Terror of Constantinople (59 page)

    ‘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. Remember 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.

63

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.

    As I watched the Ministry burning I was reminded of that official, back in the time of Julian. Now his plan was being realised. Take away the records, you see, and you rule by consent or not at all.

    I didn’t know if anyone had searched those awful dungeons. In the flickering light, it was hard to recognise anyone among the crowds but I turned away. After all the killing and pain I’d seen, I couldn’t bring myself to witness the despair of those who’d waited so long outside, only to find a catacomb at the end of the Terror.

Constantinople, as I keep saying, is a huge city. There had been a fierce battle in the centre. Buildings were burning in all directions. An invading army had taken control of the city in its entirety, but you’d never have known that from a walk outside the centre. Once past the Ministry, the streets grew steadily quieter. A few people staggered drunkenly past. One or two who were plainly up to no good darted furtively away as I approached. When one man tried to insist that I should remove my hood, I showed him the blade of my sword and it had the desired effect.

    Passing into a deserted street, I came upon bodies hanging limp from the torch brackets. Some of them wore the uniforms of the Black Agents. A few wore common civilian clothes. One had a sign hung round his broken neck: ‘Informer’ it said. I didn’t look too closely at the bodies. It was enough to imagine the furious mobs that had flushed these creatures out of their hiding places and hunted them through the streets. I thought of the crunch of breaking bones, of the cutting and gouging – of the terrified screams of hunters turned by circumstances beyond their control into prey.

    I passed into the square before the Law Courts. Here, the outdoor restaurants were in full swing. A forest of torches burned around me. Carrying heavy dishes and trays loaded with jugs of wine, the waiters ran from kitchens to tables and back again. Except that everyone should long since have been abed, it was as if there had been no battle that day – nor even the smallest disturbance to the life of the city.

    Then, as I walked round the edge of the square, I heard it:

    ‘Well, I’d stand with him again, any day. So would every man of us.’

    It was the high, clear voice of well-bred youth and I identified it as coming from a table close by one of the monuments. Braziers stood around the diners to keep off the autumnal chill, and a canopy was stretched over them in case of rain.

    I recognised the speaker as one of the students I’d led into battle. He had a bandage over his head and his right arm in a sling, but he was alive and still jubilant. At the same long table, and on the table beyond that, I saw that the majority of my students were gathered. Even Philip was there, and I was sure I’d seen him take a knock on the head. Martin had been wrong. The students weren’t mostly dead. Though rather battered from the hard fighting, they were mostly still alive. And now they were celebrating.

    ‘It was like fighting by God-like Achilles,’ another said, with a garbled attempt at quoting Homer. He got a nasty look from an elder sitting opposite him.

    ‘Oh, I shouldn’t worry about all that stuff – the Tyrant’s dead,’ he called, choosing to interpret the look as nothing other than a reflection on his learning. ‘We’ve all got our amnesty. Besides, isn’t Uncle Flavius planning to be first out of the city to welcome Heraclius when he shows up?’

    ‘There’s no amnesty for your Golden Alaric,’ the elder said with a knowing sneer. ‘There’s a price on his head – its weight in gold.’

    ‘I’d like to see anyone try to collect on that!’ the first student interjected. ‘I saw him get away right at the end. There wasn’t a single scratch on him.’

    ‘Then pray the bugger is dead before Heraclius gets hold of him,’ the elder replied. ‘He’ll regret the hour that riff-raff of veterans by the Great Church put him up for Emperor. I saw the exception list published beside the amnesty. His name was just below that of Phocas’ – the man turned and spat elegantly at mention of the Emperor.

    ‘As for you’ – he turned back to the first student – ‘you’ve had your fun. From tomorrow, it’s back to the University. If you want that posting to Rhodes, you’ll need to pass those examinations.’

    At this, the table fell silent. Then someone recited a long snatch from
The Iliad
– one of the bits full of fighting and blood – and the whole gathering joined in with varying degrees of recollection and competence.

    On the far side of the square, I noticed several men pulling on ropes at an equestrian statue of Phocas. It buckled at the legs, but was too strongly set into the plinth. The bronze would have to wait until day for breaking up into sections and dispatch for coining into money or melting into a more fashionable shape.

    I noticed more bodies hanging from torch brackets as I moved on, but the stimulants Theophanes had given me were now having their full effect, and I felt thoroughly jaunty. It was disturbing to be reminded that those idiotic Blues had put me outside the scope of the amnesty. But I was still alive and in one piece. And I had every intention of staying that way.

    As I walked from the square into the shadows of a street obviously inhabited by persons of quality, I caught a brief exchange about the whereabouts of Heraclius. Someone suggested that he was already in the palace.

    ‘Not so,’ came the reply. ‘He’s on his flagship in the Golden Horn. He’ll not be coming ashore until the mess is cleared away.’