Richard Blake - The Curse of Babylon

‘I will not seek the violent crown of martyrdom,’ Theodore said mournfully. Antonia had got him into a chair between two columns and was looking about for help. ‘Such things must never be sought. But if God, in His Infinite Mercy, calls me to stand witness to my faith, I shall be ready — yea, even though my belly be slit open and my intestines wound slowly out, I will never cry out but in joy.’

‘How much has he drunk?’ I whispered. I looked about the room. If I didn’t shut the boy up soon, I’d be a laughing stock as well as hated.

‘I could carry him out myself,’ Antonia said. ‘The problem is he keeps trying to kiss me every time I take hold of him.’ She lowered her voice still further. ‘Was that man with the painted face Eunapius of Pylae?’ I nodded. She looked back, disgusted and oddly alarmed. ‘When can we get out of here?’

‘Spot of bother, dear boy?’ Timothy asked, coming from behind one of the columns. He looked at Theodore, who now put his face into his hands and began rocking back and forth. ‘Dried oysters in honey,’ Timothy said with a laugh — ‘that’s what your boy needs. They’ll bring him round in no time.’ Losing interest in me, he put his flabby face close to Antonia. ‘I really don’t think I’ve had the pleasure of you yet, young man.’ She fell back before the blast of his putrid breath. She looked at me and swallowed. I scowled back at her. This wasn’t all her fault. But I’d tell her it was the moment we were alone.

‘Stay here beside him,’ I said coldly. ‘I’ll go and get some of the carrying slaves.’ Timothy could be trusted not to rape her — not here, at least.

I turned, and found myself staring at Leander. He cleared his throat. Shining with sweat, his face was twisted into an obsequious leer. ‘The Lord Alaric will surely agree with the most just observations of the Caesar Nicetas,’ he opened with slimy respect. ‘An empire that has no place for the Muses cannot be surprised when the Persians overrun its fairest provinces.’

I resisted the urge to kick him on both shins. Eunapius was beside him. While out of the room, he’d acquired another coat of paint for his face. I stopped and made myself smile at Leander. I could see that he’d shaved closely for his recital. But black stubble beneath his skin darkened the lower half of an already dark face. I spread my arms in a gesture of piety. ‘We mustn’t forget, my dear Leander, that now Heraclius is our ruler the Empire is under the special protection of Christ and the Virgin.’

That was a nice rebuke and it shut him up. Before I could hurry past him, though, I caught sight of one of the black lovelies who were never allowed to go far from Nicetas. Nipples erect, her body glistening with sweat, her mouth was open in a smile made wanton by the hashish she was chewing. I saw how her filed teeth glittered in the candlelight and watched greasy saliva run down her chin. She was a fine sight and I’d normally have regretted that this wasn’t the kind of gathering where I could snap my fingers at her and be followed from the room. But I didn’t have to wait for the smell of stale pus before my heart sank.

‘We were discussing the magnificent achievement tonight of my poet Leander,’ Nicetas said in a high and angry voice that brought a gradual end to all conversation in the room. With a loud bump, two more of his black eunuchs put his chair down a few yards from me. He opened his mouth to say more, but instead fell back and groaned as one of his monks hurried over and continued massaging holy oil into the more swollen of his feet.

I glanced left into Antonia’s strained face. She was trying to get behind a column, but Theodore had caught hold of her left hand and was babbling about the punishments he’d brought on himself in this life and the next for his many sins. That he was too far gone to remember his Greek and had lapsed into Syriac was the only consolation I could presently find. As if herded like sheep, two hundred rubbishy Senators and various hangers-on were forming a wide semicircle about us. Even if Nicetas passed out from the agony of his monk’s attentions, I’d never get through this lot without actual violence. There was nothing else for it. I wheeled about and made an ironic bow to Leander.

‘I was much inspired,’ I said, ‘by your description of how the Lord Nicetas plunged without armour into the fray at the Battle of Antioch. His single combat with Shahrbaraz was perfectly Homeric. So too your opening account of the debate of the Saints in Heaven.’ He grinned complacently and bowed to Nicetas, who was lost for the moment to everything but the manipulations of a foot that was looking the colour of an overripe fig. Someone in the crowd sneezed. Someone else laughed. ‘But are you unaware of the conventions of hexameter poetry in Latin?’ I added. Since he was a Greek of sorts, that was less a question than a provocation. I smiled and pressed on with explaining how the Roman poets had observed the rules of quantity in a language that may never have allowed it to dominate the ear, but had maintained a spoken rhythm by making accent and quantity coincide in the two last feet. It gave me the chance to insult him and every Senator in the room by quoting Vergil at length without interpreting its sonorities. Sooner or later, Nicetas would come out of his spasm of gasping moans and be glad of my kiss goodnight. He didn’t like to hear Leander mocked — and tiredness and wine and the accumulated horror of the past two days were putting me into an irreverent mood.

I looked round again at Antonia. Still caught fast by Theodore, she was trying not to notice how Timothy was bouncing about her like a bubble of lard and making obscene gestures. By listening hard, and filtering out Leander’s wooden praise for a poet he could understand no more than I could read the inscription on that cup, I managed to catch some of the whispered conversation Eunapius had begun with a Senator whose name I couldn’t recall but whose face, sharp as a hatchet, was turned steadily in my direction. He’d set everything up, he was explaining. It would be a deciding moment no one could ignore. The nature of this moment I didn’t follow. I looked about for Antonia. She was trying to keep Theodore from falling off his chair. Timothy had now given up on gestures and retired behind one of the columns, where he seemed to be surreptitiously wanking under cover of his toga. Time, I thought, to gather me and mine together and make for the blessings of the night air. I turned towards Nicetas, ready to bring out a stream of fair words.

But Eunapius was finished with Lord Hatchet-Face. Standing between me and Nicetas, he stretched his arms wide for attention. ‘My Lord Alaric,’ he called in a voice that shook from some inner tension, ‘it is the will of your betters that you should reopen the School of Rhetorical Studies. It must be reopened at once and Leander of Memphis appointed its Rector.’ He wheeled round and bowed to Nicetas. He’d been expecting approval. He got a blank stare.

Ignoring Eunapius, I made a bow of my own to the mass of festering sores who’d been appointed to stand between us and a total Persian victory. ‘My Lord Nicetas,’ I said, speaking very smooth, ‘If this is a suggestion from you, I must discuss its details with the Emperor when he returns from Cyzicus. So notable an exception to the Austerity Decree must be carefully prepared.’ Blunt words, no doubt. What else to say, though? A private approach — not through sodding Eunapius — and I’d have had my seal, before the hour was out, on a snug little pension for Leander. I’d not have Eunapius puff himself up in public as the Voice of Nicetas. Made as it was, the request could only be a power game in which I was supposed to lose. I looked at Nicetas. The monk was doing things to his ankles that Chosroes himself might have admired. But his face remained a total blank.