‘You are most perceptive, my dear Aelric,’ came the answer. ‘But I repeat – your own safety is in proportion to your ignorance.’
I ignored that. ‘So, let us think this through,’ I went on. ‘Heraclius is now a short voyage from the City. He hasn’t the forces for a regular siege. Even if he had, it would fail. He must, therefore, rely on disaffection within for the gates to be opened. Phocas keeps a tight grip on the city and people are frightened to move against him.
‘What might a man like you advise in this case? Surely, you’d tell Heraclius to hire some barbarians to stage a raid. You make sure the Imperial envoys are turned discreetly away. You then arrange yourself for the release of captives. You show up your devotion to the public good at the same time as you reveal how little Phocas cares.
‘Of course, you make an exception for certain people whom luck has put into your hands. Their death can be blamed on the barbarians. But so long as the other prisoners return unharmed, no tears will be shed over that.
‘You will agree, Theophanes, this seems to fit very well with our own apparent circumstances – even down to your assurance that Martin and I have nothing to fear.’
Theophanes shrugged. ‘If you are right, dearest boy, nothing changes. You are safe. And it remains that I seek a favour of the greatest value to my peace of mind.’
I wanted to jump in here and continue the questioning. This was my chance – perhaps my last chance – to find out what had been going on above my head. But Theophanes had almost forgotten I was his audience. He spoke now in a slow, dreamy voice, his eyes half closed.
‘It was in the year before the first visitation of plague that I was snatched from herding my father’s goats. The raiders came from out of the desert – the great, burning desert, as wide and illimitable as the seas that lie to the west of your islands. They came in daylight. They killed my father and his brothers. They carried me off, together with my mother and my sisters.
‘My mother was left to die where she fell down on the long trek through the desert. My sisters and I were separated from each other at the slave auction outside Bostra. That is where I was castrated.
‘For a while, I was a dancing boy ministering to a rich Syrian in Antioch. Then I was sold to a brothel in Beirut. There, I was bought by a lecturer in the School of Law ...’
He drifted into silence again and reached for the stone. He cupped it in his hand. ‘I know I can make myself sleep tonight. I can will myself to anything.’
‘But you came at last into the Imperial Service?’ I broke in. I’d get back to the main question shortly. For the moment, I’d learn what else I could.
‘The plague that destroyed so much of the old world’, he said, taking up the thread, ‘gave unlimited opportunities to those of us who lived and knew how to survive. I achieved my present eminence under His Late Majesty the Emperor Maurice. You know, I signed his death warrant, and the warrants against his five sons. I watched the deaths, and then signed the release forms for the archive.’
He paused, doubtless reflecting on the enormity of what he’d done – breaking a peaceful continuity of centuries. Then he continued: ‘I’ll not deny that what I did greatly advanced my position. But I also insist that I acted in what I truly thought at the time was in the best interests of the Empire as a whole. We were beginning to face pressures within and without that Maurice had repeatedly shown himself unable to handle with the necessary resolution.
‘I did try explaining this to the poor man as we took him from the cell. He simply bowed, quoting the old verse:
“One who does evil, then is caught,
I hate to hear insist he ought.”’
Theophanes laughed gently. ‘My real life began with a capture. Now it will so end. I have done many wicked things in the time between but I am not ashamed to ask that a final – and perhaps justified – wickedness against me shall be frustrated.’
Well, that was Theophanes – still secretive and still trying to be a slippery Oriental right to the end.
‘What is it to be, then,’ he asked, with a return to practicalities – ‘mercy at your hands, or a roughness of handling that I am surprised has been so long delayed?’
‘Neither,’ I said, speaking softly but urgently. ‘Even if Heraclius is trying some clever trick, I don’t trust these savages. Their nerves are fraying, and I know what they’re capable of doing once the drink has gone round a few times. I’ve seen the Lombards at work any number of times on their prisoners. I’ve – er – seen much unpleasantness among my own people.
‘Your death, when it comes, Theophanes, will not be at my hands. Nor am I planning to sit here in the hope that orders will come from Abydos or wherever before it’s too late. I’m getting out of here,’ I added. ‘Come with me if you want to stay alive.’
Theophanes leaned forward and looked hard at me. He brushed some creases from the front of his tunic and leaned still closer.
‘I do believe, my dear and beautiful boy,’ he said, ‘you have a plan. Would you do me the honour of sharing it with me?’
Speaking fast and in my quietist whisper, I explained the plan. At first sceptical, Theophanes, I could see, was brightening. He raised objections I hadn’t considered. He made suggestions that I incorporated. By the time we were finished, the plan was settled.
We agreed that it had a slender chance of success, but was worth trying. At worst, it might bring us faster or at least more dignified deaths.
All that remained was to put it to Martin. Theophanes and I looked at each other.
‘I think it will be best coming from you,’ he said.
I put my hand over Martin’s mouth and my knee in his stomach to wake him as quickly and silently as I could. We didn’t want to alert any of the other captives, who’d gone placidly to sleep around us like good little citizens of the Empire. And we wanted no attention from our captors.
In the end, it took us both to convince him. Only when Theophanes spread his legs and hitched up his robe and belly to show his castration scar shining silver in the dim light from the dying moon, and spoke about the blood and pain involved even for a small boy, did Martin come to a semblance of his senses.
‘But if it fails ...’ he said, his eyes rolling with terror at the thought of actually taking matters into our own hands.
‘It won’t fail,’ Theophanes said in a tone that crushed dissent. ‘Have you seen Aelric fail in any of his ventures? I can assure you, I have never once failed in mine.
‘Do you see this stone in my hand? If you don’t say “yes”, now, this very moment, I swear I’ll use it to provide a real corpse – your own.’
That was it. For what little he might be worth, Martin was in.
We waited until what was left of the moon was high in the night sky. The other captives had drifted as deep as they ever would into sleep on the damp, stinking ground. The Yellow Barbarians had all disappeared to wherever they went by night. The Germanics were left in charge of us.
Around us were the snores of the sleeping. From over by the fire came the shouted laughter and guttural calls on Lady Fortune of about a dozen barbarians having fun. I heard the steady rattle and fall of dice from a cup.
At last, one of them got up to do the rounds. On the first and second evenings, they’d taken care to go about in pairs, one standing outside the doorway, torch in hand, while the other came in with drawn sword to count us. But keeping watch over these Greeks really was less trouble than herding sheep. Tonight, they’d given up on what they’d found to be unnecessary precautions. The inspections were still frequent, and still armed and watchful. But they came now only one man at a time, and relied on the moonlight.
It was now or never.
‘Oh, sir, do please come over,’ I cried softly and pathetically in Latin.
A massive barbarian stood over me. He blotted out what little light still came from the moon.
‘Well?’ he said in a rough yet ominous voice. From the voice, I realised he was the one I’d hear
d earlier calling for our deaths.
‘I think the fat eunuch has died, sir,’ I replied. ‘He made a funny noise a little while back, and jerked around. He hasn’t moved since. I don’t think he’s breathing. It might have been a stroke.’
‘So, what the fuck is that to me if he’s dead?’ came the reply. ‘For all I care, it just saves a bit of time.’
He turned to go back out to the fire.
‘But, please, kind sir,’ I said, now speaking urgently, ‘I can tell you something about him that I promise you’ll want to hear.’
The barbarian turned back to me. ‘And what might that be?’
‘If I tell you, sir, will you promise not to kill me tomorrow?’
I could hear a smile spreading over his face. ‘Well, my pretty young Greekling, that depends on what you tell me, doesn’t it?’
He was evidently enjoying the power, taking every ounce of pleasure from the terrified grovelling of his betters.
I counted silently to five, then continued. ‘I saw him stuff a purse filled with gold up his arse when we were taken. After every shit, he was putting it up again. I tell you, it’s a big purse. He said to me you people would be too thick to look there. He did say that, didn’t he?’ I said, turning round to face Martin.
‘Oh, yes!’ said Martin, playing along. ‘He told me he’d give the gold to the Church of the Double God to use against what he called the damnable heresy of Arius.’
‘And’, I added, ‘he’s still got huge nipple rings with sapphires on them – sapphires the size of grapes. They were making his dugs hang down like an old woman’s.’
It was the nipple rings that tipped the balance. The gold coins up the arse would simply have led to my being made to do a necrophiliac fisting job on Theophanes. The nipple rings might have worked by themselves. But together, they worked a treat.
The barbarian was half cut. In any event, experience had given him no reason to be scared of us. With a predatory grunt, he stooped over the motionless body of Theophanes. He pulled at the robe. But it was wound too tightly about the lower parts. He had to get down on his knees.
‘Get over there where I can see you together,’ he snarled softly. With a quick look over his shoulder to make sure the others hadn’t heard anything, he set to work. He rammed his sword into the ground on the side of Theophanes farthest from us and knelt to get a better purchase on the robe.
With both hands, he tried ripping the robe open. But it was cut from the heaviest weave of silk, stitched with a double hem. That sort of tailoring doesn’t rend easily. He tried pulling the robe loose. But three hundred pounds of still flesh don’t move easily either.
‘Fat fucking bastard!’ the barbarian grunted in his own language. He reached clumsily for the knife at his belt.
Crack!
Theophanes had got him straight on the head with that stone.
The creature went down like a stunned ox.
Straightaway, Theophanes was on top of him, drowning any cries he might still be able to make under a mountain of blubber. I saw his legs jerking wildly, and could hear the muffled gasps. But strong as he was, he was wounded and sprawled in the wrong position to be able to lift even half that immense weight of eunuch off his chest.
Theophanes raised his elephantine arm for a moment, exposing the barbarian’s head. With another stone, I finished the work.
I struck hard, and then again and again. On the fourth blow, the skull caved in like ice over a winter’s river, and I felt the slime of blood and brains splashing on my hand. The legs stopped their jerking. It was over.
‘Dear me!’ said Theophanes, puffing as he rolled into a sitting position. ‘I thought the beast would never die. For a moment, I thought he might even lift me off him.’
But the man was dead. Our first efforts had gone to plan.
‘Hey, Ratburger,’ came a cry from over by the fire, ‘where in fuck’s name have you got to? Come back over and lose some more.’
‘I need a good shit first,’ I replied, mimicking as best I could the voice of the late Ratburger. ‘I’ll be back, and then it’s double or quits.’
As I’d hoped, they were too dazzled by the fire to see anything outside its pool of light. From where they sat, the entrance to the guardhouse must have been a patch of blackness.
‘Ooh, isn’t he a bold one!’ came the cracked voice of an old man.
Another added: ‘Double or quits? You won’t have double nothing after that!’
There was a chorus of laughter, and attention returned to the game.
That gave us a while, but nothing more. Martin wrapped a cloth round the dead man’s head to stop blood getting on to the clothes he was wearing. Then Theophanes and I stripped the body. The man’s clothes stank beyond belief. I hadn’t washed in days, and had been rolling in stale shit and piss, but nothing had prepared me for that awful rankness. My flesh crawled as I pulled the clothes on. For a moment I thought I’d vomit at the greasy touch of the things, but it had to be done.
Alaric, the golden ‘light from the north’, had become what, but for a stroke of good fortune in Kent, he might always have been – Aelric the filthy, bloodstained desperado.
When he’d finished turning up the trousers and pulling the upper garments tight by tucking the extra into my waistband, Theophanes stood back to admire me.
‘Most fetching,’ he said drily. ‘You’d surely turn the head of every barbarian lass back in those forests.’
He tugged the sword free and passed it over. He took the knife for himself. We left the body where it lay, covering it with my own clothing and an outer garment of Theophanes so that it would easily pass in darkness for a sleeping captive. So long as the dogs didn’t find it too soon, it would stay hidden as long as we needed.
We waited until a great shout of laughter and argument showed that all around the fire were more than usually intent on the game they were playing. Then we slipped quickly out of the guardhouse and dodged round the back of the place.
Keeping the remains of the guardhouse between us and the fire, we moved as fast as we could without making any sound until the ruins became denser and we could vanish into the still silence of the old suburbs.
25
The plan now was to get back to the road leading to the city. The Germanics were all hard at play. The Yellows, if they were still about, probably wouldn’t know one Germanic from another, especially in the darkness. I was sure I could bluff my way past them.
Well before dawn, we’d be banging on the gates of the City. And these would surely open for someone like Theophanes.
The problem was, the moon had clouded over, and a light mist had fallen. We weren’t in total blackness – there was a break in the clouds now and then – but it was darker than I had expected. More importantly, with the moon out of sight, we had nothing by which to guide our movements.
We’d struck out along a narrow street, guessing from our last sighting of the moon it would eventually lead to the main road. But after the first few dozen yards, we found it so choked with rubble that we couldn’t tell road from general ruins. We turned left into another street – then, finding that also blocked, right into another. This soon twisted round to the right, before coming to a dead end.
What I mean to say is we got lost.
We stumbled for an age in what we thought was a generally straight line, the mist growing thicker and thicker about us. It was accompanied by a light drizzle.
We still weren’t in total darkness, but the light we had was of little use for navigating through a sea of broken walls and fallen masonry. The old suburbs had once been half as big as the City itself. Now, spread around us, were occasional streets running between lines of semi-ruined buildings and otherwise vast expanses of quarried rubble. It was like being by night in one of the less frequented districts of Rome.
We must, I was sure, come eventually to the great clearing that separated the outworks and defensive wall of the city from its old suburbs. But that might easily be long
after the sun had burned off both mist and cloud and left us exposed to view like thieves caught in sudden lamplight.
‘I think we should be going that way,’ said Martin, pointing left.
‘On the contrary,’ said Theophanes, pointing right, ‘I think we should be going that way.’
It didn’t help that I had my own idea of the direction.
We stopped, uncertain.
‘I think’, Theophanes said flatly, ‘we might have passed by this pedestal once already. Those legs, snapped off at the knee, look familiar.’
Possibly they were But one broken statue, in the darkness, is very like another – and they must, in this stretch of the old suburbs, have been as common as drainage grilles in the road.
‘Perhaps’, said Martin, ‘we could go into one of the ruined houses. We can hide there until the barbarians go away.’
‘No,’ said Theophanes. ‘Wherever we hid, they’d have us out come dawn like snails from a shell. With their dead friend Ratburger to answer for, I’d not care to be in their charge again.’
I agreed. The old suburbs were not wholly deserted, but those who lived in them knew exactly how and where to hide when danger threatened. We had no such advantage. We had to keep moving even though we might have been going in a circle. We kept expecting to hear the dreadful clatter of nailed boots on crunchy brick but the only sound was our own soft voices, and the careful picking of our feet through the rubble. So long as we could somehow keep to a straight course, it would be rotten luck if we found our way back to the barbarians. More likely, we’d put a good distance between us and them, and could dodge back to the City when first light showed us where we actually were.
We didn’t need a gate. We needed only to get within a hundred yards of the City walls to be under at least potential cover of the artillery. No one would follow us within that radius.
I stepped forward and let the others follow.
‘Halt! Who goes there?’ a voice called firmly in Germanic.
Terror of Constantinople Page 17