‘All is well with you?’ Meekal asked when the boys had raced back off into the desert.
I nodded. Playing the old fool is fun only in little bursts. And, if I wanted to scare him, I had no wish to prod Meekal into anything more hostile than he already had in mind.
‘Halt and state your business,’ the guard called across the remaining distance between us and the one unblocked gate of the old monastery.
‘I am Meekal, Governor of Syria,’ came the obvious answer.
‘And I am Alaric, Chief Weapons Adviser to His Majestic Holiness the Caliph,’ I added.
From twenty feet up, on the parapet of that stone wall, the guard looked coldly at us. We held up our ivory identification passes. He looked down at them. Another guard came briefly forward, then went back to his job of lounging against the new brick wall behind that stopped anyone from looking down into the monastery.
‘I want the old man out of his carrying chair and everyone else off horseback,’ he snapped down at us. ‘Before I give orders for the gate to be opened, I want to see you all with your arms in the air. I must warn you of the standing orders for any disobedience of the rules.’
I groaned and got up. I stepped out from beneath the shelter of the overhead canopy and took my place with everyone else under the baking sun. This was, after all, my eighth visit, and enforcement of the rules never varied. At least I was allowed to step into the shadow of the walls before the modesty screen was placed round me and I had to strip naked for the inspection of my clothes and body.
‘What are these?’ the unsmiling official asked, holding up the polished lenses he’d pulled out of their box.
‘Those are none of your business,’ I said sharply. ‘They aren’t on the contraband list. Let that be enough. If you drop or so much as scratch one of them, I’ll have you demoted and flogged.’
The official hurriedly pushed the lenses back inside their protective covering and looked at his superior. He in turn looked at Meekal, who was passing his inner tunic over the modesty screen. Meekal nodded and my inspection was at an end. I waited under the shade of the massive gate for the more thorough strip searching of the carrying slaves to be completed.
‘You know we can take no chances,’ Meekal said as he joined me in the shade. ‘Only the day before yesterday, someone tried to lie his way in as a supply carrier. Fortunately, we already knew the man he was impersonating had died in one of the previous attacks. I had tight cords put round his knees and elbows, and then watched while the limbs below were sawn off. You’ll be pleased to hear it was a completely successful experiment. He lived. Indeed, he sobbed most affectingly when he saw his limbs heaped before him. Unless he’s died of thirst in the meantime, I might show him to my dear young uncle.’
‘I didn’t know the boys were allowed inside the walls,’ I said, cutting off the leer.
‘I rejoice in your retention of all your faculties,’ came the reply. I got an ironic bow. ‘As it happens, I have decided to exclude them. They’ll have to wait outside with the guards. Now we’ve tightened the security again, even the Commander of the Faithful will need to prove identity and then right to enter.’ I pricked up my ears at the use of the indicative future. Meekal noticed and smiled. ‘Oh, yes,’ he whispered, ‘Abd al-Malik will be putting in an appearance within, I think, the next ten days.’
‘His Majestic Holiness has, I suppose, been victorious in the civil war?’ I asked with polite irony of my own. I watched as my carrying slaves put their skimpy loincloths back on. In a moment, the gates would swing shut, and the guards would go back to their paranoid inspection of all about the walls.
‘The Caliph is always victorious,’ Meekal answered without irony.
‘But don’t you find it rather hurtful,’ I asked again, ‘that you weren’t beside him? Isn’t it a little odd that you’re thought good enough for smashing up the lesser breeds to the East, but not for turning on other Saracens – on real Saracens, that is?’
I’d got the bastard there. His face went white with anger, and his hands shook as he refastened my cloak. He began some stammered excuse about his duties in Damascus. But now the gates did swing shut, and we were sealed within what had, before the Saracen conquest, been the Monastery of Saint Theodore the Uneating.
The monastery buildings themselves had been mostly demolished, leaving plenty of space within the high surrounding wall. This had now been separated by new walls into four separate zones, each with its own solid gate and its own complement of silent guards. The first of these zones was just inside the main gate. Here were the living quarters of the workmen and the administrative buildings. We were met by Silas, a Syrian with the usual dark beard. He was the site manager, with overall control of the project in my own absence. If he too was kept in the dark about how everything done there fitted together, he was, I suppose, the nearest I had to an assistant. He bowed low before us, and – just to show he was doing his job – spent a longish time looking at our passes and entering our details in the relevant ledger that one of his secretaries had brought forth from his office.
‘I want to begin with the preparation vats,’ I said.
He bowed again, and led us through the huddle of low buildings and piles of material that filled up much of this first zone. As he unlocked the gate, his secretary made another entry in the ledger and presented this for my inspection and Meekal’s, and then our countersignatures. We now had to wait again in the increasingly pitiless sun as my carrying slaves were all blindfolded. Silas himself would guide the head carrier through the next stages of the visit.
We passed through into an almost empty expanse of packed sand. In the middle was a high building, though of one storey, about the size and shape of a steam room in the house of a rich man. Of new brickwork – most of one wall of very new brickwork – this was secured by another stout door. We crossed the thirty yards of open ground and paused at the door.
‘My Lords have their keys ready?’ Silas asked. We nodded. He’d left his secretary on the other side of the gate, and so had carried the ledger himself. He now opened this and made yet another of his entries. Meekal walked round the whole outside of the building, and made a close inspection of the door and its locks. He nodded to me and signed again. I countersigned, and watched as Silas recorded that I had made no inspection of my own. I then reached inside my tunic and pulled out the large iron key that was fastened to a golden chain about my neck. I held this up for the other two men to see. They produced their own keys. With a ‘May it please your Lordship’ from Silas, I climbed from the chair and put my key into the first lock. Silas and Meekal put in their own. I gave the signal, and we pushed in hard and pulled out again. My hands shook slightly from all the beer I’d downed on the journey, and I missed the elaborate mechanism behind the key plates. We all took our keys back out and prepared to repeat ourselves. On the next attempt, we all hit the right spot together, and, with a slithering of bolts, the lock contracted within itself. Silas waved us back. He put a cloth over his nose and mouth, and pulled the door open. I turned away and held my breath as I smelled the noxious fumes. I walked carefully away from the door and listened to the rhythmical fall and rise of the bellows that Silas was working inside to replace all the air. At last, he was done. Now without his protective cloth, he stood in the doorway. He’d already unshuttered the window, and enough light was coming through the narrow iron grille to let us see what was within once our eyes were adjusted.