Chapter 42
If I’d so far thought little of Damascus as a capital, the vast labyrinth of stinking alleys into which we now plunged confirmed my opinion of the place. Except that most of it was newly built, and it had never been other than it was, it reminded me of the Egyptian quarter in Alexandria. But that had been a very long time ago, and I’d always then been able to protect myself from the human trash who lived there, or been able to run away. Here, I might as well have been a sacrificial animal, bound and carried towards the altar. The only consolation was that I didn’t have to spoil my nice velvet boots on those now filthy streets.
We came to a stop at the end of a little street that had snaked round and round on itself. I was set down against the wall that terminated the street, while the men who’d been carrying me put their backs into moving a broken-down cart that seemed to have been left where the wheels had come off it. Beneath was the stone cover of what I could see at once had, before the troubles brought on Damascus by the Persians, been the sewers. Because the city had been rebuilt without regard to the ancient street patterns, these were no longer used for their original purpose. As I was handed down through the narrow entrance, I breathed in cautiously through my nose. It wouldn’t have been hard, but the smell down here was somewhat better than in the streets above. The paved central channel was now dry, and we were able to make better time than we had been above.
We hurried along the straight tunnels, the torch of the man before us flaring and roaring with the speed of our progress. I could hear the increasingly laboured breath of the men who were carrying me, and the echo of their heavy tread on the stone channels. Here and there, we turned into another tunnel. Here and there, I could just make out signs of frequent use as a thoroughfare: recently dead torches fixed in their brackets, heaps of weapons, even the dismantled parts of an artillery catapult. Of course, I can’t say in which general direction we were heading. It might have been further in to the centre. It might have been away. At length, however, we came to a doorway crudely hacked into the ancient brickwork. Piles of rubble from the work almost blocked the continued way ahead. Some narrow passageway however had been left through the rubble. In the brief glance that I managed down this passageway, I could see that there was a regular junction a few yards ahead of perhaps three other tunnels. No one without a good knowledge of these tunnels would easily seal off all the approaches.
There were more torches within the doorway, and a man came out to see if we represented danger. He looked briefly at me in my fine, if now soiled, robe, and bowed low before me. I gave him another of my benedictions. Karim walking beside me with palpable terror, I was carried through an arched cellar towards a flight of stairs. These were worn down by age, and I felt them crumble still more beneath our weight. At the top of these was a stout wooden door. With a pattern of knocks that were repeated on the other side and then renewed, the door was unbolted from within, and we passed into a room that seemed as brightly lit as the banqueting hall had been.
We were in the nave of an old church – no, I could see from its shape and the remaining decoration to the walls that we were in what had once been a temple. From its size, it must have been somewhere close to the ancient centre of Damascus. Before the establishment here of the last Faith but one, the temples of several dozen gods and demi-gods would have jostled for prominence, and been thronged with singing, garlanded worshippers, come to make sacrifice. This must have been one of the larger temples. Given daylight and more time, I might have been able to tell for whose cult it had been built. Then again, I might not. The windows that had been cut into the walls on its conversion to a church were now bricked up again, and I could have no idea whether there was still any direct access to the streets outside. There was a strange kind of service in progress. Over in what served as the chancel, a priest was chanting a Te Deum in Greek. Around him, a few dozen worshippers made their unscripted responses. Here in the nave, perhaps a hundred men lounged about, drinking and looking pleased with themselves. Mostly young, they had the pinched, wiry look of the urban lower classes. They weren’t the mountain fanatics we’d helped organise into the Angels of the Lord. Even so, it was plain they were gathered together to fight and, if need be, die for the Orthodox Faith.
My carriers put me down beside one of the walls. This was covered with the usual paintings of saints and Gospel happenings. The paint was now chipped and rubbed away in places. Most importantly, all the large, staring eyes of the anciently clothed figures had been scratched out, in some places leaving deep holes in the plaster. Every representation I could see of a cross had also been defaced.
It might have been interesting to see more of the building, and to speculate on its recent history. But now, every head in that nave was turned in our direction. Whatever assumptions had been made about us in the unlit streets evaporated the moment we were pushed inside the first pool of lamplight. All else aside, Karim’s brown face stood out in that gathering like a rotten tooth. Over in the chancel, the priest let up his chanting. The exultant chatter about him died away. Wherever I cared to look in that church, I saw hard, unsmiling eyes.
‘Who are you?’ one of the older men asked. ‘And’ – he looked straight at Karim – ‘what is this?’
‘Greetings, my dear Brothers in Christ,’ I said, stepping with my best effort at a firm tread away from the wall. I leaned on the back of a chair and looked benignly about. I felt the sudden need of a piss. But I held myself steady and continued speaking in the hesitant, softened Syriac of a Greek.
‘I am Seraphinus,’ I said, reusing my assumed name from Caesarea. ‘A Greek from Smyrna, I am travelling in this now benighted realm to bring comfort to my relatives. This boy beside me is my servant. Though dark of face, he is as true in the Orthodox Faith as I am myself.’
‘There is no God but Allah, and Mohammed is His Prophet,’ Karim said, breaking the silence that followed my own words.
I groaned inwardly. What a time the stupid boy had chosen to find an ounce of courage. But I shuffled left and trod hard on one of his feet. He yelped. Given luck, that might be the end of his contribution.
‘It was a glorious blow that you all struck this evening against the dark hordes who feed like lice on the fair body of Syria,’ I said in a jolly tone. ‘Let us join together in prayer for our eventual deliverance.’ I wondered if my cock piercing might still be somewhere about me. It was pure gold, and might turn a few heads.
‘It is the Old One himself,’ someone squealed. ‘He lives and is among us!’ There was a loud groan all about, and much shuffling and scraping of boots on the unswept floor. I saw the glint of a sword held in the shaking hands of a boy who might have been about the same age as Edward. Not a good beginning, I supposed. On the other hand, it saved the trouble of introductions. Now that standing wouldn’t make much difference to what happened next, I hurried round and sat on the chair. It increased the itching in my bladder, but took the weight off my shaking legs.
‘This is surely a sign from God!’ the priest called. He hurried over and raised a hand as if to strike me. I frowned at him until he dropped his hand. I could do nothing, though, about the lunatic glint in his eye. ‘Behold, my sons, how futile are the hands of man. So long as you relied on your own weapons, the Old One escaped your every effort. With Satanic spells, did he not evade you in Beirut? Was not your attack on the road to Damascus a miserable failure? Now it is plain for all to see that your attack on the palace, where he feasted and caroused with the brown filth of the desert, has come to nothing. Yet, here he is – directed hither not by the hands of man, but of God!’