Richard Blake - The Curse of Babylon

He held out his hand for me to give the wine back. ‘Yes, I did set things up. As with all good conspiracies, some things I carefully planned, others I left to chance. I got wind of Shahin’s dealing with Eunapius and, through him, with Nicetas. At first, I thought I’d only caught Nicetas in the little web I spun. I would eventually have brought him to you without much fuss. It was when I saw how Timothy and all the others were getting sucked in that I set properly to work. I had to use you to bring things on from treasonable talk to treasonable action. But it’s done, and my advice is to hurry off to Cyzicus with the neatest discovery of a plot even I can remember. I may not be able to share your glory when Heraclius comes back breathing fire. But I’ll revel in your description of the trials.’

‘You did all this to get even,’ I pressed on. ‘These were the men who gloried in your fall. Stuffing them was to be the “final achievement” you’ve been wittering about for years. I don’t know how you did it without showing yourself but I’ll never believe Timothy would turn spontaneously to treason. It’s all a massive work of entrapment.’ I took another mouthful of wine and gave Priscus the rest to finish. I began to see his side of things. I began to see my own as it might appear to a reasonable man. So what if Priscus had found some way of acting out of sight as an agent of provocation? He deserved his revenge. And I’d now have a clear run with Heraclius. There’d be no more obstructions in the Imperial Council. There’d be no more Timothy, dripping poison in every ear he approached. Eunapius no longer counted. Nicetas would be lucky if he only got a room in the Fortified Monastery.

‘All’s well that ends well, dear boy,’ Priscus said with another smack of his lips. ‘I don’t need to spell out every step of my twisting way, nor every benefit that will flow from it. Just rejoice that we’ve won. Yes, rejoice — simply rejoice. And get rid of that fucking cup . It’s done everything it was supposed to. Reseal the box and give it to Heraclius when you see him in Cyzicus. He’s a miserable sod anyway. He’d only notice the improvement in his public fortunes.’

I helped Priscus pull the tunic over his head. I watched him fiddle with the cord that held it about his waist. At last, he got his fingers working and tied it in a loose bow. ‘What will you do with Theodore?’ he asked. ‘Don’t answer me back if I say you’ve been a crap adoptive father. Something like this was waiting to happen.’

I stood up. ‘I’ve decided to withdraw my objection to his studying at the monastic school in Chalcedon,’ I said stiffly. ‘I’ll arrange for him to go across to the Asiatic shore the moment it’s safe for anyone to leave the palace.’

‘A wise choice,’ he tittered. ‘He’d be wasted in any other occupation. Besides, you wouldn’t want him to hang around and spoil your new and happy life. The next time I pray, I’ll make sure to ask that she doesn’t start looking like her father when she grows old.’

I picked my way over to the window and drew up the blind. The sun had already vanished behind one of the higher neighbouring buildings. I frowned. What hours he kept were his business but, when I was in a better temper, I’d ask Priscus if it wasn’t time for a change of name and particularly of address. By all accounts, the small property I’d recently acquired in Crete was just the place for a man’s retirement from active life. Sun, sand, sea, anonymity — and as much papyrus as anyone could need for his long-delayed memoirs. Now he’d done everything he wanted with his life, what more could Priscus need?

Though long after darkness had fallen, dinner was better than I deserved it to be. ‘I wish you both every possible happiness,’ Theodore had said twice. He was a rotten liar, both on principle and from inexperience. He’d kissed Antonia and called her Mother, and the three of us had drunk together from the same cup. Otherwise, I’d filled up what might otherwise have been long silences with a coherent and reasonably full account of all that had happened since Monday. No mention of Priscus, to be sure. No more than I absolutely needed about the cup, either.

‘The Emperor should be back within the next ten days,’ I’d ended. ‘Until then, we are all of us still in danger. I have already instructed my own revenue officials to stop and search every ship within a fifty mile radius of Constantinople, and to stop and search every person entering or leaving the City. I will order greater vigilance tomorrow morning. This will reduce the possibility of contact between Shahin and the conspirators. Speaking of the conspirators, I don’t think, after what happened at last night’s recital, they will attempt a revolution. They can no longer be certain that Nicetas would accept the Purple if it were offered. No one but a fool would put Timothy forward as Emperor. The only way out of the equilibrium that currently exists is for the conspirators to lay hands on the Horn of Babylon. There might be a direct assault on our gates by a mob of the poor. However, beneath its elegant façade, this palace is effectively a fortress. Properly defended, it could hold out against a regular army. That leaves subterfuge. None of us must go out into the City. None but my usual clerks will be allowed to enter, and they will be searched on entry and kept to the public areas.

‘We are like a man swimming under water to avoid a barricade,’ I’d ended with a smile. ‘We can see the final length. So long as we keep our nerve and avoid useless movements, the air we’ve taken in should carry us forward to safety. But none of us must leave these walls. If either of you see anyone or anything out of the ordinary, you must bring it at once to my attention.

‘Do you understand?’

So the dinner had ended.

Afterwards, I went up alone to the palace roof. The street lighting still at full burn, Constantinople was a cheerful sight. I stood for a long time looking west, to where the blackness started beyond the land walls. Beyond that grim and battle-scarred line, the Empire shaded imperceptibly into the world of barbarism. Bearing in mind all that had happened in the past three centuries, Constantine’s choice of the new Imperial City had been inspired. His establishment of the Christian Faith may or may not have been a mistake. His hope that it would open an age of peace and external security had been falsified by events. But you couldn’t fault his choice of Byzantium. The New Rome had now survived the Old by two centuries. So long as that held itself together, the barbarians could dash themselves against its walls as that fly had against the oiled parchment. We’d hold off the Avars and the Slavs and all the others until better days came and we could restore the Danube frontier.

If I turned and walked across the roof, I’d be able to look out across the equal darkness of the sea. Somewhere out on that was Shahin, waiting his chance. How to chase the Persians off was a matter no one discussed except in vague generalities. Chased off they would be, however. If no one else could, I’d see to that. I’d lead no charge in any victorious battle. But I knew how to see to it that, in the long slogging match this war had become, it would be the Persians whose strength gave out first. Whether or not we found ourselves a decent general, Chosroes would be the first to run out of money, and his whole rickety empire would promptly implode. We’d do it with sound money and balanced finances, and a population that looked to the Empire as the least bad alternative in a world of generally shitty choices.

All this we could do so long as Constantinople itself held fast. And it would hold fast, so long as I held this palace. We were about to see if the confidence Priscus had always shown in his grandfather’s lavish spending on brick and iron was justified.