Free The Blood of Alexandria by Richard Blake Page B

trying to fuck us all over – pardon the expression, but those were his very words. He promised me a reward if I’d spread the word of unity. ‘‘There’s success in unity,’’ he said, ‘‘success in unity.’’
    ‘Me – I don’t never mix with wogs. Nasty, dirty people, I say they are. Shit in the street: can you believe it? He was a generous tipper, though, sir. He even took a whole pot of my ointment. He said he was on his way to a journey along the Canopus Road. He thought it would help with the pain.’
    I looked again over at the gate. About fifty of the Egyptians were getting up more of their chant about Alexandria. Even as they gathered, though, reinforcements were pouring out of the guard house, their swords already drawn.

Chapter 8
     
    ‘Of course it was Leontius,’ I said. ‘Who else is there to fit that description? Who else is likely to be going about preaching unity against us from both sides of the Wall?’ I’d finished with my meeting in the Food Control Office, and we were now heading back to the Palace. I’d said I wanted the new land survey reports on my desk after lunch at the latest. It was now surely pushing towards the sixth hour of the day.
    ‘But what can you do about him?’ Martin asked. He tagged along beside me, sometimes cheerful, sometimes quiet, as the opium worked its magic on his fairly virgin body. I stopped. We were about to come from a side street we’d taken to avoid the public executions into the square containing the obelisk and the statues of all the Ptolemies. From here, it was a short walk along the Processional Way into the Palace square itself. I looked at a pair of yellow shoes in the glazed window of a shop. They were pretty enough, but I preferred something cut a little lower to show off my ankles.
    ‘Among other matters Nicetas hasn’t decided to share with me are security and public order,’ I said. ‘That means I can’t just have the man taken up for suspected treason. But we had a threat of this yesterday – and Nicetas was watching. We now have some evidence that he’s going through with the threat. Stirring up the mob, especially both sections of it, is something that even His Highness will accept requires action.
    ‘I’ll go and see him tomorrow. At the least, I can have Leontius kicked out of Alexandria. And unless we’ve pushed them over the edge of desperation, I don’t think the dissident landowners will stand a moment by his side if they think he’s actually planning to raise the mob against us.’
    As we passed into the square, we bumped into the front of a long procession. There wasn’t time to get past it. The best we could do was jump backwards out of its way. We stood in front of what had once been the Department of Medicine at the University, and was now a training college for missionaries, and watched it go by. It was soon obvious this would take some time. Led by three bishops I hadn’t seen before, its centrepiece was a great wooden image of Saint Mark. It was smeared over in elaborate patterns of mud, its feet kept ever wet from pitchers of clear water. The patterns were repeated on the bodies of the humbler celebrants. Waving papyrus imitations of corn sheaves, they sang their thanks for plenty in the year to come.
    If anyone there knew what I’d just learned about the black mould on the remaining stores of grain, he didn’t seem inclined to spoil the party.
    Still, there could be no doubt the Nile was rising nicely. The silver stream I’d seen the day before in the canal was become a dark flood. It gurgled loudly through the cisterns that ran under every street. Already, Lake Mareotis was seven inches up on the day.
    Martin switched into Latin. ‘What does this mean for your speculations?’ he asked, a disapproving tone in his voice.
    ‘Nothing at all,’ I answered, following him into Latin, though the noise around us would have defeated the most intrepid spy. ‘The contracts I made last month were for sale at