Richard Blake - The Curse of Babylon

Priscus cleared his throat. ‘You did secure all the hidden ways in and out?’ he asked, sounding nervous for the first time.

I continued looking down. ‘Unless there’s another approach you haven’t told me about,’ I answered, ‘the only way still open is into the Great Sewer — and I’ve placed a couple of boys there to listen for movement.’ I scrambled back from the edge and stood carefully up. ‘I don’t know about you, but I’m more worried about that bloody catapult. Has the former Commander of the East any suggestions?’

There was now a flare of torches a dozen yards along the roof. ‘Are you safe, Master?’ Rado cried urgently. ‘We’ve been looking everywhere for you.’ I looked round. Priscus had vanished into the darkness. I looked down at my tunic. In the approaching light, I could see a dark patch that had to be dirt. I brushed the worst of it away and stepped forward.

‘There will be no other attack tonight,’ I said firmly. ‘We remain on full alert, nevertheless.’ I hurried forward. I didn’t like standing so close to a sheer drop. Equally, the faintest shuffling of bare feet over tiles had told me that Priscus was lurking only a few feet above me, and most of the men and boys clambering towards me weren’t in the know.

Heart sinking into the pit of a stomach that was itself twitching, I thought of what had to be done. ‘Rado,’ I said in what wasn’t quite a commanding voice, ‘I need to speak with you in private.’

‘Can I do you a favour, dearie?’ I paid no attention to the elderly whore. ‘I do special rates, you know, for men of the cloth.’ She reached forward to touch my hood.

I stopped myself from flinching back. ‘Piss off, you foul creature of the night!’ I grated in a Syrian accent. When that didn’t work, I shoved her hard in the chest and stepped over her drink-sodden body.

Stuck inside my palace, I’d been dithering between two views of what was happening. Either the whole lower-class population of the City was laying siege to me, or there had been a general collapse of order. The truth, I’d found, was somewhere in the middle. We’d emerged half-smothered from the Great Sewer into the usual dark and silence of the night. All the brothels around Salvation Square were closed and in darkness. The only sound as we passed by the Leiriope Park was of the watchman, snoring in his box. Throughout the whole south-eastern quadrant of the City, everything seemed entirely in order.

Here, outside the Circus, though, you could see the evidence of a more than local disturbance. It was here that the owners of the wine shops mostly didn’t live above their premises and these had been looted. No one in sight to stop them, men were reeling from fired buildings with jars of drink or other property in their hands. The narrowest part of the street was blocked by what may have been a crowd of hundreds, brought together for the sale or purchase of stolen property. The voice of the auctioneer was almost lost in the clamour of shouting and threats. But it was brisk bidding for a load of spices and silk that must have come from one of the less solid warehouses beside the docks.

I looked about for Rado. He was five yards behind me and still kicking the old whore. I hurried back for him. ‘Leave her alone,’ I hissed in Slavic. ‘You’ll draw attention to us if you kill her. And do stop swaggering. You’re supposed to be a bloody monk!’ He stopped at once and stood to attention. Glaucus was right — his days were over as a dancing boy. He’d seen to that with his efforts in the gymnasium. But, now he was swathed in black, I no longer saw him as he’d been brought to me the year before. He was getting tall as well as broad.

Ahead of us, the street was blocked by two drunks, going at each other with sharpened roof tiles. The cheering crowd they’d gathered completed the blockage. I took Rado by the arm and led him to a recessed doorway. ‘Listen, boy,’ I asked, ‘why do you suppose I brought you with me tonight?’

‘To be your bodyguard, Master,’ he replied, standing straighter.

‘And how do you think I want you to behave?’ I asked again. ‘As a man of your tribe? Or as a city tough? If I wanted the latter, I could hire the winner of those two fools over there.’ I could almost feel my rebuke sinking into the boy’s spirit. I waited a moment, then — ‘What is your heart’s desire?’ I asked.

‘To earn my freedom,’ he said, fighting a sudden tremor in his voice. ‘I’m not clever with writing and things like that. Perhaps all I can do is become a soldier.’ He stopped again and controlled himself. ‘I want to be like you, Master.’

It was a more focused answer than I’d expected. But I squeezed his hand. ‘Then be what you are,’ I said, ‘not what you think I’d like you to be.’ Not answering, he turned away from me.

The fight was ended almost as quickly as it had begun and I took the opportunity to step forward into the wavering light of the torches. Staying in character, I made sure to walk round the still body of the loser. I found myself looking at a table on which someone had spread a few dozen singed papyrus books. ‘ Come on, Alaric, move on, ’ I told myself as if I’d been giving another order to Rado. You can be sure it was a worthless order. I picked up the tattiest and perhaps the oldest of the books, and carried it over to where a fresh torch had been lit. It can never hurt, where books are concerned, just to have a look. With a skip of my heart, I found that I was holding the Twelve Letters of Carneades on the Pragmatic Acceptance of Knowledge . I’d thought his works were long since lost. The only full outline I had of scepticism was a plodding work by an Athenian doctor. I unlaced the book and unrolled it to the first page of text.

‘Lovely stuff, don’t you think, Father?’ I pretended not to hear the owner of the stall, and continued squinting at the faint script. This would be hard to make out in any light. As it was, only the central column of text was legible. I read this a second time, now committing it, clause by clause, to memory: If, then, it cannot be proven, in the sense required by the philosophers, that there is an external world, it does not seem necessarily to follow that we must reject the existence of this world. So far as we believe that there are external objects, and that these influence our mental state, it strikes me as reasonable, O Cleomenes, to say that, while always suspending final judgement, we may pragmatically, on applying certain common sense tests. .

The stallholder raised his voice and put his face closer. ‘I’m told they’re all strictly orthodox, Father. They came from a good home, and would grace any sacred library.’ I nodded and rolled the book to the protocol sheet. It was too stained to read in the light available. The script and general appearance, though, said it might be five hundred years old. Mobs never go for public libraries unless there’s a monk to urge them on. Most likely, one of the houses of the great had been sacked. What might have begun with a nod and a wink from Nicetas had turned into an uprising against everyone with decent clothes on his back. It took immediate pressure off my own walls. At the same time, had it left Nicetas with any choice but revolution against his cousin? Heraclius wouldn’t be pleased to come home to a burned and looted capital.

‘How much for all of them?’ I whispered, forgetting my Syrian accent. It was an unwise question. The answer would have tested the morals of anyone but an illiterate saint. Mine failed before the stallholder could finish naming his price. You should never not buy a book. I fished deep inside my robe and pulled out a handful of clipped silver. ‘Take everything first thing in the morning to the shop of Baruch, the Jewish banker,’ I said, speaking low. I paid no attention to the man’s funny look. ‘Tell him to give you this much again. Talk to anyone about our business,’ I added, ‘and you’ll be garrotted in the central garden of the University.’ While the stallholder turned away to count the silver in the torchlight, I grabbed Rado by the sleeve and pulled him deep into the jostling crowd.