The Philosopher Prince

by Paul Waters

  I climbed down into the blackness, taking unwilling steps. Then they hauled up the ladder behind me, slammed the grate closed and marched off, talking to one another of their dinner.

  I blinked and peered about. There had been a torch burning in the building above. Its weak light flickered through the bars of the grate a spear-length above my head. I was in some kind of chamber, a pit with a low vaulted roof like a cistern. Somewhere, in the gloom, I could hear the slow echoing drip of water. The air was damp and fetid. But at least the pit was not flooded, as first I had feared.

  I listened to the receding sound of the guards. Then, from somewhere in the surrounding darkness, I heard a stirring and a cough. I swung round. I had supposed I was alone.

  ‘Your fate is fixed,’ a man’s voice said. ‘You must accept it.’

  ‘Show yourself!’ I cried, staring and trying to see.

  There was a pause, then a stirring, and a gaunt figure came shuffling forward. He moved like an old man, slow and bent; but when he raised his face I saw that he could not have been more than thirty.

  ‘There is no escape,’ he said, with a weak gesture at the grate.

  ‘What is this place?’

  ‘A prison.’

  ‘No, I mean before that. It looks like an old water-cistern.’

  He shrugged. ‘What does it matter? God has brought me here to understand my error. I wait upon His grace.’

  His hand shifted, and I saw in his palm that he was clutching a small bronze Christian symbol, which he was kneading and prodding with his fingers.

  ‘Is that so?’ I said, eyeing him. His clothes were filthy and torn, but I could see in the dim light the stripes of some echelon of the bureaucracy. ‘Well, I for one should prefer to wait elsewhere. If this is an old cistern, there may be a channel or a shaft. Come, my friend, why don’t you help me look?’

  But he merely gave me an appalled stare, and then shuffled off and crouched down against the wall, like a beggar in the street. He began mumbling some prayer or incantation to himself, and it was clear he would be of no use. He was waiting to die.

  I shook my head, and leaving him to his business I began feeling my way along the damp stone walls. The ground was muddy; but beneath the layer of mud was hard rock. All the same I trod carefully. My eyes had adjusted somewhat; I could see there were dark, spreading puddles. Any one of them might conceal a well-shaft or a crevice.

  I followed the sound of the dripping water. After a short time, testing each step with my hands and feet, I came to a low brick-built shelf. Beyond it, water had collected into some sort of basin. I sensed a freshness to the air and looked up.

  I could see no light; but reaching up I felt a narrow brick-lined shaft, blocked with rusted iron bars. I clambered onto the shelf and tested the bars with my hands. One of them shifted. It made a grating sound that echoed about the chamber.

  ‘What was that?’ the man called. When I told him he said, ‘But you will only make it worse for yourself.’

  ‘It could not be worse,’ I answered. ‘I am a prisoner of the notary Paulus.’

  At this he let out a gasp, and hurriedly resumed his muttering.

  I managed to remove one of the bars. I was struggling with the next, when my companion cried in a low, terrified voice, ‘Hush! It is the guards!… Oh, what have you done! You have been heard. I told you your meddling would do no good.’

  I eased myself silently from the shelf and hurried back as fast as I dared to the place beneath the grate.

  ‘Say nothing!’ I hissed. I did not trust him not to betray me.

  Footsteps sounded on the stone floor above. Through the bars I saw long distended shadows stretch across the roof, and heard the low murmur of voices. The voices ceased. There was a long silence.

  I waited. Suddenly the grate shifted and swung open, and faces peered down, their forms silhouetted against the torchlight.

  I gazed up, shading my eyes with my hand. Something was not right. Why were the guards so silent?

  Then, from above, a tentative voice called down, ‘Drusus? Is that you?’

  ‘Marcellus!’ I cried.

  Beside him, someone brought up the torch, and I saw his serious face.

  ‘Did you think I was going to forget you?’ he said. ‘Look at you, you look like a rat in a sewer.’

  He glanced over his shoulder, and I heard him ask, ‘But how do we get him out? Is there a rope?’

  ‘There’s a ladder,’ I called. ‘It must be somewhere close.’ The heads in the opening withdrew. There were sounds of movement, and the wooden ladder descended.

  I stepped up to it; then I paused. ‘Are you hurt?’ asked Marcellus. ‘Wait, I’ll come down.’

  ‘No; it’s all right; I’m coming up.’ I turned to the man crouched in the corner. ‘Come then,’ I said, extending my hand to him, ‘you first; your prayers are answered. Here is your freedom.’

  But he just gaped up at me with wide pale eyes, and when I advanced a pace to help him, he backed against the wall, whimpering and clutching at his little Christian trinket.

  ‘Who is he?’ asked Marcellus, when I had climbed out. I shrugged. ‘I don’t know… A bureaucrat. A slave. I think fear has broken his mind.’

  ‘Shall I go down and fetch him?’

  ‘He won’t come, unless you drag him. But leave the ladder, in case he changes his mind.’

  I turned and looked at Marcellus, and at the others who had come. I knew them from his troop. They had disguised themselves in the uniform of one of Constantius’s eastern legions. ‘But how did you find me?’ I asked.

  ‘It was Rufus.’

  ‘Rufus told you?’

  ‘No, not quite. He came back from Succi, or wherever he was, and hanged himself. It was one of Nevitta’s men who found the body.’ He fixed my eye with a confidential look. ‘Nevitta, it seems, was more surprised than anyone when Rufus returned. I was away still in the hills when it happened. But Decimus here had stayed behind, and before he died, Rufus gave him a note. He told him to take it straight to me, and mention it to no one.’

  I asked what the note had said.

  ‘It was filled with self-pity and remorse. He told me how to find you. He said he was sorry.’

  I nodded and frowned. ‘This was not his work alone, Marcellus. Did he say who helped him?’

  ‘He gave no names. Nevitta asked the same… many times.’

  As he spoke his grey eyes motioned in the direction of his three comrades standing behind. ‘No names,’ he said again slowly, ‘and Nevitta is very sure he acted alone. Do you understand what I mean?’

  I understood. Words have power, and what the others did not know could not harm them. As for our own suspicions, now was not the time. Already, through the doorway, the first red glow of dawn was showing over the Taurus mountains.

  Outside, the street was empty. I guessed the guards had decided I was secure enough in the stinking pit where they had left me. We were, I saw, somewhere at the edge of the small village where the imperial army had made camp.

  ‘Where now?’ asked Decimus, eager to be gone.

  ‘This way,’ said Marcellus.

  We set off along an alleyway of tall, stone-built storehouses. At the end of it, rounding a corner, we emerged at the far corner of a small paved square with a fountain. There was an old shrine on one side, and on the steps, under the porch, a troop of men were sitting about, leaning against the columns, dozing and warming themselves at a brazier.

  Some of them idly turned their heads as we approached. Recognizing them, I backed into the alleyway, and half-hid myself in the recess of a wall.

  Marcellus and the others were dressed in plain military cloaks; but I was still wearing the riding tunic I had been taken in. Its bronze studs and strips of bright scarlet leather stood out among the studied drabness of the others, like a cock-pheasant among hens. I should easily be noticed.

  ‘The notary’s guards are with those men,’ I muttered. ‘They will surely know me.’

/>   Quickly Decimus moved in front to block their view. He heaved up his clothing and began to piss against the wall. The rest of us paused, shuffling about, as though waiting for him.

  ‘Are they still staring?’ he asked.

  ‘No,’ said Marcellus, ‘but better not to test them.’ He nodded to a narrow passage between the storehouses. ‘We can go that way instead,’ he said.

  With a deliberate show of casualness, we ambled away down the side-alley. We passed through a crude archway of uncarved stone; and then the village ended, replaced by the much larger area of the military camp that surrounded it.

  ‘Gods below! What is this place?’ muttered Marcellus, pausing and glaring at the street of grand, multicoloured pavilions ahead of us, each one decorated with a wide awning of sculpted hide, supported on painted columns of turned wood. As we stood looking, a dapper slave dressed in livery emerged from one of them, carrying in both hands an ornate water-flask of chased silver. He stopped and stared, and seemed about to challenge us. But the burden was clearly heavy, and after a moment he continued on his errand.

  ‘These are no ordinary servants,’ I said, eyeing him as he went. It was dawning on me what we had stumbled upon. ‘Constantius is here somewhere; this is not a place we want to be.’

  We slipped off down a narrow gap between the pavilions. Then, rounding a corner, we stumbled straight into a company of soldiers coming the other way, led by a senior officer dressed in parade-uniform. Decimus, who had been looking the other way, actually managed to tread on the officer’s red, carefully polished boot.

  ‘Look where you’re going, you oaf!’ cried the officer, giving him a clout on the head. ‘What are you doing here anyway? You know this area is out of bounds.’

  ‘Sorry, sir,’ said Marcellus, stepping up, ‘we took a wrong turn.’

  The officer glared at him. Then he looked at my clothing. ‘Who is this man?’

  ‘He is only a prisoner, sir. We have orders to move him.’ ‘Is that so?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Then why,’ he said, narrowing his eyes, ‘is your prisoner not shackled? What is your name, soldier? Which legion are you from?’

  Marcellus gave some name or other, then said, ‘We’re from the Sixth, sir, the Parthians.’

  He had dressed like a common foot-soldier, and was trying to sound like one. But lazy, uneducated speech sat on him like ill-fitting clothes. His breeding showed too clearly. And this fine-dressed officer, suspicious now, was clearly not a fool.

  He cocked his head and looked at Marcellus out of the side of his eye. ‘The Parthians, is it?’

  ‘Yes, sir; that’s the one.’

  ‘You don’t look like Parthian men to me. Tell me, where were you last stationed?’

  ‘We were at Antioch,’ answered Marcellus, looking at him squarely.

  ‘Well, we were all at Antioch before we came here. I mean, where were you before that?’

  Marcellus rubbed his face, like a stupid man thinking. ‘Oh yes, sir, sorry sir; before that we were out in Syria of course. Out in the desert, near the frontier. It was hot and sandy; I didn’t like the sand.’

  Ignoring his prattle, the officer turned suddenly to Decimus. ‘And you? Were you there too?’

  ‘Yes, sir. I was.’

  ‘And how,’ he said, with a false, conniving smile, ‘did you like the Syrian girls?’

  Decimus looked blank – for the officer had switched to Greek to ask his question; and Decimus, who had been reared in Gaul, had never been out of it until Julian took him. He did not know Greek from a bird’s chirping.

  Marcellus, quickly improvising, said, ‘Decimus prefers boys, sir,’ and at this one of the troopers smothered a laugh.

  But the officer was not amused. He looked at Marcellus coldly, sensing the joke was on him, and not liking it. But he seemed pressed, like a man who was about to be late for something, and after a threatening pause he said, ‘Get out of here, all of you! If I see you again, you’ll be on a charge. Is that clear?’

  I had been hanging my head. I allowed myself to breathe again. Then, just as we began to walk away, a voice behind us rang out, ‘Hold those men!’

  I turned, with a sinking of my heart, knowing already what I should find. Striding towards us with his prancing, cat-like gait, attended by a group of clerks and a score of uniformed guards, was the notary Paulus, his thin mouth pale with pent-up fury.

  We were seized, and taken to a patch of open, rocky ground behind the pavilions. The guards held our arms pinned. When he saw we were secure, the notary stepped forward, and walked slowly in front of us, studying our faces, like an officer inspecting a line of men.

  In front of Marcellus he halted. ‘Ah, so here is the grandson of Aquinus. It seems, then, after all, that I have caught two birds in one net.’

  Marcellus said nothing; he merely gave him a look of contempt.

  ‘And now,’ continued the notary, ‘I destroy you. I regret its swiftness, but there can be no more embarrassment.’ He turned to the officer: ‘Your knife, if you please.’

  The officer reached to his jewelled belt, and passed his dagger. It was a fussy, decorative piece, burnished and engraved, set with a line of gems in the hilt. The notary turned it in his hand. The knife may have been for show, but the gleaming blade was honed and deadly.

  Decimus shifted. ‘Hold them still!’ snapped the notary. He turned to Marcellus; but then, after an instant of thought, took another step, so that he stood in front of Decimus.

  ‘You first, I think,’ he said, in his smooth voice.

  Decimus took a breath, and his strong jaw set firm. He was a fine young soldier. He knew what was coming, and was determined to face it bravely.

  Even now, out of habit, or out of sheer pleasure, the notary calculated each of his movements to extract the highest terror. It was sickening to watch. Slowly he extended the dagger, raising the point to the soft place beneath Decimus’s chin. I heard Decimus swallow, and the sound of a prayer caught in his throat. There was a flash of motion. But it was not the notary that had moved. It was Marcellus. He had struck out with his left arm; he must have freed it from the grip of the guard. He hit the notary with a heavy blow at the wrist, and the dagger fell to the ground.

  ‘I told you to hold them!’ cried Paulus. Marcellus winced as his arm was forced back by the guard. The notary stood rubbing his thin, delicate wrist. The blow had hurt him. I was glad of it.

  ‘The futile courage of a comrade-in-arms,’ he sneered, regaining his composure. ‘To the last you are a man of honour, just like your ridiculous grandfather, full of pointless gestures to long-forgotten virtue. And now you have sealed your death with it.’

  ‘It was sealed anyway.’

  ‘But not the mode; oh no, not the mode. Now your friend here – your lover – can watch you die. Will you cry out, I wonder? Will you plead and beg? Now, let us see.’

  He stooped to pick up the blade. As he did so, I saw behind him, about twenty paces off, where the line of pavilions stood, that a man was approaching, a heavy middle-aged eunuch, dressed in layered clothes of blue and white and gold, with a felt cap on his large head, and a jewel-encrusted necklet at his throat. He gave a pointed, artificial cough, and at this the notary’s head went up. Then, seeing who it was, he stood abruptly to his full height, leaving the shining dagger where it lay.

  ‘What do you want?’ he demanded.

  ‘I will take these men,’ said the eunuch, in a tone of cold, affected courtesy.

  ‘But these are my prisoners!’

  ‘Do you presume to question me, Notary?’

  Paulus looked at him. The sinews in his face had gone rigid, and his pale lips whitened. He drew his breath to speak; but then seemed to think better of it. Everything about this bedizened eunuch spoke of power and supreme authority. He paused, straining to master himself; then said pleasantly, with a face like a man racked with toothache, ‘No; take them, Chamberlain, of course. It must be as you command.’

  I
gazed at the eunuch, remembering Julian’s words. Here, then, was the creature who had urged the emperor to execute Julian, instead of sending him to Gaul. And he would have had his wish, except that the empress Eusebia, who had been Julian’s friend at court when she was alive, had spoken up on his behalf. I recalled the courtiers’ joke which Eutherius had told me once in Paris: how it was said that Constantius was fortunate indeed to possess some influence with his mighty chamberlain. And I saw that even the notary, whose trade was fear and violent death, stood cowed and nervous and subservient.

  ‘Quite so,’ the chamberlain now said, with a chill, slight smile.

  The notary said nothing. He merely watched in angry silence as, at a motion of the chamberlain’s finger, we were hauled away.

  We were taken to a large, domed building beyond the pavilions, built within a gravelled court. Here I was separated from the others. Three guards took me off at sword-point, to a bare room with peeling ochre walls and a single wooden bench.

  ‘Strip!’ ordered the guard.

  I looked him in the face. ‘Strip?’ I asked, narrowing my eyes at him, remembering, with some part of my mind, what had been done to Rufus.

  ‘Yes, strip. Get on with it.’

  I began to pull off my clothes. I said to the guard, ‘Have you sunk so low? Remember, you are Roman still, and a man. Even here, some god is watching.’

  Taking my meaning he said, ‘Don’t be a fool. You stink; now get your clothes off. You cannot be brought before the emperor like that.’

  I froze. I suppose I must have gaped. ‘The emperor?’ ‘The emperor,’ he repeated. ‘Now get a move on.’

  So I stripped. When I was naked, the three men escorted me to an adjoining fountain-room with a cold stone floor and high, glassless windows, and stood watching while I sluiced myself under a pipe. Then, towelled and dried, and dressed in something clean, I was led out again, to where Marcellus was being held.

  ‘They are taking us to Constantius.’

  ‘I know,’ he said. ‘They told me.’

  I looked at the guard. ‘Is this the chamberlain’s doing?’ But all he would say was, ‘No more questions. You will find out soon enough.’