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with me might be better than having to face Heraclius in person.
    ‘Leontius must be made to understand that, if he draws it, his sword will have two edges.’
    I stood up. I really had finished now. Macarius hurried forward with a towel. I let him wind it round my waist.
    ‘Do arrange a cold bath for me,’ I said, ‘and something light and simple to put on. I’ll be in the Library, if anyone needs me.’
     
    It was early afternoon, and the streets of Alexandria were baking in the sun. Elsewhere, the heat would have driven people indoors for a rest. The hours of business in Alexandria, though, were always when there was business to be done. If I’d taken my official chair, or put on finer clothes, I could have relied on a clear path through the crowds. As it was, I was jostled continually to the street edges. Even in the fifty-yard width of Main Street, I had to push back at people to avoid being pitched into shops I had no intention of visiting.
    The street demagogues didn’t help. In this heat, of course, even they couldn’t be really active. But enough of them had taken up their usual positions – and they’d attracted enough of the usual scum – to add to the general unpleasantness. As I tried to pass by one of them, I had no choice but to stop and listen. He was ranting on about the floods. Apparently – and he assured us all he was the greatest expert on the matter – the Nile had risen too late, and was now rising too fast.
    ‘You mark my words,’ he bawled above the chatter of the passing crowds, ‘it will be evil as well as mud washed down from the south this year. These will be floods never to be forgotten.’
    ‘What I want to know,’ a strongly Syrian voice struck up beside me, ‘is where the police have all gone. In Antioch, this liberty of speech among the lower sorts would never be permitted.’
    The answer I could have given was that the police had no manpower for pushing the demagogues off the main streets. Most of them were manning the Wall that kept our own central district sealed off from the Egyptian quarter. The rest were down in the Harbour, keeping the Greek trash from rioting as the supplemental grain requisition was loaded. But I was in no mood today for putting a finger on the pulse of street opinion. I tilted the brim of my hat to cover more of my face and prepared to move off.
    ‘Is it true the government is planning to require different grades of bread to be sold each side of the Wall?’ the Syrian asked again.
    I stopped and looked hard at the man. Where had he picked this up? It had been raised in the Viceroy’s Council just a few days back. It had been a vague option, and the Patriarch and I had got it dismissed out of hand. But this was the sort of rumour that, Wall or no Wall, could set off intercommunal war.
    I would have asked a few questions. At this moment, though, there was one of those tidal movements in the crowd that pulled me away from the Syrian and brought me to rest just a yard or so from a column of monks, dressed all in black, who were pushing their way towards some mischief.
    ‘Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God,’ one of them cried, waving his club for emphasis. ‘Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness’ sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven,’ another bellowed. I squeezed myself far back out of their path. Wherever they were going, they really were about no good. Besides, they were almost dripping vermin. Just looking at them made me want to scratch.
    ‘Spare some change for the hungry!’ came the practised whine.
    I’d now got through the stationary crowd and was the other side of the statue put up to celebrate the Great Constantine as the Thirteenth Apostle. I’d been looking up at the colossal meekness of the thing, and hadn’t considered where I might be treading.
    ‘Piss off!’ I snarled. I stepped smartly back before the beggar could lay scabby hands on me. I could have given