The Ghosts of Athens (45 page)

‘For God’s sake, woman,’ I snarled softly, ‘get inside.’ If she’d heard me she didn’t turn. I saw her put up a hand to her cheek and continue looking over the ever-growing mass of torches. ‘Euphemia!’ I shouted. She did look round. The left side of her face was hid in shadow. The right side shone utterly blank in the moonlight. I wanted to shout again, but felt my balance going out of control. I put my arms out and struggled not to fall backwards to where Priscus had for some reason given way to loud giggles.

As I finally steadied myself, I heard the dull noise of undrawn bolts from below me. I saw the glint of moonlight on swords as half a dozen armed slaves stood forward from the opened gate of the residency. ‘Piss off, the lot of you,’ I heard Irene shout in the shrill falsetto she used for repeating unobeyed orders. ‘Piss off home, or it’ll be the worse for you.’

‘Get those gates shut, you stupid old bitch!’ I shouted downwards. Even fully armed, twenty Slavs were no match for a determined rush. Little as I knew back then of siege warfare, I did know how the most apparently solid stone buildings could go up in fire, given the right determination.

But, even as I drew breath to shout again, there was another shouted order from Irene. This was followed by the whizz and fluttering of a dozen flaming arrows. They flew across the twenty-yard gap separating the mob from the front of the residency. As they struck home, there was a great wail of terror and of pain. I saw torches fall and go out. The whole mob fell back still further, and I could see that every arrow had struck home. Some gone out, some still burning, their bright shafts gleamed beside the huddled shapes of the fallen. There was another order, and another volley of arrows, and then another. None of the armed slaves I’d seen below moved forward, but stood with glittering swords on either side of the gate. There would be no attempt now to force the gate. But volley after volley of flickering lights darted across the square.

At last, I stood looking down over complete silence. The mob had dispersed. The breeze came softly from behind, and I could smell none of the smoke from the burning pitch of torches and of arrows. I was about to jump down beside Priscus and make my way to the gate, when there was yet another shrill order from Irene. It was now that the armed slaves hurried forward. They went from body to body. Sometimes, they kicked and moved on. More often, they stopped and bent low to cut the throats of those who’d survived the arrows. The bodies, I supposed, she’d leave to be collected come morning, and to stand as a warning against any further attempt on the residency.

I leaned carefully forward again. The balcony was now empty.

‘Have you gone round the twist?’ I snarled at the large shape under the bedclothes where Euphemia cowered. ‘You could have got yourself killed. Without Irene, you might easily have sent the mob out of all control.’ I sat down and drank more wine. I reached forward on the bed and poked what might have been her back.

She gave a little cry of fright and struggled to get her head free of the blankets.

‘What could have possessed you to show yourself like that?’ I asked, now gently. I looked into her tear-swollen face. As ever, one look at her set my loins twitching. But I put this aside and frowned. ‘I don’t want you ever to show yourself to the urban trash again,’ I said firmly. ‘Do you understand?’

She swallowed and tried for a nervous smile. ‘They’ve always thought I was the witch who lurks in the residency and awaits her freedom at the hands of one who is without fear,’ she said quickly.

I cut off her next remark with a loud snort. ‘Euphemia,’ I said with heavy emphasis, ‘you have lived in this building for three years. I won’t make myself look ridiculous by taking you through the undeniable evidence for this claim. But you are Euphemia of Tarsus, widow of some brother of Nicephorus whose name and business I’ve never troubled to ask you. In addition, you are the adoptive mother of Theodore. You came here in the last year of Phocas. Whatever may have happened in this building was a hundred years ago – maybe two or three hundred years ago. Now, I want you to repeat all this to yourself and come back to your senses.’

I waited. This time, she did manage a smile of sorts. ‘You don’t understand what it’s like to be all alone in this place,’ she said. ‘There are whole days when I can barely remember what it was like to live in Tarsus. Have you never walked through this building as the dusk was falling, and heard voices in the shadows?’

‘No,’ I said, ‘and neither have you!’ I finished my wine and put the cup down on a table beside the bed. ‘There are three courtyards in the residency. One of them is rather large, if not particularly scenic. You should try walking about it in the full light of day. Now that you have some, you might set those maidservants to work on digging out a few of the flower beds. We’ll all be out of here long before they bloom. But even watching the work of others is all the medicine you need.’

I got up on my knees and pulled my tunic off. I threw it at a chair on the other side of the room. It fell short and landed beside my sandals. I laughed and lay back naked on the bed. I stretched my arms full out and then over my head. I arched my back and stared up at where the brightest of the lamps shone in its bracket. ‘Talking of medicine,’ I sighed, ‘you’ll not
believe
the day I’ve had!’

With a final smash of the crowbar, the lock disintegrated. I waited for the slaves to get out of the way and stepped into the cupboard. In my dream, the door had opened inward. I’d already guessed that it really opened outward. Now it was no longer secured, it had swung slightly out. I controlled myself and took hold of the door handle.

There was a murmur of disappointment behind me as I found myself looking at a sheet of smoothed rock. ‘What a waste of fucking time!’ one of the slaves muttered in Slavic. I pretended not to have understood him and rapped hard on the rock. It was real enough and solid. I turned and nodded at the slave who was holding a polished mirror in readiness. He moved it gently in his hands, and sent a shaft of reflected sunlight from the opened window overhead on to the rock. Keeping myself out of the light’s path, I looked carefully round. Leave aside the question of why – there was nothing to suggest that a door had not been placed against solid rock and then locked shut.

‘We continue looking for deep cellars,’ I announced. There had to be something deeper than the ordinary storerooms and the dungeon Priscus had found. I’d never seen a palace yet without somewhere deep for storage of treasures or for the refuge of its owners. If this wasn’t the entrance, Irene could carry on searching. Even a day and half a night of frantic activity had left much of the residency unexplored in detail.

‘You do realise, dearie, all these men I sold you are Slavs?’ Irene tittered beside me. ‘Even if they don’t turn against us when the city gates open, can you trust them not to winkle us all out of hiding?’

I led her over to a niche that had once contained a statue. The plinth remained. The statue itself must have been of bronze or even silver. This had been stripped out long before. So too the metallic letters of the inscription. ‘Irene,’ I said quietly, ‘I don’t expect you to know the politics of the northern tribes. But weren’t these men sold to you by the Avars?’

She smiled and shook her head. ‘Oh no, dearie.’ She laughed. ‘These ones sold themselves to me last month. They turned up asking for bread. Since no one else wouldn’t do business with them, I had to take pity. I bought them all with a promise of food.’ She patted the leather breastplate she’d put on in honour of the siege and gave a thoughtful look at one of the bigger Slavs.

This did put things in a different light. I’d have to see what steadying effect my own promise and their kiss of fealty might have. However it might be with the barbarians, there was no doubt any more of their loyalty against the Athenian lower classes.

I stepped out into the garden for a breath of fresh air. Blinking in the full light of morning, I was met by someone with a stack of letters. Two of these were from the Dispensator. In one of them, he was complaining about a slight from another of the Greek bishops. In the other, he’d posed a set of questions about the Will of Christ that would take me a whole day of sophistry to answer. These he’d coupled with a reminder of how my confirmation of the Pope’s title was still outstanding. It was worth asking which of these he’d written first. The other letters were from locals – word had finally gone round that I ran Athens. I waved the messenger inside and continued across the hard mud to where Theodore was playing again with Maximin and with Martin’s child. The nice thing about being a child, I thought to myself, is that you don’t usually know until the last moment that someone is about to slit your belly open and pull out all your guts.

‘Come to Daddy!’ I cried with a passable smile. I picked the boy up and kissed him. Back in Alexandria, I’d noticed how he was growing with every day that passed to look like Priscus. This hadn’t been lost on Priscus, who’d now managed to claim some avuncular status. He’d even muttered about changes to his will. I put this out of mind and buried my face in the heavy clothing that Sveta had insisted he needed against the chill of an Athenian autumn. There was a faint smell of unchanged underclothes and of rather questionable dirt from the heaps left by all the cleaning.

‘If My Lord pleases,’ Theodore said beside me, ‘my mother has allowed me to beg permission to sit in the council hall. Your secretary has assured me it is the greatest religious gathering of our age, and that it will remain famous in all future ages.’

I looked down at the boy. For all the sun was burning through my own tunic, Euphemia seemed to have the same idea of clothing as Sveta. If he’d been dressed like that ever since leaving Syria, no wonder he was sickly. Athens might have had a wretched summer. Even so, it was hardly some frigid desert of the north.

‘You are welcome to come along to the council sessions,’ I said grandly. I’d already established that he had no Latin. He’d be no danger to what I now had in mind. If he really believed this prolonged cloud of hot air would be so much as noticed by future historians, he had less faith than I in any recovery of the human understanding from its present low point.

I gave Maximin into Sveta’s arms. Knowledge that we were under siege appeared to have settled her temper – or whatever time of month directed her moods may have altered in my favour. I thanked her and turned back to Theodore. ‘I feel I should continue with making your acquaintance,’ I said. That might take my own mind off the gathering horror beyond the walls.

He bowed gravely, and the sleeves of his tunic brushed the ground.

‘Please do ask your mother if you can be allowed to join us for dinner. Afterwards, we can go up and sit in our much improved library until darkness calls you away to bed.’

He bowed again.

I nodded.

There were a few white puffs of cloud in the sky. I didn’t suppose they would turn to rain. If they managed to cover the sun, however, it would make walking through Athens less sticky than it might otherwise be.

We took a wrong turn after I’d taken a sharp left to avoid some petitioners. If dilapidated and mostly unoccupied, the buildings that lay between the residency and the old Areopagus courthouse did give the impression of a reasonably large city. But it was an impression only maintained by keeping to the main street. I thought we’d be going across the little bridge over the Ilissus. Instead, we took another turn, and found ourselves looking at the confused jumble of masonry that had once been the Baths of Marcus Aurelius. Beyond them was a fifty-yard clearing terminated by the city wall. This was now filled with tents and the beginnings of stone shacks put up by the refugees from outside Athens. I swore at myself for getting lost, and wished I’d just told my guards to shove the petitioners aside. I motioned at a side street that would take us into a huddle of small houses, and probably to the foot of the Areopagus hill.

We’d barely set out along the street, though, when we came face to face with another gathering. This wasn’t more petitioners. Nor, I could be grateful, was it anyone looking for trouble. It was just a funeral procession of the lower classes. The two women in front were making a feeble show of crying out and tearing at their clothes. The dozen old men who shuffled along behind had their heads covered and were looking grim. I stared at the swathed bundle they were carrying, and I took off my hat and prepared to bow. Instead of passing by, though, on their way to whatever church had been appointed for the burial, they stopped directly in my path. One of the old men came forward and stepped through my armed slaves. He jabbered something I didn’t catch. He stamped his feet and pointed at me. Someone else pulled at the shroud covering the body. As it came off, the body itself was dumped without any respect on the ground, and everyone stood away from it.

I looked at the body of old Felix. His face still carried a look of surprise, or perhaps of faint alarm.

‘Was he found in his bed?’ I asked with the slow clarity you use when addressing barbarian slaves. The old man who’d already spoken began jabbering again. I was beginning to get inside the local dialect. So long as you put out of your mind that these were in any sense the posterity of the ancients, and so long as you didn’t try to follow every single meaning, it was turning out easy enough. Certainly, it wasn’t hard to gather that he had been found in his bed. But my vague supposition that he’d shut himself in with a smoking brazier was crossed out by the news that all his windows had been left wide open.