I looked up briefly at the sun. ‘Now, gentlemen,’ I said with what I hoped was a winning smile, ‘I am on official business. I wouldn’t wish to keep you from your exercise.’
‘You won’t get away with this!’ an old man shouted after me as I set off again.
‘You try stopping me,’ I said under my breath.
‘You’re a cuckoo in the nest, Alaric,’ Simeon shouted as I hurried out of the Square. ‘I hope that assassin carves you up good and proper.’ He drew a long and wheezing breath. ‘God pays his debts without money – you mark my words.’
I pretended not to have heard.
Chapter 9
A word of advice, Dear Reader. If you ever feel inclined to follow someone about in the full light of day, do not dress yourself all over in black. Unless you’re in a place governed by odd sartorial rules, your victim will need to be blind or drunk not to notice you. My further advice is not to flit from tree to tree, or try taking shelter behind free-standing columns and street posts somewhat narrower than you are. Even if no one beats you up for looking dodgy, you’ll be laughed at.
I’d been aware of the absurd figure behind me long before Simeon had tried to do me the goodness of a warning. He’d probably been following me down the Triumphal Way. I’d certainly heard him clattering down the steps to Imperial Square. He was now making a pitiful effort not to be seen as he tiptoed twenty yards behind me, turning to look at statues or inscriptions every time I found reasonable cause to look round. Sadly for him, we were fully into siesta time. The streets were empty of everyone but a few skiving clerks. It looked a very cheap assassination attempt. If this were another Nicetas effort, he’d exhausted his budget on silver cups and seditionaries. Or probably not: Nicetas was the sort of man who’d spend more on finding this incompetent than on getting the job done properly.
I slowed down and took off my hat again. I wanted to make sure he’d keep my hair in sight. We were entering the medical district and it wouldn’t do for him to lose me in the drug market.
Indeed not. In all the years I knew it, there was never a siesta in the drug market. It was as crowded, as I walked that day into the square containing it, as the surrounding streets were empty. And why not? Along with all the worthless mummy dust and incantatory herbs, it’s here that the only heaven we’ll ever know is bought and sold by the ounce. I looked at the happy lunchtime trade. I breathed fully out and waited for a moment, before slowly breathing back in. Yes – it was the usual smell of opium vapour and the dust or steam from every other mood-altering substance known to man. Here is the one place where you can be awake and fully clothed and truly forget the horrors of existence. Here is a place where every species of physical and moral pain can be blotted out, and where every type and gradation of pleasure can be infallibly dispensed. I’ll add that, if you can’t make your own and you know the right people, it’s a fine place for buying poison.
‘Oh, My Lord!’ someone brayed into my left ear. ‘My dearest and sweetest young Lord!’ The compounder’s voice would have said Jewish, but for the inky skin of one whose ancestors had lived so long in the African sun that the colouring had become hereditary. Most who knew him struggled to recall his name. It was best to avoid trying to pronounce it. I turned to face him, and watched him sink to his knees. ‘No one said you’d be coming here!’ he whined up at me without moving his lips. He shuffled forward a few inches, nearly crushing the hand of one of the naked beggars who’d been trying to pick a blob of cannabis wax off the ground, and kissed the hem of my outer robe. ‘I don’t want any part of what’s going on.’
I glanced about the busy immensity of workshops and sampling booths, and put my thoughts in order. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ I said softly. Two assistants came forward and helped him back to his feet. He struck up in a loud voice about a new kind of stimulant imported from a place beyond the knowledge of the geographers. As if from nowhere, another assistant stood forward with a tray of silver cups. I took one of them and twisted it between forefinger and thumb. Its contents had the sheen and solidity of quicksilver and a faint peppery smell. Though a stimulant was the last thing I needed this day, I nodded approvingly.
The compounder took the cup from me and leaned forward. ‘I thought you would know the penalties for treason,’ he said. He licked suddenly dry lips. ‘I can’t help you. No one can make me do that.’
I took the cup again and twirled its contents. I fought off a second, though slighter, panic attack. He’d been recommended to me shortly after I began my rise to eminence. He may have guessed, from the way I’d combined orders the year before, that I was not entirely correct in my dealings. But why start making a fuss now? I thought once more about my silver cup, doubts pressing heavy on what I could feel had been only a brittle certainty. It would have been useful to take him aside for questioning. A shame I was being followed. ‘You want to pull yourself together,’ I whispered. ‘The penalties for treason only apply to those who get caught. You just fill the same order every month and send me the bills – and keep your speculations to yourself.’ A look of confusion flickered across his face, before it lapsed into another happy smile. I put the cup back and said something loud and flattering.
I stopped at the last main booth to look at myself in one of the big mirrors young men used for practising how most elegantly to sniff vapour from a heated spoon. I moved into a shaft of sunlight and grinned uncertainly at my own reflection. Given my lack of beard, I’d have had trouble passing for twenty, let alone the thirty-five I’d implied without ever claiming to be. The dominant appearance though, for anyone able to see past the beauty, was of a man trying not to give way to an unease that was never far below the surface. Suppose that compounder’s nerve snapped and he turned himself in to the Emperor? Whatever happened to him, I’d probably get off with being locked away in a monastery – Heraclius had lately shown a taste for punishments to fit the crime. But it would be as spectacular a fall as any in the Empire’s ancient or modern history.
Pull yourself together! was the advice I’d given. Now, as I watched my face go into its usual blank politeness, I tried to take it for myself. I leaned forward and touched my fringe. I could see how, before stepping out, I’d left a streak of paint just below the hairline. I took a napkin and wiped this away. I patted my hair back into place. I stepped back till I could see not only my face but also the elaborate gathering of silk across my shoulders. Seven years earlier, I’d been stealing food from Kentish pigsties to stay alive. No one looking at me now could have believed that. I was doing well. Given time, the one cloud that might blot out the sun in my heaven would inevitably pass away. Till then, I had only to keep a stiff upper lip.
I stood as if smitten by the sight of my own pretty face. It gave me the chance to see more of my follower. He was a few yards behind me, and was flinching away from someone who’d not yet sold all his clothes to buy drugs and was turning aggressive with his begging bowl. Take off that black cloak and I really doubted if he was much more substantial than the unfortunate boy I’d turned down on the Triumphal Way. He might have a poisoned dagger. Then again, if he proved as skilful with that as he had with keeping himself out of sight, I was in sod all danger.
Still heading for Middle Street, I turned into a street close by what, before I’d cut off its funding, had been the Imperial School of Rhetorical Studies. The street was so unfrequented nowadays that grass had sprouted between the cobble stones. I turned left and quickened my pace. Another hundred yards and, looking back to make sure I was still being followed, I turned right into a lane that sloped steeply down.
I’d now entered one of those places where, unless to sleep, the street cleaners never went. And why bother setting them to work in there? The poor districts of Constantinople have few streets in the normal sense. They are best described as warrens of high wooden structures, grouped round interconnecting courtyards that are often pools of sewage and of other waste sent downhill from the shambles and tanneries. Here was on
e of the less salubrious districts. Though crossed by an aqueduct, it had no running water. It was home to the class of festering paupers Nicetas was courting. Its main difference was not to be exclusively inhabited by the poor. By night, these courtyards were lit by a thousand torches, and swarming with multitudes, offering or on the lookout for vicious entertainment. Was it stolen goods you wanted? Or brothels filled with limbless cripples? Or sacrifices to the Old Gods? Or fights to the death between renegade slaves? Or horoscopes cast? Or slaves illegally castrated for punishment or profit? Or the comforts of a hundred proscribed and ludicrous heresies? Did you want gambling, where losers unable to pay could be dragged off and carved into a mockery of the human form? Or did you just want to breathe the air of a place from which the Imperial Government had carefully withdrawn all hope, without bothering to provide even the basics of order? If you wanted any of this, you came here.
Not, however, at this time of day. It’s often hard to say what the very poor do for a living. They still keep faithfully to the siesta. Excepting a few stunted children, who shut up at the sight of a stranger, and a sound of chickens and the occasional pig, you’d almost have thought the place abandoned. Even the dogs were asleep. Unless my follower got lucky, the worst I had to fear was the misfortune of stepping into one of those shining puddles. The sudden blast of what you stirred up could knock you backwards. I did avoid them. Scented napkin held under my nose, in I hurried deeper and deeper into this labyrinth of despair, all the time making sure to keep the sound of pursuit not too far behind.
I took myself into a courtyard from which there was no longer any exit. Imagine a mass of wooden fish boxes. Heap them up on a dockside and wait for the upper levels of the mass to lean over in an unstable equilibrium. Magnify the smell coming from them and you have some resemblance to where I now was. Time, I decided, to bring this chase to an end. I stopped and made a show of tipping more scent on to my napkin. After that, I walked noisily round a corner and got myself behind a door that had remained standing after the collapse of its surrounding wall, and waited. There was a distant sound of crying children and the unbroken squealing of pigs. The wind was blowing in my favour, and the main smell was only of brick dust and rotting timber.
For a moment, there was no other sound. The children and even the pigs had gone quiet. I began to worry that my follower had lost me. So much of a detour – and now possibly for nothing. I relaxed, stepping down from a mud brick that had begun to crumble. I’d run through various options since coming into the poor district. All of them involved a violent interrogation. I hadn’t supposed this most useless of assassins would simply get lost. Still unspotted by the surrounding filth, I could almost see the funny side of things. I was in the thin, western extremity of a slum that gradually widened until, bounded by the military docks on one side and the Jewish district on the other, it stopped just short of the Golden Horn. Unless he managed to climb one of the steep banks that kept the poor from offending the noses of the respectable, there was every chance the duffer would wander lost in here until he fell into one of the cesspools and drowned, or was knocked on the head. He’d never collect so much as a clipped copper from Nicetas.
I looked up at a sky that was as beautiful here as outside my palace. I felt a sneeze coming on. I blinked and blinked again. Yes, it was a big one. If I held back, but kept darting a glance at the sliver of sun peeping over the highest rooftop, it would be the next best thing you can manage, without drugs, to sex. Sad to think, I told myself, this would in all likelihood be the high point of my day.
No sneeze, however. Just as I blinked harder to see through the anticipatory tears, there was a single, shrill cry of fear from close by. It was followed by the sharp sound of collapsing masonry and a sudden manic barking of dogs. After another crash, I heard the laughter of many voices and another loud scream.
What a buggery day this was turning out! I put a hand on the hilt of my sword and peered cautiously from behind the door. I was completely alone. It was a neighbouring courtyard where it seemed a riot was brewing. I took out my sword and tried not to make any noise of my own while stepping from one dry patch of ground to another.
The sounds of masonry were easily explained. The Christmas earthquake that had got me and mine out of bed, and set every church bell ringing by itself, had levelled whole stretches of the poor districts. Nothing had been rebuilt yet. Few owners saw the point of rebuilding. The survivors had squeezed themselves into other accommodation. The courtyard where I’d taken shelter had been knocked about. This one bordered on one of the areas of total collapse. And here was my follower. He must have lost sight of me and taken a wrong turn. Hard to say whether he himself had been followed, or if he’d blundered into a meeting of armed trash. Whatever the truth, he’d made a rotten job of clambering over a heap of mud brick. It had collapsed on itself at first touch. Here, within the slight depression made by the falling of bricks and tangled in his cloak like a corpse in its winding sheet, my follower’s only answer to the two men who were poking at him with bits of wood was much twitching and a few muffled screams.
I waited for a pause in the entertainment and cleared my throat. A dozen dark and rattish faces turned in my direction. All was silent. Someone had already killed one of the dogs, and was holding it as a trophy. The others had scurried out of sight.
‘Oo you?’ one of the younger creatures jabbered. He held up a three-foot length of roofing timber. ‘Oo you?’ One of the others gave my follower a kick, but dropped the block of paving stone he’d carried over to use for a killing blow.
They all stared at me for a long moment. They could have tried rushing me but I knew they wouldn’t. I sheathed my sword. ‘Piss off, the lot of you!’ I said quietly. I inclined my head towards the one exit. I saw the glint of an iron knife. Not going for my sword, I frowned slightly and took a step forward. That was all it needed. Everyone knew the score. I was in my class, they in theirs. No one would lift violent hands against the irresistible and merciless force that plainly stood behind me. No one fancied being torn apart in the Circus by hyenas, or being roasted over a slow fire, or being deprived of sight and manhood and turned loose outside the city walls. I listened to the retreating patter of bare feet, then turned my attention to the struggling figure who remained.
I glanced up at the nearest building. I was aware of the scratching sounds the very poor make when something out of the ordinary has happened close by their homes. But no face showed itself from within the unshuttered squares of darkness. Taking my sword out again, I stood behind one of the many heaps of crumbled brick. I stared at the human bundle before me. Completely lost inside a cloak made light by the brick dust, it had stopped moving.
‘If you’re still alive,’ I said in a conversational tone, ‘you can get yourself out of that stupid cloak and stand up.’ After a long moment, when I began to wonder if someone hadn’t managed a killing blow, a white and trembling hand emerged through a rent in the cloth. It was followed by another. They failed to rip a larger hole and vanished again. Still swathed in the stained blackness, my follower tried to get up. After more struggling, there was a faint ripping sound and the cloak fell apart. Rolling free of it, my follower looked at me and struggled on to his knees, arms raised in supplication.
I stared across three yards of rubble into the face of the young petitioning agent who’d pissed me off that morning. There were fresh tears trembling on the lids of those grey eyes, and the freckles hardly showed on a face pale with fear. As I had back in my hall of audience, I waited until it seemed I’d say nothing at all. This time, however, there was nothing to be said beyond a statement of the obvious.
‘A bloody woman!’ I cried, aghast. Ignoring the possibility of a stain on my outer tunic, I sat heavily on another heap of bricks and dug my sword into the packed earth. Tearful, but not yet crying again, she stared silently back at me. I sighed and arranged my face into a less menacing smile. ‘Well, man or woman,’ I said, ‘you have the most wonderful capacity for sl
owing me down.’
Still kneeling, she dropped her arms. She smiled nervously. She managed a sort of shrug. I stretched out my legs before me and crossed them at the ankles. I’d chosen those leggings well. They really were most elegant.
Chapter 10
‘Of course they were trying to kill you,’ I said impatiently. ‘You may have noticed their attentions were somewhat less than friendly.’ Antonia, only surviving child of Laonicus of Trebizond, looked back at me in scared if slightly defiant silence. ‘However, this brings me to my next question, which is how long have you been in Constantinople? Since you haven’t yet got yourself raped or murdered, I don’t think you can have been here long.’ The tear that I’d seen welling beneath her left eye chose this moment to start its progress down her cheek. Without thinking, I reached into my inner tunic and took out a clean napkin. I passed it to her and looked down at the hilt of my sword. It had a solid, reassuring feel in my right hand. I could have written a short epic had I wanted to give the names and miscellaneous attributes of those whose lives I’d ended with its point or sharp edges. But it had no place here. I stood up, sheathed it and covered it with my outer tunic.
I sat down again and looked at Antonia. She’d controlled her tears. At this distance, and in bright sunshine, she was obviously a woman of about twenty. But it wasn’t hard to see how in male clothing, and with her brown hair cropped short and with surprise on her side, she could have passed for a young man. I cast about for something more to say that didn’t involve reminders of violence or death. ‘It is not the custom for women to lay petitions on behalf of others,’ I said with a haughty sniff.
‘Is it the custom for women to do anything but shuffle between bed and cooking pot?’ she answered, tears suddenly giving way to defiance. ‘I’ve told you who my father was. If you don’t want me to starve or sell my body in the street, what else can I do but take over his practice?’ She stuck out her lower lip and seemed to be expecting an answer. I sniffed again and felt the ghost of my aborted sneeze. I suppressed it and covered the effort with a frown. Rotten luck, no doubt, that plague had taken her family on its last visitation. But that was no reason why an Imperial minister should make a laughing stock of himself by hearing petitions from a woman. I looked into her eyes, and changed the subject.
The Curse of Babylon Page 7