Richard Blake - The Curse of Babylon

‘You don’t look very old yourself,’ she said with another stab at the defiant. It was no more than I deserved. I smiled and leaned back. I looked up at the bright, cloudless sky, and then hurriedly back at Antonia. She was on her feet and brushing dirt from her outer tunic. I looked at her trembling hands. They had the right proportions for a woman, but also the slight roughness of someone who’s done manual work.

‘Taking your leave of the Lord Alaric?’ I asked.

She pushed her lip out again. ‘Since you haven’t arrested me,’ she said, ‘I don’t see how that’s any of your business. I see I’ve been wasting my time on you. I’m going back to my lodgings.’

This was my chance to be rid of her. Instead, I pretended to yawn. ‘Your cloak is ruined. The clothes you have on aren’t for wearing in the street. You have no hat. You seem confident, even so, that you’ll find your way back alone and in safety.’ I shook my head and put a sad note into my voice. ‘You need to have grown up in a nunnery to believe any of these things. If you’ve been in this city longer than a week, I’ll be impressed by your luck.’

I watched her stiffen slightly. It was only for a moment. ‘But you won’t stop me from going if that’s what I want?’ she asked, looking carefully into my face. ‘You won’t make me stay?’

‘Not at all!’ I said with a reassuring smile. ‘You are a free individual. It’s your undoubted right to come and go as you please. I’d never dream of forcing my protection on someone who didn’t want it.’ I made my smile broader and waved her about her business. I looked once more at my gorgeous leggings and wondered what I ought to say next.

With a sharp intake of breath, Antonia put a hand to her belt. There was nothing where her purse might have been. She looked down and patted all round her waist. Not looking at me, she stumbled past me to where she’d been rolled about by the locals. Helplessly, she looked at the mass of shattered or crumbled bricks that lay about.

I got up. ‘What is it?’ I asked. Ignoring me, she bent down and poked at random under the heaps of masonry. ‘Where did you last definitely have it?’ I asked, trying to sound helpful. ‘You could try looking underneath the remains of your cloak.’

She sat on a low heap of rubble. ‘It won’t be there,’ she said in a voice of quiet despair. ‘I can’t go home without it. It was my rent money.’ She looked about to dissolve into proper tears.

There was a sudden clatter of disturbed masonry to my right. The reply I’d been looking for died on my lips. Looking straight ahead, Antonia put both hands to her mouth. ‘They’re back!’ she cried softly.

She was wrong. Every city has its human trash. In a city the size of Constantinople, there are many gradations of the human trash. The poor who’d followed Nicetas weren’t the absolute lowest in the City. Nor were the rattish creatures I’d lately chased off. Once I could jolly them outside the walls to grow their own food, some even of these latter had a fair chance of returning to humanity. Or their children had. Not so the small, shrivelled creatures in dark rags who, with a soft scraping of hands and knees through rubble, had been creeping towards us — these were the lowest. Alone, I’d have given them one look, before running away. I’d seen a man die from a scratch he got off one of these. Maybe their touch — and, for all I knew, their very breath — carried contagion. It may well have been the puke-inducing smell of their bodies that curdled, when there was no wind to moderate the sun, into the miasma by which the summer pestilence was caused.

I waited a few moments after letting them see they’d been noticed. Slowly, I got up and, without going for it, let my sword show. That put an end to their present attack. One of them dropped his length of sharpened stick. Another stretched supplicating arms in my direction. One after the other, they took on the high and pitiful whining of those who’ve decided they’re more likely to get what they want by showing weakness.

I looked slowly about me. I raised my arms in a gesture of peace. ‘You beg the charity of His Magnificence the Lord Senator Alaric,’ I intoned in my most hieratic voice. I reached inside my robe and took out a leather purse. ‘Let it be received.’ I poured its contents into the palm of my left hand. With a flick of my wrist, I sent twenty or so misshapen coppers towards the far end of the courtyard.

Not looking at the effect this created, I turned back to Antonia. ‘Take my hand,’ I said. ‘There’s no present danger. But the mood of the burrow people is changeable. Try not to look at them.’ She got up and put her hand into mine. With one backward glance at where her fallen purse might be lying, she allowed me to lead her across the wide carpet of rubble. Together, we picked our way across the courtyard. Never once did the beggars look up from their frantic scavenging and their squeals of exultation whenever a coin came to light amid the filth.

At last, I was in Middle Street. From the poor district, it was a matter of climbing over another collapsed building, then of finding the one flight of steps that led upward to a street that, long since abandoned, still had the names of shops written in Latin. From here, it was a short cut through an alley. Middle Street itself was largely empty at this time of day. But it was a relief to stand on paving stones again and to breathe uncorrupted air.

I stood in the shade of a triumphal arch begun and never finished by the Great Justinian towards the end of his reign, and looked west at the looming mass of the land walls. ‘I have business outside the City,’ I said, breaking a long silence. ‘I’ll give orders in the guardhouse for you to be escorted back to your lodgings.’ I stopped and tried once more to think through what else I had in mind. ‘You can come and see me tomorrow morning and explain your clients’ petition. They took you on in good faith. Whatever the irregularities, it’s only fair that I should hear what brought them all the way to Constantinople.’ I kept my voice neutral. ‘Since they have no money, I will pay the customary fee. We can settle that in the guardhouse.’

I thought Antonia would reject an offer of outright charity. I bent down and, taking care not to rub it in, brushed a patch of brick dust from my left boot. I stood up again and stared in silence along the quarter mile of street that separated us from the walls. Much of it was waste nowadays. Here and there, though, you could see little fields laid out and planted with crops. They were a cheerful sight. They showed how at least some people in the City were standing on their own feet.

I stood up straight again and looked at Antonia. Her face wasn’t a mask of happiness. But she was bright as well as proud. My offer could be seen as a professional courtesy. It had no obvious strings attached. She’d be a fool not to take it. ‘Come and see me at the third hour of light,’ I said. ‘Give your name to the doorman. He’ll know that you’re expected.’ She still said nothing. I stepped out of the shadow and didn’t look round to see if I was followed. After so long in shade or comparative shade, the sunlight was dazzling. I wondered if I should give her my hat. No need. When I did look back, she’d been rather inventive with my napkin. It did suit her, I had to admit.

You will have noticed, Dear Reader, that this is a story of digressions. Some of these might usefully be pruned. This one, I think, is needed. When I speak of places and events inside Constantinople, it doesn’t much matter whether you know the City. It is a very, very big city. Even after five years of exploration, driven by my own eccentric tastes and by professional duty, there were still courtyards here and there, and whole streets and short cuts between streets, that I didn’t yet know. Don’t worry if you cannot exactly place all that I describe inside the walls. Unless you know its general situation, though, all that I say regarding the outside of the City might as well be in the language of one of the peoples who live beyond the furthest limits of the East.