‘However, does any of this correspond to the reality that we perceive with our natural senses?’ I continued with illustrations that might appeal to a Jew – of coins worn away by much handling, of bodily increases brought on by overeating, and the like. I ended with an explanation of how happiness can be enlarged by a study of the atoms and their combinations, and the turning of this study to our own advantage.
There – I’d come full circle. Now using his drugs as my example, I was discussing how the right combination of atoms could produce known and desired effects on the human body. And there would be no more of Aristotle of Stagira and his ludicrous talk of heat and cold and wet and dry as the fundamentals of existence. Sickness was a disordering of the bodily atoms. The purpose of drugs was to bring about a collision and mingling of atoms to reorder the body.
Jacob drank heavily of the very heavy wine. I took mine watered, and passed up the offer of more drops from the bottle he carried about with him. He looked steadily forward at the streams of water that shot into the air and cascaded back into the stone basin, each one now an individual, shining drop.
‘I regret that you must soon leave us,’ he said, speaking as if in a dream. ‘If I but close my eyes, I can see your atoms, rushing forward like grains of sand blown up by the desert wind. I really would hear you speak more of them. And I’d hear you speak also of your world without empires to tax and oppress, and without religions to divide us. Are there still writings on all this?’
I shrugged ruefully. In a lifetime of collecting, I’d managed to gather up just over half of the three hundred books the Master had produced. They’d been carefully repaired and arranged in my library in Constantinople. But all my property had been confiscated. Had the books found their way into some other library? Or had the ancient rolls been cut up so accounts could be kept on the blank side of the papyrus? Constantine surely wouldn’t have had them cast into the fire. The only thing he’d ever shown much interest in burning was people.
‘Has my father said that you have two places booked on the first spring sailing?’ Jacob asked. ‘It leaves the day after tomorrow.’
I hadn’t seen old Ezra since the previous evening. Whatever arrangements he’d made were of the present day. But Jacob was drifting into the sort of state where details of time were decreasingly important. I thought again of the boy laid out in the shuttered room upstairs just behind where we sat. I didn’t suppose Ezra had even gone through the motions of reserving a third place.
‘My father negotiated hard,’ he said. ‘You know he got you the best deal.’
I nodded. That was an unstudied ambiguity best not resolved. I should have thought here of the mysterious figure shut away in Ezra’s counting house. I found my thoughts pulled back to Wilfred. Jacob would get him buried in hallowed ground. In this heat, we’d surely have the funeral before the next dawn.
‘The world can be a shitty place,’ I said. I thought of many things, though chiefly my own guilt. Why had I never once in my life grieved for someone I loved without also feeling that I was in some way to blame? If there was an answer to that one, I made sure to drown it with a double mouthful of wine. ‘The world can be a right shitty place,’ I said again.
‘Never a truer word,’ Jacob sighed. He put aside any pretence of wine, and let a few drops from his bottle fall directly on to his tongue.
We might have sat there in the appearance of silent communion until the lengthening shadows had taken all colour from the flowers. But I could now see Edward. Visibly limp with exhaustion, he was creeping through a doorway that didn’t lead to our rooms. Exhausted or not, he could come and help me back inside. It was time for our discussion. I wouldn’t tell him everything I’d now pieced together. But there were still those decisions I’d mentioned. He’d have to make those.
Chapter 27
‘Says here you’re a Jew – right?’ The Captain stabbed a dirty finger on to my passport and looked up at me.
I nodded. I could have tried the exaggerated Jewish whine I’d been practising all the previous day. But, if Ezra had assured me I’d convince everyone but another Jew, I thought it best for the time being to grovel in silence before this bloated, insolent pig of a man.
‘Well, we ain’t taking no chances,’ he added with a laugh. He tipped his head back and hawked. The flob landed about an inch from my left sandal. I resisted the urge to look down, and focused on the passport Ezra had bribed out of the Prefecture. ‘If you are what you say you are, you won’t mind hitching up that fancy robe for me.’
Bastard shitbag! I thought. If ever I were in a position to do him ill, I’d have him chained to one of the slave oars of this ship. And I’d not have him moved to the other side every month. He could grow as lop-sided from continuous exercise as he’d let the other slaves I’d seen as I came on board. Then, the free oarsmen could come up and piss all over him. But I smiled greasily and did as I was told. I steeled myself not to set about him with my stick as he barked out another laugh and invited the other passengers to get a look at my circumcision. It was enough that the grim, unsmiling guard beside him bent down for a long inspection, then went back to his continuous scanning of everyone else boarding the ship.
‘The boy’s not a Jew, though,’ the Captain added with a statement of the bleeding obvious.
Still not speaking, I pointed shakily at one of the lower sections of the passport. It confirmed my permission to own a Christian slave.
‘And I suppose you’ll be trading him with the enemy, won’t you?’ came the reply. He took up the sheet of papyrus and waved it around. ‘Boys like him fetch their weight in silver among the debauched Saracens.’ He raised his voice and repeated the witticism. Someone behind me laughed. Well he might laugh. If we hadn’t all been granted permits to trade with the enemy, why else was the ship filling up with merchants in the first place? Just because there’s a war on doesn’t mean trade has to stop.
‘Oh, fuck off, then,’ he snarled, waving me on board. ‘But I don’t want none of your Jewboy caterwauling on deck. I run a Christian ship, and I’m proud of it.’ He waited until Edward had gathered all our documents back into his satchel and we were moving off in search of our cabin. ‘It’s salt pork for dinner,’ he bawled after us. ‘It’ll be served just after prayers.’
After what seemed an endless wait, the ship pitched horribly to one side, and we were moving slowly away from the docks. Still gripping hard on the side, I stood beside Edward and looked back at Caesarea. The whole family had turned out to wave goodbye. There was old Ezra, capering about like a schoolboy as he waved his stick at me. There was Jacob, sitting dazed on an abandoned crate and looking intently at something in his hand that I couldn’t see, but could easily imagine. And there was a whole tribe of sobbing women. I strained to see more clearly. Was that Ezra’s wife blowing kisses at us? I looked at Edward. His face was as impassive as it had been on that day, so long before, in Jarrow. Not bad for only thirteen, I’m sure you’ll agree.
‘How long to Beirut, My Lord?’ he asked.
I looked up at the clear, blue sky, and at the large birds that screeched and careered against the backdrop of the sky. Storms and pirates allowing, I told him, we’d be there in fourteen days – sooner if the wind held up.
‘And it is ruled by the Saracens?’ he asked, in English. He went back to his inspection of the receding docks.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It’s been in their hands over fifty years now. When I was your age, it was a thoroughly Greek city. Any Syrian with ambitions who settled there had no choice but to learn Greek and fit in. Why, it once even had the third largest law school in the Empire. It’s still the main port for that part of Syria. But it’s well outside the Empire nowadays. And that, my dear, is why it’s to be Beirut for us. It has all the civilised amenities – without any Brother Joseph to cut short my decline.’ I tried to scan the docks. They’d receded too far now to be other than a blur. ‘Anyone else back there you might recognise?’ I asked, switching too into English.