Richard Blake - The Curse of Babylon

Canterbury, Wednesday, 17 June 688

What do you say to a boy of fifteen when you’re sending him to his death? The easy answer is you say nothing. After so many repetitions of the dream, there was nothing more to be said. I was staring into the face of someone who’d been dead over seventy years. He’d volunteered to serve. He’d then volunteered for nearly certain death. If that weren’t enough, I had been only nominally in charge at the Battle of Larydia. I’d been a mile away when he went into battle. At the head of a frontal assault, I was hardly out of danger myself.

The easy answer never mattered. I looked into his eyes and saw him try for a nervous smile, then reach up to touch crisp and very dark hair. Another moment and I’d hear a voice behind me explain the plan of attack. It had all the boldness of desperation. We were three hundred men against forty or fifty thousand. Once the Persians were out of the mountain passes, nothing at all might stop them till they reached the walls of Constantinople. Hit them in the passes, though — and hit them in a manner suggesting we were the first wave of a bigger force — and they might crumple and make a run for it. But this part of the attack was the ultimate in desperation. Of the hundred men about to run down into the battle not one would return. A boy who was now shivering in the cold of a mountain dawn wouldn’t live to feel the noonday heat.

I’ve said I wasn’t there. I’d been watching events at the front of that gigantic invasion force. No place in this dream, though, for spying on Shahin as he put on his reluctant show. I knew that he was down in the pass, his back to me, ready to present a certain object to his master. I could almost see the cold glitter of the thing in its box, and the dark luxuriance of the box on a table spread with yellow silk. But almost seeing isn’t actual seeing. I was dreaming of events above the pass. I focused once more on the boy.

Fifteen is no age for dying. I’ve had six times that and more, and I could live a little yet. Familiarity aside, what makes the dream bearable on every repetition is that the boy never sees me. Behind me, the voice was now going over the plan. It made no mention of wider issues. It was the sort of talk you’d want if you were ever about to attack a force inconceivably larger than your own — cover those beside you; keep in their cover; don’t drop your weapon; don’t stop for booty; listen for the signal to pull back; and go to the toilet now ! That always got a big laugh. The boy was looking through me, at the owner of the voice. Also behind me, the little priest was holding up an icon of Saint Michael. He would soon claim that no earthly hand had painted it, and that all who fell this day would be received straight into Heaven, washed clean of their sins. That would be followed by a loud cheer. Then as the sun rose higher in a sky turning a painful blue, they’d get into position for their downward rush into the butcher’s market.

And, all the while, I looked into the eyes of a boy whose mangled body I’d see later that day. .

It was dawn already. My jailor was in the room. ‘Get up, you lazy old bastard!’ he shouted in English, pulling the blanket off me. ‘Who should listen to you, blubbering away in your sleep, when every better man’s already finished saying his prayers? Get up, and give thanks to God that you aren’t yet in Hell!’

Unpredictable stuff, opium. You can hope it’ll blot out all the discomforts of age and give you a good night’s sleep. Mostly, it does. Then, every so often, it’ll give you the sort of spiritual burp that leaves you wondering if you’re not better off without it. I opened my eyes and waited for Brother Ambrose to come into what passes nowadays for focus. I found the gloom and the loud twittering of birds outside most provoking. But he’d not be nagging me this morning into my fine outgoing clothes, or stuffing me into that wheelbarrow again. That could warm my heart, if not my hands or feet.

‘Haven’t you been told, Ambrose,’ I croaked, ‘that the inquiry won’t be resuming today?’ He really should have guessed that much. He hadn’t, of course. Are jailors always stupid? Or have I been invariably lucky in the various places of confinement I’ve known? I called on every ounce of strength left to a man of ninety-eight. After one failed effort, and one slight worry that I’d pulled a muscle, I sat up in bed and shuffled myself round until my feet were resting on the floor. ‘You’ll soon have your formal orders,’ I said, now in better voice. ‘You’re to get all my stuff packed up and moved to the monastery round the corner.’ I managed a toothless smile. ‘Now, what have you brought me for breakfast?’

I watched his face turn from bafflement to a snarl of hate. ‘Is that all you can think about?’ he asked in a voice that was supposed to scare me. ‘ Breakfast ?’

‘A very important meal,’ I replied in a voice that I knew might send him over the edge. My head was clearing of the dream, and of the poppy fumes that had sent it. I looked about for my stick. Ambrose had knocked it out of reach, worthless pig that he was. My false teeth of ivory and gold were still where I’d left them on the bedside table. Those could stay put. But I did reach for my blond wig. I could do with that to keep the chill from soaking in through my scalp. And it was more provocation of my own to a man who, still spraying abuse at me with every breath, knew that such power of compulsion he’d had over me was now ended.

I looked at the covered tray the boy had brought up with him. The smell would have made a dog vomit. ‘Ooh, nice runny cheese, if my nose tells right,’ I said. ‘The monks of Saint Anastasius won’t spoil me like this!’

Ambrose pushed his bleary face close to mine. ‘Don’t think you’ve got away with it,’ he snarled. ‘You’re a murdering bastard — and I’ve now found the proof.’ He stopped, presumably giving me time to fall to pieces. Instead, I was coming properly back to life, and could feel my spirits rising like the sun itself at the thought that I’d soon be out of this ghastly place. I popped my teeth in and smiled. Ambrose stood up. ‘There’s a hole on the seventh stair down,’ he gloated. ‘It’s a fresh hole. I wonder what was pushed in there, and why ?’

Dear me — the low beast had finally done his homework! I couldn’t have that. Nothing he said now could unstitch the deal I’d made. But he could still raise an unpleasant stink. He might even try his hand at blackmail. Yes, he was the type for that. I licked my upper teeth into place, and smiled again. ‘Oh, Ambrose, Ambrose,’ I said in my most emollient tone, ‘this isn’t a day for unpleasantness. We must soon take leave of each other. I like to think that, in spite of one or two disagreements, we have forged an unbreakable bond of friendship. Why not join me in a last shared drink?’

A last shared drink? There hadn’t been a first! The way he’d been at my breakfast ale without asking, it was a wonder I hadn’t seen to him months before. But it was nice ale, and he’d not pass up a last chance to thieve his half of it. Following his usual custom, he swaggered over to the window. He pulled its shutter fully open, and shouted something vulgar to anyone who might be passing by beneath it. This done, he hitched up his robe and began a piss that would leave a stinking puddle on the sill.

‘I should have known you’d get off,’ he said bitterly. ‘Your sort always do. Lord High Bishop Theodore himself ain’t nothing up against you people.’ He’d splashed someone again. He leaned forward to look out of the window. ‘What the fuck do you expect, walking so close to the wall?’ he shouted. He turned bitter again. ‘If there was any justice in this world, your penance would have been a flogging that broke every bone in your shrivelled old body. Theodore himself telled me no less.’