Richard Blake - The Curse of Babylon

He finished his wine and reached inside his cloak for one of his powders. I waited for him to come back to order. ‘Alaric,’ he started in a less patronising voice, ‘I know your view of torture is that it’s a game between two demented beasts — between one who enjoys inflicting pain and another who’ll say anything to stop the pain. But it’s far more sophisticated than that. Unless he’s thick, a torturer soon gets a nose for the truth. You should think about that the next time you plague Heraclius with your ideas of abolishing the rack.’

He sniffed, then blew his nose. He stared at the remains of the powder he’d put up his nose. ‘Yes, dearest Alaric, what Eunapius told us was the truth to the best of his knowledge. It’s up to you to find if he was told the truth, or if the plans have been changed in the light of circumstances.

‘But do accept, my dear, it’s useless knowledge. Though you’ve learned it’s the Larydia Pass they’re headed for, you still can’t outrun Shahin. I repeat that you’ll only get lost in the mountains trying. And, if you do catch up with him, how do you expect to surprise him with the three dozen armed men he’s got with him? Give up on it, my dearest. Take my word for it about Antonia and come upstairs. We can start thinking of your report to Heraclius.’

I said nothing. He frowned. ‘Then you’re throwing away another fine opportunity,’ he sighed. ‘I thought you’d learned something from that brave but lunatic mission to Ctesiphon. It was only Nicetas then who wormed his way between you and the Emperor. This time, you may not be so lucky.’ His voice turned cold and thoughtful. ‘But we have unfinished business, don’t you agree?’ He turned a predatory stare on Leander. ‘Dead men don’t walk. If they do, none must see them.’ He repeated himself in Latin for Samo’s benefit. They laughed softly together.

I didn’t look round, but I heard Leander fall to his knees on the cellar floor.

I stopped by the statue of Cicero and breathed in the fresh night air. Leander caught up with me. ‘You didn’t need to take me home, My Lord,’ he wheezed. Knowing my face was in the shadow of the moon, I smiled. His hands fluttered close by my sleeve. He thought better of catching hold. ‘Would My Lord like me to return to Egypt?’ he asked. ‘I could leave tomorrow. I could take ship to Cyprus and pick up another ship from there. I wouldn’t stop in Alexandria. I’d go to Antinoopolis. I’d — I’d. .’ He trailed off into scared silence. I could hear the continual questioning in his voice. The Lord Alaric had saved him from Priscus and the wheel. Had that been simply to save the trouble of ridding the palace of two corpses? How safe was he out here in the street, with me in arms beside him?

I took a deep breath. The wreckage of the dawn had mostly been cleared away. Old Simeon might, at this moment, be in the Prefecture, raising hands in prayer over his dead son. These few hundred yards along the Triumphal Way, though, and I could almost tell myself nothing awful had happened.

I reached inside my night cloak. ‘Here is your patent, Leander,’ I said gently. ‘Present it during the day to the Treasury Chief Clerk. After that, you need to go on the first day of every quarter to the Payment Office. There, you’ll collect thirty solidi , or their equivalent in silver if gold is in short supply.’

He cleared his throat to speak. I put my hand on his shoulder. ‘I told you I keep promises,’ I said. ‘I only reserve the right to vary them upwards. Now, I’ll not go in with you. Nicetas might be awake in his chair and I don’t fancy another meeting with him.’

I didn’t look left, though I thought I’d seen a shadow flitting about in the darkness. I raised my voice. ‘I don’t think I need remind you of the need to keep your mouth shut for the rest of your life. But I will advise you never to go out again at night.’

‘What have you done with the boy Theodore?’ he asked with a sudden change of subject.

I smiled again. ‘The last time I looked in on him, he was praying in the chapel,’ I said. I thought of our only conversation that day. ‘Beat me — kill me — burn me alive,’ he’d wailed, slapping more salt into the open wounds left by the trampling of the crowd. I’d sent him away with frigid kindness. Perhaps I should have thrashed him with the scourge he’d made for himself. After all, the worst punishments are often those you heap on yourself.

I took a step forward. ‘I’m leaving the City at noon tomorrow,’ I said. ‘I may be gone some time. Please make sure to report everything said and done by Nicetas to John of Ragusa. You’ll find his office in the building that sits above the entrance to the spice market. Don’t be put off when, on your first visit, you’re told he doesn’t exist.’

Rado leaned forward on his horse. ‘Is your arse hurting again, Master?’ he asked. I pretended not to hear him. Instead, I took advantage of the stop to look again at the dreary expanse of hills and ridges and mountains and valleys that surrounded us on every side. He waited until it was plain I’d not reply. ‘You shouldn’t hold the reins so tight, Master,’ he added.

I put aside the groans of agony now coming from every muscle between my toes and my jaw. ‘You’re a free man, Rado,’ I said. ‘It’s no longer appropriate to call me “Master”. You may call me “My Lord” or use my personal name, as the preference takes you.’ I tried to sound cheerful. ‘You might even call me “Father”.’

Not answering, he gave his horse the slightest flick of his unspurred ankle and moved forward as if the two of them were a single being. He stopped at the edge of the ravine. He looked down several thousand feet into a bank of white mist. If this was the one we’d been skirting most of the afternoon, there was a meandering stream beyond the mist. In the spring, it would be swollen to a surging torrent.

I gave up on the pretence that this was other than a stop for my benefit and climbed stiffly down from the saddle. My horse was probably more relieved than I was. He didn’t collapse into a heap of unconsolable helplessness. Rado looked politely ahead. ‘The pass we want is between those two mountains over there,’ he said. I followed his pointed finger to a blur that may have been twenty miles away or may have been a hundred — if I knew how high we were above sea level, I’d be able to calculate the distance to the horizon. Without numbers to put through the formula, I might as well have been blind. Rado pointed again and drew a path in the air. How he could see two mountains there, or know what sort of pass ran between them, were questions I chose not to ask.

My own silence continued till it bordered on the embarrassing. ‘There really are no mountains in England?’ he asked once more.

‘Just hills,’ I repeated. Could I get away with implying that I’d spent my own barbarian childhood riding up and down them? I still hadn’t said that the hills of Kent were nothing like these wild crags that, except for the peaks looming far above them, I’d have called mountains. For the first time ever, I thought nostalgically of hills covered in bouncy turf, and valleys dense with oak and birch and chestnut. I shifted my sore bottom a few inches to a patch of what counted here for grass. ‘Mine is a rather settled race,’ I said in the best careless tone I could manage — ‘farmers mostly. Before then, we invaded by sea.’

He nodded. It was an answer that recovered me some status. Unlike him, I’d not spent the whole wild dash from the Senatorial Dock to Trebizond rolling about my cabin in a pool of sick. Oh, I’d been His Magnificence the Lord Senator until Rado had chosen these scrawny horses in preference to the much finer beasts on offer. And I’d kept up much of the pretence right till the moment he’d seen a path invisible to me, and taken us off the lovely road that led inland via Pylae. Twelve days later, and a boy who’d never quite learned to dance for me in Constantinople was maturing, almost as I watched him, into something not always likeable but always admirable. Old Glaucus had complained about his narrow focus in the gymnasium. I could see now that this wasn’t a fault: it was Rado. I’d told him we needed to move fast. And fast, therefore, we’d moved. Every time I showed I was getting used to the pace he’d set on horseback, the pace would be increased. We had, in twelve days, covered a distance on my map I’d never have thought possible. The steadily increasing speed Rado had maintained was remarkable — so, too, his granite certainty, from moment to moment, of exactly where we were. It didn’t seem to matter that he’d grown up a thousand miles to the west, and was as new to these mountains as I was. If my backside was hurting more than at any time since I’d taken my first steps in Latin, who was I to complain?