The Ghosts of Athens (43 page)

There was a loud breaking of glass overhead, and a large stone crashed on to the floor a few feet to my left. A few shards of broken glass settled on my robe. I raised my arms to quell the rising panic within the hall and looked at the Dispensator. He shrugged and got up. Just before the main door, he turned and made a long bow to me. Listening in the silence that followed, I heard a shouted order that wasn’t from Priscus, followed by a scream of pain. I swallowed and tried for a smile as I looked round the hall. The interpreter had vanished under his table, and the minute clerk had thrown down his stylus in despair. But the Dispensator was now back in the room. He shook his head and sat down again. Another moment, and he was scratching away with his stylus as if there had been no disturbance.

I looked at the water clock. This session had been prolonged far beyond what I’d expected. But I pulled my thoughts together and continued: ‘If I may return to the main issue, a man can be a heretic either from ignorance or by act of the will – that is, he may be a material or a formal heretic. So far as material heresy is not an act of the will, it cannot be regarded as a sin. Therefore, the fanciful theology of women or of the lower classes should be corrected whenever encountered, but not punished. However, any person of intelligence and learning, who is made cognisant of his deviation from orthodoxy, and who persists in his deviation – he is rightly considered a formal heretic, and may anathema fall upon his head . . .’

So I spoke on in the still and heated air, to a rising chorus of shouting and screams from the street outside. There was a trumpet blast, and now the clatter of what may have been a single horse. From the intense look on his face, the Dispensator might never have been out of the room. Certainly, he’d not be followed by a hundred enraged and stinking beggars, come to beat us all to death. Even so, the Greeks, who now had not the smallest notion of what I was saying, sat looking nervously at each other. A few twisted their beards with the strain of all that had happened and was still happening. Others fell into various modes of silent prayer. But I had little doubt the militia was winning. If Priscus was right, and the barbarians wouldn’t attack until at least the following day, this was just the right excuse for imposing order on the city. Once the barbarians did move against us, we couldn’t afford a rising of the urban trash behind us. As I reached a dramatic pause in my discourse on the various meanings of ‘Person’, I looked again at the Dispensator. He caught my look, and stopped scratching away on his oversized wax tablet. He stared briefly back, one of those thin and mildly triumphant smiles on his face.

Someone at least was enjoying himself.

In its best age, I’ve already noted, the Athenian taste ran to buildings small but perfectly formed. The great Temple of Jupiter was an exception. Though not big at all by the standards of Rome or Constantinople, it was vast in Athenian terms. Its bulk loomed high over the wall that it nearly joined. Then again, it had been started by the tyrant Pisistratus as a symbol of his might. It had then been left unfinished by the democracy that followed the downfall of his son – too expensive and now too old-fashioned, I could suppose. After seven hundred years, it had been completed by Hadrian on his celebrated visit. No expense had been spared, I’d once read, and the archaic design had been followed as if all the improvements in construction of the intervening centuries hadn’t taken place. Now, its outer colonnade had been bricked up on its conversion to some other use, and it was surrounded by other low buildings that made the original plan hard to follow.

‘Oh, there is a sort of administration here that’s independent of Nicephorus,’ Priscus said with an airy wave. ‘Don’t ask me what it actually does. But we can be glad that, in the chaotic administration of the Empire, not every city council has been abolished.’

I nodded and bowed to avoid knocking my head on a low point in the ceiling. Normally, after four days in a city, I’d have made a full inspection of how it was administered. If I was still pretty much in the dark about Athens, this was the natural effect of having concentrated on religious affairs – and on staying alive.

There really was no point in wondering about the administration of Athens, nor in the internal geography of what was obviously its actual heart. As with parts of the residency, the interior of this building had been divided into a labyrinth of offices and narrow corridors. As in the residency, most of the offices appeared to be unused. But, unlike in the residency, some were still in use, and this was now the headquarters of such resistance Athens was likely to make in the event of any storming of the city wall.

Darkness hadn’t yet fallen. But the sky was beginning to glow red through the single high window as I stepped into what may once have been the temple sanctuary. A hundred or so men, all dressed in various kinds of military clothing – most showing unmistakable Germanic or Slavic ancestry – got up from where they’d been sitting on the floor and bowed. I jumped lightly on to a platform that still had the remains of a few statue bases to make it irregular, and waited for Priscus to climb up beside me. He was now dressed in the full regalia of a Commander of the East, and was, I had to admit, a gorgeous and a reassuring sight.

‘Gentlemen, this will not be a long meeting,’ I began. ‘My purpose in calling you together is to announce that, as Legate of the Emperor, clothed in full authority, I have formally dismissed Nicephorus as Count of Athens. I dismiss him on the grounds of desertion in the face of the enemy, and declare him an outlaw.’ I looked about the room. If the lower classes had liked the man enough to riot in his defence, no one here seemed put out in the slightest. Their tight faces made perfect sense in terms of the immeasurable horde that had finally arrived, and was now held back by a wall that, every time I tried to imagine it, seemed more and more inadequate.

‘Anyone who can give information that may lead to the former Count’s arrest – or his conviction in any trial that I may allow him – is assured of full immunity, no matter what offence such information may indicate.’ I stopped again. No one looked as if he’d step forward. I’d see if anyone made a private approach later on.

I chose my words carefully and tried for a neutral tone. ‘I am aware that the former Count has, for the past several years, treasonably failed to collect taxes lawfully due to the Emperor.’ I stopped yet again. This had got everyone looking at me. But I smiled. ‘I have decided to absolve everyone but the former Count of blame for this treason. In due course, assessors will arrive here from Corinth. By the authority of my commission, however, I remit all arrears of tax up to and including the day when the barbarians shall be repulsed from our walls.’

I pretended not to notice the relieved looks and sagging of shoulders this concession had brought on. Barbarians prowling outside the walls were one horror. A mob inside the walls that had no visible inclination to do other than stab us all in the back was another. But at least there would be no third army of ravening tax-gatherers. And, if both mob and barbarians could be handled, given reasonable luck and reasonable judgement, tax-gatherers – everyone knew – could never be appeased.

‘Now, gentlemen,’ I started again, ‘you and your sons and servants, and such other free persons as may be dependent upon you and whom you believe to be trustworthy, are the defenders of Athens. His Magnificence the Lord Senator Priscus, Commander of the East, I appoint as leader of the defence, giving him all such authority over life and property as may be required for an effective defence.’

And that was it. I’d assumed supreme authority, and straightway handed its substance over to Priscus. My job was now to seal the stack of proclamations Martin had been working like a slave to produce in appropriate form, and otherwise keep my council moving in the right direction. Without looking again at the gathered men of Athens, I jumped down from the table and walked quickly from the room. I stood a few moments outside the door. Priscus had gone straight into his plan of defence. Whether it had any chance of success was beyond me. But he sounded happy enough. As I’d got a few yards along the corridor, and had a hand on the door that led into the tiny room where wine had been set out, I even heard a little cheer.

I brought both fists crashing down on the table. Martin jumped several inches, and his tightened grip on the pen sent several drops of ink on to the papyrus sheet. I glared at Priscus, whose face was shining with sweat in the light of the single overhead lamp. This was an unplanned interrogation, and he was making a right mess of it. Since there was no question of threatening Euphemia with anything at all, I wished he’d kept his mouth shut.

‘Let me say at once,’ I grated, ‘that, when they are in short supply, there is a natural tendency to join facts into chains that are unusual and generally useless. However’ – I looked at Euphemia, who was still dabbing at her eyes – ‘however,’ I continued when she was looking properly in my direction, ‘I must emphasise that Nicephorus and his present whereabouts are of double importance.’

I paused again and looked about the library. Irene had overseen heroic efforts of cleaning. It would still be days – possibly months – before the smell of damp and ancient dirt would disperse into the main courtyard from all the lower rooms. But everything smashed and otherwise ruined had been cleared out of the library. The remaining bookracks had been put back in place. There were even about a hundred book rolls shoved at random into the compartments. Replacement furniture had been rescued from other parts of the residency and arranged with some appearance of taste and comfort. Whole areas of mosaic had been swept away, or scraped away with shovels, and the floor was now firm, if mostly uneven concrete. It would never again look as I’d imagined it in my dream. But it was easily the best room we had.

I waited for Euphemia to stop snivelling, and gathered my thoughts to restate things in the clearest terms I could manage. I went over the importance of knowing anything at all about Nicephorus.

‘I will leave aside the question of murder,’ I continued after pausing for another burst of sobbing. ‘The girl we found along the Piraeus road may no longer be of any importance in herself.’ I stopped and looked carefully at Priscus. He stared back with an innocence so exaggerated, it set me wondering again. ‘What does matter is that, this morning, Nicephorus was seen by a trustworthy witness forcing his way through a stream of incomers to get out of the city. The hooded man may have been a man called Balthazar. It is possible that the bag they were carrying contained a large sum of gold. If these surmises are also of no present importance, we do have reason to fear that the Lord Count will – deliberately or by misfortune – find himself in barbarian hands. We must also fear that the barbarians will soon be aware of certain facts about the condition of the walls.’

I now looked at Euphemia, who was wiping her nose and giving hurt looks at no one in particular. ‘You must, then, appreciate the urgency of our questions about your late husband’s brother,’ I said, now gently. ‘It seems that, before he took off yesterday morning, he burned or scraped clean nearly all his correspondence. What remains is of no importance.’ I stopped again, and thought with a suppressed tremor of what those two letters might indicate.

‘Because we have no further leads,’ I ended, ‘we have no choice but to look to you.’ I smiled at Euphemia – not the smile of a lover, of course, but the smile of one who is trying to settle a crying child and find out something of desperate urgency. ‘Is there anything you can tell me – anything at all – about his dealings with a man called Balthazar? We know they were partners in a scheme of at least double illegality. But did you see or hear anything of these dealings? Did you see Nicephorus in the company of men dressed all over in black?’

Euphemia wiped her eyes again, but didn’t this time dissolve in tears. Nevertheless, I’d had no impact on her story: that she’d kept to her own part of the residency, seeing Nicephorus only for daily prayers and a trip every Sunday to the church inside the old Temple of Hephaestus. Her own life with Theodore had been entirely self-contained.

I stopped the nasty sentence Priscus was forming and leaned forward. I must say she was looking decidedly fetching. But this had to be set aside.

Euphemia sat up straight and stopped my own next question. ‘What you claim to know is all very well,’ she cried. ‘But I tell you that Nicephorus is a good man. I’ve known him for three years. In all this time, I never had reason to suspect treason or sorcery or any other impropriety. He was always very correct in his behaviour.’ She fell back in her chair. No longer verging on tears, she looked defiantly back at me.

I shrugged. She wasn’t telling the truth – I could be sure of that. But I’d get nothing out of her in company. She might be more forthcoming in bed. I turned to Martin. ‘Please speak to Irene,’ I said. ‘I want her to go through this whole building with a measuring rod. I want
every
room opened up. If it’s been opened already, I want it opened again. I want a full search for any cellar that might be large enough to hold everyone in an emergency, and deep enough not to become an oven if the residency is set alight. I also want its entrance hidden again from even a thorough search.’

I waited for Martin to finish his note, and took a deep breath. ‘I do apologise, Euphemia,’ I said, now in a tone of finality, ‘for any unpleasantness that you have suffered. But I do appreciate your frankness in answering our questions. Please do feel free to return to your quarters. I am sure you wish to speak with Theodore until he goes back into the library or off to sleep in the nursery.’