The web of little streets that surrounded the Heretical Patriarch’s residence was surprisingly empty as we passed back through them. On our way here, they’d been never less than busy. I think we now passed more dogs than people. Small, mangy, suspiciously calm in the baking sun, they pawed through the piles of refuse in search of something that wouldn’t make even them sick. For a hundred yards at a time, the only sound was often the patter of my slaves as they hurried my chair along, and the more solid tramp of the guards beside me.
At first, the cheers might have been some trick of the breeze on the roof tiles. As we came closer to their source though, there was no mistaking them. It was the sort of massed sound I’d last heard on a trip to the Circus in Constantinople. As we turned back into the square from which we’d get more or less straight back to the Wall, we hit what seemed a solid mass of flesh. It was as if the entire Egyptian quarter had come out and packed itself into one place. Men stood there in work overalls, others in the clothes they’d worn to church. A couple of ladies sat in closed chairs. They were all looking to the middle of the square, to a fountain that no longer worked. Standing in the dry bowl, a man was haranguing them. He was a large, well-dressed man in perhaps his late fifties. I couldn’t understand him, but he was putting on an impressive display of bellows and gestures. Standing around him were a handful of lowish thugs – probably his bodyguards – and a couple of priests.
On the steps surrounding the fountain stood some dozen of the native men of quality. They weren’t landowners – merchants, more like – and they probably kept to their own side of the Wall. I didn’t know any of them. But I did know of them. I’d never yet heard that they had any time for sedition. They had as much, after all, to lose if the mob ran out of control as anyone of the possessing classes who spoke Greek. Here they were, though, openly supporting what I had no doubt was bitter hostility – at least by implication – to the Imperial government here and in Egypt.
And then – it was the crowning glory on that morning. Lurking just behind those native men of quality was that wretch who’d tried facing me down in the Great Hall of Audience. He had his hat on again, but I’d not have mistaken those Ethiopian lips anywhere, or that look of exalted hate covering the rest of his face. As I watched, he passed up a note to the speaker, and performed a little dance of triumph as it was turned into the appropriate snarling rhetoric. So much for damning the ‘wogs’! I thought. The next time I saw Nicetas, it would be with a stack of arrest warrants for him to seal. Inciting the mob to violence was treason in anyone’s book. By the time I’d finished with these turds, they’d be begging on bended knees for the deal on their land so lately thrown back in my face. Oh, I’d leave the deal unchanged. Why go for more than you need when it’s dropping so nicely into your lap?
I think the landowner saw me as we pushed our way into the square. Certainly, the next time I had a clear view through the crowd, he was no longer in his place. The speaker was still in full flow. If I couldn’t understand what he was saying, its burden wasn’t at all hard to guess. As he paused and, with a dramatic wave, pointed in the rough direction of the Eastern Harbour, where the grain fleet awaited its orders to depart, the whole mob took up that chant about the Tears of Alexander. By now, I knew that one well enough. Like regular peals of thunder, it rolled again and again from thousands of throats. For disciplined loudness, I really hadn’t heard anything to match it since my last Circus attendance. With every repeat, the speaker would throw up his arms and laugh into the sky.
No one was pressing against us. But the chair was beginning to wobble out of control as the carrying slaves panicked. I prodded the two in front with my slave stick and leaned forward with calm words and promises of money. Visibly scared, the guard officer looked at me for instructions. ‘No drawn swords,’ I mouthed in Latin. I flicked a fold of my robe over my own sword. He was still looking at me. ‘No drawn swords,’ I mouthed again, this time in Slavonic. He nodded and made the appropriate gesture to his men. Was it worth turning round and trying the back streets? Forcing a way through this seemed about as sensible as shoving your head into a lion’s mouth.
But now the two Sisters of Saint Artemisia stepped forward. They’d come with us supposedly as guides. I don’t suppose Anastasius had thought it would do with me to explain their real use. They walked straight forward into the mob, calling out something over and over again that included the name of their saint. One of them was waving her arms in the air. The sleeves of her gown fell away, showing thin and hideously scarred, but at the same time muscular, arms.
It was like passing through a night mist that was repelled by torches. As the Sisters advanced, the crowd hollowed out around them. From behind, it closed in again. So, one Sister on each side of us, we passed safely through. The speaker never let up his flow of oratory, other than to give the main crowd room for its increasingly monotonous responses. But if people looked murder at me as I sat still in my chair, with a probably failed attempt at the haughty, no one dared step into the slow-moving void created by the Sisters.
‘If you’ll pardon the expression, sir, it’s fucking chaos all over,’ the police officer shouted as we paused at the Egyptian side of the Wall. The mob was now bellowing its guts out in the square, about a quarter-mile back. By the Wall, a smaller mob – or perhaps a grouping of mobile crowds – was striking up the usual chant. Boys darted quickly in and out of the side streets, sometimes screaming abuse, sometimes throwing stones. I wondered why the police didn’t pull back to our side of the Wall. There was little enough they could do this side to keep order. And these occasional stone showers had already caused injuries.
‘It’s the grain ships, you see,’ the man explained with a look in the direction of the cheering. ‘Both the wogs and our own people think they shouldn’t go out. We’re stretched thin both sides of the Wall. If the Jews turn nasty, we don’t know how we’ll manage.’ He twisted round and shouted an order to some archers who’d appeared along the top of the Wall. They steadied their bows and let fly. They weren’t aiming to kill. It was flesh wounds they inflicted on some of the boys. They fell down screaming. The others backed off. The police moved forward to secure the vacated ground.
It wasn’t much better on the Greek side. Just like at night, the mobs were rushing up and down the streets, passing from agitator to agitator. This side of the Wall, I could at least understand what it was all about. As I’d expected, it was the grain fleet. Perhaps worse, it was also claims about the quantity and management of the supplies left in the granaries.
We’d left the Sisters behind as we passed through the gate. Now, if less scary, the streets were more impassable. We moved slowly down Main Street. Its great width served only to contain the so far aimless crowds of the hungry poor and their troublemaking leaders. All the shops were shut up and boarded. I glanced into the streets leading off, where the men of quality had their palaces. Being the richest of all the landowners, Apion took up both sides of one street, which was itself terminated by the high walls of his garden. He’d now barricaded the entry to the street, and armed his larger and more ferocious slaves to hold off any concerted attack.
How much had he known of the conspiracy? I wondered. He must have known something. It was bad enough if I’d been kept in the dark. But I was an outsider, only recently arrived. It would have been impossible for a man in his position to know nothing. If he wanted those preferments, he’d need to work considerably harder in my interest than he so far had.
I thought suddenly of the Mistress. How was she keeping in all this? I dismissed the thought. If she wasn’t willing to count on me for her safety, she was on her own – not, I had to admit, that she seemed unable to look after herself.
As we turned into the square before the Palace, the guards came forward to help clear a way through.
‘It’s bad news, My Lord,’ one of them told me as we finally passed through the treble gate into the fortified courtyard. ‘A child died of starvation earlier today in one of the poor districts – the one starting behind the Church of the Virgin. As the father carried her body through the streets, a crowd gathered and gathered behind him. It’s too big now to break up, and no one knows when it will catch fire.’
I looked up at the high walls of the courtyard. The windows started around sixty feet up. Even if the whole mob – Greek and Egyptian – broke through the front gates, it wouldn’t get any deeper into the Palace. The mob ever in their minds, the Ptolemies had built well.
‘Has my secretary’s chair come back yet?’ I asked. It had. I nodded. Martin hadn’t needed much encouragement to retreat into his own armoured chair for going about Alexandria. Nevertheless, I didn’t want him out on his relic hunt on a day like this.
I walked by myself into the glittering entrance hall of the Palace. It was here that chairs were normally set down, and this was the first view of the Palace that visiting dignitaries would have. At the far back of the hall was a giant mosaic of Alexander putting the Persians to flight. Down the side walls were statues of every emperor from Julius Caesar onwards. Lucky for us only the most Hellenised or loyal of the natives were ever let in. As it was, I was surprised their mob hadn’t yet based one of its chants on the fact that, with Heraclius, every available space down the walls was now filled up.
It had taken so long to get across the square that the eunuch greeters had been able to raise my own household. The slaves stood in a group beside the statue of Septimius Severus. Martin – so hastily changed, he was wearing shoes of different colours – stood to their right. He bowed low at the waist. The slaves threw themselves down in a full prostration. This was a public event, and the eunuchs could be severe judges if the formalities weren’t respected. Once we were through the door behind the statue, it would be more relaxed. The idea was that I should get into my internal chair and have myself carried sedately up the ramps to the fifth floor, where we had our main accommodation. Without those eunuchs looking on, I’d do no such thing. The kava juice had been having its progressive effect on my bladder since we’d left the Egyptian quarter. I was now bursting for a piss. It would be a quick dash up the stairs provided for the slaves.
‘Have you seen Macarius?’ I asked as we paused at the fifth flight. It took longer than I wanted for Martin, bent double, to gasp out his negative.
‘It doesn’t surprise me if he’s vanished again,’ he wheezed. ‘You know that antique chamber pot you gave Maximin last year – the brass one you bought in Cyprus? Well, it’s gone missing. Sveta saw it when we came back. Yesterday, she went looking and-’
‘Never mind,’ I said hurriedly. ‘I’m sure it will turn up in time.’ Trust Sveta to notice it was gone. I pointed at two of the slaves. They got either side of Martin and readied themselves to propel him the rest of the way. ‘I need you to arrange a meeting with the Viceroy,’ I said. ‘Before then, we’ve business in my office.’