The Blood of Alexandria Read Free Page A

Martin coughed again.
    ‘They’ve been gathered since the spring,’ I replied, switching from Latin into the privacy of Martin’s native Celtic. ‘If things had gone as planned, it would have been a matter of reading out the law and then taking questions about implementation. Thanks to the sodding Viceroy . . .’
    I trailed off bitterly, thinking about those endless delays, delays, delays. Waiting for the Nile to rise was nothing like waiting for a decision from Nicetas; indeed, there was less doubt the Nile would eventually rise.
    ‘You’ve seen the newsletters drifting in from Constantinople,’ I went on, ‘and I don’t think we’ve intercepted half of them. Everyone’s had time to know what’s in the law, and to spend every evening arguing and plotting against it.
    ‘If I go in there now or after lunch, it’s pretty much the same. I’ll be facing down an assembly of factions, most of them immovably hostile.’
    Martin looked quietly down. I turned back again to the window. Above Lake Mareotis, a flock of birds was wheeling and darting. I counted twelve of them. If I’d believed in the Old Faith, I might have called this a good omen. But I didn’t believe. If Martin had brought in the orthodox and the heretical patriarchs of Alexandria, together with His Holiness himself from Rome, it would have done nothing more to lift my spirits. There was no recapturing my earlier peace of mind.
    ‘Oh, what’s the point in keeping them still further?’ I sighed. ‘Do go ahead, Martin. Prepare the way as best you can. I’ll be down in a moment.’
     
    The Great Hall of Audience was an obvious addition to the Palace. It had its own gated entrance from the square outside, and a fortified entrance into the Palace itself. I think it had been put up by Cleopatra when the Romans were making life hard for her and she found it necessary to suck up to the natives. Whatever the case, it had been extensively remodelled by the first Imperial governors so it would project the New Order of Things. This remodelling had included a thirty-foot-high frieze running all round the place. It showed Augustus making his deal with the Senate that had finished off the Republic except in form.
    Done in the Greek style of their best age, the frieze showed him as first among equals among the senators. There was no hint of the universal barbarian custom of making the ruler look bigger than his subjects. Submission here was conveyed by facial expression and downcast eyes. Augustus wasn’t even in the absolute centre. That was given over to the various nonentities he hadn’t thought it worth murdering before he’d got himself declared Father of the People. Only on the outer fringes, far down the Hall, could you see his family. They jostled at the back of the admiring crowd, most of them not even in full view. You did manage to see the whole of his ghastly wife. She stood in the gallery of the Senate House, looking almost maternal as she leaned over the children Cleopatra had borne to Antony. The deposed couple, you could be sure, were nowhere in evidence. Nor was the child she’d borne to Caesar. Like his mother, he’d not lived to see the New Order of Things.
    Yes, the New Order of Things. It was now six and a half centuries old. And still it continued, in an unbroken and apparently unbreakable sequence of governors and prefects and dukes, and, more recently, of viceroys. And here I was from Constantinople to bring the glad tidings of its renewal.
    The chair that had collected me on the roof, then carried me down the paved ramps that connected the floors of the Palace, paused as the double doors into the Hall were silently opened. As they closed behind us, one of the eunuchs who’d tagged along gave a gentle cough. Ten feet above, on the platform that blocked my view of the Hall, we were at last in business.
    ‘All rise for His Magnificence Alaric, Senator, Count of the Most Sacred University, Legate Extraordinary from His Imperial