Who aloft in the heavens rose
on fluttering waxy wings
and dared the cloudless realm
of Phoebus Apollo breach
sure for presumption
earned his mother’s stony embrace.
Thee almighty protectress wise
by Heaven’s decree to blaze
with sempiternal flame
so ending our darkness sent
equal the danger
so it seems of seeking to see.
O victorious all against
in battles unequalled those
by darkness granted sway
O Lady of might serene
Mother of Jesus
ever splendid Vision of Light!
Nicetas greeted the rapturous applause with a loud tapping of his stick. Everyone who hadn’t already scarpered hurried over to join in the shouted acclamations. He collapsed into a new chair someone had brought forward. His monk would soon be at work again. I turned and looked into the darkness. Priscus was gone. In his place, Leander was fiddling with a lock of his greasy hair. ‘It was an historic mark of My Lord’s favour,’ he slimed at me, no longer hiding his Egyptian accent, ‘that these humble verses were taught to every staff officer to sing to the men before the Battle of Antioch.’
‘Did they finish the song during or after the retreat?’ I sneered. ‘Oh, and didn’t Icarus fall into the sea?’
Hands folded across his chest, Leander bowed silently. ‘I have been sent, My Lord Alaric, to thank you for the return of something most valuable to the Lord Nicetas.’
I stopped looking about for Priscus. After waiting all evening for an approach of this sort, I’d been ready to dump all suspicion that he so much as knew about the cup. If Eunapius was up to something – that much was clear as day – I’d seen it confirmed that Nicetas couldn’t conspire his way out of a chamber pot. Here now was Leander, bearing a request that no longer made sense, but that would need somehow to be fitted into a revived hypothesis.
Someone inside was starting up on a flute. Someone else joined in with a drum. At once, a regular padding of bare feet on marble indicated the black girls hadn’t just been brought out for ornament. It was a bastard evening. I’d endured the whole recitation at a distance that almost exposed me to Leander’s garlicky breath. I was now stuck with him again to miss the one compensating entertainment. The modern Callimachus waited for a break in the squealed, swaying rhythm that streamed from the open window. He leaned forward. ‘Since I have often had the honour to be welcomed into My Lord’s private quarters, I am able to confirm that she is a most headstrong girl. If she has caused you any trouble, I am authorised to apologise with the utmost sincerity.’
I had my back to the window. That meant I had a better view of Leander than he had of me. When I still said nothing, he smiled nervously. ‘After she rejected the wholesome discipline of her father’s household, she was sent to be instructed in the ways of humility by the nuns of Saint Tomalina in Trebizond. Even so, she escaped and returned to the scene of her old debaucheries in Constantinople. She was apprehended and brought home. Before she could be returned to the holy sisters, there to await an introduction to her future husband, she escaped again. That was the night before last. It was feared that she might be preparing a complete change of identity. My Lord wishes me to assure you that, now you have returned her, she will be more closely watched until she can be locked into the female quarters of some other house.’
A dozen yards to my right, I heard Theodore carried out. The change of air must have revived him. Still speaking Syriac, he called loudly on God to blind him, so he could look no more on the perfect beauty of Antony. He was cut off in mid-flow by a slap to his face. Samo grated at him in Latin to shut up if he didn’t want a stick taken to his bare arse. The boy gave way to moaning sobs of ‘Antony, Antony – how I love you, and how I sin!’ Luckily, that too was in Syriac.
I nodded at Leander. There was an intellectual neatness in what he’d said. I no longer needed to revive an exploded hypothesis. And Theodore had given me time to ignore the chill spreading out from my chest. ‘I am always the most devoted friend and servant of the Lord Nicetas,’ I managed to say in a voice that didn’t waver. ‘I am also much in your debt for the goodness you have shown in bringing me news that the girl is now reunited with her loving father.’
Leander bowed again and smirked. Inside, there was a burst of applause, and the musicians turned to one of the slow dance tunes popular back then in the brothels of Syria. ‘Does he ever go to bed?’ I asked, allowing myself one flash of temper. Played out to its last variation, the dance tune could last all night.
Leander shook his head. ‘The Lord Nicetas has been assured that, if he lies down to sleep, he will stop breathing,’ he explained. ‘It is his custom, therefore, to sit upright in chair through the night, sleeping and waking as the holy fathers who surround him direct.’
I controlled a sudden urge to burst out laughing. I bowed to Leander. As a poet of sorts, he was partly outside the usual hierarchies. ‘Your conversation is always a delight,’ I said, ‘However, I feel obliged to take my leave of His Magnificence the Commander of the East.’
I stepped back from kissing Nicetas on the lips. ‘You really are my dearest friend,’ he replied without moving his lips. ‘But, if it can’t be the rectorship, Leander must have a job that will give him official status and a salary. You know that only you can seal that manner of appointment.’
I bowed low before the man who, in his cousin’s absence, was supposed to be Regent. ‘There was a time when the Treasury had a department of correspondence,’ I said quietly. ‘That was when Latin was still the official language and the clerks needed to be trained in the appropriate phraseologies. I could revive the post of director for Leander. The salary isn’t much, but would give him the right to present birthday wishes to the Emperor. We could interpret that as the right to present birthday odes.’
Looking relieved, Nicetas signalled to his eunuchs. They got him from each side and pulled him to his feet. ‘Let it be known,’ he cried weakly, ‘that our most beloved friend Alaric has opened poetic hostilities this night with Leander. At our next recital, Leander will make his reply.’ He leaned on me in what might pass for an embrace. I smiled at Timothy and pretended not to notice the scared, apprehensive faces of those who hadn’t already gone home. Nicetas sat heavily back in his chair and nodded at Leander, who went into a long and reverential bow in my direction. That got me more nervous looks. There were even angry murmurs when Nicetas stayed on his feet while I backed out of the room. One of the black girls who’d been playing with each other in the recital space broke into an exaggerated orgasm. I don’t think anyone paid attention.
Chapter 35
The wind had made another of its endless shifts of direction. Inside, with all the candles burning away like houses in a city taken by storm, it had continued sweltering till the end. Out here, in the quiet and increasingly unlit streets, I was glad of the cloak I’d put on over my toga. I was tired. Two days running, I’d been scared half out of my wits. I’d uncovered a web of treason the nature and extent of which remained unclear. Where was bloody Priscus? Why come out in that absurd disguise, only to vanish like a ghost?
Except I was tired, none of this mattered. Even before getting my people to check her story, I’d known Antonia was lying. I’d asked, only that afternoon, who her father was. Did it matter if her father turned out to be Nicetas? It did, of course. Anyone else I could have called straight into my office to present with a bill for unpaid taxes. Everyone owed something. No one was ever expected to pay unless he upset someone like me. I could have bought Antonia fair and square. Not so Nicetas. Save by the Emperor himself, he was untouchable. Whenever he wanted, he could have his daughter tied hand and foot and stuffed into a wagon rumbling east. I couldn’t denounce him for treason. Beyond a hint from some scabby old fool who might already have been put out of the way by Simon, I had bugger all evidence of his co
mplicity in anything. Heraclius wasn’t Chosroes: especially against his own blood, he’d expect some grounds of probability. I could go after his creature Eunapius, but the Lord Commander of the East would only throw his hands in the air and plead ignorance. He’d be believed, because no one could doubt someone as thick as Nicetas was telling the truth.
But I could drop the whole line of thought. Heraclius was away. In his place, Nicetas was the supreme power. Antonia would be back scrubbing floors in Trebizond before that changed. And what of that? We’d met. We’d fucked. We’d argued. Theodore might be getting ready to offer up his soul in exchange for what he thought she was. I was His Magnificence Alaric – now of age. The girl dripped trouble from every pore. It was pure accident she’d kept me out of Simon’s hands. Everything else about her was a complication. She’d now overreached herself – no doubt thinking her own father wouldn’t recognise her got up as a man. Who was I to hurry to the rescue? If I tried, I was sure, I could put her and everything concerning her out of mind. Let silly Theodore sob his heart out when Antony didn’t show for breakfast the next morning. If I never saw Antonia again, I was the Magnificent Alaric. I’d know how to keep a stiff upper lip.
There was a faint noise behind me. Priscus? No, not Priscus. However faint, he’d never have made a noise. ‘Might our young lord be lost?’ someone grated in a voice straight out of one of the lower poor districts. ‘Aren’t we a bit tipsy, to be out on our own so late and all?’ Someone else added.
I turned and looked at the half dozen footpads. The closest of them had his cudgel already raised. Doubtless, there were a few knives tucked out of sight. I’d been passing the Central Milestone on my slow walk from Nicetas to the Triumphal Way. Slowly, I turned and went over to sit on the lowest step. ‘Do you know who I am?’ I asked.
‘We might soon find out,’ the man with the club said with a laugh. As I’d expected, sitting down had unnerved them. They stopped edging forward.
For once, I had no money with me. No chance of my usual dealings with the city trash. I flicked my cloak aside to show that I was armed. ‘If you don’t fuck off out of my sight,’ I said mildly, ‘I’ll carve you up so fast, you won’t have time to shit yourselves.’ I’d left my favourite sword with Shahin. This one, though, had served me well that afternoon. When being got ready to leave Nicetas, I’d taken it from the doorman and held it up, so the lamplight could glitter on the many-folded steel of its blade. Bearing in mind the clothes I had on, I hoped I’d not have to use it tonight. One good look at me and the night vermin were slinking off in search of easier pickings.
I waited for the last footsteps to go out of range. I got up and arranged my clothes again. I turned and looked at the Milestone. It gave the name of and distance to every provincial capital in the Empire that the Great Constantine had ruled. London was near the top. So was York. One of the more recent Emperors had fixed a pompous inscription on its base that combined a Greek translation of Vergil with a quote from Revelation. It was a poor moon but looking at the inscription drew me to a graffito someone had chalked on another side of the monument. I thought at first it was about me. I didn’t know whether to feel pleased or disappointed that it wasn’t.
I heard another noise – this time a soft padding of feet coming towards the far side of the monument. I jumped noiselessly up the steps to the base of the inscribed column. Eight feet above ground, and sheltered between statues of Romulus and Augustus, I unsheathed my sword.
The padding of feet stopped. ‘Where have you gone, Alaric?’ Antonia quavered. ‘I did see you, didn’t I?’ She hadn’t lowered her voice. A few yards away, a scared night creature shuffled deeper into one of the flowerbeds.
I jumped down beside her. ‘Run away from home again?’ I jeered in Latin. ‘If I didn’t know him well enough already, I’d have to think ill of your father’s control over his women.’
‘Oh, Daddy’s easy to avoid,’ she laughed, going herself into perfectly fluent Latin. ‘He said he’d beat me half to death, once he was done with Akimba. Silly idea! We used to be lovers, and she kept Daddy busy till I’d crept out of the room.’
Looking at her girly face under a hat that, in itself, might have screamed ‘Rape me!’ I wanted to hit her. Instead, I stamped my foot and put a scowl into my voice. ‘You’re mad if you think these streets are safe,’ I said. What point, though, in nagging? From what Leander had told me, she must have known these streets by night as well as I did. The flash of anger gave way to tiredness. ‘Where do you suppose you’re going?’ I asked.
‘Home with you – where else?’ she said.
I climbed the base of the Milestone again and sat on the uppermost step. I waited for her to join me. ‘Listen, Antonia,’ I said, ‘you’re a renegade nun and you may be the daughter of a traitor. There are limits to the sanctuary my house can give you. Other than that, you’re a niece of the reigning Emperor. You may have noticed that, for all my fancy titles, I’m a barbarian immigrant. How long do you think it would take your uncle to remind us both of that?’
‘But I love you, Alaric,’ she said simply. ‘I will never be parted from you.’ She waited a moment. ‘It’s your turn now,’ she prompted.
I sighed and looked at the moon. ‘I knew it when I found you in the poor district,’ I said, trying to keep my voice steady. ‘I knew it, but didn’t notice the fact for a while. It came on slowly and imperceptibly, like the passing of spring into summer. I was fully aware of it before we had sex. I wanted to tell you afterwards but didn’t know how.’ Since I’d already made a total fool of myself, I could see no benefit in holding back. But there was nothing left to hold back. I’d said it all, and with fewer words than I might scribble in the margin of a report. If I added that I loved her more than life itself, I’d only be inviting her to a suicide pact. I put my arm about her. It was a nice feeling.
‘Alaric,’ she said, now urgent, ‘I said I came to see you yesterday on a whim. That’s true but it was also because, after I’d untied myself the night before, I overheard Daddy saying what he planned to do to you when he became Emperor. I thought if he hated you so much, you must be worth seeing. So I cut my hair off when I was with someone who gave me shelter and got ready to bluff my way past your eunuchs. That was the whim.’ She pressed herself close against me. ‘Alaric, do you believe in fate?’
I didn’t. But I was interested to hear more about her father’s confession of treason. I said nothing. ‘After the audience,’ she took up again, ‘I was getting ready to go away when I heard those men from Pontus complaining about Eunapius. They must have been twenty feet away in a dispersing crowd. But I heard them as clearly as you can hear me. Before I could realise what I was doing, I’d pushed my way through to them and taken their case. I didn’t know what to do next. It was Simon who came up behind me and said which way you’d be going. I was sure he didn’t recognise me. Everything after that you know. It was fate that brought us together. No one can ever tell me otherwise.’
I sat awhile in silence. I thought hard. ‘Did your father really say he’d be Emperor?’ I asked. I was probably clutching at air. But, if I could never marry an Emperor’s niece, I might be able to beg for the daughter of a fallen traitor. In part, this would depend on whether her loathing of Nicetas was a settled or a brief embitterment.
‘I told you he’s a traitor,’ she said. ‘And I know exactly what I’m saying. I stood outside a door left ajar and heard Eunapius assure him it was all in the bag and he didn’t need to lift a finger. That was the same Eunapius I met tonight.’ I leaned forward into the moonlight. She caught the look on my face. ‘The reason I told you yesterday I’d go with you to see Heraclius was so I could tell him the truth about Daddy. You don’t know what he did to Mummy,’ she ended.
I thought again. With anyone else but Nicetas, the facts she claimed would have jarred so much with what I’d seen for myself that I’d have to reject her claim. But it was easy to believe that Nicetas was half inclined to go along with a plot someone had brought
him, and also willing to fit himself round the established order. One moment he’d be fantasising about tying me to the rack, another begging favours off me for his poet.
‘Didn’t you notice that Theodore is sweet on you?’ I asked, changing the subject. I’d have to think this through. Nicetas wouldn’t think to come knocking on my door for ages, if at all. In the meantime, Samo could outdo himself with keeping Antony as my guest.
She ignored the question. ‘That wasn’t a woman who interrupted things, was it?’ she asked.
I stared ahead at the moonlit view I had of lower Constantinople. ‘Does cross-dressing offend you?’ I asked with a smile.
Antonia fell silent. ‘Will you stop being angry with me if I tell you that I saw Simon again this evening?’ she asked. ‘I can prove everything I’ve told you.’
I took my arm away and looked at her. ‘If you’ve wasted any more time than it’s taken to tell me this,’ I said sharply, ‘I shall be very angry indeed. Will you share the details with me?’
She did share them and did it rather better than she had the previous day. Once into the courtyard of her father’s palace, she’d heard men talking and taken shelter behind some roses. She’d heard Eunapius let out a cry of alarm and had looked out to see him with Simon. She’d been too wrapped up in keeping her scared breathing under control to overhear all that was said. But she had heard Simon announce a meeting for the eighth hour of this night.
The Curse of Babylon Page 25