The Curse of Babylon (34 page)

I clenched my fists. ‘You have walked two miles through Constantinople, and dressed like something out of Menander, to tell me
this
?’ I asked, trying not to shout. ‘Fuck off home, Priscus. You’ve taken enough risk with all our lives.’ I wouldn’t even ask how and what he’d heard about my visit to the astrologers. That could wait.

Priscus took a deep breath and blew his veil outwards. ‘Of course, I do have more to say, my dear – really important stuff that will put you in a much better mood with me. Have you ever wondered . . .?’

With a loud click, the window opened behind me. I stepped sideways to avoid being brained by it. Inside the room, Nicetas had been pulled back to his feet. Leaning unsteadily on the back of his broken chair, he was surrounded by his more determined hangers-on. ‘I will give you Leander’s
Lyric Hymn to the Virgin
,’ he cried. ‘Hear what beauties a
true
poet can achieve.’ Eunapius threw himself to his knees and lifted his arms in a show of exaltation. Paying no attention, Nicetas wobbled forward on his stick to where Leander had given his performance. After a long, ragged breath, he recited:

Who aloft in the heavens rose

  on fluttering waxy wings

and dared the cloudless realm

of Phoebus Apollo breach

sure for presumption

earned his mother’s stony embrace.

  Thee almighty protectress wise

   by Heaven’s decree to blaze

   with sempiternal flame

so ending our darkness sent

equal the danger

so it seems of seeking to see.

O victorious all against

in battles unequalled those

by darkness granted sway

O Lady of might serene

Mother of Jesus

 ever splendid Vision of Light!

Nicetas greeted the rapturous applause with a loud tapping of his stick. Everyone who hadn’t already scarpered hurried over to join in the shouted acclamations. He collapsed into a new chair someone had brought forward. His monk would soon be at work again. I turned and looked into the darkness. Priscus was gone. In his place, Leander was fiddling with a lock of his greasy hair. ‘It was an historic mark of My Lord’s favour,’ he slimed at me, no longer hiding his Egyptian accent, ‘that these humble verses were taught to every staff officer to sing to the men before the Battle of Antioch.’

‘Did they finish the song during or after the retreat?’ I sneered. ‘Oh, and didn’t Icarus fall into the
sea
?’

Hands folded across his chest, Leander bowed silently. ‘I have been sent, My Lord Alaric, to thank you for the return of something most valuable to the Lord Nicetas.’

I stopped looking about for Priscus. After waiting all evening for an approach of this sort, I’d been ready to dump all suspicion that he so much as knew about the cup. If Eunapius was up to something – that much was clear as day – I’d seen it confirmed that Nicetas couldn’t conspire his way out of a chamber pot. Here now was Leander, bearing a request that no longer made sense, but that would need somehow to be fitted into a revived hypothesis.

Someone inside was starting up on a flute. Someone else joined in with a drum. At once, a regular padding of bare feet on marble indicated the black girls hadn’t just been brought out for ornament. It was a bastard evening. I’d endured the whole recitation at a distance that almost exposed me to Leander’s garlicky breath. I was now stuck with him again to miss the one compensating entertainment. The modern Callimachus waited for a break in the squealed, swaying rhythm that streamed from the open window. He leaned forward. ‘Since I have often had the honour to be welcomed into My Lord’s private quarters, I am able to confirm that she is a most headstrong girl. If she has caused you any trouble, I am authorised to apologise with the utmost sincerity.’

I had my back to the window. That meant I had a better view of Leander than he had of me. When I still said nothing, he smiled nervously. ‘After she rejected the wholesome discipline of her father’s household, she was sent to be instructed in the ways of humility by the nuns of Saint Tomalina in Trebizond. Even so, she escaped and returned to the scene of her old debaucheries in Constantinople. She was apprehended and brought home. Before she could be returned to the holy sisters, there to await an introduction to her future husband, she escaped again. That was the night before last. It was feared that she might be preparing a complete change of identity. My Lord wishes me to assure you that, now you have returned her, she will be more closely watched until she can be locked into the female quarters of some other house.’

A dozen yards to my right, I heard Theodore carried out. The change of air must have revived him. Still speaking Syriac, he called loudly on God to blind him, so he could look no more on the perfect beauty of Antony. He was cut off in mid-flow by a slap to his face. Samo grated at him in Latin to shut up if he didn’t want a stick taken to his bare arse. The boy gave way to moaning sobs of ‘Antony, Antony – how I love you, and how I sin!’ Luckily, that too was in Syriac.

I nodded at Leander. There was an intellectual neatness in what he’d said. I no longer needed to revive an exploded hypothesis. And Theodore had given me time to ignore the chill spreading out from my chest. ‘I am always the most devoted friend and servant of the Lord Nicetas,’ I managed to say in a voice that didn’t waver. ‘I am also much in your debt for the goodness you have shown in bringing me news that the girl is now reunited with her loving father.’

Leander bowed again and smirked. Inside, there was a burst of applause, and the musicians turned to one of the slow dance tunes popular back then in the brothels of Syria. ‘Does he
ever
go to bed?’ I asked, allowing myself one flash of temper. Played out to its last variation, the dance tune could last all night.

Leander shook his head. ‘The Lord Nicetas has been assured that, if he lies down to sleep, he will stop breathing,’ he explained. ‘It is his custom, therefore, to sit upright in chair through the night, sleeping and waking as the holy fathers who surround him direct.’

I controlled a sudden urge to burst out laughing. I bowed to Leander. As a poet of sorts, he was partly outside the usual hierarchies. ‘Your conversation is always a delight,’ I said, ‘However, I feel obliged to take my leave of His Magnificence the Commander of the East.’

I stepped back from kissing Nicetas on the lips. ‘You really are my dearest friend,’ he replied without moving his lips. ‘But, if it can’t be the rectorship, Leander
must
have a job that will give him official status and a salary. You know that only you can seal that manner of appointment.’

I bowed low before the man who, in his cousin’s absence, was supposed to be Regent. ‘There was a time when the Treasury had a department of correspondence,’ I said quietly. ‘That was when Latin was still the official language and the clerks needed to be trained in the appropriate phraseologies. I could revive the post of director for Leander. The salary isn’t much, but would give him the right to present birthday wishes to the Emperor. We could interpret that as the right to present birthday odes.’

Looking relieved, Nicetas signalled to his eunuchs. They got him from each side and pulled him to his feet. ‘Let it be known,’ he cried weakly, ‘that our most beloved friend Alaric has opened poetic hostilities this night with Leander. At our next recital, Leander will make his reply.’ He leaned on me in what might pass for an embrace. I smiled at Timothy and pretended not to notice the scared, apprehensive faces of those who hadn’t already gone home. Nicetas sat heavily back in his chair and nodded at Leander, who went into a long and reverential bow in my direction. That got me more nervous looks. There were even angry murmurs when Nicetas stayed on his feet while I backed out of the room. One of the black girls who’d been playing with each other in the recital space broke into an exaggerated orgasm. I don’t think anyone paid attention.

Chapter 35

The wind had made another of its endless shifts of direction. Inside, with all the candles burning away like houses in a city taken by storm, it had continued sweltering till the end. Out here, in the quiet and increasingly unlit streets, I was glad of the cloak I’d put on over my toga. I was tired. Two days running, I’d been scared half out of my wits. I’d uncovered a web of treason the nature and extent of which remained unclear. Where was bloody Priscus? Why come out in that absurd disguise, only to vanish like a ghost?

Except I was tired, none of this mattered. Even before getting my people to check her story, I’d known Antonia was lying. I’d asked, only that afternoon, who her father was. Did it matter if her father turned out to be Nicetas? It did, of course. Anyone else I could have called straight into my office to present with a bill for unpaid taxes. Everyone owed something. No one was ever expected to pay unless he upset someone like me. I could have bought Antonia fair and square. Not so Nicetas. Save by the Emperor himself, he was untouchable. Whenever he wanted, he could have his daughter tied hand and foot and stuffed into a wagon rumbling east. I couldn’t denounce him for treason. Beyond a hint from some scabby old fool who might already have been put out of the way by Simon, I had bugger all evidence of his complicity in anything. Heraclius wasn’t Chosroes: especially against his own blood, he’d expect some grounds of probability. I could go after his creature Eunapius, but the Lord Commander of the East would only throw his hands in the air and plead ignorance. He’d be believed, because no one could doubt someone as thick as Nicetas was telling the truth.

But I could drop the whole line of thought. Heraclius was away. In his place, Nicetas was the supreme power. Antonia would be back scrubbing floors in Trebizond before that changed. And what of that? We’d met. We’d fucked. We’d argued. Theodore might be getting ready to offer up his soul in exchange for what he thought she was. I was His Magnificence Alaric – now of age. The girl dripped trouble from every pore. It was pure accident she’d kept me out of Simon’s hands. Everything else about her was a complication. She’d now overreached herself – no doubt thinking her own father wouldn’t recognise her got up as a man. Who was I to hurry to the rescue? If I tried, I was sure, I could put her and everything concerning her out of mind. Let silly Theodore sob his heart out when Antony didn’t show for breakfast the next morning. If I never saw Antonia again, I was the Magnificent Alaric. I’d know how to keep a stiff upper lip.

There was a faint noise behind me. Priscus? No, not Priscus. However faint, he’d never have made a noise. ‘Might our young lord be lost?’ someone grated in a voice straight out of one of the lower poor districts. ‘Aren’t we a bit tipsy, to be out on our own so late and all?’ Someone else added.

I turned and looked at the half dozen footpads. The closest of them had his cudgel already raised. Doubtless, there were a few knives tucked out of sight. I’d been passing the Central Milestone on my slow walk from Nicetas to the Triumphal Way. Slowly, I turned and went over to sit on the lowest step. ‘Do you know who I am?’ I asked.

‘We might soon find out,’ the man with the club said with a laugh. As I’d expected, sitting down had unnerved them. They stopped edging forward.

For once, I had no money with me. No chance of my usual dealings with the city trash. I flicked my cloak aside to show that I was armed. ‘If you don’t fuck off out of my sight,’ I said mildly, ‘I’ll carve you up so fast, you won’t have time to shit yourselves.’ I’d left my favourite sword with Shahin. This one, though, had served me well that afternoon. When being got ready to leave Nicetas, I’d taken it from the doorman and held it up, so the lamplight could glitter on the many-folded steel of its blade. Bearing in mind the clothes I had on, I hoped I’d not have to use it tonight. One good look at me and the night vermin were slinking off in search of easier pickings.

I waited for the last footsteps to go out of range. I got up and arranged my clothes again. I turned and looked at the Milestone. It gave the name of and distance to every provincial capital in the Empire that the Great Constantine had ruled. London was near the top. So was York. One of the more recent Emperors had fixed a pompous inscription on its base that combined a Greek translation of Vergil with a quote from
Revelation
. It was a poor moon but looking at the inscription drew me to a graffito someone had chalked on another side of the monument. I thought at first it was about me. I didn’t know whether to feel pleased or disappointed that it wasn’t.