The Sword of Damascus by Blake Richard

Author:Blake, Richard [Blake, Richard]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton
Published: 2011-06-08T23:00:00+00:00

I woke from my doze just as the light was fading. There was a slip of parchment beside the bed. The messenger who’d delivered it stood wordlessly and bowed. I took it up and peered at the gold writing. Black on the yellow parchment would have taxed me in that light. Gold was quite beyond me. I’d speak to the messenger in due course. I called him over with my stick, and got up with stiff weariness. At my age, there’s a limit to what massage can do. And I had strained myself in that pool. But the smell of charcoal from the glass furnace had reminded me of the works in progress. I hobbled expectantly out of the room and along the corridor.

In the large room beside my office – I noticed the books had now arrived, by the way, and were already out of their crates and arranged in the dark racks – the workmen were still hard at their jobs.

‘Let’s see how far we’ve got,’ I said in Syriac. I picked up the glass discs, each one about five inches in diameter, and held them to my face. I swapped them round, then was about to reverse them, when the bearded craftsman gently took them back and handed them over again in the right order. I held them an inch from my face and looked through them at the golden writing. I moved them closer and focused hard.

‘Excellent,’ I said softly. The man breathed a sigh of relief. I’d not been happy with his colleague’s explanation that glass as clear and hard as I’d directed would need to be specially made, and that I’d need, until then, to put up with a bluish tinge. Nor had I been impressed with the crumbling about the edges of his own first effort with his polishing tools. But they’d worked like maniacs while I slept, and the results were nearly as good as where I’d been forced to leave off in Constantinople.

‘I suggest you polish this left one a little thinner in the centre,’ I added. I raised my voice and spoke generally. ‘I am pleased, my dear friends, with the speed and accuracy of your work. Though what I want you have never before thought to attempt, you have followed my directions nearly to the letter. For tomorrow, I want the work repeated – this time with both discs a sixteenth of an inch thicker all over. We can then polish them down with less enthusiasm. For the moment, I am pleased with this first effort, and I want the discs set immediately in a gold framework with a long handle. I suggest you measure my face, so that the centre of each disc corresponds with the centre of each eye.’

The men bowed, and one reached for his measuring rod.

‘Isn’t civilisation a wonderful thing?’ I asked Edward. I sat down opposite him and reached for his wine cup. When I’d nodded off, he was lost in his game of chasing a ball down the winding ramps to the ground, and then running back up with it.

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