There was a time when Canopus was the main pleasure resort for Alexandrians of quality. The breeze it took straight off the sea made it so pleasant a change in the summer months from Alexandria. Long before then, I believe – back in the time of the native kings – it was a main trading port. With the building of Alexandria, that source of importance had quickly disappeared. But it had more than compensated with its shops and brothels and temples. It also drew benefit as the nearest exchange point, by land or water, between Alexandria and the Nile. Before its branch began to silt up, it was both the nearest and by far the most convenient exchange point.
Then, the canal dug by the Ptolemies to join the two cities had been kept clear at all times, and poets had sung of the flotillas of gay barges that, throughout the day and night, would pass and re-pass the silver thread of water. Canopus was now in much reduced circumstances. It had lost position to the more distant but generally more convenient Bolbitine. Its people had withdrawn to a walled centre. Outside the walls, the old pleasure gardens were given over to fortified monasteries or overgrown wasteland. The place survived as a satellite port for Alexandria, and because no one had ever thought to reorder the posts along the Nile.
Except when the floods came and raised the water level the old canal was choked with reeds and rubbish and the usual connection was now by sea or by the road I’ve already mentioned. But the floods had now come, and the docks at the Alexandrian end retained some of their ancient elegance. It couldn’t be described any more as the best way of entering the city after a journey down the Nile. But if now used as warehouses, or divided into single rooms to house the poor, the palaces once built to stand close by the docks still impressed on first inspection. And it had, for me, the one advantage of privacy. I wanted to be back in my office, putting some kind of gloss on my adventures, before anyone noticed I was back.
As our barge rounded the last bend before the docks came in sight, I realised I was in for another disappointment. Not only had the news of my adventures raced ahead of me, but so had news even of my return. During the last few hundred yards of our approach, the mass of bodies that clustered round the landing place resolved itself into something like all the official and well-connected of Alexandria. I almost thought of joining the Mistress in the one covered place on the barge, and ordering the crew to take us straight past the docks into the Eastern Harbour. But then the cheering started. It began as a concerted buzz from the front of the crowd, then rippled back through the less important dignitaries, until there was, billowing across the closing distance of the water, a continuous roar of greetings and adoration.
‘Put that box down,’ I said to Martin without moving my lips. ‘Get up here and look happy.’ I’d already set my face into a smile and was nodding complacently back at the shining faces now clearly in sight.
‘My darling Alaric, how glad I am to see you looking so well!’ Our lips brushed as we kissed, and Priscus kept my hand to his chest as he stepped back a few inches. He was at his most convincing. The bystanders must have thought us the very dearest friends. ‘But you must tell me the whole story once we’re alone. What little I’ve picked up is absolutely shocking. Such rough and even impious behaviour to a person of your quality – it chills the blood.
‘Oh,’ he went on, answering my unvoiced question about the healing but still red gash across his forehead, ‘I can’t claim anything so dramatic as your own capture and escape. But the security of the Egyptian roads makes some of the places I’ve campaigned almost tranquil by comparison.
‘And, no,’ he added, now dropping his voice and leaning into another embrace, ‘I didn’t find it. I did learn much of value. But if I’d found what I went for, you can bet your life I’d not have arranged this homecoming for our impetuous little barbarian.’ Priscus followed my glance at the armed guard that surrounded the two chairs that had obviously come from the Palace. He smiled.
‘You must understand,’ he said, ‘that your safety is no longer something to be taken for granted, even in Alexandria. I’m afraid there can be no more casual wandering about the town. Besides’ – again, he stretched forward and dropped his voice – ‘there have been troubles while we were both away. There was nearly a riot yesterday in the Eastern Harbour. It was as much as the police guards could do to keep the grain fleet safe.’
‘Hasn’t it gone yet?’ I asked. ‘It should have been ten days at sea.’ I smiled graciously at one of my Jewish agents. I’d scare him and his friends shitless when we were alone. For the moment, I smiled again and gave him my hand to kiss. There were a couple of the greasier landowners behind him. They made nothing like so good an effort as my Jew or Priscus as they congratulated me on my survival and return.
A flash of steel drew my attention sharp left. All this milling about had left a momentary gap in the crowd of well-wishers. Looking through it, I could see the armed cordon, and, behind this, the much, much larger crowd of the poor. Held back in one of the wider avenues that led to the dock, all stood silent and grim. One thing I’d learned early in my stay was that you don’t let a crowd that size assemble in Alexandria. If it does, you break it up. I looked back at Priscus.
‘Main forces are in the Harbour,’ he explained shortly. ‘And no, the fleet hasn’t gone out yet.’ He came close again for another embrace. ‘If you can talk any sense at all into the wanker,’ Priscus whispered into my ear, ‘you’ll have the entire Council in your debt. Nicetas has kept the grain fleet in harbour pending his further instructions. The effect it’s having on the mob doesn’t appear to concern him.’
We were interrupted by Martin, who pressed a message into my hand. In a firm though somewhat odd script, the Mistress thanked me for the journey down the Nile, and said she’d send for me when she felt ready to receive guests.
I bit back the angry reply I was about to make. I could see Priscus was trying to get an upside-down view of the note. I stood on tiptoe and looked over the heads of everyone else in the crowd. That might have been her chair going off towards the centre. Or she might have disappeared already into one of the smaller streets. I had offered her rooms in the Palace. Since she hadn’t said no, I’d assumed her acceptance. Now she was gone. I hadn’t thought she knew Alexandria at all – let alone well enough to have got herself lodged already. And she hadn’t collected the emergency passport I’d had Martin draw up for her. She’d not get far without that. All told, though, it might be for the best if she weren’t to be in the Palace. The various households there were pretty broad-minded. But her notions of slave management would have raised eyebrows anywhere.
‘It’s nothing,’ I said, turning back to Priscus and waving Martin away. ‘I need a bath and a change of clothes. Then, I think, we might both profit from dinner without an audience.’
‘We are quite at one, my blond pot of love,’ he replied as we closed for another embrace. ‘You’ll see that everyone is keen to be away before dark. The mobs are gathering all over the place by night. So far, it’s just speeches. But you haven’t seen what’s going on in the Egyptian quarter. I’m so glad,’ he breathed softly, ‘that we can work together at last. We’ll both have what we want – and be out of here before the place bubbles completely over.’
Though half gone now, the moon was still bright enough to show all the streets below. I stood on the roof of the Palace, looking down. Priscus hadn’t been wrong. The streets were almost alive with people. With torches to make up whatever light the moon didn’t supply, the crowds swarmed around the main squares. I couldn’t make out the words of the leaders as they stood on the fountains or clung to the legs of statues. But I could hear the angry buzz. In Constantinople, the custom was for trouble to start in the Circus and then spill on to the streets. Here, it began in the streets. Because the days were so hot, it made sense for protests to take place in the evening.
‘Without actual provocation,’ Macarius had told me earlier, ‘it will be just gatherings and speeches. There is hardly ever serious rioting except in the spring.’ He was probably right, I thought, still looking down. On the other hand, I knew that food supplies had barely ever been so short except in the spring. Nothing would happen tonight. It was too late. Priscus had told me of his meeting with the Police Secretary. There weren’t the forces to disperse the crowds. But so long as they could be kept apart, nothing at all might happen. But rioting was something no person of quality in Alexandria ever wanted to see. Even when the city was new and still mostly settled by Greeks who hadn’t yet had time to go rotten, the mob had been a fact of life. The reason the Ptolemies had built the Palace so close to the harbour was so they could make a quick getaway to Cyprus or Cyrene if the mob got out of hand – which it had been doing periodically ever since.
‘You’ll have to make it clear to her,’ I said, turning back to Martin, ‘that, whatever she says in private, she just can’t go about the whole Palace making threats against the Emperor’s Legate.’
‘I think I’ve talked some sense into her,’ Martin said uncertainly. His black eye shone clearly in the moonlight. ‘I can promise she’ll not embarrass you again with Priscus.’ He tried to say something more, but trailed off and turned back to an inspection of the streets. A column of armed police was pushing its way between a dangerously large crowd in the Square of the Ptolemies. Divided in two, it might soon disperse of its own accord.
‘It really is because she was so worried for the pair of us. You see, I did tell her we’d be away just a few days. When we didn’t come back in the time I said, she grew worried. Then Priscus came back early, and he kept turning up at the nursery. Then news of our difficulties began coming through in Alexandria. You can’t imagine the things Priscus said to her when she locked all the doors and kept Maximin under her own bed.’
‘Let’s drop the matter,’ I sighed. Imagining what Priscus had said was something easily within my capacities. Back in Constantinople, I’d made an agreement with Sergius to get Martin and his family plus Maximin shipped straight out in the event of my fall. There was money pledged to get them all the way to Rome, and even, if need presented itself, on to Ireland where Martin might still have a few relatives who recognised him. Priscus was now in Alexandria, where I’d never thought it necessary to make any plans at all.
‘I’m told Nicetas is under absolute orders now from Heraclius to get the grain fleet under sail,’ I said with a nod at the far side of the roof. At least from the Harbour side of the Palace, the streets were dark. ‘I’ll speak to the Captain tomorrow about it sailing at night. I think we can still get it out safely if we start the Christmas distribution early and call it something else. But the longer it sits down there stuffed with grain people here think is better directed at their own bellies, the harder everything becomes.’
I looked round at the soft pad of feet on pavement. It was the nephew or son of one of my Jews. Demonstrations or none, my lamp in the inspection room had worked its usual magic. I’d known someone would come, but hadn’t expected a reply till morning. I took his knife and opened the letter.
‘I look forward to seeing Isaac at the time appointed,’ I said at last. ‘Will you be staying here till morning?’ He wouldn’t. He always looked more Greek than Jewish. Dressed as he was now, no one on the streets would have given him a second look. And that was a big knife. I was surprised he’d been let in with it. Still, Jews always find a way. I shrugged and wished him safe passage back to the Jewish quarter. Even if his kinsman didn’t, he deserved some courtesy.
‘Leontius wasn’t made bankrupt after all,’ I said to Martin. There was no point going beyond the basics. But he was looking interested, and it took our minds off Sveta and what she’d said to and about Priscus. ‘That draft he was expecting from non-Imperial territory across the Red Sea came through early just after we’d left. Given that some of his larger creditors have refused payment, it’s enough to settle all outstanding debts.’
Martin didn’t ask about the oddity of refusing payment from a solvent debtor’s estate – not that I could have answered him: it made damn-all sense to me. He did ask about the deal I’d made with the Mayor of Letopolis. But since there were two possible answers to that one, and he’d not have understood either, I looked back over Alexandria to Lake Mareotis and the dark but horrid mysteries of Egypt that lay beyond.
‘I’ve decided,’ I said, rolling the letter up and putting it under my arm, ‘not to bother with an enquiry. The Brotherhood, we’ve every reason to suppose, has agents throughout the whole government. If I order an investigation into who leaked our travel plans, it will only rumble on for months. Some low clerk might be sacrificed for Nicetas to burn to death. But we’ll never get to the bottom of things. This being so, we might as well not bother even going through the motions.’
Martin nodded.
I continued looking into the darkness of Egypt. I’d had a lucky escape – all told, a very lucky escape. Lucas and his friends, I had no doubt, would haunt my dreams for years to come. But they were somewhere far out in Egypt, and I was back in the safety of Alexandria. The less I brought myself to their attention, the better it would be for me and mine.
‘One useful outcome of dinner with Priscus,’ I continued – and this was agreed after the guards had removed Sveta – ‘is that he’ll do his best to help get Nicetas to seal those warrants. Now Leontius is out of the way, the landowners have no convenient single voice for their opposition. With the warrants sealed, we can set the surveyors and lawyers to work. All that in motion, we can start preparing a return to Constantinople. The various deals I’ve made are safe enough in the hands of my agents.’
‘God be praised!’ said Martin.
All through my own inspection of where Egypt began, I don’t think he’d taken his own eyes off those swirling, moderately angry processions of torches down in the main streets. I leaned forward over the rail and looked hard right. I could see the southern fringes of the Egyptian quarter. There was some vague light coming off there. For the moment, however, the protests seemed to be a purely Greek matter.
Things might be better, I told myself. They might also easily be worse.