Terror of Constantinople

by Richard Blake

  ‘Which is it to be?’

  ‘Do as they say,’ the Abbot cried.

  ‘An excellent choice,’ I snarled in his ear. I stepped into the corridor. Still holding their swords, the three monks moved away from us.

  Baruch covered me from behind as I followed the Abbot’s directions and pushed him down the long main corridor of the building. Doors opened before us, and pale, scared faces looked out from the tiny cells. But no one else was armed. As we approached, the faces pulled back and doors were slammed again.

  ‘In there,’ the Abbot gasped, indicating a smaller doorway near the end of the corridor.

  ‘In there – and may God punish your blasphemy.’

  ‘We’ll see about that,’ I said coldly. I held my sword tighter to his throat and stared at the armed monks, who’d followed us closely down the corridor. For a moment, they stared back. Then, with a gesture of submission, they put their swords down. For them, the game was over. What point in wagering now?

  ‘Get me the keys to this door,’ I said to no one in particular. His use as guide and hostage now at an end, I pushed the Abbot so he fell sprawling to the floor.

  ‘Keep your sword up,’ I said to Baruch as keys rattled somewhere in trembling hands. ‘We’ll need to look overpowering.’

  My voice shook as I strained to hear any sound from inside. Was that the rasp of a sword from its scabbard?

  For me, the game wasn’t over at all.

  65

  Though still hardly into the eastern sky, the sun had risen with almost summer-like heat as we set out upon the Golden Horn.

  ‘That one, over there,’ I said to the boatman, pointing at the largest of the ships that rode at anchor in the narrow bay.

  I emptied a whole vial of perfume on to my sleeve and raised it to my nose as the oars began turning over the filth that lurked just beneath the sparkling water. Common sense told me I should sit in the boat but dignity was more important. I steadied myself against each gentle pitch of the boat and remained standing.

  I’d thrown off my dark cloak and was showing off the dazzling white and purple-fringed robe of a senator. That, plus my golden hair and the general dignity and assurance of my pose, must have fixed every eye on those anchored ships.

  I couldn’t be sure. If the sun shone full on me, it was also in my eyes, and I could see damn all of what might be happening ahead of me.

  ‘Who goes there?’ a voice cried from the flagship as we came within hailing distance.

  I waited until we were close enough for me not to have to strain my voice with shouting.

  ‘I am the Senator Alaric,’ I called back at the second hailing, ‘formerly Acting Permanent Legate of His Holiness the Roman Patriarch, and lately Count of the Palace Guard.’

  There was a long silence. We came alongside the flagship and skirted round the banks of oars to the wide stern. I remained standing, my head held up proudly for anyone to see who was inclined to look.

  A face peered over the stern of the flagship. ‘What do you want?’ a voice asked uncertainly.

  ‘I have come to pay my respects to the Emperor,’ I said mildly.

  The face retreated. There was a subdued conversation several feet above me. Then, instead of the rope ladder I’d expected, there was a clumsy squeaking and a whole wooden staircase swung over the side, its lowest step just above the waterline. I stepped across on to it.

  ‘Wait here,’ I muttered to Baruch. ‘Do exactly as I say.’ He looked at me, suddenly doubtful. His free hand tightened on the leather satchel that contained the promissory notes made out to bearer.

  As I came on deck, it was like stepping into one of the grander mosaics you see in the Great Church. In full dress and all in proper place before me stood what looked like the whole of the new Imperial Court. Here were the generals, the priests and bishops, the scholars, the ministers, and all the other leading men of the New Order of Things. They stood before me grave and silent, glorious in their robes of many colours. I had no idea what they had been about before I came aboard, but they were as fine a reception committee as anyone short of an emperor himself might have wanted.

  Right at the heart of the gathering sat Heraclius. I recognised him from the purple robe, and from the fact that he was sitting while all the others stood. He was just approaching his thirty-fifth birthday when I first saw him. Tall and thin, his light hair cut short, his face close-bearded, he looked barely older than I was. He stared back into my face, confused and perhaps a little annoyed.

  A eunuch just to the left of Heraclius coughed gently and looked meaningfully at the purple carpet that lay between us. I stepped forward into my best ever prostration. Every movement was exactly as it ought to be. I could hear a whisper of admiration around me as I tapped my head a third time on the carpet and then rose in a single movement.

  ‘You will be aware’, someone who looked rather senior began, ‘that you are excepted from the amnesty, and that you stand ready condemned as a traitor.’

  ‘I am so aware,’ I answered in a firm voice. ‘But His Imperial Majesty may be assured that I neither sought nor accepted an election that was made in my absence.’

  Suddenly, just behind Heraclius, I noticed Priscus. How I hadn’t spotted him at once is beyond me. Perhaps he only came forward when I was deep into my grovel. Perhaps it was the white lead that had blurred and softened his features. Even through the paint, though, I could see the rage on his face.

  ‘That may be the case,’ the senior official replied – I discovered shortly afterwards that he was the new Master of the Offices. ‘You still stand condemned. Will you beg for mercy?’

  ‘I will never beg before the Great Augustus’, I said, ‘for the justice that is mine by right.’

  As a murmur of astonishment rose around me, I turned and walked back to the stern of the ship. About a mile away, far within the City, a pall of smoke hung over the centre. The Ministry and Prefecture buildings were still ablaze, and even if the flames had been contained, they would continue to burn for days to come.

  I looked down at Baruch and jerked my head upwards. Without a word, I went back to stand before Heraclius.

  ‘Caesar,’ I said, looking him in the eye, ‘there are many things you will want in the long reign that stretches before you. Many of these will be granted to you. Some will be withheld. At this moment, however, I give to you the thing you want most in the world.’

  I took the bound figure swathed in black from Baruch and pushed it forward, to land clumsily on the deck about a yard from Heraclius.

  Now Heraclius stood. There was a general shuffling and impromptu bowing as people crowded back to get out of his way. He was a big man. Standing, he fell more into proportion, so that he didn’t seem so thin.

  He pointed to Baruch. ‘You have a knife, I have no doubt,’ he said. ‘Let me see this alleged gift of my heart’s desire.’

  As the black folds of the cloak and the restraining thongs fell away, there was a wail of terrified shock at the sight of Phocas. Still wearing the monkish robe in which he’d hoped to escape the city, and in which he’d come and gone at will from the Legation, he stood cowed and suddenly somehow shorter than he’d seemed only a day or so earlier. He winced at the sudden strain on his broken wrists and looked round, squinting in the brightness.

  ‘Vile ruffian!’ Heraclius cried in the loud and dramatic voice that I later found he used whenever he hadn’t the foggiest idea what to do next and was hoping for inspiration. ‘Foul beast!’ he added.

  Phocas looked past him to the silent crowd. ‘See how the pigs gather at the new-filled trough,’ he said. ‘You all accepted my honours when they were worth having. You all swore loyalty when there was no likely test of it. As for you’ – he turned to me – ‘I should never have listened to that fucking eunuch. You were trouble from the moment you turned up in the City. I should have had you killed long ago.’

  ‘You flatter me,’ I said gravely. ‘But I may have done you quite a favour. You’d have hated
Canterbury in the winter. Forget the blacks, the headless dwarves, the lack of wine. It’s the weather that rules England out as a fit place of asylum.’

  ‘I suppose Theophanes sold me out,’ Phocas snarled at me. ‘Or was it Silas? Never trust Latins. Never trust the fucking Pope!’

  ‘Not at all,’ I said, raising my voice so all could hear me. Those stimulants were wearing off but my mind was still like glowing charcoal. ‘You praised my investigatory skills just a few days ago. It was only a question of using those skills to uncover your whole sordid conspiracy against the Empire.’

  As I fell silent and turned to face him, Heraclius piped up again:

  ‘Is this, O villain, how you have ruled the Empire?’

  He waved at the City and at the smoke that was now billowing towards us on a shift of the breeze.

  Phocas walked over to the side of the ship and looked long towards the City. He turned back with an easy smile. He now had all the assurance as if of restored power. He threw a sardonic glance over the hushed, crestfallen band of courtiers, then he turned to look Heraclius in the face.

  ‘And will you, my young man, rule any better than I did?’

  It was a brave answer. As if he’d been rehearsing for this moment, Phocas was preparing to die better than he’d lived.

  And there was only one possible end to the conversation. Heraclius raised a hand and nodded. A soldier stood forward. He bowed as he handed over his sword, hilt forward.

  As the soldier moved out of the way, I got a sudden view of Martin. He stood over by the other side of the ship, looked tensely back at me. Maximin was in his arms.

  ‘My dearest friend,’ Heraclius said after the second embrace, ‘before I met you, I was prepared to grant you only your life. Now that you have performed so worthy a service and shown me such loyalty and devotion, I grant you the friendship of your Emperor.

  ‘Yes, my Golden Alaric – and let all the universe be my witness – you are my Special Friend from this moment forth, and I will find some position in my government worthy of your talents.’

  That Priscus didn’t collapse from horror is testimony to his diplomatic skills. As it was, he waited his turn with the others to kiss me.

  ‘Perhaps you’ll be Whoremaster General,’ he whispered in my ear. ‘That’s about the level of your abilities.’

  ‘So long as you don’t get to mix the wine’, I replied, ‘I’ll take what I’m given.’

  Slaves were already scrubbing away at the splash of red on the deck. The body was perhaps ten yards away, floating about an inch below the filthy waters. I could see its position only from the outer layer of clothing that broke the still smoothness.

  The head was set on a pike and tied to the prow of the flagship. Phocas would precede us into the Senatorial Dock. It was the last precedence he would ever enjoy.

  Phocas would precede us, his head to the right of the prow. To the left, his severed head also on a pike, would be Theophanes. As in life, so in death, their fate was joined.

  ‘I thought I’d know where to find him,’ said Martin once we’d broken for drinks and a bite to eat. ‘I found him with his bags already packed. He and Alypius were planning to get themselves out of the city dressed as monks. They’d have been halfway to Damascus before anyone would have missed them. They’d have been across the frontier into Arabia before anyone could have caught up with them.’

  Somewhere behind me, Baruch was lecturing a slave on the dietary requirements of his restored faith. They seemed to exclude most of the breakfast buffet. Luckily, Moses had said nothing in particular against wine.

  I looked at the severed head of Theophanes. Without his animating spirit it was just one more saggy ball of flesh and bone. The eyes were already dull. The worn teeth poked forward above the drooping lower lip.

  Phocas still looked like Phocas. Theophanes was already gone.

  ‘What threats did you use?’ I asked.

  ‘None,’ said Martin. ‘I simply described the situation and asked for his help.’

  ‘And he came?’ I asked again. ‘He simply came at your request?’

  ‘He sat thinking a while,’ Martin said slowly. ‘We discussed what else might be done to get you and the child reunited and out of trouble. In the end, though – and there was a big argument over this in their own language – he ordered Alypius to go off alone. Then he came with me down to the shore.’

  ‘Was it a fast death?’ I asked. The head was neatly severed, but gave no indication of what might have been done first to the body.

  ‘As fast as anyone could wish,’ said Martin. ‘The deal I brokered was that Theophanes handed himself over. In return, Priscus surrendered the child, you got kicked out of the Empire, and Theophanes was put to death without torture.

  ‘Unlike with Phocas, Heraclius didn’t strike the killing blow himself, but it was done with so much skill, I didn’t realise at first the sword had passed clean through his neck.’

  ‘He gave me a message to pass on to you,’ Martin continued after a pause. ‘He said to remind you of the promise he made. He also said: “If I now give my body to be burned, I do so with charity”.’

  I said nothing, but continued to gaze at the head. You shouldn’t weep for a man like Theophanes. How many tears had been shed over his actions? That labyrinth under the Ministry had long since been his second home. His company was fine enough from across a dinner table. It must have been something else from the bed of a rack.

  And his final service to the Empire might well have served to divide it. In exchange for that roll of parchment, all made out in proper order, he’d arranged for Phocas to be shipped out of the city under Church protection and set down in one of the monasteries outside Canterbury. There, Phocas would have been a standing challenge to Heraclius. The Church would only have had to say the word and there’d have been rebellions all over the West.

  To avoid the possible loss of Italy and his native Africa, Heraclius would have been tied to Rome in all matters of doctrine and authority.

  How long the Eastern Provinces would have stood for that – especially with the Persians running wild – is anyone’s guess. Perhaps the Phocas challenge would have sunk without trace. But it might have split the Empire, leaving a Greek core, the other parts moving off in different directions.

  That this had now been achieved by the Saracens, from whom Theophanes was snatched as a child, is one of the curiosities of history.

  Perhaps it would have been better for the world if the inevitable that I’ve spent much of my life trying to put off had happened at one stroke. Perhaps Theophanes was after all a faithful servant of the Empire.

  I couldn’t know that as I stood looking at his severed head. While you shouldn’t weep for a man like that, I had to fight myself not to. How he must have dreamed of a return to the burning wilderness of his childhood – free to pass the remainder of his life without lies or betrayal. He’d come so close to that. Then he’d given it all up for the child of his own worst enemy and for a barbarian who’d tried his hardest, without knowing what it was, to wreck his plan.

  I reached forward and pulled the eyes shut. Then I took Maximin in my arms.

  Now that the sun was up, a whole flotilla had set out from the shore. It was obvious even to the most cautious or foolish of the better classes who was the undisputed victor. I could already hear the salutations and cries of loyalty.

  Whether they now raced against each other not to be last on that purple carpet, or stayed on shore to greet the Saviour on his entry into the City, all would be welcomed – with a few named exceptions, and a slightly larger number of others who would be disposed of before the coronation.

  Behind me, I heard Baruch offering round his ivory cards and explaining the precise location of his bank. There can be advantages, you’ll agree, in being the first.

  66

  Once again, the Dispensator avoided looking me in the eye.

  ‘I wanted you there’, he said for the third time, ‘to secure the best
outcome for the Church.’

  All over Rome, the bells were ringing for Christmas Day. A steady drizzle since dawn had taken the fun out of the processions. But there was feasting and dancing and general good cheer within doors.

  Or there was in all places but the Lateran. The great spider that lurked at the centre of the extended web of the Roman Church was taking no rest from its continual watch over the whole, or from its spinning of new threads to secure still more power for itself.

  ‘You cannot imagine, my dear Aelric,’ the Dispensator said, ‘how those coded reports I kept getting from Silas alarmed me. I agreed in principle that any price was worth paying to get our Patent of Universality. But the deal Silas proposed was potentially ruinous. It would have been ruinous had it come unstuck. It might have been still more ruinous had it succeeded.

  ‘Holding Phocas might have been useful for us – but not in England.

  ‘I hardly need remind you that England belongs to the Church as a religious asset. With England as a direct province of Rome, the whole of the West can be ours until Judgement Day. We can hold it against all heresies that exist or may arise. It is therefore important that England should not be embroiled in merely Imperial politics.

  ‘There was no chance that Heraclius or any other Emperor could invade England. But the use of England as a place of refuge for Phocas would have worked a diplomatic revolution throughout the West. The Lombard and Frankish courts would have swarmed with Imperial agents – and, for all I know, agents of the Persian King. The northern kingdoms of England would have been locked into the new diplomatic system. Even the Irish would not have been left out.

  ‘We needed the title of Universal Bishop – but not at the expense of losing all that made it worth having. England is ours. We will not share it with anyone. We will not risk having to fight for it. We will compromise in nothing – not even for the considerable short-term advantage we might have obtained.’