Taking into account the twisting of the road as it hugs the shore, Tipasa is about twenty miles from Caesarea. A man of reasonable vigour can cover that in a day. With me bumping along in the wheelbarrow Edward had rescued from a church, it should have taken two days. Halfway through the first day, however, Wilfred had his worst attack yet. I’d already decided he wasn’t up to helping Edward with pushing me. But, though I’d insisted on a slow progress along the road, even that, in the unaccustomed heat of Africa, was too much for him. After our first long noonday stop, he couldn’t get up again. This time, what began as coughing turned to a long choking. As I wiped the foul-smelling froth from his lips, I decided it was time for the Magnificent Alaric to show the world he was still up to taking a walk.
So, for three days, and not two, we journeyed along that baking road, the blue sea sparkling always on our right, drinking much, eating little, with barely another human being to pass or overtake us. Though our most understandable concern was the sea, and what ships there might be upon it, my own private concern was bandits. The days when a citizen might walk the roads of the Empire in reasonable safety – Saint Paul, for example, in Asia – were so long since passed away that it was hardly worth enquiring when. But I knew the African roads were especially dangerous. Professional thieves, escaped slaves, raiders from the south, the occasional band of Saracens – those were the real danger. We had no credible means of defence. We had no chance of running away. As for money to appease anyone who might accost us, those clipped coins would have sent any thief into a frenzy of disappointment.
But, unaccosted, we came at last within sight of the walls of Caesarea. Unlike Tipasa – unlike even Cartenna – this hadn’t shared in the general emptying out of Africa. Instead, by taking in the remnants of other communities, it had maintained the ancient circuit of its walls. Bearing in mind its evident lack of commerce with the hinterland, it was hardly flourishing. It had, nevertheless, survived.
‘State your business, Citizen,’ a guard called out from just inside the gateway.
I’d seen the wooden bar come down on our approach, and had my story already made up and rehearsed. I shuffled forward and peered into the dark gateway.
‘It is surely the mercy of God,’ I opened in an elderly whine, ‘that I should ever again hear the voice of authority.’
Deep within the gateway, there was a sound of leather scraping on wood. Then the guard emerged. Fifty, fat, shifty, he blinked in the sunlight. The metal strips had come off his breastplate. His sword was broken away near the point. But he was taking no chances. He gave me and the boys a hard, suspicious look, then turned his attention to the road behind us.
‘I am Seraphinus,’ I said proudly, ‘a man of some repute in Carthage. I am travelling to Cartenna with my grandsons. Since the last visitation of plague, I am all they have left in this world. You will see that the younger boy is sick. We are advised that his only hope is to roll in the holy dust before the tomb of Saint Flatularis.’ I did a fair job of laying the mannerisms of the higher classes over an African accent. As I was hoping, it placed me nicely as what I was pretending to be.
The guard came over to us and leaned hard on the wooden bar. It groaned beneath the weight, and the folds of his belly not contained within the breastplate wobbled with every breath.
‘That’s a sick lad you have there,’ he agreed with a look at Wilfred, who, covered with his faded robe against the sun, slept fitfully in the wheelbarrow. Sleep had suppressed the coughing attacks. Now, it was a matter of how long he could keep up the shallow gasps of his breathing. ‘I suppose it was the doctors got him this way. They always do in my experience. You’d better get him to the saint before it’s too late. Hard journey along the road?’ he added with a nod at my clothing.
I thought of the brown stain and smiled. ‘We fell among thieves,’ I said. ‘They stripped us of our possessions. But my healthy grandson fought like a desert lion, and put the thieves to flight.’ Edward nodded vigorously in agreement and held up the knife. ‘I now beg at the gates of this most opulent and well-protected of cities for entry. We cannot face another night on the road. All else aside, I must have a bed for the sick child.’ The guard continued looking for a while at nothing in particular. I raised my arms in supplication. I began to wonder if it was worth the risk of falling to my knees. Perhaps I could spare a few coins. But the guard eventually heaved himself upright and fiddled with the bronze hoop securing the bar.
‘Mind you,’ he said as the bar went up, ‘you’ll get nothing within unless you’ve managed to keep a little money in your own hands. More important, that knife stays with me. City ordinances don’t allow no weapons. This is a peaceful place. No weapons for nobody – just the authorities.’ It took a surreptitious but hard jab with my stick before Edward handed the knife over.
There was a time – perhaps not that long before – when Caesarea had been one of the most elegant cities on the African shore. Coming through that heavy gateway, you’d have found yourself in a long, wide street that passed right along to the central square, around which the churches and the main public buildings were arranged to avoid the full power of the sun. Each side of the street would have been lined with a colonnade. Behind this, about four feet above street level, the pavements would have allowed pedestrians to move back and forth, safe from the dust or any filth cast up by the wheeled traffic. Running parallel with each colonnade, long granite basins would have splashed and sparkled from a dozen fountains that cooled the hottest day.
That was before the long tide of African prosperity had finally withdrawn, and Caesarea became the last refuge of a dozen other cities. Now, the colonnades had been closed up with crude brickwork, the pavements behind made into habitations for the poor. The fountains were dry and the basins choked with rubbish. Every ten yards or so, the ancient statues – some dressed in all the opulence of merchants made good, some nude – still held their plinths. Whatever paint and gold leaf had been applied to heighten their semblance to the living was gone. It was replaced by the grime of many open fires and by white streams of shit from the birds. The nudes had been disfigured to accord with modern ideas of propriety. But they all still looked from their sightless eyes on the broken-down jumble their city had become.
I picked my way carefully across the uneven and impacted dust that now coated the paving stones of the long street. Its smooth line had been broken by a row of makeshift houses that wandered down the centre and forced all traffic into six-foot passageways on either side. By much shoving and bumping, Edward was able to force the wheelbarrow through the crowded ways.
The central square was an improvement on Cartenna. At least all the buildings were still standing, and there were a few signs of a more organised civic life. Looking at the shabby crowds, though, it was plain that the public baths hadn’t been open for some while past. I rather think that, of all the hundreds there who pushed and shouted as they went about their business, we were the cleanest.
‘Don’t look at those young men with your mouth open,’ I whispered at Edward. ‘You’re supposed to be from Carthage. It doesn’t do to behave like some barbarian in a border fort.’ But, since Cartenna didn’t really count, this was the first city he’d ever seen. To me, it was just another disappointing slum, interesting only for a spot of highly selective viewing of ancient sights. There was, for example – or once had been – a column put up by Hadrian with a trilingual inscription that might say something about Punic. If, however, I thought myself behind his eyes, I could see how it appeared to Edward. The largest human settlement he’d probably seen didn’t contain more than a few hundred people or above one brick building, if that. For him, this place was everything Hrothgar had promised him when he’d been forced to hand over all direction of his life for purposes he wasn’t given to understand. He stared round and round at the people in their mean finery, and looked at the huge, solid buildings that had come down to us from better days. And – fair’s fair – clean up both people and buildings, forget the surrounding streets, and the place wouldn’t have looked half bad.
‘I think we should try again to force some water into poor Wilfred,’ I suggested.
Edward nodded and reached for the water skin. He was paying rather less attention to us, though, than to a couple of the local whores who’d drifted over for a look at the newcomers. To me, every bloated wrinkle screamed contagion. But, again, I was a jaded old me. They doubtless appeared otherwise to a boy who hadn’t managed sex with anyone but himself in over two months. I thought of the money hanging from his belt and decided to take charge.
‘Come, Edward,’ I said firmly. ‘There’s no good served in dawdling here. If we don’t get him under cover soon, poor Wilfred will dry up in this sun.’ I turned to someone close by who was trying to sell dried fruit from a bag.
‘I shall be grateful,’ I said in my assumed accent, ‘to know the whereabouts of the Jewish district.’
The man scowled and spat. Then he pointed at the largest church in the square.
Silly me! I thought. Of course, the Jews would be clustered behind the main church. It was the best place for bribing the priests when the mob turned ugly. I peered in the dazzling sun for evidence of an alley or some other exit from the square.