The Ghosts of Athens (Aelric)

by Richard Blake

  She had me there. I’d clean forgotten I was unclothed. With a blush and a mumbled apology, I turned and got the sheet unfolded and hastily wrapped about my middle. I was just in time to avoid showing Nature’s inevitable salute. From what I could see of her, the Count’s sister-in-law wasn’t at all bad-looking. About thirty, and with the faintly dark looks of the East, she was the first woman I’d seen since leaving Alexandria. Sveta, of course, didn’t count – nor the elderly cook Priscus had tried to beat. If she’d been a slave, I might have honoured her with a request before setting down to business. But you don’t begin an acquaintance with free women of the higher classes by suggesting a quick jump into bed. On the other hand, she hadn’t squealed and made all the usual fuss. Now, she stood in the still open doorway, plainly inspecting the uncovered upper parts of my body. I was suddenly aware that my last depilation had been in Alexandria. I was showing areas of blond stubble on my chest and lower arms that suggested anything but my exalted station. I resisted the urge to unwrap the sheet and rearrange it in the semblance of what the Greeks had worn in ancient times. Unless I turned round again and showed the comical whiteness of my bottom, it would have revealed my interest far too plainly.

  While I was thinking of anything to say that wasn’t ludicrous, I heard within the room the staccato sound of a child’s coughing. ‘Your child is sick?’ I asked.

  Again, she smiled. She stepped back from the door and motioned me into the room. There was a strong smell of something aromatic in the little brazier that kept the room warm.

  ‘Not my child,’ she said. ‘Not, at least, my own child.’ She led me over to a small bed, where a child was twisting and spluttering in its sleep. ‘My husband left me with a son from his first marriage. I am all the poor child now has.’ She sat down beside the bed and fussed with the blankets. ‘You might say he is all I now have.’ She smiled sadly and stroked the boy’s dark hair. As there was more lightning and I waited for the answering thunder, he groaned and threw off the blanket that had been tucked underneath him.

  I stood back from the bed and looked about the room. Though large, it was plainly furnished. There were some book rolls of the old kind and a box of toys. There were a few unmatched chairs and a table. I took it that this was the child’s room. His stepmother must sleep in the next room. There was another door in the room that probably led through to this.

  ‘There are no slaves to assist?’ I asked.

  Her answer was a shake of the head. It was a final and, so far as I could tell, an entirely reasonable denial. I could see it would be worthless to ask if she’d heard anything in the main block. It was too far away. Plainly, she’d been wholly involved with caring for the sick child.

  ‘The Lord Count has long lamented that his budget leaves him without means to afford such comforts. The household slaves do what they can to help. But they are now assigned to guests of considerably more importance.’ She got up and crossed the room to play with the wick of the single lamp.

  ‘I do most earnestly apologise,’ I said, ‘for disturbing you so late at night. But Nicephorus did give me to understand that we were the only other residents here apart from himself.’ I paused and chose my words. ‘If you will allow me to speak with the Count, I will ask for you and the boy to join us for meals. I’m sure no scandal would be caused. I have no doubt you had the freedom of the residency before we arrived. It would sadden me to think that you were both confined now to these rooms.’

  The woman looked back from attending to the lamp and smiled more brightly. ‘The Lord Count is my only kinsman,’ she said. ‘That does not make him my keeper. I am a widow, and am free to come and go as I please. I have stayed up here only because my presence might have been thought an inconvenience to yourself. And it would please me to be able to eat in comfort.’ She came and stood again beside the bed. ‘I do believe I heard young children crying after you had entered the residency. If so, Theodore would surely delight in their company. He sees no children of his own age. Even much younger children would be a joy for him.’

  I took a few steps backwards in the direction of the door. You can always be sure when you think you fancy someone rotten. You can usually be sure when you think someone fancies you rotten. I was pretty sure on both counts. For the moment, it wouldn’t do to outstay my welcome. Besides, there was something faintly unpleasant about that aromatic smell. There was a hint of beeswax about it, and of something much dryer and sweeter that I couldn’t place. The woman seemed unaware of it. But if it was intended as medicine for young Theodore, she’d long since have grown too used to it to notice the smell.

  I turned various stratagems over in my mind. ‘I regret that I didn’t catch your name,’ I finally said. There was a very white flash of lightning.

  She laughed, now happily. ‘Then you must forgive my want of manners,’ she said once the thunder had done its work. ‘I am Euphemia, born and married in Tarsus, widowed in Hierapolis, now transplanted to Athens.’

  ‘Then, My Lady Euphemia,’ I said with a bow, ‘I am delighted to make your acquaintance.’ Without bothering to die away, the storm seemed now to have stopped. I could hear the rain, no longer driven by wind, pattering gently on the window panes. A perfectly irrelevant thought crossed my mind. That disembodied voice in my dream had addressed me not in Greek, nor even in Latin, but in English. How very peculiar!

  Chapter 18

  The storm really had ended, and ended as abruptly as a water jet is turned off. Now, as I went back through those desolate rooms, the clouds vanished and the still and silvery light of a fullish moon streamed through every window. Now in what would, but for the continued splashing of water from a dozen entry points overhead, have been complete silence, I padded over floors of various covering. The relative silence and the new patterns of light and shadow made it seem I was in a different place entirely. The family mural shone with a brightness that bleached all colour from the faces. Except for the outstretched right arm, Demosthenes stood in darkness. Every statue that remained and every moulding on the ceilings and walls threw still and impenetrable shadows.

  I felt comfortable only when back in the library. I’d left the lamps burning away, and these, plus the light of the moon, showed the room to better effect – and to worse. I’d been right about the glass bricks of the dome. They gave the ceiling a greenish translucency. Though still not enough for easy reading, the combined light allowed me to see still more books. They lay in abandoned jumbles beside the racks that had once housed them, and in untidy piles against the far wall.

  It was now that I saw the remains of a small bonfire in the middle of the room. It wasn’t worth asking how I’d missed it before. As said, the light was completely different. I picked up a chair leg and poked the embers. They were long since cooled, and all covered in dust. In better light, I could have tried looking at the charred scraps of writing surface to see what had given such offence. But I really couldn’t be bothered. It was enough to wonder if there’d once been a riot in the building. That would explain the chaos in the library.

  I went back to the table and sat down again. The pages of Gregory of Nyassa shone an unearthly pale in the moonlight, the ink showing a kind of red that it would never possess in normal light. I pushed the heavy volume to the other side of the table and waited for the cloud of dust I’d thrown up to settle. Theology was the last thing on my mind at that moment. I was thinking hard of Euphemia. Watching her bob up and down in that tight robe, all loving concern for the sick child, had set off any number of pleasing reflections. I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to think of something else. I only saw Euphemia more clearly. No effort of will could shut off the slow removal of clothing and the look of cool desire on her face. I opened my eyes and tried to focus on the bust of Polybius. He sneered back at me to no effect. I leaned forward and tried to look at Gregory. The tiny writing danced and wavered and blurred to bars of blood redness.

  ‘No,’ I croaked, ‘no, not here!’ But I was already lost. As if I were wa
tching someone else, I wriggled myself into a comfortable position within the cushions that padded the chair. I raised my legs and reached about until my feet made contact with the inner legs of the table. I pushed hard. The table was too heavy to move from its spot, but the chair moved back a couple of feet until it made contact with the window seat. Now trembling, I squeezed one of my very firm nipples. From far off beyond the pounding in both ears, I heard a groan of lust. What remained of my willpower gave way entirely, and I could see that wanton and now fully unclothed body as clearly as if it had stood before me. Even as it merged into the naked girl of my dream, horror only added to the arousal.

  Since my intention here is to write a kind of history, I see no value in giving close description to the act of self-pleasuring that followed. Writing about sex of any kind is rather like writing about eating. No matter how skilfully it’s done, it doesn’t make a hungry man full. You do it. You enjoy it. You put it aside. I’ll not deny that I enjoyed myself about as well as anyone could with no assistance but his own hands and a fevered imagination. What little sense of time I’d managed to possess now vanished. In total self-absorption, I sprawled for what may have been an age in that chair. At last, in full exhaustion, my body chill with sweat, white flashes of ecstasy still going off behind my eyes more intense than any lightning, I slowly untensed and came back into the normal stream of time.

  I opened my eyes. The light was good enough for me to take everything in at once. I doubt if the slight contracting of muscles, to reach for the broken chair leg was even noticed. I relaxed fully and squirmed against the rough cushions. I smiled and reached up to brush a lock of hair from my eyes.

  ‘Hello, Martin,’ I said lazily. ‘Have you shat the bed?’

  Martin swallowed and looked about for words. ‘What are you doing?’ he eventually gasped.

  I laughed softly and lay fully back. ‘Haven’t you ever seen a man having a wank?’ I asked. It was an odd sort of question to ask of a man who’d once, in his days as a slave, been put to work in a brothel. I laughed again and reached for the sheet to wipe away the mess that covered my belly and chest. I did think of making some comment on his early life. But it would have been cruel. I sat up and looked past him. There was a shaft of moonlight coming through the windows. It seemed for a moment that a whole cloud of dust was dancing about within it. But I blinked and looked again. Whatever I thought I’d seen was already fading when I looked. Now, it was gone. I put forefinger and thumb together and noticed how sticky they were. I could almost have done some absent person a favour and glued those papyrus sheets in a loose order. But Martin’s face was now relaxing, and he was looking more his normal self. He’d put on a dressing gown that was far too small for his bulk, and I could see the tangle of what I knew were ginger hairs that covered his lower gut. It required some effort of imagination to see what had once possessed whoever had finally sold him to the Church to set him to work as an object of pleasure. It was an effort of imagination I didn’t currently feel inclined to make.

  ‘But why are you here?’ I asked. There was a dull and pleasurable ache in every muscle. If Martin hadn’t been scowling at me from across the table, I might have set about myself again to settle things entirely. Already, though, I was beginning to feel stupid. Giving way like that in an unknown place – even if I had believed I was alone – hadn’t been an entirely sensible act. But it was only Martin. There was no harm done. I looked at the pattern of veins that stood out on my left forearm. The lamps showed the covering of tiny golden hairs, and I was aware again of how uncouth I was beginning to look. Had Euphemia noticed my spot? I wondered. I hoped the light hadn’t been good enough for that.

  ‘I saw the light from downstairs,’ he said. ‘I thought you might be up here to look for something to read.’

  I smiled happily and touched my left nipple. Sure enough, it set off more flashes in my mind. But I sighed and pulled myself fully together. I supposed Sveta really had kicked him out of bed – that, or he’d run away from more of her private nagging about the cobwebs and general absence of comfort. I thought of dinner and saw the pained look on his face. Perhaps he had shat the bed!

  But I was wrong. ‘The storm sent Maximin into one of his crying fits,’ he explained. ‘Sveta kept him from waking everyone with his screams, but she sent me to find you. She thought it would be necessary for you to comfort him back to sleep.’ He broke off and looked nervously about the room. ‘Don’t you think this room has an evil atmosphere?’ he muttered.

  Letting the crumpled sheet drop under the table, I stood up and arched my back. I looked at the wreckage of the library and shrugged. Martin had a talent for reading emotions into arrangements of stone and glass and wood. If he chose to announce this place was evil or friendly or supremely good, that was his affair. I could see that it was a question now of finding something to put on and then going off with him to see if my child was still sobbing disconsolately in Sveta’s arms.

  I took up my lamp and made for the door leading to the staircase. Suddenly, I stopped. I listened hard. Far below, in the main block of the residency, I could hear voices. They were argumentative but too low for me to catch any words. I was about to step forward again, when I heard the scrape of sandals on the stairs.

  Normally, I’d have stood there and waited to see who else was wandering about this place in the middle of the night. I might even have learned something. But I was stark naked. Worse than that, I had another stiffy that I didn’t think would go down in time. All that, plus Martin for company, might be made a reason for comment by whoever was coming up the stairs. I put the lamp on one of the window seats and pinched hard on the wick. I hurried back to where Martin was frozen to the spot. I put out his own lamp and took him by the arm and forced him silently over the less crunchy areas of mosaic to where a couple of bookracks had fallen together. If we took refuge here, we’d be out of sight until the library was clear again.

  ‘Oh, get down, you fool!’ I whispered as I pushed hard on the top of Martin’s head. I took a final look across the littered floor of the library to where the moon shone back at me, distorted to twice its normal size by the little panes of window glass. I had an irrelevant thought about what use I might somehow make of glass shaped with better order. Then I heard the renewed sound of much closer voices to my right, and forced myself down into the shadow of those bookracks.

  As I’d already gathered from the voices, it was Nicephorus and someone else. ‘How should I have guessed it would be found – and by the young barbarian?’ that someone else insisted in a tone of finality as he paused just outside the door to the library. ‘Just be thankful it was done in time.’ I heard him walk in and stop. He breathed in and gave a long and satisfied sigh. ‘But I tell you again, My Lord Count, this room is a place of the greatest potency. When, at the beginning of time, Athens was appointed as the centre of the world, two lines of the Primal force were set running through your palace. They meet in this very room. Was it not here that Plato was visited by the spirits that revealed their fundamental wisdom?’ He breathed in again, and now mumbled a few words of gibberish.

  But he took up again. ‘The power invested in this building is enough to contain every evil,’ he said with a thrilling descent. ‘Properly harnessed, it can protect against every evil. And, after this one, I promise, we have just six more nights till the stars are again in their long-awaited place. Then, once more, shall be the time of greatest strength and greatest weakness.’

  I really couldn’t help myself. When a man comes out with this sort of thing in a combination of bad Greek and a fancy accent, how can you not poke your head up for a quick look? I did for just a moment, and then dodged back down to where Martin was twitching and shivering beside me. I’d seen a tallish man – far taller than any of the local people I’d seen that day – probably in late middle age. I think the mop of dark hair beneath his hat was a wig. Under his cloak, he wore a robe of dark linen painted all over with stars and moons and astrological symbols. Besi
de him, silent and looking angry beyond belief, Nicephorus was slowly hopping from one foot to the other.

  ‘You promised he’d never get here,’ Nicephorus now said accusingly. ‘You said the storms you’d raised would sink his ship. Yet here he is, safe under this very roof.’

  I pricked up my ears at this. Martin’s whispered prayer might not reach all the way over to the door, but was getting on my tits. I silenced him with a quick elbow to one of the fleshier parts of his back and listened harder.

  ‘The Great Goddess serves those who are pure of heart,’ the other man replied in a tone of still greater superiority. ‘But who can divine her ultimate purpose? If she has allowed him to survive the perils of the sea, and return to the site of his previous outrages, it is assuredly for a good purpose.’

  Return? I thought. With a stab of disappointment, I realised it was Priscus they were discussing, not me. But never mind this, I told myself. I still might learn something. Even deliberate spying, I knew already, can be a gamble. You often learn nothing at all – what you overhear makes sense only in terms of what you haven’t heard. Sometimes, though, you do get lucky. This might be one of those latter occasions. Already, I gathered that Nicephorus was an accomplice to murder. I’d see what else I could learn.

  I heard the two men walk past me. They continued left until they must have reached the ring of lamps. I looked up again. Yes, they were both by the table. Arms outspread in some gesture of reception as he breathed in the air of this allegedly potent room, the other man had his back to me.

  Nicephorus was looking down at the open book. ‘I want you to make him go away,’ he said, for once managing to sound like the civil and military ruler of Athens. ‘If you have any real powers at all, Balthazar, you must get rid of him!’