The guard looked at the satchel I had about my neck. Someone behind me coughed loudly. Someone else began a jingling of coins in his hand that could have only one meaning. He looked at me again. ‘You can go in,’ he said, now back in Greek. ‘Captain Silenus is at the top of the main staircase. Make your way straight to him. Don’t go near the private quarters. We’ve had orders to kill on sight.’
‘My own quarters are this way,’ Antonia whispered. She pointed at a door that, flush against the wall, was the same colour as the wall. She stood before it and was about to rap against it with her knuckles. ‘Daddy has a eunuch on guard there at all times,’ she explained.
Leander got in before me. ‘Please, My Lady,’ he begged, ‘don’t tell anyone. Aren’t we in enough danger?’
She pulled her hood back and frowned. ‘You always were a wet blanket, Leander,’ she snapped. ‘Why don’t you just go off to bed?’ Though still barely above a whisper, her voice was loud enough to set up a sibilant echo in the big hall.
‘You can put that fucking hood back on,’ I snarled in Latin. I’d shown a most remarkable restraint in not stripping her naked before the statue of Cicero and slapping her arse till she cried – not, I might add, that she would have cried. Not having any obvious alternative in mind, I’d let her change clothes with Rado, and given him a direct order to wait for us near the secret entrance to the Great Sewer. He’d nearly boiled over with anger at the order, and I’d been sorry to see him go. I’d then let her tag along on an adventure that I was too proud to explain had no specific purpose. But I’d not stand by and let her queen it over the palace eunuchs. Even if, in my present mood, it was only so I could knock her about afterwards, I wanted the two of us to stay alive.
‘I was only going to . . .’ She fell silent before I could step on one of her feet. Drifting from one of the state rooms it had been Antonia’s idea to avoid was the unmistakable whine of Eunapius in rattled mood.
His voice was overlain by one of Timothy’s contemptuous laughs. Eunapius waited for this to finish. ‘So why didn’t you try persuading him?’ he asked with a show of defiance.
‘Never mind drinking, dear boy,’ Timothy said in a whisper that carried all the way to us. ‘You won’t get a horse to water if you can’t first flog it to its feet. I’m going home, to think what to do next.’ He stopped a few inches short of coming through the door. I could see the shadow of his bulk cast by the bright mass of candles within the room. ‘Whatever I do, Eunapius, will not involve you. Take it as friendly advice or as a threat. But, when I have made such arrangements as I must, I shall not be grateful for the efforts you made to entice me and my friends into this dangerous apology for a plot.’ He turned and continued into the hall where, for want of anywhere to hide, the three of us were trying to look inconspicuous.
‘Ah, Leander!’ Timothy cried, spreading his arms in satirical good humour. ‘Barely one moment ago, the Lord Nicetas was lamenting your absence – and here you now are!’ He twisted his face into a polite smile. ‘Was the catapult attack a disaster, or only an embarrassing failure?’
‘Forty people died, My Lord – mostly in the panic,’ said Leander. ‘However, I am assured another try will be made in the morning.’ He looked at me from the corner of his eyes. ‘I was told the Lord Alaric would be pulled dead or alive from the rubble of his stinking lair.’
‘Dead would be some consolation for all the trouble he’s caused us!’ Timothy snorted. ‘His capacity for staying alive has disordered every plan in sight.’ He walked over to a big mirror that was hung against the marbled walls. He arranged his wig and pulled at his baggy features. He looked at me and sniffed appreciatively. I’d managed, in the Great Sewer, to avoid treading in the yard thickness of its various deposits. Without the ventilation of the outside breeze, though, its miasma was spreading about me again like an invisible fog. ‘I don’t care what anyone says,’ he muttered to his own reflection. ‘The Intelligence Bureau must have got wind of this plot. Now it’s plain there will be no change of Emperor, it’s a matter of hours before the agents come off the fence.’ He turned away from the mirror. ‘I’m out of this plot and glad of it,’ he said with loud finality. He made for what I supposed would be one of the side entrances. Stopping this side of a big doorway, he turned and looked back at us. ‘Eunapius,’ he called softly, ‘I’ll make myself plain to you. The next time we meet must be in an interrogation cell without a shorthand clerk. I can’t have you denouncing me to Heraclius. Your good friend Simon has a ship ready in one of the coastal harbours. Why don’t you just sail off in it and throw yourself on Shahin’s mercy? One way or the other, you’re taking the whole blame for this when Heraclius gets back. You might as well give yourself some chance of staying alive. Yes, go and see Shahin. The Persians can be most hospitable – even to those who have only tried to do them a service.’ He laughed grimly and continued into the next big room.
Eunapius dropped into a padded chair beside the mirror. ‘Oh Jesus, what am I to do?’ he called in soft despair. ‘I’m a dead man after tonight.’ He buried his face in his hands. ‘He’s right about the Intelligence Bureau. I’ll be arrested at dawn.’ Antonia turned her hooded face in my direction. I shook my head. When you don’t know where to go next, best stand still. Eunapius sat upright. With most of his face powder transferred to his hands, he looked much older, and the twitching of his jaw muscles was fully evident. He stared at Leander. ‘You do know that the young shit got a message to Heraclius before we sealed him in that fortress he took from old Priscus?’ he asked bitterly. Leander bowed silently. Safe inside my hood, I smiled. Anyone with an ounce of intelligence would have set pickets at all the city gates. I’d been worrying about that for days. Any moment, I’d been expecting to see the messenger’s head sent over one of the balconies by a slingshot. Well, the idiots had let him go. By now, even Heraclius would have finished with dithering. He would be assembling every regiment within a three-day march from the City. He’d be preparing letters of instruction and reassurance for the provincial authorities. In the next few days, he’d turn up outside the walls. No one would slam the gates in his face for the sake of Nicetas. Because I’d discovered the plot, I could probably insist on due process for the plotters. That would allow me to watch the executions with an easy mind. Also, a month of trials could be made to produce a wider benefit.
How did Eunapius know any of this? From Nicetas, I could have no doubt. Perhaps a stern message had already arrived from Cyzicus. You didn’t need that to set Nicetas into one of his fits of total immobility – but it might have helped.
Suddenly, Eunapius jumped to his feet. ‘Leander,’ he said urgently, ‘Nicetas listens to you. He respects your – your genius.’ He took hold of Leander’s arm. ‘You speak to him. You were there. You’ve seen the catapult. We just need a morning bombardment and Nicetas can be Emperor. It’s the barbarian who’s in our way. Without him, everyone will gather round Nicetas. But he’s got to give the order for attack. You’ve got to speak to him!’
There was a sound of boots coming down stairs. ‘What’s all this fucking noise?’ someone asked in a vaguely military voice. ‘Doesn’t no one go to bed in this place?’ That was a nuisance. I’d been speculating on the benefits to be had from pulling Eunapius into a darkish corner for a few pointed questions, followed by a visit to Nicetas. The dark head looking over the balustrade told me to keep my mouth shut. Good advice! I was winning. It might be for the best simply to go home and wait.
Eunapius hurried past me into full sight of the bleary guard. ‘His Magnificence has asked us to wait outside a while,’ he said with a stab at firmness. ‘You may return to your place of supervisory inspection.’ With a laughed obscenity and a scraping of feet, the guard tramped off out of sight and hearing.
Eunapius turned back to Leander. ‘Come on,’ he said. He moved towards the room filled with candles. ‘We can grab him before he falls asleep in his chair. We’ll have him all to ourselves.’ He took Leander’s hand in his and stepped
through the doorway. Since he hadn’t told us otherwise, I followed. I didn’t look round but had no doubt Antonia was close behind me.
On entering the palace, we’d skirted the areas I knew from my own visits. But, passing through empty, though vast and brilliantly lighted rooms, I could sense we were making our way towards the recital room. Sure enough, we reached the far end of a gallery filled with more art than I’d thought had survived from ancient times, to hear a muffled sound of drums and flutes on the other side of the door.
Uncertain again, Eunapius stopped. ‘Try to look confident,’ he whispered to Leander. For the first time, he turned to me. ‘He was complaining about his legs when we left him. There’s water and bandages in the usual place.’
Chapter 47
Upright in his chair, Nicetas opened his eyes. He focused on the three of us and reached for his walking stick. ‘I sent you away, Eunapius,’ he said wearily. ‘I said you had failed me and that I wouldn’t receive you again. Why are you back so soon?’
Antonia moved two paces to the left. She might have done this to let Nicetas see there were four of us. It also served, though, to block my view of one of the best dildo dances I’d seen outside a brothel. Stark naked, her father’s black girls weren’t at all put out by the lateness of the hour, or by their master’s lack of attention. I allowed myself one final look at the glistening, upturned breasts of the girl nearest to me, and turned my head back to the overdressed invalid for whom they’d been kept out of bed.
Eunapius poked Leander in the back. ‘Come on!’ he hissed, not moving his lips. The poet stepped forward and bowed with his arms stretched out. ‘I bring news of our preparations for the final assault,’ he began in a voice loaded with dramatic potential.
Nicetas paid him no attention. ‘There is a letter from my Imperial cousin,’ he said, still weary. He gripped harder on his stick and pointed me towards a silver side table. I bowed and walked slowly across the room. Formal communications from the Emperor were written in gold on a purple background. This was a personal note. The parchment sheet was folded in three and it wouldn’t do for me to be seen looking at it. One glance at Nicetas was enough to guess the generality of its contents. Never cheerful, he now radiated dejection. I carried the letter back and presented it with a low bow. Nicetas didn’t move. ‘I have been dismissed as Regent,’ he said after a long silence. ‘The Patriarch is appointed in my place and Alaric in his place till he gets back from Nicaea. Alaric has full authority to take such steps for the security of the Empire as he may think just and expedient.’
Behind me, I heard Eunapius fall to the floor. I suppressed my own desire to throw off this smelly outer robe and join the girls in a performance of the high step. With shaking hands, I put the letter on a spare footstool and cancelled the nap I’d had in mind for when I got home. The morning would be spent more productively getting Theodore to help write out six dozen arrest warrants and a terrifying proclamation. I’d drifted in with no idea what actions I could take to justify this entire digression from the work of buggering the catapult. But just standing about and looking nondescript had done enough for me so far.
Nicetas lifted his stick again and prodded me in the stomach. ‘Must I suffer all night without the ministrations of Holy Mother Church?’ he asked peevishly. Eunapius had said the bandages and water were in ‘the usual place.’ Search me where that might be. But Nicetas prodded me again and pointed a wavering finger at a polished chest beside the window. I bowed and went over to it. No bandages inside, unless I was supposed to tear up the cotton towels folded in a neat heap. I’d seen enough of Nicetas, though, to know the use of the other things I found. I gave the bowl and water jug to Antonia. The other things I carried back myself.
Leander started again in a voice too loud to shake. ‘The foul and bestial barbarian trembles behind his shattered walls. The renewed bombardment at dawn will cast down those walls as if they surrounded the city of Jericho. Then the Roman People will stream through the breach and find him wherever he takes cover. Was it not Sophocles who said that every barbarian excretes in his moment of death from every orifice?’
It was actually Callisthenes – but never mind that. While the poet’s voice rose to a squawk of enthusiasm, I set about my own work. My stomach had been turned any number of times by the sight, and the smell, of those inflamed legs. I’d never had cause to touch them. I undid the lower bandages and kept myself from puking by thoughts of my proclamation. I knelt back and allowed Antonia to do the washing. Trying to recall how I’d seen it done, I poured oil into a silver bowl and mixed in a double handful of something dark that had the consistency of roughly ground charcoal. I rubbed some of this between both hands, before starting work on the ankles.
With a long gasp of pain, Nicetas got me a sharp blow of his stick on my upper back. ‘Not so hard!’ he cried. ‘I’m not yet in Hell! The sacred earth from Sinai calls for only the lightest touch.’ He fell back again and groaned. I felt him scrabble for something. The crackle of parchment told me he was reading his cousin’s letter again.
Behind me, the door opened. ‘I thought you’d still be awake!’ Timothy said in his official voice. The door closed with a soft click, and there was the sound of leather soles on marble. Nicetas struggled to sit up again. With desperate urgency, he pushed the letter into my face. I turned to Antonia. But she was kneeling too far away to take it. He poked the letter inside my hood. I twisted my face this way and that, till the folded sheet was against the back of my neck. Assuming it said what I’d been told, it might come in handy once I was out of here. There was no certainty Heraclius had bothered writing to Sergius or me directly.
‘I said I’d give you till noon,’ Timothy said. ‘Bearing all things in mind, I’m having the mob cleared away as soon as there’s enough light for my men.’
‘So why have you come to tell me of your betrayal?’ Nicetas whined.
Timothy laughed. ‘Not out of politeness, you can be sure! What I want from you, my jumped up little provincial, is the names of your ringleaders among the mob. If you have any trace of common sense, you’ll agree on the value of having every last one of them hanging from the city walls. Even with Heraclius running the Intelligence Bureau, there are some kinds of evidence you don’t leave lying about. When our Lord and Master gets back, we need the past day to look as much as possible like a spontaneous collapse of order. The only alternative is for you to carry the whole blame.’
Nicetas hit me again with his stick. ‘But keeping order is your job,’ he whined. ‘You can’t shuffle the responsibility for that on to me. It was you who let the mob gather outside Alaric’s palace.’
Timothy laughed again, now with an unpleasantness that reminded me of Priscus. ‘Oh, I’ve got a signed note from silly Eunapius here, telling me to stand everyone down. I may get the sack for taking this as a direct order from you. But I’m presently only interested in keeping the head on my shoulders.’ I heard Eunapius scramble to his knees and begin a sobbing excuse – a piss-poor excuse, I’ll tell you it was: that sort of instruction he should have gone off to deliver in person.
Nicetas suddenly drew his legs back. ‘What are you doing?’ he asked me. In answer, I held up one of the maggots I’d been picking off his raw, ulcerated flesh. ‘You must never do that!’ he cried in horror. ‘Let them feast on what God has given them.’ There was no answer to that. I stared silently down at the heap of squashed bodies. Nicetas dragged his legs further under the chair. He poked me sharply in the chest. ‘Who are you?’ he asked angrily. ‘I don’t remember seeing you before.’ In Latin, he let out a brief apology to God. He looked at me again. He raised his stick as if to hit me across my face. He checked himself, but opened his mouth and drew a long and ragged breath. I hadn’t seen any guards on my way in. But who could say how many there were outside the main door to the room? Timothy was here. He’d surely have come with a file of prefecture guards to keep him safe.
But it was Leander to the rescue. ‘I can feel the Muse abo
ut to come upon me!’ he cried in what was supposed to be a thrilling descent. He clapped his hands together. The soft and wailing music that had never so far let up came to an abrupt end. I heard the rustle of clothing and the soft patter of his feet as he wheeled about in his poetic manner. Then:
O golden youth, this day
By seven and thirty summers blessed,
That only joyful thoughts we pray
Shall animate thy breast.
Who cares for Alexander?
Pelopidas who knows?
Than thee a manlier commander
Who shall dare propose?
This day, O splendid, golden youth,
By seven and thirty summers blessed,
Those who love thee know in truth
Of all days is the happiest.
Leander fell silent in a completely silent room. I watched Antonia’s shoulders tremble in one of her quiet laughing fits. Unfair, I thought – this had been one of his better productions. No one else moved. Nicetas was first to speak. ‘Bravo, my Poet!’ he cried. ‘Though my birthday is still four months away, was ever such a gift made by a poet to his patron?’ Timothy cleared his throat. But Nicetas wasn’t finished. ‘Leander, I say as a man famed for both learning and taste, that no poet, ancient or modern, has approached you in genius of inspiration or elegance of style.’ He reached once more for his stick, but this time missed it. With a sigh, he waited for it to stop its loud rolling across the floor. With another sigh, he pulled his left leg forward, then his right. ‘If only, my dearest friend, you would work miracles other than with words. Our heads sit so weakly on our shoulders.’
The Curse of Babylon Page 34