I stopped where I could get a proper look at things and lifted my arms in prayer. The most obvious weak point in the catapult was its bowstring – I call it a bowstring, though it wasn’t far off an inch of plaited silk strands. Cut through this and you’d need special machinery to pull the torsion springs back far enough for a replacement to be fitted. This was assuming a replacement could be found. A raking blow with my sword and we could go back to toughing things out till Heraclius chose to grace his capital with his renewed presence.
Now I could be sure there were only three of them, the guards weren’t a problem. The real problem was fleshing out the plan I’d thought over between coughing fits in the Great Sewer. I needed an unhurried go at the bowstring and a safe escape afterwards. How to get that? I glanced under the colonnade. I only saw him because I was looking; but Rado, still as a cat before a mouse hole, was looking back at me. He was expecting something clever.
A voice called out nervously on my left: ‘Has he decided anything yet?’
Leander of Memphis stood with his back to the main source of light. But I could almost hear the cold sweat on his face. ‘I was nearly killed when the night attack went wrong,’ he added, coming forward another step. He lowered his voice. ‘Of course, I’m not scared to die in the service of My Lord.’ He struck a pose and tried for one of his poetic growls. ‘But it’s the lower people, you see – many of them have said they won’t be coming back tomorrow.’
Chapter 45
I stared at Leander. Was this a nuisance? Or was it one of those strokes of luck so great and so bizarre that it’s hard to know what use to make of it. I bowed slightly, wondering how best I could play for time. ‘The Lord Nicetas instructs you to continue about your duties,’ I said in my best Syrian accent. It was just the sort of answer you could expect from Nicetas in an emergency. I watched Leander’s shoulders sag and racked my brains for what to do with him. Enticing him under the colonnade for a quick blow on the head seemed the easiest option but might be a waste of a good opportunity. ‘He wishes to be told, however, why the catapult has not been tried again. Treason has been committed in removing it from the walls. It was not carried here to stand as an ornament.’
‘Oh, but nothing can be done till morning!’ Leander groaned. ‘Didn’t His Lordship get my last message?’ I shook my head. No cause for suspicion here. He knew Nicetas. He dropped the question. He hopped lightly across the last few yards that separated us. ‘The man with the instruction book got frightened when people said they’d hang him,’ he explained. ‘He went home ages ago but said he’d try to understand all the hard sums in his book in time for a morning attack.’
I thought quickly. The plan I’d had in mind was dead. Time to make up another. ‘Let me see the catapult,’ I said, putting a note of involuntary interest into my voice. Leander stepped back and bowed.
I’d known one of the guards was listening to us. He’d been watching me from the moment I stepped out of the shadows. ‘You just keep away from that thing,’ he warned us. ‘You heard the orders.’
Leander took his hat off so he could give a haughty toss of his head. ‘My good man,’ he said, ‘your orders come from a youthful clerk, who takes his orders from me. And I represent the Lord Nicetas. Your new orders are to stand aside and allow your betters to go about their business.’
‘Well, don’t you go messing about with that thing,’ the guard said flatly. ‘It’s done enough harm already.’ He waved at the other two guards. ‘Come on. I don’t fancy being anywhere near if those two jokers let that thing off again.’
I watched the three men shamble towards one of the more distant bonfires. For the first time in two years, I was beginning to see some merit in the New Callimachus. Kissing him was out of the question. But I’d make a point of not killing him unless I really needed to.
Leander climbed up and balanced unsteadily on the catapult’s wooden stock. He pointed at one of the bow arms. ‘It’s really just a big bow,’ he said learnedly. ‘But, when you’re shooting arrows, it’s the bow itself that gives the tension. This is much cleverer. Can you see how its arms are buried in those elaborate twistings? They look like elongated balls of wool, but are many rods of coiled bronze.’ I said nothing but moved closer to the silken cord. The guards were far off, and had their backs to us. Leander’s most likely response when I pulled my sword out would be to shit himself. I wondered again how much noise the torsion springs would make when they snapped back into place. Thanks to Leander, it probably didn’t matter.
He noticed where I was looking, and laughed. He climbed down again beside me. ‘Yes, Father, it is a gigantic bowstring. You put your stone ball in the special pouch woven into its centre. Now, you don’t pull the string back by hand. Instead, you attach it to the hook in this block of wood. This thick rope here pulls the block back. You wind the rope back by turning that big wheel thing.’ He pointed again at the torsion springs. ‘When the bowstring is wound fully back, the wooden arms come back as well, and they pull the bronze twistings back.’ He laughed. ‘You can’t imagine how powerful those twistings are. Four powerful men can’t move one of them even an inch. Winding them back needs two men with wooden levers to pull on the big wheel. When the tension is released, they spring back too fast for the eye to see.’
He paused for breath and struck another pose, this time, pushing his fingers between the strands of the nearest torsion spring. ‘I tell you, Father – and I tell you as a man filled with ancient learning, who helped interpret its instruction book into the common Greek of our own age – this is the ultimate power in the universe!?’
‘My son,’ I said, nearly forgetting to sound foreign, ‘are you not overlooking the power of Him who stands above all earthly powers?’
I was expecting a long whine of piety and a convenient upward glance. Instead, with a sudden lapse into glumness, he sat down on the stock. ‘But is there no one to talk His Lordship into a diplomatic solution?’ he asked. ‘Has he forgotten it’s his own daughter who may be destroyed if the power of this thing is fully unleashed?’ He covered his eyes. ‘I’ve known her since she was just a little girl. Nicetas can’t be serious about giving her up to the mob.’
Eyes still covered, he fell into a fit of horrified sobbing. It was long enough for me to check what I’d briefly felt when stroking the bowstring. Yes – the silk strands were cut at least three-quarters through each side of the central pouch. This wasn’t anything you might expect from clumsy use. Someone had cut it from underneath. Gently, I pushed a fingernail into one of the notches. Perhaps three-quarters through was an understatement. I’d already seen that the torsion springs were set to maximum stretch. Pull it back as far as the first trigger mechanism and the string would certainly fail. Tensed as it presently was, it might go at any moment. I pulled my hand back from the string and stepped away from the machine. Leander was right about the torsion springs. They were enormously powerful. If the bowstring snapped, they’d send its two lengths whipping about like flexible razors. I’d heard of one battlefield accident where an operator’s head had been sliced off.
‘So the assault is to be at dawn?’ I asked.
Leander looked up and spread his hands. ‘I was hoping you would tell me that,’ he said. He covered his eyes again and uttered an almost poetic groan. ‘If we don’t get proper orders soon, even those who bother coming back will only stay for breakfast. I don’t want this thing to be used again. But what are we all to do if the revolution goes out like a lamp exhausted of its oil?’ He put his hands down. ‘Oh, Antonia,’ he sighed, ‘if only, for the first time in your life, you’d done as you were told. You’d soon have got used to Eunapius!’
I stepped further away from the catapult. In his genuine despair, Leander was rocking back and forward on it. I could almost fancy I was looking at the remaining strands as they snapped, one at a time. No point in asking who’d set things up for a catastrophic failure. I turned and stared at the looming mass of my palace. When I got back inside, I’d call him
names for keeping another of its hidden doorways to himself. I’d pointedly not ask how he’d got past the guards. There could be no spoiling his present fun, however. He must be somewhere up on the roof, hugging himself and breathing self-endearments, as he beheld what an utter fool I’d been made to feel. All the way here, I’d been turning over what to say to Antonia when I got back. ‘Wake up, dearest,’ I’d been thinking to call. ‘Don’t worry about the catapult. I’ve just slipped out and disabled it.’ Nonchalance on one side, astonishment on the other – a nice long fuck to keep us happy till dawn, and then a clear view of baffled rage, or even death or dismemberment, brought on by the ever-resourceful as well as beautiful young Alaric. Oh, I’d have Priscus for this!
But it wouldn’t be a wasted journey through the night, I suddenly told myself. I looked again at Leander. ‘Two men travelling together are surely better than one at a time like this,’ I said. ‘Why not come back with me, my son? You could speak the message of peace and diplomacy directly to the Lord Nicetas. Will he not still be awake? Does he not hang on your every word?’
‘He did tell me to stay put and wait for instructions,’ came the hesitant reply. Leander looked about at what little there was to see in the gloom of the Triumphal Way. ‘And the important men about him won’t like anything that sounds like a compromise. But I can’t say I like it out here all alone. Some of these people have rough ways.’ He brightened. ‘And, if you don’t like the idea of going back alone, I suppose I could come with you as protection. A man of the church shouldn’t be expected to risk himself alone in these streets. You never know what might happen on a night like this.’
‘Indeed, my son,’ I said. Unmoving in the darkness, Rado hadn’t enough Greek to follow the discussion. I’d have to trust him to guess what I was about and play along.
I didn’t fancy stepping any closer to the catapult. Leander had stopped rocking back and forth on it, but was now kicking his heels against the stock. I stretched out my arm. ‘Come with me, my son,’ I said. ‘All that can be done in this place you have done well.’ I waited for the faint look of doubt to vanish from his face. There was a five-foot space behind the statue of Cicero. Any vagrants sleeping there could be sent packing with a few coppers.
I shuffled into a more comfortable spot on the ledge and leaned back against the chilly bronze. ‘I won’t tell you again,’ I said. ‘If you don’t keep your voice down, my friend will have no choice but to cut your throat.’
The light here was just good enough for me to see Leander run his fingers again through his hair. ‘But you’re mad,’ he said, now in soft panic. He’d tried that argument already, without effect. He cast round for another. ‘How do you know I won’t betray you the moment we’re in the palace?’
Good point – though also easily answered. ‘The young man with the hood still over his face knows who you are and what you look like. All you know about him is that he’s rather big and has a talent for holding a knife to your throat. Aside from him, my household is filled with slaves and freedmen I’ve always treated well and who have more than a certain regard for me. This, I hope you’ll agree, makes for an imbalance of power you should keep continually in mind. If anything happens to me, you’ll be dead meat the moment you show yourself in public.’
I put a smile into my voice. ‘Now, let me go over again what I’ve told you. This time, if you don’t keep begging for mercy, you might understand it.’ I waited for him to finish slobbering more wine from his flask. Scaring him was easy – and there would be more of that to come. But I really needed him at least minimally on side.
‘The City mob doesn’t count,’ I said, starting over. ‘Your boss can’t be Emperor. The Army wouldn’t hear of it. He won’t carry the respectable classes after a night like this. Unless someone brings him round before it’s too late, he’ll be nursing two blinded eyes in the Fortified Monastery, and his poet will get all the blame for sending him as mad as everyone thinks he must be. That means you, Leander. Even if Heraclius is tender to his cousin, he’ll think nothing of having you racked to death, or torn apart by hyenas in the Circus. We are talking about high treason, after all.’
I waited for him to stop farting. I’d applied the stick. Time, now he was on the verge of moral collapse, to show the carrot. ‘Leander, there is, in one of my filing boxes, a sealed patent granting you a position in the bureaucracy. It’s worth forty seven solidi a year. You can rent a small house on that and keep two slaves. I’ve added a variation that gives you this by right, not at will. Once published, only an emperor will be able to cancel the appointment.’ I waited for this to sink in. ‘Is it your highest ambition to spend the rest of his life spraying flattery at Nicetas? He’s not exactly an ideal patron.’
Leander put both hands on his belly and leaned forward. I thought he was about to vomit. Instead, he was crying. ‘How do I know you’ll keep your word?’ he sobbed.
Another easy one to answer. ‘I have a reputation for honesty and fair dealing,’ I said. I stood up and moved away from Leander. He was deep in shadow but had the best sight of me a waxing moon allowed. ‘This is a reputation that brings many advantages. Why should I risk it on doing you over? Oh, I may, now and again, wriggle out of big promises. But I can always find a convincing excuse for that. And it’s against a deep background of promises to people like you that I never break.’ I waited for the logic of my case to seep into his mind. ‘So, I put it to you, Leander: I’m your best chance of staying alive and of making it to a security that few poets achieve. Will you get me in front of Nicetas?’
He kept his head almost between his knees. But I could tell from the way he breathed that Alaric the Golden-Tongued – Alaric, who could make the worse appear the better reason: Alaric, who was presently telling the truth – had made the necessary conquest. Search me what I was to tell Nicetas when, like Cleopatra from her carpet, I appeared before him. But neither of the main alternatives to talking sense into the fool was greatly to my convenience. Now he was my prospective father-in-law, watching him dragged off to the Fortified Monastery had lost all its old charm. And, if one of them had just been put out of action, there were over a hundred other catapults that could be unbolted from the city walls.
I reached out to Leander. ‘Put your hand in mine,’ I said softly. ‘Get me to Nicetas. I’ll do the rest. Do this for yourself – and for Antonia.’
Something metallic scraped against the street side of the statue. This was followed by a light patter of feet. I pushed Rado back. ‘No, stay here with the little Greek,’ I murmured. Sword in hand, I darted out of cover.
The street was empty – rather, it had been almost empty. In the moment before it disappeared, though, I’d seen enough of the flutter of dark cloth against the darker shadow of the far colonnade.
I took a deep breath. I shut off the approach of a rage darker than the shadow of the colonnade. ‘I won’t ask you to explain yourself,’ I said in Latin. ‘But you can come out of hiding.’ How she’d made it this far in life might be used as a minor proof of God’s existence.
Chapter 46
Though it was well past the midnight hour, the square in which Nicetas had his palace was brightly lit. Two huge torches burned above the main entrance. Armed men stood beneath, stopping and mostly turning back the flow of visitors. Right in the middle of the square, a gang of drunken proles was raucously hailing Nicetas as the new Emperor. As yet, no one took notice of them. Leander hurried us past the line of well-dressed supplicants and seemed about to avoid the guards altogether.
Not quite. ‘Here, mate, where do you think you’re going?’ The guard stepped backwards through the gateway and leaned his right arm against the wall. He drummed the fingers of his left hand on his breastplate.
It was Leander’s turn to step backwards. He pressed shaking hands against his thighs and tried for an easy smile. ‘I am Court Poet to His Magnificence the Commander of the East,’ he squeaked. ‘If you send for your superior officer, he will readily confirm that I am not to b
e delayed as I go about my Master’s business.’
The guard’s answer was to hawk and spit, his gob just missing Leander’s feet. He turned his attention to me. ‘Big for a monk, aren’t we?’ he asked. He stood on tiptoe and peered suspiciously into what I hoped was the darkness within my hood. One hand raised to pull at the hood and he’d have been dead before he hit the ground. I’d have been halfway to the Central Milestone, with Antonia pulled along behind me, before the other guards could check that he was dead.
I kept my arms folded inside the long sleeves of my robe. ‘I am Father Gregory,’ I said in my Syrian accent. ‘The Lordship’s poet has brought us through all the danger of the streets on a mission of great importance.’ I bowed respectfully, shuffling forward an inch to finish the work of concealing Antonia.
Still looking closely at me, the guard took his arm from against the wall. It might have been a friendly action. Just as likely, it allowed him all the quicker to go for his sword. ‘Where are you from?’ he asked in Syriac. ‘The Lord Nicetas has his own spiritual advisers in residence. Why does anyone need more than that?’
He was lighter than most Syrians and his Greek was completely idiomatic. He’d taken me by surprise. But I bowed again. ‘From Edessa, my son,’ I answered in his own language. I’d been there more than once. I could describe its sights well enough for anyone who wasn’t a native. It was where I’d learned my Syriac. I tightened my grip on the short sword I was pressing with my right hand against my left forearm. ‘We were asked to send holy oil from the lamp that burns before the relics of Saint Aerumenus the Merciful.’
The Curse of Babylon Page 33