Richard Blake - The Curse of Babylon

Urvaksha looked up from his interminable sorting of knotted strings. ‘You speak the soft and fluting language of the enemy too well,’ he whined. ‘Your mother did you ill to teach it.’

Chosroes pulled hard on the golden chain. ‘If you don’t keep your fucking mouth shut,’ he hissed in Persian, ‘I’ll have you flogged.’ He glanced at me, then back at his cowering general adviser. ‘You go too far in your boldness,’ he said emphatically.

I sniffed at the implied warning. ‘Your Majesty assumes, of course, that his own invasion will be more successful than that of Xerxes,’ I said with a bow that hovered between the perfunctory and the insulting. I turned and looked at the rain-sodden multitudes — most of them up to their knees in water. ‘I’m surprised this army’s got as far as it has into Imperial territory.’

Chosroes lifted his head so that his beard jutted forward. ‘With Shahrbaraz leading, we’ll get to Constantinople in time for the August heat,’ he growled.

I allowed myself a quiet laugh. ‘You might get to Chalcedon,’ I said. ‘You then have six hundred yards of water to cross to the European shore — six hundred yards that Timothy or even Nicetas — will absolutely control. Then there’s the city walls. Also, I don’t think your extermination plan is likely to win hearts and minds inside the walls.’

From far along the pass, a low cheer rolled towards us. There was a patch of blue in the sky and a shaft of sunlight followed the cheering. Before it could reach us, the shaft was cut off. There was a long and universal groan. ‘I’ll confess, I’m not a military man,’ I added. ‘But you’re leading what’s already a dispirited rabble before it’s met a stroke of opposition.’

Chosroes slitted his eyes and looked at me out of their corners. ‘I do have a weapon of great power,’ he suggested. He twisted round and looked fully at me. ‘And, since I can see the thought in your mind, I’ll tell you now I’m not talking about the Horn of Babylon. That might or might not get me inside the walls of the City. But, Alaric, I have something else with me that is the stuff of dreams to all true devotees of the Christian Faith. That will certainly cause the gates to be opened.’

He stopped and tapped his forehead knowingly. The tiny gap in the cloud had closed over. It was turning colder and I felt another spot of rain on my face. Tugging Urvaksha as if he’d been a drunken dog, he led me back inside the tent. The eunuchs and remaining serving boys had done a fast job. The place no longer stank of blood and ruptured entrails. There was a wine jug in a bowl filled with crushed ice. A couple of pale boys stood ready with bags of rose petals to shower on the Great King. He waved them out of sight, and sat on his ivory chair.

I sat beside him and filled the wine cups. I ignored the guard who took his place behind me. Chosroes stood up and pointed. ‘You, boy,’ he called imperiously. ‘Come out of hiding. I need you here to taste my wine. Taste the Lord Alaric’s as well. If it makes you sick, you won’t die soon enough to avoid the Great King’s wrath.’ He looked at the boy’s pale, tear-stained face. He looked briefly at the parts of Babar arranged on the silver dish. It was too much for him. He sat back and roared with happy laughter.

I took up the third sheet of papyrus I’d now covered in my attempt at the Persian script:

Now, the deposition and blinding of his own father had caused great outrage among the Persians. At first, this was suppressed by a general and unrestrained terror, a secondary effect of which was the removal, by death or mutilation, of all who had served his father in senior positions.

In the second year of his reign, however, Chosroes found himself no longer able to keep the opposition from uniting. The first among many failures of the harvests in the southern and most fertile regions of his empire, combined with what appears to be the inevitable return of pestilence, diminished his support among the people. His refusal to command a war against the nomadic Saracens of the desert, who had raided almost to the walls of Seleucia, alienated the loyalty of the army.

On the very day when the price of food is said to have reached its highest level in Ctesiphon, a mob, directed by General Bahram, burst into the summer palace. As was his custom, the young King had given himself up to wine and every manner of debauchery. Even so, he escaped the massacre of his entire household by dressing in the rags of a common leper and making his way towards the Euphrates, where he claimed the protection of the Greek Emperor, Maurice. .

I looked up from my text. Chosroes was still nodding and smiling. ‘Is this what you really want?’ I asked dubiously.

‘Oh yes,’ came the immediate answer. ‘I want a philosophical history. That means telling the truth so far as it can be ascertained. And, since I’m well on the way to conquering the entire known world, I like what will be your dramatic contrast between the early and the mature years of my reign.’ He took the sheet from which I’d been reading and squinted at the smudged mess I’d made of having to compose in a script that ran from right to left. ‘I do particularly like the connection you make between food prices and Bahram’s coup . Without spelling it out, you suggest a certain opportunism in his behaviour. Once we move beyond these sample chapters, I’ll explain to you how, after the Greeks put me back on the throne, I had him locked away with his children until he ate them.’

He pushed the sheet back across the writing table at me, and arranged all seven into a neat pile. ‘I’m so glad, Alaric, I haven’t had you killed. You’re the only man alive who can write history this objectively, and in Persian. Please keep it that way. I believe Shahin will be here within the next few days. If he doesn’t corroborate your story at least in its essentials, I won’t kill you — but I will make you watch the death of that Syrian boy you appear to have adopted.’

I pursed my lips and looked thoughtful. I could probably get over the loss of Theodore. But Shahin’s arrival would bring Antonia into the Royal Clutches. The thought of that was enough to set my insides moving in odd rhythms. ‘I wish you hadn’t tortured him,’ I said. ‘I’m not sure his wits will ever entirely come back.’

Chosroes laughed. ‘He had fuck all of those when he was brought in,’ he said. ‘He was talking to himself in a language no one could understand. He only spoke back in Syriac when one of his testicles was almost crushed — and that was to thank his jailor and ask to be roasted over a slow fire. You surround yourself with some very odd people.’

So Theodore hadn’t talked yet. I could be glad of that much. I smiled weakly and reached for a clean sheet of papyrus. ‘I believe you spent eighteen months in Constantinople,’ I said. ‘I’ll need your help to compose the speech you made to the Emperor. There is a couplet by one of your old poets whose name I currently forget. But do you really plan to take the place apart?'

Chosroes looked round and dropped his voice. ‘Of course, I don’t,’ he said in Greek. ‘I said what I did to jolly the army along. You don’t willingly destroy a city of such marvels. Its current population will be gradually eased out. But their lives will be spared. It’s only the farmers I really want to kill — destroying the Greeks at the root, you see; no chance of olive shoots, and so on. For the rest, you will surely agree that the ruler of the world deserves to occupy no less than the capital of the world.’

‘It makes sense,’ I agreed.

He stood up and stretched. I’d been scribbling away for him for the remainder of the afternoon and the sky was turning dark outside. ‘I don’t like to be away from my palace at night,’ he muttered. He snapped his fingers at the two guards who’d stood behind me all the time I was writing. ‘Bring the Lord Alaric along. Don’t lose him in the dark.’