon from somewhere beyond the shuttered window. I was too pleased with myself, and still too drugged to feel tired. Still, how long could I be away from my bed before someone raised the alarm?

But Khadija and Karim were prosing on endlessly about matters of no concern to me. It was all a matter of names and of household expenses that were irrelevant. I kept my good ear against the curtain just in case. But there was nothing more for me. I waited patiently for the conversation to run out of force, and for those long internals of silence that you find between close friends or relatives to grow longer still. At last, they slid into the conventional phrases that indicated a farewell. I stretched my arms and legs in the darkness, reasonably sure that the clicking of aged cartilage wouldn’t carry through the curtain. I heard Khadija get up and go – I hoped for the last time – through the door into her private quarters. Shortly after, there was the sound of Karim’s getting up. I heard the gentle click of the door into the antechamber. Another moment, and I could try another getaway of my own. All was silence about me. I stretched my arms and legs again and prepared for the effort of climbing to my feet.

Then the door opened, and a pool of lamplight splashed into the room. Framed in the doorway was Karim – one arm clutching the still sleepy slave girl, his outer robe hitched up in his other hand. For what seemed a very long time, we looked at each other. With a whispered command, he dropped the girl behind him, and came fully into the room.

‘What are you doing here?’ he whispered, his voice shaking with the shock of discovery. I smiled back at him, and held out my arms for him to lift me.

‘You should know the answer to that one, my dear,’ I whispered with much firmer voice. ‘You caused me to be brought here. Are you surprised if I chose to stick around to seek what else I might learn?’ I closed and opened my outstretched hands. As if automatically, he bent forward and helped me to my feet.

‘If she finds out you’ve been spying on her, she’ll kill you,’ he moaned. He looked back at the slave girl. So far as I could tell, she was still sprawled on the floor where he’d dropped her.

‘Well, my dearest and only posterity,’ I said with a smile, ‘it’s up to you to make sure she doesn’t find out. Can you help me back to my chair? It should still be waiting outside.’

‘What did you overhear?’ he asked.

‘Oh, everything – yes,
everything
!’ I said, now with a gentle laugh. ‘And what I didn’t hear I was able to guess. Now, are you going to raise the alarm – and this would not be in anyone’s interest? Or are you going to get me out of here? And are you going to keep your mouth as tightly shut about this as I’ve kept mine about your less than glorious performance of last night?’

The slave girl had vanished from the antechamber, and the main hall was now empty. Finally, the guards had had the sense to shut and bolt the gate. But that was no problem with Karim beside me. He kicked some life into the guards, and I followed him with apparent meekness out into the chilly night air. My carriers were verging on moral collapse when we found them. Ignoring me, they threw themselves down before Karim in the sort of prostration an emperor would have thought flattering, and listened to his instruction to take me straight back to the Tower of Heavenly Peace.

‘I don’t think she got round to telling you,’ I whispered slowly in Greek. ‘But Khadija will now let you firm up my security.’ He nodded with plain relief, and with some embarrassment. ‘And you can be assured that, so long as young Edward is guaranteed safe, Khadija will get everything she wants. Your own children will learn many things, I have no doubt – but Greek will not be on their syllabus.’

By now, I’d been packed into the chair, and the carriers were in position front and back. With a nervous order from Karim, they had me aloft.

‘I don’t know how you’ve managed to stay alive this long with your behaviour,’ he muttered with a faint return to his diplomatic manner. ‘But I pray to Allah that He will continue to watch over you.’

‘I have not the slightest doubt, my darling great-grandson,’ I mumbled as I tried to get my teeth back into position, ‘that Allah will continue the same watch on me as He has always kept.’

Without bothering to reply, Karim slapped the shoulder of the head carrier and watched as I was carried rapidly out of sight.

Chapter 51

That really should have been the evening’s work. Even a younger man, by now, should have been wilting. But good opportunities hardly ever present themselves singly. It was as we were passing again over the long wooden bridge that I saw Meekal. It was too dark for playing with my visor. But I’d pulled the curtain aside to cool my sweating face, and I’d have known that long stride anywhere. I watched with idle attention as he approached from the right. At our current speeds, I guessed, he’d pass the far end of the bridge shortly before I arrived there. Interesting that, for all his exalted position, the Governor of Syria and effective deputy of the Caliph himself still went about the palace on his own two feet. Khadija’s stimulants were still at full blast in my head, and I felt little inclination to go back off to bed. The idea may have been in my mind the moment I saw Meekal. Certainly, it wasn’t long after that when the idea was fully formed.

‘Follow that man,’ I hissed. The head bearer twisted round with a muttered protest: hadn’t I made them risk enough already? I ignored the protest. ‘That man over there,’ I said, pointing. Our relative speeds had changed, and Meekal would pass the bridge some while before we were off it. ‘I’m sure you recognise the Lord Governor of Syria.’ In the moonlight, the face staring back at me seemed a mask of sudden fear. ‘You heard me,’ I hissed again. I paid no attention to the reply – half protest, half terrified plea. ‘I said follow that man. Do it, and there’s five solidi extra for each of you.’ That decided them. With a few soft words of command from their leader, the slaves were padding faster down the planks of the bridge. Meekal was now about twenty yards over on our left, and was ready to vanish round a corner. ‘Careful, careful!’ I called softly. ‘Follow at a distance. Try not to appear eager to keep the man in sight.’

So, with cautious haste, I swayed along in the chair. Back in the main buildings of the palace, the evening may still have been in full swing. This far out, there was nothing but the occasional covered chair and the ubiquitous slaves, all carrying boxes of food and drink and the obvious implements of pleasure. If Meekal had looked round more than once, he’d have found reason to pause and come back for enquiries. But he turned round not at all. He did stop at one point, but that was only to look up awhile as the moon dodged in and out of the clouds. The carriers stopped behind a deserted pavilion and, shaking with fear, waited for the chase to begin again. And it did. We passed now within some streets of derelict buildings that had, before the palace walls extended so far, been houses for the middling people of Damascus. These would, sooner or later, be demolished, the ground on which they stood given over to some more exalted purpose. For now, they remained as evidence – if such was needed – that the world in which I was living had nothing about it of the immemorial. There were five of these streets, dark and quiet beneath the fitful moon. As scared now of their surroundings as of Meekal, the carriers prayed softly as they picked their way through the overgrown streets.

At last, perhaps three hundred yards from the light outer rim of the walls, we came to a dense grove of trees. Every palace has one. In Constantinople, of course, the hunting ground covered an area at least three times larger. Being several hundred years older, the Emperor’s little forest was graced with much higher trees and a much more convincing appearance of natural growth. But, against the day when Damascus was besieged, or the palace itself was besieged by the people of Damascus, the caliphs had taken care that all the normal pleasures of life might continue, if on a smaller scale than usual. At a pinch, you’d go into there on horseback – though you’d have a better appearance on foot of boundless, overgrown solitude. Into this grove, Meekal now vanished.

‘We daren’t go in after him, My Lord,’ the head carrier gasped.

I nodded. Even on a gravelled path, anyone would have to be stone deaf not to hear us. I peered over at the walls. The grove seemed to run right up to them, though probably stopped ten or so yards short for security. Was there an unfrequented gate in that stretch of wall? Was Meekal only going through the grove so he could get out, unobserved, into the city?

‘Wait over by that tree,’ I said, trying to sound surer than I now felt about matters. ‘I will give further instructions when I am ready.’ Obediently, the carriers trotted over to the shade of the low apple tree. ‘Put me down here,’ I said, ‘and sit as if you are all at rest.’ I sat for what seemed an age. I sat until I began to feel stupid. The moon was now fully out from behind the clouds, and its mysterious light bleached out all that wasn’t in shadow. A gentle breeze ruffled the chair curtains. Somewhere in the distance – perhaps outside the palace grounds – a dog barked without letting up. The sky told me it was rather earlier than I’d assumed. We were still approaching the midnight hour. Even so, this vigil was dragging on and on.

Then, just as I was about to order the retreat, there was a sound deep within the grove. What it was I couldn’t tell with my hearing – but the carriers heard it. I saw them sit up and listen. At once, though, their own response was overwhelmed by the dry clatter of several hundred wings as what may have been every bird in the grove left its perch for the night. That, plus the cries of animals on the ground, brought the night suddenly to life. Just as suddenly, though, it faded again. The carriers looked at each other in the returning silence, and then to Heaven. I steadied them with a distribution of gold. So far as I could, I scanned the still blackness of the grove for any sign of movement.

I can’t say how much longer we waited. I had one of the chair curtains pulled down so I could wrap it about my own chilled body. There were faint bursts of sound as, back towards the centre of the palace, the bands of revellers began to break up for the night. The birds were almost set off again by a procession of several dozen blacks that passed by close to where we sat out of sight. Accompanied by drums, though in mournful voice, they shouted out what may once have been their battle cry as, chained neck to neck, they were hurried past by a pair of eunuchs who didn’t seem to care what skin they broke with their discipline rods. As if on some night exercise, they were driven from deep within the palace grounds, only to be turned and driven back.

And that was it. The drums and chanting faded into the night. The bursts of revelry became fainter and further apart. That dog barked endlessly, and the moon rose ever higher above the high wall of the palace and the trees that, young as they were, already topped the palace wall. Once again, I began to wonder if it was time to order the carriers out of their cautious doze and have myself taken off to bed.

Then, suddenly, a small, dark figure darted out from the trees. It stopped in the moonlight and looked frantically about. I sat up and stared hard. Was it a deer or some other small animal? Was it just a trick of the light? I strained and focused. I stood up and rubbed my eyes, and looked again.
How the bloody hell . . . ?
I thought. I stepped forward and poked my stick into the back of one of the huddled carriers.

‘Catch that boy!’ I said urgently. ‘All of you – after him. Bring him back here. And try not to make any noise.’

As the carriers caught up with him and noiselessly surrounded him, I saw Edward pull out a knife. He turned round and round, stabbing frantically, his knife glittering dark in the moonlight. Without giving him space to break free and run, the slaves darted back. Still perky from the stimulants, I hurried over the thirty yards or so that separated us.

‘Edward, Edward!’ I gasped softly in English. I doubled up with a coughing fit, but was up again in moments. ‘It’s me. Come over here before we all get seen.’ The boy looked in my direction, then went back to stabbing at the air. I hurried closer and called again. This time, he looked properly at me. I caught a blurred glimpse of his face in the moonlight, and wanted to step away. Then, he dropped down and covered his eyes. His body shook with a wild sobbing. ‘Get him up,’ I called to the carrying slaves. ‘Get him into the chair with me, and get us both back to the Tower of Heavenly Peace. Be quick about it. There’s double gold all round.’