Richard Blake - The Curse of Babylon

Eunapius turned back to Leander. ‘Come on,’ he said. He moved towards the room filled with candles. ‘We can grab him before he falls asleep in his chair. We’ll have him all to ourselves.’ He took Leander’s hand in his and stepped through the doorway. Since he hadn’t told us otherwise, I followed. I didn’t look round but had no doubt Antonia was close behind me.

On entering the palace, we’d skirted the areas I knew from my own visits. But, passing through empty, though vast and brilliantly lighted rooms, I could sense we were making our way towards the recital room. Sure enough, we reached the far end of a gallery filled with more art than I’d thought had survived from ancient times, to hear a muffled sound of drums and flutes on the other side of the door.

Uncertain again, Eunapius stopped. ‘Try to look confident,’ he whispered to Leander. For the first time, he turned to me. ‘He was complaining about his legs when we left him. There’s water and bandages in the usual place.’

Upright in his chair, Nicetas opened his eyes. He focused on the three of us and reached for his walking stick. ‘I sent you away, Eunapius,’ he said wearily. ‘I said you had failed me and that I wouldn’t receive you again. Why are you back so soon?’

Antonia moved two paces to the left. She might have done this to let Nicetas see there were four of us. It also served, though, to block my view of one of the best dildo dances I’d seen outside a brothel. Stark naked, her father’s black girls weren’t at all put out by the lateness of the hour, or by their master’s lack of attention. I allowed myself one final look at the glistening, upturned breasts of the girl nearest to me, and turned my head back to the overdressed invalid for whom they’d been kept out of bed.

Eunapius poked Leander in the back. ‘Come on!’ he hissed, not moving his lips. The poet stepped forward and bowed with his arms stretched out. ‘I bring news of our preparations for the final assault,’ he began in a voice loaded with dramatic potential.

Nicetas paid him no attention. ‘There is a letter from my Imperial cousin,’ he said, still weary. He gripped harder on his stick and pointed me towards a silver side table. I bowed and walked slowly across the room. Formal communications from the Emperor were written in gold on a purple background. This was a personal note. The parchment sheet was folded in three and it wouldn’t do for me to be seen looking at it. One glance at Nicetas was enough to guess the generality of its contents. Never cheerful, he now radiated dejection. I carried the letter back and presented it with a low bow. Nicetas didn’t move. ‘I have been dismissed as Regent,’ he said after a long silence. ‘The Patriarch is appointed in my place and Alaric in his place till he gets back from Nicaea. Alaric has full authority to take such steps for the security of the Empire as he may think just and expedient.’

Behind me, I heard Eunapius fall to the floor. I suppressed my own desire to throw off this smelly outer robe and join the girls in a performance of the high step. With shaking hands, I put the letter on a spare footstool and cancelled the nap I’d had in mind for when I got home. The morning would be spent more productively getting Theodore to help write out six dozen arrest warrants and a terrifying proclamation. I’d drifted in with no idea what actions I could take to justify this entire digression from the work of buggering the catapult. But just standing about and looking nondescript had done enough for me so far.

Nicetas lifted his stick again and prodded me in the stomach. ‘Must I suffer all night without the ministrations of Holy Mother Church?’ he asked peevishly. Eunapius had said the bandages and water were in ‘the usual place.’ Search me where that might be. But Nicetas prodded me again and pointed a wavering finger at a polished chest beside the window. I bowed and went over to it. No bandages inside, unless I was supposed to tear up the cotton towels folded in a neat heap. I’d seen enough of Nicetas, though, to know the use of the other things I found. I gave the bowl and water jug to Antonia. The other things I carried back myself.

Leander started again in a voice too loud to shake. ‘The foul and bestial barbarian trembles behind his shattered walls. The renewed bombardment at dawn will cast down those walls as if they surrounded the city of Jericho. Then the Roman People will stream through the breach and find him wherever he takes cover. Was it not Sophocles who said that every barbarian excretes in his moment of death from every orifice?’

It was actually Callisthenes — but never mind that. While the poet’s voice rose to a squawk of enthusiasm, I set about my own work. My stomach had been turned any number of times by the sight, and the smell, of those inflamed legs. I’d never had cause to touch them. I undid the lower bandages and kept myself from puking by thoughts of my proclamation. I knelt back and allowed Antonia to do the washing. Trying to recall how I’d seen it done, I poured oil into a silver bowl and mixed in a double handful of something dark that had the consistency of roughly ground charcoal. I rubbed some of this between both hands, before starting work on the ankles.

With a long gasp of pain, Nicetas got me a sharp blow of his stick on my upper back. ‘Not so hard!’ he cried. ‘I’m not yet in Hell! The sacred earth from Sinai calls for only the lightest touch.’ He fell back again and groaned. I felt him scrabble for something. The crackle of parchment told me he was reading his cousin’s letter again.

Behind me, the door opened. ‘I thought you’d still be awake!’ Timothy said in his official voice. The door closed with a soft click, and there was the sound of leather soles on marble. Nicetas struggled to sit up again. With desperate urgency, he pushed the letter into my face. I turned to Antonia. But she was kneeling too far away to take it. He poked the letter inside my hood. I twisted my face this way and that, till the folded sheet was against the back of my neck. Assuming it said what I’d been told, it might come in handy once I was out of here. There was no certainty Heraclius had bothered writing to Sergius or me directly.

‘I said I’d give you till noon,’ Timothy said. ‘Bearing all things in mind, I’m having the mob cleared away as soon as there’s enough light for my men.’

‘So why have you come to tell me of your betrayal?’ Nicetas whined.

Timothy laughed. ‘Not out of politeness, you can be sure! What I want from you, my jumped up little provincial, is the names of your ringleaders among the mob. If you have any trace of common sense, you’ll agree on the value of having every last one of them hanging from the city walls. Even with Heraclius running the Intelligence Bureau, there are some kinds of evidence you don’t leave lying about. When our Lord and Master gets back, we need the past day to look as much as possible like a spontaneous collapse of order. The only alternative is for you to carry the whole blame.’

Nicetas hit me again with his stick. ‘But keeping order is your job,’ he whined. ‘You can’t shuffle the responsibility for that on to me. It was you who let the mob gather outside Alaric’s palace.’

Timothy laughed again, now with an unpleasantness that reminded me of Priscus. ‘Oh, I’ve got a signed note from silly Eunapius here, telling me to stand everyone down. I may get the sack for taking this as a direct order from you. But I’m presently only interested in keeping the head on my shoulders.’ I heard Eunapius scramble to his knees and begin a sobbing excuse — a piss-poor excuse, I’ll tell you it was: that sort of instruction he should have gone off to deliver in person.