The Blood of Alexandria

by Richard Blake

Genres: Historical Fiction; Ancient World Romance

Synopsis

The third book of the DEATH OF ROME SAGA, perfect for readers of Ben Kane and Simon Scarrow. 612 AD. Aelric of England has become the Lord Senator Alaric and the trusted Legate of the Emperor Heraclius. He's now in Alexandria, to send Egypt's harvest to Constantinople, and to force the unwilling Viceroy to give land to the peasants. But the city, with its factions and conspirators - thwarts him at every turn. And when an old enemy from Constantinople arrives, supposedly on a quest for a religious relic that could turn the course of the Persian war, the ensuing chaos may be enough to rip Egypt - and Aelric - apart.

Release date: June 10, 2010

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Print pages: 516

Sample

Chapter 1

The story opens on the day when we began to lose Egypt. It was Thursday, 10 August 612, and I’d been just over four months in Alexandria. And at twenty-two, the infirmities of age were things at worst to be read about or imagined.

Martin gave one of his dry coughs as, otherwise noiselessly, he came into the room.

‘They’re gathered and waiting for you,’ he said.

‘Come over and look at this,’ I said, not bothering to turn. I waited a moment for him to cross the floor and join me by the window. ‘Down there,’ I said, pointing over to the left.

We were in one of the inspection rooms high above the Royal Palace. Its glass windows faced out over the city. The Sea Harbour and the Lighthouse were out of sight behind us. You had to be in the other inspection room to see those. This was, though, by far the best place for viewing the city called into being by the Great Alexander nearly a thousand years before – the city that, in age after age, had been the one place where Egypt and the West and the most gorgeous East came together for trade and for mutual enrichment.

Before us, the neat central grid of the city laid out as on some mosaic floor. Along the wider avenues stood the public buildings, their roofs glittering in the early light. In narrower streets leading off, you saw the houses and palaces of the higher classes. Where the main streets intersected were the public squares, some paved, others laid out as little parks with trees and fountains to give relief from the baking heat of the summer. Though, like all other places in my world, somewhat past its best, Alexandria remained a city of three hundred thousand people. If not all were now occupied or working, it still rejoiced in its four thousand palaces and its four thousand baths. Now Rome was a shattered dump, only Constantinople itself was bigger.

Over on the right, clouds of steam were standing up from the vast slums of the Egyptian quarter.

But I was pointing to the left. Yesterday, it had been almost dry. Now, snaking from far beyond and then round the Jewish quarter, the canal shone silver as it brought the flood waters from the westernmost branch of the Nile to flush out and refill the underground cisterns.

‘It’s later than we were told,’ I said. ‘But the Nile has risen. It’s now only a question of how high, and waiting for the harvest estimates to come in.’

‘I saw it twice when I was – er – when I was in Antinoopolis,’ Martin said, turning the sentence to avoid recalling his time there as a slave. ‘Herodotus said it’s all to do with the shifting winds to the south.’

‘I don’t believe that,’ I said, turning to face him. He’d cut himself shaving. I suppressed the urge to frown at him. ‘According to Colotes,’ I went on instead, ‘it’s the rains that fall every summer on the mountains where the Nile starts – the Mountains of the Moon. These swell the river and carry down the silt that refreshes the land. You’ll surely agree, this is a more credible explanation.’

Martin smiled faintly at the appeal to the scientific followers of Epicurus. He might have asked who had ever seen these Mountains of the Moon. But we’d been arguing about the Epicureans for so long now, he’d not be rising to this challenge. The sun now full in my eyes, I squinted to see how far into the distance the canal might be visible.

‘They are now gathered, Aelric,’ Martin reminded me, a polite urgency in his voice. He would have said more, but he’d seen the burned-out lamp poking from my bag of notes. If this was a place from which the whole city could be seen, it was also a place that could be seen by those able to understand the signs.

‘He got in again, past the guards?’ Martin asked, his voice now sharper.

I nodded. ‘You know these people make an art of going everywhere without ever being noticed,’ I said. I poked the lamp deeper into the bag and pushed the leather flaps together. I turned back to the window, wondering how long it might be before my instructions had their effect.

Now obviously impatient, Martin coughed again.

‘They’ve been gathered since the spring,’ I replied, switching from Latin into the privacy of Martin’s native Celtic. ‘If things had gone as planned, it would have been a matter of reading out the law and then taking questions about implementation. Thanks to the sodding Viceroy . . .’

I trailed off bitterly, thinking about those endless delays, delays, delays. Waiting for the Nile to rise was nothing like waiting for a decision from Nicetas; indeed, there was less doubt the Nile would eventually rise.

‘You’ve seen the newsletters drifting in from Constantinople,’ I went on, ‘and I don’t think we’ve intercepted half of them. Everyone’s had time to know what’s in the law, and to spend every evening arguing and plotting against it.

‘If I go in there now or after lunch, it’s pretty much the same. I’ll be facing down an assembly of factions, most of them immovably hostile.’

Martin looked quietly down. I turned back again to the window. Above Lake Mareotis, a flock of birds was wheeling and darting. I counted twelve of them. If I’d believed in the Old Faith, I might have called this a good omen. But I didn’t believe. If Martin had brought in the orthodox and the heretical patriarchs of Alexandria, together with His Holiness himself from Rome, it would have done nothing more to lift my spirits. There was no recapturing my earlier peace of mind.

‘Oh, what’s the point in keeping them still further?’ I sighed. ‘Do go ahead, Martin. Prepare the way as best you can. I’ll be down in a moment.’

 

The Great Hall of Audience was an obvious addition to the Palace. It had its own gated entrance from the square outside, and a fortified entrance into the Palace itself. I think it had been put up by Cleopatra when the Romans were making life hard for her and she found it necessary to suck up to the natives. Whatever the case, it had been extensively remodelled by the first Imperial governors so it would project the New Order of Things. This remodelling had included a thirty-foot-high frieze running all round the place. It showed Augustus making his deal with the Senate that had finished off the Republic except in form.

Done in the Greek style of their best age, the frieze showed him as first among equals among the senators. There was no hint of the universal barbarian custom of making the ruler look bigger than his subjects. Submission here was conveyed by facial expression and downcast eyes. Augustus wasn’t even in the absolute centre. That was given over to the various nonentities he hadn’t thought it worth murdering before he’d got himself declared Father of the People. Only on the outer fringes, far down the Hall, could you see his family. They jostled at the back of the admiring crowd, most of them not even in full view. You did manage to see the whole of his ghastly wife. She stood in the gallery of the Senate House, looking almost maternal as she leaned over the children Cleopatra had borne to Antony. The deposed couple, you could be sure, were nowhere in evidence. Nor was the child she’d borne to Caesar. Like his mother, he’d not lived to see the New Order of Things.

Yes, the New Order of Things. It was now six and a half centuries old. And still it continued, in an unbroken and apparently unbreakable sequence of governors and prefects and dukes, and, more recently, of viceroys. And here I was from Constantinople to bring the glad tidings of its renewal.

The chair that had collected me on the roof, then carried me down the paved ramps that connected the floors of the Palace, paused as the double doors into the Hall were silently opened. As they closed behind us, one of the eunuchs who’d tagged along gave a gentle cough. Ten feet above, on the platform that blocked my view of the Hall, we were at last in business.

‘All rise for His Magnificence Alaric, Senator, Count of the Most Sacred University, Legate Extraordinary from His Imperial Majesty to His Imperial Highness the Viceroy.’

Even before the echo faded of Martin’s voice, there was a scraping and shuffling as a hundred and seventy well-fed bodies heaved themselves up and then pitched forward for the required prostration. As the echo did fade, Macarius preceded me to the top of the stairs leading up to the platform. I followed, still carried in my chair. Following me were a couple of black slaves to fan me with ostrich feathers.

As the prostration ended, the hundred and seventy called into my presence looked up to see me already sitting on a high chair of ebony and ivory. I sat in the beam of sunlight ever directed on this point from the mirrors set in the domed roof high above. The frieze of Augustus and friends was behind me. Against the wall to my left stood a colossal statue of Augustus. Over on my right stood one of the Great Alexander. Of exactly equal height, each looked across the Hall at the other, ambiguously soft approval on their faces. On a golden easel just behind me on the platform, an icon of the Emperor kept watch on the proceedings. Before me, presiding over my silver inkstand of office, Martin sat on a low stool, his eyes cast reverently down to a heap of papyrus rolls.

In that vast floor space, and with a hundred and fifty feet of ceiling height above us, it hardly mattered with what magnificence we’d arrayed ourselves. For that reason, I’d decided against the gold leaf and cosmetics. I’d chosen instead to rely on the natural gold of my hair and from the smooth regularity of my still clean-shaven face. As for the robe, it was mostly white, though with a good third dyed purple. Normally, the heavy Corinthian silk would have shouted wealth and taste and, above all, power beyond anything the grandest man in my audience could ever hope to match. Not here. The statued past and the architectural ever-present alike dwarfed us all.

As the slaves, now standing on each side of me, set up an almost imperceptible breeze, Martin rose and stretched a hand out to the audience. With a chorus of relieved grunts, the hundred and seventy sat back into their own chairs.

I sipped at the cooled, well-watered wine before handing back the goblet to Macarius. It did nothing to settle my nerves. I looked at the sweating, slimy faces of the Egyptian landed interest. In silence, they looked back at me. I looked briefly up to my left at the curtained-off gallery: was that a gentle tug on the painted silk? Or was it a stray morning draught? I took a deep breath; and thus, as Homer says, the great consult began.

Chapter 10

It was here, outside the city, yet within reach of its protective walls, that the very rich had once built their country villas, and the district had been quite a garden suburb. With the decline of population, and of order beyond the city gates, the villas had long been abandoned, and were now mostly fallen down. Slaves still toiled in the occasional cultivated field, growing lettuces and other delicacies for the city markets. Slaves still trod the occasional wheel, raising water from the low canals to irrigate the land. Otherwise, the area was a near-solitude of rocky green bordering the blue solitude of the sea.

About a mile outside the walls, the solitude became complete. The birds twittered in the little trees. There was a continual rustling under the bushes of lizards and small furry creatures. Over to my left, the sun sparkled on the sea. I was on a fairly narrow spit of land that separated Lake Mareotis from the sea, and the road to Canopus ran through this. But I was on a side road that ultimately led nowhere. Here, there wasn’t a human being in sight.

It was hard to say what had got me out this way. Partly, of course, it was the joys of solitude. You got none of that in the Palace, and still less in the streets of Alexandria. If Martin had been working hard, so had I.

Then, it was the news I’d had of Leontius. He’d told the potty man he was setting out along the Canopus Road. Priscus had told me he’d not have set out till after lunch. Taken together, these might be significant facts. You see, no one ever set out by chair on the road to Canopus in the afternoon – not even with two relays of carriers to go at a steady trot. The Police Chief there had started locking the gates well before sunset, and was famous for not opening them for anyone till the sun was well up again. By day, the road could be as delightful over its whole stretch as the countryside around me. By night, it was a haunt of bandits and God knows what other mischief. No one ever started a journey that would have meant being stuck on that road after dark. Nobody local was stupid enough to do that, even with an armed guard.

But if the potty man had been accurately reporting what he’d been told, Leontius was on a journey along the Canopus Road. Now, the settlements that had once lain between the two cities had been abandoned a good century before. If it wasn’t Canopus, then he might well be up to something decidedly fishy.

I had thought at first to leave all this to Macarius. If Leontius was under continual surveillance, whatever he was up to would surely be known without my intervention. But little as I had any faith in his judgement, Martin’s endless mutterings about Macarius were getting to me. Perhaps I could take some hand in digging up the dirt on Leontius.

I turned up a slight incline. It was about the only high ground on the entire spit of land that stretched east of Alexandria. From the top, you could see down on the other side over a longish part of the Canopus Road. I stood and looked up and down the road. It was as empty as the road I’d just left. No one, of course, would be going down from Alexandria. Neither, though, was anyone coming up.

Leontius would have been long since out of sight. That is, if he’d done other with Priscus than make a polite excuse from his company – hardly a surprising act.

I swore at myself and turned back to look over the sea. But no one can be really out of sorts when looking over that wonderful ocean that washes every civilised shore. It sparkled so prettily in the sun. About a mile out, a few coastal ships were hurrying into port from Canopus or perhaps further out. If I strained, I could just hear the regular beating of time for the oarsmen chained to their benches.

Uton we hycgan hwær we ham agen,

ond þonne geþencan hu we þider cumen

I sang in English. Other than for secret notes to myself, I hadn’t used my own language in years. I no longer thought in it, though I believe I did sometimes dream in it. Now, its harsh sounds grated in my throat, nearly as unfamiliar and as menacing as Egyptian. I’d spent so long away from the language that any other Englishman who might overhear me would surely have thought I was a foreigner.

I fell silent. Once again, I asked what I was doing here. Again, the question had nothing to do with immediate circumstances. What was the point in this lunatic mission to stabilise the Empire by raising up the low? Hadn’t that landowner been right? Perhaps there was a reason for the difference between high and low that went beyond human injustice. Give it as you will, would not the cultivators of the soil eventually lose the soil again?

What was I doing here? On the other hand, what else should I be doing? There was a question worth asking. If only I could think of the answer . . .

I turned from looking over the endlessly fascinating sea and walked over to the little ruin.

I’d come across the abandoned shrine on one of my earlier walks. I call it a shrine, but it might have been a tomb. After so many centuries of neglect, it was hard to tell what the thing once had been. Roughly the shape and size of a small house, it stood up here about fifty yards off the Canopus Road.

It had plainly been intended as a place of some importance. Now, its roof had long since fallen in. Its walls held, but were buried up to perhaps two feet above their original base. The inscriptions covering the inner and outer walls might have been younger than that inscription in the Library. But they’d been in the open, exposed to the sea air. Reading even a few words here and there had so far been as much as I could manage.

I sat down on a fallen column. With a wild olive tree for shade, I reached into my satchel and took out the bread and cheese I’d brought with me. As I chewed on the slightly stale crusts, I fixed my eyes on the least worn area of the outer wall and willed myself to make sense of what could still be read.

Was this a dedication to one of the Kings Ptolemy? Or did it record an erection by a commoner called Ptolemy? Who was Aristarchus? What significance had these repeated quantities of oil and grain?

Land redistribution, Martin, Priscus, even the spring prices – these were all forgotten. Perhaps, I thought, after an endless scanning and re-scanning of those broken words, the place had been neither a tomb nor a shrine. Perhaps it had been some kind of civic building. If so, however, why so far outside the city walls? I took a swig from my wine flask and got up to look again at the rear inside wall. There had been words carved here that I’d already tried to read. They might now make sense.

Behind me, over on the road, there was the crack of a whip and a shrill cry. I turned and looked through the boughs of the olive tree. It was a chair for longish distance travelling, and one of the slaves had put his corner down too roughly. I could hear angry scolding from behind the curtains, while some steward laid about the offending slave with one of those flexible leather rods you use when pain is intended rather than actual bodily harm. If there was still a queue back at the gate, it wouldn’t be unreasonable for the owner of the chair to be thoroughly pissed off.

There was a sound of hooves further along the road. Still keeping behind the tree, I looked far to the left. Yes, it was a horseman. Dressed all in black, hood pulled over his head, he came on at a slow canter. So far as I could tell, he was alone. Or he might have been the first of several from round the far bend in the road. But unless those slaves were armed – and ready to fight – I doubted if their owner would be up to very much in the way of resistance, to one man or to many. I squinted into the now lower sun and looked at the monogram on the curtains.

Well, well, well, I told myself. Who was it but Leontius himself? He’d been telling the truth about his journey. And how late he’d set out! Well, if he were to get his throat cut, it would be no loss to me. Even if it was a question of lifting his purse and personal jewellery, it would be a sight worth the journey to behold. I pulled myself back deeper behind the boughs of the olive tree and squeezed myself harder against its trunk. It would never do to be seen.

The horseman came level with Leontius. No sword showing, I noted with disappointment – only a salute. Another moment, and he’d swung off his beast and was standing on the smooth slabs of the road, stretching his arms and legs and brushing the dust from his cloak. Two of the slaves pulled the curtains aside and helped Leontius on to the road. He waddled forward as if to embrace the horseman. But the horseman stepped back. Going over to his horse, he dug into his saddlebag and pulled out a large package.

There was a conversation that I was too distant to hear. Then Leontius pointed straight up to where I was standing. I cursed and prepared to go down towards them. The thought of politeness to the man was enough to make the bread and cheese heavy in my guts. I’d not have put anything past Leontius, but I didn’t expect I’d have any need of the sword I had at my belt. At worst, I’d have to cry off the dinner invite with the real excuse of Priscus. It was worth asking which of the two’s company I least fancied for the evening.

But no – he wasn’t pointing at me. He was pointing at the shrine. Leaving horse and chair and slaves behind, they were picking their way through the brush as they came up for some quiet conference. Given more time, I’d have backed round to the other side of the far wall. But there was no time. The best I could manage was to drop down on hands and knees and crawl as fast as I could over to the fallen column. If I squeezed underneath it from behind, it would need to be rotten luck if either of the approaching men were to push through those bushes and find me lurking there.

Chapter 11

Leontius wasn’t at all used to walking – especially uphill – and I heard his rough breathing from a good ten yards away.

‘So, my friend, your journey was uneventful?’ he gasped with an attempt at pleasantry. He evidently thought enough of his company to put on a comical drawl that wouldn’t have impressed a barbarian slave in Constantinople.

‘If you’re asking if I was seen,’ came the reply, ‘the answer is no. I’m here for one piece of business. This being done, I’ve a passage booked on a ship calling at Canopus. You will understand my disinclination to savour the delights of Alexandria.’ It was a deep, rather slow voice. The accent said educated Syrian. Something about it also hinted at time spent in Constantinople.

I felt a slight tremor above me as Leontius sat heavily on the column, and then another as, with a little yelp, he shifted position. He’d knocked loose a cloud of dust, and I had to suppress a sneezing attack. He sat where I had been, his back to where I now was.

‘Well, my dear fellow, I think it’s time we discussed terms for the no doubt excellent work you’ve done for me,’ he said.

I thought from his tone he’d move to a boast about his estates and his position among the quality of Letopolis. Instead, he left his words dangling as he waited for a reply.

There was a silence. Then: ‘Our terms were settled several months ago,’ the horseman said, a hint of impatience in his voice. ‘This meeting is to complete our business. As said, I have no wish to remain even outside Alexandria longer than I need. You have the gold with you?’

Leontius began one of his blustering speeches. He was allowed to run on a while.

Then the horseman broke in. ‘You have the gold with you?’ he asked again, not bothering now to smother his impatience. ‘If you don’t care to pay what was agreed, I can take myself and all I brought with me back to Canopus.’ That shut up Leontius.

‘You’ll find it all in order,’ he said, trying to sound cheerful. I heard the thump of at least one heavy purse. ‘It was a large sum to gather in cash, and not all of it is the new-minted Imperial coin you specified. But weight and fineness are correct. Would you like me to help you count it?’

‘I don’t think that will be necessary,’ the horseman said. ‘With all my clients, I like to think I deal on trust. Let me give you what is now your property, to do with what you will.’

There was a rustling of smooth leather and then another silence. I was dying for a look at what they were trading. I almost had to hold myself from twisting my head up. Something was crawling on my neck. I hoped it wasn’t one of those yellow bugs. They had a nasty sting.

‘My, but aren’t those big, heavy scrolls,’ Leontius said uncertainly. ‘What am I supposed to do with them?’

‘When I am asked for information,’ he was answered, ‘my practice is to give it in full. If there is a lot here, it is because there was a lot to be gathered.’

‘I will read all this,’ said Leontius. He was still disconcerted. ‘But could you oblige with a verbal summary?’

‘Very well,’ the horseman said. I could hear a little smile. ‘Remember, though, that the written texts are the full report. Those are what you have bought. I hold out no warranties for any verbal summary.’ As if getting back on his horse, he twisted himself astride the column and faced Leontius. His booted left foot swung maybe four inches from my face.

‘Your target is not a natural-born citizen of the Empire,’ he said. ‘He comes from Britain, which I believe is an island to the west of Africa. Though this was in ancient times a province of the Empire, it is now given over, like much of the West, to barbarian occupiers.’

My heart skipped a beat. I’d normally have felt an overpowering urge to brush those bugs off me. There were two others now – brown ones – crawling up one of my arms. But, frozen in my place, I hardly breathed.

‘He is himself of barbarian stock,’ the horseman continued. ‘His claim to be descended from citizens of good quality is as false as the name he uses. His real name is also barbarian, but far less easily pronounced among the civilised. As for his claim to be thirty-five, that too is a lie. So far as I can gather, he is at least twelve and perhaps fifteen years younger.

‘He arrived in Rome just over three years ago. He was secretary to a priest sent back to gather books for the new Church mission established in his country. The priest was murdered in circumstances that neither Church nor Imperial authorities will reveal to any enquirer. It is enough to say that Alaric emerged with credit, and was able to stay on in Rome as main collector of books to the Church mission in a place called Canterbury.

‘He then moved about two years ago to Constantinople, again on Church business. He involved himself in the rather complex intrigues that ended in the replacement of Phocas with Heraclius. Since then, he has moved to a position of increasing importance in the Imperial Council. He is one of the projectors of the new land law. He has overseen its implementation in three provinces so far. And Heraclius is known to be impatient for his return to Constantinople, where he is needed to ensure good relations with the Roman Church.’

‘So, he’s the Emperor’s bumboy?’ Leontius cut in. He laughed unpleasantly. Sex was something anyone could understand. High politics, I’d known already, were beyond his provincial vision.

‘According to how these things are measured,’ the horseman said with quiet contempt, ‘he is number four or five in the Imperial Council. You haven’t bought my advice. But I will tell you free of charge to underestimate him at your peril. Despite his age, his reputation is for energy and efficiency.’

I nodded complacently at this. Those who spy never hear good of themselves, I’m told. That isn’t always true. But the fucking cheek of it! Leontius had got someone down all the way from Constantinople to do for me what I was having done for him. I was mortified. More than that, I was surprised. I’d never have thought him up to anything half so effective.

‘I have little interest in his university reforms,’ the horseman continued. ‘But I am assured that he could, but for his turn to politics, have become the most brilliant scholar of this age.’

‘I’m sure all you have to tell me is substantiated in your documentation,’ said Leontius. ‘However, I’m not sure if any of it is as useful as your associate promised it would be. My friends and I may choose to consider ourselves short-changed after so much promised.’

‘You can all choose to consider what you please,’ the horseman said drily. ‘But what I’ve given you, properly used, can severely undermine the authority here of the Lord Alaric. Heraclius is far away and preoccupied with five concurrent wars. What confidence will remain in a representative who turns out to be an under-aged barbarian of dubious background?’

‘Tell me about Priscus,’ Leontius asked with a sudden change of tone. ‘I mean the General Priscus.’

‘A nobleman in his late fifties,’ came the reply, ‘Priscus rose to prominence as a soldier in the reign of Maurice. He switched immediately to Phocas and became his son-in-law and heir. When it still seemed a matter of choice, he then switched to Heraclius and was rewarded with control of the armed forces. Why do you ask?’

‘Because he’s here,’ said Leontius. ‘He’s very interested in and sympathetic to my campaign against this barbarian child. I think he might be a useful ally to confirm all that you have finally brought me.’ There was a long silence, broken only by the sound of the scraping of the horseman’s boot against the other side of the column.

Then the horseman spoke again: ‘You regard Priscus as your ally?’ He laughed gently. ‘I can only rejoice I came here in time to collect my fee. I will freely advise you, my dear if temporary client, to watch Priscus very closely indeed. I will confirm that he and Alaric are sworn enemies at every level. Indeed, it was Priscus who led opposition in the Imperial Council to the land law. But there must be whole cemeteries filled with those who thought Priscus might be useful to them.’

The horseman suddenly changed tone. ‘You tell me you came here in secret?’ he asked.

‘Of course,’ said Leontius.

‘Can you tell me, then,’ the horseman replied, ‘what that half-eaten loaf is doing on the ground?’

I kicked myself. I should have noticed that. But Leontius was laughing.

‘Some slave’s lunch,’ he said easily. ‘You must recall that I am a man of considerable weight in this whole region. I have friends in every party. I have that even without developments that will soon force every party to seek my friendship. I don’t think anyone would dare do anything so vulgar as spy on my movements.’

‘A wealthy city indeed,’ the horseman said with a sniff, ‘where even slaves can eat bread of that quality, and have new linen for wrapping it.’

‘Of course, I don’t want the information you’ve brought me to discred