‘Did you recognise any of the other men?’ I asked. That was in itself a useless question. But it served to draw the main attention away from Meekal. Karim hadn’t stayed around to share in the boy’s lesson, and, once I was dressed up and ready to go, Edward had got himself ready to tag along behind. As I might have expected, he’d stopped a little too long to feast his eyes on the snake woman. By the time he’d pulled himself away, my chair was nowhere in sight. Instead, he’d wandered lost for a while, hoping he’d see us all again by chance.
‘Very well,’ I sighed. I hurried him to the main events. ‘You are sure it was Brother Joseph?’ I asked. ‘It isn’t easy to disguise yourself as a eunuch – especially when you have a beard like his. What makes you so completely sure it was him?’ You might think it a silly question. But I wasn’t telling Edward anything of what I’d been up to that evening. And, supposing he hadn’t seen or guessed that Joseph had followed us to Caesarea, his last sight of the man had been far off in the western seas of the Mediterranean.
‘He spoke Latin,’ came the answer through chattering teeth.
I thought of a dab of opium in the wine cup. But you can’t be sure of the effect that will have on the very young.
‘But you weren’t close enough to hear what was said,’ I prompted. The boy nodded. But he’d heard the other man addressed as Meekal, and guessed that he was the Governor of Syria. They’d spoken together a long time outside the hall where the geometry lesson was still in progress. Apparently, Joseph had spoken in cutting tones about the teacher’s ability. Then the pair had moved just outside Edward’s hearing. Meekal had laughed much and shaken his head at some repeated urging. Beyond that, Edward had got nothing from the conversation. Joseph had eventually melted into a crowd, and the choice had been come back here to bed or follow Meekal about. He’d done the latter – and much he’d got from it with his total lack of Saracen. Meekal had gone to a meeting of the palace guards, where he’d been greeted with much cheering. He’d then spent a long time in some low building without lights. He might have been in conversation with one or with many men. Edward had tried listening at a window, but the shutters had been pulled to, and it was impossible to make sense of the faint noises from within.
At last, he’d followed Meekal into the grove. I groaned as he said again that he’d not once noticed my chair. Since he’d been flitting about in the shadows, and my own lack of night vision was to be expected, there was no disgrace in my not having seen him. But he’d never make a spy with that degree of attention to his surroundings. I didn’t mention that Joseph had seen him; that would only have sent him into another sobbing fit.
‘So you followed Meekal along some narrow, winding path to a clearing,’ I said, trying to sound matter-of-fact. ‘There were six men already waiting there. Beardless and with pale faces, they were all dressed in black, with high, pointed hats. They danced about him for a while, chanting. They then helped him out of all his clothes, and, naked in the moonlight, Meekal fucked a corpse. Is that what happened?’ Edward said nothing, but covered his eyes in recollection of the horror. I did manage to sound matter-of-fact. This was, however, a new departure for Meekal. If much had been alleged by the stupid monks he’d never gone out of his way to conciliate, not even the Emperor Constans in all his shocking glory had ever actually tried necrophilia. ‘The boy was dead,’ I asked in the same flat voice, ‘you were sure of that?’ He nodded. He said again how the stiff, naked body had been unrolled from the black shroud in which it had been lying on the ground when Meekal arrived. Edward had been close enough behind his bush to see the heavy cord still tied about the neck, and to see the ferocious delight with which the body had been enjoyed. And all the while, the moon had shone through the softly sighing branches, and owls had flapped and hooted overhead. I thought of the serving boy at the previous night’s feast. He’d been such a jolly young creature. But I was far too grown-up to join Edward in shocked tears. I also thought better than to remind him of his own tastes in love. I waited for the new shivering fit to pass.
‘Let us go back to the men in pointy hats,’ I prompted once more. ‘They had light, shaven faces. But you don’t think they were eunuchs?’ He nodded. I took that as a negative. ‘And there were six of them – you counted six of them for sure?’ He had. ‘The faces could have been painted white,’ I went on. ‘That would be fairly standard with the sort of proceedings you witnessed. Now, as Meekal fucked the corpse a second time, they danced about again, chanting in what you think was Saracen. It was after this, when they cut off the dead boy’s head, that all the birds woke up. You say that Meekal got up and joined them in shouting and waving their arms – though the noise was too great for you to hear anything.’ He nodded. ‘Very well. Once everything was quiet again, Meekal took up the severed head and danced with it held aloft. It was now that the others set up a regular chant – the same words over and over.’ I waited for the nod. ‘Can you repeat for me what sounds their words had?’ Edward opened his mouth. I leaned forward, hoping against hope. He squeezed his eyes shut and thought hard. Then he opened them and shook his head.
I could have beaten the stupid boy. I’d just got for myself a stick to wave over Khadija’s head if required. I could now have had a sharp little knife to shove into Meekal’s guts. As it was, though, I had enough. I patted Edward’s shoulder and reminded him of my words earlier that evening, about the usefulness of learning foreign languages.
‘It seems that you caught your nephew in some act of sorcery,’ I explained. ‘But you knew that already, I’m sure. I want you to tell yourself – and to keep telling yourself – that there is no magic. Leave aside whatever nonsense was clogging Meekal’s mind, all you witnessed was an act of physical grossness, following what I cannot regard as other than a brutal murder. However, the Saracens do believe in magic. If possible, they take an even dimmer view of it than the Christians do.
‘You’re bleeding lucky, young man, that no one saw you. By now, you’d be ripening somewhere for Meekal to shove a knife up your arse till it too could accommodate his massively engorged member.’ I cursed those stimulants Khadija had poured down my throat. They’d kept me going. But I thought for a moment Edward would puke up again. I got the wastepaper basket ready. But he controlled himself and drew himself up on the sofa to hug his knees.
‘What did it all mean?’ he asked. He squeezed his eyes tight shut.
I laughed softly. ‘The corpse-fucking we can take as an act of superstitious blasphemy,’ I said. ‘It’s the sort of thing people did on the quiet, back in the days of the Old Faith, before committing an act of the most desperate treason. There are varying explanations of its meaning. But the most reasonable is that it’s an act of ritual defilement, followed by cleansing. You say Meekal wheeled round and round at the end of his dance, then tossed the head into some bushes. I think you’ll find that he threw it in exactly the direction of the rising sun. The idea is that the thing takes on all the sins and general worthlessness of the killer’s life to date. All this is then communicated to the first person who touches the head when the sun is risen. The body can be dismembered and buried wherever may be convenient. I don’t suppose any of the parts will be discovered. In any event, one more body in a place like this won’t raise many eyebrows.’ Oddly enough, Edward seemed to find some comfort in my conjectural explanation. But, if this wasn’t the first time I’d tried lecturing him out of belief in it, he’d grown up – rather as I had – in a world where magic and divination were taken for granted.