Richard Blake - The Curse of Babylon

Reluctantly, he got up. ‘And the cup?’ he asked.

‘It goes back in a secret place only you and I know.’ I said.

Priscus arranged his face into a bleak smile. ‘Your trust in my honesty is an inspiration that I will do my best to keep in mind,’ he sneered. I smiled back at him. Priscus was a champion liar in a race of liars. I’d seen fear in his eyes, though, even he couldn’t fake.

After a mostly wet April, the winter roof was now off my gymnasium. Once I’d finished scraping off the thick coat of sand that was stuck to my oiled body, I could hurry off to the bathhouse. After that, I could make a start on the morning’s work and deal with whatever accumulation had been carried over from the previous day.

Glaucus pointed at an unscraped area on my lower back. ‘A civilised man ties a cord over his foreskin,’ he said shortly.

He was starting an old argument. I twisted round with my strigil and got nearly everything off with a single stroke. ‘The ancients wrestled with other free men,’ I said lazily. ‘Young Rado, on the other hand, would feel put out if I didn’t shoot all over his chest.’ I smiled at the boy. He’d almost got himself clean enough for the steam room. He smiled back and flexed himself most charmingly. But for the pale faces already looking through the doorway, I’d have suggested another grapple in the sand.

The old trainer frowned at the stiffy that had popped up again. ‘I have repeatedly told you,’ he said, ‘exercise is not an opportunity for sex,’ he said. I could have told him to address that remark to the ancients. Why else do it in the nude and end it so often with wrestling? But Glaucus was Glaucus, and he’d said his piece. ‘I’ve given you lighter weights,’ he said going back to my earlier question, ‘because I don’t like the way your biceps are growing. For the same reason, I refuse you any breakfast. Your shoulders are already on the outer borders of harmony with your lower body. Just because you are a barbarian is no reason why you should look like one.’ He stood back and stared at Rado. ‘You can interpret the same to him. If he pumps himself up any more, you might as well complete his ruin as a dancing boy and cover his body with tattoos and get him kitted out as a bodyguard. From what I hear of yesterday’s adventure, you’re a fool to go about alone in the City.’

I bowed. ‘It is as you say, Glaucus,’ I said meekly. I suppressed the memories he’d stirred of the previous day. I did it too late. My foreskin rolled fully back, exposing the pink of my glans to the morning sun.

Glaucus came out with something unflattering and walked slowly round me, grunting and poking at me with his cane. ‘The purpose of training,’ he said as if telling me for the first time, ‘is not to make yourself look like a human bull for two seasons, before running to fat. It is to keep the body in balanced proportions throughout the whole term of life. Hair goes. Teeth go. Get it right early enough and good muscle tone lasts a lifetime.’ He stopped and looked angrily into my face. ‘I have told you many times, a depilated crotch is unattractive. It gives an impression of effeminacy. You waste your time in modelling your speech on the correct elegance of the ancients, if you cannot leave your manhood clothed with its natural modesty.’

I bowed again and thought of the all-over kiss of silk undergarments. ‘I crave indulgence for the weakness,’ I said. Saying no more, I joined Glaucus in a probably illegal genuflection before an empty niche.

‘Your kava , Sir,’ young Eboric said behind me in Latin. I nodded and continued taking the salutes and greetings from the multitudes who passed back and forth along the Triumphal Way. It was one of those glorious mornings the spring gives only occasionally to Constantinople. The sun shone clear on my right, but a cool breeze from the north took away all but a hint of what it might do later in the day. The roofs of the lower City shone a cheerful red or glittered like jewels on velvet. The seabirds called and circled overhead.

And here I was, alive and well, and bathed and oiled and perfumed. Dressed in a white outer tunic crossed by bands of shimmering green, I stood at ease on the front steps of my palace. There could be no doubt of the previous day’s horrors but I was almost ready to believe the lying account of my capture and escape I’d dictated in the steam room. It was already set up on its easel and attracting a most flattering number of readers. I was alive and well, and Shahin and all his friends could go fuck themselves.

Not even Timothy’s presence could sour the morning. ‘Duty presses, dear boy,’ he said again, ‘Duty presses. Can’t possibly step inside.’ Even so, his cold unsmiling eyes were looking past me into the darkness of my entrance hall. Of course, a man of my quality deserved no less than the City Prefect in person — though his local deputy would have been more welcome.

He turned and looked down the steps to where my easel had been set. ‘Shocking story,’ he went on — ‘perfectly shocking. These bandits were never so bold when I was your age. A man could ride halfway to Thessalonica before hitting serious trouble.’

I sipped delicately at the contents of my glass beaker and continued looking into the street. Was that Eunapius of Pylae down there? His head and shoulders were hidden behind the easel. But there was surely no one else in the City with that combination of emaciation and fussy taste in clothes. From what I could see, he was reading my account to a crowd of his parasites and to the general trash who couldn’t read for themselves. I looked harder. I frowned. Several of the listeners were breaking into a shambling dance. I was sure I could hear a low titter. I pretended not to notice. ‘The street cleaners have done a good job,’ I said, looking back at Timothy.

I’d caught him in the act of picking his nose. He moved a forefinger that had been poised an inch from his mouth and wiped the bogie into the off-yellow banding of his robe. ‘It was the least I could do, my dear fellow,’ he answered. ‘I had them out with the dawn, scrubbing and cleaning. I was here myself to supervise. We had to flog a few of the stragglers awake. A couple of dead, too, we had to carry away.’ He pointed to a brown patch where two of the public slaves were still at work. The lower part of his face took on a sad smile. ‘You should have seen what had been done to the poor creature we found there. Animals in human form — no, demons out of Hell — some of the humbler people of this fair city.’ He looked carefully at my face.

‘Any reports of an older body found in the area?’ I asked with a slight wrinkling of my nose. ‘My own slaves found a dried blood patch in the side street round the corner. If you have found anything, I feel a certain obligation to pay for its collection.’

‘Your goodness, young Alaric, is proverbial,’ was Timothy’s answer. Without giving more of an answer, he turned to feast his eyes on Eboric, who was waiting quietly for me to finish my kava . ‘As, if you’ll pardon the compliment, is your taste in slaves.’ His lower jaw sagged open, giving full view of his teeth. ‘Where does one lay hold of such freshness and elegance?’ he cried with sudden enthusiasm. ‘Speaking for myself, I find the markets in this city a continual disappointment.’ He leaned forward and stroked the boy’s cheek. ‘So fresh, so elegant!’ he repeated. Eboric shrank back and turned appealing eyes on me. I gave him the tiniest reassuring nod.

‘I take a personal care in the training of my younger slaves,’ I said, staring into a face visibly consumed by lust.

Timothy settled his features into a look of only moderate satyriasis. ‘If you’ll pardon an older man’s advice,’ he said, now in a patronising tone, ‘your way with slaves has provoked a certain degree of adverse comment.’ He continued staring at Eboric. ‘You don’t make a human being into a slave by the mere facts of capture and sale. Taking anyone into your house who hasn’t been broken by the dealers to servitude is rather like taking in a dangerous wild animal. Having more than a few slaves of the same nation compounds the risk. You’ll never sleep soundly. You’ll never rely on them in a crisis — you mark my word.’ Still looking at Eboric, he controlled himself. He leaned close to me. ‘To see the boy naked would not displease me, though,’ he whispered from the corner of his mouth.