The Curse of Babylon

by Richard Blake

  Antonia changed the subject. ‘So this is it?’ she asked, nodding at the cup. ‘This is the Horn of Babylon that Daddy wants so he can give it to Shahin?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said briskly. Antonia had brought Theodore back to what few senses he had. I was glad of that, but didn’t wish to dwell on the force of personality this had taken. The cup was much easier to discuss. ‘I’ve been wondering if the wording is some elaborate modern code. Apart from recent cleaning, though, it’s unquestionably ancient.’ I put it down before her. ‘I’ve cleaned it again,’ I explained. ‘It had none of the usual signs of poison. It’s quite safe to touch.’

  She frowned and sat back. ‘Do you really think that,’ she asked. She ignored the impatient face I pulled. ‘I heard what Eunapius explained last night. Don’t forget too that I was there when your eunuchs set hands on it. Neither was killed by poison. Perhaps they temporarily drained its power. Perhaps it likes you. But can’t you at least see how evil it looks?’

  Time to show who was the master, I decided. ‘Antonia,’ I said, ‘this is a piece of metal shaped by men whose bodies had crumbled to dust before the Jews built Jerusalem. Whatever harm it can do is purely in the mind of anyone who believes in it.’

  ‘Oh, believe what you will,’ she said quickly. ‘But lock it away. You mustn’t let Daddy or the Persians take it from you.’ We could agree on that. I lifted the cup and saw how it glittered in the sunlight. When enough people share them, imaginary terrors become real. We couldn’t have this carried into battle against us. Our armies were demoralised as it was. I went back to my earlier thoughts of mint value. Assuming five pounds of reasonably pure metal, the cup would make about four hundred of the new coins. That would put an end to all this nonsense. The cash would certainly come in handy. I wiped off my fingerprints with a napkin and put the thing back into its box. I put the lid on roughly where it had been levered away by the Master of the Timings. But that gave the whole thing a tatty appearance. I took the lid off again and dropped it into one of the trays on my desk.

  I changed the subject. ‘You did know that your father had promised you to Eunapius?’ I asked. She thought, then nodded. That explained the risk she’d run in getting me to take her along to the recital. She wanted a look at her intended one. If he’d been younger or less nauseous to look at, would she have sided so decisively with me? I put the thought aside. Unlike her father, Antonia knew when to keep her options open and when to stand by her choices.

  She was looking at the cup again. On its bed of silk padding, it was beginning to remind me of a body in an unsealed coffin. I picked up the box and locked it away in the secret cupboard. I glanced out of the window. It would be a late dinner. ‘Get Theodore from the chapel,’ I said. ‘He’ll take you to the dining room. I’ll join you there with a full explanation of the past few days. Before then, there are one or two matters that need my attention.’ The excuse I gave for this was a look at the five baskets of documents the clerks had dumped beside my desk.

  Chapter 40

  Hands behind my back, I stared down at Priscus. ‘You swore blind you wouldn’t shit on me again,’ I shouted. I dropped my voice. We were a long way from the inhabited areas of the palace and the walls were thick, but I brought my voice under control. ‘I was a fool to believe you.’

  Priscus twisted again on his filthy mattress and laughed into his pillow. ‘But Alaric, my dearest young stunner,’ he croaked, half triumphant, half desperate not to give way to open, mocking laughter, ‘it was a harmless deception – and do try to see how well it’s turning out. I watched you earlier in loving mood with your intended. Just think what joys I’ve brought into your life, even if they were unintended.’

  Not moving, I hardened my face. ‘I could have been killed a dozen times over,’ I said. I realised too late how pompous I must be looking. I shut my eyes and let out a long breath. ‘You could have let me in on your plot,’ I said. Too late again, I realised how feeble that sounded.

  He rolled over on his back. ‘Don’t be silly, Alaric!’ he laughed. ‘I knew you could deal with poor Shahin. You hardly stayed on his ship long enough to digest your dinner. As for last night, I did intend warning you but I decided at the last moment to trust in your unfailing luck. The girl overheard enough. No need for Uncle Priscus to join in the fun. And you did have the cup on your side.’

  Breathing heavily, I glowered at the grinning skeleton before me. ‘I see you now admit to knowing all about the cup,’ I said darkly. ‘So let’s try for a little frankness. You heard about the Eunapius conspiracy on one of your night walks through the City. Instead of bringing word of it to me, you went and stole the cup. You stuffed it inside the main gate, then let word get back to Simon that I had it. I suppose I should thank you for getting word to Shahin to come and save me from Simon.’

  Priscus sat up and reached for a mirror. He rubbed at the lines on his face. ‘You must believe me for once,’ he said with an earnest turn, ‘that I do have your welfare in mind. Can we speak frankly about the cup? It really is what everyone says it is. It’s not supposed to do anything nasty for seven days. But you have been touching it with your bare hands. No one outside the initiated has ever done that before. God knows what you’ve set in motion.’

  I fished about in a pile of clothes for the baggy tunic he wore when there was no chance he’d leave the palace. How could he make these rooms so untidy? No – how could he make them so dirty? I had five trusted slaves dancing attendance on him. Doubtless, he liked to keep these attic quarters in much the same state as the whole palace had been when I first moved in. But he might have had some regard for the poor bloody slaves I’d given him. I checked myself. Talk about regard . . .

  He staggered to his feet and took the tunic from my outstretched hand. ‘Will your face go any redder if I continue talking about the supernatural?’ he asked with a turn to the serious. I said nothing. ‘You will have it your way, Alaric,’ he sighed. ‘Be a love, then, and tell me if you can see a bottle of green fluid. Until you can find us a new compounder, I plan to be more economical than I’ve become.’ Turning, he nearly kicked over a full chamber pot.

  I sat down on the one chair that wasn’t heaped with soiled undergarments. ‘It was you who killed the man I found in the side street,’ I said. ‘And, since you knew what he was looking for, why did you treat that intruder so cruelly?’

  He shrugged and pulled the seal off a small ceramic wine vat. He looked at the dark fluid. He took a swig from it and smacked his lips. ‘This is good stuff,’ he said. ‘I hope you can find more of it.’ He passed it to me. It was good wine. And I’d been privately blaming Samo for depleting my stock of it. ‘The man in the street had been trying to kill me and was able to tell me something useful before he died. The man I put under your bed was your freedman. He had certain duties to you that a few gold coins didn’t abolish. You’ll be a proper fool if you weep for him.’

  He held out his hand for me to give the wine back. ‘Yes, I did set things up. As with all good conspiracies, some things I carefully planned, others I left to chance. I got wind of Shahin’s dealing with Eunapius and, through him, with Nicetas. At first, I thought I’d only caught Nicetas in the little web I spun. I would eventually have brought him to you without much fuss. It was when I saw how Timothy and all the others were getting sucked in that I set properly to work. I had to use you to bring things on from treasonable talk to treasonable action. But it’s done, and my advice is to hurry off to Cyzicus with the neatest discovery of a plot even I can remember. I may not be able to share your glory when Heraclius comes back breathing fire. But I’ll revel in your description of the trials.’

  ‘You did all this to get even,’ I pressed on. ‘These were the men who gloried in your fall. Stuffing them was to be the “final achievement” you’ve been wittering about for years. I don’t know how you did it without showing yourself but I’ll never believe Timothy would turn spontaneously to treason. It’s all a massive work of entrapment.’ I took another mouthf
ul of wine and gave Priscus the rest to finish. I began to see his side of things. I began to see my own as it might appear to a reasonable man. So what if Priscus had found some way of acting out of sight as an agent of provocation? He deserved his revenge. And I’d now have a clear run with Heraclius. There’d be no more obstructions in the Imperial Council. There’d be no more Timothy, dripping poison in every ear he approached. Eunapius no longer counted. Nicetas would be lucky if he only got a room in the Fortified Monastery.

  ‘All’s well that ends well, dear boy,’ Priscus said with another smack of his lips. ‘I don’t need to spell out every step of my twisting way, nor every benefit that will flow from it. Just rejoice that we’ve won. Yes, rejoice – simply rejoice. And get rid of that fucking cup. It’s done everything it was supposed to. Reseal the box and give it to Heraclius when you see him in Cyzicus. He’s a miserable sod anyway. He’d only notice the improvement in his public fortunes.’

  I helped Priscus pull the tunic over his head. I watched him fiddle with the cord that held it about his waist. At last, he got his fingers working and tied it in a loose bow. ‘What will you do with Theodore?’ he asked. ‘Don’t answer me back if I say you’ve been a crap adoptive father. Something like this was waiting to happen.’

  I stood up. ‘I’ve decided to withdraw my objection to his studying at the monastic school in Chalcedon,’ I said stiffly. ‘I’ll arrange for him to go across to the Asiatic shore the moment it’s safe for anyone to leave the palace.’

  ‘A wise choice,’ he tittered. ‘He’d be wasted in any other occupation. Besides, you wouldn’t want him to hang around and spoil your new and happy life. The next time I pray, I’ll make sure to ask that she doesn’t start looking like her father when she grows old.’

  I picked my way over to the window and drew up the blind. The sun had already vanished behind one of the higher neighbouring buildings. I frowned. What hours he kept were his business but, when I was in a better temper, I’d ask Priscus if it wasn’t time for a change of name and particularly of address. By all accounts, the small property I’d recently acquired in Crete was just the place for a man’s retirement from active life. Sun, sand, sea, anonymity – and as much papyrus as anyone could need for his long-delayed memoirs. Now he’d done everything he wanted with his life, what more could Priscus need?

  Though long after darkness had fallen, dinner was better than I deserved it to be. ‘I wish you both every possible happiness,’ Theodore had said twice. He was a rotten liar, both on principle and from inexperience. He’d kissed Antonia and called her Mother, and the three of us had drunk together from the same cup. Otherwise, I’d filled up what might otherwise have been long silences with a coherent and reasonably full account of all that had happened since Monday. No mention of Priscus, to be sure. No more than I absolutely needed about the cup, either.

  ‘The Emperor should be back within the next ten days,’ I’d ended. ‘Until then, we are all of us still in danger. I have already instructed my own revenue officials to stop and search every ship within a fifty mile radius of Constantinople, and to stop and search every person entering or leaving the City. I will order greater vigilance tomorrow morning. This will reduce the possibility of contact between Shahin and the conspirators. Speaking of the conspirators, I don’t think, after what happened at last night’s recital, they will attempt a revolution. They can no longer be certain that Nicetas would accept the Purple if it were offered. No one but a fool would put Timothy forward as Emperor. The only way out of the equilibrium that currently exists is for the conspirators to lay hands on the Horn of Babylon. There might be a direct assault on our gates by a mob of the poor. However, beneath its elegant façade, this palace is effectively a fortress. Properly defended, it could hold out against a regular army. That leaves subterfuge. None of us must go out into the City. None but my usual clerks will be allowed to enter, and they will be searched on entry and kept to the public areas.

  ‘We are like a man swimming under water to avoid a barricade,’ I’d ended with a smile. ‘We can see the final length. So long as we keep our nerve and avoid useless movements, the air we’ve taken in should carry us forward to safety. But none of us must leave these walls. If either of you see anyone or anything out of the ordinary, you must bring it at once to my attention.

  ‘Do you understand?’

  So the dinner had ended.

  Afterwards, I went up alone to the palace roof. The street lighting still at full burn, Constantinople was a cheerful sight. I stood for a long time looking west, to where the blackness started beyond the land walls. Beyond that grim and battle-scarred line, the Empire shaded imperceptibly into the world of barbarism. Bearing in mind all that had happened in the past three centuries, Constantine’s choice of the new Imperial City had been inspired. His establishment of the Christian Faith may or may not have been a mistake. His hope that it would open an age of peace and external security had been falsified by events. But you couldn’t fault his choice of Byzantium. The New Rome had now survived the Old by two centuries. So long as that held itself together, the barbarians could dash themselves against its walls as that fly had against the oiled parchment. We’d hold off the Avars and the Slavs and all the others until better days came and we could restore the Danube frontier.

  If I turned and walked across the roof, I’d be able to look out across the equal darkness of the sea. Somewhere out on that was Shahin, waiting his chance. How to chase the Persians off was a matter no one discussed except in vague generalities. Chased off they would be, however. If no one else could, I’d see to that. I’d lead no charge in any victorious battle. But I knew how to see to it that, in the long slogging match this war had become, it would be the Persians whose strength gave out first. Whether or not we found ourselves a decent general, Chosroes would be the first to run out of money, and his whole rickety empire would promptly implode. We’d do it with sound money and balanced finances, and a population that looked to the Empire as the least bad alternative in a world of generally shitty choices.

  All this we could do so long as Constantinople itself held fast. And it would hold fast, so long as I held this palace. We were about to see if the confidence Priscus had always shown in his grandfather’s lavish spending on brick and iron was justified.

  Chapter 41

  ‘Thank the Senator Eunapius for his most helpful suggestion,’ I said. ‘However, the purity of the new coins has been announced in public and more than half the first issue has been minted. Remind him of the Emperor’s speech to the Senate on how the Empire has long benefited from a stable medium of gold exchange, and of how the time is come to let the common people enjoy the benefits of a stable medium of silver.’ I paused and, putting up a hand for shade, opened my eyes. ‘There’s no need to show me the finished letter. But do send a copy to the Lord Nicetas. Instruct the messenger to read all of it. Tell him to read it louder if His Lordship appears to fall asleep.’

  The clerk finished scratching on the soft wax and bowed. Trying not to leave a stain on it, I picked up the sheet of very expensive parchment that Eunapius had covered with his idiot suggestions. Sending out the coins with a copper core, I ask you! But why bother writing at all? Had the plot finally crumbled? If so, did those behind it think I knew nothing and that they could go back to troublemaking as usual? Or was I supposed to think everything was normal? I looked harder at the neat writing. What I’d assumed, when it was read out, was a long grammatical mistake turned out to be a kind of elegiac couplet. I’d taken it for granted Eunapius was still working for Nicetas. Was this evidence he was working with Nicetas?

  Hard to say. I tossed the unrolled sheet at the nearest clerk. It was an official communication and would have to go in the archives. A shame, this. Gone at with a sponge dipped in vinegar, it could have been made almost as good as new.

  I sat up and stared at my legs. Might they be turning red in the sun? Glaucus had insisted on a proper tan – ‘Real men don’t hide from the sun,’ he’d sai
d the previous morning. ‘They rejoice in bodies the colour of polished wood.’ The men he’d had in mind, I hadn’t dared answer, weren’t northern settlers born in Kent. Was I now overdoing it? I wondered. I noticed the clerks were all staring at me with close attention. I stretched both arms and yawned. Too many questions for this heat. I pointed at another of the clerks. This was one who looked as if he was in urgent need of a piss. Best to see what he’d brought over from the Treasury.

  Antonia came into the garden, Eboric prancing beside her with a sunshade. ‘Alaric, I need to speak with you,’ she said in Latin. Annoyed, I got up and watched the clerks part for her to come forward. Though, as agreed, she was wearing men’s clothes, you’d need to be blind to overlook her actual sex. From their deferential bowing, the clerks knew rather more about her than that. Our upper bodies stretched forward and met in a kiss that avoided any contamination of her clothes by the oil and sweat that ran down my body. Someone began wiping my back with a towel. Wincing, I took it from him and wiped my face. That was hurting as well.

  I clapped my hands for attention. ‘Gentlemen,’ I said, ‘you are all excused for one quarter hour of the sundial.’ I moved to a stone bench and took the cover off a jug of cooled fruit juice. It was only Saturday. Just two entire days had passed since making our commitment. It felt like a year. It also felt as if we were meeting for the first time.

  But I’d show I was still master in my own house. ‘You could have worn something baggier on your chest,’ I said once we were alone.

  She smiled and shrugged. ‘I’ve had a letter from Daddy,’ she said. ‘It’s all out in the open.’ She waved a large sheet of papyrus under my nose. The few lines of writing it carried looked like the production of an angry child. ‘He wants me home at once.’ She smiled again and stood back. ‘As for clothing, shouldn’t you put some on?’ Before I could reach forward to take it, she dropped the sheet on the ground and wiped it underfoot.