Richard Blake - The Curse of Babylon

The stairs led to a room below what I’d always taken to be the lowest level of cellars in my palace. For this reason, it was still as filthy as everything else had been when I took over from Priscus. For this reason also, it was still fitted out with the instruments of his favourite recreation.

‘Don’t worry that pretty young head of yours, Alaric,’ he said in Latin. ‘Torture is hardly ever for its own sake. I don’t think we’ll need any physical nastiness here.’ He went back into Greek and waved at Leander. ‘Hold the lamp closer to the traitor’s face,’ he cried grimly. ‘Let everyone see the infamy stamped upon it.’

Priscus sat in a chair padded with cushions the damp had long since rotted. He took a long sip of wine. ‘Eunapius,’ he asked in his friendly voice, ‘do you remember that time when Phocas the Tyrant was Emperor and I marched into your father’s house with a dozen of my Black Officers?’ Eunapius sagged forward, but was held tight in Samo’s massive arms. Priscus smiled and took another long sip. He tapped his forehead and smiled. ‘But how could you forget that day?’ he asked. ‘It was you who denounced your father for not cleaning a graffito promptly enough from the outer wall of his palace. It was all very embarrassing. I was drugged out of my head and arrived under the impression that your brother was the man I wanted. Anyway, do you remember what I did to young Stephen once I had him tied down naked on his bed? Do you remember how he squealed like a dying pig and how your mother fell dead from the horror of what I did? You should do. After all, you got back five-sevenths of the estate when Phocas confiscated it, and didn’t have to share it with an inconveniently elder brother.

‘Now, would you like me to do to you what I did to poor Stephen? Or shall we be civilised men of the world? Look at that nice clean sheet of papyrus our poet has brought down with him. One way or another, we all know, it will soon be covered with every answer that young Alaric wants. Shall I pour you a cup of this lovely red wine? It might help the distressing hoarseness that I shan’t blame your voice for having acquired?’

Eunapius let out a loud fart before shitting himself. The cold air took on a smell of inward bodily decay. ‘Don’t let him touch me, Alaric!’ he shouted. He twisted to get free of Samo and managed half a step in my direction. ‘I’ll tell you everything.’

‘That’s the spirit!’ Priscus cried. At his little desk, Leander controlled his hands sufficiently to lift a pen.

Eunapius ran his tongue over dry lips. ‘Before I say anything, though,’ be babbled, ‘I want Alaric to swear that I’ll walk out of here alive and that I shan’t be harmed in any way. I’ll tell you where Shahin’s taken the girl. I’ll tell you what he’s planning with the magic cup. But I want Alaric’s spoken promise in front of you all.’

Priscus frowned and got slowly up from his chair. He went across to a filthy curtain and pulled it down to show an old cartwheel fixed to the wall. He nodded to Samo, who dragged Eunapius round to see it. ‘Silly young Alaric is no longer in charge of this interrogation,’ he said in a voice I well recalled from his days of glory. ‘You had your chance. We’re now following my rules.’

Priscus sat down again. He sipped delicately at his wine. ‘Did you ever watch a man broken on the wheel?’ he asked. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve had that pleasure. Even old Phocas had limits to what he’d let me do in public. But I’ve seen it done quite often by the Avars when they want to make an example of one of their prisoners. It’s ever so cheap and simple, you see. Even barbarians can’t mess it up.’ He got up, wine cup still in his hand. He walked slowly over to the wheel. ‘See these straps here?’ he asked. ‘The purpose is to spread you naked on the wheel, arms and legs apart. Once you’re in place, that drunken ox of a freedman will take up the hammer that you should be able to see just beside the wheel. He’ll start by smashing your ankles — one or two blows on the bones of greatest sensitivity. If that doesn’t loosen your tongue, he’ll move to your wrists, and then your knees and elbows. Your hips and shoulders will be the final horror.

‘And, Eunapius, don’t suppose it will be other than horrible. Forget burning alive, or hooked gloves, or even the bite of a starved hyena. Breaking on the wheel produces the most staggering and continuous pain. And you might last for days down here in the darkness. So long as the barbarian doesn’t break the skin, your limbs will swell up like inflated bladders and you’ll keep enough blood elsewhere to stay alive. I remember one time — it was during the great siege of Mantella, you know — when the Avars somehow laid hands on my commanding officer. Using a screen of women and children to put our archers off, they broke him a hundred yards outside the city wall.’ Priscus paused for dramatic effect. He drank more wine. ‘In no time at all, I saw a battle-hardened veteran turned into a sort of huge screaming puppet writhing in rivulets of blood — a puppet with four tentacles, like a sea monster, of raw, slimy and shapeless flesh mixed up with splinters of smashed bones. He was luckier than you’ll be: he lost enough blood to die before the afternoon was out.’ He stopped again for wine and burst into helpless giggles.

He controlled himself. ‘Don’t force me to do that to you,’ Priscus urged. ‘Why not make it easy for yourself and answer dearest Alaric’s questions. He won’t let me hurt you after that.’

The threat was enough. Between screams of terror and more farting, out rolled the details of Shahin’s plan. In the brief intervals of silence, I heard the steady scratching of Leander’s reed pen on papyrus. Before the confession was over, he’d filled one sheet and was halfway down another.

‘Anything more to add?’ Priscus asked after it was over.

‘Don’t hurt me — please!’ Eunapius sobbed.

Priscus laughed. ‘I promised our fastidious young Light from the West that I’d lay hands on you only when all else had failed. You must appreciate, however, that your last chance of really civilised treatment vanished when he called me in. You told me yourself that I was dead. We can’t have anyone around to disabuse the world of that belief — can we, now?’ He got up again, a lead cosh in his hand. One blow to the right temple and Eunapius sagged dead in Samo’s arms. He dropped to the floor and lay with his eyes still glittering in the lamplight.

Priscus turned in my direction. ‘I know I’ve often disgusted you, dear boy,’ he said with a smirk that cracked the lead on his face. ‘But how was that for interrogation?’ He bowed and put his cosh away.

I shrugged. ‘He could have avoided this,’ I said evenly. Treading carefully to avoid the patches of damp filth, I went and looked down at the body. I turned to Samo. ‘Have it dumped in one of the flower beds down the road,’ I said. ‘Complain to the Prefecture tomorrow about the unfinished work of collection.’ Samo grinned and nodded. He took the cup of wine Priscus had poured for him. They shook hands and stood together to admire their work.

I sniffed at a scented napkin and told myself again that all this could have been avoided. It was true. But you have to see things as they really are. I hadn’t laid a finger on Eunapius. Even so, I’d killed him in cold blood. Had the end justified the means?

‘He was telling the truth?’ I asked.

Priscus laughed. ‘I expected better from you than that, dear boy,’ he said. He poured more wine for himself and gave the jug to Samo to finish. He sat once more in his crumbling chair. ‘He told us everything that could have been learned by making a window into his soul. Whether this accords with the true state of affairs depends on whether Shahin took him fully into his confidence — and, of course, on what Shahin himself was told.’