Priscus sat down again. He sipped delicately at his wine. ‘Did you ever watch a man broken on the wheel?’ he asked. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve had that pleasure. Even old Phocas had limits to what he’d let me do in public. But I’ve seen it done quite often by the Avars when they want to make an example of one of their prisoners. It’s ever so cheap and simple, you see. Even barbarians can’t mess it up.’ He got up, wine cup still in his hand. He walked slowly over to the wheel. ‘See these straps here?’ he asked. ‘The purpose is to spread you naked on the wheel, arms and legs apart. Once you’re in place, that drunken ox of a freedman will take up the hammer that you should be able to see just beside the wheel. He’ll start by smashing your ankles – one or two blows on the bones of greatest sensitivity. If that doesn’t loosen your tongue, he’ll move to your wrists, and then your knees and elbows. Your hips and shoulders will be the final horror.
‘And, Eunapius, don’t suppose it will be other than horrible. Forget burning alive, or hooked gloves, or even the bite of a starved hyena. Breaking on the wheel produces the most staggering and continuous pain. And you might last for days down here in the darkness. So long as the barbarian doesn’t break the skin, your limbs will swell up like inflated bladders and you’ll keep enough blood elsewhere to stay alive. I remember one time – it was during the great siege of Mantella, you know – when the Avars somehow laid hands on my commanding officer. Using a screen of women and children to put our archers off, they broke him a hundred yards outside the city wall.’ Priscus paused for dramatic effect. He drank more wine. ‘In no time at all, I saw a battle-hardened veteran turned into a sort of huge screaming puppet writhing in rivulets of blood – a puppet with four tentacles, like a sea monster, of raw, slimy and shapeless flesh mixed up with splinters of smashed bones. He was luckier than you’ll be: he lost enough blood to die before the afternoon was out.’ He stopped again for wine and burst into helpless giggles.
He controlled himself. ‘Don’t force me to do that to you,’ Priscus urged. ‘Why not make it easy for yourself and answer dearest Alaric’s questions. He won’t let me hurt you after that.’
The threat was enough. Between screams of terror and more farting, out rolled the details of Shahin’s plan. In the brief intervals of silence, I heard the steady scratching of Leander’s reed pen on papyrus. Before the confession was over, he’d filled one sheet and was halfway down another.
‘Anything more to add?’ Priscus asked after it was over.
‘Don’t hurt me – please!’ Eunapius sobbed.
Priscus laughed. ‘I promised our fastidious young Light from the West that I’d lay hands on you only when all else had failed. You must appreciate, however, that your last chance of really civilised treatment vanished when he called me in. You told me yourself that I was dead. We can’t have anyone around to disabuse the world of that belief – can we, now?’ He got up again, a lead cosh in his hand. One blow to the right temple and Eunapius sagged dead in Samo’s arms. He dropped to the floor and lay with his eyes still glittering in the lamplight.
Priscus turned in my direction. ‘I know I’ve often disgusted you, dear boy,’ he said with a smirk that cracked the lead on his face. ‘But how was that for interrogation?’ He bowed and put his cosh away.
I shrugged. ‘He could have avoided this,’ I said evenly. Treading carefully to avoid the patches of damp filth, I went and looked down at the body. I turned to Samo. ‘Have it dumped in one of the flower beds down the road,’ I said. ‘Complain to the Prefecture tomorrow about the unfinished work of collection.’ Samo grinned and nodded. He took the cup of wine Priscus had poured for him. They shook hands and stood together to admire their work.
I sniffed at a scented napkin and told myself again that all this could have been avoided. It was true. But you have to see things as they really are. I hadn’t laid a finger on Eunapius. Even so, I’d killed him in cold blood. Had the end justified the means?
‘He was telling the truth?’ I asked.
Priscus laughed. ‘I expected better from you than that, dear boy,’ he said. He poured more wine for himself and gave the jug to Samo to finish. He sat once more in his crumbling chair. ‘He told us everything that could have been learned by making a window into his soul. Whether this accords with the true state of affairs depends on whether Shahin took him fully into his confidence – and, of course, on what Shahin himself was told.’
He finished his wine and reached inside his cloak for one of his powders. I waited for him to come back to order. ‘Alaric,’ he started in a less patronising voice, ‘I know your view of torture is that it’s a game between two demented beasts – between one who enjoys inflicting pain and another who’ll say anything to stop the pain. But it’s far more sophisticated than that. Unless he’s thick, a torturer soon gets a nose for the truth. You should think about that the next time you plague Heraclius with your ideas of abolishing the rack.’
He sniffed, then blew his nose. He stared at the remains of the powder he’d put up his nose. ‘Yes, dearest Alaric, what Eunapius told us was the truth to the best of his knowledge. It’s up to you to find if he was told the truth, or if the plans have been changed in the light of circumstances.
‘But do accept, my dear, it’s useless knowledge. Though you’ve learned it’s the Larydia Pass they’re headed for, you still can’t outrun Shahin. I repeat that you’ll only get lost in the mountains trying. And, if you do catch up with him, how do you expect to surprise him with the three dozen armed men he’s got with him? Give up on it, my dearest. Take my word for it about Antonia and come upstairs. We can start thinking of your report to Heraclius.’
I said nothing. He frowned. ‘Then you’re throwing away another fine opportunity,’ he sighed. ‘I thought you’d learned something from that brave but lunatic mission to Ctesiphon. It was only Nicetas then who wormed his way between you and the Emperor. This time, you may not be so lucky.’ His voice turned cold and thoughtful. ‘But we have unfinished business, don’t you agree?’ He turned a predatory stare on Leander. ‘Dead men don’t walk. If they do, none must see them.’ He repeated himself in Latin for Samo’s benefit. They laughed softly together.
I didn’t look round, but I heard Leander fall to his knees on the cellar floor.
I stopped by the statue of Cicero and breathed in the fresh night air. Leander caught up with me. ‘You didn’t need to take me home, My Lord,’ he wheezed. Knowing my face was in the shadow of the moon, I smiled. His hands fluttered close by my sleeve. He thought better of catching hold. ‘Would My Lord like me to return to Egypt?’ he asked. ‘I could leave tomorrow. I could take ship to Cyprus and pick up another ship from there. I wouldn’t stop in Alexandria. I’d go to Antinoopolis. I’d – I’d . . .’ He trailed off into scared silence. I could hear the continual questioning in his voice. The Lord Alaric had saved him from Priscus and the wheel. Had that been simply to save the trouble of ridding the palace of two corpses? How safe was he out here in the street, with me in arms beside him?
I took a deep breath. The wreckage of the dawn had mostly been cleared away. Old Simeon might, at this moment, be in the Prefecture, raising hands in prayer over his dead son. These few hundred yards along the Triumphal Way, though, and I could almost tell myself nothing awful had happened.
I reached inside my night cloak. ‘Here is your patent, Leander,’ I said gently. ‘Present it during the day to the Treasury Chief Clerk. After that, you need to go on the first day of every quarter to the Payment Office. There, you’ll collect thirty solidi, or their equivalent in silver if gold is in short supply.’
He cleared his throat to speak. I put my hand on his shoulder. ‘I told you I keep promises,’ I said. ‘I only reserve the right to vary them upwards. Now, I’ll not go in with you. Nicetas might be awake in his chair and I don’t fancy another meeting with him.’
I didn’t look left, though I thought I’d seen a shadow flitting about in the darkness. I raised my voice. ‘I don’t think I need remind you
of the need to keep your mouth shut for the rest of your life. But I will advise you never to go out again at night.’
‘What have you done with the boy Theodore?’ he asked with a sudden change of subject.
I smiled again. ‘The last time I looked in on him, he was praying in the chapel,’ I said. I thought of our only conversation that day. ‘Beat me – kill me – burn me alive,’ he’d wailed, slapping more salt into the open wounds left by the trampling of the crowd. I’d sent him away with frigid kindness. Perhaps I should have thrashed him with the scourge he’d made for himself. After all, the worst punishments are often those you heap on yourself.
I took a step forward. ‘I’m leaving the City at noon tomorrow,’ I said. ‘I may be gone some time. Please make sure to report everything said and done by Nicetas to John of Ragusa. You’ll find his office in the building that sits above the entrance to the spice market. Don’t be put off when, on your first visit, you’re told he doesn’t exist.’
Chapter 52
Rado leaned forward on his horse. ‘Is your arse hurting again, Master?’ he asked. I pretended not to hear him. Instead, I took advantage of the stop to look again at the dreary expanse of hills and ridges and mountains and valleys that surrounded us on every side. He waited until it was plain I’d not reply. ‘You shouldn’t hold the reins so tight, Master,’ he added.
I put aside the groans of agony now coming from every muscle between my toes and my jaw. ‘You’re a free man, Rado,’ I said. ‘It’s no longer appropriate to call me “Master”. You may call me “My Lord” or use my personal name, as the preference takes you.’ I tried to sound cheerful. ‘You might even call me “Father”.’
Not answering, he gave his horse the slightest flick of his unspurred ankle and moved forward as if the two of them were a single being. He stopped at the edge of the ravine. He looked down several thousand feet into a bank of white mist. If this was the one we’d been skirting most of the afternoon, there was a meandering stream beyond the mist. In the spring, it would be swollen to a surging torrent.
I gave up on the pretence that this was other than a stop for my benefit and climbed stiffly down from the saddle. My horse was probably more relieved than I was. He didn’t collapse into a heap of unconsolable helplessness. Rado looked politely ahead. ‘The pass we want is between those two mountains over there,’ he said. I followed his pointed finger to a blur that may have been twenty miles away or may have been a hundred – if I knew how high we were above sea level, I’d be able to calculate the distance to the horizon. Without numbers to put through the formula, I might as well have been blind. Rado pointed again and drew a path in the air. How he could see two mountains there, or know what sort of pass ran between them, were questions I chose not to ask.
My own silence continued till it bordered on the embarrassing. ‘There really are no mountains in England?’ he asked once more.
‘Just hills,’ I repeated. Could I get away with implying that I’d spent my own barbarian childhood riding up and down them? I still hadn’t said that the hills of Kent were nothing like these wild crags that, except for the peaks looming far above them, I’d have called mountains. For the first time ever, I thought nostalgically of hills covered in bouncy turf, and valleys dense with oak and birch and chestnut. I shifted my sore bottom a few inches to a patch of what counted here for grass. ‘Mine is a rather settled race,’ I said in the best careless tone I could manage – ‘farmers mostly. Before then, we invaded by sea.’
He nodded. It was an answer that recovered me some status. Unlike him, I’d not spent the whole wild dash from the Senatorial Dock to Trebizond rolling about my cabin in a pool of sick. Oh, I’d been His Magnificence the Lord Senator until Rado had chosen these scrawny horses in preference to the much finer beasts on offer. And I’d kept up much of the pretence right till the moment he’d seen a path invisible to me, and taken us off the lovely road that led inland via Pylae. Twelve days later, and a boy who’d never quite learned to dance for me in Constantinople was maturing, almost as I watched him, into something not always likeable but always admirable. Old Glaucus had complained about his narrow focus in the gymnasium. I could see now that this wasn’t a fault: it was Rado. I’d told him we needed to move fast. And fast, therefore, we’d moved. Every time I showed I was getting used to the pace he’d set on horseback, the pace would be increased. We had, in twelve days, covered a distance on my map I’d never have thought possible. The steadily increasing speed Rado had maintained was remarkable – so, too, his granite certainty, from moment to moment, of exactly where we were. It didn’t seem to matter that he’d grown up a thousand miles to the west, and was as new to these mountains as I was. If my backside was hurting more than at any time since I’d taken my first steps in Latin, who was I to complain?
Water flask in hand, Rado slid down beside me. I let him straighten and massage my legs as if I’d been Nicetas in one of his more helpless moods. ‘It’s a bit like where I was a boy,’ he said wistfully. He looked round at the edge of the ravine. ‘My father’s people sweep down from mountains like these to burn or levy tribute on the Greek cities.’ He laughed. ‘I remember how we once took on a whole column of the Emperor’s soldiers, when they marched out from Thebes to force us back to the Danube. We threw big rocks down at them till they were all dead. I don’t think they even saw us!’ He laughed again, now fiercely. Leaving me to drink from the flask, he got up lightly and perched again on the edge of the ravine. If there was room for a bug to crawl between the front of his boot and the edge, I’d have been surprised.
‘Am I a Greek now?’ he asked uncertainly, not looking round.
I took advantage of being unobserved to loosen the collar of my quilted jacket. So high up, the wind was icy. A few moments out of it, and though dipping now towards the western horizon, the sun was hotter than on the coastal plain. I could already feel the sweat running down my chest. Avoiding the sun, I looked up into the astonishing purple of the sky. That alone was enough to set my nose twitching. I looked back at the stony ground. We were thousands of feet above sea level. But the smoothness of the smaller stones put me in mind of the pebbles on Dover beach. That, in turn, put me in mind of Xenophanes and his claim of endless vistas of time preceding the emergence of man. Could it be that thousands – indeed, tens of thousands – of years before, this had been a seabed? How violent must have been whatever earthquakes had brought about the present order of things? And everyone was fighting over a cup that was young by comparison!
Rado hadn’t yet looked round for his answer but I was aware of how long since he’d asked his question. ‘Yes, you are now a Roman Citizen,’ I said. Everything else was beyond me but I could still sound authoritative on the Law of Persons. ‘The normal rule is that no slave freed before he is thirty can become a citizen. Instead, he recovers the nationality of his previous condition. In your case, however, and that of all the other underage slaves I freed, this rule was set aside on my declaration that you had saved my life. In the formal sense, you are no longer a barbarian. I suppose we should be speaking to each other in Latin rather than Slavic. Unless you plan to settle in Africa or Italy, you should also learn some Greek.’
The legal niceties went over his head. Or perhaps they didn’t matter. ‘Samo told me too I’m now your son,’ he said. ‘But my father was put to death when we got taken in the western mountains.’
How to answer that one? Every time you want something fast, you can trust lawyers to take a complex law – rendered more complex by some ‘clarifying’ decree that Heraclius might or might not have published – and make a total balls-up of it. The other manumissions could go through the normal process. Even after backdating the special cases to the day of my Regency, though, I’d been assured adoption was the only way of cutting through the complexities. An hour after registration, you can be sure, the lawyers had dropped in again, carrying enough papyrus rolls to fill a latrine trench, and begged my pardon for getting it wrong. By then, the number of my son
s had expanded irrevocably from two to five – none of them mine other than in the sense prescribed by law.
Thoughts of children actually sired by me brought on another stab of the ache deep within that dwarfed the pain of riding. I closed my eyes and focused on that until it went away. Nothing good came of dwelling on things beyond my knowledge and control. I’d made my plans and I’d carry them through grimly, not flinching though I went to my death. I smiled at the back of Rado’s neck. ‘It’s a formality required by Greek tribal custom,’ I explained. ‘It makes our own relationship somewhat irregular. But you’d soon have been fully grown in any event.’
I was saved the trouble of further explanation by a rattling of hooves on loose stones. Without any other warning, my other new ‘sons’ emerged from what I’d taken for a sheer drop. From the pleased looks they flashed us, they’d been competing again at who could ride fastest without any noise. It was easy to guess that Slavs could move about this sort of terrain like a cat over roof tiles. That’s why I’d brought Rado. If I weren’t so aware of my own failings, I’d have been pleased to be shown again that Lombards were the same.
Jealous, I kicked out at the dead goat Eboric threw at my feet. ‘Where did you get that?’ I asked sharply in Latin.
‘It fell off a rock and died, Master,’ he said with a winning smile. His brother was already dismounted and going at it with a knife. I dropped the pretence of envy posing as anger. Eboric was getting prettier by the day. His brother wasn’t less than easy on the eye. Besides, it would be nice to have something for dinner that didn’t give the four of us a bellyache.
I told myself not to feel – or, failing that, not to show – any pain, and got unsteadily to my feet. I walked over to my horse and took out the big map I’d brought from Constantinople. Rado brushed some dust from a flattish rock and waited for me to unfold the linen sheet. ‘If you’re right,’ I said in Slavic, ‘we must be here.’ I jabbed my finger at one of the stylised blobs that signified a mountain. ‘The village from where the boys stole the goat is probably this one.’ I pointed again. There was no certainty in either claim. The map had been another rush job – superimposing my own drafting office coordinates on a military map was bound to multiply any initial errors. Rado stared intently at what I was sure meant very little to him. He made a casual remark in Latin and looked quickly round to make sure the boys were watching his show of equality with the Great Lord Alaric. Purely for my own benefit, I traced a depressingly long route from where we might have been to another blob. ‘The Larydia Pass will be over here,’ I continued. ‘All this being so, the question is whether we’ve outrun them.’
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