Richard Blake - The Curse of Babylon

‘If I asked where we were going,’ I enquired politely, ‘would you be able to answer?’ The compounder shook his head. My sword in its scabbard was pressing against my thigh. Would it get me out of any trouble I might be heading towards? As the carrying slaves got into their stride and lifted us higher above the pavement, the compounder unstoppered his glass bottle again and sniffed at its fumes until I thought he’d stop breathing. I’d have no trouble from him, I thought.

‘Wait here for us,’ the compounder pleaded. ‘We shan’t be long at all.’ He mopped his forehead and ran a dry tongue over dry lips. ‘I’ll pay you double what I’ve given you so far,’ he added. After a brief hesitation, the owner nodded and pulled out a short sword. The slaves already had their knives out. This ‘moment of my time’ had already extended itself to an hour.

My boots crunched on disintegrated bricks as I skirted heaps of filth too rancid to be scavenged away. We were moving into an area where no outsiders ever went for amusement. If I was right about the geography, we’d soon be in a place where the authorities never went without very good cause and then with a few dozen armed men for protection. As we emerged from one of the bigger courtyards into the semblance of a street, we stopped before a heap of dead and decomposing rats. Now I didn’t need both arms to keep my balance, I took out a bottle of perfume and emptied it into a napkin.

‘It’s in here, My Lord,’ the compounder whispered. He nodded at the narrow entrance to another courtyard and, within that, to a door that hung open in a high wall of surprisingly decent brick. The other buildings were of the usual rickety timber. I thought again of the geography. Before renamed Constantinople and made the Empire’s eastern capital, Byzantium had been given walls adequate for keeping out most barbarian raids. These walls were long gone. But, here and there, deep inside the modern City, traces remained. This could be one of the towers.

The compounder grabbed at my arm as I stepped sideways for a better look at the building. ‘I crave your indulgence if anything you see or hear might contravene the laws of the Empire,’ he said, looking nervously round the empty yard. I said nothing. I’d once heard it seriously argued that the laws didn’t apply in these districts.

In a fog of smells that, despite the napkin pressed to my face, could have made a muckraker puke, we moved up one flight of irregular stairs. From here, it was an unlit passageway. Behind every door that we passed, I heard a scurrying that put me in mind of rats, but was more likely to be the human residents. We stopped at the far end of the building. This would have been the outer wall of Byzantium and there was no entrance here. We took another flight of stairs back to ground level. Hidden as if by accident behind a pile of building materials covered with the dust of generations, a solid door was set into a solid wall.

The compounder knocked three times. Someone on the other side knocked once and then again and a small hatch was drawn open. The compounder leaned closer so he could be seen. For added security, he said his name. As the door creaked inward, I suppressed a flash of sudden panic and stepped into an interior that seemed to be in total darkness and smelled like an opened grave.

‘Please feel welcome here, My Lord Alaric,’ the compounder’s associate said, speaking for the first time, and in a strongly Syrian accent. ‘Be assured you are among friends and that no danger can come to you.’ By the dim light that came from the corridor, I could see I was in a curtained sliver of what may have been a large room. Whoever had opened the door was out of sight behind the foul and shining curtain.

The compounder pushed himself through the door, leaving me no choice but to stand against the curtain. ‘I assure you, My Lord, you are in no danger,’ he said, drawing the bolt shut. So many assurances of safety. I tried not to listen to the voice inside me that said to pull the bolt open again and make a dash for the light.

I looked past the compounder and willed my throat muscles to work properly. ‘Where’s your friend?’ I asked.

‘Keeping watch outside,’ the compounder answered. I suppressed another flash of panic. If this was a trap, it was unnecessarily elaborate. Avoiding the curtain, I pressed myself against a damp wall and let the compounder run his hands over that horrid cloth in search of an opening.

Through the curtain, I was in a room about the size of a large holding dungeon, though somewhat higher. It was pointless to wonder what had been its original purpose. Whatever that had been, its current purpose was decidedly more exotic.

‘You have brought him to us?’ the most decrepit-looking of the three old men quavered in Syriac. ‘You have brought us the seventh outsider to approach you after the breaking of the sun upon your face in the place of your business?’ He got stiffly up from his place beside his colleagues and peered at me from within the wide circle of candles.

‘As you directed, O Master,’ the compounder answered in a voice that seemed likely to tremble out of control, ‘I have brought the Lord Alaric.’

Oh dear! I thought. I’d assumed he was fussing about Priscus. If he believed I’d been in the drugs market to see him, his had been the bigger misapprehension. I kept my face steady and waited.

Without rising from his place, another of the old men looked at me. ‘The stars assured us the thief was an older man,’ he quavered, also in Syriac. ‘It was an older man, and a darker, who was seen carrying it from its place of safety,’ He reached out a bony hand to help him see past the candles. ‘Is this not a young barbarian? Has he brought it with him? If not, why has he not brought it with him?’

The compounder went forward another step and bowed. ‘Just as you told me a man would seek me out, Master, so came the Lord Alaric to me yesterday, seeking help. I have done as you directed. I can do no more.’ His voice caught and he began a sentence in Greek that trailed off before it could make sense.

Still on his feet, the first old man pointed at me. ‘Come forward, young man,’ he said in Greek. ‘Do you truly possess the Horn of Babylon?’ He raised both arms in a dramatic gesture, the black folds of his robe stretching out like the wings of a bat.

The stone floor had dipped in places and every depression was a puddle of slime. Avoiding these, I walked forward to the edge of the pentagram that I saw had been chalked just beyond the circuit of the candles. Even after the door was closed, I’d seen how the candles continued to flicker, but hadn’t used up the stinking air. From where I now stood, I could see a small window on my left. The main hole in its shutter was blocked with a sheet of oiled parchment.

‘I do possess the object of which you speak,’ I said, making my own attempt at the dramatic, ‘and would learn whatever can be said about its current significance.’ I stepped forward a few paces and tried to avoid showing my interest in the window.

The old man who hadn’t yet spoken put up an arm for attention. ‘Has My Lord touched the Horn of Babylon?’ he croaked. I think I was supposed to give way to terror at this point. I folded my arms and tried not to look impatient. Aside from the nonsense they speak, the problem with astrologers is that they can beat eunuchs every time for stretching out the most commonplace utterances. ‘Have you taken it from the box in which it was to be insulated forever, and touched it with your bare hands?’ he elaborated.

‘I have touched it,’ I said, sounding earnest — I, and whoever last polished the bloody thing , I might have added but didn’t. I ignored the nervous looks and the quiet muttering of the old men. ‘Is this a matter I have cause to regret?’ I asked. ‘I know nothing of your Horn. It was brought to me yesterday, wholly unsought by me.’ I paused and waited for the muttering to die away. ‘What is the Horn of Babylon?’ I asked with sudden firmness. If I wasn’t to be here till nightfall, I’d have to move things along.