The Curse of Babylon

by Richard Blake

  He sat back in his chair and put his hands out of sight. ‘Don’t pass it to me, dear boy,’ he said, raising his voice before dropping it again. ‘Shahin thinks it’s bewitched. It’s killed at least one eunuch who touched it. Sneer at me if you will, Alaric – I haven’t made it this far in life to be carried off by some wog curse. You touch it if you will. But keep it away from me.’ He laughed nervously and scraped his chair slightly backwards. ‘Have you considered, Alaric, why the box was closed on every side with such long nails? I don’t believe it was meant to be opened.’

  Anyone who’d rubbed poison over the surface of the cup was probably an amateur beside Priscus. But I let a short and pitying smile stand in place of the obvious arguments. I put the cup down before me and ran my fingers over it. ‘I’d guess, from its probable age and good condition,’ I said with pointed nonchalance, ‘it was dug out of a tomb. It has the general appearance of a drinking horn used by the Persians and probably by those who ruled the East before them, at formal occasions.’ I stopped and picked it up again. Even empty, it seemed too heavy for actual use. Also, the lettering showed no sign of the differential wearing you get when an object is routinely handled. I twisted the cup to see more of the inscription. It wasn’t possible to tell where it began, or in what direction it was supposed to go.

  I sat forward again. ‘I found a body on my way out,’ I said, returning to less impenetrable facts. ‘It was dumped beside the private entrance. I’ll take your word that you didn’t leave it there. It may have no connection, but I’m told the cup was found pushed under the main gate. The nice box in which it came was scratched on one side. Let us assume that this man had been running away with the cup. He needed to get rid of it before he was caught. Perhaps he needed to get it to me. This is only a surmise, but it would explain the sudden and elaborate plot to get rid of me. The cup had been left in a place from which it couldn’t be recovered at once. So a murder plot was ordered as well as a burglary.’

  I stretched. More than my thinking faculties had been revived. If Priscus hadn’t been sitting opposite, I’d have been more than half-inclined to go off and slap some life into Antonia. No chance of that, however. Priscus took his eyes off the cup. ‘Treason on this scale, dearest Alaric,’ he said with a return of his mocking tone, ‘and you knew nothing till its projectors hit out and nearly killed you?’

  I shrugged. ‘I have spent the past six months absorbed in bullion ratios and other calculations,’ I said defensively. It was a feeble answer. Heraclius had taken the Intelligence Bureau out of my hands but I should have been aware of at least one Persian ship in our home waters. I shrugged again, now adding a fierce scowl. ‘What have you heard?’ I asked.

  Priscus smothered a smile and looked into my eyes. ‘Alaric,’ he said, ‘you know our agreement was that I should never go outside the walls of our palace. What could I possibly have heard that you didn’t tell me yourself?’

  ‘Let’s stop playing games,’ I said with a genuine scowl. ‘What, if anything, have you picked up on your nocturnal wanderings through the City?’

  ‘Nothing, my dear,’ came his maddening answer. ‘If I’d heard cousin Shahin was about, I’d have told you at once. If you don’t believe that, let’s agree that Nicetas is somehow involved. Do you suppose the thought of him in a dungeon, maggots wriggling in the suppurating flesh of his legs, wouldn’t have got my tongue wagging?’ It was a decidedly Greek answer – argue from probabilities, rather than swear to facts. But they were strong probabilities. I looked at my wine cup. I hadn’t realised how empty it was. Priscus noticed, and reached for the jug.

  I put the silver cup back into its box. That morning, I’d thought the box was ebony. In fact, it was quite ordinary wood, painted a shiny black. You could see that from the scratches on the underside. Careful not to knock it on to the floor, I reached in for the parchment slip that carried the only writing I could understand.

  ‘The misshapen S, and the spelling mistake sekretum, indicate a Greek who is unfamiliar with Latin – or, at any rate, with written Latin,’ I said. ‘But why go to the trouble of Latin at all?’

  Priscus raised his eyebrows. ‘I bet you nearly shat yourself when you saw the message,’ he said. ‘I know your secret!’ He giggled and swilled wine about his mouth. I frowned, but didn’t rise to the challenge. I stared at the neat slip of parchment. Why Latin? Except the two characters not found in Greek were uncertainly written, the message was smooth and unblotted. It couldn’t have been written by a man who was on the run and desperate to tell me something. Had the message been meant for me? If not me, for whom?

  I got up and pulled gently at one of the shutters. I’d expected to see the eastern sky ready for the pale glow of dawn. Events and whatever I’d taken, though, had jumbled my perceptions of time. The sky was still dark. ‘What did you learn from the man you questioned?’ I asked.

  ‘Much less than I can teach you about him,’ Priscus sniggered. ‘When Heraclius gave you this palace, your first act on taking possession was to free all my slaves and kick them into the street. Some of them you would have found more useful than the slobs you stuck in their place. Regardless of that, you never considered that one of them might one day be found useful by somebody else for gaining entrance. The man under your bed was called Marcian. He had a talent for snooping that I often found useful. He got past your useless household and made his way here. When I caught him by accident, he was picking the locks in your office cupboards. Despite my best efforts, he told me fuck all. He was looking for a silver cup, he told me. That was it.’

  I rubbed my eyes. Priscus had lied about the headache. His drug had worn off as quickly as you might snuff out a lamp. I stood up and stretched. ‘Since I don’t fancy sleeping with your latest victim under my bed, how do you propose getting rid of him?’

  Wearily, Priscus raised his left arm. ‘How do barbarians dispose of rubbish in the towns they’ve settled?’ He asked.

  I shut my eyes and breathed slowly out. Antonia had rolled across the bed, but was still fast asleep. ‘How did you keep him quiet while you did that to him?’ I asked as quietly as I could manage. If I’d been more my usual self, I’d have been struggling not to vomit. Priscus grinned back at me in the gloom and muttered something about a ‘trick of the trade.’ I swallowed and pulled the dead man fully clear of the bed. Priscus didn’t offer any help and I didn’t ask. Instead, I got the body by its shoulders and tried to keep the leaking areas from touching the floor as I got it over to the balcony. Priscus was there already and draped a towel over the ledge. I shook my head and lifted the heavy corpse into my arms. I threw it straight over and watched as it tipped over and then over again, before landing with a faint but audible splash on the granite pavements of the Triumphal Way. It landed about a dozen feet from one of the sleeping figures and almost on top of one of the dying fires. I looked cautiously down. If anyone had noticed the new arrival, no one bothered to move.

  By the time I turned, Priscus had already used the sponge and washing water left by the bed to clean up the bloody trail across the floor. I used the towel and what was left to wash the slimy blood from my own body. Over the edge went the sponge and towel. Over too went the remains of the water.

  The dawn was still nowhere to be seen. But I now felt as if I’d gone the whole night through and longer. ‘Go back to your attic,’ I said to Priscus. ‘We’ll take this up again when we’ve both had some sleep.’

  Reluctantly, he got up. ‘And the cup?’ he asked.

  ‘It goes back in a secret place only you and I know.’ I said.

  Priscus arranged his face into a bleak smile. ‘Your trust in my honesty is an inspiration that I will do my best to keep in mind,’ he sneered. I smiled back at him. Priscus was a champion liar in a race of liars. I’d seen fear in his eyes, though, even he couldn’t fake.

  Chapter 24

  After a mostly wet April, the winter roof was now off my gymnasium. Once I’d finished scraping off the thick coat of sand that was st
uck to my oiled body, I could hurry off to the bathhouse. After that, I could make a start on the morning’s work and deal with whatever accumulation had been carried over from the previous day.

  Glaucus pointed at an unscraped area on my lower back. ‘A civilised man ties a cord over his foreskin,’ he said shortly.

  He was starting an old argument. I twisted round with my strigil and got nearly everything off with a single stroke. ‘The ancients wrestled with other free men,’ I said lazily. ‘Young Rado, on the other hand, would feel put out if I didn’t shoot all over his chest.’ I smiled at the boy. He’d almost got himself clean enough for the steam room. He smiled back and flexed himself most charmingly. But for the pale faces already looking through the doorway, I’d have suggested another grapple in the sand.

  The old trainer frowned at the stiffy that had popped up again. ‘I have repeatedly told you,’ he said, ‘exercise is not an opportunity for sex,’ he said. I could have told him to address that remark to the ancients. Why else do it in the nude and end it so often with wrestling? But Glaucus was Glaucus, and he’d said his piece. ‘I’ve given you lighter weights,’ he said going back to my earlier question, ‘because I don’t like the way your biceps are growing. For the same reason, I refuse you any breakfast. Your shoulders are already on the outer borders of harmony with your lower body. Just because you are a barbarian is no reason why you should look like one.’ He stood back and stared at Rado. ‘You can interpret the same to him. If he pumps himself up any more, you might as well complete his ruin as a dancing boy and cover his body with tattoos and get him kitted out as a bodyguard. From what I hear of yesterday’s adventure, you’re a fool to go about alone in the City.’

  I bowed. ‘It is as you say, Glaucus,’ I said meekly. I suppressed the memories he’d stirred of the previous day. I did it too late. My foreskin rolled fully back, exposing the pink of my glans to the morning sun.

  Glaucus came out with something unflattering and walked slowly round me, grunting and poking at me with his cane. ‘The purpose of training,’ he said as if telling me for the first time, ‘is not to make yourself look like a human bull for two seasons, before running to fat. It is to keep the body in balanced proportions throughout the whole term of life. Hair goes. Teeth go. Get it right early enough and good muscle tone lasts a lifetime.’ He stopped and looked angrily into my face. ‘I have told you many times, a depilated crotch is unattractive. It gives an impression of effeminacy. You waste your time in modelling your speech on the correct elegance of the ancients, if you cannot leave your manhood clothed with its natural modesty.’

  I bowed again and thought of the all-over kiss of silk undergarments. ‘I crave indulgence for the weakness,’ I said. Saying no more, I joined Glaucus in a probably illegal genuflection before an empty niche.

  ‘Your kava, Sir,’ young Eboric said behind me in Latin. I nodded and continued taking the salutes and greetings from the multitudes who passed back and forth along the Triumphal Way. It was one of those glorious mornings the spring gives only occasionally to Constantinople. The sun shone clear on my right, but a cool breeze from the north took away all but a hint of what it might do later in the day. The roofs of the lower City shone a cheerful red or glittered like jewels on velvet. The seabirds called and circled overhead.

  And here I was, alive and well, and bathed and oiled and perfumed. Dressed in a white outer tunic crossed by bands of shimmering green, I stood at ease on the front steps of my palace. There could be no doubt of the previous day’s horrors but I was almost ready to believe the lying account of my capture and escape I’d dictated in the steam room. It was already set up on its easel and attracting a most flattering number of readers. I was alive and well, and Shahin and all his friends could go fuck themselves.

  Not even Timothy’s presence could sour the morning. ‘Duty presses, dear boy,’ he said again, ‘Duty presses. Can’t possibly step inside.’ Even so, his cold unsmiling eyes were looking past me into the darkness of my entrance hall. Of course, a man of my quality deserved no less than the City Prefect in person – though his local deputy would have been more welcome.

  He turned and looked down the steps to where my easel had been set. ‘Shocking story,’ he went on – ‘perfectly shocking. These bandits were never so bold when I was your age. A man could ride halfway to Thessalonica before hitting serious trouble.’

  I sipped delicately at the contents of my glass beaker and continued looking into the street. Was that Eunapius of Pylae down there? His head and shoulders were hidden behind the easel. But there was surely no one else in the City with that combination of emaciation and fussy taste in clothes. From what I could see, he was reading my account to a crowd of his parasites and to the general trash who couldn’t read for themselves. I looked harder. I frowned. Several of the listeners were breaking into a shambling dance. I was sure I could hear a low titter. I pretended not to notice. ‘The street cleaners have done a good job,’ I said, looking back at Timothy.

  I’d caught him in the act of picking his nose. He moved a forefinger that had been poised an inch from his mouth and wiped the bogie into the off-yellow banding of his robe. ‘It was the least I could do, my dear fellow,’ he answered. ‘I had them out with the dawn, scrubbing and cleaning. I was here myself to supervise. We had to flog a few of the stragglers awake. A couple of dead, too, we had to carry away.’ He pointed to a brown patch where two of the public slaves were still at work. The lower part of his face took on a sad smile. ‘You should have seen what had been done to the poor creature we found there. Animals in human form – no, demons out of Hell – some of the humbler people of this fair city.’ He looked carefully at my face.

  ‘Any reports of an older body found in the area?’ I asked with a slight wrinkling of my nose. ‘My own slaves found a dried blood patch in the side street round the corner. If you have found anything, I feel a certain obligation to pay for its collection.’

  ‘Your goodness, young Alaric, is proverbial,’ was Timothy’s answer. Without giving more of an answer, he turned to feast his eyes on Eboric, who was waiting quietly for me to finish my kava. ‘As, if you’ll pardon the compliment, is your taste in slaves.’ His lower jaw sagged open, giving full view of his teeth. ‘Where does one lay hold of such freshness and elegance?’ he cried with sudden enthusiasm. ‘Speaking for myself, I find the markets in this city a continual disappointment.’ He leaned forward and stroked the boy’s cheek. ‘So fresh, so elegant!’ he repeated. Eboric shrank back and turned appealing eyes on me. I gave him the tiniest reassuring nod.

  ‘I take a personal care in the training of my younger slaves,’ I said, staring into a face visibly consumed by lust.

  Timothy settled his features into a look of only moderate satyriasis. ‘If you’ll pardon an older man’s advice,’ he said, now in a patronising tone, ‘your way with slaves has provoked a certain degree of adverse comment.’ He continued staring at Eboric. ‘You don’t make a human being into a slave by the mere facts of capture and sale. Taking anyone into your house who hasn’t been broken by the dealers to servitude is rather like taking in a dangerous wild animal. Having more than a few slaves of the same nation compounds the risk. You’ll never sleep soundly. You’ll never rely on them in a crisis – you mark my word.’ Still looking at Eboric, he controlled himself. He leaned close to me. ‘To see the boy naked would not displease me, though,’ he whispered from the corner of his mouth.

  Eboric and his brother had been glorious finds after the repulse of a Lombard attack on Naples. Leaving aside their own dignity, I’d be buggered if I so much as considered sharing either of them with anyone – certainly not the tub of rancid fat that was His Magnificence Timothy. I gave my empty cup to the boy. ‘Tell Cook you’ve earned a very big spoonful of honey,’ I said in his own language.

  The same thought in our minds, Timothy and I watched him scamper up the last flight of steps to the entrance. He’d outgrown his tunic again and it barely covered his upper thighs. My attentio
n was pulled away from those endless bedtime romps by a low groan of horror from the street behind me. It was followed by a faint babble of insults.

  ‘Some of your Jewish friends, I think,’ Timothy said, now in accusing tone. ‘If you can bear another friendly word of advice, they’re all Persians at heart. Your good nature was surely misled when you persuaded the Council to advise Heraclius against enforcement of the conversion law.’ I nodded vaguely. I could have asked what use there was in making things worse than they already were. But we’d had that argument already. It was a nice morning, and my Jews were here. I stared at the three uncovered chairs that were making their way past the big statue of Poseidon. There are many reasons for employing Jewish financial agents. One is that they don’t waste time when you call them to an emergency meeting.

  I watched ben Baruch and his cousins carried towards the lesser entrance to my palace. ‘I imagine there’s something they want,’ I said dismissively. Not quite truthful, that. I was about to call in some favours. Another reason Jews are worth employing is that they’re often a good substitute for the Intelligence Bureau. If there was anything I needed that morning, it was a bit of intelligence.