Terror of Constantinople

by Richard Blake

  13

  Or so it continued until one morning late in August.

  I was sat in the University Library. As ever, I sat alone. One of the books Epicurus had written on the good life had finally been located among the reserve stock. I was half into it when Theophanes came into the reading room.

  He was announced by the collective intake of breath and the shuffling as several people stood for their formal bows. With a benign look around him, Theophanes waved everybody back to work.

  ‘I came as soon as I heard the terrible news,’ he said. ‘No, my dear friend, please do not trouble yourself with rising in my presence. This is an informal visit.’ He sat down at my reading table. The cane chair bowed under his weight, but held.

  I looked at him and thought hard. My favourite writer on his favourite theme had taken me clean out of Constantinople. Had Antioch declared for Heraclius?

  ‘Oh,’ I said eventually, pulling myself back into the present, ‘you mean the roof tiles. That could have been nasty. But I knew that warning slide overhead well enough to get away in plenty of time. Shame about the old woman, though.’

  ‘Alaric,’ he said with slow deliberation, ‘whatever may be the case in Rome, roofs here in Constantinople do not shed their tiles on passers-by. I am informed that every pin had been removed.’

  ‘Oh!’ I said again. I tried to add something to break the resulting silence, but nothing came.

  ‘What can you tell me about the man who engaged you in conversation at that very point in the street?’ Theophanes asked.

  ‘Not much,’ I said. ‘He was in early middle age. He might have been balding – though the hood made that hard to tell. He was well-spoken, but I think his accent was from the East. He wanted me to interpret a new law set up on the wall.’

  ‘And you think nothing out of the ordinary that a stranger should stop you and ask for a Latin translation?’

  ‘Not at all,’ I replied. ‘Latin may be the official language of the Empire, but it’s gone decidedly out of fashion in the Imperial capital. I often wonder why you don’t just publish everything in Greek and have done with it.’

  In support, I looked down at the uncluttered areas of my table. Generations of students had worn it to a dull gloss. What were obviously the older comments carved into the wood were all in Latin. The more recent ones were invariably in Greek. You could write a book about change in the City on the basis of that table. But I won’t.

  Theophanes gave a mirthless smile. He turned to Alypius – as ever by his side – and spoke rapidly in a guttural language I’d never before heard. With a curt answer in the same tongue, Alypius was off. Theophanes turned back to me, now with one of his most charming smiles.

  Of course, I’d been suspicious at the time. That stranger had jumped back before the noise overhead, and had been off very sharp. But whatever Theophanes might care to say, roofs did give way, even in the City.

  So, at least, I tried forcing myself to believe. A murder attempt in Rome was one matter. I was at home. I had friends. I understood my surroundings. I was in control of my life. If someone tried to end that life, I knew exactly how to respond. In the street, I could carry weapons. My home was fortified.

  Murder attempts in Constantinople were different. They rubbed in just how dependent I was on one man whose interests were as beyond calculation now as they had been at the Senatorial Dock.

  I smiled weakly back at Theophanes. I tried again to place his accent, but couldn’t. His Greek was admirable. For all his courtliness, he always avoided the diffuse pomposity of the educated. But I’d never imagined he might be a native speaker. He didn’t sound Syrian or Egyptian, but was undoubtedly from the East.

  ‘Your stay in the city’, he said with an abrupt return to a ceremonious manner, ‘has been prolonged somewhat beyond our expectations. While your presence is a source of infinite pleasure to us all, and to me in particular, I have for some while now been looking forward to discussing when and how you intend to go back to Rome. A sea journey might present certain difficulties at the moment. But an armed guard along the whole length of the Egnatian Way is yours for the asking.

  ‘We could get you to Ravenna within twenty days. His Excellency the Dispensator could then use his known relationship with the Lombards to ensure a safe journey from there to Rome.’

  ‘Look, Theophanes,’ I said, growing impatient, ‘it was you and the Dispensator who arranged for my visit. I have every personal need to be out of here by the middle of September at the very latest. If I could go tomorrow, I’d run to the Legation now and pack. It’s hardly my fault if every post from Rome brings letters of further instruction.’

  I looked over at the most recent. Martin had wept with horror when it was opened. The Dispensator’s requirements seemed to expand every time he took up a pen. From a straightforward collection of materials against the Arian heresy, I was being pushed into a general defence of Orthodoxy. Was he storing up favours from every Church in the West? I was beginning to wonder.

  Theophanes ignored the letter. Why not, after all? He’d probably seen it well before it got anywhere near the Legation.

  ‘What is the book you are reading at the moment?’ he asked.

  ‘It is a work of technical philosophy from before the Triumph of the Faith,’ I answered cautiously. ‘Such works are often useful for the light they shed on the terminology of the Fathers.’

  Theophanes gave a brief upside-down glance at the unrolled part of the papyrus. He sighed.

  ‘I am aware, my young Alaric, that you and Martin are a pair of the most wondrously fast scholars. I have been informed of the packets and whole boxes of copies of translations and of original commentaries and glosses you are sending with every post back to His Excellency in Rome. Your diligence, indeed, is the talk of Constantinople.

  ‘My correspondence with His Excellency, however, did not assume such productivity or such prolongation of stay. You are an honoured guest of the Great Augustus himself. It is my duty to see that your stay is without mishap. But half of every day in this place and only half in the Patriarchal Library may not be the full straining of effort needed to get you home for the birth of your child.’

  I was sufficiently used to Theophanes by now not to stare at this latest revealing of knowledge.

  ‘I am aware, Your Magnificence,’ I said as smoothly as I could, ‘that His Excellency the Permanent Legate is displeased at my presence, and that his displeasure is not wholly to your advantage.’

  Theophanes frowned. He looked about at the hushed, bent heads of the students. He dropped his voice, though not by much.

  ‘When the traitor Heraclius does finally arrive in the City,’ he said, ‘it will be minus his body, and what remains will be put on display in the Circus according to the traditional etiquette. Until then, he remains stranded in Cyprus, his forces dwindling by the day as his means fall short of his need to keep them in good spirits.

  ‘However, because of the love he bears us all – those who remain loyal and those who through weakness or folly have strayed from their proper loyalty – the Great Augustus is eager to see how this almost insignificant revolt can be brought sooner rather than later to its end. There are certain services His Holiness in Rome can render. In return, there is something that we can give.

  ‘The longer you stay in Constantinople, the more our discussions with His Excellency the Permanent Legate are disrupted.’

  I looked back at him, the whole tangled knot of the previous few months seeming to unravel around us.

  ‘I am indebted to His Magnificence for such clarification and advice,’ I said. I leaned forward and dropped my own voice to a whisper. ‘Though surely you might have told me all this over dinner.’

  ‘I regret that I am unable to enjoy the pleasure of your company this evening,’ came the reply. ‘You cannot imagine how I shall miss our little repast in the usual place. But urgent business elsewhere in the City calls me away.’ He stood up. ‘You will appreciate, however, that my
concern for your safety is ever uppermost in my thoughts, and you will forgive my disturbing you in work that is, I cannot but suppose, of the highest value to the Faith.

  ‘You may suppose yourself a little old to be advised not to speak to strangers who accost you in the street. It may, nevertheless, be advice worth considering.’

  ‘We can be sure, then,’ I said later on to Martin, ‘we were sent here to freeze negotiations. I’m ready to believe His Excellency in Rome does want materials for his Spanish council. And he probably is annoyed about the heresy in Ravenna. But all that is really just a cover. Our true purpose here is to put a brake on the diplomatic wheels. That explains why we weren’t told anything. We aren’t here to act, but to provide others with an excuse not to act.’

  We were walking alone on the City walls. A strong breeze cooled us and carried our hushed voices out over the narrow sea beyond. For additional safety, we spoke in Celtic, replacing names and untranslatable titles with circumlocutions.

  ‘Right from the start,’ I added, ‘I knew it was all connected with the Universal Bishop business. The Dispensator wants it sorted – but not if the price is calling down anathema on the rebels. I imagine the Permanent Legate was under pressure here to make a deal. Then we turned up, and gave him cause to shut himself away.

  ‘I did think it was the rebels who’d tried to murder me in Rome. I now see it was the Emperor.’

  Martin turned and looked straight at me. Oh dear – I hadn’t meant to tell him about that. As I filled him in, it mixed with the roof-tile incident and got him into a right panic.

  ‘For God’s sake, Martin,’ I had to hiss, ‘can’t you keep a stiff upper lip, at least in public? Gibbering away like this, and in a foreign language, is the quickest way into one of those cages.’ I nodded at a cluster of freshly gibbeted corpses further along the wall.

  It didn’t help that I could feel my own legs starting to shake.

  But Martin controlled himself. ‘Might there be anything else you’ve neglected to tell me about this sojourn in Hell?’ he asked, a dash of bitterness now in his voice. ‘You may be the primary target. But you have nearly got me killed once already; and our families have been in protective custody on and off since we left Rome. You surely have some duty of openness with me.’

  My apology and reassurance fell oddly flat. We looked awhile in silence out to the boundless freedom of the waters. If there had been a sensible falling off in numbers, the wind still brought ships from every trading port of the world.

  ‘So what if His Excellency has locked himself into his rooms?’ Martin asked with a return to the original subject. ‘There’s not a door in this city the Emperor can’t kick open.’

  ‘Oh yes there is.’ I smiled. ‘The Permanent Legate represents the Pope in the fullest possible sense. An attack on him is an attack on His Holiness. If he refuses to see anyone, he must be cajoled. If he won’t continue negotiations, they come to a halt.’

  ‘So why are we still alive?’ Martin asked again. ‘If we disappeared, the Dispensator might not even bother with a letter of formal complaint. And if it were an accident ...’

  ‘Good question,’ I said, trying to sound less queasy than I felt. ‘It may be what Epicurus called a “rescue hypothesis”’ – I ignored the look on Martin’s face – ‘but let us suppose that the Imperial Government is not a monolithic structure. Let us suppose it is a group of more or less ordinary people, riven by faction. One faction might want us dead. That would explain Rome and what happened here today. It might also explain what nearly happened under the Ministry.

  ‘Another faction seems to want us alive. That would be led by the old eunuch. He certainly wants us gone – but his preferred means of getting his way seems to involve playing the Dispensator’s game. This means keeping us hard at work and ransacking every library in the loyal parts of the Empire to give me whatever I ask for.’

  ‘And you find that convincing?’ Martin asked, his voice incredu lous.

  ‘Every hypothesis stands or falls according to the facts it is supposed to explain,’ I said with a shrug. This one didn’t explain everything, but sounded likely otherwise.

  ‘Can you conceive how it feels to be forsaken by God?’ Martin asked suddenly.

  ‘Er, not really,’ I said without thinking. I’d been watching some sea birds as they flew out from the walls to dive for rubbish tossed from the ships. It was a good moment before I realised Martin was going into one of his funny turns.

  I thought about some heart-warming sermon culled from the Book of Job. But it was too late for that. In any event, Martin was now calm again. We’d come up level with the corpses and could see they were still fresh enough for the birds not to have had the eyes. Martin stood awhile in silence, looking into the dead faces. ‘In the midst of life, we are in death,’ he said mournfully.

  ‘No, Martin,’ I said, trying to pull him back to the present. ‘In the midst of death, we try to keep our wits about us and stay alive.’

  ‘How long do you suppose this will continue?’ Martin asked. ‘How long must we linger at these Gates of Death?’

  ‘Search me,’ I answered. ‘It could be right to the time when Heraclius is sitting in the Imperial Box in the Circus – or being looked at from there.’

  ‘Until then, we stay?’ Martin asked. He was staring again into the dead faces, a look of horrified fascination on his own. ‘We stay and do whatever duty may be required of us?’

  ‘I’m afraid so, Martin,’ I said, putting my arm in his as we continued our stroll along the walls.

  ‘And is waiting to be murdered among those duties?’ he asked.

  ‘I wish I had a more comforting answer than I have,’ I said. ‘So far as possible, we don’t go out of the Legation. When we do go to the libraries, we stick to the main routes where we shall be watched and reasonably protected.’

  ‘Why did the eunuch tell you all this in public?’ he asked with a change of tone, turning back on the conversation. ‘It will be all over the place by now.’

  That was the one fact my hypothesis didn’t explain. I’d been chewing it over ever since Theophanes had left me. Was he trying to persuade some other faction to leave me to him? That didn’t sound likely.

  ‘I can’t answer that one,’ I said, abandoning all attempt at reassurance. ‘The man has a reason for everything he does. Sadly, it’s hardly ever apparent to people like us.’

  ‘God have mercy! God have mercy!’ Martin cried softly, crossing himself.

  14

  It was late evening of the same day. I was back in the Legation. His afternoon terrors settled by a light dinner and extended prayers, Martin had gone out for another of his walks. Authari had then come back from the brothel empty-handed – some problem of licensing had closed it without warning.

  I was alone in my office. My eyes were beginning to hurt from reading by lamplight. I could swallow some opium. I could drink myself silly. I could have a slow wank. Any of those, and I’d fall asleep. But I fancied none of them tonight. The light aside, I didn’t even fancy a book.

  I was thinking again about the roof tiles. I nearly had been got this time. Martin was right – an ‘accident’ wouldn’t have raised an official eyebrow back in Rome. It was down to luck alone that I was still alive. Who could tell if there would be a next time? Or, if there were, how that would turn out?

  I got up from my desk and went out to the balcony and stood in the evening air. Distant, I could hear the sounds of Constantin ople. There was a murmur of crowded streets. A dog barked. Below me, in the dark gardens, the night insects chirruped and a light breeze stirred the bushes. There was the ever-present smell of aromatic shrubs. A moon was rising.

  From the slave quarters directly below, I could hear a drinking party in subdued but determined swing. Snatches of song and the occasional burst of laughter drifted upwards. I thought of the Permanent Legate and what news I’d just picked up. There could be no doubt he was sticking to his own rooms on the other side of the main
hall. All access was blocked by Demetrius. Our slaves could find out nothing from the household beyond what Martin had discovered on our second day. The messages I sent him were never answered.

  I looked at the sky about the risen moon. It was black. Looking down, I could see neither the little garden at the foot of the steps down from my balcony nor the larger, central gardens. I turned and looked along the blank shuttered windows beyond my own suite. No movement. No sign of life.

  The Legation, I must remind you, was built around a central square divided into a jumble of enclosed gardens. Its four sides were on two storeys of very high rooms. Seen from the square outside – not that anything could be seen through those blank, marbled walls – my suite was on the top floor to the left of the main entrance hall. It took up half of the front elevation. All its windows, remember, were at the back, facing on to the gardens.

  I looked left along the upper storey of windows in the Legation. Next door was my bedroom, with its own door to the balcony. Beyond that were a few guest and reception rooms. From the far end of my suite, the Legation continued at a right angle, reaching down in a long enclosing arm to join the other buildings opposite my balcony. The far side was mostly hidden by trees but I was sure I could have seen lights over there, had there been any lit.

  With Martin, I had found a way into that enclosing arm from the garden. Its rooms hadn’t been used in years and were falling into ruin. The only signs of maintenance had been on the street side of the building, to preserve the symmetry of the Legation and to protect it against intruders.

  I looked to my right. The line of windows continued until it reached the back end of the main hall and its dome. All of these were mine. Martin’s bedroom was the fifth window along. Next to that was his office. After that were another four windows of rooms that were mostly unused.

  Though he’d made some attempt at the front of the building, the architect employed to add the dome to the main structure had done nothing at the back to hide its incongruity. The brickwork of the dome broke all the harmony of the rear elevation. The parapet wall that hid the roof tiles from an observer below had been demolished in part, and its jagged edge shone white in the pale moonshine.