I’ve only seen the Pyramids twice. My first view of them, I’ll assure you, was from exactly the right direction at exactly the right time of day. It was coming on for late afternoon, and the shadows cast by every jagged rock and every pile of sand were lengthening around me. We were coming out of the desert from the north-west. They must have been about five miles off when I drifted awake, and I didn’t notice them at first. I was thirsty and my wrists were hurting. Looking ahead, I seemed only to see more of the endless heat haze that obscured the horizon.
Then I saw them: three vast and regular mountains that shone a dazzling white as they caught the rays of the sun. I didn’t know where Siroes had gone. But no one around me paid the slightest attention. They’d seen it all so often, they hardly noticed how wonderful it was. My carriers didn’t once look up as they trudged ever onwards. Of course, Lucas had to be different. He bounced up again beside me, pointing and jabbering about his ‘ten thousand years’. I did think of starting another argument over his beloved Egypt, this time sneering at his idea of its antiquity. But I grunted at him and pretended to be still half asleep.
In truth, I was privately willing those carriers to go faster. I badly wanted to get as close alongside the Pyramids as I could before night fell. They were a wonderful sight. Nothing I’d read in Herodotus or Strabo or the other historians had prepared me for how they actually were. According to Herodotus, the biggest of the three took a hundred thousand workers twenty-six years to complete, and its function was to serve as the tomb for some megalomaniacal king. Manetho gives a different account, more flattering to its builder. But no one disagrees on its size. It is seven hundred and fifty feet long on each of its four sides, and around five hundred high. It is a huge structure. You could pack the Great Church inside it several times over, and still have room for some of the other sights of Constantinople. The two pyramids beside this one are also very big, but are dwarfed in comparison.
We came at last to the flat expanse of rock on which the Pyramids are built. In or out of flood, this is far above the level of the Nile, and there are still miles to go before the edge of the black land is reached. Even so, the plateau is crowded with buildings. At this time of year, it was naturally the home of those displaced by the floods. But there is a dense network there of ruined and semi-ruined temple buildings. And there may be dozens of monasteries dotted about, these obviously in continuous occupation.
There had been some kind of market all day when we arrived at a small town. But I paid no attention to the mud-brick buildings and the brown, shouting lower orders of Egypt. I’d long since given up concealing my interest in the Pyramids. The Great Pyramid must still have been a good mile distant. But it loomed over everything. The light around us was fading fast away, but the Pyramid still shone white as if it had been a mountain of snow. I believe the inner part is of granite blocks arranged round a core of rock. But the exterior of each of the pyramids is one smoothness of white limestone.
‘So, Alaric,’ Lucas said as he came yet again beside me, ‘are you willing to agree now that the Greeks have nothing to set beside this?’
‘Get enough men together,’ I sniffed, ‘and work them long enough, with just the right touch of the whip when they get uppity, and I’ve no doubt anyone could put up this sort of thing. The question is who else would have thought it worth the effort?
‘Any chance of another drink?’ I asked, cutting short my paraphrase of Herodotus. The wine flask he’d reluctantly handed over was long since empty, and my tongue was getting ready to stick to the roof of my mouth. I pretended not to notice the flies, which, with the fading light, had begun buzzing about in predatory manner.
Lucas got off his camel and began walking beside me. I was in no mood for a laugh, but the long account he began of the Pyramids as a love gift from the people of Egypt to their kings was absurd both in itself and in its earnest narrating. In its own way, it was more absurd than any miracle of the Church. Those usually involve a deviation from the normal course of things as a result of God’s commanding. This farrago didn’t so much deviate from as suspend the normal course of things. But I did get a full cup of water pushed at me. It was now evening, and we were approaching the centre of this town that huddled so inconsequentially at the foot of the Great Pyramid.
We stopped in a central square that served during the day as a market. I stumbled from the chair and stretched my arms and legs. I looked round. It was rather like Letopolis, but without the appearance of better days past. It might have been far older as a settlement. It might have dated back to the building of the Pyramids. But the jumble of narrow streets that led off from the square in which we’d come to rest looked about as tempting as turd pie.
Lucas snarled something at the carriers that didn’t sound particularly worthy of any love gift at all. They bowed and padded off somewhere.
‘If your people haven’t stolen all the cash I brought with me,’ I said, ‘I think I could stand you a dinner somewhere. I don’t suppose you’ll find anywhere about that’s fit for a king – not even a pretend king like you. But you might care to point me in the direction of an inn that won’t give us the shits.’
Avoiding a pile of rotting filth that I could more smell than see, I walked away from him and stood looking up at the Great Pyramid. Its lower parts were now buried in the advancing gloom of evening. Its topmost twenty or thirty feet, though – just below the stained apex, where some ornamentation of bronze, or perhaps even of gold, had once been – still shone bright in the rays of the departing sun. Even as I looked, the line of shadow moved rapidly higher, until only the very apex remained. For a moment, the apex alone glowed. It was as small and as bright as some object in the darkening sky. Then it too was gone. As a result, there was no longer any contrast in the light, and I could now see the whole bulk of the Pyramid outlined against the ever darkening sky.
I turned back to face Lucas. His torchbearers were picking their way towards him. Until they got closer, I’d not be able to see his face. But I could feel the disapproval radiating from him. And my perception of his mood was as cheering as a cup of really good wine.
‘So which establishment in this probably nameless dump is up to serving persons of our quality?’ I asked, taking up the last subject.
‘Are your bodily needs all that concern you?’ Lucas hissed at me.
The torchbearers had now arrived, and I could see the insanity blazing from his eyes.
‘Do you expect a visit to the town brothel once you’ve stuffed your belly?’
‘Oh, not at all, dear Lucas,’ I said, speaking brightly and loud. Several passers-by stopped and looked in my direction. I doubted if they understood me, but I carried on as if I had an audience. ‘If Egyptian women smell anything like the men, I’d have vomited on them long before I’d lost any mess inside them. Dinner will be quite enough – oh, and a little wine.’
I watched Lucas while various passions battled for control of his mind. There was outrage at the affront I’d offered him. There was his evident need to keep me in one piece and undamaged until further notice. As his fists unclenched and his face relaxed, he smiled and motioned me towards a large building almost next door to the main church.
I stopped for a moment at the open gate. I put a smile on my face and turned to Lucas with another witticism. But for the first time, I was seriously scared. Of course, I’d been in his power an entire day. At any time since I’d stepped out of the shadows, he could have had me strung up on hooks, or staked out naked under the burning sun. He could have done as he pleased. His people wouldn’t have lifted a finger. Siroes was rather stuffy about the proprieties and needed me alive until I’d turned up his piss pot. But unless he was serious about putting me up for emperor, we might be talking of days. And how much control did he really have over Lucas? Now, as I looked through that black entrance to who knows what, my stomach turned over. I stopped at the threshold and found I couldn’t go further.
‘Come now, Alaric – do you need a formal invitation?’ Lucas breathed behind me. He’d perked up since our last exchange. Worse, he was beginning to sound horribly gloaty again.
‘Not at all, Your Majesty,’ I jeered. ‘I’m just wondering how much nastier the inside of this place smells than the street.’ I thought I’d get a push from behind if I didn’t move soon. That was too much. Lucas might play at being Pharaoh. I was the Emperor’s Legate. If I was now to be put out of the way, blubbing at the doorway wasn’t likely to change matters. I might as well go out with a ‘Fuck you, arsehole!’. I bit my lip and stepped forward.
As we went through the usual gateway leading to a central garden, there was a left turn into the building. All was dark at first, though not smelly in the least. If anything, the place was rather pleasant. With Lucas to guide me, though without any lamp, I passed through a series of interconnecting rooms, each unlit and stuffed with furniture. We turned right into another stretch of the building. There were more rooms, again all in darkness. In still more complete darkness, we went up a staircase, our feet scraping on the rough brick of the stairs. There was a short corridor at the top. This terminated in a door, light pouring out from underneath to show the dull roughness of the floor.
‘You go in alone,’ Lucas whispered with what sounded like a suppressed snigger. I said nothing. He knocked briefly, then pushed the door open and stood back for me to go in. I stepped forward, my mind a deliberate blank, and rubbed my eyes in the sudden brightness. Except for a couple of chairs and a little table over by one of the walls, the room was unfurnished. In one of these chairs, his back to me, a man was sitting. He twisted round and looked at me.
‘Ah, Alaric,’ he said, ‘I’ve been expecting you.’
Priscus stood up and advanced towards me across the room. He had that bastard cat of his in his arms. As he got within a few feet of me, the thing hissed and raised one of its paws at me.