‘Something I shall need to cover in my report,’ he went on, ‘is the apparent delay between the time you sent this piece of meat to Hell and your call for help. Everything points to a death no later than the midnight hour. Your call was just before dawn.’
I pulled a face. ‘I’m an old man,’ I said. ‘It took me time to recover from the ordeal. The boy and I then sat awhile looking at the smoke from the fires that were breaking out all across the city. They reminded me of riots in Constantinople.’
Karim scowled and muttered something about Christian ingratitude for all the benefits of the Caliph’s rule.
‘But you really must pardon me, Karim,’ I broke in, ‘for not at first recognising you. When you told me you were the son of Malik, I thought you were related to His Present Majestic Holiness. Am I right, however, in believing that you are in fact the son of Malik al-Ashtar, companion of the Caliph Ali and his Governor of Egypt?’
He nodded and sat down again. This time, he sat on the little sofa where – unable to follow a word of the conversation – Edward had been sitting very still.
‘You are indeed a master of all wisdom,’ he said. ‘Know then that my father may have died in the civil war that the Empire did so much to foment. Know also that Muawiya delighted in the removal of his rival’s main support. I am, even so, a loyal servant of the Caliph. Abd al-Malik is eager to move on from those regrettable disputes over policy. My main family in Medina has long since accepted the hand of friendship, and I rejoice in the Caliph’s fullest trust.’
‘I’d never have thought otherwise,’ I said with an easy wave. ‘But I did once meet your father. It was after your people had taken Syria from us. We were both part of the negotiation after the main battle for the exchange of prisoners. I found him a most brave and generous opponent. I was sorry to hear about his death.’
Karim nodded again. He got up and crossed over to the door. As he bowed, I caught the unguarded look on his face. ‘Loyal servant of the Caliph’, my foot. The unifying bond of the Desert Faith was one matter. The bond of blood was something else. I kept a bleary, tired look on my face until the door was shut and we were alone. I reached behind one of the heavier bound volumes that was propped against the wall, and pulled out the wine jug.
‘That was a good meeting,’ I said, now in English.
Edward looked up and made an effort to focus on me. He’d started to hurt rather badly once his bruises came out. In retrospect, the two drops of Jacob’s opium juice might have been more than strictly needed. He opened his mouth to speak. He shut his eyes and squeezed his fingernails hard into his palms.
‘Why is everyone trying to kill you?’ he asked with an effort. His face broke into a sweat and he leaned back into the soft cushions of the sofa.
‘I have already explained, my dear boy,’ I said patiently, ‘that these are not things for you to worry about. Besides, not everyone is trying to kill me.’ Drugged as he was, I could see the beginnings of a dark look. There was a knock on the door. I put the two brimming cups on my desk and stood in front of them. Three slaves entered with a large cloth sack. Another couple followed behind with mops and buckets of water.
‘Ah, come to clean up the mess, I see,’ I called briskly. ‘Well, so long as it doesn’t start to smell too bad, I can put up with a body in the library. So you take this poor boy and put him to bed. Gently with the clothes. Gentle with the sheets. Let him sleep until-’ Edward heaved himself up. He’d understood what I had in mind from my tone, and his displeasure was now obvious.
‘Very well,’ I said evenly. I pointed at the body and let the slaves set about their business without further interruption. I made sure to drop a large sheet of papyrus over the cups, then took Edward very gently by the shoulder. If its effects had been bleached away by the drug, the pain itself was still there. ‘Let us go next door,’ I said, ‘and see how my works progress. Indeed, since Karim has advised us not to leave the palace until further notice, there can be no shopping today. That leaves you with a choice between the long sleep that I do most urgently suggest and watching me improve my vision.’ I helped him into the corridor, and guided him through the entrance to the room where the smell of charcoal and the low fluttering of a polishing wheel spoke of much hard work.
‘I told you yesterday,’ I said as I got him through the door and handed him to someone just inside, ‘about the theory of vision taught by Epicurus. I find it more reasonable than the claim made by Plato that we all have an invisible light behind our eyes that illuminates objects for us alone. However, I’m still not entirely happy with Epicurus, great man though he was. I think a theory more consistent with the facts of vision is that light itself is a stream of atoms, and that vision arises from the differential absorption into or reflection from objects of this light. This explains darkness as a simple absence of light – though it does less well to explain why the perceived size of objects varies with their distance. But it still clarifies how shaped glass can deflect whatever atoms carry an image from their normal course.’
But Edward had turned pale, and was beginning to sag between the arms of the two workmen who’d taken him from me. I had him laid on to the only sofa not covered in papyrus sheets, and waited for the slaves to come and take him to bed. I then turned to the much clearer, small lenses I’d ordered. There were still problems with the curvature of everything I tried. There really is a difference between using Apollonius to suggest varying degrees of convexity, and getting these reproduced in glass. And that leaves aside the question of what degree of convexity might be needed to correct the defects of my own vision. Nevertheless, I was now able to pick out lenses that showed writing much better than the day before, and even lenses that let me take in something of the view from the window.
I distributed gold purses all round, and turned to a discussion of what I wanted next.
A slight hangover coming on, I sat in one of the smaller gardens of the palace. My own Tower of Heavenly Peace was about fifty yards over on my left. While I still felt up to walking about, I’d gone over to look at the unmistakable signs of climbing on the water pipe. They started a few feet above the rotating mechanism, and went up as far as I could see with one of my pairs of lenses. There was still no guard at the foot of the tower, and I’d seen no evidence from within that bars were being fitted. But a palace is a notoriously slow medium for the transmission of orders. I had no doubt something would be arranged before evening.
I handed my lenses back to the attendant who’d come out with me. Even when you haven’t seen properly in years, there is a limit to how much you want to inspect of leaves and flowers. Besides, the hangover was bringing on a headache. If it hadn’t been such a pleasant late morning, I’d already have had myself dipped into a cool bath and then put to bed until it was time to get ready for the Governor’s banquet.
The Governor’s banquet! I groaned inwardly at the thought. It would combine the Greek inconvenience of lying on a couch all evening with the Saracen prohibition of wine. I didn’t even have the excuse that travelling through Damascus might be unsafe. This being the joint capital of Empire and Province, the Governor had his residence inside the palace. It would be a matter of being carried by chair through half a mile of crowded rooms to a stuffy hall where I’d be lucky to catch one word in two of any conversation. I took my lenses back and looked through them at the unrealistically sharp and enlarged gravel at my feet.
It was now that I saw the double dot of intense brightness within the shadow of my lenses. The moment I saw it, I realised it shouldn’t have been any surprise. If these things could concentrate the atoms cast off – or reflected – from objects before they reached my own eyes, they could also concentrate light from the sun before it reached other objects. And it was light in itself that I was now discussing. The Epicurean theory was ingenious. But the theory of autonomous light was far more convincing. But, as said, this double light had an intensity I’d never seen before. Moving the lenses back and forth could make the size and intensity of the dots vary inversely. At the smallest, the dots were not merely bright – they could also focus heat. I watched a fallen petal smoke as a hole was burned straight through it. With shaking hand, I moved one of the lenses over a bug I saw crawling across the gravel. At first, it tried to hurry away from that intense light. But I moved with it. Finally, the thing stopped moving. Then with a loud pop and a little puff of smoke, it exploded.