Richard Blake - The Curse of Babylon

I took the cup again and twirled its contents. I fought off a second, though slighter, panic attack. He’d been recommended to me shortly after I began my rise to eminence. He may have guessed, from the way I’d combined orders the year before, that I was not entirely correct in my dealings. But why start making a fuss now ? I thought once more about my silver cup, doubts pressing heavy on what I could feel had been only a brittle certainty. It would have been useful to take him aside for questioning. A shame I was being followed. ‘You want to pull yourself together,’ I whispered. ‘The penalties for treason only apply to those who get caught. You just fill the same order every month and send me the bills — and keep your speculations to yourself.’ A look of confusion flickered across his face, before it lapsed into another happy smile. I put the cup back and said something loud and flattering.

I stopped at the last main booth to look at myself in one of the big mirrors young men used for practising how most elegantly to sniff vapour from a heated spoon. I moved into a shaft of sunlight and grinned uncertainly at my own reflection. Given my lack of beard, I’d have had trouble passing for twenty, let alone the thirty-five I’d implied without ever claiming to be. The dominant appearance though, for anyone able to see past the beauty, was of a man trying not to give way to an unease that was never far below the surface. Suppose that compounder’s nerve snapped and he turned himself in to the Emperor? Whatever happened to him, I’d probably get off with being locked away in a monastery — Heraclius had lately shown a taste for punishments to fit the crime. But it would be as spectacular a fall as any in the Empire’s ancient or modern history.

Pull yourself together! was the advice I’d given. Now, as I watched my face go into its usual blank politeness, I tried to take it for myself. I leaned forward and touched my fringe. I could see how, before stepping out, I’d left a streak of paint just below the hairline. I took a napkin and wiped this away. I patted my hair back into place. I stepped back till I could see not only my face but also the elaborate gathering of silk across my shoulders. Seven years earlier, I’d been stealing food from Kentish pigsties to stay alive. No one looking at me now could have believed that. I was doing well. Given time, the one cloud that might blot out the sun in my heaven would inevitably pass away. Till then, I had only to keep a stiff upper lip.

I stood as if smitten by the sight of my own pretty face. It gave me the chance to see more of my follower. He was a few yards behind me, and was flinching away from someone who’d not yet sold all his clothes to buy drugs and was turning aggressive with his begging bowl. Take off that black cloak and I really doubted if he was much more substantial than the unfortunate boy I’d turned down on the Triumphal Way. He might have a poisoned dagger. Then again, if he proved as skilful with that as he had with keeping himself out of sight, I was in sod all danger.

Still heading for Middle Street, I turned into a street close by what, before I’d cut off its funding, had been the Imperial School of Rhetorical Studies. The street was so unfrequented nowadays that grass had sprouted between the cobble stones. I turned left and quickened my pace. Another hundred yards and, looking back to make sure I was still being followed, I turned right into a lane that sloped steeply down.

I’d now entered one of those places where, unless to sleep, the street cleaners never went. And why bother setting them to work in there? The poor districts of Constantinople have few streets in the normal sense. They are best described as warrens of high wooden structures, grouped round interconnecting courtyards that are often pools of sewage and of other waste sent downhill from the shambles and tanneries. Here was one of the less salubrious districts. Though crossed by an aqueduct, it had no running water. It was home to the class of festering paupers Nicetas was courting. Its main difference was not to be exclusively inhabited by the poor. By night, these courtyards were lit by a thousand torches, and swarming with multitudes, offering or on the lookout for vicious entertainment. Was it stolen goods you wanted? Or brothels filled with limbless cripples? Or sacrifices to the Old Gods? Or fights to the death between renegade slaves? Or horoscopes cast? Or slaves illegally castrated for punishment or profit? Or the comforts of a hundred proscribed and ludicrous heresies? Did you want gambling, where losers unable to pay could be dragged off and carved into a mockery of the human form? Or did you just want to breathe the air of a place from which the Imperial Government had carefully withdrawn all hope, without bothering to provide even the basics of order? If you wanted any of this, you came here.

Not, however, at this time of day. It’s often hard to say what the very poor do for a living. They still keep faithfully to the siesta. Excepting a few stunted children, who shut up at the sight of a stranger, and a sound of chickens and the occasional pig, you’d almost have thought the place abandoned. Even the dogs were asleep. Unless my follower got lucky, the worst I had to fear was the misfortune of stepping into one of those shining puddles. The sudden blast of what you stirred up could knock you backwards. I did avoid them. Scented napkin held under my nose, in I hurried deeper and deeper into this labyrinth of despair, all the time making sure to keep the sound of pursuit not too far behind.

I took myself into a courtyard from which there was no longer any exit. Imagine a mass of wooden fish boxes. Heap them up on a dockside and wait for the upper levels of the mass to lean over in an unstable equilibrium. Magnify the smell coming from them and you have some resemblance to where I now was. Time, I decided, to bring this chase to an end. I stopped and made a show of tipping more scent on to my napkin. After that, I walked noisily round a corner and got myself behind a door that had remained standing after the collapse of its surrounding wall, and waited. There was a distant sound of crying children and the unbroken squealing of pigs. The wind was blowing in my favour, and the main smell was only of brick dust and rotting timber.

For a moment, there was no other sound. The children and even the pigs had gone quiet. I began to worry that my follower had lost me. So much of a detour — and now possibly for nothing. I relaxed, stepping down from a mud brick that had begun to crumble. I’d run through various options since coming into the poor district. All of them involved a violent interrogation. I hadn’t supposed this most useless of assassins would simply get lost. Still unspotted by the surrounding filth, I could almost see the funny side of things. I was in the thin, western extremity of a slum that gradually widened until, bounded by the military docks on one side and the Jewish district on the other, it stopped just short of the Golden Horn. Unless he managed to climb one of the steep banks that kept the poor from offending the noses of the respectable, there was every chance the duffer would wander lost in here until he fell into one of the cesspools and drowned, or was knocked on the head. He’d never collect so much as a clipped copper from Nicetas.

I looked up at a sky that was as beautiful here as outside my palace. I felt a sneeze coming on. I blinked and blinked again. Yes, it was a big one. If I held back, but kept darting a glance at the sliver of sun peeping over the highest rooftop, it would be the next best thing you can manage, without drugs, to sex. Sad to think, I told myself, this would in all likelihood be the high point of my day.

No sneeze, however. Just as I blinked harder to see through the anticipatory tears, there was a single, shrill cry of fear from close by. It was followed by the sharp sound of collapsing masonry and a sudden manic barking of dogs. After another crash, I heard the laughter of many voices and another loud scream.