Richard Blake - The Curse of Babylon

The gilded pinnacle was gleaming like a beacon. Still waiting, I willed the sound of our own response. It came just as I was thinking to hurry downstairs to see what was causing the delay. With a dull roar and much clanking of gears and iron, the portcullis went up. Timothy gave his orders. Men raced off in both directions and disappeared under cover of the colonnade. The seditionaries in their masks came from somewhere that had been out of my sight and climbed slowly up their ladders.

‘My dearest friend, Alexius,’ Constans opened with much buzzing, following by a complete loss of sound. He reached up with his free hand and nudged his mask into place. ‘O Alexius, such news have I been given to relay to the brave and formidable Roman People who are gathered here about us.’ Carefully balancing himself, he reached down to his belt and produced a standard sheet of papyrus. He turned his head to stare at the front wall of my palace — I supposed the recess of its gateway and the bronze gate were to act as an additional reflector — and raised his voice.

‘In the name of Heraclius, Caesar, Augustus, Faithful in Christ, to the Senate and People of Rome,’ he boomed. ‘Let all who are present hear and obey the wishes of the Ruler of the Universe, ordained by God.’ So, to increasingly depressed incredulity, he read out my instructions to the City. It was a long text, bulked out with formulaic utterances designed more to impress than enlighten, and with repetitions of the main points that you must have in anything intended for reading out to the common people. The sun was already on the marble of the victory column when Constans finished. He’d been heard in silence. The silence continued after he’d finished.

It was broken by Alexius: ‘I think, dearest Constans, that we speak as one when I say that we have never wished anything for His Magnificence the Lord Senator Alaric but the greatest and most unending continuation of good fortune. Moreover, the Lord Nicetas is himself blessed when he blesses. .’

Alexius had been waving his arms about to show how he was warming to his theme. A sudden scraping sound from far beneath where I stood had him clutching the top of his ladder. Ignoring the remains of my sunburn, and the possibility of another break in the wall, I leaned forward as far as I could. I managed to catch sight of Timothy’s sideways scuttle.

Rado saved me the trouble of speaking. ‘Someone’s opened the main gate, Master,’ he cried.

With the reading of the proclamation, the crowd had parted like the Red Sea, leaving a wide space between the front steps of my palace and the colonnade on the other side of the Triumphal Way. Both wings of the crowd now edged further back and I saw some of the men in better clothing turn and push their way out of it.

Oh, fuck me — it was Theodore! ‘Behold the Horn of Babylon!’ he called out in his highest and most demented voice. ‘Behold and fear the earthly symbol of all satanic power!’ Before I could draw back and dash for the stairs, he came in sight. Dressed in a white gown too long for him, a withered olive wreath on his head, he stumbled forward, holding up the box, within which the silver cup glittered in the reflected light of the sun.

‘Go from this place, my people, lest you too be accursed — lest your souls too be lost to the powers of darkness.’

Still unseen, Antonia’s voice rang out: ‘Come back, you bloody fool. Can’t you see, you’re spoiling everything?’ She rushed forward into sight. She stepped on to the long trail of Theodore’s robe and put her arms about him. They went down together.

With a long roar of terror and rage, both sides of the crowd streamed forward. They came together again, and Antonia and Theodore were lost within its joining.

Sitting here in Canterbury, I can tell you the route I must have taken. I’d have hurried along the central well of the roof to the doorway and the stairs down. These led to an unlit corridor lined with closed doors, each of which gave access to its own labyrinth of attic rooms. From here, it was more stairs — not the grand staircases, with side ramps for carrying chairs, for the use of persons of quality, but dozens of narrow flights, designed to get slaves up and down with the least delay. From the bottom of the flight painted red, it was another long corridor, past the domestic administration of the palace, to a heavy door, wooden on my side, sheathed with bronze on the side of the entrance hall.

I can describe the likely journey from the roof. But I can’t remember taking it. The first I do recall is hacking the raised arm off one of the intruders who’d seen his chance of loot once through the wide open main gate. His screams added to the general pandemonium of noise and fighting all about me. It looked — and smelled — as if a whole army of the rotting, reanimated dead had streamed in through the gate. And more were trying to get in. The gate was blocked by them. Though pushed from behind, those in front were held back for the moment by Samo. Just inside the gate, he was bawling war songs and laying madly about with his broadsword. There were already bodies and body parts piling up at his feet.

Eyes blazing, bloody sword in hand, Rado crashed into me. ‘We can’t get to her, Master,’ he shouted. He pointed at the blocked gate, then turned to slash at someone who was trying to pull the gilt scroll from one of the statues. I tried to shake some sense into my drugged mind. How had Rado and everyone else got down here so fast? I was sure I’d left him behind on the roof. I gripped hard on my sword and prepared to charge at the gate and cut my way through.

From behind me, there was a sudden scream of many voices. I turned to see the kitchen women and maidservants stream into the hall. All of them armed, all of them probably thinking of their dead menfolk from when they were taken as slaves, they hurled themselves into battle with the Greek intruders. It was less a battle than a slaughter. With them advancing down the hall like a phalanx of harpies, there was no chance the palace would be taken by storm.

I stabbed someone in the guts when he ran at me. I got someone else in the bladder. I jumped on to a statue plinth that I think had been kept vacant for Priscus when he died, and slapped the blade of my sword three times against a bronze torch bracket. ‘All able-bodied men in formation behind me,’ I shouted in the comparative silence that followed. ‘We’re going outside!’ I stepped down and waved my sword threateningly at those in the gateway who were still turned in my direction.

I gave a quick inspection to my little army. You’d never have thought they were slaves — no, not even the epicene youth who spent much of his time shrilling over mixtures of depilation wax. Every one of us a marauding barbarian again, we raised our swords and let out the battle roars of our various races.

I heard a discordantly high voice among the shouting. I looked for and pointed at Eboric. ‘Not you!’ I barked. ‘You’re far too young.’ Rado gave him a rough push away from the group. He sat down cross-legged beside a man I’d seen him kill and began to cry.

I took a step forward. ‘Kill only if you have to,’ I remembered to shout as we picked up speed. Of course, I’d heard similar exhortations from the Church, when handing over heretics to the civil authorities. Mine had exactly the same effect on the blood-frenzied mob that followed me against the wall of trapped and terrified humanity. We hit with something like the impact of a drunkard deflowering a virgin.

Trying not to slip in the blood I was shedding, I forced my way to the foot of the steps. I looked about for the last place I’d seen Antonia and pushed on alone into the crowd. I pushed and punched and kicked and prodded. I could guess that the city guard was pressing forward from both directions. Everyone intent on loot was already inside the palace. Those I was now pushing through were, for the most part, more frightened than hostile. A gap opened before me. I don’t know if it closed behind.