The Terror of Constantinople a-2

by Richard Blake

  Try to imagine smaller streets leading off from the greater, all paved with stone or brick, or with regular flights of steps to join different levels, these little streets themselves all lined by houses so tall they often stop the sun from falling on the ground. Try to imagine little alleys leading off these smaller streets, connecting the whole like the strands of a web, so that you can wander for an entire day and not see all of it, let alone conceive its plan.

  Try then to imagine all those people – some dressed finer than any bishop, some in rags that a churl would despise. And try to imagine all these in a continual bustle of activity.

  Think of just of one incident I recall from that first afternoon. A slave was painting one of the houses in a main street. He hung by one arm from the sill of a high window, a brush in his free hand. Another slave leaned out of the window, paint-pot in hand. Others stood below, arranging a net in case the painter should fall. Around them the pedestrians flowed like water about a rock in a fast stream.

  Imagine this, and you have Constantinople, the greatest city in the world.

  Theophanes ignored everyone on foot as we passed through the crowds. He made sure, though, to greet anyone who passed in a chair. Sometimes he would introduce me with a flattering reference to my quality that seemed always to magnify his own importance. With a grave nod of his bearded and carefully groomed head, the stranger would acknowledge my presence and utter some exactly worded greeting. More often, I’d be ignored throughout an interminable exchange of courtesies.

  In Rome, at this time of year, everyone who could afford to get out would have escaped to the better air of the country – that is, assuming the Lombards weren’t on the prowl. In Constantinople, I soon gathered, everyone who hadn’t actually run off to join Heraclius found it advisable to show loyalty by staying put, regardless of the heat.

  On a blank wall by one of the road junctions, someone had written a long graffito in a language I couldn’t then recognise, but that I now know was Coptic – Greek letters are used to express Egyptian sounds. I saw a recognisable version of the name Heraclius and I could make out the sign of the Cross. Some official-looking slaves were hard at work scrubbing it off.

  I felt Martin plucking at my sleeve. I looked down at him as he padded along beside us.

  ‘If you look over to your right in the square coming up, sir,’ he said softly, ‘you’ll see the High Courts.’

  Faced with many-coloured marble, topped by two giant symmetrical domes, each itself topped by a golden cross, the court building took up an entire side of the square. The Latin inscription above its central portico recorded its rebuilding by the Emperor Theodosius, the son of Arcadius. Above this, in a sheltered recess, was a giant mosaic of Christ sat in judgement. On each side of him, in Latin and in Greek translation, was the legal maxim: Fiat Iustitia Ruat Coelum – ‘Let Justice be Done, though the Heavens Fall’.

  Almost like ants around a cottage door, the litigants and their slaves ran up and down the steps to the great building. The chairs of the great and the carts of the humble crowded the square, awaiting their owners. The dense mass of stalls clustered in the centre around a column topped by a golden statue – I think of Justinian – Martin told me, were selling legal forms and services to those unable to afford proper representation.

  ‘Is that where the bankruptcy case was decided against your father?’ I thought to ask. It would have been a redundant question. His face already answered. What was it like, I wondered, to be back here after such personal catastrophe?

  The Papal Legation was housed in a small but imposing building on the far side of the square containing the Great Church. In its essentials an old palace, arranged around a set of gardens, it must have dated back to the early years of the City. At some point, its central front portico had been graced with an incongruously modern dome of a translucent green and blue, topping an entrance hall as large as a middling church.

  It was here, bathed in the eerie light from the dome, that we were greeted by some decidedly secondary officials. One of these stood forward.

  ‘I am Demetrius,’ he said, ‘Acting Head of the Legatorial Secretariat. I report directly to His Excellency.’

  He went on to explain in a Latin so slipshod he might have been a tradesman that the Permanent Legate remained indisposed.

  I looked at him. A small man in late middle age, with the movements of a startled bird and a face that had somehow escaped any touch of the sun, this official stood out from his colleagues partly on account of his greater age, and partly because, while their beards had the lush fullness of the Greeks, his own was either kept short or of recent growth.

  It was evident he wasn’t a Latin. Nor did he sound Greek. His Excellency doubtless would send for me when he was less indisposed, he added. In the meantime, I should settle into the little room he’d found for me beside the kitchens and rest myself from a journey that must have rivalled that of Ulysses himself from Troy. As the Legation slaves had other duties, it was my good fortune to have brought enough of my own to attend to my ordinary needs. They could be accommodated in the corridor outside my room.

  I glanced at Theophanes. Was that a look of sour impatience? Hard to tell. It was there for a moment, then he was all charming smiles again.

  ‘Demetrius is surely mistaken,’ he said. ‘I am sure that His Excellency the Permanent Legate had in mind for young Alaric and his party to be given the distinguished visitors’ suite on the upper floors.’

  Demetrius himself pulled a face that wasn’t so fleeting. But it was obvious that no one argued with His Magnificence the Great Theophanes. He bowed and threw a look at one of the other officials, who promptly vanished.

  ‘Most sadly, the work of the Great Augustus calls me away,’ said Theophanes with a brief glance at Demetrius. He would leave me for now, he added, but would send for me after lunch the following day to discuss my schedule and attend to the necessary paperwork for my stay.

  After more embracing and protestations of mutual regard, he was off with his little army, leaving us alone with the Legation officials. The hall seemed to grow duller by his leaving it. The officials there remained awed, though, and did their best to improvise a reception that anyone could have seen was not on their list of instructions.

  6

  I never did find out what Demetrius had intended for me. The suite Theophanes had ordered him to give me was a self-contained unit within the Legation. Branching off to the left from the back of the entrance hall, and covering two floors, it had its own access from the hall. It might have been an apartment in a residential block.

  ‘Good for defence,’ Authari whispered, for the moment forgetting he was no longer at the head of a Lombard raiding party. ‘I’ll guess the main building could hold off an army for days.’

  I silenced him with a frown, and followed Demetrius up the stairs.

  On the upper floor, there were about fifteen living and business rooms, some interconnected. All were approached by a corridor lit during the day by glass bricks set into the roof above. There could be no windows in the corridor, as they’d have looked out into the main square, and compromised the security of the Legation.

  The doors that led off the other side into the rooms of my suite were all of solid wood with locks that turned from both sides. The rooms looked inward over the central gardens. The ground floor covered the same area, but the connecting corridor had no natural light except when the doors were open to the rooms leading off it. These were to be the quarters for my own slaves, and had a little kitchen that made me independent of the main household.

  Right at the end of the corridor was a bathhouse and furnace that would be for my use.

  Outside the main reception room and my own bedroom next door was a balcony. A bronze staircase led down from this to one of the central gardens, where trees and a fountain promised relief from the blazing summer heat. Looking out from the window of my office, I saw five monks shuffling about in a garden beyond this with watering cans and vario
us garden implements.

  Thinking back to Authari’s comment, I wondered if this might be a weak point for defence. I put the thought from my mind. This was Constantinople, not Rome. On the whole journey up from the dockside, I hadn’t seen a single fight, let alone a killing.

  The upper rooms were placed to catch the morning sun, but had ceilings high enough to make the afternoons bearable. They were furnished with a taste and luxury that any self-respecting priest would have denounced as a mortal sin. But although it was Church property, the Legation was the place from where the Pope spoke through his representatives to the Emperor himself, and where, from time to time, the Emperor and the greater dignitaries would have to be entertained. For reasons of obvious prestige, its splendour could not fall below a certain level.

  As we entered the suite, a few slaves and even officials were running frantically about with dusters and aired linen. Demetrius fawned around me, trying to divert my attention from the obvious change of accommodation.

  ‘We trust the young citizen will not be overcome by the splendour of these rooms,’ he said in his poor Latin. ‘We is told that Old Rome has not a single working bath in these last days of the world. Here, the young citizen has his own all for himself.’

  I sniffed, and asked to see the toilet. Very important things are toilets. Forget beds and chairs, which can always be found at short notice. The toilets tell you exactly how civilised a house is, and your own position within it. I had to admit these ones did me proud. The fittings were of marble with four seats of polished ebony. A channel ran under the seats, for water to carry away the waste. Another channel ran in front to give continual water for the wiping sponges that were set on sticks of elegant design.

  The glazed tiles that covered the floor and the lower walls were of a variegated blue. The plaster that ran above these was a dark and luxurious red. There had once been a fresco on the wall opposite the window, but this was now painted over in the same red, and I was unable to see what images or designs it had once had. The only evidence for it was a few patches of colour that had leached through the red.

  Demetrius had to grope about to find the handle that turned on the water. With a gurgle that sounded like a belch from the depths of the Legation building, and then a hiss that died to a gentle splashing, the water burst up in a slightly higher point of the latrine. At once, as the water flowed through its appointed channels, the room came to life. The little tiles of the channels turned from dull to various shades of sparkling blue. The glazed tiles of the lower walls bounced back the shimmering light thrown up from them.

  Come the winter months, ducts set beneath the floor would carry heated air from a central boiler to keep the latrine warm. For the moment, the gentle but continuous trickling of the water would keep it cool on the hottest days. This was a room appointed both for practical use and for mental reflection. I felt I’d be spending a fair bit of time in here.

  I smiled inwardly as I realised Demetrius had pulled a muscle by reaching about for the lever, and his hands were covered with dust. He stood facing me, a suppressed wince on his face and evidently resisting the urge to hop from one foot to the other in agitation. So I sent him off with orders that Martin’s bed should also have clean linen and that the slave quarters should be provided with all that fitted my status as a halfway guest of the Emperor.

  Walking backwards, he bowed out of my presence. I had a most gratifying sight of the confusion on his face as he bumped into Authari. Our kitchen cupboards might be bare. It was plain, though, Authari had found the wine store.

  Back upstairs, while Martin supervised the unpacking and disposal of our baggage, I went into the main office and sat at a great ebony desk inlaid with gold and ivory. On this, a leather bag marked for my attention contained letters from Rome. Some were impressively recent. The roads hadn’t been so impassable after all. At least the post was now getting through again.

  There was something about the Cornish tin business. As it was in code, it would be interesting. But it could wait. I rummaged in the bag and pulled out a thick letter from the Dispensator. I went over by the window for a better look at the microscopic writing.

  Apparently, the Bishop of Ravenna had found a whole nest of heresy under his own nose. His most senior deacons were dissenting from the true position on the Trinity anciently settled at the Council of Chalcedon. They accepted that there was but one Person in Christ, but further inferred that there was but one Will and one Operation – thereby denying the true position, that there were two Natures, Divine and Human, which were hypostatically united in Christ, not mingled

  …

  My eyes glazed over as I read sentence after sentence of denunciation of this most horrid innovation. My job, I gathered, was to procure a formal refutation of all this in Greek – the longer the better. It would be the penance of the offending deacons, who knew only Latin, somehow to understand this and then to memorise it by heart, so they could preach against their heresy in every church in Ravenna.

  As I looked down from the window, one of the monkish gardeners stared up at me from the main central courtyard, an oddly intelligent look on his face.

  Back at my desk, I called for a jug of iced wine, and reached for another letter. This was from Gretel. The secretary who’d taken her dictation had faithfully copied her style of speech. She prattled on about her morning sickness and her longing to see me again, and her profound gratitude for all I was doing on her behalf. She was no longer confined to the house, though had no cause to go out. She emphasised that Marcella was now treating her as one of the guests.

  In Rome, I’d always found Gretel’s conversation something to be endured. Now, I felt tears coming to my eyes as I read about Marcella’s vexation at the theft of linen by one of her less salubrious lodgers.

  There were other letters – from an agent who was handling the sale of some land on the Aventine Hill, and reporting movements in prices that I could relay to traders here in Constantinople. There was another, dated last Easter from Canterbury, thanking me for a complete Virgil I’d sent over from Rome and asking for another City of God, the one I’d sent previously having been spoiled by the sea voyage.

  I’d deal with all these in due course. The light was beginning to fade, and I didn’t feel up to writing or dictating late into the evening. For the moment, I kept going back to the letter from Gretel. I kissed the mark she’d written at the foot of the papyrus sheet, telling myself I’d done right to announce marriage to her rather than concubinage.

  Martin knocked and entered. The baggage we’d managed to bring with us was now arranged, he said, but there was no sign of our main luggage from Rome. Also, the lack of any food was now pressing. Should he try to rouse the Legation slaves? Or should he send out for a takeaway? Our own slaves were famished.

  Now that I thought about it, so was I.

  ‘Do arrange for a takeaway,’ I said. ‘I’ll eat here alone. Do also try to get some better wine than this stuff. It smells of pine needles. Something red and rich, if you can get it.’

  I reached across the desk. ‘Here’s a letter for you,’ I added. ‘I imagine it’s from Sveta. Do send her my greetings in your reply.’

  Martin’s face paled as he looked at the scrawled writing on the outside.

  ‘Do cheer up,’ I said with an attempt at jollity. ‘She can’t go at you with a knife at this distance!’

  Outside the room, I heard Martin try again at giving orders to Authari. It was only a matter of time before he made a right fool of himself. I took up the jug and went on to the balcony. For what seemed an age, I stood and watched the flowers turn pale against the gloom that gathered round them.

  7

  ‘Thank you, but I have washed already,’ said Martin, peering dubiously into the water.

  It was late the next morning, and a bath and quite a passable wank had done for my hangover.

  ‘Besides,’ he added, ‘I thought you said there was a steam room and all.’

  ‘Well, it’s all
bleedin’ broke, innit?’ Authari rasped at him from the other side of the lead tub he’d eventually managed to find enough hot water to fill. You could have opened a wine shop with the fumes from what else he’d managed to find. Another moment, and he’d forget who was slave and who freedman.

  ‘Indeed,’ I said, rising hastily from the water. ‘Authari assures me that any attempt to light the furnace would cause an explosion. This will be a temporary arrangement. I have no doubt His Excellency will advise on how to proceed with engineers.’

  Once he’d patted me dry, I sent Authari to sit on the other side of the bathhouse door.

  ‘Oh, come on, Martin,’ I urged, now we were alone. ‘Those streets must be baking.’

  I looked away as he undressed. It was hardly his fault he’d once been a slave. But it was his business if he didn’t care to show off the white scars on his back.

  ‘I didn’t think to go far from the Legation,’ he said, easing himself into the now cool water. ‘Since we haven’t any papers yet, I thought it was best to keep to the market before the Great Church. I managed to get nearly everything on your list.’

  I sat down beside him and asked what he’d found out from the stallholders. As I pumiced at my legs, he spoke in a whispered and very slow Celtic I could just understand from my days among the bandits on the Wessex borders.

  He hadn’t that much to say. No one in the streets had been inclined to pour out his innermost thoughts to strangers – not at a time like this. The mood out there, he said, was ugly beyond anything he’d ever known. All business was winding down, and the loss of Egypt to Heraclius meant questions over the free distribution of bread to the poor.

  ‘Have you managed to pick up any information about our Most Noble Host?’ I asked, stretching my legs.