Richard Blake - The Curse of Babylon

I got up and climbed on to one of the larger boulders. I put down a hand to pull her beside me. We sat together in silence. Though I was chilled through from the sea and from all that had gone before that, the City wall was shelter from the wind. Without that, the night was what in England would have counted as sultry. I could remember a night rather like this in Cornwall when, to the distant sound of hunting horns, I’d been diverted from stealing sheep to the final and glorious loss of my virginity. I hadn’t been at all cold then. I’d soon warm up now. I listened for any sound of voices. I heard only the soft chirruping behind me of the night insects. I stood up and looked across the sea. The moon lit up a long streak of water. The stars gave all else a dim and silvery glitter. On the far side of the strait, there were individual gleams of light from the palaces and the better remnants of what had once been the Asiatic suburbs of Constantinople. So far as I could tell, the sea was empty.

Antonia stood up and looked across the sea. After another long silence, she turned to me. I saw her eyes glitter in the starlight. ‘Alaric,’ she said. I waited for what she might have to say. She looked away. ‘What happened?’ she asked in a voice no longer charged with significance. ‘What did those men want?’

I put my arm about her and I felt a tremor run through my body. It went on a long time, and ended in an explosion of unseen light deep within my chest. Not caring whether she could feel anything of this, I smiled and continued looking out over the faintly glowing sea. ‘I currently have no idea,’ I said. ‘But I do plan to find out.’ I pulled her closer. ‘It’s treason and with Persian support,’ I went on. ‘You can be sure of that. The question is how something this big can go on in broad daylight, apparently unseen by the Intelligence Bureau.’

‘Could it have been Eunapius?’ she broke in with an eagerness she didn’t try to hide. ‘Could it have been him and the Emperor’s cousin, Ni — Nicephorus?’

‘Nicetas,’ I corrected her. It was a good question. ‘Did you notice the Greek beside Shahin?’ I asked. ‘He was the one with the lamp. He spoke at this morning’s audience.’

She nodded. ‘He came up to me when I was with my — my clients .’ She paused for me to register the slight but defiant emphasis of the words. ‘He pointed me in the direction you’d gone and told me to stay out of sight until I could surprise you outside the walls. I think he’d guessed I wasn’t a man.’

I stared at the crescent moon until the urge to burst out laughing had passed. ‘ She’s a nuisance for other reasons ,’ Simon had said. What could that have been if it wasn’t connected in some way with Eunapius?

I shivered slightly after so long without movement. I reached up to brush a hand over very hard nipples. I noted the immediate response in my groin. But this was something I must and could control. ‘I won’t rule Nicetas out,’ I said cautiously. ‘But I can’t see him as a traitor. Besides, all that’s happened today needed fast communications, not to mention a capacity for decision that I haven’t seen in Nicetas or any of his creatures.’

‘And where do I stand in this?’ she asked as if she hadn’t heard me. Once more, her voice had taken on a wondering, almost a dreamy tone.

I looked at her. She had the pale glow of the city walls behind her and her face was in comparative darkness. The moment for speaking had passed beyond recall. ‘Let’s get inside the walls,’ I said. I turned and climbed down from this boulder on to another. I helped her down beside me and looked over at the walls. I’d seen the white dust of a path. If we could get across an expanse of smaller stones, and then a mass of brambles without cutting ourselves, we might soon be able to present ourselves in reasonably good order before the Golden Gate.

‘You have seen naked men before?’ I asked impatiently. Now we’d rounded the corner where land and sea walls met, we were back in a chill wind.

The guard’s mouth twitched slightly. ‘Never a naked Lord Treasurer, Sir,’ he said. I scowled. But he’d had his fun. His face vanished from the inspection window ten feet above. A moment later, I heard the scrape of bolts in the tiny door beside the main gate. A few moments more and I was sitting with Antonia in what seemed an astonishingly warm room, a cup of wine in my hand.

The guard finished shaking the dust from two dark cloaks he’d found in a cupboard. ‘It’s a proper relief to see you, My Lord,’ he said. ‘We’d been fearing the worst ever since your clothes was found close by them dead bodies. There’s talk of sending a fast galley off to tell the Emperor.’

‘Then we can be glad his communion with the monks of Saint Vesalius will not now be disturbed,’ I said. The last thing I fancied was a summons along the straits to Cyzicus, or — much worse — a sudden return by Heraclius. Whatever else he did, he’d drag me into a church and keep me there praying and fasting till I wished I was still with Shahin.

The guard sat down before me. He dropped his voice. ‘What was you doing out there, if you don’t mind my asking?’ He looked from the corner of his eyes at Antonia, who’d wrapped herself in one of the cloaks and was looking ready to fall asleep. ‘She’s a nice bit of tail, Sir,’ he whispered. ‘But you can’t have been fucking her all afternoon and evening. And what about all them bodies? Most of them was shot with arrows. Also, didn’t I see you go out through my gate with a young man?’

I finished my wine and pushed the cup forward for a refill. I’d made my promise to Antonia. Now was the time to keep it. ‘When you send in your report,’ I said, ‘I’d like it to say that I turned up alone at your gate and fully clothed.’ The guard frowned. I looked about the room. ‘There’s been much speculation about the design on the back of the new silver coins. I’m sure you’d like to be among the first to see the design for yourself — shall we say enough copies to fill that leather bag over there?’ The man pursed his lips. Then he nodded. I smiled wearily at him. ‘I’m glad that was so quickly arranged,’ I said. ‘Now, if you can find two suits of plain clothes for the pair of us, we’ll be on our way.’

The guard shook his head. ‘Can’t do that, Sir. It’s quiet enough out here. But the mob’s taken over all the central streets and is celebrating your death. You’ll have to wait while I send off for an armoured chair to get you home.’

As if on cue, I heard a distant sound of cheering. It came from deep within the City, and reminded me of the solid roar a winning charioteer gets in the Circus.

You never realise the full convenience of a secret entrance to your palace until you need to make a secret entrance. A hundred feet each side of the main entrance, the Triumphal Way was packed with the City trash, dancing round bonfires, or just cheering themselves hoarse at their apparent liberation from my spending cuts. But I was snug inside the thick walls of my palace before most of the household could know that I was alive, let alone insist on embracing me, one after the other.

‘I didn’t believe any harm had been allowed to come to you,’ Theodore said, once he’d got over the shock of seeing me in the chapel. It was a double shock, I might say — seeing me, and in the chapel. Pale and sad, his face wavered in the light of many candles. ‘I prayed before the icon of Saint George. It has never let me down.’ He got off his knees and embraced me. I can’t say our relationship had ever been affectionate. It hadn’t been that sort of adoption. Still, I liked to think there was a certain regard between us. I kissed his greasy forehead, noting how he’d shot up in the past few months. If he didn’t come up to my chest, he was no longer short for thirteen.