Richard Blake - The Curse of Babylon

‘ Means well? ’ Constans shouted in mock outrage. ‘You’re too trusting, Alexius. How do you think he pays the bills on that palace he was given? I tell you, he’s on the take. Where else is all the money going? What’s he done with all the taxes that come in from the provinces? They don’t go on us, the Roman People, that’s to be sure. What happened to the olive oil ration?’ He raised his voice. ‘Do you even remember that?’ Loud groans. More repeating of the words. More groans.

‘Never mind the oil,’ Alexius broke in, still sounding even-handed. ‘But I’ll grant you have a point. What really matters is the army and there’s been precious little money spent on that. If the Lord Nicetas had been given proper support, we’d never have lost Syria to the Persians. The Empire wouldn’t have been cut in half. We wouldn’t now be facing an invasion of Egypt.’

Oh, the fucking injustice of that! I really had to struggle not to kick my way through the crowd, to pull Alexius off his chair and wring his lying seditionary neck. But I did control myself. I also kept my face down when Constans called me a yellow-haired catamite, and someone with a Cypriotic accent accused me of conjuring headless demons in my palace to let loose in the City.

Yes, the gross fucking injustice! I’d put off the currency reform so money could be found for the defence of Syria. As if from nowhere, I’d squeezed out as much money for that as had been lavished in the old days on the combined land and sea operation to recover Africa from the Vandals. I’d given Nicetas the best-equipped army we’d sent out in a generation — and to hold a perfectly defensible province. The duffer had fallen into a trap an idiot child might have spotted and, a thousand years after Alexander had brought it under Greek dominion, the Persians were again masters of Syria.

One way or another, I’d have Nicetas for this. If I got any say in the matter, serving in a public toilet would be a soft option for the useless, blame-shifting bastard. For a moment, I thought of pulling my hat off and giving these flecks of stinking gutter scum a lecture on how to save an empire run down by a century of misgovernment. You can imagine this didn’t involve piling still more taxes on those who grew food for the Empire and provided it with soldiers. But I kept my mouth shut. Someone in the crowd now began bleating how I’d used the whole Imperial budget to make solid gold statues of myself in the nude. If true, that would still have been a better use of the taxpayers’ money than spending it on food to shove down his worthless throat.

Constans struck up again, now suggesting a petition to the Emperor when he finally decided to come back from consulting the ‘holy fathers’ in Cyzicus. They could ask for me to be dragged from my ‘demon-haunted’ palace and blinded and stuffed away in a monastery. There was a long groan of agreement from the crowd and a woman began shrieking as if about to give birth. Alexius disagreed, merely suggesting I should be taken back to whatever northern forest was my true home. There, I could be let loose to run about with the other howling savages. That got him a raucous laugh. I didn’t like the repeated talk of demons. I’d speak with Samo, when I got home, about another change of the locks. I watched the two seditionaries smile at each other. You couldn’t deny they were earning their fee for the day.

They now decided they’d finished earning it. As the crowd drifted in the direction of the food wagons, I walked slowly across to the wide steps that led down to Imperial Square. This journey was already taking longer than it should. I needed a short cut to the city walls.

Dignity almost recovered, I stood on the topmost step and took my hat off. I fanned myself and put it back on. The breeze was settling into a regular wind and the afternoon might not be quite so sweltering as I’d thought it would be. I looked at my boots. They could do with a light brushing but I’d avoided stepping in any of the filth that drops from the bodies of the poor. I’ll not say my spirits were rising but it was a fine day for being out of doors. Nicetas was trying to do me over. Good seditionaries don’t come cheap. He’d spent a fortune on a cup that would be an excuse for one of Leander’s leaden epigrams. But I’d more than match that. I’d send the cup off to the mint and put notice of this into The Gazette . That would put a sour look on his face.

But all that could wait. Lucas was waiting outside the walls, and with evidence that might let me save still more of the taxpayers’ money on salaries and pensions. I prepared to hurry down into Imperial Square.

‘Might Your Honour be a gambling man?’ someone asked in the wheedling tone of the poor. I paid no attention and looked up at the sky — not a cloud in sight, but the gathering shift to a northern wind would soon justify my blue woollen cloak. ‘Go on, Sir — I can see it’s your lucky day!’ I looked round at someone with the thin and wiry build of the working lower classes. He looked under the brim of my hat and laughed. ‘For you, Sir, I’ll lay special odds,’ he said. ‘You drop any coin you like in that bowl down there.’ I didn’t follow his pointed finger. I’d already seen the disused fountain thirty feet below in Imperial Square. He put his face into a snarling grin. ‘Even a gold coin you can drop, Sir. The ten foot of green slime don’t count for nothing with my boy. He’ll jump right off this wall beside you, and get it out for you.’

I was about to tell him to bugger off and die, when I looked at the naked boy who’d come out from behind a column. I felt a sudden stirring of lust. Like all the City’s lower class, he was a touch undersized and there was a slight lack of harmony in the proportion of his legs to his body. For all this, his tanned skin was rather fetching. Give him a bath and. .

Oh dear! He’d no sooner got me thinking of how much to offer, when he swept the hair from his eyes and parted very full lips to show two rows of rotten teeth. The front ones were entirely gone. The others were blackened stumps. Such a shame! Such a waste! So little beauty there was already in this world — and why did so much of that have to be spoiled? I could have thrashed the boy’s owner for not making him clean every day with a chewing stick. I stood up.

His owner hadn’t noticed. ‘Oh, Sir, Sir!’ he cried, getting directly in my way and waving his arms to stop me. ‘Sir, the deal is this. You throw in a coin. If the boy gets it out, you pay me five times your coin. If he can’t find it, I pay you five times. If he breaks his neck or drowns, I pay you ten times.’ He laughed and pointed at the boy again. I didn’t look, but wondered if I might make an exception. Bad teeth are bad teeth — but the rest of him was pushing towards excellent.

But I shook my head. I could fuck anything I wanted later in the day. Until then, duty was calling me again. Trying not to show I was running away, I hurried down the steps.

‘You’ve a nerve, showing your face in public!’ the old man croaked accusingly. I’d been aware of him — of him and all the others — as I hurried across the square. My main attention, though, had been given to an epigram about me scrawled on a statue plinth. It was in better Greek than your standard graffito and involved a play on words that joined the name Alaric with the use of powdered lark wing as an emetic. ‘Not content with stealing half my pension, you’re also putting both my boys out of work.’ He stopped in front of me and stamped his foot angrily.

‘I didn’t expect to see you here, Simeon,’ I said, taking my hat off in deference to his years.

‘And if you had seen me,’ he snapped, ‘you’d have been back up those steps before I could say “knife”.’ There was a murmur of agreement from all the other old wrecks in the square. I sighed. Would I ever get outside the city walls?