The Sword of Damascus (48 page)

While the valve was fitted to the double spout – yes, there wasn’t quite enough thread for the sleeves to get a proper hold – I tapped both kettles with the silver head of my walking stick. They sounded as if they’d do. Once it was fixed in place, I tapped the steel mixing valve. The ratio of wall thickness to volume didn’t let me tell much at all from the sound. Nevertheless, I did test the basic security of its fitting to the kettles.

I took my seat beside the kettles and nodded at Meekal. He gave an order to the workmen, who then lit the fire. With air from the bellows, the charcoal was soon an intense white even in that scorching sunshine.

‘I didn’t think to ask you,’ I said with sudden alarm, ‘if both kettles are filled half with water. It needs to be neither more nor less than half.’ Meekal nodded. Relieved, I sat back and waited. I had another headache coming on. It might have been the fumes. Just as likely, it was all the beer. Meekal stood beside me. Neither of us spoke as we watched the nervous pumping of the workmen on the bellows. I put up my ear trumpet and leaned forward again. ‘I think it’s boiling,’ I said in Syriac. One of the workmen nodded. ‘Then do please screw on the lids.’ He bowed and began fumbling with the eight-inch brass discs that would seal both kettles. I got up and let Meekal carry my chair behind the protective wall. As the workmen hurried round to stand behind us, Meekal bent down and pulled out the stopper on the water clock.

‘But tell me again, my dearest kinsman,’ he asked, now speaking Latin for added security, ‘why the kettles are only to be filled halfway.’

I sniffed and looked at the dribble of water from the clock. It had already reached the first marker in the collecting bowl. I’d decided we had to wait until it reached the fifth.

‘Your lack of attention to these matters disturbs me,’ I replied. ‘The purpose of dividing the work as we have is to ensure that no one person – indeed, no group of persons working together – shall be able to reproduce the Greek fire. The plan is that you, and only you, will have the overall knowledge needed to make everything work. Now, that really does mean you need to understand what is happening.’ I held up a hand for my cup, and waited while it was filled with iced lemon juice. ‘The idea that Greek fire is a burning liquid is an error that I have deliberately cultivated. In fact, if these kettles were to discharge their contents as a liquid, I don’t see how the flame jet would be longer than a few dozen yards, and it would all be used up in a single burst. The truth is that all materials exist in three forms: as solids, as liquids, and as vapours. Each state depends on the amount of heat applied to the atoms. The greater the heat, the looser the atomic structure.’

‘So you’ve said,’ Meekal sneered. ‘But this does conflict with what I’ve read in Aristotle.’ He smiled at the involuntary tightening of my face. ‘He says that fire is heat and dryness. Water is cold and wetness. Steam is made by combining the heat of fire and the wetness of water. The product is air and earth. All my teachers in Constantinople were of that opinion. And I have read the same in that book you so kindly gave me.’

I breathed in and out very heavily. I took off my visor and looked at the questioning face. Was the man taking the piss? Of course he was. I forced myself to relax and drank more of my lemon juice.

‘If you don’t wish for a public beating,’ I said coldly, ‘you’ll keep your mouth shut about that man and his equally deluded followers. According to Aristotle, none of this is even conceivable – unless you call in the “intellectual” support of magic. Now, unless you have something sensible to add, I suggest you shut up and wait.’ I took off my hat and wig and mopped my sweaty scalp. I looked again at the clock. Another two markers to go. I dropped the wig into my lap and replaced the hat.

‘Epicurus was wrong when he said that there are atoms of heat,’ I said, breaking the silence that had resulted from my last comments. ‘I think it more likely that heat is a kind of motion, the communication of which causes atoms to vibrate within their structures. Whatever the case, the furnace under those kettles converts their liquids to vapour. These two vapours then mix together in the bulb of the double valve and become explosive. When they are lit, it is burning vapour that shoots out. Because Greek fire is a vapour and not a liquid, these kettles can be used and reused throughout an entire battle without any need for recharging.’

I fell silent again and watched the clock. We were almost at the fifth marker. I was now sweating heavily. I was also beginning to shake with the tension. The valve excepted, all had gone perfectly this time. I didn’t want another anticlimax. The water level had risen to the fifth marker in the bowl. It was now or never. I took up my walking stick and got slowly to my feet. I peered cautiously round the wall to the double kettle. It was beginning to shake, but I could hear none of the bright hissing that would indicate a failed joint. I turned back and smiled at the head workman. He swallowed and clutched at the silver relic case about his neck. I continued looking round the wall as he walked forward and began tapping with his long crowbar at the brass plug screwed into the exit spout of the mixing valve. I could hear Meekal groaning away behind me in some stupid prayer. Incongruously, the other workmen beside him were calling desperately on Christ and the Virgin; surely, if they had any say in the matter, we’d have a catastrophic explosion that took us and all our achievement straight to Hell. But I put the human noise out of mind. I pushed in my hearing trumpet and listened intently. Yes, I could now hear the high whistle as the plug reached the last turn of its thread. I rapped the wall smartly with my stick and called out a word of encouragement to the workman. With a last cry of fear and pleading, he brought his bar down with a firm tap on the spout, then threw himself down. I pushed sweaty palms against the wall and took a deep breath.

Chapter 56

With a deafening ‘whoosh!’ the combined jets of invisible vapour shot across the hundred yards of clear space in front of the kettles. I saw the wooden screen placed by the wall go back, and heard its dull clatter against the stones of the wall. I breathed out and pushed my head further round the wall to see the kettles. They hadn’t exploded, but the first charge of vapour was spent, and it was now steam and water shooting forward. As I looked, the kettles began to shake and rattle about in their housing. As I pulled myself back behind the wall, I heard the cracking of support beams within the stuttered scream of the discharged steam and water. I felt the impact of the kettles as they flew backward into the sandbags, and then the warm spattering of water that rained down on us.

As the scream died away to a gentle hissing, I hobbled out from behind the wall as fast as my stick would push me, and looked at the result. Meekal grabbed at me and tried to pull me back. But I evaded him and stood before the upturned kettles. They’d burst several of the sandbags on their impact, and were now lodged there, spout pointing straight up. I laughed and waved my stick. I poked Meekal away and watched him vanish back behind the wall to try to force the workmen up from where they’d prostrated themselves on the packed sand. I wouldn’t bother with dragging myself over to the wall. But I could see that the wooden screen had been shattered by the blast, and that the wall behind it was dark from the soaking. I looked up. The noise of the explosion had frightened the carrion birds into flight. They flapped about overhead with tuneless calls.

‘But, surely, the kettles have burst?’ Meekal asked with a shaking voice.

I walked forward and struck the largest of them with my stick. It rang like a misshapen bell. I wheeled round and faced him. ‘On the contrary, my dear,’ I said triumphantly, ‘it was a complete success.’ I went back to my inspection of the kettles. They had eventually flown back with tremendous force. But for the sandbags, they’d have smashed themselves and the wall to smithereens. ‘Oh, don’t worry about the recoil,’ I said with a dismissive wave. ‘I fully expected that. You see, every time there is motion in one direction, there is another motion in the opposite direction. And this was water we were using. The real mixture is much heavier. It doesn’t expand like water does. Instead, it seethes away within the kettles, producing vapour in a steady, controllable casting off of atoms. Mounted aboard a ship, you’ll need to reinforce the timbers. But there will be no expulsion of heavy liquids to produce that extreme opposite motion.’

I sat down in the chair that had been placed behind me, and felt very weary. Meekal strutted about the kettles, looking at them, testing their still great heat with the tip of a finger.

‘Congratulations, then, my Sword of Damascus,’ he said, now in Saracen. ‘God has brought your labours to a fine conclusion.’ He dropped his voice and went back into Latin. ‘Does it not disappoint you, though?’ he crooned. ‘You spent my childhood lecturing me how the application of reason to the natural world could improve human life without limit. Yet your greatest demonstration of this reason has only been to destroy life – to create a weapon of massive destructive power. I wasn’t there to see it used outside Constantinople. But I saw the burns on some of the few who survived.’

I looked about for my wig. It must have fallen to the ground behind the wall when I’d got up.

‘When I used the words “complete success”,’ I said, ‘I meant complete success this far. We still haven’t seen a demonstration of the main weapon. The mixture we’re brewing needs much more pressure. We still don’t know how the kettle joints will stand up to that. Still, I do rather think you’ll have a fine show to put on for the Commander of the Faithful.’ I paused. ‘I must ask myself, though, how he’ll take it when you tell him that you are to be the only person, outside the Imperial Palace in Constantinople, who has the secret of the Greek fire.’ I hid behind my visor and watched his face carefully. He smothered a smile and muttered something about revealing the secret when the time was right.

I would have pushed my luck a little further. At this moment, though, the gate opened over on my left, and one of the guards came slowly towards us back first. He turned as he reached us and looked steadily at the ground. Two men on horseback had been sighted, he told Meekal. They’d been watching the monastery for some while from a little hill a quarter of a mile to the north.

‘They’ll see fuck all from out there!’ Meekal said, still in Latin. He laughed. ‘No action for now,’ he said to the guard in Saracen. ‘My compliments to General Hakim, though. Ask him to get his men quietly ready to face an attack.

‘We’re safe enough,’ he explained to me once the man had withdrawn. ‘Those Cross-Worshipping bandits aren’t up to regular fighting. Besides, I’ve left orders in Damascus that, if we aren’t back by tomorrow morning, an army of ten thousand is to be sent out to relieve us.’

‘It seems the Mighty Meekal thinks of everything,’ I said drily. ‘Your real grandfather might have been impressed – assuming, that is, he could have overlooked your treason. Old Priscus was capable of many things. But, if always in his own manner, he was loyal to the Empire.’ That wiped the smile from his face. Yes – dear old Priscus! If he’d lived to see it, he’d have died of envy at what I eventually did to the Persians. Given half a chance, he’d have bullied Heraclius into a last desperate stand against the Saracens when they took Syria, and we’d have folded like the Persians. But, if he wasn’t ultimately the second Alexander he always fancied himself to be, he never betrayed the Empire. I looked over at my own work, still embedded in the sandbags. I got up and stretched my legs.

‘Get that lot sorted,’ I said to the workmen. ‘I want those kettles better secured for my next visit.’ To Meekal: ‘I’ve seen enough for today.’ I glanced over at my carriers. Still blindfolded, they’d now got themselves off the ground, and were coming out of their shaking fits from the noise of the experiment. Their bodies had turned white where dust had stuck to the sweat.

‘Get them properly rested and fed,’ I ordered no one in particular. ‘It’s a long trek back to Damascus in this heat.’ I turned back to Meekal. ‘I need to spend much of the afternoon in the records building,’ I said. ‘As ever, I suppose, I’ll have to write up my own notes. This time, though, I want to go again over the records of the works before the big explosion. I doubt I shall copy the mistakes made then. But, if you’re now forcing the pace, I need to make sure of certain things. You’re welcome to sit in there with me. You might even be useful for reading some of the more charred records. But, if you’d rather be off and torture someone, I’ll not hold it against you.’ I dug my stick into the sand and began to move towards the gate into another of the zones.

Karim said nothing, but looked like a man who tries not to show that he’s recently shat himself from terror. Edward was shouting away in fluent Saracen to anyone who’d listen.

‘They scarpered like wild pigs in the hunt,’ he said. He took out his little sword and waved it in the sun. ‘As we came closer, I thought they’d stand and fight like men.’ He paused, then spat melodramatically. ‘But, like all the other unbelievers, they were just cowardly pigs!’

I looked at Meekal with raised eyebrows. He shrugged. I wondered if Edward wasn’t growing a little too close to his new friends. But there could be no doubt he was their young hero. The other Saracens stood round him, calling out his praises and giving him little hugs.

‘While he is your hostage,’ I said quietly, ‘you really should consider keeping him safer than you do.’

Meekal scowled and said he’d speak with General Hakim about the breach of his orders.

‘You can tell me the whole story over dinner,’ I said in English. ‘I don’t suppose you’ll be passing up yet awhile on the wine.’