The Curse of Babylon

by Richard Blake

  No one seemed to be looking in my direction. I slithered down again and put my hands on the top level of bricks in the wall and pulled back and forth. No movement. I pulled myself forward and, ignoring the pressure on my sunburn, kept my upper body straight. This gave a better view of things. Because I could see more of it, the crowd seemed much larger. Now its rightmost extremity was in sight, I could see how it was still being joined by newcomers. Right at the back, I could see a couple of closed and unmarked carrying chairs. Most of the crowd wore the dark clothing of the very poor. Here and there, though, were individuals or groups dressed in white. One of these robes was topped by a splash of red hair that could only belong to one of the senior managers in the Food Control Office. ‘A favourite has no friends’ was a saying I’d often had cause to repeat to myself. To be fair, I hadn’t gone out of my way, in the previous few years, to win friends in the administration or among the people at large.

  But my attention was pulled back to the main area before my palace. Big men of the usual type were pushing and threatening to clear two spaces within the crowd about fifty feet apart. In these spaces, high stepladders were being set up.

  I stretched forward still more to see what more was happening. With a slight jolt, the wall moved outwards a little. Scared, I threw myself back and knocked all my breath out on the tiles. I shut my eyes, trying not to remember the terrors of that roof in the poor district. I slid down on to the bubbled lead. I looked at the parapet wall. There was a horizontal crack halfway up its rendering. I pushed gently against it. No more movement. All else forgotten, I looked up at the lovely blue of the afternoon sky. It didn’t matter how rich I’d made myself: the money I spent on maintenance alone for this palace would have made me the richest man in Rome. That took my mind off the sudden death I may just have avoided. I looked again at the wall. Beyond it, all was now silent.

  I picked up the chair I’d brought up with me and carried it along to another part of the wall. Making sure this time not to lean forward, I stood on the chair and looked down. Both ladders were occupied. At the top of each stood a man dressed in white. Their heads looked swollen far beyond any normal variation. I blinked and looked harder. Up here, the sunshine was still pitilessly bright. Far below, it was dappled by increasingly long shadows. One of the men was in shadow, the other half in shadow. Before I could focus properly, though, I had my answer. The man nearest me let out a loud and inarticulate buzzing. He reached up and tapped at his head. Leaning forward so he didn’t lose balance, he put up his other hand and pushed at his face. They were wearing the masks actors used in the Circus when they had to stand away from the permanent amplifying walls.

  ‘Will you now share my own judgement, Alexius?’ one of those bastard seditionaries cried in a voice that boomed and echoed about the confined space. He took both hands from the rail at the top of his ladder and stretched them cautiously in the direction of my palace. The movement pushed his amplifying mask out of its correct position against his face, and what he said next was a muffled shout. Buggery things to use, these masks. Worn properly, they could project a voice to the back rows in the Circus. You could sometimes hear the voices if you looked out from the top windows in the Great Church. But it was a matter of getting exactly the right distance between a wearer’s face and the mask’s inner wall. I think that’s one reason why, even without masks, actors don’t look round by turning their necks, but twist their whole upper bodies – it’s the long training, you see, to keep a mask in the right place.

  Alexius was having better luck. Then again, the natural sound of his own voice indicated some prior training. A failed actor, perhaps? ‘Oh, my oldest and dearest friend, Constans,’ he cried with perfect clarity, ‘I freely admit that I was too indulgent in my opinion of the young barbarian. I never supposed he would go so far as to abduct the pure and beauteous daughter of our most beloved Commander of the East.’

  That, and the resulting shouts of anger from the crowd, gave Constans time to put his mask right. ‘I freely pardon you,’ he said, no longer needing to raise his voice above the conversational. ‘How could a man of your inborn goodness imagine the depths of infamy to which Alaric the Degraded has finally sunk? Indeed, who could imagine that the sweet and virginal daughter of the Lord Nicetas could be snatched, even by the Persians, from her monastery, and be carried off to shriek and twist in such lascivious embraces?’ He stopped for breath, then: ‘Oh, but I can shut my eyes and see her now. I see her penetrated again and again by the stinking meat that swings between those barbarian thighs. I see a tongue that is filthy from lies and blasphemies, thrust into secret places that the very angels in Heaven do not permit themselves to see.’

  His mask went out of position again and his voice trailed off into more buzzing. ‘Daddy always did have a theatrical touch,’ Antonia said behind me. I turned and stepped down beside her. She was back in men’s clothing, a short sword strapped about her waist. Sword in hand, Rado stood beside her, looking fierce and protective.

  ‘Is everyone armed downstairs?’ I asked in a voice that was just too high to be commanding. Looking more relaxed than I was feeling, she nodded. I waited for another roar of anger to gather force and die away. ‘It’s about the worst choice your father could have made,’ I said, trying to match her lack of concern. ‘In his place, I’d have used my powers as Regent to deprive Alaric the Degraded of his offices. I’d then have sent the Prefect with a unit of the city guard to demand entry. Better still, I’d have made a better try at negotiating. Instead, we have an apparently spontaneous riot in the making that may easily run out of control. Whether or not this hails Nicetas as Emperor, it won’t break in here, and I imagine every property owner in the City is cursing his name.’

  As if he’d read my thoughts, Alexius was back in action. ‘Why does the Lord Nicetas not take action against this enemy of God and man?’ he asked in a rising tone of question. ‘Why does he not declare Alaric a traitor and an outlaw? Why is it for us, the Roman People, to cry aloud for justice.’

  ‘You surely forget, Alexius,’ Constans replied, ‘that Nicetas has no power to remove from office those appointed by the Emperor. Whom an emperor has appointed only an emperor can remove.’ That was an odd view of the law but it got a predictable if ragged cry of ‘Nicetas to the Purple! Down with Heraclius!’ I got on the chair again and looked over the wall. Someone at the bottom of his ladder was waving frantically up at Constans. He’d gone beyond his brief. Not caring how he wobbled, he raised his arms for silence. ‘The very furniture in that palace is of gold and silver,’ he improvised. ‘Every room is stuffed with silk and other precious fabrics. The slaves Alaric has about him are of surpassing beauty and all are gagging for the touch of our clean-limbed Romans. Everything within those walls has been taken from our mouths and the mouths of our children. Why do we wait outside this house of our treasures?’

  That got everyone off the subject of who should be Emperor. I watched the great, enraged mass of the poor surge forward. Every gate was protected by its portcullis. The beating of many wooden clubs against the bronze sheeting of the normal gates was loud but ineffectual. The gap about his ladder closed up, Alexius swayed and wobbled. He slid to the ground just in time for his ladder to go over and be swallowed in the swirling crowd. I didn’t need to walk round to see what was happening against the other walls of the palace. The noise alone told me we were under attack on every side.

  ‘All is in order up here,’ I said to Rado. ‘I appoint you commander of everyone not guarding the balconies. Form them into a mobile force, ready to give support wherever needed.’ He puffed his chest out and gave a lovely smile. Antonia nodded her agreement, and he hurried from the roof.

  She watched him go. ‘I’m not marrying you for them,’ she said, leaning close to me. ‘But I was wrong about your slaves. I do like them a lot. I’m surprised Daddy wasn’t murdered by his long ago.’

  I thought of the look on Rado’s face. ‘They like you as well,’ I said. I was glad at once t
here was too much noise for me to be heard. I was jealous of poor Theodore. I was jealous of my slaves. If I wasn’t careful – and if I survived – I’d turn into a proper bastard.

  I think I was heard. Antonia smiled. ‘Unlike Eboric, I’d not call Rado talkative,’ she said. ‘But I know he worships you. Never mind going to bed with you – he’d cut off his right hand if you asked.’

  I thought. I felt a surge of pity, then of tenderness that ended in guilt. ‘I’ll never ask for that,’ I said firmly. ‘But it may be time for promotions within the household. Let’s see how the boy does with his mobile force.’

  Antonia was looking at my stained tunic. She looked away and walked back to the exit from the roof. She waited for the noise to go into one of its rhythmical low points. ‘I heard all that talk of fucking and sucking,’ she said. ‘Will you be appalled if I say that my secret places hunger for the meat between your thighs?’ In the clothes she’d put on, she did look decidedly lush. ‘I promise not to scratch your sunburn,’ she added.

  ‘Don’t worry about that,’ I said thickly. ‘Do keep the sword on as well.’

  Together, we went down into the dark interior of the building. The roar of the crowd faded as we reached the bottom of the staircase from the roof. It was replaced by the endless crash and its echoes of the assault on the main gate.

  Chapter 43

  Not caring if she was naked, Antonia leaned over the balcony and spat at the smashed bodies of the men I’d sent to their deaths. It was hard to recognise the demure being I’d rescued from the poor district in the Jezebel soaking up the groans of the crowd. I bent and finished pulling the grappling hook free of the baluster. I’d not throw it on the heads far below – that would only get it reused. I placed it carefully on a rush mat. Even if not dropped on it, iron can do horrid things to marble. I stood up and, to a gathering roar of disapproval, put my arm about Antonia and tried to lead her away from the edge. ‘I don’t think it’s wise to show yourself in this manner,’ I shouted in her ear.

  ‘Wave the knife at them,’ I saw her lips describe. ‘Show how you killed a whole stinking rope of them.’ She turned her radiant and almost orgasmic face downwards again. She stretched forward over the balcony. I don’t think she noticed the arrow that missed us but split on contact with the stonework barely a couple of feet to our left. The mob was drifting back to its favourite chant of ‘Kill! Kill! Kill! Kill!’ The dozen bodies had already been taken up and were being passed overhead to the far side of the Triumphal Way. Men were reaching up to dip napkins in the blood. Monks danced about with upraised arms. The dead aside, everyone down there was having a decidedly good time. The sudden roar of triumphant hatred was evidence of that. It drowned out the chanting. It even covered the renewed battering of long poles on the gates.

  Someone poked me hesitantly in the small of my back. I turned. It was young Eboric. His normal duties were to look pretty and attend on my various wishes. This afternoon the front of his tunic was covered in a splash of fresh blood – not his, though, I could be sure from the pleased look on his face. ‘Pardon for the disturbance, Sir,’ he piped into my ear. ‘But Samo begs to inform you that he’s cut two ropes they managed to get on the office balcony.’ Fascinated, he stood beside Antonia to look over the balustrade. The crowd was still emptying its lungs up at us and jumping about as if someone had poured itching powder down every single back. He remembered himself and turned back to me. ‘He says I can tell you that I cut the throat of a man who managed to climb over,’ his lips described in Lombardic. ‘Samo threw him over the edge. He left red mist in the air even after he’d burst open on the paving stones.’

  ‘Very good,’ I said, patting the boy on the shoulder. I glanced at him again. It may have been the mood I was in, but Eboric was looking decidedly fanciable. I embraced him and felt a thrill of renewed lust that was checked only by a pursing of Antonia’s lips – and by another arrow: this one still went wide, but embedded itself in one of the wooden beams. I got them both inside and pulled the glazed door partly closed. I looked down at my chest. I was thickly smeared with blood from Eboric’s tunic and this had now imprinted itself over the boy’s lower face. ‘Any casualties on our side?’ I asked in Latin. Eboric shook his head. One of the older slaves had been bruised by a slingshot ball while urinating triumphantly over the balcony. Otherwise, all the dead and injured were on the other side – heavily on the other side, he added to an approving look from Antonia.

  I dabbed at the blood with a dry sponge. I had more luck getting the blood off my knife. ‘Have we used any of the molten lead yet?’ Again, Eboric shook his head. More good news – it would need a mountain of scaffolding to get that off the upper walls. ‘Then it’s the balconies we need to watch – oh, and we need to keep them from starting another fire against the portcullis by the lesser gate.’ I slid my knife into its sheath and tossed it on to the bed, and let the boy set to work on me with a piece of the silk sheet that I’d somehow ripped apart in the long climax of my coupling with Antonia.

  The archers had finished taking up residence atop one of the victory columns and were now shooting volley after volley of arrows at every opening in the upper front wall. Mostly, they were still firing wide. But one of the arrows smashed through the glazed door and whizzed by so close, I felt its displacement of air against my nose. It buried itself noiselessly in the upper bed hangings. If only it wasn’t madness to close the balcony shutters. I took Antonia to one of the far walls. Unless I was a complete duffer in the military arts, nothing could reach us here. I stood beside her and stared at a large plan of the building. ‘There’s an escape tunnel from the lowest level of the cellars,’ I said in Latin. I pointed at a line of coded text on the plan. ‘If they do break in, I want you to take Theodore and Maximin, and all the female slaves and those under age, and make a run for it. I believe the tunnel comes out into the Great Sewer. Get yourselves to the Kontoskalion Harbour and bribe yourselves on to the first ship towards Cyzicus. The rest of us will hold the ground floor, one room at a time.’

  Antonia shook her head. ‘Don’t be silly, Alaric!’ she laughed. ‘Any palace this age that had a flaw in its defences would have been burned long ago.’ She walked back to the middle of the room and let Eboric help pick her clothes up from the floor. ‘I don’t know about you, but that was the fuck of a lifetime with those bearded faces climbing over the ledge.’

  That wasn’t quite how I’d have described it – not, at least, after one of the bastards had nearly skewered me from behind. But I joined her and began untangling my leggings from my inner robe. We were just about decent when Theodore staggered in. Eyes screwed shut, hands over his ears, he danced close to the balcony in full sight of the archers. ‘Has God truly abandoned us?’ he sobbed. He opened his eyes. Suddenly thoughtful, he looked at the torn and crumpled bedclothes.

  Outside, the crowd was settling into one of its silences. Dinner time? When there’s so little real chance of plunder, the poor don’t riot for free. I hurried over and peeped round the corner of the balcony. I was right about the food. Handcarts were being pulled into a big space made against the colonnade. Also, the seditionaries were back. In their speaking masks again, it was hard to see which was which. I wasn’t kept long in suspense.

  ‘I think, dear Alexius, I may have been unjust to the barbarian,’ Constans opened after much buzzing and tapping. ‘It must now be plain to the meanest understanding that the girl is no more than a bitch on heat. It may even be worth asking who seduced whom.’ He stopped and waited for an unenthusiastic laugh to ripple through a crowd that was, for the moment, more given over to being fed than stirred to action.

  ‘Surely the Lord Nicetas is doubly betrayed,’ Alexius replied, unable to keep his voice free of uncertainty. ‘To have his dearest friend shack up with a daughter who’s had enough cock inside her to reach beyond the topmost rung of this ladder is too much for mortal flesh to bear. Overcome by grief, our gallant Commander of the East has retired to the private quarters of his
palace. I am told he looks to the Roman People to secure the justice that a corrupt administration of the law has denied him.’

  His voice trailed suddenly off into a kind of muffled burp. The crowd was otherwise engaged and Alexius looked to the men standing at the foot of his ladder for guidance. One of them shrugged and called up something that I didn’t catch. I leaned against the wall. ‘Corrupt administration of the law,’ he’d said. Did this mean the conspiracy had fallen apart? That was what the evidence suggested. If Timothy was sitting on his hands in the Prefecture, that gave Nicetas a choice between waiting for Heraclius to come back and gambling everything on the mob. Or, since he’d apparently returned to his usual dithering, Eunapius and Simon were trying one last push to save their necks.

  I looked at Eboric. He’d recovered the arrow from the bed hangings and was testing its point against his thumb. ‘Go down and see what Cook is preparing for dinner,’ I said. ‘Tell her we’ll have it in the garden at dusk.’ He bowed and darted out of sight. I looked at Theodore. He’d fallen to his knees and had his arms raised in prayer. ‘I thought I’d given you a Latin exercise to complete,’ I said coldly. ‘Please go back to the library.’ I raised my hand to stop him. I’d specified dinner outside to avoid the reverberant echoes of the pounding on the gates. I didn’t want Theodore wailing like someone on the rack when I finally got myself into the library to oversee the transfer of the most precious volumes to one of the cellars. ‘Correction – go and sit in the garden. The sun is no longer strong enough to burn you.’ I stepped quickly across the killing zone. One of the archers had been waiting, and I saw the blur of his arrow about a foot in front of me. It went straight through the wood of what may have been an original painting from ancient times and buried itself in the plaster of the wall. I tried to look carefree, though the picture had been ruinously expensive. ‘The Lady Antonia and I will spend the time before dinner inspecting the defences.’