Richard Blake - The Curse of Babylon

He sprawled on a pillow black with grease from his scalp and listened as I felt my way into a story that I hadn’t come here to tell, and that still managed in places to bring a scared lump into my throat. A few times, he stopped me to ask a question about persons or places. But he listened mostly in silence as I spoke until the faint glow of light on our side of the curtain had faded and we were in darkness but for the wavering gleam of the lamp.

When I’d finished my account of my last days in Persian territory — speaking a different language and giving a different story to every picket that stopped me — he got up and walked to the farthest length his chain allowed. He turned and made a bow that I thought for a moment was ironic. Then he was back beside me and reaching for his box of drugs. He watched me take a small pinch of his orange powder and waited for its effect to begin. He put his face close to mine. For the first time since we’d met, his breath smelled only of rotting teeth. ‘You know, dear boy, I decided to kill you after your first proposal of a law to dispossess my class of its land. I went out with Heraclius when he needed a piss during the banquet after that Council meeting. I just happened to be carrying the right poison in a flask about my neck. I found myself alone with all the boots and I could tell yours from their size. Five drops in each and you’d have fallen dead some time the following day. Everyone would have agreed it was a heart attack. Instead, I stood looking at those boots till Heraclius had put his catheter away. I never had such an easy chance again.’

He stopped and gathered his thoughts again. ‘Listen, Alaric,’ he whispered, ‘if Heraclius will never understand the brains and courage required to keep the Home Provinces safe, I do . Give Uncle Priscus your hand. He’d like to touch a man who at last has become his equal.’

I could have laughed at him. Perhaps I should have got up and crossed to the other side of the white line. I could have called an order to the monk praying in a scared voice outside the door. I could have walked out. I could have hurried through the ruined suburbs. If the Military Gate was already locked and barred, I could have ordered it reopened. I could have let my eyes glaze over every time I found myself looking at the Fortified Monastery.

Instead, I gave him my hand.

So was resumed what you might call our friendship. On the first Friday in every month, I’d slip outside the City and walk alone through the ruins to call on Priscus in the Fortified Monastery. After my first visit, I’d given orders for the whip to be put away and for him to be moved into better quarters. There, we’d spend the evening drinking wine and sniffing drugs and talking over the state of the Empire. It was an odd relaxation from the cares of office. Perhaps I should confess it was a support for those cares. Beyond torturing householders in fallen cities into screaming where they’d hidden their savings, Priscus knew nothing of finance. The delicate web of dealings I was beginning to map out in earnest, one touch on any part of which would be felt in all the others, was as great a mystery to him as colours are to a blind man. But show him the correlation of forces in the Imperial Council and he had the feel of a master for how to break up hostile combinations — who should be bribed, who blackmailed, who should be quietly entrapped, without showing by whom, into boys or heresy or financial losses to the Jews. My survival so far in the councils of the Empire — indeed my achievements in the demented snake pit that was Ctesiphon — showed some understanding of the courtly arts. What Priscus now taught me was of a wholly different character. Even when I had no taste for following his advice, it was useful to know what others might be planning against me.

Martin stopped before a statue that showed Polyphemus in the act of eating a man. ‘Aelric, I still don’t like this place,’ he whispered in Celtic. ‘The very walls pulsate with evil. Can’t we just move back to the smaller palace you were given?’

I frowned and looked at the statue. Though not from the very best age of Greek art, it was a fine composition. Its provenance carried it through a line of owners and dealers that led back to the demolition of Hadrian’s villa outside Rome. It might have been commissioned by the Emperor himself. I waited for a couple of slave girls to walk past us in the corridor. One of them looked back at me and smiled. I smiled and nodded. That was tonight sorted, I told myself with a thrill of lust I took care not to show.

I turned to Martin, whose face had taken on a greyish colour in the light from a glazed window. ‘Bricks and marble do not pulsate with anything,’ I said with greater patience than I felt. ‘Now, I’m the Lord Treasurer. I can’t be expected to slum it in a residence stuck between a monastery and an ivory warehouse. I need a big audience hall and room for offices. I need somewhere in which I can show off to all who attend on me.’ I could have gone on to say that I needed somewhere with walls thick enough to let the Emperor’s Lord High Economiser not be torn apart by the mob. But I smiled and reached out to my bedraggled secretary. ‘Oh, come on, Martin,’ I said. ‘We’ve finally got the place spotlessly clean — and you have said how you love the rose garden.’

We continued together along the corridor. The door to my office anteroom was ajar and I heard Samo inside let out one of his moderately drunken burps.

I sat at my desk and stared at the sullen boy. The look in his eyes had already taken Martin’s thoughts off invisible horrors. He was sitting on my left and giving nervous glances at the iron sword on my desk.

I looked up and down the semi-literate scrawl on the wooden board that had been taken from about the boy’s neck. ‘Your name is Rado?’ I asked in Slavic. He stared back at me, his eyes showing their first trace of humanity since he’d been made to stand before me. I let my face break into a smile. ‘I speak several languages,’ I said — ‘most of them rather well. However, the working language of this palace is Latin. Do you know any Latin?’ His eyes darted sideways at Samo, whose chair creaked with every movement. He focused on me again and nodded.

I looked again at the wooden board. ‘You were found trying to run away on a sprained ankle after the failure of your tribe’s raid on Rhodope.’ The boy nodded, but made no other answer. I got up and went to stand over him. He stank like a dead fox. His hair was still plastered with something that made it white and spiky. I guessed its natural colour was light brown but this was only from looking at his eyes. ‘Your people have colonised some high mountains,’ I said. Breathing through my mouth, I walked round him. He had the wiry look you get in mountain races. At the same time, he had the makings of something rather more harmonious. My agent had been in Rhodope at the time of the raid and had been able to get first pick of the human debris left after an unusually firm defence of the city. This boy had been his only selection. I stopped in front of him. He was too young to have suffered the scarification that made adult males of his race useless for anything but working in the mines. In its few moments of relaxation, he had a pretty face.

‘Take off your clothes,’ I said in Latin.

‘You’ll have to kill me first!’ he snarled back in a voice that wasn’t quite broken. He looked at the sword and tensed his muscles as if to make a lunge for it.

I shook my head at Samo to stay seated. I picked up the sword by its blade and handed it to the boy. As I’d expected, it was too heavy for him to do other than let its point bump on the floor. Leaving the sword in his hands, I pulled out a low stool and sat before him. ‘Listen, Rado,’ I said, now back in Slavic, ‘you were held in the slave pens of Rhodope for several days before the road was declared safe enough for travel. I’m sure that let you see how the other captives were made ready for servitude. Did my agent beat you? Did he starve you? Did he cause you to be raped? Did he force you to eat his shit or to assist in killing the injured boys of your people? According to the note that came with you, he bound up your ankle, and packed you off to me.’