Richard Blake - The Curse of Babylon

I was looking at the dim shape of the bed, when I heard a familiar cough.

‘I was in no doubt you’d survive the murder attempt,’ a voice called out from behind a screen. ‘It must have been a close shave, though, if, having brought a woman back, you just fall asleep and babble half the night in what sounded like Syriac but wasn’t.’ I hurried across to the bed. Eyes still closed, Antonia had rolled over to my side.

‘Don’t worry, dearest Alaric,’ the voice said again. ‘The girl’s fast asleep. You should be more concerned about the inability of your barbarian sots to notice the man who broke into our palace this evening.’ He laughed and there was the loud click of a box closing. ‘I kept him alive a while for questioning. Among much else that made fuck all sense, he spoke about a cup. Would you believe he was here to steal a cup from you? ‘I regret that the only place I could hide the body was under your bed. But please don’t think ill of poor old Uncle Priscus for that.’ He sniffed up whatever powder he’d chosen and followed this with a long groan of ecstasy.

‘Do tell me about this cup,’ he went on at last. ‘I really am all ears.’

It may be age, or opium, or the nature of what I’m trying to explain, that requires this to be a narrative of digressions, and that these often involve abrupt shifts of time. However, Antonia won’t mind if she’s left sleeping, unmolested, in my big and wondrously soft bed. Priscus can nurse his box of drugs. The mob — well, let the mob drowse over dying bonfires, and enjoy the immemorial privilege of making trouble: I’m not revealing much if I say it was a privilege with a longer past than future.

You, my Dear Reader, I’ll simply assure that this is the last of my deviations. So let us leave the world of 615 — the year when Alaric the Farsighted brought in the new silver coinage — and go back two and a half years. We go back to the December of 612, a week after I had returned with Priscus and various other companions from nine months of adventuring in the outer provinces of the Empire.

‘Oh, come on, Martin,’ I said. ‘It’s stopped raining and we’ll be ever so early if we carry on by chair.’ I jumped down and, avoiding the other traffic, hurried across the road into Imperial Square. I looked up at the sky. We’d had heavy rain since dawn and Martin had insisted on a covered chair — ‘You can’t think of turning up on foot!’ he’d said, aghast. But the clouds were now rolling by. We might even have a spot of sunshine to light up proceedings in the Senate House.

I turned back to Martin. ‘As your former master and as your only friend,’ I said firmly, ‘I command you to climb out of that chair and walk for one mile with me. Our fine outer clothes can stay in the chair. So can your writing things. That’s quite enough weight for the poor slaves to carry uphill. Now, you come over here and take a little health-giving exercise.’

The oiled curtains twitched and then parted. Slowly, and with a glance at the sky and a hurt look at me, Martin waited for one of the carrying slaves to bring round the little steps that were for the use of invalids and the aged. Avoiding a puddle, he stepped down beside me. As he did, a gust of wind took his hat and carried it a dozen yards into one of the bleak flower beds. With a laugh, I ran after it. As I brought it back, Martin was patting the last of his hair back into the elaborate weave that, in poor light and seen only from the front, gave the momentary impression of a man who wasn’t actually as bald on top as a boiled egg.

I took him by the arm and led him towards the Imperial statues and a ritual of the aged that had been only delayed by the rain. He came to a sudden stop and looked at the wide steps that led up to the Triumphal Way. I could almost hear the scream inside his head of ‘a hundred and twenty steps!’ He walked over to a stone bench and flopped down. He pulled his hat harder on to his head and, glaring at me from under its brim, looked very like a donkey that has shed its load and is refusing to walk another inch.

I stood before him. ‘Just look at these men,’ I said, trying to hide my annoyance — ‘every one of them old enough to be your father and fit enough to be your son!’

Martin stopped trying not to wheeze from the hundred yards we’d just covered on the flat. I sat beside him on a dry part of the bench. I put a hand on his shoulder and dropped my voice. ‘Listen, Martin,’ I said urgently, ‘you’ve heard the doctor. If you don’t take action now, your heart really will go pop.’

That only got me one of his despairing looks. ‘Does it matter?’ he asked. ‘We’re back in the spider’s web. We’ll never get away now.’ He put both hands over his eyes and rocked back and forth till the rolls of fat on his body set up a rippling of his outer tunic that I found distressing to watch.

I got up again and stood over Martin. ‘You prepared the reading text of the speech I’ve written,’ I said. ‘You know perfectly well that we don’t need to get away. We’re in the clear.’ I might have pointed out that we’d effectively been prisoners since leaving Alexandria. There had been no chance of escape from the Viceroy’s ship, nor — unless, that is, we fancied the certainty of barbarians on land and pirates at sea — anywhere to run to from Athens or from Corinth. I didn’t want to think when was the last time we hadn’t been travelling about in a gilded cage. I was sure this approach would only send Martin into an attack of the vapours that would keep him here for the rest of the day.

I took him by the hand and pulled him to his feet. ‘Look around you!’ I hissed. ‘Look at this great and wonderful city. Look at its clean pavements and magnificent buildings. Think of its libraries, filled with every book ever written that is worth reading. Think of its comforts, of its delicacies. Think of our own leading part in its defence and improvement. If none of this strikes you as worthwhile, think at least of the oath I swore to Heraclius. Greeks may break their oaths. You know that we don’t. Now, stop this lachrymose bleating about the joys of omnipresent dirt and squalid poverty. We were both happy enough to get away from that. And, if you see Ireland through rosy window glass, that isn’t how I see England. I’m never going back! ’

I let my face relax. I linked arms with Martin. ‘Now come on,’ I said soothingly. ‘I’ll help you and we’ll do the stairs a dozen at a time. We’re not in any hurry. There’s plenty of time to rest between exertions.’

‘You’re looking pleased with yourself,’ Priscus said, catching me unawares. ‘Did you stop by a brothel on your way here?’ He’d put on his purple-edged toga over his uniform as Commander of the East. On anyone else, the resulting mix would have looked absurd. Now that illness had stripped away nearly every ounce of flesh from his body, the extreme padding suited Priscus.

‘Yes, very pleased with yourself, if you don’t mind my saying,’ someone added from behind in the drawl of a court eunuch. ‘After all, it wasn’t you who got past my guards to the Emperor. It wasn’t you who put his side of the story. For which of us three, I wonder, has that closed carriage been parked behind this place of deliberation?’

I didn’t turn. ‘Piss off, Ludinus!’ I said. ‘Or do you fancy an accidental cup of wine down your front?’ I stared past Priscus to where Martin was nagging some slaves to get my ivory stool the right way round. As they lined it up again, he looked about the wide space between the semicircle where the Senators would sit and the Imperial Throne. Unable to see that I was watching him, he stuffed another honeyed oatcake into his mouth. ‘A moment of the lips, a lifetime on the hips,’ I’d announced when the first tray was uncovered. A waste of breath that had been. I turned to look the Grand Chamberlain in the face.