The Ghosts of Athens (59 page)

He turned back after a few yards and smiled. ‘I believe the Lord Priscus will eventually take over the defence again,’ he said.

If he really believed that, he hadn’t just come from the man. But I said nothing.

‘However, I do think it appropriate if I am the one who negotiates the withdrawal. Several wives of the Great Chief are of the Faith, and I am confident that he will be more easily persuaded by me than by a Greek whose warlike skill and personal courage are more than compensated by his reputation for double-dealing. Our garrison is exhausted. We cannot rely on keeping the ordinary people quiet. A second attack – this time with all the Great Chief’s force – will not be so easily repelled.’

‘So, you’ll empty the granaries into his lap?’ I asked.

The Dispensator smiled again. ‘Cast thy bread upon the waters: for thou shalt find it after many days,’ was his only response.

Simeon waited till Martin had finished interpreting before snorting with disgust. But the Dispensator had made his intention plain from the beginning. After a long preparatory stage, in which their main symptoms had been palpitations and sweating attacks, my drugs had now settled down to a steady glow. I sprawled on the biggest couch in the library, and looked complacently at my slippered right foot. I heard Simeon put his wine cup down with a sound of scraping on the surface of our one decent table.

‘If you believe you can make any sort of deal with that creature, you’re absolutely mad,’ he said. ‘Open those gates, and it will be the end for all of us.’ Sooner or later, he’d go back to being as scared as he had been when the barbarians broke in on the council – or as he’d been once everyone the Dispensator and I had left behind were exposed to the taunts and petty thieving of the urban mob. For the moment, he was just angry.

‘My Lord Bishop,’ I said, keeping as diplomatic as anyone might have managed at the end of this ghastly day, ‘we didn’t ask you here this evening to discuss the military situation. That is now in the hands of His Excellency the Dispensator. I need your undertaking that you will ensure the unanimous assent of the Greek bishops the day after tomorrow, and that you will countersign my report to Caesar as I have explained it to you.’

No good. The man was now on his feet and walking towards the bust of Polybius. Between stuffing food and weapons through the reopened door within the cupboard, the slaves had found time to bring in enough lamps and candles to light the room almost as well as it was by day. There was none of the gloom here you’d associate with the midnight hour. He stepped sideways to avoid a heap of books that hadn’t fitted into any of the racks. Then I saw him stop and put his face close to the damaged bust. There was another snort, and he was coming back.

He stopped beside one of the larger tables that covered the worst patch of the ruined floor, and took up the casualty list. I’d prepared this in Latin for the Dispensator. But its meaning was clear enough. ‘How did you manage to lose so many men beside the gate?’ he asked with an ill-natured look in my direction. ‘Priscus did tell me he was planning to avoid a direct encounter. From what I hear, you fought with all the skill of a drunken savage. Little wonder you’ve persuaded yourself that opening the gate is our only choice.’ He pulled a very sour face and sat down again in his chair.

I swung my legs off the couch and sat up. ‘Simeon,’ I began again, still smooth, ‘we did have an agreement . . .’

‘
Agreement
, eh?’ came the sneered reply. ‘You buggered up everything in Egypt good and proper. Don’t suppose bullying us into admitting that black may, after all, be white will make up for that. Don’t ever suppose letting this tonsured barbarian risk getting all our throats cut will put everything right with Heraclius.

‘As for these vicious accusations you and Priscus made the other evening – oh, do me a favour!’ He trailed off for a long and bitter laugh of triumph. ‘My dear and soon to be
late
cousin might have got somewhere with those. Even supposing they are true, a piece of dirt like you will never get close enough to the Emperor to repeat them. So you go ahead, and get your savages to stand up in their clerical finery and agree that black is white. It’s the Greek bishops who really matter in Constantinople. And you’ll get nothing out of us!’

I pretended to ignore this last burst of ill-humour, and got up and went over to look at the mural. I could see I’d missed a fine chance earlier in the day. I should have waited till Simeon had been skewered by that barbarian before going into action. But that’s life for you – it’s often a catalogue of missed opportunities. Still, I’d not miss out on this one. Behind me, the Dispensator breathed out impatiently, and I heard him whisper to Martin for an explanation of what was being said.

Still looking at the wall painting of Athens, I told myself that it must show the city as it had been in the time of Demosthenes. According to what I’d read in Dexippus, the colonnade that fringed the whole of the main market place was decisive evidence. As if for the first time, I saw how so much of what was shown here was now just heaps of rubble beyond the modern wall.

‘I suggest we should check that they really have withdrawn before we send anyone down to Piraeus to see if the Corinth ferry will come,’ I said in Latin.

The Dispensator said nothing, and I took this as a provisional assent. If possible, I’d seen more barbarians than ever outside the walls. I’d stood there with the Dispensator until long after darkness had come. Until the light went altogether, we’d seen the irregular columns of men as they came over from the main camp north of Decelea. Even after that, we’d seen the flaring torches as others beyond counting had joined them. More than ever, we were as surrounded as one of those artificial mounds in Egypt that rise above the Nile flood. But the mere knowledge of the coming parley with Kutbayan was turning every mind in the room but one to the matter of how and when we’d be leaving Athens.

‘Simeon, has it ever crossed your mind,’ I asked, switching back into Greek, ‘how desperately short we are of money in Constantinople? You can’t fight off the Persians without soldiers, and you can’t employ soldiers unless you have the money to pay them. Now, His Holiness the Universal Bishop has decided to present the Great Augustus with a gift of twelve hundred pounds of gold. The former Western Provinces are not notable for their riches – but the Western Church is very rich. As is proper in these cases, it will be a free gift. There will be no conditions attached. However . . .’ I stepped closer to the painting and didn’t care if anyone watching me might guess that I was smiling. I’d suddenly realised that the mural showed the Temple of Athena with two extra columns on its front portico. I leaned forward and stared at the carefully depicted inaccuracy.

I turned and gave Simeon a bright smile. ‘You know, My Lord Bishop,’ I continued, looking carefully into his still snarling face, ‘you did call the Pope’s right-hand man a ‘‘gross and vulgar barbarian’’. Of course, you did this only to me, and I’m sure you have no fear of what I might say against you. But you did also insult your Latin Brother in Christ – and to his face, and with the Bishop of Ephesus as a witness. A complaint from His Holiness about your behaviour is unlikely to be ignored by the Emperor. Where do you think he’ll send you – a mountain or a desert monastery? If you like, I could put in a word for you. The former British provinces have a most bracing combination of cold and rain.’

I could have stood there all night, watching the subtle changes of colour and expression in Simeon’s face. But some threats are best unelaborated – not least when the facts on which they are based are neither wholly nor partially true. I left him in his chair and went over to the window, and looked out into the utter darkness of the midnight hour.

‘Have you made notes of your closing speech?’ Martin asked me.

I hadn’t, but I assured him that it would be very simple. Whether I made it in Greek or Latin, it would take no effort to put it into the other language. Even here, the tension was perceptibly relaxing.

‘I have no idea what orders the captain of our own galley was given,’ I said in Latin, turning back to face everyone. ‘But, if he does put in on Monday – or is still in Corinth – I’ll somehow get him to take us to Constantinople. If we can work the rowers at full strength, we should see the Senatorial Dock days and days before a
certain other person
can be carried back along the main road. I’m assuming, of course, he will be carried. Then again, I don’t assume there will be any horse able to carry his bulk. So long as we can get back in time, I do suspect we can talk Our Lord and Master into a better view of his interests.’

I fell silent. Through all I’d just said, Simeon had been trying to follow its meaning – as if you can understand an unknown language by looking intently at how a speaker moves his lips. Awareness of his desperate concentration had kept me from realising how depressed I’d suddenly begun to feel. Perhaps the stimulant was starting to fade. More likely, this was one of those times when putting thoughts into words shows them as the wishful thinking they probably are. With Sergius under house arrest, and all the palace eunuchs running wild against me, who could tell if I could even get into the Imperial Presence? Unless I could bribe someone to open one of the gates, and then force my way into the Presence, the white, thirty-foot-high walls of the palace were as impregnable as Constantinople itself. If Heraclius was resolved not to see me, it would be as much as I could do to avoid being torn apart by the city mob. I thought again of Martin’s private urging to make a dash to the West before word could drift back that we’d lifted the siege.

I changed the subject. ‘What happened with the body of Irene?’ I asked.

‘I had her buried in the Church of Saint Eutropius the Lesser,’ the Dispensator said. ‘My secretary has taken over the running of this household. And I must apologise on his behalf for the extreme lateness of dinner.’ He walked over to one of the long windows and looked out into the darkness. ‘I did suggest boiled mutton. But we shall have to see what the slaves could manage.’

Euphemia didn’t come to me that night. After a day of hard killing, I might have fancied her attentions. But I didn’t miss her. Instead, for the first time in days and days, I fell straight into a long and exhausted sleep. I dreamed I was back in the barbarian camp, with Priscus and Ludinus both gloating down at me. But it was one of those indistinct dreams, in which you feel no terror. Though I could taste the full sourness of my replaced gag, I stared serenely back at the twisted faces, and heard nothing of what was said to me.

The dreams shifted, and I was now beside the tomb of Hierocles. The dead girl stood there, smiling wantonly and offering herself. Even before I could step backward on to the road, however, she was gone, and I had retraced both space and time to be once again in Richborough. I stood up to my waist in the chilly, grey sea water and looked out to where mist blotted out the horizon. Behind me, on the beach, there was something I didn’t care to turn and look at. I took a step further into the water, and then another, until the waters came up to my neck. With another step, they closed over my head, and I opened my mouth and breathed them into my lungs.

Even before I could realise what I’d done, the dream shifted yet again, and I was grovelling before Heraclius. I couldn’t say where I was. When I looked up, I didn’t see anything beyond his very still purple boots. I stretched forward again, and adored the Great Majesty for ages and ages. As I lay there, I could feel my body shrinking and withering with age. When I managed to look up again, there were the same purple boots, though I now had the sense that they covered other feet. Still, they didn’t move.

So the dreams tumbled through my head in a riot of muted colours and faint sounds. Perhaps they continued all night. Perhaps they were all crowded into the few moments before I opened my eyes and blinked in the morning sun that streamed through the uncovered window. But it was some while after I’d woken and looked about in vain for water in which to wash before I could shake off the feeling of vast and inconsolable sadness that had tinged every dream I could recall.

As if nothing at all had happened, or was happening, Theodore was pushing Maximin in his swing. The sun had gone in behind one of the slightly grey clouds that were scudding across the sky, and Sveta stood beside me with her arms folded.

‘He will be coming back with us,’ she said in Slavic. She nodded at Theodore. When I said nothing back, she asked if I’d be adopting him as well.

‘You did well to go for the Dispensator,’ I said. I made an effort to look her in the eye. ‘Thank you,’ I eventually said in place of the more elaborate speech I’d had in mind.

Unblinking, she stared back at me. ‘One of these days, you’ll get us all killed,’ she said. ‘You know my great booby of a husband worships you and prays nightly for your safety?’

Having no answer in mind, I shrugged.

Without another word, she walked past me to where Theodore had now lost his hat. The sun would soon be out again. Whatever she thought of the boy’s adoptive mother, she was entirely at one with Euphemia on the danger this might pose even to the slightly sallow skin of a Syrian.