If Martin had thrown the wine jug out of the window, and slapped my face and called me names, it wouldn’t have had the same sobering effect as this latest outpouring. But what reply was there to it all?
We looked silently at each other for a long moment. Then I walked out on to the balcony and sat at the little table, trying to think through the practicalities of the situation.
‘Drink this.’ Martin pushed a cup of warmed fruit juice to my lips. ‘You’ll get cold out here otherwise.’
We sat for a very long time without speaking. The sky turned from purple to black. Dogs barked in the distance. The wind blew softly on my face.
At last, I got up and went back inside. Maximin was now awake. He smiled as I approached him, lamp in hand. I looked down at him. I put the lamp on the table beside his cot and took him into my arms. I breathed in the slightly shitty smell of the only son I’d ever managed to hold.
I tried to control the spasms, but wept uncontrollably. The tears burned my eyes and I buried my face in Maximin’s blanket.
‘You’re mine, you’re mine,’ I said again and again. ‘You’re mine, and I’ll kill anyone who tries to take you from me.’
After what seemed another age, I felt Martin beside me. ‘Aelric,’ he said softly in Latin, ‘I’ve sent down for hot water. There’s a messenger from Theophanes. You must wash your face.’
There was an armed guard outside the Ministry. The few clerks who’d bothered turning up for work had all been kicked out into the street, where some of them now fraternised with the demonstrators. These had now taken to singing hymns and looking hopeful.
‘He’ll be coming out soon, you know,’ said the old woman who’d spoken to Theophanes in the summer. ‘The time of retribution is upon us. My son will come home again.’
I evaded her attempt to catch hold of me and slipped past. A silent crowd had gathered to watch the demonstrators. It was impossible to tell from their faces what they were thinking. Dressed mostly as if for church, they stood and watched, and waited for whatever might happen next.
As I finished threading my way through the crowd, Alypius came forward to meet me. He waved me past the guards and into the darkened hall of the Ministry. Lamp in hand, he led me up to Theophanes.
‘I already know the truth,’ said Theophanes, cutting off my account of Priscus. ‘I climbed on to the walls before darkness and saw the man riding up and down and calling on the City to surrender. He’s had quite an effect. About half the remaining nobility has now slipped out of the City, together with most of the senior Ministers. A few were caught and hanged as they tried to leave. Most bought their way out. I regret we are losing control over the garrison in charge of the land walls.
‘But tell me, Aelric,’ he said, changing the subject, ‘what did you discover from Priscus? You were seen going together into the wine shop. You came out separately – he to open treason, you back to the Legation.’
‘I know that you and he reached an agreement outside the Great One’s tent,’ I began. ‘I know that you conspired to kill the Permanent Legate. And I know that you both agreed on my death.’
Theophanes checked me. ‘You know that Priscus agreed on your death,’ he repented with a laboured formality. ‘That you are still alive and in good health should tell you the extent of my agreement.
‘I have no doubt Priscus told you many things. But there are many other things far beyond his knowledge. For all you see it as your present duty to uncover these things, I must remind you yet again that knowing them would do you no good.’
‘Theophanes, I will have the truth about the Permanent Legate’s murder – and about everything else,’ I said.
‘Then you will have none from me,’ he responded. ‘However, we are meeting here to get one set of truths that you may readily have. Though, since they concern Priscus, they may come too late.’
I thought of those four Syrians down below, now a day into their solitary confinement. I’d been looking forward to showing Theophanes the benefits of an interrogation that didn’t involve the rack and red-hot pincers. It no longer seemed such a fine idea, but it was already arranged and I could think of nothing else to do instead.
‘Because I know this building better than I know the wrinkles on my own face,’ Theophanes said, ‘you will pardon me if I insist on leading the way.’
I followed Theophanes down the stairs from his office to the main hall, and then across to a locked doorway. As he unlocked the door and pulled it open, my stomach turned at the waft of cold, filthy air.
In all the ages during which the Ministry had stood, I wondered as I followed him down that endless spiral of worn-out steps, how many wretches had been dragged through this or the other entrance, and never come out again?
We passed into the entrance chamber I recalled from my first visit. It was a low-vaulted circular room with another set of steps on the far side. Equidistant between these two entrances, a wide passageway led into the endless and regular network of cells.
As before, the lamps flickered dimly in their niches. The reception desk was covered with much the same jumbled mass of papyrus. But ‘Where can they be?’ Theophanes asked, looking round the empty room. ‘The guards knew we had an appointment. I was here myself earlier to see that all was in readiness.’ I strained to see into the network of corridors but heard and saw nothing. The whole place might have been evacuated.
‘Do you know where the prisoners were put?’ I asked Theophanes.
He nodded absently, still looking around the unexpected stillness of his own private Hell.
‘Then we’ll start with the big one,’ I said. ‘I mean the one with the scar on his left cheek that stops his beard from growing right. I think he was their leader.’
Theophanes fussed a while over the heavy ledger on the reception desk, turning the pages. He reached up to a board studded with what looked like hundreds of numbered hooks and lifted off a single set of keys. He tutted impatiently as he saw they were all out of sequence and searched again for the ring that carried the right number. Then he turned back to the ledger and made a series of neat entries.
‘Order in this world begins with small things,’ he said, blotting the parchment.
Then, without so much as a pause to get his bearings, he took up his lamp again and stepped into the passageway. I followed close behind, trying not to retch at the smell of the place. It was far worse than I remembered.
I tried at first to take note of the turns we made and the secondary corridors we passed. But I noticed the complex stretched under the whole Ministry building – even under the surrounding streets and squares. It was immense. But for Theophanes leading the way with the unthinking assurance of a native, I’d soon have been lost.
As we turned into another corridor, I saw two dark figures standing in the gloom of the far end. One was gigantically tall. The other stooped. There was something furtive about their appearance. It was as if they’d been caught in some malevolent act.
We stopped. I fingered my knife. Theophanes smoothed his robe in a gesture of confusion.
‘Fancy meeting you here,’ a voice rasped loudly. ‘As ever, we can dispense with prostrations. With these floors, you’d never get the muck off your clothes.’
56
Phocas inspected himself in the long mirror Theophanes kept in his office.
‘I don’t suppose the blood shows too much against the purple – not in this light, anyway,’ he said.
‘If you please, Your Majesty.’ Theophanes handed him a large cup of wine. Phocas drained it and let out a long sigh of contentment. He handed it back for a refill.
‘Do I need explain myself to you?’ he asked me.
‘No, Caesar,’ I said, trying not to look at the red smear that ran from his trailing robe to the door of the office.
‘Then if you’ll take advice from an older and wiser man,’ he said, ‘let me give you one of the main secrets of effective leadership. As an officer on the Danube, I never believed in giving orde
rs I wasn’t prepared to follow myself.’
‘Clearing my accounts’ is what he’d called it when stopping halfway up the spiral steps for a tipsy giggle. I didn’t see what business it was of mine to ask how many prisoners had been held down there. It was enough to know that he’d gone down and ordered the dungeon guards to kill all of them. He and the huge black slave he’d brought in tow had then turned on the exhausted guards. It was my business that some of the prisoners had been mine. But there’s nothing in the books of etiquette to cover protests to an Emperor for this sort of thing.
I was glad I’d taken care to put on common leather boots before coming out. Anything else would have been ruined by all the blood I hadn’t seen on the floors.
‘I see that fucker Priscus has shat on me,’ said Phocas, still looking at himself in the mirror.
‘Your Majesty will surely agree’, Theophanes said, ‘that Priscus has served his purpose remarkably well since we discovered his intentions. Everything we told him was passed back, and was implicitly believed by Heraclius.’
‘I suppose he’ll be more of a danger to Heraclius outside the City than he was to me inside,’ Phocas said. He sank heavily into a chair covered in white kid leather. I could almost hear the squelching of his robe. I could certainly see the dark stain on the chair-back when he leaned forward.
He looked at me. ‘Now, I find a vacancy has emerged at the head of the City defences. Bearing in mind the defection of almost all the qualified candidates – and the unreliability of those remaining – I am minded to appoint you to the position.’
‘Sir,’ I cried, aghast, ‘I – I…’
I trailed off. I was too young. I was a barbarian. I was the Pope’s representative. I knew fuck all about the military. I didn’t want to die. All I wanted was to go home.
‘If I might be so bold as to suggest-’
Phocas cut Theophanes off. ‘You suggest nothing,’ he snarled in sudden anger. ‘I’m Emperor yet. I still say what goes in this City. I’m keeping to my side of the bargain. You will therefore keep your mouth shut.’
A strange look on his face, Theophanes did as he was told. He turned back to me.
‘I remove you from the post of Acting Permanent Legate,’ he said. ‘I now appoint you Count of the Palace Guard, which includes the newish post of Duke of the Sacred Defence.’
As he spoke, he splashed wine from his cup over the black slave who was nodding off on the floor beside him. He too was sodden with blood. Like water from a squeezed sponge, it oozed from his clothing on to the floorboards. The man jerked into life and handed up the leather satchel he’d been cuddling. From this, Phocas produced yet another of his parchment sheets.
‘This gives formal effect to my wishes,’ he said. He tried to wipe a spot of blood from the sheet. Instead, his finger only made a broader dark smear over the writing. ‘I brought this along on the off-chance I’d catch you. How lucky we ran into each other downstairs.
‘With immediate effect, you are transferred to duties of equal rank to those from which I relieve you. I appoint you Count of the Palace Guard and so forth, with supreme power over all life and property for the purpose of your commission,’ he intoned. ‘You will see there is no mention of appeals to me from any decision you make. You have the same rank and powers as dear Priscus.’
I struggled to find the words to extricate myself from this latest horror.
Phocas flashed me a thoroughly evil smile. ‘Oh no, my lad,’ he said, ‘you don’t get out of this at all. You get yourself off to the palace where you’ll be kitted out in armour of gold and silver, and then greet your men. If you refuse my order, I’ll have you impaled before morning.
‘If you lose the battle on the streets, you either die or make whatever submission you can to Heraclius and Priscus. But let’s be reasonable – that means you die. If you win, you become my champion. Play things right, and I’ll think of chucking in my daughter and the succession. Since there’s no one else left, it might as well be you.
‘With hindsight, I can see that Priscus wasn’t the right man for Domentia. He didn’t use her well. You, on the other hand, will make an ideal husband. She might even fancy you. Certainly, you’ll need to give her another son. I can’t have a son of Priscus continuing my line.’
Unable to think of anything remotely better, I stood in front of the Emperor, bowing my obedience to his will.
‘Go, my boy,’ Phocas called, with a return to full good humour. ‘You’ve a busy night ahead of you. I expect to find everything up to scratch on the streets tomorrow when – or if – I decide on my eve-of-battle inspection.’
As I bowed out of the room, I threw a final glance at Theophanes. He looked ninety if he was a day.
‘It suits you better than the clerical robes,’ Martin agreed. ‘It’s a shame they’ve finally arrived.’
Radogast untied the golden breastplate and I let out my first natural breath since leaving the Imperial Palace. Martin hadn’t missed the scale of this latest disaster. Given any choice in the matter, he’d have had the Legation gates locked, with us on the inside and the keys dropped into a sewer. On the other hand, I could sense some relief that the blasphemy of my position as Acting Permanent Legislator was at an end.
But my new appointment – and I can’t sufficiently emphasise the fact – was a fucking disaster. All else aside, I knew as much about military tactics as I did about the laying of mosaics. Whatever plans of defence I might take over would have been already betrayed by Priscus. And that was assuming his plans were any good in the first place.
On the other hand, the shock of the appointment had wondrously settled me after that horrid time with Priscus. Men often dull the pain of torture by biting their tongues. One pain cancels the other. So it was with me. Back in the Legation earlier, I’d thought the pain of that truth about Maximin would never pass. Now, it was almost forgotten with this latest turn of the page.
And I looked absolutely lush in the suit of armour that had been waiting for me at the palace. It had been so skilfully adapted that it might have been made specially for me.
I scooped Maximin out of the cot from where he’d been solemnly regarding me, and carried him triumphantly about the room. I’d taken many things from Priscus – his job, his armour, his son. None of them might do me much good, but I might as well try to enjoy them.
‘So he killed them all?’ Martin asked, now in Celtic.
‘Every last one of them, it seems,’ I replied, giving Maximin my helmet to pat. ‘On the way out, I’ll swear I saw blood dripping down the walls. They must have gone through each cell in turn. Even with the guards to help, I can’t say how the Emperor and his slave could still stand afterwards.
‘For what it may now be worth,’ I added after another look in the mirror, ‘I know it wasn’t Priscus who hired those Syrians. It was the Emperor. I had a good look at his bloody footprints in the Ministry. They were the same as the ones in the Permanent Legate’s bedroom. The left foot was decidedly shorter than the right.’
God forgotten for the moment, Martin’s face turned grey.
‘I find it reasonable’, I went on, ‘to assume he had everyone under the Ministry butchered to save himself the embarrassment of being revealed as the man who hired those assassins. Having me put to death would itself have been embarrassing, bearing in mind what he’d appointed me to represent. But he was so eager to cover any trail that led to Demetrius that ordering me and Priscus to back away wasn’t enough.’
‘So Phocas killed the Permanent Legate?’ Martin asked. ‘And Authari?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘That was still probably Demetrius. But Phocas was in the Legation to help get rid of the body. If two monks really were seen there last Sunday, Phocas was one of them. That raises any number of new hypotheses to test against the facts. However, the investigation is ended – at least, for the moment.
‘Now, to other business,’ I said. ‘I’m going out shortly to see what forces I might have for tomorrow. I’d like you
to start supervising the packing of boxes. I want all the more important papers and books safely stowed in the official areas of the Legation.’
There was a knock at the door. Antony entered the room.
‘My Lord,’ he said, ‘I’ve drafted the documents you asked for. All is in order.’
He’d been quick about his business. I’d only instructed him a while earlier in the main hall as I came back in.
‘Excellent,’ I said. ‘Martin, be so kind as to assemble all the slaves in this office. I have an important announcement to make.’
All my slaves stood before me, including Gutrune. With them were the three slaves Theophanes had passed over to me to keep the bathhouse in order. These had been kept away from anything confidential and, having been watched on and off over the past few days, seemed to fit nicely into the household. I didn’t know what they could have heard of the latest news, but they looked worried.
‘Martin,’ I said, ‘I shall make my announcement in Latin. I’d like you to interpret straight into Lombardic. That should make what I have to say comprehensible to everyone.’
I stood up. ‘Dear friends,’ I began, ‘you will be aware that everyone expects an attack on the City tomorrow or the day after at the latest. It is now impossible to believe that a gate will not be opened to Heraclius. I cannot say what will happen when he enters the City. But I must act now so far as I can to ensure the safety of those who look to me.’
I raised my voice and spoke slowly, stopping after every clause to make sure I was clearly followed.
‘By the authority vested in me by His Imperial Majesty, I believe that the safety of the Empire and of the City requires me to free certain persons from the servitude to which they were born or to which they have been reduced by the fortunes of war.’
I named all the slaves present. As I did so, Martin took up the relevant deed and passed it to me for signing. I had no seal ready but Antony had assured me that a signature would be sufficient. As I signed each document, he added the seal of the Legation. I no longer had any right to this, so had passed it to him for safekeeping.
The Terror of Constantinople a-2 Page 36