Watson, Ian - Novel 16 (16 page)

 
          
Stifling
his first outcry, he felt himself all over. He crouched and cast around in the
gloom amidst legs and feet both bare and sandalled. ‘My purse! Is anyone
standing on my purse?’

 
          
He
rose and clutched Gupta. ‘Have you taken my purse as a joke? Tell me!’

 
          
‘I
did nothing of the sort. Maybe it fell at the entrance after you paid. You
thought you put it back. It slipped down. That’s possible.’

 
          
‘Yes.’
Alex elbowed his way through the audience as the flute began to play.

 
          
He
quizzed the doorkeeper. He searched the ground.

 
          
‘Any
luck?’ Gupta had followed, friendly concern written on his face.

 
          
‘Nothing!’
Alex grabbed the Indian and ran his hands all over him. ‘This place would strip
my soul, you said! And what else? What else would be stripped from me?’

 
          
‘I
must protest. Though I forgive you your feelings. What an awful shock.’

 
          
Alex
drew back. ‘Fat lot of use feeling
you.
It could be up your anus, for all I know! Please, Gupta, please, if you do have
it on you - ’

           
‘I don’t. Emphatically.’

           
Alex again confronted the
doorkeeper, who had been watching with polite interest. ‘Has anyone left the
performance yet?’

 
          
‘You
two gentlemen have.’

           
‘I mean anybody else!’

           
‘After the very first dance?
Hardly.’

           
‘Then the thief’s still in there
with my money.’

           
‘How fortunate for you, sir. You
need only stand here and ask everyone in turn as they leave.’

 
          
‘Ask?’

           
‘If by any chance they picked up
your purse.’

           
‘I want the performance stopped. I
want everyone searched. Thieving is against the law.’

 
          
‘To
be sure, but there are forty people inside tonight. Who will search them?’

 
          
‘I
will - if you bar the door.’

           
‘Some might prove aggressive. They
wouldn’t wish to be groped intimately.’

 
          
Alex
groaned. Briefly he clutched at the good Greek knife hidden inside his tunic.
Ostentatiously the doorkeeper rearranged a cudgel on a nearby shelf. Alex let
his hand fall limp.

 
          
‘I’d
like my lantern,’ he said.

           
‘You can’t take a lantern inside,
sir. It would spoil the lighting balance.’

 
          
‘I
want it because I’m going home! To bed.’

           
‘Don’t leave,’ said Gupta. ‘As the
veils of mortality are stripped away, the thief may have a change of heart.’

 
          
‘Fat
chance. I’m not going to stand in the same room with someone who just destroyed
me.’

 
          
‘That’s
an extreme interpretation.’

           
‘I haven’t any money, Gupta. None at
all. I’m a beggar.’

           
‘Let me offer you a loan. I can
spare a shekel and a half for your immediate needs.’

 
          
‘Don’t
ruin yourself with generosity.’

 
          
‘Sorry
I’m not Croesus! Feel free to refuse. Be proud.’

 
          
Whose
money would Gupta be lending? His own - or Alex’s?

 
          
‘I
can’t impoverish myself, Alex. That’s the amount I can risk.’

 
          
‘Thanks,
I’ll think about it.’

 
          
‘I
shall stay and see the show I paid for. The first dance was highly instructive!
Be careful on the way home, my friend.’

 
          
‘Am
I going to be waylaid? Robbed again?’

 
          
‘A
disturbed soul treads heedlessly, thinking that nothing worse can happen. A person
becomes accident- prone.’

 
          
‘I
have a knife - and I’ll use it!’

 
          
Gupta
cocked an ear to the wailing of the flute. ‘Excuse me. I might miss something
revealing.’ He slipped away.

 
          
Alex
trudged off, lantern in left hand, right hand on the hilt of his knife.

 
          
He
reached Between The Skin Shops safely, but didn’t sleep too well. On the bright
side, he was still in good credit - unless Gupta tipped off Kamberchanian. And
who knew what Thessany’s visit might bring? He concentrated hard upon the image
of her actually coming as promised the following afternoon. If she didn’t. . .

 
          
Thessany
looked demurely around his bare room. ‘Haven’t you anything you can sell?’

           
‘Those seven shekels were like a
loan to you and Moriel.’

 
          
‘A
loan? Without a tablet of receipt? No, they were an investment - in a risky
enterprise.’

           
‘In which, so far, I seem to have
put everything! The little scroll included.’

 
          
‘The
scroll on its own is meaningless - an ugly brown ribbon. You’ve no idea how
much effort, knowledge and cunning Mori and I have exercised. I think you’re
being quite unfair.’

 
          
‘So
what’s the outcome?’

 
          
‘You’re
also monstrously impatient. We must proceed subtly, slyly. In three more days
I shall be able to amaze you. Hints would only spoil the pleasure.’ ‘Three
days. What do I do till then? The landlord is going to present a bill. I need
some money.’ (Gupta’s pittance - keep that in reserve.)

           
‘You could always sell yourself.’

 
          
‘Haven’t
I already?’

 
          
‘I
mean it seriously. I think I could persuade my father to acquire you for me. He
might pay as much as forty shekels. The money would be yours. Your life
wouldn’t be harsh. You would enjoy a lot of freedom in which we could pursue
our intrigue. This would be so much easier if you were under my roof.’

 
          
‘And
under your thumb. Sell myself to you? You must be joking.’

 
          
‘There’s
no dishonour in being a slave. It’s merely a misfortune. I could protect you.’

 
          
‘I’d
be a fool to fall for that. The idea’s mad. Sell myself into slavery five
minutes after I arrive in
Babylon
?’

 
          
‘It
can happen.’

 
          
‘I’d
rather leave.’

 
          
‘You
can’t, because you can’t pay the exit tax.’

 
          
With
Gupta’s loan, he could! She didn’t know about Gupta’s offer.

 
          
‘Besides,
you have to remain one lunar month. Money is invested in potential citizens.’

 
          
Would
they let him board the hovercraft early? As he thought of the hovercraft; it
receded into invisibility inside a cloud of dust. He no longer quite believed
in its existence.

 
          
Money.
He could sell his knife for a few coins.

 
          
Never
disarm yourself! Never go defenceless! Mitch had drummed that into him long
ago. But where was Mitch now?

 
          
‘Three
more days? You swear it?’

 
          
She
crossed her heart, then ran to the window and called to her red-headed
bodyguard in the yard: ‘Come up, Praxis! Escort me. I will depart.’

 
          
Alex
realized that he had been fingering his knife. Perhaps he had put the wind up
her. Good. Drive a fellow into a corner and his claws come out; unless he
simply curls up . . .

 
          
‘
Here
, in three days’ time?’

 
          
‘I
swear I’ll come back.’

 
          
Of
course she would. The whiff of danger would excite her.

 
          
A
fist thumped on the wooden door.

 
          
‘In,’
she called; and Praxis loomed, scratching the hairs on his chest.

 
          
‘Think
about my offer,’ Thessany said sweetly. ‘It’s sincerely meant. You wouldn’t be
made into a eunuch or anything of the sort. That’s against the law. You would
have needed to, oh, rape the daughter of the house first!’ She winked.
‘Seriously, you’d do well to accept. If our venture prospers, I’m sure you’ll
soon buy your freedom back. Right now you only have one silly hotel bill to
settle. But expenses do have a way of mounting up for a free man, don’t you
think? Without a quarter-shekel to your name, you’re doomed.’

 
          
Alex
simply looked at her.

 
          
‘You’d
have a period of grace,’ she added encouragingly. ‘You have to be a citizen
before you can lose your citizenship. You’d have to go inside
Babel
for a week. Who wants a slave who can’t
speak Babylonian?’

 
          
And
what games would Thessany get up to as regards the scroll and Deborah and
Marduk’s impending marriage while Alex was
hors
de combat
learning Babylonian?

 
          
‘A
person,’ he said, ‘might be forgiven for supposing
you
want me as a slave - a lot more than I want you! Who is selling
what, to whom?’

 
          
‘Intriguing
question,’ she agreed.

 
          
So
much for Thessany’s visit.

 
          
Alex
wandered again, with the Indian’s shekel and a half, gift of Gupta, tucked in a
tiny pouch, pinned to his loincloth with a bronze safety pin.

 
          
Oh
yes, he had borrowed - almost as soon as Thessany had gone. It was far too
dangerous to be without any money; she was right on that score. It was like
being disarmed. In a sense Deborah owed him all the money he had lost. It was
because of her departure - her desertion - that he had been stripped bare of
funds; though this was hardly a debt he could proclaim in public should Deborah
and prosperous Shazar pass by.

 
          
A
shekel and a half: a breathing space. Meanwhile, forget about Kamberchanian’s
nebulous bill at least till tomorrow - or the next day, or the third.

 
          
Gupta
hadn’t asked for a receipt. Perhaps the sum was too trivial. Perhaps he was
indeed a friend. Or perhaps he was laughing silently, and had no wish to
scratch on clay any details about money which he himself had caused to
disappear.

 
          
Failing
to forget about money - since every time he tried to forget, he remembered -
Alex wandered as far as the
Rainbow
Gardens
, the
Hanging
Gardens
.

 
          
The
gardens were draped over the seven terraces of Nebuchadnezzar’s palace, on the
sunward side. At street level were offices and storerooms; and tucked away at
the north-east corner, the Wonder Cabinet. This time Alex approached the palace
from the south side, where a broad flight of marble steps led upward into green
shade away from dust and bustle. To a spectator down in the street the cedars
and cypresses of the first tier, the almonds and figs, Sennacherib’s cotton
trees and olives half hid and half revealed the upper tiers in the way mountain
terraces both hide and hint at higher terraces; except that this particular
mountain was a building, a stretched-out ziggurat of seven pillared layers. The
palace was longer than it was high, though its summit was no mean height.