I was free. Rather, Priscus had gone off to play with his cat, and there was no immediate claim on my time. I swam for a while in the pool set behind some trees in the Palace gardens. Because it was looking increasingly likely that there’d be another trip into Egypt, I decided to have the canopy taken off so the sun could get at me. Afterwards, I lay in the sun, drowsing while the clerks read to me.
I’d not been away that long from Alexandria. But the administrative mill I’d constructed had continued in my absence to grind out reports and correspondence. There was now a mountain of stuff to be processed. There were the usual survey abstracts, plus all the other matters that had been insensibly diverted to my attention the moment it was realised that I was the only person around able to get Nicetas to listen to anything at all and take any action at all. It didn’t help that the posts were in from Constantinople again, and there was a great stack of newsletters and official bulletins to hold back or to let through censored.
Birds twittered in the trees, and slaves rubbed oil on me as often as I shifted position. It was something of the same delicious feeling as when I took just the right dose of opium. The only difference was that the sun was giving me a slight stiffy. I decided it wouldn’t do to attend to this with so many relative strangers looking on. I would contain myself until the evening. Then, I’d look to Luella for the usual relief.
‘Cut out all reference to the Jewish disturbances in Antioch,’ I said lazily as the clerk who was reading finished one of the newsletters. ‘Fill up the gap by transferring the story from Ravenna of the stolen jewels and their miraculous return.’
The clerk made a note on one of his waxed tablets. He bowed and took up another newsletter.
The news was generally disastrous. There was nothing on the Persian front. It seemed Priscus had been right about the zone of starvation he’d inflicted on the provincials of Cappadocia; that would keep things quiet until the spring. But it was bad on every other front. Rome was under siege again by the Lombards. There could be no help from the Exarch, as Ravenna was also blockaded by land. The Danubian provinces were effectively lost to the Avars; and the Slavs had now taken everything north of Corinth except Athens. There was renewed piracy in the whole Mediterranean. Communications with Carthage were intermittent, and about a third of the taxable land over which it ruled had been definitely written off as claimed by the desert.
In Constantinople, Heraclius had suspended servicing of the Imperial debt, and the banks were failing one after the other. Money just couldn’t be had at the legal rate of interest, and property in even the best parts of the City was going at eighteen months’ purchase. In a private letter, my banker, the Jew Baruch, was recommending against buying at any price; he doubted if the falls had reached anything like their bottom, and doubted also if there’d be any meaningful recovery in the next five years. He’d taken the liberty, he explained further, of calling in all the non-political loans I’d made, and would keep the money in plate and coin pending my own instructions.
The one patch of brightness in these narratives was that pirates had landed between Ephesus and Halicarnassus and had devastated two of the smaller cities. But this was an area where my land reforms had been in place for nearly two years. Without any help from the authorities – not that any was available – the locals had taken up arms and routed the pirates. They’d then burned the prisoners alive at a great feast in which they’d also settled a mass of outstanding boundary disputes without reference to the courts. Back in Constantinople, several members of the Council had complained about a ‘dangerous spirit of independence among the people’ – as if that weren’t the intention of the reforms. Happily, Sergius had flattened their objections with a threat of excommunication, and had got Heraclius to issue what coins he could for the whole of Asia to celebrate the victory.
It was all important – the financial news particularly so: I’d have my Jews in around the midnight hour to discuss its impact on the Alexandrian markets. But it all seemed rather distant as I lay by the pool squinting up at the sun. Uppermost in my thoughts was what to do about the piss pot. This was now the key to everything. Priscus was right: I’d have to do something about Soteropolis. It had been my intention to get the new law implemented, and then go up river with my five hundred diggers. It was plain, however, that I’d never get Nicetas to act, nor the landowners to back down, until we had the piss pot.
Whether and where it might be in Soteropolis, I was increasingly convinced, didn’t matter so much as I’d made out to Priscus. The provenance rules applied only to whatever Martin turned up here in Alexandria. In Soteropolis, I’d be in control of all appearances. My first training in Church affairs had been far off in Canterbury, where my employer, Maximin, had taught me the ways of pious fraud. Our ‘miracles’, had worked there to bring the natives over to the True Faith. I was sure I could produce something really impressive in Soteropolis. We’d dig for a few days here and there. My object, of course, would be the reserve stock. But it wouldn’t be hard to plant something in those sands at night for uncovering by day. Let me round up a dozen or so of those desert hermits. Let me spike the filth they ate with hashish or with opium – or just get them singing Hallelujahs together for a day – and they’d swear to any miracle I cared to arrange at the uncovering.
We could arrive in triumph back in Alexandria. The Patriarch would then lay on the biggest service in living memory. Priscus could bugger off in a fog of holiness. I’d get everything I wanted, and those beastly landowners could kiss my feet in gratitude for what I’d left in their possession.
Naturally, after my last trip into Egypt, security would be an issue. But that I could leave to Priscus. He needed me to find the relic. It would never do to have me other than back safely in Alexandria with him afterwards. His interests being calculated, keeping Lucas and Company away from me in Soteropolis was well within his competence.
Things weren’t turning out that badly, I thought. There may be no such thing as miracles. Even so, there are happy circumstances that, rightly used, can bring on happy outcomes. Finding that reference to Soteropolis – and with Priscus looking on – might have been one such happy circumstance. Having him around was never good news. On this occasion, though, his arrival might have complicated matters, but might well have become a means of breaking the stalemate over the land law.
I did think of sending straight off and telling him to get ready for a trip to Soteropolis. But no – this had to be done properly. If there was to be a miraculous finding of the piss pot, he’d have to be among those deceived. That required a continued show of reluctance to leave Alexandria until I’d done with following every other lead. I’d string him along until the flood waters were at their height, and until I’d got more out of Hermogenes about the probable location of Soteropolis and the reserve stock. By the time I gave in to his nagging, he’d be ready to believe anything, and disinclined to suspect I was ready to feed it to him.
I thought of the Mistress – where was she? It was over a day now since she’d vanished from the canal docks. It was surely time for the message she’d suggested would be sent. She’d come down the Nile with minimal baggage. She couldn’t have brought much cash with her. She evidently knew nothing of Alexandria, and I doubted she had any relationship with the bankers. Whatever independence she’d shown in the wilds of Egypt, she was now on my territory. If she wanted to go about as a grand lady, she’d surely have need of at least a few letters from me. Once his other business was arranged, I’d send Macarius off on a search. If anyone could find her, it was him.
I rolled over on my stomach. Thinking of the Mistress had brought on a very proud stiffy, and those clerks were still droning on beside me. A quick suck from one of the slaves was wholly out of the question. I tried to redirect myself from thoughts of those naked black bodies in her cabin and what she might look like under that veil.
‘The wife of My Lord’s secretary approaches,’ one of the clerks sang out, breaking his colleague’s flow of grain inventories. I sat up and shaded my eyes. Sveta it was, crunching loud on the gravel path, a slave holding a parasol to keep her milky skin from dropping off in the sun. Beside her, Maximin was skipping happily along, a bunch of flowers in his hand.
‘Get me dressed,’ I muttered to the slaves. It was time to do something for his birthday. ‘And bring wine and a dish of honeyed figs.’ I looked again at Sveta. ‘Make that two dishes,’ I added.