The Ghosts of Athens (21 page)

I was expecting some reaction from Martin to this very diplomatic admission that Athens might not be completely safe. But it was now that the slave spoke. Rather, he giggled and let out a sentence of what sounded like Egyptian while poking at my nose. I frowned and gripped the sides of the bath. He repeated himself and gave me another poke. Would it be unreasonable, I wondered, if I stood up and boxed his ears? Or might it show a certain want of dignity?

‘I think he’s asking if you’d like him to suck out the pus,’ Martin explained, seemingly unaware of my admission.

He was right. The slave had spoken in the local dialect. Now I bothered listening, it did have a Greek base, but was so corrupted, and so mixed in Slavic words and grammatical forms, that it might have been a different language. Sad, I thought, that Athens had come to this. I nodded and tried to ignore the blast of stinking breath and the scrape of teeth against my nose.

‘Have you seen our host yet?’ I asked as the slave pulled momentarily back and spat a mouthful of goo into the water. Even if he was rather an unlikely spy, I might as well avoid any mention of names or titles that had meaning in Greek as well as Latin.

Martin nodded. ‘He was up before me,’ he said. ‘He got the big slave to heat your bathwater. He said he’d not be able to join you for breakfast, but would arrange a tour for you of Athens. He had a black eye,’ he added.

I waited for the slave to suck again on my nose. ‘I choose to assume he’s off on some official business,’ I said. ‘For sure, with no one employed to copy letters, or even deliver them, he must be running about Athens like a blue-arsed fly.’ I closed my eyes as the slave attached himself still harder to my nose, and thought about possible departure times for Corinth. I had no great wish to see the Governor. But I did want Sveta and the children safe behind the walls of the provincial capital. Also, I was short of cash. What Martin had handed back to me might have got him and my other people to Rome. But, now I’d be in Athens for some while – and now I’d heard it plain the whole official budget was embezzled – I needed some Jewish or Syrian banker to cash a draft for me. If I wanted any degree of comfort, I’d need slaves of my own to clean up my part of the residency. I might even get some of the heating back into working order.

The slave finally pulled back from my face, and I watched his pink spittle dissolve in the bathwater. I resisted the urge to put a finger to my nose. I sat up again and reached forward for the mirror. I wiped it clear and looked at the bright swelling. Had this been, in any sense, a worthwhile treatment? I put the mirror on the table beside my cup and changed the subject.

‘There is,’ I said to Martin, ‘a summary of the issue that I prepared for the orthodox and heretical Patriarchs of Alexandria. I believe you packed it in the smaller document box. You’ll need to make certain obvious cuts. But I’ll be most grateful if you could translate it into Latin for me to read out to the Western delegates. If they’ve arrived yet, and if there are no contrary instructions from the Emperor, I think I’ll convene the council the day after tomorrow. We’ll have a nice Sunday service, where everyone can be sworn to secrecy. Then we’ll proceed to whatever place of meeting Nicephorus has been ordered to make ready for us. The clearer we can make the issues, the sooner we can get everyone to agree the manner of their future discussion.’

‘What are you going to do about what you learned last night?’ Martin asked suddenly in Celtic. ‘The tongue of Saint George will protect us from satanic spells, but—’

‘Oh, do shut up, Martin!’ I laughed, joining him in Celtic – you can never be too paranoid where even idiot slaves are concerned. ‘I’ve told you many times there is no such thing as magic. You control the forces of Nature by the uncovering of facts and careful reasoning from them. There’s no short cut to be had from incantations, or chance resemblances of tree roots to body parts, or whatever. Be aware that the Count is a murderer, aided and assisted by some local charlatan and his agents or servants. There really is nothing more to be said.’

I smiled and reached forward to pat Martin on the back. I noticed too late I was putting a wet stain on his tunic and apologised. ‘Look, Martin,’ I said earnestly, ‘there is no magic. All that chanting does no more harm than the twittering of some bug at night.’ I stopped and waited for the look of strain to go out of Martin’s face.

Of course, it stayed put. ‘And you’re not going to act on what we learned last night?’ he asked, his mouth dropping open. ‘Even if you’re planning to overlook the girl, Priscus did say he wanted you dead.’

I stretched and yawned. ‘Oh, Martin,’ I said, ‘what do you suppose I should do – arrest the Commander of the East?’ I laughed. ‘In the first place, there’s the question of where to hold him. Then, there would have to be a trial before the Emperor. Even if we managed to throw in a few accusations of sorcery, the Great Augustus would require
some
evidence – and we really have nothing to offer at present. I hope you’ll agree that our only option is to take reasonable care and to wait on further developments. Besides, you may remember that, if our friend did request a murder, his request doesn’t seem to have produced anything other than a few more of the magic spells that didn’t stop us from getting here in the first place.’

I smiled reassuringly and had another look at myself in the mirror. That gave me an excuse for saying nothing more. Martin did have a point, I had to allow. If sorcery itself is nothing, sorcerers can still be dangerous. The rotting corpse we’d found the day before was proof of that. I changed my train of thought. Murder is murder. Sooner or later, that has to be punished. But I thought again. There was, to my knowledge, neither civil nor military government in Athens. Nicephorus had seen to that. I’d need at least a few days of caution. Balthazar had dismissed me as of no account. Of no account I’d therefore be. I’d make a few ineffectual enquiries about the state of affairs – do less than that, and I’d raise suspicion. Today was Friday. On Monday, I’d be off to Corinth. There, all being well, I’d take charge of things and come back with fifty or sixty armed men. The only shame was that I’d not be able to include Priscus in the arrests. But I really would try every one of those bastards for murder, from Nicephorus down, and throw in a sorcery charge to justify the executions. Even without the brilliant success I had in mind for the council, Heraclius would wet himself with joy as he read my account of the proceedings in Athens.

Or perhaps I’d do nothing at all, I told myself with yet another change of thought. I might not even make a trip to Corinth. I could send Martin over with letters. He and the others could stay there. The money I wanted could come back by courier. The most important single job in hand was getting that bloody council under way. Could I afford any time at all outside Athens? And what might be the effect of a full-blown sorcery investigation on those already skittish priests? Murder is murder. You don’t walk by on the other side when you see it. But I’d been sent here under a cloud. My one chance of redeeming myself was to get agreement on the importance of that Single Will argument I’d fabricated out of nothing. Murder is murder. But there was a religious dispute to be settled here in Athens. Back in Constantinople, there was an interlocking set of crises brought on by disaster in the war with Persia – and who else was there but me who could even understand them, let alone resolve them? My own interest aside, perhaps I should just keep all focus on the job in hand. Would justice in the main really be served by making a fuss here?
Fiat iustitia ruat caelum
is a fine motto for lawyers with no wider duties to consider. But would the skies not fall everywhere in the Empire if I insisted on strict justice here in Athens? Might they not fall on
me
?

Martin suddenly leaned forward and pushed the mirror aside. ‘Listen, Aelric,’ he urged, ‘why don’t we just get out of here? If we’re all going to Corinth, why stop there? We can all get away together. You say the Governor is useless. He won’t even notice if we take ship back to the West. We can—’

‘We can do no such thing!’ I snapped. ‘Since I don’t seem to have been dismissed from his service, that oath I swore to Heraclius still holds. My duty is to do what I can for the Empire.’ I looked into Martin’s drawn face. Surely he could understand the concept of duty. After all, wasn’t he also a barbarian? Honour, duty, courage – even a
cowardly
barbarian couldn’t set those aside. Or could he?

I sighed and went back to the previous matter. ‘Until further notice,’ I said firmly, ‘last night didn’t happen. Trust me, and keep a stiff upper lip.’ That was an order, and I expected no more about any supposed magic in Athens, or any more about running away from our undoubted duties. I stood up in the bath and looked across what had been a cavernous steam room. No general heating, of course, meant no steam. But having the lead tub moved in had at least reminded me of the comforts I was missing. I climbed carefully out and stood shivering on the unheated tiles. I took the towel Martin passed me and rubbed myself dry. The rain that had gone away when the big storm ended didn’t look as if it would return for a while. If so early in the morning was any indication, we had a fine day ahead. Already, there was a bright patch of sunlight inching its way down the plain bricks of the domed wall.

‘You,’ I said to the slave in very slow and simple Greek, ‘take up this mirror and hold it while I shave myself.’ Whether or not he’d sorted out my spots, he could help get that shameful blond bristle off my body. I stared back at a thoroughly idiotic smile on his face. I tried him in one of the Slavic dialects that I knew was spoken south of the Danube. It didn’t help. ‘Oh, go away!’ I groaned. ‘Go and report for cleaning duty.’ I stepped out of the pool of sunlight that had now just reached where I was standing and grabbed both oil and razor. I pointed at the door. ‘Get out!’ I roared.

The slave finally understood me and scurried out, leaving the door wide open.

‘Martin,’ I said, once he had returned from closing the door, ‘I don’t like to remind you of less pleasant days. But I do believe you once did bathroom duties when you were a slave. If I can do the rest myself, do be so kind as to shave my back.’

I was inspecting the underside of my crotch in the mirror when the door opened again. It was the idiot slave come back. He capered about, shaking his head and pointing at my crotch. He laughed and clapped his hands and let out another burst of nonsense. This time, I made an effort to listen. He
was
speaking a kind of Greek. The main problem was that he was defective in the head.

‘I gather the Western delegates have now arrived,’ I said to Martin. ‘Am I right in believing, however, that the Pope himself is outside?’

‘Not His Holiness in person,’ came the reply in a voice I’d never thought – or hoped – I’d hear again. ‘And, I assure you, there is nothing immediate about our arrival. We have been kept waiting here longer than we might have wished.’ I’d put my question in Latin, and I’d been answered in Latin.

I looked over at the door. A monk beside him, who was trying his best to pull the front of his hood over his eyes, there stood my old friend the Dispensator.

‘The head of the Roman delegation offers his deepest respects,’ he said, ‘and would have an audience with the Lord Senator.’ He ignored the fact that I was standing naked with my legs apart and showing every appearance of trying to sodomise myself with the handle of a bronze mirror. In both general and specific circumstances, a prostration would have been out of the question – at any rate, from him. But he did manage a very stiff bow.

‘My Lord Fortunatus!’ I cried. I hurried across the room, hardly noticing that the towel Martin had tried to wrap about me fell off after two paces. ‘This is a most unexpected honour.’

He raised his arms for an official embrace. Our lips met without touching in a way that might have impressed a geometry teacher. As soon as decency allowed, I took my hands from his stiff, bony shoulders and helped him into the only chair in the room.

He’d aged a little in the two years since our last meeting. The parchment of his face was paler and more withered. He might have been a touch smaller. But it was the Dispensator, sure enough – chief servant of the Servant of the Servants of Christ. He was the man, that is, who, formally charged with handling the Papal charity, was in fact governor of the Roman Church. So long as he took the trouble to get addled old Boniface to stamp his seal on whatever writing surface embodied it, his word was law in spiritual matters over the whole of those vast regions, mostly now unknown to Constantinople, that looked to Rome.

‘My Lord will forgive me,’ I said with all the smoothness I could find, ‘if I am overcome for the moment by the joy of an acquaintance that I never thought would be renewed.’

He stared back at me while Martin made a better job of getting the towel tied about my waist. It had its convenient side that he’d chosen to come out as head of the Western delegates. No one would ever dare question what agreement we might eventually reach about the questions for a future council. At the same time, someone more junior – and more pliable – would have been more immediately convenient.