Richard Blake - The Curse of Babylon

I got up and stepped down to the street. ‘No,’ I said with a firmness I should have used earlier in the day. This was why she’d waited so long before ‘catching up’ with me. I was in the shadow of the Milestone, so put the scowl into my voice. ‘You will tell me what you know. I will then take you home before coming out again with Samo. You should know that this matter isn’t a game. I suggest you should stop treating it as one.’

‘If I tell you, you’ll have to take me with you,’ she said defiantly.

‘I’ll take you home!’ I said. I had an hour at most to get wherever the meeting was to be. She knew Constantinople. Had she already made it impossible to get her to safety and get to the meeting? ‘Look, Antonia, it’s dangerous,’ I said, now trying for a reasonable tone. ‘If you insist on coming with me, you’ll put me in danger as well as yourself. If there’s fighting to be done, or running away, I need to move quickly. Did you learn nothing yesterday?’

She said nothing. Her face was in shadow. I could almost hear the time gurgling away through one of my expensive water clocks. I sighed. Boys want money, or freedom. Quite often, if you have looks or charm, girls want nothing at all. Women always make you choose. The choice Antonia was putting to me was outrageous. For all I knew, Eunapius and Simon would soon be making everything as plain as day and within a few hundred paces of where I now stood. All else aside, she might be throwing away her only chance of never setting foot again in that Trebizond nunnery.

I reached out with my right hand. ‘We’ll go home,’ I said calmly. ‘My Jews will be with me late tomorrow morning. They will tell me all I need to know.’

She took my hand and jumped down. She put her arms about me and kissed my cheek. I put my own arms about her and felt suddenly clumsy. ‘Alaric,’ she whispered, ‘Simon said the meeting would be in one of the lecture halls in the Baths of Anthemius. I know a secret way in that the poor use now you’ve put all the prices up.’

Built in more prosperous and leisured days, the Baths of Anthemius still counted as a world in itself. Except I’d recently ordered it to be closed between sunset and dawn, you could spend your whole time in that vast complex and never see need to go outside. It had shops, restaurants, and a church, and a library and brothels. Once you’d paid your entrance money, there were free lectures on mathematics and history, and poetry recitals and performances of comic plays, and readings of such news as the government thought fit for public consumption. There was also the biggest heated pool in the known world and a gymnasium that, fitted out with the best nude statues taken from Olympia before the earthquake, doubled as an art gallery. Just providing marble for the vast central hall had left every former temple in Ephesus a shell of exposed and crumbling brick.

Now I’d taken the Empire’s finances properly in hand though, the Baths were locked up and in darkness. Before noon the next day, the disused drainage tunnel Antonia had shown me would be bricked off and rendered at both ends. If they wanted a bath, the poor could stick to the cold pool outside. No wonder raising the entry charges hadn’t so far reduced the number of times we had to change the hot water.

As we stepped into the central hall, I put a hand over Antonia’s mouth. ‘If you must speak, do it softly and into your clothing.’ I said, covering my own mouth to avoid an echo. The tunnel had been completely dark and I’d had to trust her assurances that it was safe to pass along. Here, the windows in the dome far above let in enough light from the moon and stars to give bearings. There were four arched doorways, three of them leading to different areas of the sprawling complex. I looked hard at the bronze group of Hercules and Antaeus. If she’d heard right, the exit we needed was the one to which Antaeus was pointing with his right leg. ‘Either lift your feet properly, or take your shoes off,’ I breathed. I took Antonia by the hand and led her away from the worn limestone paths along which visitors were made to keep by day. Within our dark outer clothes, we’d show in this light as black on black against the porphyry cladding of the lower walls. We made our way towards the memorial Heraclius had set up to the unfortunate Emperor Maurice and his five murdered sons.

‘Where are you going?’ she whispered. She slowed and tried to pull me back. ‘I said we had to go this way.’

I put a hand over her mouth again. ‘So you think the plan is for us to go down that corridor,’ I whispered as softly as I could, ‘and knock on every door until Simon or Eunapius calls us in for light refreshments?’ I stepped forward again, quickly passing across the entrance to the corridor. ‘I don’t want to hear from you again until I tell you it’s safe to speak.’ Of course, I’d been stupid to give in to the girl. I should have taken her home and waited for Baruch to report back in the morning. Even if not at first hand, he’d surely have found everything worth knowing. If there was something to be learned here, it couldn’t be worth the risk.

But there was now the faintest sound of voices, and of a big door quietly opened and closed. And there was a flicker of light in the corridor leading in from the main entrance. My heart skipped a beat and everything in the surrounding gloom seemed to become sharper. No longer angry, nor scared, nor beset by guilt for letting her tag along — no longer even dog tired and longing for my bed — I pulled Antonia closer against the wall. ‘Keep still,’ I said, ‘and try not to make any sound at all.’

Approaching along the wide access corridor, the voice of Shahin was unmistakable. ‘Oh, but what splendid buildings you have in this great city of Constantinople,’ he called out in Greek. ‘I had quite forgotten how little we have in Ctesiphon to compare with these glories.’ I pulled the hood closer over my face and looked across the two hundred yards that separated us. Two lamp-bearers were first into the hall. They separated and stood each side of the doorway, bowing as Shahin strode confidently past them. Perhaps half a dozen men filed in behind him — hard to tell exactly how many, given the light available, or the distance. Once inside the ring of columns that supported the arches that held the dome, he stopped and clapped his hands. He listened to the echo and clapped again. He moved towards the central statuary. He put his hand on one of the buttocks and, looking upward, recited:

O Goddess sing what woe the discontent

Of Thetis’ son brought to the Greeks; what souls

Of heroes down to Erebus it sent,

Leaving their bodies unto dogs and fowls.

The laugh he brought out was the verbal equivalent of slapping himself on the back. And I had to admit he’d done a fine job on Homer. Leander could have taken lessons from Shahin with obvious profit. Even Nicetas might have heard the distinction between long and short syllables. ‘But can’t you bring in more lamps, Simon?’ he barked. ‘I’d love to see how high the ceiling is in here.’ Simon’s reply was an anxious groan. Shahin snorted, then laughed again. ‘But I’ve no doubt I’ll see this place again in daylight — this and many other places!’ He stepped away from the bronze group and followed the lamp-bearers across the hall.

The procession passed by us not ten feet away. I’d been wondering if we’d be spotted from the lack of reflection where we stood against the polished walls. But Shahin, breathing hard, had stopped again, and was looking away from us at an oversize statue of Antinous. Simon hovered visibly between the nervous and depressed. Everyone else was muffled in his cloak.