Richard Blake - The Curse of Babylon

She stopped again for breath — or to cover a fit of the giggles: the loss of temper hadn’t been genuine. Time for me to pull the conversation back to the course I’d laid down for it. ‘Why did you encourage him to insist on going out tonight?’ I asked. ‘Theodore never goes out unless it’s to church. He’s never shown the slightest interest in secular poetry. I’ll have to accept that you’ve been using me in some stupid game. I suppose latching on to me was a change from your normal — and no doubt vicious — entertainments. But why rope in poor Theodore? I do think less of you for that.’

Sure I’d finally got the upper hand, I stood up and scowled at her, hands behind my back. ‘Now, Antonia,’ I said sternly, ‘I don’t choose to wait till you’ve made up another pack of lies. I want to know who you are. You can begin by telling me who your father is.’

Antonia sat back and laughed softly. She looked at Eboric. ‘What were you doing with that boy when I came in here?’ she asked. Before I could think what to roar at her, Eboric got up from where he’d been sitting against the wall and bowed. It was a graceful, even a charming, gesture. No one could really hold his lack of clothing against him in a bathhouse and Antonia gave him a charming smile in return.

The smile stayed on her face when she turned back to me. ‘Is there any young slave in this place, Alaric, who is actually ugly?’ she asked. ‘Are there any of them, male or female, with whom you haven’t had sex?’

Oh, the outrage of it! She hadn’t been here a day and she was already commenting on my household management. No — never mind the outrage of it: there was the irrelevance.

But, even as I bent down to look her close in the face, I heard a scraping of shoes in the outer room. Antonia stiffened slightly then, keeping her back to the door, was on her feet and looking into a pot of setting depilatory pitch.

‘I was told you were down here, Antony,’ Theodore said with a strained laugh. He came fully through the door and caught sight of me. He bowed briefly before looking away from my naked body. His eyes fixed on an image of Pasiphae having sex with the bull. He pulled them away and found himself staring at something even I’d for a while thought outside the normal range of taste. Served the boy right, I told myself, for having lived here over two years and till now avoiding comforts a civilised man enjoyed every day. I was deciding how to speak with him about the inadequacies of cold washing water as a substitute for the real thing. But he’d turned to Antonia and I could see he was going weak at the knees. I couldn’t see his face. Could I complain if it had gone bright red?

‘We were discussing what clothes Antony should wear tonight,’ I said in a jolly voice too loud for the room. ‘His luggage was taken yesterday by the bandits.’ Theodore turned back to me, this time ignoring the sin of unashamed nakedness. What he would certainly have called a further and graver sin was presently under control. I hoped he wouldn’t ask for any advance on the vague story I’d given about our meeting while in captivity. But that was easily handled. How was I to explain things when, sooner or later, Antony became Antonia? The staff I’d so carefully assembled wouldn’t so much as blink if I turned into a swan and began propositioning the kitchen maids. If one of my guests changed sex between dinner and breakfast, no one would mention it outside the household. I’d need a bloody good explanation, though, for Theodore. Perhaps I should take him aside now and tell him what I’d had no proper reason for keeping from him the night before.

It was too late. The boy was smitten. From the look on his face, he loved Antony with total boyish devotion. If I told him anything without careful preparation, he might never get over the shock. I walked past Antonia for a towel and tied it about my waist.

‘I came down,’ Theodore said in a voice that seemed on the edge of trailing off, ‘to ask if Antony would like the green silk you gave me for my birthday. Siegmund is sure it will fit him.’

I nodded. ‘I’ll call the tailors in tomorrow,’ I said. ‘For tonight, though, I agree the green silk will go nicely with his eyes.’ I looked into Theodore’s closed and faintly suspicious face. I’d barely started my interrogation of Antonia but Theodore wasn’t moving. I got up. ‘I have important business,’ I said with an involuntary glance at the mirror I was still holding. ‘If anyone needs me, I shall be in my office.’

I paused for the clerk to soak more ink into his pen. It gave me time to complete the passage I’d been forming in my head. It was a nuisance that his weak chest had kept Sergius in his Nicaea residence far beyond the passing of winter. Until he returned, the usual understandings we could reach together without too many words had to give way to a careful balance in writing between clarity and circumlocution. I took a deep breath and looked for inspiration at an ivory of Cupid making love to Psyche.

‘As for the insistence of the Lord Bishop Longinus on a duality of will in Jesus Christ,’ I dictated, ‘this may not as yet be unorthodox, and the chapter in the decrees in the Council of Chalcedon to which he continually refers may not contradict him in their plain sense. Nevertheless, he has been made unofficially aware of the preliminary questions agreed at the closed Council of Athens. Even if he has not spoken out in public against a single will, I find his general attitude unhelpful. We are at one in asserting that such preferments between sees are a matter for the Lord Patriarch, and not for the Emperor or his ministers, to decide. It is, however, my personal opinion that the excellent missionary work overseen by Longinus among the Slavs should not be interrupted by his translation to a bishopric deep within the Home Provinces.’

I paused again and leaned back in my chair. ‘Put that between the eleventh and twelfth paragraphs of my letter to the Patriarch,’ I said. The clerk bowed and brought his waxed board over for reading. I scratched one word out and put in another. It made no change to the overall sense but avoided a distasteful clash of consonants. I looked over the whole addition and smiled. If he thought he could poke his nose into matters of church doctrine best left with me, His Grace Longinus could go jump a foot in the air. I’d not have him yapping at me from a place as central or as cushy as Stauropolis. He could stay put in Larissa. Given luck, one of the barbarians he was trying to convert would knock him on the head. Unless he’s made his position clear in writing, a dead martyr is always better than a live troublemaker.

I got up from my desk and carried a letter over to the window. The daylight was going, and someone in the Food Control Office had been showing off how many words he could cram on to a half sheet of papyrus. I looked at it and sniffed. I went with it to the clerk’s writing table. I dropped it in front of him. ‘Proposal rejected,’ I said. ‘I wrote a memorandum last August on the futility of price controls. Find it and adapt the relevant passages into a reply. Also, I want the man’s head of department in this office on the third hour of light on Friday. Tell him to bring a complete listing of his clerks and their functions.’

I was pulling a face over some spelling mistakes in another document when the door opened and Theodore and Antonia crept in. I blinked and looked at Theodore in the fading light. Though I’d set half a dozen slaves on forcing him through the faster actions of the bathhouse and on getting him dressed, he still managed to look dirty. Antonia had been unjust about Samo’s abilities. She’d been got up as the most astonishingly lovely young man. I looked at her and my heart beat faster. I looked at Theodore and realised again that he was totally and irreparably lost. I could have fancied Antonia in either sex. This silly boy would never have looked at Antonia. How long before he started feeling guilty about his passion for Antony? I felt a stab of pity, then of guilt. If I explained the whole plot to him when it was over, I might bring him to a reasonable view of things. I knew I wouldn’t. How long before Martin was back? He’d have sorted this in no time.