The Father of Locks E-Book

Andrew Killeen

• Herausgeber: Dedalus
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 557

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012

Beschreibung

A tale of murder and espionage in the spirit of the Arabian Nights

Das E-Book The Father of Locks wird angeboten von Dedalus und wurde mit folgenden Begriffen kategorisiert:

Leseprobe

Dedalus Original Fiction in Paperback

THE FATHER OF LOCKS

Andrew Killeen was born and lives in Birmingham. He studied English at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, and has spent most of his career working with homeless and disadvantaged children.

In his spare time he makes music, and can occasionally be found performing as a singer, musician and DJ. He supports Birmingham City FC, as karmic punishment for sins in a past life.

The Father of Locks is his first novel.

CONTENTS

Title

Map of the World as known to Ismail al-Rawiya

Prologue: The Tale of the Witch and the Jeweller’s Daughter

One:The Tale of the Thief in the House of Wisdom

Two:The Tale of the Eunuch, the Wazir and the Chief of Police, which includes, The Marvellous Adventures of Ismail al-Rawiya

Three:Concluding The Marvellous Adventures of Ismail al-Rawiya, and, The Tale of the Eunuch, the Wazir and the Chief of Police

Four:The Tale of The Ring of The All-Seeing Eye

Five:The Tale of Three Gentlemen and a Musician, which includes, The Tale of Iblis, the Father of Bitterness

Six:The Postman’s Tale, which includes, The Tale of the Righteous Ones

Seven:The Tale of the Visitors

Eight:The Tale of the Deserted Camp

Nine:The Tale of the Khalifah’s Feast, which includes, The Tale of the Poet and the Three Boys, and, The Tale of the Horn of Hruodland

Ten:The Tale of the White Ghost in Blissful Eternity

Eleven:The Tale of the Red Cloth

Twelve:The Tale of The Great Demon Time, Devourer of All Things, which includes, The Tale of the Game of Four Divisions

Thirteen:Concluding, The Tale of the Game of Four Divisions, and, The Tale of The Great Demon Time, Devourer of All Things

Fourteen:The Tale of the Shower of Petals, including, The Tale of the Cock and his Hens

Fifteen:Concluding the Tale of the Cock and his Hens, And, The Tale of the Shower of Petals

Sixteen:The Tale of the Boy in the River, including, The Tale of the Father of a Muslim

Seventeen:The Tale of the Birthmarked Boy, which includes, The Tale of the Raiders

Eighteen:The Tale of The Royal Hunt

Nineteen:The Tale of the Dog-Headed Demon

Twenty:The Tale of The Prisoner and the Guard

Twenty One:The Tale of the Saint and the Sinner, which includes, The Education of a Poet

Twenty Two:The Tale of the Brass Bottle

Twenty Three:The Tale of the Door That Should Not Have Been Opened

Twenty Four:The Tale of the King and Queen of Darkness

Epilogue: The Tale of the Boats

Historical Note

A Note on Names

Glossary

Copyright

Map of the World as known to Ismail al-Rawiya

Prologue

The Tale of the Witch and the Jeweller’s Daughter

Once there was a jeweller, who was known for his good fortune. He was an attractive man, blessed with quick wits, a strong body, and a full and luxuriant beard. He could catch fish simply by putting his hand in the river, and find water by pushing a stick into the ground. His name was Ali, but his neighbours called him al-Mubarak, the Lucky One.

Al-Mubarak did not rely solely on his luck. He worked hard and prospered, and the fame of his merchandise spread throughout the land. Amirs and Shaikhs travelled to his shop to purchase tokens of love for their concubines or catamites. When it came time for Ali to take a wife, he married the most beautiful girl in his town. She had hair soft as spring rain and eyes as bright as lightning.

A year after they wed, she fell pregnant. When al-Mubarak learned that his wife was with child, he began to weep. His wife said:

“Husband, why do you not rejoice at this news? Have I offended you in some way?”

He looked up from his tears and answered:

“No, wife. I weep because God has favoured me better than I deserve. There are many who never know the happiness of wealth, love and fertility. I pity them, yet I believe it is harder to have such things and see them taken from you. Now I weep for fear that God will test me as he did the Prophet Ayyub. Would that I could protect my family from disaster and disease!”

The jeweller’s forebodings proved to be well-founded; for his wife died giving birth. (We are from God, and to him we return.) The baby survived, but instead of the son he had hoped for it was a sickly girl.

Devastated by his loss, the jeweller poured his love and sorrow into the girlchild, whom he named Nadiyya, meaning Delicate. Against expectation she thrived, and grew to be more beautiful even than her mother, with skin like silken sheets and eyes as dark as hunger. Al-Mubarak’s brothers and cousins brought their handsome sons, offering them as prospective husbands for the girl, but he turned them all away. Nobody was good enough for his daughter.

The jeweller became obsessed with finding her a husband who would be able to keep her safe from all harm. Having refused all the young men of his town, he began to travel further afield, in search of prospective sons-in-law. His business suffered, and in time he had to sell his shop. With nowhere to call home they trekked from town to town, selling trinkets from a cart.

In summer they slept under the stars, but winter was hard. Al-Mubarak found lodgings for his daughter, but could not afford to sleep indoors himself. So it was that the girl came out one morning to find that her father had frozen to death on the street in front of her door. (We are from God, and to him we return.)

As she was weeping over his body, a merchant by the name of Khalil happened by. He had just returned from a voyage which had brought him vast riches, and was on his way to the masjid, to give a share of his gold to the poor. He sent one of his servants to discover the cause of the girl’s distress. When he learned of her misfortune, he thought:

“Surely God has put this girl in my path as a test of my charity. I shall take care of this orphan, and bury her father with all due ceremony.”

Khalil had the jeweller’s body washed and wrapped in rich cloth. He ordered his household to put on mourning weeds, and they prayed over the body before placing it in the grave. For the next three days, no work was done, and the women of the huram wailed and tore at their clothes as if the stranger were one of their own. That was the end of Ali al-Mubarak, the Lucky One.

The merchant Khalil took the jeweller’s daughter into his house, a spacious mansion of broad halls and pleasant gardens. He had fallen in love with her dark eyes before she had even stepped across his threshold. However he waited for four months and ten days, as if she were a widow, before offering her the brideprice: a heavy ring of gold, in which was set a sapphire the size of a ram’s testicle. They were married with great feasting and revelry, and two hundred guests attended the celebration.

Al-Mubarak’s life had ended cruelly, but some of his good fortune lingered. In death he had finally found the son-in-law he had been seeking. Khalil treated the girl as if she were a rare orchid, and tended to her every need. His attentions to her brewed bitter jealousy in his first wife. She had never borne him a child, and when her younger, prettier rival conceived, envy turned to hatred.

The first wife began to dream that Nadiyya had died, by accident or from illness. In the morning she would wake to find her husband gone from her side, and in her grief she would pull at her hair till it lay on her pillow, like a rebuke. At last she sent her maid to buy poison, saying that she could hear rats in the garden. The first wife of Khalil the Merchant dug a hole in the skin of a sour orange, and impregnated the fruit with the venom. Then she sent her maid to take the orange to Nadiyya, saying:

“My new sister may think that I have been cold towards her. Let her accept this gift, so that there can be the beginnings of love between us.”

The maid went to Nadiyya, where she sat in the garden with Khalil, under the shade of a fig tree, and spoke as her mistress had directed her. Khalil’s heart filled with joy, and he cried out:

“Now we can live in harmony! Let us share this gift between us, as a token of the peace in which we shall live!”

But Nadiyya disdained the bitter fruit, and Khalil ate it alone. That evening he lay with his first wife, because he was pleased with her gesture. In the depths of the night he began to buck and puke. His screams brought his slaves to the chamber, but it was too late. Khalil the Merchant opened his bowels and died. (We are from God, and to him we return.)

The first wife saw what she had done. As the smell of sickly shit filled the room, she turned and walked away. She passed through the vestibule and onto the street, alone and unveiled. By the time anyone asked where she had gone, she had already waded into the river, to her thighs, to her waist, to her neck. When the dirty water began to fill her mouth she panicked and began to struggle, but her clothes were heavy and dragged her down to the mud.

We are from God, and to him we return.

Nadiyya was left in possession of his estate, and the Eunuch brought her the keys to the house. In the merchant’s bedroom she opened a cedarwood chest to find it full of gold dinars. Every day his slaves would come to her for the household expenses, and she would take money from the chest and give it to them, before carefully locking it again. In this way time passed, and Khalil’s child grew within her, swelling her belly.

Eight months after the death of her husband, Nadiyya gave birth to a girl, as beautiful as her mother and grandmother before her. The labour was difficult, and for weeks afterwards the jeweller’s daughter lay close to death. When at last she recovered her strength the slaves begged her to give them money, as the household was in much debt. It was not until she opened the chest that she realized the merchant’s treasure had dwindled to a few coins, and there was not enough to pay their creditors.

Nadiyya knew no way of acquiring wealth other than to marry a rich man. So she sent the Eunuch into the town to find her a husband. However, the men of substance wanted virgin brides, and nobody was interested in the pretty but impoverished widow.

She complained of her problems to the wetnurse, as she suckled the baby girl. The wetnurse looked at her for a long time, as if making a decision. Then she spoke.

“Mistress, there is a woman in this town that might help you. Her name is Qamra, and she is a witch. If you wish I will take you to her, but her services may cost you dear.”

Eagerly the jeweller’s daughter begged to be introduced to the witch. So it was that the two women set out after nightfall, with no escort and only a small lamp to guide their way through the dark streets. They came at last to a small hut on the edge of town, and the wetnurse said:

“You must go in alone, or the witch will not speak to you.”

Nadiyya entered the hut. Inside she was dazzled by the blaze of sixty-six candles, and at first could not make out the huddled shape seated on a carpet. Her eyes cleared though as she sat down, and the jeweller’s daughter beheld the face of the witch. Nadiyya had imagined her as an old crone, but Qamra was a young woman, who would have been attractive were the left side of her face not scarred, as if she had been burnt by fire. The witch addressed her.

“You seek a husband who will keep and protect you. That is no easy matter. What payment have you brought me?”

Nadiyya produced the ring which Khalil had given her, the one with a sapphire the size of a ram’s testicle. Qamra took it and squinted at it in the candlelight, before secreting it in her robes. Then she took a disc of lead, and scratched into it three symbols. The jeweller’s daughter could not read, but knew these were no letters of Arabic. The witch passed her the disc.

“Put this under your pillow, and sleep on it for three nights. On the morrow after the third night, your husband will come to you.”

At those words the sixty-six candles all went out at once, and Nadiyya stumbled blindly from the hut in terror. For a month she hid the disc in a jar, too frightened to use it. But in the end, she reflected that she had spent her bride-price on it, and it seemed disrespectful to her husband not to make use of it. So she placed it under her pillow, and tried to forget what she had done.

Four days later, there came a banging at the door in the middle of the day. The Eunuch opened to see a tall figure silhouetted by the sun. The man at the door gave his name as Nuri, and said that his horse had gone lame in the street. He would pay for refreshment and a farrier to look at his animal.

This sudden apparition sent the whole household into a frenzy, like a termite’s nest poked with a stick. Nadiyya ordered a curtain hung across the vestibule, and food and drink brought to the visitor. She sat behind the curtain and conversed with him, refusing all payment, while her stable boy treated the horse, which had merely caught a stone in its hoof.

Nuri returned the next day, and the day after, and the day after that. Each afternoon he sat on one side of the curtain, and Nadiyya on the other. They talked, and sang each other songs, while the slaves brought sherbet and sweetmeats. After sixty-six days of visiting, he offered her a bride-price: a chain of gold twice as heavy as Khalil’s ring, studded with six rubies, each the size of a ram’s testicle. Nadiyya considered that she had got good value from the witch, and accepted his offer.

For several years they lived in happiness. Nuri never spoke of his business, although he would sometimes disappear for weeks at a time. He took possession of the keys to the house, the slaves and the livestock. Nonetheless there was always gold in the cedarwood chest, and the jeweller’s daughter wanted for nothing.

The wetnurse remained in the huram long after the child was weaned, looking after the daughter of Khalil the Merchant. Then one afternoon she took the girl to the river, to fish for minnows. Her friend came and sat with her, and the two women gossiped. When next they looked around, the little girl was gone.

The women ran up and down the riverbank, calling her name. Frantically, the wetnurse plunged into the river, fearing the child had met the same fate as her stepmother. However, there was no sign of the girl, and the nurse’s friend begged her to return to the bank before she was swept away.

Weeping with shame the women returned to the house to take the grim news to Nadiyya. The jeweller’s daughter felt her blood turn cold. Unveiled she ran into the street, shrieking and begging for help. Her neighbours came out of their shops and houses, and milled around, asking each other what was wrong.

Soon Nuri rode up on his horse. When he was told of the girl’s disappearance, he organized the neighbours into search parties, scouring the town. Then he rode to the river and persuaded the fishermen to drag the riverbed with their nets. All was to no avail. That night Nadiyya and Nuri held each other tight, and made desperate, unhappy love.

The next morning the people of the town returned to their occupations, but the girl’s stepfather continued his search. Every day he rode further afield, following rumours and reports. The jeweller’s daughter waited anxiously for his return, but each day he came in shaking his head sadly.

As days turned to weeks Nadiyya began to be troubled by a slow, thudding sound from the walls, as if the house had a beating heart. She told Nuri about it one evening, but he said to her:

“I hear nothing. Listen –”

They fell quiet, and she realized he was right. The house was silent. Nuri told her:

“You are tired, my love, and wracked with grief. You must rest more, then these strange noises will cease.”

And he gave her opium, to help her sleep. However the next day the beating returned. Now it seemed to pulse and echo, like the thud of a drum in a deep valley. Again she told Nuri on his return, and again he pointed out that the house was silent. He told her:

“Perhaps some vermin has made its home here. I will arrange for the ratcatcher to visit.”

But the next day the noise was unbearable. It felt to Nadiyya as if her brain was battering at the inside of her skull, in a bid to burst free. She went to the Eunuch and begged him to help her find the source of the din, but he told her:

“The master has the keys.”

She seized his arm and dragged him after her, as she followed the sound through the courtyards of Khalil the Merchant’s sprawling mansion. At last they came to a small wooden door, which led to a storeroom. Nadiyya begged the Eunuch to open it, and reluctantly he battered at the lock with his cudgel until the frame splintered and the door burst open.

It was dark in the room, which had no windows. As her eyes grew used to the gloom the jeweller’s daughter saw what she thought was a pile of rags. She drew closer, and realized it was her daughter, bound and gagged, red eyed and filthy. The little girl tapped on the floor with one foot. This tiny sound, magnified and reverberating in the mother’s ears, was what had drawn her to the room. Then a gasp from behind her caused her to turn round.

In the doorway stood her husband Nuri, knife in hand. At his feet lay the body of the Eunuch, his life bleeding and whistling out of a gash in his neck. Nuri laughed at the expression on her face, a harsh, heartless laugh.

“That look of surprise marks you out as the hypocrite you truly are. You sought a husband by magic. What kind of man did you think would be summoned by the twisted charms of witchcraft?”

Nadiyya was too frightened to speak, and her husband continued.

“I too once asked the help of Qamra the Witch, and in consequence I was possessed by a Ghul. It was the evil spirit within me that answered your call. The Ghul must feed on the blood of children, or both the spirit and my body will die. All these years I have only been waiting for the child to ripen, like a side of beef hung at the butcher’s shop, while I hunted elsewhere for my prey.

“Now you have discovered my secret. But you will be the last human being ever to do so.”

The jeweller’s daughter watched, helpless, as the door slowly closed. Then the darkness was complete.

This much I can tell you. Only God knows all.

One

The Tale of the Thief in the House of Wisdom

It was a Golden Age.

As a nightmare fades in the mind of a man blinking awake, so the dark days of violence and bloodshed seemed scarcely real now that peace dawned across the Land of Islam. From the flood plains of the Nile to the bitter deserts beyond the Oxus, the Abbasid dynasty had prevailed over its foes. And all true believers bowed the knee to the young and handsome Khalifah, the Successor to the Prophet of God, the Commander of the Faithful: Harun al-Rashid, the Righteous One.

Of course the Holy War against the Unbeliever went on, as it would until the Day of Judgement. Every summer the warriors marched to war against the Christians of the Roman Empire. But they were civilised people, the Romans, People of the Book, and it was a civilised war that was waged against them, in the Golden Age. There would be raids across the border, some minor scuffles and sieges, a few small towns would change hands. Then the combatants would exchange prisoners, and everyone would return home to tend to their harvests.

The Roman Empire was like the serpent that continues to writhe after being cut in two, still dangerous but slowly bleeding to death. Its western half had long since rotted into anarchy. Even the city of Rome itself had fallen, and the empire that bore its name was ruled from New Rome, or Konstantinopolis as it was sometimes known.

There were those who said, in the markets and bath houses, that Christianity rose again in the west. They said that a yellow haired barbarian called Karlo sought to subjugate the warlords and have himself crowned Emperor in Old Rome. However, to most true believers, he was no more real than the monsters or spirits with which storytellers frighten children.

The glory of the Golden Age was made manifest in the Khalifate’s glittering capital. The great city of Baghdad was a mere quarter of a century old, and bristled with the arrogance and pustulence of youth. Everywhere it shucked its seed, proliferant and unchecked. Every day new citizens arrived, drawn by the lure of power, wealth and opportunity. Not only true believers but Jews and Christians and Mazdaists came, from Athens and Aswan and Samarqand, from the banks of the Indus and from the Kingdom of Yemen beyond the Empty Sands. Artisans and artists, doctors, astronomers and scribes, whores and mystics, peasants and princes, schemers and dreamers, the hopeful and the hopeless came to Iraq to bathe in the light of the Golden Age.

To the south of the city lay the suqs of Karkh, the bustling markets that sprawled over a square mile of land. Trade was brisk, and Faruz the Costermonger strained to hear his customer over the pitching and haggling of the other stallholders. As he leaned across to listen, he did not notice the slight figure who slipped three apples from his barrow and hid them under his patched tunic. No matter. Faruz had already made fifteen dirhams that week. If his business continued to thrive, he might be able to take a second wife before winter came. The thought of lying between two women, each competing to please him, made him smile. Even for a simple dealer in fruit, it was a Golden Age.

The thief in the patched tunic, a young man of some fifteen or sixteen years, headed north through the crowded streets, picking his way over the wheel ruts and the donkey shit, scampering across boats to traverse the canals that blocked his way, ignoring the shouts of the bargees. Ahead loomed the walls of the City of Peace, the height of seven men. The youth leaned against a well, munching one of the apples, and watched the traffic through the Kufah Gate.

The City of Peace was the germ from which Baghdad had grown so rapidly and violently. The Righteous One’s grandfather, al-Mansur the Victorious, had himself marked its limits, trailing ashes behind him as he traced a two mile circle on the ground. Then he had oil poured on the ashes and the circle set alight, so that his vision leapt into life, a city of fire in the night.

This infamously thrifty man, who commanded an empire but darned his own robes, spent twenty tons of gold on making his dream a reality. A hundred thousand craftsmen laboured for four years to create the perfect metropolis on the banks of the Tigris. Now Baghdad lay at the crossroads of the world.

In the shadows of the walls of al-Mansur’s Round City, the young thief contemplated the soldiers of the Guard. He watched as they stopped and quizzed incomers, before the heavy wooden door slid up into the gatehouse and granted admittance. He caught glimpses of the iron armour beneath the black robes, glinting in the sunshine. He studied the heavy swords hanging by their thighs. These were no cheap thugs like the Shurta, the City Police, who were mostly recruited from the gutters, and would be committing crime if they were not paid to prevent it. The men in black were highly trained soldiers, the Khalifah’s personal regiment.

Their function was not to defend against foreign invaders, here at the heart of the empire. The greatest threat to the Khalifah came from within; fanatics and assassins were a constant menace. Yet even that danger was subdued in the Golden Age. The revolution that swept the Abbasids to power had almost wiped out the Umayyad clan, who had reigned for a century before them. Only the young prince Abd al-Rahman had escaped, and he was now struggling to establish a tiny kingdom at the edge of the world, in the land called al-Andalus.

Inside its borders, the Land had recovered from the fevers that had convulsed it and threatened its very existence. Now it stretched like a cat, luxuriating in the ease and fecundity that came with peace. The dissidents and heretics, the Alids, the Kharijites, the Zindiqs: all were silent, or at worst confined to shabby small conspiracies of desperate men.

Nonetheless the Guard patrolled the circumference of the City of Peace, and buildings and market stalls crowded the base of its walls. Anyone attempting to scale them, even after dark, would be quickly spotted. The thief must find another way in.

While he mused, a father and his son passed by. Ishaq was excited. It was his eleventh birthday, and his father was taking him to visit his uncle Musa. Musa was not a real uncle, but his grandfather’s cousin. However he was very rich, and they always ate well when they visited him. Since his mother had died, and they had moved from Ukhaydir to the new city, there had been many days when there was no food on the table, and Ishaq went to bed hungry.

Ishaq’s father Ibrahim did not share his excitement. He pretended he was nervous, but in truth he felt guilty. He would have tried to prepare the boy for what was to come, if he could have found the words. Instead he gave a thin smile and gripped his hand tightly. Life had been hard since they came to Baghdad. Uncle Musa could open doors in the capital, help him to a post in the civil service. From the moment the old man described Ishaq as beautiful, Ibrahim knew he had no choice. For some there were sacrifices to be made, to be a part of the Golden Age.

The ragged young man threw the apple core away, and stepped forward. The flow of traffic through the gate had been disrupted by a fat man in a red turban trying to drive a train of mules into the city. The animals, having halted while their owner negotiated with the guards, were reluctant to start moving again. Slaves ran around whipping the beasts and shouting, while those waiting to gain entrance cursed and spat.

The young man saw his chance. He worked his way through the throng and put his shoulder to a mule’s behind, slapping its flank. A slave boy looked at him quizzically, but the youth winked and tossed him an apple. The boy accepted the bribe solemnly and said nothing.

With much complaining the beasts lumbered back into motion. They trudged through the long passageway under the outer wall, and across the open ground that led to the inner fortifications. The second wall was even higher than the first. Its massive iron gates had been found on the site of an ancient city. No craftsman of the present day could have forged them, even in a Golden Age; and it was said that Jinni had created them by magic, at the command of Sulayman ibn Dawud, King of the Jews.

The youth slipped through in the wake of the procession, then dodged away as they passed through the second gate. He crouched in the shadows and considered his next move.

Beggars were forbidden in the City of Peace, and his tattered clothes would soon attract unwanted attention. Besides, his appearance was unusual in other ways. Beneath the dirt and suntan it was apparent that his skin was pale, almost white. This unearthly pallor made his dark eyes all the more striking. He needed to find a refuge until sunset.

The building across the street was modest by the standards of the Round City. Its portal was of plain wood, studded with black metal. Above the door, however, was an alcove, decorated with brightly painted stucco.

There was nobody around. The youth scampered across the street and leapt up, grabbing the edge of the alcove. With a strength that seemed unlikely in his slender arms, he hauled himself up and slithered into the recess. Here he was invisible to all but the most assiduous observer below. He pulled out the last of the apples and settled down to wait.

Inside the building Muti’a inhaled carefully. She needed enough breath to carry her through the long first phrase, but not so much that her voice became strained. The slave girl opened her mouth, and hit the first note with an easy purity that even she herself found thrilling.

This was perhaps the most important song she would ever sing. If she could persuade Ali ibn Isa that she was worth the twenty thousand dinars that was her asking price, she could look forward to a life of comfort. The Khalifah’s friend was a man of culture, who appreciated artistry and treated his musicians well. Besides, the gossip was that his sexual demands were straightforward, and that he was quickly satisfied. Muti’a was hopeful that that part of her duties would be not too onerous. Even for women, or at least for a few lucky ones, the reign of Harun al-Rashid could be a Golden Age.

Outside the last rays of the sun warmed the youth in his hiding place. Rather I should say, warmed me; for I remember the cool stone on my back, and the crisp sweetness of the stolen fruit as I bit into its flesh. I must confess that I was that pale thief – yes, I was young once, however strange that seems now. I find it hard to believe myself. Yet how many of us, as we look back to our past, really recognize ourselves in those callow, distant adolescents whose decisions have set the course of our lives?

You may be cross with me, perhaps, and feel that I have deceived you. You may ask, how could I have known the names of the costermonger, of the boy and his father, and of the singing girl, let alone their innermost thoughts? I could not, of course; and I did not. But what I say is true, nonetheless. I am al-Rawiya, the Teller of Tales.

As twilight fell I slipped from my perch and dropped to the ground. If my presence in the Round City during the daylight hours was risky, after dark it was potentially lethal. I flitted between the grand buildings, bare feet almost silent on the dirt. Fortunately the only other denizens of the evening streets were rowdy groups of men with lanterns, whose noise and light gave me warning of their approach. It was easy to duck into cover as they passed by.

Inside its walls, the City of Peace was not infested with the shanties that pullulated in the suburbs. Here there were only mansions and masjids, built by wealthy men to flaunt their importance. I knew that these strongholds guarded gold and jewels far beyond any hoard I had ever seen; but it was wealth of a different kind that I sought. I ventured on, until the Palace of the Gilded Gate came into view.

The Gilded Gate lay at the heart of the Round City, just as the Round City lay at the heart of Baghdad; and Baghdad itself at the centre of the world. The Umayyads had ruled from Dimashq, close to the holy cities of Makkah and Madinah. By moving his capital east, al-Mansur had not only distanced himself from the old regime, he had changed the very nature of the Khalifate. Here, in the fertile Black Lands between the rivers, far from the savage deserts where God spoke to his prophets, was the very womb of civilisation. Here the first city had been built, the first laws written down, the first canals dug. Here the brooding passion of Arabia met the haughty hedonism of Persia. The two cultures scrapped and coupled like mating dogs, and from this clash was begotten the Golden Age.

The primacy of the Gilded Gate was now purely symbolic. The Khalifah himself no longer lived there, preferring to make his home in Blissful Eternity, his pleasure palace by the Tigris. Yet the vast dome of al-Mansur’s citadel, a hundred cubits high and one thousand across, still dominated the city, watching over the Ummah, the Family of Islam, like a stern but protective father. But it was power of a different kind that had tempted me to risk my life. My destination lay elsewhere.

In the light of the waxing moon it was hard to find my way. The streets and alleys twisted deceptively, and all the buildings began to look alike. The crude map, sketched onto parchment, that I drew from my tunic was hard to read. I tried to keep the dome in sight, navigating by it as if by a star, and after a long, nervous hour I found the place I sought.

It was a plain, square edifice, distinguished only by a slender tower, like a minaret, at the far end. Amid the ostentation of the Round City it looked like the ugly, stunted runt of the litter. But the name over the door, painted in elegant calligraphic script, spoke to me of magic and wonder: The House of Wisdom.

The door was locked and the windows shuttered, but I planned to use a different entrance in any case. I skirted the building until I reached the base of the tower. Then I began to climb.

The City of Peace was for the most part constructed of costly materials, marble, glass, sandstone and alabaster. The House of Wisdom, in contrast, used the same dried mud bricks as the poorer houses beyond the circular walls. This made my ascent much easier. My toes wriggled into tiny crevices, my fingers scraped away mortar to find a better grip. Before long I was high enough above the street to crack my bones if I fell. However, I was also high enough that when a man passed by below, I remained unnoticed.

If he had looked up, he would have seen me, clinging like a lizard twenty cubits up the wall. But he did not, and he walked on. To stay still was harder than to move, and my fingers ached as I tried to hush my breathing. I started climbing again before he was even out of sight, hands shaking with the effort.

I could not stop again, and I could no longer look down. Finding the holds, testing my weight, battling the pain and the urge to ease it by just letting go, took all my concentration. If anyone else passed, I would have to take my chances.

At forty cubits my fingers at last felt the ledge of a window. However this was the moment of the greatest danger. I tried to pull myself up, and found that my muscles had frozen. I had to hang for a moment, find a still point amid the agony and fear, then move slowly and by small stages until I could grip the sill with both hands. Finally I heaved my aching body through the window, and tumbled onto the timbered floor inside the tower.

For several minutes I lay there in the darkness and silence, enjoying the relief and the sensation of being alive. Then I sat up and looked around.

The room was circular, occupying the full width of the tower. Opposite me was a hole in the floor, that must lead to a staircase or ladder. At first I thought the wall that curved round the room was panelled in wood. When I got to my feet and looked closer, I saw that the panelling was in fact hundreds of hinged doors. Each was around the height and width of my hand.

I traced my finger across one of the doors. It was marked with three symbols. It had been a few years since I had seen such letters, but as I traced them with my finger the learning came back to me. For a moment I was a child again, studying the strange shapes with Hermes the Kritan, and their names sounded like an incantation: Alpha. Beta. Gamma.

Every door had a different combination of three Greek letters. I selected one with the symbols Sigma, Alpha, Pi, and examined it carefully. Below the Greek letters was a row of different signs. Recognising these required a more difficult and painful remembrance, but in time it came to me. It was a Latin alphabet, but with most of the letters missing.

I checked a number of doors, and found that although the Greek symbols were different on each, the Latin letters always followed the same sequence:

C D I L M V X

When I touched one I found that it receded slightly into the wood. There was a sound of delicate metalwork shifting inside, a sound I was familiar with from years of picking locks. The symbols, then, formed some kind of password, granting or denying access to the mystery within, to the secrets that had drawn me half way across the world and into terrible danger. But what was the key that would open the box?

Something about the Latin letters tugged at my memory, something that linked the symbols selected. Then it struck me. They were not letters at all, but numbers. C was one hundred, D five hundred, and so on. I recalled that Greek letters also had numerical values, although these did not change according to position. In the Latin system a numeral coming before a larger number was subtracted from it, not added to it. So VI was six, five plus one, but IV was four, five minus one.

I was close to unravelling the knot. I returned to the first door I had inspected. If I remembered the Greek system correctly, Sigma was two hundred. Alpha, the first letter, was of course one, and Pi was eighty. Two hundred and eighty one.

I turned my attention to the Latin numerals. Two hundred was CC: I pressed the letter “C” twice, carefully. Eighty became “LXXX”, fifty and three tens. Last, I touched the letter “I”, once only, to represent the final digit. My fingertips knew the lock had been sprung before the door slowly swung open.

It was too dark to see inside the compartment. Groping in the hole made my fingertips itch, and I half expected to feel the sharp prick of a scorpion tail, but instead I touched a cylinder of odd, soft material.

Carefully I drew it from the cavity, and took it over to the window to examine it in the moonlight. It was a scroll, but felt like no parchment I had ever encountered. It was lighter, more flexible, and rustled as I unfurled it. Memories of the Greek language were now flooding back, as I read the words on the scroll:

“Phainetai moi kisos isos tieoisin …”

“To me he seems the equal of God,

that man who sits with you,

his face so close to yours

that he can taste the sweetness of your voice …”

It was true, then. Here, in the tower of the House of Wisdom, locked away even from the scholars who were admitted to the library below, were hidden the lost books of the ancients. With this theme, and denoted by the letters Sigma Alpha Pi, what I held in my hands had to be the work of Sappho of Lesbos. If so, the words I was reading had been written over two thousand years ago.

Sappho, a Greek aristocrat who had lived on the island of Lesbos in the White Middle Sea, was one of the most important figures in the history of poetry. Her passion for both men and other women drove her to pour out her feelings in verse, to use the forms of sacred hymns to speak of longing, lust and loss; to become the very first poet of love. However, her work had all but disappeared, surviving only in fragments.

The scroll that I held now could not be two millennia old, though. The miraculous substance on which the verse was scribed was clean and white. I recalled other rumours, of secret techniques imported from China, by which rags were transformed into a new kind of parchment, called paper. If the medium was new, that meant that the lost books were not only being preserved, but transcribed, copied.

My heart was beating faster than it had when I was scaling the wall. Somewhere, within the room, must be the text I sought, the one that I had risked my life for the slightest chance of reading. I began to scour the panels for the combination I needed: Alpha. Rho. Iota.

So rapt was I in my search that I did not notice the walls grow brighter, as a glow emerged from the hole in the floor. It was only when I heard footsteps on the stairs that I realised someone was coming.

Quickly I shoved the scroll back into its place. I looked around the room, but there was nowhere to hide. My hands seemed to hurt at the very thought of it, but I had no choice. I climbed back through the window, and hung from the sill.

I contemplated working my way back down the tower, but the descent would be even harder than the climb. For the first time it occurred to me that I had made no plan to escape from the House of Wisdom, had never thought past the moment when I would behold the occult texts. Then a voice from above interrupted my despairing thoughts.

“So, my young friend, you can hang there until you drop, and shatter your skull on the street below. Or you can come back in here and face me. Which is it to be?”

Two

The Tale of the Eunuch, the Wazir and the Chief of Police, which includes, The Marvellous Adventures of Ismail al-Rawiya

As I dragged myself back into the room two pairs of hands helped me. However, their intent was not benign, and once I was inside they handled me roughly. I could not see who pinned my arms behind my back, but when the man in front of me spoke I recognised the voice that had addressed me earlier.

“Well, lad, this is a strange place for a thief to ply his trade.”

He was a heavily built man of middle age, holding a burning torch. I guessed that he had once been physically powerful but the muscle was now turning to fat. His robes were splendid, dyed orange and green and embroidered with gold thread. The impressive effect was marred, though, by the pustules that peppered his face, as if the acne of adolescence had become a lifelong affliction. His voice was the high-pitched croon of the eunuch.

The pimpled man looked at me as if waiting for me to speak, but he had asked me no questions and I was not inclined to give answers. He huffed at my silence and said to my unseen captor:

“Bring him.”

I was forced over to the hole in the floor and thence to the staircase. Along the way I caught glimpses of the man who was holding me. He looked like a northerner, perhaps a Khazar. I assumed he was a slave, a bodyguard, judging from the long sword that hung from his side. Certainly he was strong, and I did not resist him.

At the bottom of the stairs a heavy door stood ajar. We passed through it into a short corridor, and the pimpled eunuch locked it behind us with a golden key. He pushed open another door ahead of him, through which we emerged into the main library of the House of Wisdom. Here the Arabic scrolls stood on wooden shelves, row after row filling the huge hall. When he closed the portal through which we had entered, I noticed that it seemed to form part of the wall, complete with shelving. From inside the library it was invisible, unless one knew where to look.

However I had little opportunity to examine these wonders before I was shoved outside. For the first time I considered attempting an escape. If I could slip from the Khazar’s grasp, I was confident that I could outpace the two bigger men. Unfortunately he tightened his grip, and my wrists were sore by the time our short journey through the empty streets had come to an end.

We arrived at a great house not far from the Gilded Gate. Its facade was ornate, and the broad doors swung open at our approach. Somebody was watching for the return of the master.

Once inside, servants rushed to attend to the eunuch. They escorted us through the vestibule to a courtyard, and across a fragrant garden. At the far end was a room, with a roof and three walls but open on one side to the cool, perfumed air.

In this pleasant snug were two men, sitting on farsh rugs. Slave girls knelt at their feet, with golden goblets of wine and platters of fruit. The atmosphere was relaxed, but the men reeked of power. One was a sharp faced Arab with a steel-grey beard, the other, younger man, a lean, handsome Persian in his early thirties. It was he who greeted my captor.

“Here comes the Speckled One! Have you found the text which proves me right? And do you have the thousand dinars which you owe me in consequence?”

Then he noticed me, and rose to his feet.

“In the name of God! What apparition have you brought to astound us, Salam? Is this pale urchin a spirit, that you have summoned as a witness in your cause?”

The eunuch, whom he had called Salam, and also the Speckled One, mimed that he was out of breath, and sat down on a third rug. He signalled to a slave for wine, which he slurped theatrically before speaking.

“It is a curious tale, mighty Wazir, and one that I thought might amuse you. As I approached the House of Wisdom, I heard a rattle, as if dust were raining down the side of the building. I looked up, to see this strange creature scaling the tower like a fly. While I watched, he disappeared through the window into the Chamber of the Ancients.

“Since I had Ilig with me, and knew the thief to be alone, I had no hesitation in ascending the tower and apprehending the creature. He appears to be human, but has spoken not a word. What shall we do with him?”

The Persian seemed amused by the situation. Salam had called him Wazir, meaning minister of state. It was possible this was a nickname, but the cool authority with which he spoke suggested he really did hold that high rank.

“His courage and skill, in reaching the Chamber, seem to be matched only by his misfortune. What ill luck that our wager should take you to the library after dark, just in time to catch him; and worse luck that he should be caught by a man who happened to be entertaining both the Wazir and the Chief of Police!”

The old Arab, whom I assumed must be the Police Chief, snarled impatiently:

“Why do you waste our time with this nonsense, Salam? The boy is a thief, cut off his hands and throw him out on the street to bleed to death.”

The eunuch gestured. Two slaves seized hold of my arms. This freed the bodyguard Ilig to step away and unsheathe his sword. I had held my peace while I watched where my destiny led me, but I had to speak now, or haemorrhage my life in the gutters of the City of Peace.

“The Sharia states that two eyewitnesses must swear an oath before the amputation of hands. Since I took nothing from the tower, there has been no theft, and can be no witnesses.”

This pronouncement was followed by a stunned silence. Then the hush was broken by howls of laughter from the Wazir. His hilarity seemed to enrage the Police Chief further.

“You dare to quote the Sharia to me! Do you know who I am, boy? I have been appointed to keep the peace by the Khalifah himself, the Commander of the Faithful. In this town I am the Sharia.”

The slaves stretched my left arm till my shoulder cracked, and I felt the cold touch of the Khazar’s sword on my wrist as he aimed his blow. He raised his weapon to strike, and I cried out:

“Would that I could save myself, and save you, from this waste!”

The Wazir leapt forward, and seized the bodyguard’s wrist. He was no longer laughing, and his face was so close to mine that I could smell his minted breath as he spoke.

“Tell me where those words come from, boy. Or I let him cut.”

“The Ode of Tarafah, my lord. From the Mu’allaqat, the Seven Hanging Odes of the Jahili.”

He stepped back, but signed for Ilig to put his sword away.

“Ibn Zuhayr, with your permission, I would like to question this miscreant further.”

The Chief of Police nodded sourly. The Wazir sat down on his farsh and contemplated me, while the Speckled One gulped his wine.

It had been an insane gamble, but I had nothing to lose. And, praise be to God the All-Knowing and All-Powerful, it was, after all, a Golden Age, and a ragged youth could catch the attention of the masters of an empire by quoting poetry. And the masters of an empire would recognise that poetry, because for them there was no purpose to the empire and the power and the wealth if they could not surround themselves with beauty and brilliance, and the poetry they knew meant as much as the swords they commanded and the women they fucked.

And that was really how it was.

“The Chamber of the Ancients is a hard place to penetrate. Surely, you could have risked less and gained more by burgling some wealthy merchant?”

This was not the right question, and I gave no answer, making the Wazir work to understand, even though it annoyed him.

“What then, boy, gave you the wings to scale the tower? What were you after?”

This was the right question.

“I wanted to read the “Peri Poietikes” of Aristutalis.”

The handsome Persian face was immobile for a moment. Perhaps his eyes widened very slightly. Then he shouted with laughter, falling backwards and beating the floor with his fists. Ibn Zuhayr, the Chief of Police, did not join his merriment, but seemed resigned that the matter had spiralled out of his jurisdiction. Salam the Speckled One, who I gathered was the least important of the three, decided it was politic to join in the joke, and shrieked his eunuch titters.

At last the Wazir calmed himself, and, wiping his eyes, addressed me again.

“Oh, the solemn gravity of youth! Very well, boy, I am intrigued. What is this sprite with white skin and black eyes, that wears rags and risks his life to read Greek philosophy? If you tell me who you are and where you are from, I may spare your hands.”

And so I did.

The Marvellous Adventures of Ismail al-Rawiya

I do not remember my original name, the one my parents gave me. Perhaps they never bothered. From somewhere comes the word Mau, but you should call me Ismail.

I was born in a land called Kernu. I could not tell you where it is. Later, when I found my way to civilisation, I saw maps, charts of the whole known world. My birthplace did not appear on them.

Kernu was beyond the world, and felt like it too. It was cold, and battered by fierce winds, and constantly raided by someone called the Wolf King. Living was thin. My earliest memory is of scaling the cliffs by our home to gather samphire and steal gulls’ eggs, while my father yelled at me below. I think I could climb before I could walk.

My father was a Christian priest. Holy men of the western church are required to be celibate, although I am living proof that they do not always observe their vows. Whether he was expelled from his order I could not say, but I remember very little praying, and a great deal of drinking and cursing.

He did at least teach me some hymns, in the brief periods of geniality between hangover and violence, and to read and write a few words. When I could escape from him, I would sit alone on the clifftop, singing to myself, and I was happy. I think I may have learnt songs from my mother too, but my memories of her are uncertain. Do I truly recall that soft voice comforting me, or is it only my yearning? She died when I was very young. I suspect my father was responsible for her death, one way or another.

Most of my childhood in Kernu seems like a dream, but the incident that snatched me from that life is as sharp as yesterday. I can see the brown skins of the strange men standing in our hut, hear their guttural shouts. I can feel the strong arm around my waist as they carried me away. I must have been about five years old.

I do not know how much of the argument I understood at the time, and how much I discovered later, but the strangers were traders from distant Nekor. Somehow they had found their way to Kernu in search of tin, which was mined in the region. As they did not speak the local tongue, they had been brought to my father, who communicated with them in fractured Latin.

He promised them tin, and took in payment jugs of wine, a luxury almost unknown in savage Kernu. He got as far as borrowing a cart with which to take the wine inland, so that he could trade with the miners. But when the brown-skinned men returned a month later, the cart was still at our door, there was no tin, and a great deal of the wine had gone.

They were understandably angry, and told him they would take me instead, and sell me as a slave, to recoup their losses. My father made some effort to protect me. He swung a fist, but he had been drinking himself blind every day for a month. The trader ducked his blow contemptuously, and kicked him in the stomach. The last time I ever saw my father he was on his knees retching. It was a comfortingly familiar pose.

My new owners were brothers, Shahid and Shahib. Once on board their ship they threw me in the hold, and set sail immediately, in case my father roused his neighbours against them. (It seems unlikely that he took the trouble, and if he did, they would not have come to his aid.) The traders were rough but not unnecessarily cruel. I had the impression they did not really know what to do with me.

Being knocked about was normal for me, and I adjusted to my new environment with equanimity, finding a place out of the way where I could curl up to sleep. The next morning when the brothers awoke I was singing.

My childish voice was high and sweet, and the sound delighted Shahib, who was very fond of music. When he approached me I shrank away from him, but through gestures he encouraged me to sing more. By our next landfall they had come to treat me more as a pet than a captive; like a songbird in a cage. They decided I would fetch more money in the civilised lands of the south, and when they journeyed on I was still on board the ship.

And so it continued as we meandered along the coast of Frankia. They were an odd couple, the brothers. It was years before I realized that most merchants dwelt in comfortable houses, only setting out to trade in the calm seasons. Shahid and Shahib lived almost entirely on their dhow, wandering aimlessly on the outermost fringes of the world, following rumours of opportunity and their own whims. There was talk of a family back home in Nekor, but the tone was not affectionate.

Shahid was the older, a lean, taciturn man who bossed and fussed over their dispirited rabble of a crew. Shahib was plump and childlike. It was he who gave me the name Ismail. When they had struck a big deal, Shahid would bring a whore onto the ship, as a treat for himself and the crew. Shahib would disappear onto the land. On one such occasion he was chased back by angry peasants, and we had to weigh anchor hurriedly, chucking the whore overboard as we sailed away. By then I could follow their conversation, but not enough to understand what exactly it was that Shahib had been doing with the goat.

They were kind to me in their way, kinder than my father had been, and they kept putting off the day when they would sell me. I was young enough to learn quickly, and by the time we reached the Straits of Gibel Tariq I spoke only Arabic. My original language was lost to me, save for scraps and echoes.

They seemed reluctant to enter the White Middle Sea. They were not sociable men, and were happier haggling with barbarians than conversing with their peers. However, the crew had been depleted by desertion and disease. I made myself useful scrambling around the rigging, but they needed fresh men.

I was at the top of the mainmast when I noticed the sinking ship. Even in the rolling swell I could see how it listed to one side, and pick out the waving sailors on board. Shahid wanted to leave them to their fate, saying that they were probably Christians anyway. Shahib, on the other hand, insisted that God would punish us if we did not help our fellow seamen. His argument appealed to the superstitions of the crew, and unusually his will prevailed.

We changed our course, and soon could hear the grateful shouts from the stricken craft. The Christians dived into the water as we approached. We threw ropes over the side to allow them to clamber up onto deck. That was when they pulled out their weapons.

Ironically, it was because we had been far from civilization for so long that we fell for the trick. There were no pirates in the wild Western Sea. The crew fought like maniacs, but to no avail. Shahib fell to a sword which pierced his plump flesh. Shahid’s brain was crushed by a cudgel.