Terror of Constantinople (10 page)

    ‘It was the Will of Caesar,’ said Theophanes smoothly. ‘As such, the punishment was just.’

    ‘Let His Will be done,’ said Martin, pulling himself together. ‘We are all one beneath His Benevolent Sway.’

    He lapsed into silence. Called forward once more, the assistant produced a sheaf of letters of introduction from Theophanes to all the main libraries in the City that I’d be using. Coming from the Master of the Offices, these would prompt more ready co-operation than whatever I might have brought or might procure via the Roman Church.

    There was also an introduction to the Professor of Theology at the University. His department, I was told, had been unaffected by the spending cuts recently applied to the main University. Theophanes understood that my mission might involve enquiries that could only be answered
viva voce
by the highest theological authorities. This letter of introduction would ensure immediate and full consideration of all points raised.

    ‘I must inform you’, Theophanes said, ‘that His Excellency the Dispensator and my superiors have been in close contact ever since your mission was raised as a possibility. Both agree that nothing should stand in the way of its speedy completion.’

    I sprayed back a stream of flattering gratitude. I was now horribly alarmed. What was Theophanes up to? Why such interest in our mission? What was the function of that nasty little assistant of his? He’d stood silent throughout the conversation, for all the world as if memorising every word for later transcription.

    And what was the Dispensator up to?

    ‘You will enjoy Constantinople, young Alaric,’ Theophanes said at length with a smile of astonishing charm. ‘The only pity is that you will have so little time here on your first visit. Your mission is of the highest importance, and must come before all else.’

    He waved aside another helping of his fruit concoction. His assistant leaned forward to whisper something in his ear.

    Lunch was over. I now had other business.

9

The banking house of ben Baruch lay at the extremity of a dead end that backed on to one of the larger churches. It was a building of windowless stone walls with a three-inch wooden door plated both sides in bronze. There were the usual armed guards inside and out.

    No sun reached the paving stones of that narrow street. Aside from the thin slit of blue sky overhead, the only splash of colour came from a caged bird just outside the door. It sang and sang, and no one looked on.

    Nothing unusual about this, I should say. Wise bankers don’t go for the sort of frontage that allows easy access. Baruch in Rome always did his business from the basement cells of a converted prison.

    The difference between this and its smaller equivalent in Rome was the seemingly recent absence of any Jewish symbolism. The Star of David had been hacked from above the entrance and the gap partly filled with an enamelled icon of the Risen Christ. Inside, the walls were covered with painted icons – most of them jewelled and gilded.

    ‘Welcome, O Welcome, dear Brother in Christ!’ said Baruch of Constantinople. He shuffled into view, a much larger and heavier version of his brother in Rome. Indeed, this Baruch had the same shape as my building contractor. Also unlike his brother, he had a gold cross embroidered on his shabby robe and a jewelled icon of the Virgin hung round his neck so large it had to be seen to be believed. He spoke loudly in Latin of the saints who must surely have watched over my journey to Constantinople. To this he added even louder praise of the divine care of the Emperor in keeping the sea routes clear. Then he fell to a more reassuringly Jewish inspection of the draft I’d brought with me.

    ‘That’s a pretty sum you’re expecting me to honour, isn’t it, my dear Brother in Christ?’ he rasped in Greek, hurriedly crossing himself at the mention of Our Saviour’s name. ‘A pretty sum indeed. What will you be doing with all this gold – buying a palace?’ Without moving his nose from the parchment sheet, he looked up at me from the corners of his eyes.

    ‘I must ask this, you know,’ he explained, seeing my look of slight shock. ‘There is a new ordinance limiting cash withdrawals without good reason. I can give you some gold, but the rest in promissory notes. You’ll have no trouble passing these, I can assure you. The House of Baruch is the strongest in the city.’

    ‘All the stronger now for your conversion?’ I hazarded. He gave me a queer look, then darted a glance at one of his clerks, who’d been paying us much attention from the moment I came in.

    ‘My poor brother in Rome,’ he sighed. ‘He may be close in the confidence of His Holiness, but he lacks the stern and loving command of the Great Augustus to abandon the error of our ancestors for the Word of Christ – as clarified, of course, at Nicaea and at Chalcedon and by all lesser Councils of Holy Mother Church.

    ‘You must come to dinner on the next main feast day,’ he said loudly, reaching under a blue scarf to scratch his head. ‘There will be pork with every dish, you know, or shellfish. This is a good Christian house, be assured. We serve no
kocha
muck here.’

    I thanked him. Trying to turn the conversation, I complimented him on the icon.

    ‘Picked up at an auction of confiscated property,’ he said proudly at the recollection. ‘If you look closely, you’ll see the bloody tears that run down her cheeks are picked out in rubies – genuine rubies too, I’ll have you know, not glass. I paid a tenth of its true value. I ...’ He trailed off. Then, very loud: ‘Of course, I’d have paid ten times more than its true value if I could thereby have shown my loyalty to the Lord Augustus who watches over all of us.’

    ‘I am a true son of the Church,’ he bellowed after me as we left. ‘I pray twice a day at the Church of All the Saints!’

    Turning out of the little street, I noticed another Jewish bank – this one closed, with the Imperial Seal on its door and a notice of auction above.

There followed the best spending spree I’d ever yet known.

    You can forget Rome for shopping. If you have no taste, the shops there are good enough. If you search and nag, you can usually get the basics of a civilised existence. If you want something really special, though, you have to order it from Ravenna, and hope it won’t get pilfered or spoiled on the way.

    In Constantinople, you can get absolutely everything. Most of the shops are just stalls set up outside houses in the side streets, the owners calling out and catching at you as you pass in the street. You ignore these. They are for the lower classes. Those in the main streets are large establishments, with many rooms, all gorgeously furnished, where the staff behave like the best household slaves. Some even have glazed windows, so you can stop and gloat over the riches within. Mostly, the shutters block off any view by night. But a couple of the very grandest shops, where the city guards can be trusted to patrol, keep the windows exposed all night long, with lamps to give a clear view within.

    Once you get used to the fact that the Greeks are the most shameless rip-off merchants, who’ll try selling you moulded for carved work and silver plate for the real thing, you can have a glorious time in those shops. And it isn’t just the shopping. The better shops are places of general resort. The upper floors have private dining rooms and even the occasional brothel. You can meet old friends there. You can make new ones.

    It was turning out fortunate that all our main baggage from Rome had never arrived. The clothes I had brought with me, it seemed, were rather frumpy for Constantinople. Trousers were not at all the thing in the city. They showed you up as a provincial or even a barbarian. Tunics there were the fashion. You could have shortish ones, with close-fitting stockings right up above the hemline if you had legs to show off. But no trousers.

    I passed an age at the most expensive tailor Martin could remember, inspecting bales of cotton and the finest silks to be had from the East. Rather pretty youths of about my own age sauntered around my chair, showing off the elegance that could be achieved for just a few of those Baruch notes. I must have assumed every conceivable pose while the assistants hurried round me pinning lengths of cloth into the most fashionable styles.

‘If you’ll pardon my liberty of comment,’ Martin told me over dinner in a decidedly fancy restaurant opposite the Legation, ‘you’ll soon be needing more of those notes.’

    The complete new wardrobe I’d forced on him now forgotten, he’d gone back to looking anxious. His idea of the evening had involved another takeaway in the Legation, and then making up a shopping list to send with our slaves to the Covered Market. I’d wanted something grander, so had chosen the restaurant on the basis of its evident expensiveness and the just as evident quality of the other diners I’d watched going in.

    My attention had been drawn to it by the two blazing torches set up each side of its main door. The shops had been closing one after another with the onset of the dusk that comes late to Constantin ople in summer, and I was feeling starved after walking what must have been five miles through the shops.

    ‘I suppose I shall need eventually to go back to Baruch,’ said I, dipping my bread into a glass bowl of some delicious yellow sauce. ‘But rest assured – more wine, if you please, and unwatered this time,’ I added to the owner of the restaurant, who’d come over to serve us with his own hands – ‘rest assured, there can be plenty more notes where those came from.’

    And there were. Cash, I’ll grant, has its uses. It’s good for small purchases. It’s good in quite large sums for bribing officials. In a crisis, nothing can beat it: that is, after all, what got me to Jarrow after that pig Constantine had ordered all my accounts frozen. But it also has its limitations. You don’t use it for big purchases. You certainly don’t carry large amounts when you travel.

    ‘Listen, Martin,’ I said, with another attempt at introducing him to the ways of finance. ‘The letter from Baruch in Rome creates a debt against him with his brother in Constantinople. This can be paid from Rome by a later shipment of gold. More likely, it can be offset by issuing a draft in Constantinople to someone who wants to buy goods – relics for illegal export, perhaps – in Rome. It may be bought by the Imperial authorities if they ever want to remit funds for Italian defence. Or it may be traded via third parties in Carthage or Alexandria.’

    ‘And if the Roman Baruch has no money?’ Martin asked with a glimmer of understanding.

    ‘The web of trust is broken,’ I replied, ‘and everyone’s in the shit. But that won’t happen. Those brothers know which way the wind is blowing before others feel the draught. Besides, I have letters of credit from the Papal Bank. I don’t want to use them, though, because of the discount.’

    That lost him again. But never mind. It’s enough that I wasn’t short of money, and wasn’t likely to be. In any event, if I wanted quick and ready service to get us out before Heraclius turned up to sound the political equivalent of the Last Trump, it wouldn’t do to go about looking like some semi-barbarian from the outer fringes of the Italian Exarchate.

    ‘Leave the money to me, Martin,’ I said, giving up on explanation. ‘That bag of clipped silver you had nicked off you in Corinth won’t be missed here.

    ‘Any further thoughts on the old eunuch?’ I asked. I’d dropped my voice, but was speaking in a Latin that it seemed unlikely that anyone else in the restaurant could understand.

    ‘He plainly knows everything about us, and took great pleasure in having us know that he knows.’

    Martin opened his mouth to answer, but no sound issued.

10

Instead, the whole restaurant fell suddenly quiet. It was as if a singer were about to begin a performance. There was that same feeling of hushed expectancy. The chattering and laughter of the diners had ceased. The serving slaves left off their darting around and clattering of dishes. All was suddenly fallen silent. All was still.

    I looked round to my left. Over by the door, their set faces pale in the glimmer of the lamps, three men dressed in the black I’d earlier seen at the Ministry stood looking at the diners. They were as still and silent as everyone else in the room.

    Then one of them stepped forward. Taller than the others, his wiry build partly compensated by the bulk of the armour under his cloak, he added to the impression of a performer about to begin. He looked from table to hushed, expectant table, dwelling on none. A smile on his thin lips, he seemed to bask in the terror his appearance had created. A slave was pushed forward to stand trembling beside him.

    ‘Well?’ the Tall Man asked in a voice of quiet but silky menace. ‘Where is he this time?’