The Ghosts of Athens (Aelric)

by Richard Blake

  ‘Then come back with me,’ I pleaded. ‘I left Martin with his wife. She’ll keep him for ages yet.’ I stretched out imploring arms.

  Euphemia stared back at me in the fading light. She pursed her lips and tried to look away.

  ‘Oh, come on,’ I urged. ‘There’s nothing like a bit of killing to get the amorous propensities going. Just a quickie before dinner – you surely can’t deny me that.’

  Nor could she. Nor did she. The question I found myself asking afterwards, as she whimpered softly in my bed and I splashed cold water over my body, was not whether but how I’d manage to take her with me back to Constantinople.

  Chapter 37

  Miracles of the Christian Faith usually astonish most when heard at fourth hand. What a little gold can do anyone may see for himself. We’d begun the day with an empty kitchen and a dining hall probably not used since the accession of Phocas the Unmentionable. Well before the coming of darkness, my new and reasonably clean and attentive slaves had begun serving a dinner that would never have passed in Constantinople, but that no one else could have despised. In one respect, it was an improvement. Because this was a partly ecclesiastical function, we could do without dining couches. Instead, I could sit at the head of an open square of tables arranged as Nature and Scripture agreed was most fitting for human convenience.

  I waited for the Bishop of Athens to finish a very queer sermon on the text ‘If I find in Sodom fifty righteous within the city, then I will spare all the place for their sakes.’ As he finally came to a close, and sat down with a look about him as queer as his sermon and a tight clutch at a jewelled relic case, I let a couple of slaves lift my chair a foot back from the table and stood up. There was a massive scraping of chairs and grunting as a hundred diners got to their own feet and went into a long and respectful bow. I motioned with my arms for everyone to be seated – this really wasn’t Constantinople, and the niceties could be overlooked – and stared round the table at which I had to sit, and at the two long tables that ran at right angles along the length of what had once been a magnificent room, and that was now respectably clean.

  ‘Most learned and reverend Fathers of the Universal Church,’ I began, ‘O men of Athens.’ I’d been working on this speech between bouts of frenzied copulation. It can best be described as a kind of warmed-over Demosthenes, with long allusions to Scripture and the Fathers. It rolled out with an appearance of unprepared fluency, and my only need to think was in choosing where to stop for Martin to put it into Latin for the sake of the Western delegates. It allowed me, while on my feet, to have a good look at everyone. The Athenians were easy. Most of them were town assemblymen, and I’d seen them shuffling twice about Nicephorus. The others I had no idea about – Martin had got all the names out of Nicephorus on our second day – but they looked of much the same quality. Their Greek was better than that of the lower classes, though I soon realised that my speech was still somewhat above their understanding. Nodding in what they thought the appropriate places, they stared back at me with the tight, sweating faces of provincial tradesmen whose uppermost thought is to worry that I might take it into my head to notice their fine clothes and sound the fiscal equivalent of the Last Trump. If any of them might wonder, or might know, the whereabouts of their Count, no one had commented on his absence from the seat beside mine, and I’d not trouble myself with commenting.

  The clerics were a different matter. Again, Martin had got their names out of Nicephorus. Comparing that list with the one supplied from Constantinople showed a few and sometimes odd alterations. But the world is a big place. People die, or move on. Others come to notice. Overall, though, much as I hated the flabby eunuch, the correspondence of the names on both lists showed a very brisk efficiency in Ludinus – all the more admirable, given how quickly the council had been arranged. What struck me most on looking about, however, was what a strange gathering they were. It’s one thing to look at names on a list, and when you have other things uppermost in your mind. It’s another to look at actual faces. I’d been calling these people the ‘best minds’ of the Church and trying to believe it. Some of them were remarkably fine theologians: when they did speak as one, it might well be for the Church as a whole. What bound the Greeks most together, though, was that they were nearly all prize troublemakers of one kind or another. Simeon – well, Simeon was Simeon. But Ajax, deacon in the Metropolitan Church of Aphrodisias; Soterius, thrice enthroned and twice removed Bishop of Nicopolis; Creon, Bishop of Saranta; and so on and so forth: this was as rich a cast of nit-picking fanatics, drunks, fornicators, office-peddlers and general villains as could ever be assembled.

  As for the Westerners, I knew very few of them even by name. But the Dispensator was enough trouble in himself for the lot of them. Ludinus was too far away to be pulling any actual strings. But it wasn’t hard to imagine how he’d be sniggering every night into his pillows as he thought of the mob he’d called together for me to try somehow to whip into the right order. Yes, intellectually – and, where not that, socially – this was the Church in miniature. But what I’d thought the previous day about herding cats would apply in force to this lot.

  I ended with a fancy peroration cribbed from a speech I’d written for the Emperor at a banquet in honour of the goldsmiths of Constantinople, and sat down to a few desultory acclamations. ‘I want beer,’ I muttered in Slavic to one of my attendants. ‘Bring it in the biggest cup the Lady Irene can find.’

  I held up my hands for wiping by the slave who stood behind me, and smiled at the Dispensator. I’d had Simeon placed on my left, with Priscus next to him. It was turning out rather convenient that neither Simeon nor the Dispensator spoke a language the other could understand, and that, with no interpreters present, all conversation had to pass through me. In the intervals of a long and mind-rottingly dull argument with his cousin about a stolen pomegranate when they were at school together, Simeon had tried a few stilted pleasantries with the Dispensator. I’d touched these up in Latin till they could have served as the flattery of someone fishing for a legacy.

  The wine was still putrid – better had been located, though not in time for the lees to settle – but, if they had spoiled the grain harvest, the endless rains of summer had given us a fine choice of fruit juices in which to dissolve whatever drugs took most fancy. I waited for the slave to finish with my hands, and reached for my cup of honeyed melon pulp.

  ‘It is often sad news that friends must exchange after so long apart,’ I said in what might have passed for a mournful tone. ‘If the Gospels report that he frequently wept,’ the Dispensator had told me near the beginning of our acquaintance in Rome, ‘Our Lord never once laughed.’ Whatever was in his lemon juice was now testing this imitation of Christ to the limit. Still glowing with the holiness and excitement of the day, he was far into the news from Rome. The last plague had run a scythe through the upper reaches of the Church there; and, if one or two of those carried off were to be regretted, we could both privately admit that the others wouldn’t much be missed. The Dispensator took a long and diplomatic swig from his cup. I looked across to where Martin was getting ready to start another of his readings. Above us, I heard the scrape of a vast chandelier pulled up again. It was loaded with candles all of the finest local beeswax, and it cast a gentle glow over the company.

  ‘I’m just a rough military man, as you know,’ I now heard Priscus say quietly to Simeon. ‘The councils of the Church are quite beyond my understanding. But I have picked up a little Scripture in my time. Doesn’t Matthew report Our Lord as having said: “Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven”? Something I don’t quite understand is how this statement can be reconciled with any hypothesis that, while Christ has two Natures, he has only a single Will.’

  He caught my scowl and raised his voice. ‘Can you explain this, My Lord Senator?’ he asked with a devout raising of eyes to Heaven. ‘I do know the further t
ext from John: “Then said Jesus unto them, When ye have lifted up the Son of man, then shall ye know that I am he, and that I do nothing of myself; but as my Father hath taught me, I speak these things.” This shows a uniformity of Will. But does it show any singularity?’ he asked with another pious raising of eyes.

  ‘If you don’t shut up at once,’ I answered in Slavic, ‘I’ll have my slaves put you in chains, and I’ll take a chance with the Emperor.’

  He grinned and carried on in Greek. ‘A most complete and elegant response!’ he cried. ‘A shame, though, you choose not to give it in either Imperial language. Of course, Scripture itself can only be understood as interpreted by the infallible councils of the Church, and who am I to venture into such complex areas?’

  Simeon had set his face like stone. One of the Asiatic Greek bishops was beginning to look thoughtful over his wine. I put my face into a friendly smile and nodded to Martin, who was waiting for silence. I pretended to listen intently to Saint Augustine’s sermon on the virtues of continence. If Priscus thought he’d got me with a few random tags of Scripture, he could think again. I’d long since made up answers to those questions – and answers to whatever supplementals might be raised. The Latin version still had a few edges I hadn’t yet managed to blur over. But, given the absurd premises, the Greek original followed as unshakably as any demonstration in Euclid. However, this wasn’t the time and place for showing exactly what I had in mind. Even if word of that had gone round – and had done even without Priscus to leak it – it could wait for my opening speech to the council.

  ‘Was the Commander of the East quoting Scripture?’ the Dispensator asked as Martin came to a dramatic pause in his reading.

  ‘Augustine is his favourite Latin author,’ I lied irrelevantly. I looked up to the circle of glowing lights. Priscus aside, the dinner had gone rather well. No one had commented on the smell of damp that drifted in from the rooms that hadn’t yet been cleaned and aired, nor on the slight jerkiness of the service, nor on the audible savagery with which Irene had directed things from just outside the door. Even better, no one had still uttered a word – not, at any rate, in my hearing – about the missing Nicephorus. The arrest warrant, plus the direct rule order, that I’d got Martin to throw together could both remain unsealed until further notice.

  I’d agreed a set of readings between courses where Greek and Latin alternated. We were now coming to the end of the Augustine. There would, if I recalled correctly, be a course of dormice stuffed with beans soaked in fish sauce, followed by Basil of Caesarea in Greek on the need for religious correctness; then cabbage stewed in wine, followed by prayers in both languages. After that, I could kiss the whole company a very good night and take myself off to bed.

  No one else, I’d already observed, seemed inclined to sit the night out, cup in hand. With a minimum of conversation, the food had been scoffed down as quickly as served. Now it was properly dark, I got the impression that everyone else would be much happier the sooner he could be out of the residency.

  Martin was finished with Augustine. The Dispensator leaned towards me. ‘I’m still wondering,’ he whispered, ‘how those men could have crept up on us so effectually.’ He smirked and gave himself a little hug. We’d agreed not to discuss these things fully over dinner. But it’s not every day even a Roman cleric gets into a fight for his life – and gets out of it without having to commit the sin of drawing blood.

  ‘Oh, I think I can answer that,’ I said. And I could. I’d had a thought in my bath, and had gone straight off for another look at the bodies. The different patterns of dirt on the clothing of those Priscus had killed and my own kills had been decisive. I’d been labouring under one of those false assumptions. ‘Based on a very rapid look on my journey up from Piraeus,’ I explained, ‘I’d supposed the tomb of Hierocles was nothing more than an unburied stone coffin. But our attackers were covered in brick dust. That suggests a larger chamber underneath the tomb, where they’d lain in wait. It could even be that the dead girl was down there. Unless you positively insist, I’ll not trouble you with another trip outside the walls. But I do intend going out myself tomorrow, once the first session of the council is over.’

  ‘Then I will certainly come with you,’ he said firmly.

  No arguing with that. I ignored the loud crash behind me. If that was the dormice, I’d be rid of this lot in no time at all. I also ignored the Dispensator’s praise of my ability to observe important facts. If I were right in this supposition, it only raised further questions. Those men hadn’t followed us out to the tomb, but had been waiting there all along. How could they possibly have guessed movements I hadn’t myself known until I was about to make them?

  Far down one of the side tables, one of the tradesmen had switched out of proper Greek and was jabbering softly away in the local dialect. Someone opposite had raised a titter at whatever joke was being told. I looked up again at the candles. Far above them, there was a flickering redness that came in through the windows to play on the ceiling. It was as if the Northern Lights were suddenly visible from Athens.

  Though I still avoided looking round, it hadn’t been the dormice that had crashed on to the floor. Three of the things had been dumped before me on a clean silver plate. Whoever had cooked them hadn’t known they should first be skinned and gutted. On my left, Priscus had left off theology, and was now explaining how he’d sat out the final massacre in Trampolinea by burying himself in a cesspit and breathing through a piece of lead water pipe. On my other side, the Dispensator was speaking to a French bishop whose plaited blond hair about his tonsure and giant moustache indicated a shift of power in the Church beyond the Alps. I settled my face into an expression of polite boredom. Nothing is forever: even this was coming to its end.

  As Martin reached what I thought as fine a turn of phrase in Basil as any of the ancients might have envied, Simeon leaned over and burped into my face. ‘Even if this doesn’t go as badly as you deserve,’ he whispered with a drunken leer, ‘do you really think it will be any better for you in Constantinople? I thought even barbarians knew when they’d been set up to fail.’

  Priscus looked down from his own inspection of those red and flickering lights. ‘You’ll do as you’re fucking told, my dear kinsman,’ he said without turning round or moving his lips. ‘There’s always room for a third set of squirting bowls before the Wrath of Caesar.’

  Simeon looked as if he’d been slapped hard in the face. ‘But Priscus . . .’ he whined. He tried to say more, but fell silent after a few words of protest.

  Priscus stared up again at the ceiling. ‘I gather you’ve been putting yourself between those trembling white thighs,’ he said to me with a turn into Slavic. I ignored him. ‘Still, so long as she has strength to change my bandage, you go right ahead and fuck your brains out. Even you won’t tire her out that much.’

  He laughed oddly and nodded upwards. ‘Do you see that flickering from the north?’ he asked with a change of tone. ‘Unless I’m seriously mistaken, that will be Decelea burning.’

  I looked up again and thought. Decelea was about twenty miles due north. Given a clear night, its fires would be visible on the horizon.

  ‘Well before morning,’ he went on, ‘there’ll be streams of terrified survivors banging on the gates. You’ll also see a better class of Athenian than the city trash, as the farmers drive in their animals and carry anything else that can be moved.’

  With a great clearing of his throat, Martin was about to begin his bilingual recitation of the Sermon on the Mount. In Greek or Latin, I might have added: ‘Blessed are those who wait on events – their enemies shall be turned.’

  Chapter 38

  ‘I must thank Your Grace for having had the goodness to stay on for a while after our most enjoyable dinner,’ I opened with my smoothest charm. Simeon sat in the library, looking nervously between me and Priscus. ‘What we have to discuss is a somewhat delicate matter, and I hope you will agree that this generally unfrequented place is mos
t appropriate for our discussion.’ I smiled and looked at Priscus.

  ‘You reorganised the Intelligence Bureau, dear boy,’ he said. ‘This is best coming from you.’ He switched for a moment into Slavic: ‘Besides, my darling, I’d only spoil things by enjoying myself too much.’ He walked over a few yards and leaned nonchalantly against one of the bookracks that was still in place.

  I sat down at the desk and looked over at Simeon. His face had now turned pale in the lamplight. If he didn’t know any Slavic, he knew Priscus well enough to follow his tone of voice in any language.

  ‘Very well, My Lord,’ I went on. ‘I thought we had reached agreement when we sat here together yesterday evening. Perhaps, as a foreigner who only learned Greek when already mature, I was mistaken as to the extent of our agreement. I do hope you will forgive me if I must now speak with a bluntness that I never thought would be required.’

  I paused and waited for Simeon’s face to change to a paler shade of white. ‘Allow me to enquire, My Lord Bishop, if that patch of rough skin on the inside of your throat is giving you pain tonight?’

  As I’d expected, his face sagged as if I’d killed him with a single blow to the back of his head. He swallowed and gave a scared look over at the mural behind me. I was still smiling as feet sounded on the stairs and Martin came in with cups and a jug of wine. I nodded for him to leave at once, and poured three cups. I waited for the footsteps to die away and sipped at my own cup.

  ‘The Baths of Anthemius are very big,’ I said with a friendly smile. ‘You can get ten – sometimes fifteen – thousand people in them at the right time of day. That may be why so many people think they are anonymous. Whatever the case, that feeling of anonymity is something the Intelligence Bureau does everything to foster. The days are gone when your dear cousin Priscus could send his Black Agents into private homes to arrest people and drag them off for arbitrary torture and killing in one of his dungeons.’ I turned to Priscus.