Richard Blake - The Curse of Babylon

‘Thank the Senator Eunapius for his most helpful suggestion,’ I said. ‘However, the purity of the new coins has been announced in public and more than half the first issue has been minted. Remind him of the Emperor’s speech to the Senate on how the Empire has long benefited from a stable medium of gold exchange, and of how the time is come to let the common people enjoy the benefits of a stable medium of silver.’ I paused and, putting up a hand for shade, opened my eyes. ‘There’s no need to show me the finished letter. But do send a copy to the Lord Nicetas. Instruct the messenger to read all of it. Tell him to read it louder if His Lordship appears to fall asleep.’

The clerk finished scratching on the soft wax and bowed. Trying not to leave a stain on it, I picked up the sheet of very expensive parchment that Eunapius had covered with his idiot suggestions. Sending out the coins with a copper core, I ask you! But why bother writing at all? Had the plot finally crumbled? If so, did those behind it think I knew nothing and that they could go back to troublemaking as usual? Or was I supposed to think everything was normal? I looked harder at the neat writing. What I’d assumed, when it was read out, was a long grammatical mistake turned out to be a kind of elegiac couplet. I’d taken it for granted Eunapius was still working for Nicetas. Was this evidence he was working with Nicetas?

Hard to say. I tossed the unrolled sheet at the nearest clerk. It was an official communication and would have to go in the archives. A shame, this. Gone at with a sponge dipped in vinegar, it could have been made almost as good as new.

I sat up and stared at my legs. Might they be turning red in the sun? Glaucus had insisted on a proper tan — ‘Real men don’t hide from the sun,’ he’d said the previous morning. ‘They rejoice in bodies the colour of polished wood.’ The men he’d had in mind, I hadn’t dared answer, weren’t northern settlers born in Kent. Was I now overdoing it? I wondered. I noticed the clerks were all staring at me with close attention. I stretched both arms and yawned. Too many questions for this heat. I pointed at another of the clerks. This was one who looked as if he was in urgent need of a piss. Best to see what he’d brought over from the Treasury.

Antonia came into the garden, Eboric prancing beside her with a sunshade. ‘Alaric, I need to speak with you,’ she said in Latin. Annoyed, I got up and watched the clerks part for her to come forward. Though, as agreed, she was wearing men’s clothes, you’d need to be blind to overlook her actual sex. From their deferential bowing, the clerks knew rather more about her than that. Our upper bodies stretched forward and met in a kiss that avoided any contamination of her clothes by the oil and sweat that ran down my body. Someone began wiping my back with a towel. Wincing, I took it from him and wiped my face. That was hurting as well.

I clapped my hands for attention. ‘Gentlemen,’ I said, ‘you are all excused for one quarter hour of the sundial.’ I moved to a stone bench and took the cover off a jug of cooled fruit juice. It was only Saturday. Just two entire days had passed since making our commitment. It felt like a year. It also felt as if we were meeting for the first time.

But I’d show I was still master in my own house. ‘You could have worn something baggier on your chest,’ I said once we were alone.

She smiled and shrugged. ‘I’ve had a letter from Daddy,’ she said. ‘It’s all out in the open.’ She waved a large sheet of papyrus under my nose. The few lines of writing it carried looked like the production of an angry child. ‘He wants me home at once.’ She smiled again and stood back. ‘As for clothing, shouldn’t you put some on?’ Before I could reach forward to take it, she dropped the sheet on the ground and wiped it underfoot.

‘I trust you haven’t sent him an answer?’ I said carefully. I took the face she pulled as a negative. ‘Then, if you haven’t made too obvious a footprint on it, I’ll send it back with a polite query.’ I bent down to recover the message. The skin on my upper back seemed very tight. I focused on the message. This wasn’t the first time I’d seen her father’s own handwriting. Never mind the large scrawl, nor the evident and possibly not unreasonable fury — his spelling would have disgraced a tradesman.

Antonia took the message from between my forefinger and thumb. ‘Theodore had another bad dream last night,’ she said.

I looked away. ‘Theodore’s always having bad dreams,’ I said. ‘Was this one about hellfire? Or was it the one he often has, about being molested by giant bugs and then buried alive in rose petals?’

She lowered her voice. ‘It was the man with golden wings again,’ she said. She noticed that Eboric was listening and went into Greek. ‘Talking of hellfire, you do know the colour you’ve gone?’

Trying to look unconcerned, I sat back a few inches into the shade of a potted olive tree. ‘I’ve shown you the icon of Saint Michael he keeps in the chapel,’ I said firmly. ‘That has golden wings and a sword and a horrid look on its face. That’s the origin of his dreams.’

‘And a beard of many curls?’ she asked, ‘And speaking a language that sounds like Syriac, but isn’t?’

‘So he’s been dreaming about the cup,’ I allowed with a careless wave of my arm. It was bright red from the wrist upwards. ‘Perhaps I was dreaming about it last night. I’m surprised you weren’t. Thanks to that cup, we’re all stuck here like passengers on a ship. Dreams are the least of our worries.’

‘And Maximin?’ she asked impatiently. ‘He hasn’t seen the cup, but kept his nurse awake half the night, crying out from terrors he couldn’t describe.’

‘If the poor child couldn’t describe his terrors, why assume they were about my silver cup?’ I asked in my most reasonable voice. ‘You didn’t have a long career as a petitioning agent. But you can’t have forgotten that you don’t go to someone with a problem unless you also have a solution. So why not come out with it, and say what you’d have me do?’

She stuck her lower lip out. I already knew that meant trouble. ‘Theodore believes you should throw it into the sea and let Father Macarius purify every room in the palace,’ she said.

‘Then Theodore’s a fool,’ I said, now impatient, ‘and you’re a fool if you believe him. The cup stays where it is until Heraclius gets back.’

I’d been right about the trouble. ‘Theodore believes the palace is haunted by the ghost of its previous owner,’ she announced. ‘He’s often been woken at night by the echo of footsteps and heard voices in rooms that he can’t locate.’ I frowned. Theodore had got rather fast over the loss of Antony . His regard for his new ‘mother’ wasn’t wholly to my taste. But Antonia wasn’t finished. ‘ I’ve heard strange footsteps,’ she said. ‘And why did Samo stop me yesterday from going along a corridor into one of the unoccupied areas? What are you hiding from me?’

I stood up. ‘Rats,’ I said quickly — ‘it’s the rats. And there’s poison all over the floors in those rooms. It wouldn’t do to go walking in them with bare feet.’ I smiled feebly. I was already trembling from a slight fever that shouted ‘sunburn!’ Perhaps I should put some clothes on.

I took Antonia’s arm and led her in the direction of the swimming pool. It would still be in shadow and I felt the need of a plunge into its icy depths. I still had time before the clerks returned. I’d ask for the sake of it but knew Antonia wouldn’t join me.

She stopped beside the entrance to the gymnasium. ‘I looked in on you this morning,’ she said in Latin. ‘Do you really need the big Slavic boy? Can’t the old man wrestle with you?’