The Curse of Babylon

by Richard Blake

  Even before the screaming man hit the deck, I had Antonia’s arm again. I threw my knife at someone who was hurrying forward to clutch at me. I took her in both arms and threw myself backwards over the rail. A moment later, she and I were coming up for air in a sea that was like black and liquid ice.

  ‘Get the boat – the boat!’ I heard Shahin roar above the babble of shrieks from the ship. ‘I want them both alive.’ I caught hold of Antonia’s hair and pulled her close beside me. She’d got herself afloat but was crying out from shock and the cold. She wasn’t up to much directed effort. I looked about for the lights of Constantinople. They seemed much dimmer and more distant at sea level.

  Swimming with one arm, I dragged her forward until we had to be out of view from the mirrored lamps that Shahin’s men had now brought up on deck. ‘Get on my back,’ I gasped, taking in a mouthful of salt water. ‘Put your arms about my neck and hold on.’ I stretched my arms into a wide arc and kicked in the direction of the shore. Shahin had seen me swim the Euphrates in July. That’s wholly different from sea swimming at night – sea swimming at night with two arms clamped round your neck. But thoughts of Chosroes were a useful spur. By the time I stopped to see if we were still going in the right direction, the babble of shouts on board the ship was already a few hundred feet away. So far as I could tell, they still hadn’t got Simon’s boat or their own into action. I took a long breath and struck forward again.

  Antonia loosened her grip on me. ‘Let me come off you,’ she cried in soft panic. ‘I can swim by myself.’ I slowed again and looked up to tell her not to be so stupid. One look at the shore and I realised what she was getting at. The long strait past Constantinople has a top current and an undercurrent. Their relative strength varies according to the time of day. No one with any sense ever tries to swim there. The currents are too dangerous. Even as I made for the shore, I could see it moving further and further to my right. If we didn’t get a move on, we’d be swept into the wide Propontis.

  ‘Keep hold of me,’ I said in a voice that shook with cold and a fear I couldn’t control. ‘One big effort and I can do this.’ I wasn’t sure I could. But it seemed a fair guess that she couldn’t and that she’d vanish the moment she let go of me. I looked again at the now fast-moving lights on the wall and pointed myself right. Leaving Antonia to hold on as best she could, I strained every muscle as I darted forward. Now I was swimming diagonally with the current, low waves kept sweeping over me. I thought once I’d have to stop to cough out a whole lungful of water. But I kept thinking of a boat rowed by terrorised Syrians, hurrying to get in front of us. I thought of Shahrbaraz and the very stiff bow he’d give me as I was shoved forward into his presence. I thought again of Chosroes. And I thought of the swirling, limitless waters of a Propontis that might begin only a hundred yards to my left. Antonia moving her own body in time with mine, I called on every reserve of strength and swam toward the lights.

  I was still swimming when Antonia slid off me and stood up to her waist. I felt cold where she’d been against my back and tipped myself upright. After a boyhood spent swimming in the Channel off Richborough, it was no surprise how warm the sea now felt on the rest of my body – nor how cold I felt out of the water. I crouched down, with my head out of the water and my feet bouncing on the smooth boulders placed all about the sea walls to stop any ship from landing. From what I could see of the wall, we weren’t far from the Golden Gate. When I did finally stand up properly, I should be able to see the night beacon on top of the Marble Tower.

  Antonia splashed down beside me. ‘I think they’re coming after us,’ she breathed through chilled lips. I nodded. I’d expected no less. I turned and looked out to sea. The light that was coming closer might be from one of our own patrols. But I didn’t think it was. I shook more water from my ears and tried to listen. The voices were too deliberately low for me to hear other than they weren’t Greek. I felt Antonia take me by the wrist and pull me behind a large boulder. I slipped lower into the water and stared at the crescent moon. We’d got away! There was now the matter of getting back inside the City. I was knocked out. Now I’d stopped moving, the sea was feeling cold again. The wind would make us colder. It would be at least half a mile to the nearest gate and that would be barefoot over ground that some very clever engineers had made difficult to cross in shoes. But sod all this – we’d got away.

  ‘Alaric!’ I heard Shahin call from perhaps a dozen yards away. I froze with the shock of his voice and sank in up to my neck. He went on in Persian: ‘Alaric! I know you didn’t drown. You’re here somewhere and listening to me. There are matters we need to discuss. I have a deal I should have put to you over dinner. You must believe I am your safest option. Come out and join me in this boat. Bring the girl or leave her. She’s no longer important.’

  He drew breath to say more. But I didn’t hear. As he’d been calling out to me in a language she didn’t understand, Antonia was pulling me behind a clump of boulders where the water shelved to about nine inches. At once, her cold lips were pressed against mine, and her body was joined to mine. If I’ve suggested I was wholly worn out from that wild dash through the sea, I’d be exaggerating. I had energy enough to go with Antonia into a world of intense and sustained pleasure, and to stay there for what seemed a very long time.

  I moved away from her for the last time and realised we were both up to our waists again in the cold sea. Her face drained of expression, Antonia was staring up at the moon and the wide carpet of stars. ‘You didn’t leave me,’ she said in a wondering voice. ‘You’re the first man I’ve known who didn’t betray me.’

  I thought what reply to make. Even then, I was a man who could speak and write to effect in many languages. I might have told her things that a poet would have envied. But the time for words was drifting by. What to say, though? Women are strange creatures. When you aren’t completely certain what to tell them, it’s best to say nothing at all.

  I got up and climbed on to one of the larger boulders. I put down a hand to pull her beside me. We sat together in silence. Though I was chilled through from the sea and from all that had gone before that, the City wall was shelter from the wind. Without that, the night was what in England would have counted as sultry. I could remember a night rather like this in Cornwall when, to the distant sound of hunting horns, I’d been diverted from stealing sheep to the final and glorious loss of my virginity. I hadn’t been at all cold then. I’d soon warm up now. I listened for any sound of voices. I heard only the soft chirruping behind me of the night insects. I stood up and looked across the sea. The moon lit up a long streak of water. The stars gave all else a dim and silvery glitter. On the far side of the strait, there were individual gleams of light from the palaces and the better remnants of what had once been the Asiatic suburbs of Constantinople. So far as I could tell, the sea was empty.

  Antonia stood up and looked across the sea. After another long silence, she turned to me. I saw her eyes glitter in the starlight. ‘Alaric,’ she said. I waited for what she might have to say. She looked away. ‘What happened?’ she asked in a voice no longer charged with significance. ‘What did those men want?’

  I put my arm about her and I felt a tremor run through my body. It went on a long time, and ended in an explosion of unseen light deep within my chest. Not caring whether she could feel anything of this, I smiled and continued looking out over the faintly glowing sea. ‘I currently have no idea,’ I said. ‘But I do plan to find out.’ I pulled her closer. ‘It’s treason and with Persian support,’ I went on. ‘You can be sure of that. The question is how something this big can go on in broad daylight, apparently unseen by the Intelligence Bureau.’

  ‘Could it have been Eunapius?’ she broke in with an eagerness she didn’t try to hide. ‘Could it have been him and the Emperor’s cousin, Ni – Nicephorus?’

  ‘Nicetas,’ I corrected her. It was a good question. ‘Did you notice the Greek beside Shahin?’ I asked. ‘He was the one with the lamp. He spoke at this
morning’s audience.’

  She nodded. ‘He came up to me when I was with my – my clients.’ She paused for me to register the slight but defiant emphasis of the words. ‘He pointed me in the direction you’d gone and told me to stay out of sight until I could surprise you outside the walls. I think he’d guessed I wasn’t a man.’

  I stared at the crescent moon until the urge to burst out laughing had passed. ‘She’s a nuisance for other reasons,’ Simon had said. What could that have been if it wasn’t connected in some way with Eunapius?

  I shivered slightly after so long without movement. I reached up to brush a hand over very hard nipples. I noted the immediate response in my groin. But this was something I must and could control. ‘I won’t rule Nicetas out,’ I said cautiously. ‘But I can’t see him as a traitor. Besides, all that’s happened today needed fast communications, not to mention a capacity for decision that I haven’t seen in Nicetas or any of his creatures.’

  ‘And where do I stand in this?’ she asked as if she hadn’t heard me. Once more, her voice had taken on a wondering, almost a dreamy tone.

  I looked at her. She had the pale glow of the city walls behind her and her face was in comparative darkness. The moment for speaking had passed beyond recall. ‘Let’s get inside the walls,’ I said. I turned and climbed down from this boulder on to another. I helped her down beside me and looked over at the walls. I’d seen the white dust of a path. If we could get across an expanse of smaller stones, and then a mass of brambles without cutting ourselves, we might soon be able to present ourselves in reasonably good order before the Golden Gate.

  Chapter 17

  ‘You have seen naked men before?’ I asked impatiently. Now we’d rounded the corner where land and sea walls met, we were back in a chill wind.

  The guard’s mouth twitched slightly. ‘Never a naked Lord Treasurer, Sir,’ he said. I scowled. But he’d had his fun. His face vanished from the inspection window ten feet above. A moment later, I heard the scrape of bolts in the tiny door beside the main gate. A few moments more and I was sitting with Antonia in what seemed an astonishingly warm room, a cup of wine in my hand.

  The guard finished shaking the dust from two dark cloaks he’d found in a cupboard. ‘It’s a proper relief to see you, My Lord,’ he said. ‘We’d been fearing the worst ever since your clothes was found close by them dead bodies. There’s talk of sending a fast galley off to tell the Emperor.’

  ‘Then we can be glad his communion with the monks of Saint Vesalius will not now be disturbed,’ I said. The last thing I fancied was a summons along the straits to Cyzicus, or – much worse – a sudden return by Heraclius. Whatever else he did, he’d drag me into a church and keep me there praying and fasting till I wished I was still with Shahin.

  The guard sat down before me. He dropped his voice. ‘What was you doing out there, if you don’t mind my asking?’ He looked from the corner of his eyes at Antonia, who’d wrapped herself in one of the cloaks and was looking ready to fall asleep. ‘She’s a nice bit of tail, Sir,’ he whispered. ‘But you can’t have been fucking her all afternoon and evening. And what about all them bodies? Most of them was shot with arrows. Also, didn’t I see you go out through my gate with a young man?’

  I finished my wine and pushed the cup forward for a refill. I’d made my promise to Antonia. Now was the time to keep it. ‘When you send in your report,’ I said, ‘I’d like it to say that I turned up alone at your gate and fully clothed.’ The guard frowned. I looked about the room. ‘There’s been much speculation about the design on the back of the new silver coins. I’m sure you’d like to be among the first to see the design for yourself – shall we say enough copies to fill that leather bag over there?’ The man pursed his lips. Then he nodded. I smiled wearily at him. ‘I’m glad that was so quickly arranged,’ I said. ‘Now, if you can find two suits of plain clothes for the pair of us, we’ll be on our way.’

  The guard shook his head. ‘Can’t do that, Sir. It’s quiet enough out here. But the mob’s taken over all the central streets and is celebrating your death. You’ll have to wait while I send off for an armoured chair to get you home.’

  As if on cue, I heard a distant sound of cheering. It came from deep within the City, and reminded me of the solid roar a winning charioteer gets in the Circus.

  You never realise the full convenience of a secret entrance to your palace until you need to make a secret entrance. A hundred feet each side of the main entrance, the Triumphal Way was packed with the City trash, dancing round bonfires, or just cheering themselves hoarse at their apparent liberation from my spending cuts. But I was snug inside the thick walls of my palace before most of the household could know that I was alive, let alone insist on embracing me, one after the other.

  ‘I didn’t believe any harm had been allowed to come to you,’ Theodore said, once he’d got over the shock of seeing me in the chapel. It was a double shock, I might say – seeing me, and in the chapel. Pale and sad, his face wavered in the light of many candles. ‘I prayed before the icon of Saint George. It has never let me down.’ He got off his knees and embraced me. I can’t say our relationship had ever been affectionate. It hadn’t been that sort of adoption. Still, I liked to think there was a certain regard between us. I kissed his greasy forehead, noting how he’d shot up in the past few months. If he didn’t come up to my chest, he was no longer short for thirteen.

  I looked about the unfamiliar room. With Martin away, the boy must be lonely in here. Oh, but silly me – you’re never alone in a House of God! ‘Where is Maximin?’ I asked.

  ‘I had him put to bed at the usual time, My Lord,’ Theodore answered. ‘I told the nursemaids to say nothing without my permission.’ I nodded. Looking at his sallow face and lack of bodily shape, no one could imagine Theodore was other than adopted. But, as well as much holiness, he had a frequently sound judgement. It compensated for the holiness. It even compensated for his lack of attention to personal hygiene and his absolute refusal to contemplate stripping for daily exercise in the gymnasium.

  I looked again about the chapel. No wonder I’d nearly passed out on entering. The boy had five sticks of incense on the go. Should I tell him this stuff cost more than its weight in gold? ‘Where is Father Macarius?’ I asked instead. Since I’d been nagged into hiring a chaplain, I could go through the motions of annoyance that he wasn’t beside Theodore to pray for my safety.

  ‘He’s giving comfort to the eunuch who was struck dumb this morning,’ Theodore said. He saw the blank look on my face. ‘It was after you went out,’ he explained. ‘The older eunuch – the one with the fine voice – died suddenly of a bloody flux while easing himself in the latrine. His assistant fell down shortly after, and may not see the morning.’

  That was a shame and an oddity. I would have asked more, but I noticed the boy was now looking past me. ‘Ah, Theodore,’ I said, turning to wave Antonia forward, ‘this is . . .’

  ‘I am Antony,’ she said, stepping forward with outstretched hand. ‘Your father saved me from the bandits. I am eternally grateful.’ She pulled her military cloak into place and tried for a manly smile. I pulled a disapproving face at her. Keeping her any longer than tonight in male clothing hadn’t been on my list of things to do. If she thought she could run a petitioning business from the Lord Alaric’s palace, she could think again. But she ignored me. ‘Your father is the bravest man I’ve ever met,’ she added. ‘You must be terribly proud of him.’

  ‘Our guest will be staying with us till further notice,’ I sighed. This wasn’t the time or place for complications.

  Oh, bugger! I’d no sooner let this new moment for truth go past, when I turned back to Theodore and saw how red his face had gone. The redness was followed by a look of exalted longing. ‘I am delighted to make your acquaintance, Antony,’ he croaked. He put out a shaking hand and bit his lip hard as she took it. He looked down at the mosaic floor. ‘Shall I arrange a temporary bed?’ he whispered. ‘Or has Samo already been inform
ed?’

  I glared again at Antonia. I was already feeling nostalgic for a household in which the only females allowed were there to cook and clean and generally do as I told them. I’d put off one complication and raised another. I could still have taken charge and made a joke of telling Theodore about our little deception. But his face had settled into the look of rapturous agony you see described in Sappho and Catullus. Theodore had been growing up, I could see. It was time for me to attend to the next stage in his education. But that wouldn’t begin with a brutal and public disabusing.

  ‘Samo will attend to everything,’ I said. I pretended to misunderstand Theodore’s look and smiled. ‘Now, do go down to the kitchens and find Samo,’ I said. ‘I sent him there to arrange celebrations for the household. It may be worth reminding him of the need to keep every man sober who can handle arms. If word goes round that I’m alive, the mob may take a battering ram to the main gate. I’m sure you remember how much it cost to replace the bronze facings there after the last riot.’

  ‘You may leave us,’ I said in Lombardic. ‘Ask Samo to attend on me alone at dawn.’ The young slave bowed and, having dimmed the lamps, padded out. I shut the door behind him and almost fell out of my clothes.

  I sat down and watched Antonia tug at the unfamiliar laces of her own clothes. She’d seen the massive luxury of my palace and my own absolute mastery within it. It seemed no more to throw her than the sight of my naked body had earlier in the day. ‘What is to be my status here?’ she asked in a tired but businesslike tone.