‘If you’re after the Papacy itself,’ I reminded him, ‘you’ll need Heraclius to confirm it. And will he do that for a man who’s lately made life harder for him all over the East?’
‘Heraclius will have no choice but to accept the unanimous decision of the Roman Church,’ Silas said with a snigger. ‘Phocas has left him with problems that leave no Imperial room for manoeuvre in the West.’
‘Tell me, Silas,’ I asked suddenly, ‘tell me – why shouldn’t I kill you here and now and trade that patent with Heraclius for my life?’
Silas did an excellent job of keeping a look of alarm off his face. ‘Because, my stupid little barbarian, I represent His Holiness in Rome. Lay violent hands on me, and you’ll go to Hell. Besides, you haven’t any sword with you.’
A fair answer, the second one at least – though I did have a very sharp knife under my cloak.
‘And,’ Silas went on, with a cheerful wave of his hand, ‘because Heraclius would need rather more than a scrap of parchment to convince him that a rival for the Purple shouldn’t be killed on the spot. Some of your “soldiers” were so drunk towards the end of that glorified street brawl you led that they were still hailing you as Emperor even after order was restored.
‘I wouldn’t trust any promises he made to the likes of you. Even if we leave aside the little matter of the Purple, you’re a barbarian. I know you don’t like Greeks. I don’t much like them myself if truth be told. But they’ve always known how to deal with barbarians.
‘Let me tell you – back when your people were first smashing up the Western Provinces, there were immense numbers of you settled here in the Eastern cities. In the West, we spoke piously of integration and assimilation. We rejoiced over the prospect of your conversion to the Orthodox Faith of Nicaea and of Chalcedon.
‘In the East, they knew better. You can take a barbarian out of the forest, the Greeks said to us. You can’t take the forest out of a barbarian. Getting a few of the Creeds by heart doesn’t make a savage into a citizen.
‘The authorities sent out a message to every barbarian in the East to assemble in certain places on a certain day. There they should all receive some token of Imperial favour.’
Silas paused for a gloating smile, then continued:
‘They killed every last one of you – men, women, children. They had you surrounded in the public squares. You people stood there, as trusting as beasts on their way to slaughter. You never saw the archers until they were on every rooftop.
‘As the West fell away, a province at a time, the East was renewed in the blood of the barbarians. The Greeks have kept an eye on you lot ever since. Therefore the need for residence permits.
‘Don’t suppose any deal you made with Heraclius would last the blink of an eye beyond his setting hands on this document.’
Silas sat back and laughed unpleasantly as he doubtless recalled the massacre of barbarians all over the East.
‘Don’t think of killing me, my silly Englishman,’ he said at length. ‘Come back with me to Rome. Only I can get you out of here, and you’ll be useful to me there as an unfriendly but truthful witness to what I’ve done here in the city.’
‘That’s all very well, Your Excellency,’ I said with a mock bow at his genius. ‘There is, however, one matter that still perplexes me. Phocas has saved your life. Phocas has given Holy Mother Church what it wanted most in the world. He has made you the agent of communication to Rome. This will perhaps advance you to the Papacy. But what’s in it for him? Phocas has never struck me as a particularly charitable man. Back in his early days, he may have given a lot to Pope Gregory, but he always made sure to get flattery and hard cash in exchange. So what’s in it for our former Lord and Master and Ruler of the Universe, Phocas?’
‘You may ask that of the Dispensator in Rome,’ Silas said with an attempt at the enigmatic. He wasn’t to know that Theophanes had already given the same answer. Hearing it a second time rather spoiled the effect.
Again, I didn’t pursue the question. The answer was now pretty obvious. The moment I saw the patent, all those odd conversations with Theophanes and with Phocas suddenly made sense. It was like one of those bursts of enlightenment the very religious sometimes report. Instead I moved on to the question of what had occurred in Ephesus late the previous spring. That was something I still couldn’t fit into the puzzle.
Silas was going into an orgasm of evasion when we were disturbed by a knock at what remained of the door. One of the Legation officials looked in.
‘Demet- My Lord, rather,’ he said in evident confusion, ‘there are armed men to see you.’
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The official stood back. Immediately, three soldiers stepped past him into the room.
‘Ah, do come in, my good men,’ Silas said in halting Greek. Now he was no longer Demetrius, it would never do for him to soil his lips with the common Greek of the streets. Like most of his sort, though, he was too grand and too idle to have paid much attention to learning the pure language.
He turned to me and switched back into Latin. ‘You know I said I’d take you to Rome with me? Well, I lied.’
He sat back in his chair and hugged himself.
One of the soldiers stepped forward. He was a big man with black hair on his hands and wrists and a massive black beard broken only by the occasional battle scar. He looked nothing like the men of the City Guard I’d taken as typical of the Eastern armies. He cleared his throat and held up a slip of papyrus.
‘We are here’, he said in the deep, flattened Greek of the Mesopotamian provinces, ‘to see the so-called Permanent Legate of the Roman Patriarch.’
He looked at Silas. ‘Are you that person?’
‘I am indeed, my good man,’ Silas said, patting his official robe to emphasise his status. ‘To be precise, I am the Permanent Legate of His Holiness the Universal Bishop. I represent His Holiness and, through him, Saint Peter himself.
‘Now, to business. I want to thank His Imperial Majesty Heraclius for the speed of his response to my message. You will find that this loathsome and obscene barbarian child-’
The soldier held up an impatient arm for silence. He looked decidedly sour at Silas’s mention of the hated title.
‘You tell me you are the Acting Permanent Legate?’ he asked. Without bothering for a reply, he turned to his subordinates. ‘You will note’, he said, ‘the malefactor confessed his blasphemy and treason.’
The other two nodded. One fingered his sword.
Silas got to his feet. The easy smile had gone from his face. He looked nervously around the room. The windows were still shuttered after my orders for the room to be sealed. Soldiers blocked the doorway.
I cast my eyes demurely down and tried to look part of the battered furniture.
‘My good man,’ Silas opened, with another, but failed, attempt at jollity, ‘I think we are talking at cross purposes. I said I was the Permanent Legate. If you want the Acting Permanent Legate-’
He got no further. The soldier reached forward and struck him hard in the face with a fist that looked about the size and weight of a lead club.
‘Silence, you piece of Latin shit!’ he said, barely changing either tone or volume.
Silas fell gasping to the floor. He put his hands to his face and drew them away covered in blood. Then he fell silent, looking up with growing horror at the dull, official faces.
The soldier held the slip of papyrus close to his face and began intoning his orders from Priscus.
‘You’ve misunderstood,’ Silas gabbled, now in Latin. ‘The one you want is the yellow-headed barbarian. He’s the one you want.’
‘Silence, pig!’ the soldier rasped in Greek, showing his fist again. He was growing impatient at the sounds Silas was making. It was plain he knew no Latin.
He turned to the other two soldiers. ‘Get him on his feet,’ he said curtly. ‘Each of you – take an arm. Hold him steady.’
He drew his sword.
‘No!’ Silas screamed. ‘Please, in the name
of God. You must take me to Heraclius. I have a deal with him. He’ll confirm you’ve made a mistake. Please-’
He got no further. His voice was choked off by a hard sword-thrust into the guts. The soldier pulled it smartly out, wiped the blade on a cloth and sheathed it again. It was one of those smooth strokes you only see from professionals.
Silas was on his knees again. He held up his hands, bloodier than before. He looked up at me, terror and shock stamped equally on his white face.
‘No,’ he croaked, still in Latin. ‘Not like this. I’ve come so far. You must tell them-’
He fell on to his hands and tried to crawl towards me. But every move was suddenly an effort. Then he fell forward on to his face and tried ineffectually to drag himself across the boards. I continued staring down.
The soldier looked at me for the first time. ‘Do I know you?’ he asked.
‘I am, sir,’ I replied in the smooth, unaccented Greek that I’d long since perfected, ‘Fourth Secretary to His Holiness Sergius, Patriarch of Constantinople. I was here on business at the Legation when this impostor tried to extract money from the officials.’
The soldier softened. ‘You know, people like you shouldn’t be out on the streets on a day like this,’ he said. ‘There are some wicked people about.’
He gave me an appreciative look that went straight through my outdoor clothing. But then he remembered what I’d said about the Greek Patriarch. It didn’t do to go about propositioning clerics, even on the Imperial frontiers.
I gave him a charming smile and said something about how the work of Holy Mother Church must go on even during a civil war.
We all crossed ourselves at the mention of the word ‘holy’, then the soldier turned back to Silas, who was still groping his way across the floor in my direction. His bloody robe clung to him as after a heavy downpour and its delicate silk snagged on the floorboards. Strength failing, he gasped with pain at every move. But he somehow wanted to be beside me.
The soldier waved at his subordinates. ‘Let’s get this over and done with,’ he said.
One of them took hold of Silas by what remained of his hair and pulled his head up. There was a hiss of steel through air and a dull thud as the head was parted with a single stroke from its shoulders. Spurting blood which the soldiers moved smartly back to avoid, the body fell to the floor with a heavy thump. For a moment, it lay twitching – then it was still.
‘Excuse me, sir,’ I said, standing forward. ‘May I?’
I took the severed head from the soldier’s hands. He stood back with a bemused respect. I held the head up carefully to avoid getting blood on my clean clothes. I’d often wondered how quickly a beheading killed its victim. Does the mind die at once when the head is severed from its body? Or does some vestige of life remain like the cooling of a stone taken from a fire?
There were other matters, I’ll admit, more deserving of my attention. But this was a chance of knowledge that might not come up so conveniently again. I pushed my face within about six inches of the severed head.
‘Can you still hear me, Silas?’ I cried softly in Latin. I tapped hard on the closed eyes with the fingers of my left hand. There was a fluttering movement.
‘Silas,’ I repeated.
The eyes fell open. I swear they focused for a moment on my face.
‘Silas, you’ve lost,’ I said triumphantly. ‘Now that I know everything, I’m going to make sure that what you schemed to achieve will come to nothing. In a few moments, you’ll wake in Hell. Take this as the beginning of your torments.’
I watched in fascination as the eyes dulled and the twitching of the already slack lips died away.
There – I’d learned something. I’d also done something to get even with that worthless fucker. No one calls me a barbarian without coming seriously to grief, I can tell you.
‘I was placing a curse of the Church on the impostor,’ I explained to the soldier. He nodded, still respectful, and put the head into a black bag.
‘Was any of that stuff his?’ the soldier asked, looking at the pile of things on the floor.
‘The document belongs to the Church,’ I said, avoiding the matter of which Church.
He grunted and took the bronze mirror for himself. It was a very nice object. Martin had gaped at the price.
I went with the soldiers down to the main hall to make sure the door was secured behind them. Before it closed, I noticed another detachment of armed men in the street. They didn’t stop to compare notes, but marched straight past each other.
When there came the inevitable knock on the Legation door, I was ready for them.
‘His Excellency the Permanent Legate begs your indulgence, kind sirs,’ I said through the grille, ‘but your presence is no longer needed. The emergency has been handled from within the Legation.’
I closed the grille and waited until, at last, I heard a shuffling outside and a few muttered obscenities. Then there was the tread of booted feet marching off in disciplined fashion.
This might have been a happier day for me. But I couldn’t complain about my luck.
‘Please, sir,’ the official asked with a despairing look at the headless corpse, ‘can you explain what is going on?’
‘It has been a trying day for all of us,’ I said soothingly, patting the man on the shoulder. I turned back to rolling up the Patent of Universality I’d been inspecting. It was wholly in order. I put it back into the retaining band and then into the leather case.
‘Just get Demetrius ready for a decent burial.’
‘He told us’, the official said – ‘he told us he was really the Permanent Legate. He was ever so angry with us when we let him in. He was angry when we didn’t believe him. He was angry that you were here. He was angry about everything. He said he was going to send us all to Thessalonica to be massacred once the barbarians broke in.’
‘The Permanent Legate died last Sunday morning,’ I reassured him. ‘We all saw the body. We don’t need to ask what Demetrius was up to. He was a strange one, even without this latest pretence.’
The official nodded. That much was undeniable.
I looked at the body. Someone like Seneca might once have taken all this and worked it into a farce to amuse the Imperial Court. Here lay the Permanent Legate in place of me. Someone else of utterly unknown name had lain in the room next door nearly five days back in place of the Permanent Legate. In place of him, Authari had been buried in the Great Church. In place of Authari, some slave of unimportant name had been buried in another church.
Now the Permanent Legate would be buried under the name of a Demetrius who had never lived at all. Rather, his body would be buried. The head would be thrown down a sewer the moment Priscus caught sight of it.
I changed the subject. ‘Other men will be here before morning. Don’t let them in. Tell them I’ve gone away. Tell them also to remember that the Legation has full immunity from entry and inspection. I’d be grateful if you could eventually get all my books and papers back to His Excellency the Dispensator.’
‘Is it true, sir,’ the official asked, ‘you are wanted for treason?’
‘Probably,’ I said. ‘Though I doubt if anyone will publish the details until tomorrow morning at the earliest.’
‘Why not stay here, sir?’ the man asked. He spoke with sudden eagerness. ‘There are many places in the Legation where we could shelter you.’
I looked at him. He really meant it.
‘I thank you, but no,’ I said. ‘When order is finally restored, you will need to open the gates to the Emperor and do so with a clean conscience. When I do make it to the “wanted” list, Heraclius will not be pleased with anyone who might have given me sanctuary. You’ve risked enough already.’
When I’d changed again in what had been my suite, we walked back together down to the main hall. The lamps still burned as they always had. I took one last look around me.
‘Once I’ve gone,’ I said, ‘do make sure to lock and bar the door. Rememb
er what I told you about not letting anyone else in.’
We shook hands. Then, on a sudden impulse, we embraced.
I paused in the chill outside the gate and listened for the heavy click of the bar. This time, I had a sword under my cloak.
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All was quiet in the square outside the Legation. A small but bright moon shone down from the clear skies above the city. In its pale brightness, I could see one or two dark patches on the pavements, which I took to be blood. But the bodies had been long since cleared away.
The Great Church, far opposite, was now in darkness. With quarter given, it was no longer needed as a place of sanctuary. The Blues had taken up their movable wealth and gone home.
A few streets beyond the square, it was all different. Here, the Urban Prefecture was still on fire, and the fire had spread to the surrounding buildings. It was too late to save the Prefecture building. The flames had spread far within, and would burn unchecked for days to come. But the city slaves and sundry volunteers ran noisily back and forth with buckets to try and save the surrounding buildings. Men I’d never seen before stood in fine clothes, encouraging the slaves with words and the occasional handful of silver.
A dark hood covering my face and hair, I moved carefully through the running, often frantic crowds of fire-fighting men. So far as possible I kept close to the walls of buildings to avoid drawing attention to myself. I picked my way down a street still littered, except for the bodies, with the refuse of battle. I passed a set of barricades that now amounted to a pile of broken masonry and some burnt wooden spars. Was it here, that dozens had fought desperately to hold off an army – and that army had been held at bay for the better part of half a day?
Now all was silent and silver in the moonshine. A dog cocked its leg on one of the spars and went back to licking at the dark smears on the pavement.
From two streets away, I could see that the Ministry building was on fire. Great tongues of flame shot from the upper windows and licked cruelly around the lower reaches of the central dome. No one was trying to quench these flames. Instead, an immense crowd stood silently watching as the building in which generations of Constantinopolitans had been terrorised, and from which so many had never again emerged into the daylight, was consumed by flames that were themselves fed with the files that had enabled the despotism.
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