The Sword of Damascus (8 page)

‘Oh, my dear boy, I’m not saying we should entirely think ourselves into the heads of beasts prodded along to the slaughter. I’ve been alive a long time, and one reason for that is that something always turns up – if only you know how to recognise it. For the moment, though, with or without its two head gaolers, this ship is a floating prison, and we might as well put aside all thought of escaping. We wait here for Edward and Hrothgar to come back. I’m beginning to hope they’ll bring some decent wine to have with dinner. In the meantime, I’m off to my cot for another nap. Get me up when the sun casts a four-foot shadow of yourself, and we’ll have a Greek lesson. I think you will now understand why I’ve been putting so much emphasis on the spoken language.

‘So, help me to my cot if you can,’ I said curtly. ‘I feel a good dinner coming on for tonight, and I’d like to be up to its full enjoyment. One of us needs to stay in reasonable health.’

Chapter 9

But there was no good dinner. The crew waited until the stars looked down from a moonless sky. When Edward and Hrothgar didn’t return, they served up something disgusting and went back to their beer. I was kept up half the night by their bawled singing and by their yapping, increasingly ill-natured arguments. When I eventually woke the following morning, the sea was calmer still and the sun hotter. I sat on the deck under my awning, looking over to the land. I still couldn’t see much of Cartenna. And I could see no suggestion of a returning boat. It would soon be a day since it had set out.

‘I think we should pray, Master,’ Wilfred said, coming over to stand beside me.

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 presume 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.’