The Blood of Alexandria

389 Pages·2016·1.73 MB·English

by  Blake Richard

Richard Blake
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
SANCTI AELRICI DE UITA SUA DECEM LIBRI
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Epilogue
Richard Blake
The Blood of Alexandria
Prologue
Jarrow, Tuesday, 21 August 686
‘You know, Brother Aelric,’ Benedict told me this morning, ‘you may be up
for canonisation.’
I grunted and carried on looking at the draft manifesto one of King
Aldfrith’s clerks had given me to correct. It was dire stuff. Latin has no aorist,
and you can’t use participles to supply the lack. And that was probably the most
literate error.
I think the Abbot mistook my silence. He brightened his voice, adding, ‘Of
course, I would never dream of wishing you called out of this life. For all your
great age, the work you do for us here makes you irreplaceable’ – he repeated the
word ‘irreplaceable’, and emphasised it – ‘but the common people are already
calling you a saint.’
I’m now alone in my little cell, and free to think again. Benedict is a good
man. I’m grateful for the refuge he gave me in his monastery, no questions
asked. I’m particularly grateful at the moment for the stove he’s had brought in
to keep the afternoon chill away. If you think I was upset by his reference to the
inevitable, you’re as mistaken as he was. At ninety-six, that is something you’ve
had plenty of time to consider. And Saint Aelric! It may not make death any less
of the darkness it probably is. But it does have a nice sound.
The truth is, I was cutting off any renewal of the questioning. What did
happen yesterday afternoon? Everyone is itching to know. Benedict first asked
just after I’d been carried back here, and I lay dripping on to the polished floor
of his refectory. All he got for his trouble was a blank stare. The boy who dared
ask this morning got a box on the ears. But questioning by others is easily
handled. The problem is that I don’t myself know what happened. Oh, the
generality is easy: lack of air can do funny things to the mind. The question
remains, though, of the attendant circumstances. How to explain those?
Well, as Epicurus said, facts must be described before they can be
explained. Before I go any further, let me here – in the double privacy of this
journal and of the Greek in which I keep it – set out the facts as best I have them.
Since what I must explain happened yesterday afternoon, I suppose it is with the
facts of yesterday afternoon that I must begin.
Generally, the Northumbrian summer is shite. So it was last year, and the
year before that, and the year before that. I can’t speak for the year before that,
as I still had my summer palace in Nicea, and rain was the least of my worries.
Yesterday, though, it was almost warm. And that’s what had me out for a
sightseeing tour on the banks of the Tyne.
Nothing there to see ordinarily, I’ll admit. Even when not hidden in mist,
the whole prospect is one dreariness of green with a great expanse of water
running through to the sea. But let the sun be out, and it’s here that the boys
come to bathe and play. So, fighting off the stupor of beer at lunch, I stepped out
of the monastery garden, and in my slow, rickety gait made my way down to the
river and settled myself on a convenient stone.
The stone was too convenient. I was no sooner arranged than the beer won
its battle and I nodded off in the sun. I can’t say how long I slept. I don’t know if
I dreamed. But I woke to a sound reminding me in a smaller way of the great,
collective wail that went up in Ctesiphon when we smashed through the southern
gate. I propped myself up on an elbow and looked blearily at one of the boys
standing nearby. Water ran off him as he hopped terrified from one foot to the
other.
‘What’s going on?’ I croaked. I was stiff all over. I could feel that my face
and hands had caught the sun. Behind, I was cold and itchy from having rolled
on to the damp grass. I think I’d pissed myself a little. Certainly, I could feel a
sicky burp coming on.
The boy looked through me and turned away to look into the water.
‘Well, come on, lad,’ I said, louder now. I struggled to my knees, and,
pushing my walking staff into the soft turf, heaved myself unsteadily up. Yes, I
had pissed myself, and it was still dribbling down my legs. ‘What’s all this
racket?’
All the boys, I could now see, were standing still and silent, and looking
into the water. I squinted against the glare from the water and waited for my eyes
to focus. It wasn’t hard to see what had happened. Being so close to a strong
tidal sea, the bed of the Tyne here is rippled with sandbanks. Stay on one of
these, and you can walk far out at low tide, paddling in just a few inches of
water. A foot or so either side, the water may be bottomless. One of the boys had
walked out a few hundred feet. Then the tide had swept back in. The water had
suddenly risen from his knees to his chest, and was still rising.
No problem there, I thought. If he couldn’t see the sandbank now, all he had
to do was step off and splash however feebly while the tide washed him back in.
If he couldn’t swim, however… I turned back to the boys.
‘Well, don’t just stand there, you stupid buggers,’ I said in Northumbrian
dialect as I hobbled down to the water line. ‘Get back in there and bring him
out.’
I might have shouted in Persian or in one of the Slavonic dialects for all the
effect my words had. They just stood there, surly looks on their faces. Some had
turned now to face inland.
It was fear, I could see, of the Old Gods. It’s only been a generation or so
since the missionaries turned up in this part of England. Before then, the locals
had drowned the occasional human offering in the Tyne – something to do with
the fishing, or perhaps the harvests. If the boys rattle off their prayers well
enough in class, they’ve picked up an older nonsense at home. They were
terrified of going back into the water now that one of them was being taken.
I sighed. It struck me once again how ugly most of the boys are in
Northumbria. The line put out from Canterbury is that we’re all one people in
England. My own experience is that the better sort of barbarians who came here
settled the south, the very best, I’m in no doubt, settling my own Kent. The
further north you go, I find, the more runtish the people become. Why I’d
bothered staggering down to look at those white, knock-kneed bodies I couldn’t
now imagine.
Meanwhile, the tide was still coming in. As if he wanted to keep as much of
his body from the chill waters, the boy held his arms over his head. I might have
heard sobbing from far out. Even by local standards, he was a pathetic specimen.
I thought of quoting Lucretius on the evils of religion, and settling back to reflect
on how rotten life can be. Then, as I strained to see more clearly, my stomach
turned upside down.
It was Bede out there. What the sodding hell had he been doing in the river?
With his asthma, it was a miracle he’d even walked out that far. I poked my staff
sharply into the stomach of the boy most conveniently in reach. It was an
unexpected blow, and it doubled him up.
‘Get in there, you little shitbag bastard,’ I snarled, ‘or I’ll see you won’t sit
down for a week. Get in there and pull him out.’
He simply ran up the bank out of further reach. The others huddled
together. One of the older boys who’d sprouted a few muscles over his ribs
began to puff and look ferocious. I suddenly recalled this was near enough how
Brother Paul had got his head bashed in last summer. I looked desperately
around. There were no adults in sight. I was in no condition to run off for help.
The little churls and semi-churls around me couldn’t be trusted to get any sort of
message back to the monastery. It was a matter of standing impotently on the
river bank watching as my best student drowned in some stupid accident.
When that toad Croesus grassed me up in Constantinople, it was annoying
but manageable. The confiscation of goods, the loss of status, the midnight
escape down the Straits, Catania, Rome and all the continued shuffling along the
roads good or bad, never more than one step ahead of the Imperial agents – all
that and more I’d borne with surprising equanimity. I’d even put up with Jarrow.
But the loss of Bede, I knew, would be the end.
Take from me that scrawny little creature who’d been soaking up these past
few years all the learning I could give, as a sponge does water, and that would be
the end. It would be simply a question of how to bring on the darkness without
embarrassment for Benedict.
I looked round again as if there might be any alternative. There was none. I
kicked off my sandals. I gritted my teeth and stepped into the river. The water
came up to my ankles. It was fucking cold, I can tell you! With so little flesh on
my bones, the chill went straight through me. I thought at first I’d faint from the
shock. No one could have blamed me if I’d stepped out again. For anyone but
Bede, I’d not even have got my ankles wet – not at my age, nor at twenty years
younger. I once watched a man put himself into a barrel and float over a
waterfall. It did him no good, and isn’t something any reasonable person would
have advised. But there are times when you have no choice but to act in ways the
whole world would call foolish. So here I was. I took a deep breath and fixed my
attention on that terrified boy, then I stepped further into the liquid ice of the
Tyne. The only noise I could hear as I waded further and further out was my own
gasping breath. My robe was floating up and clinging to me. I pulled it over my
head and wound it round my left arm. I’ll swear I could feel the
uncomprehending stares of those silent boys from behind me.
The water was now up to Bede’s neck. I’d managed to stay on one of the
sandbanks. Though it shelved about an inch every few paces, the sand underfoot
was firm enough. The water spread around me in uncountable acres of cold
silver. But it came hardly up to my chest even as I got within a dozen feet of the
boy. I could see into his terrified eyes. I wanted to call something reassuring. But
I had no breath to spare. I smiled and waved my staff. For all the response, I
might as well not have been there.
Another few feet to go, and the sandbank seemed to give out on me. I
prodded around with the end of my staff. He was standing on something. So was
I. Between us, though, was some watery chasm. I pushed the staff at him.
‘Take hold of this,’ I gasped through chattering teeth.
He looked straight through me, as still and unresponsive as one of the
carved figures in the monastery chapel. I pulled the staff back and turned it
round. The other end had a kink at the top. If I got that into his clothing, I could
pull him towards me.
Splash!
I’d leaned forward at just the wrong moment. A stray current had got me
from behind and I’d overbalanced. One moment, I was standing a fifth out of the
water. The next, I was several feet under. I opened my eyes, and looked up to see
the sun-dappled surface of the Tyne rising higher and higher out of reach. From
habit, I’d taken a lungful of air before my face hit the water, and I still had the
skills of a swimmer. But the Tyne is not the heated swimming pool I used to
keep up in my main palace. And age is age, there’s no denying. I couldn’t find
the power in my arms to keep from sinking further into those frigid, black
depths. Was now the right time for a prayer? I remember thinking as my chest
began to hurt.
But the time came and the time passed. I found myself back on one of the
sandbanks, pulling a now unconscious Bede by his hair.
There were a couple of the bigger monks waiting for me. Flashing scared
looks at something behind me, they waded in to their knees and helped us out. I
needed that. Without the water to support me, I’d have fallen straight down.
They tried to pick me up and take me back to the monastery. But I had come this
far. I wasn’t leaving until I was finished.
Bede was lying still on the river bank beside me. His eyes were closed, his
face wizened and a touch blue.
‘The Gods’ – the monk corrected himself and switched to Latin – ‘The
Devil has taken him, O Master. The Angel was too late.’ He made the sign of the
Cross. ‘Come back to the monastery. Your body is all blue from the cold.’
‘Not taken anywhere yet, I think,’ I snapped back at him in a surprisingly
clear voice. ‘Get the boy laid out on his front.’ I knelt over Bede, all sense of
how cold and stiff I was banished from my primary attention. I reached out to
the fleshless, white skin of his upper body and pressed with both hands. I pressed
hard, and hard again, as if I were a servant making bread. Again and again I
pressed, until I thought my thudding heart would just stop.
I suppose that was another opportunity for prayer. Again, I passed it up.
Then Bede was coughing and spluttering and vomiting water on to the grass. I
rolled him over again and looked on my handiwork. The young are marvellous
creatures. The colour was already coming back to his body.
I wanted to promise him a sound whipping for what he’d done. But I now
really was at the end of my strength, and I flopped helplessly on to the grass.
Those monks had me wrapped in warm clothing and back to the monastery
before I had time to think what was happening. Then straight to a bed made up
beside the bakery oven and Abbot Benedict to watch over me until I was
wakeful enough to bear the full weight of his anger.
Bede’s family came by in the evening with a sheep and a whole barrel of
salt fish. I heard the little speech Benedict gave on my behalf. He excused my
accepting in person on the grounds that I was confined to bed in my cell.
I woke this morning feeling decidedly perky. I don’t think I’ve been so with
it in the morning since last Christmas in Canterbury, when old Theodore of
Tarsus made sure to keep me off the beer. I glared at the novice monk who
fussed around me, arranging food and asking endless questions.
Did I walk on water? Did I restore life by the laying on of hands? Did I
expel the old demonic Gods from their last refuge in Northumbria? Did the
Angel of the Lord say anything while I was all that time under the water that I
might wish to share?
No and four times no! I wanted to shout at him, my good mood clouding
over. But I didn’t. So I’m now a candidate saint. There will be a sermon about
me next Sunday. Aldfrith will come over in royal state and look pious. His clerk
won’t bluster when I point out his illiteracy. When I’m dead, I don’t doubt
they’ll have my body on show till it crumbles to dust.
Basic Greek restored my spirits. I was on excellent form. Wrapped in a
double cloak under the thatch roof, my students all sitting obediently before me
on the floor of beaten earth, I chalked up one of the more nonsensical passages
from Revelation, and demanded an exact Latin translation. That was my excuse
to set about flogging the arse off every boy I’d seen by the Tyne. When I ran out
of energy, I wheezed and gloated while one of the novices drew blood for me.
Dear me – I said I’d describe the facts before I explained them. But I
haven’t even described them properly. What did happen out there in the water?
How was it I didn’t drown? How was it that Bede still had his head above the
water when I went under, and had managed to drown by the time I got him by
the hair? What really happened between the moment I fell off that sandbank and
when I found myself on another, pulling Bede behind me, back towards a shore
thick with boys and monks, all bouncing up and down in some kind of frenzy?
Good questions. Only, the more I think about the answer, the more I realise
that yesterday afternoon is not the right place to begin. If I’m to make any sense
at all – to me as well as to you – I’ll need to begin much, much further back.