The floor was of polished black granite. Like the waters of a Kentish pond, it gleamed in the dying light of the day and the growing relative brightness of the lamps. Where the tapestries broke off, the walls were covered with mosaics from an older time of hunting and feasting scenes.
‘It is an honour that I shall describe to my sons,’ someone behind me said softly, ‘to stand so close to the Magnificent al-Arik, Shield of the Greeks. One of my wives is niece to a man whom you caused to be instructed in the learning of the ancients. Her family, though now of the Faithful, still rejoices to have known your generosity of heart.’
‘I shall be honoured to know his name,’ I said gravely. The converted name of Hamid meant nothing to me. But I spoke well of his willingness to remember favours from the days when he still ranked among the Cross Worshippers.
But now the herald had taken his place just before Meekal. With two blasts on a silver trumpet, the gathering was called to order. He stood forward and raised his arms for attention.
‘His Highness Meekal, Governor of Syria, trusted companion of His Majestic Holiness,’ he cried in a loud voice that echoed from the back of the hall, ‘Meekal, whose piety is known from a thousand battlefields and in innumerable works of charity, bids greeting to you, beloved guests and friends. Peace be upon you all. May you recall the words of the Prophet, upon whom be there peace.’ There was a general mutter throughout the hall of ‘Peace be upon Him.’ The herald smiled, and took in another lungful of air. ‘When asked what was the greatest good in the Faith, know that the Prophet replied, “Feeding others and giving the greeting of peace to those whom you know and those whom you do not know.” ’
So the man went on and on, while the guests shouted out the appropriate responses. I didn’t think it would end, and that I’d have to pull the rank that age and achievements had earned me, and be taken off to my couch. But it did end, and we shuffled forward. With a flick of my tongue, I had my teeth in place. I opened my mouth and took a deep breath.
‘Mighty Meekal,’ I cried in a voice that was somewhere between a quaver and a shout, ‘trusted and beloved friend of the Caliph’ – I thought it best not to dwell on the family connection, even if it was a matter of common knowledge – ‘accept this humble gift of a book that, nevertheless, contains the wisdom of the ancients.’ I nudged the attendant who stood beside me. He stepped forward and presented the scientific work of Aristotle I’d picked up in Beirut. I’d made sure to have the pages taken out and cleaned and then rebound in white vellum with gold and silver inlays. Young Michael had been a crap student: his own taste in the ancients had never run beyond military history. Meekal the Merciless would never notice the gross corruption in two of the middle chapters – assuming it wasn’t Edward’s own reading that wasn’t at fault. But it was a pretty book.
He glanced at it and smiled graciously. ‘It shall, O Magnificent One, be placed among my most valuable treasures,’ he called out in a great voice, ‘and shown to my most honoured guests.’ He dropped his voice and fell into Greek. ‘And do have this, my darling Alaric.’ Someone reached forward with a small golden box. ‘You’ve already had your teeth back. I trust this, your recovered cock piercing, will be of equal use.’
We hurried through the formal kiss, and I was carried off to my dining couch. This, sadly, was placed right beside Meekal’s. With the changes necessary for the difference of religion, this was a banquet that reproduced all the heavy formality of the Imperial court. Age would get me out of staying to the grisly end. But I reclined in the raised area of the hall, a couple of hundred other couches spread out beyond like the blocks on a polished wooden floor. My every gesture could and would be observed.
I maintained a diplomatic immobility during the reading from the Prophet’s sayings, smiled benignly through the endless speeches and shouts of greeting to the Old One al-Arik, and finally took in one hand the loaf that Meekal held out to me. We broke it together and shared a drink from a goblet that was more impressive than its contents. The banquet had begun. It was the standard civilised food – fresh salads, pickled cucumbers, hummus eaten with unleavened bread. Some of this I could eat, some not. Beyond some goat that had been boiled down to a sort of jelly, Meekal didn’t press the meat dishes on me. My teeth placed discreetly in their ebony box, I ate with a nice balance of the cautious and the grateful. I even managed not to drool too much on to my new banqueting robe.
One of the differences between Greek and Saracen dining is that the latter tend to eat in silence. It’s one of the customs they brought with them from a desert where food is so rare that it isn’t to be spoiled by the chatter of conversation. That saved me from the ordeal of having to be pleasant to Meekal. But, regardless of custom, he was hard at work with his secretaries. It was, so far as I could tell, the usual work of the powerful – petitions, diplomatic letters, internal administration. He drank steadily from a cup of what may have been ginger broth, and chewed morsels of food between dictating brief answers and instructions. Every so often, he’d dart a look of wolfish triumph in my direction. I countered these by ignoring him.
Once, after a long and very gloaty inspection, I called for the potty men. While one held the silver pot for my – genuine – call of nature, the other held the screens about me. It was, in every sense, a moment of bliss. As the screen was taken down, though, I saw Meekal was on his feet. Breathing hard, his beard thrust out straight in front of him, he was looking exultantly about the hall. Several hundred hands had stopped their steady scooping up of food, and everyone was looking nervously in his direction. Then, he pointed at one of the serving boys. I looked hard at the lad. He seemed well-made, and perhaps a few years older than Edward. I couldn’t say more, as all that playing with lenses and dotty parchment had left my unaided vision worse than it had been. But I heard the quiet mutter of approval that ran about the room.
I shrugged as my own attendant rearranged my banqueting wig. This sort of thing would never have done in the Imperial court – not even under Constans. But this wasn’t Michael the Greek. Meekal the Saracen could probably have taken the boy straight outside for a spot of bum fun. For my own reason, I rather wished he had. But the first courses were now being cleared away, and we had a most welcome break. I put my teeth back in for a desultory conversation with someone who came up and asked about the mosque I’d caused to be endowed in Constantinople. At last, he drifted off to bore someone else, and a small man with a boy walked into the one clear space within the hall. Now, the buzz of chatter fell silent. With a bow to Meekal and to me as guest of honour, he looked round. His mouth opened, his teeth a brilliant white against the brown of his face. He began.
‘Once upon a time there dwelt in Egypt a confectioner who had a wife famed for beauty and loveliness; and a parrot which, as occasion required, did the office of watchman and guard, bell and spy, and flapped her wings did she but hear a fly buzzing about the sugar. This parrot caused abundant trouble to the wife, always telling her husband what took place in his absence. Now one evening, before going out to visit certain friends, the confectioner gave the bird strict injunctions to watch all night and bade his wife make all fast, as he should not return until morning. Hardly had he left the door than the woman went for her old lover, who returned with her and they passed the night together in mirth and merriment, while the parrot observed all…’
It wasn’t a long story, but the repeated cheers and calls for the wittier passages to be recited over, dragged it out to what seemed a great length. It was made still longer by the flute accompaniments. I listened carefully, trying to keep the detachment of a philosopher and of a spy. The easiest part of spying is to find out how many soldiers the enemy has, and what use is to be made of them. You can’t fault this for the purely military aspects of victory. Far harder is getting inside the enemy’s head – to learn the causes that shape his manners and beliefs. So far as I was any kind of spy tonight, I was depressed in exact proportion to the entertainment. These people might be regarded in Constantinople as a race of barbarians just like my own ancestors. But this was a false assumption, based on recollections of how the Western Provinces had been lost. These people hadn’t come out of their desert with little of their own. It wasn’t a matter of waiting until they had adopted the superior ways of their subjects, and could then be evangelised and absorbed into our own civilisation. There would be no shadowy imperium extended here through the Church, aided by the occasional reconquest. If they copied from us, it was only to incorporate into a civilisation that could, in its own way, become equal to our own. Their literature stood on its own and needed nothing from us. Behind this rose their own Desert Faith – silly enough in its details, but without the terrible mess of Persons and Substances the Greeks had immovably fastened on the Christian Faith. We could, with our superiority in the sciences and with grim determination, hold their Empire from rolling forward into the Greek Provinces of our own. But these were not the Goths and Angles and Saxons. They were not even the Persians, as corrupt as they were alien. In time, they might appreciate Aristotle and Apollonius. They’d neither feel nor have any need for Homer and Herodotus. Least of all would they need Christ.