Richard Blake - The Terror of Constantinople

‘One way or another, the agreed transfer will go ahead. It may be by friendly consent. It may be on the judgement of the Prefect. It may be following some other process. Until such time as that happens, the Lady Marcella will retain Gretel in her own household and will continue to allow her all the indulgences we agreed when her pregnancy was confirmed. Do I make myself clear?’

Marcella glanced away from me. She looked suddenly a good fifty years older than the eighty I’d always taken her for. The lawyer looked back at me, unimpressed.

‘I understand the slave’s child is due in October,’ he said. ‘You will be aware, I have no doubt, of the great length that legal proceedings can often reach. You will equally be aware that, unless the mother is freed at any time between conception and birth, the child will also be a slave. Even if subsequently freed, the child will suffer certain disabilities. This might not count much in the case of a girl. Boys, however-’

‘I know the law perfectly well, if you please,’ I snapped. And I did. If I couldn’t be father to Edwina’s child, I’d not pass up the opportunity Gretel had presented me. I would be a father, and my child would have everything a father could give. You can’t give looks and intelligence: those come from Nature. But you can give education and wealth and status. No one this side of the grave would stop me from giving those.

I looked at the fresh tiling on the library floor and stood up. There was nothing more to discuss with these people. That much was plain. What further business I had lay elsewhere. With frigid politeness, I asked Marcella if she needed an escort back to her lodging house. The streets would soon be far too unsafe for the elderly slaves I imagined she’d brought with her.

‘You’re a good boy, Alaric,’ she whispered once the lawyer had left the room ahead us. ‘You know, by myself I’d never do nothing to hurt you-’

She broke off. Then: ‘Oh, this wicked world surely can’t be for much longer,’ she sobbed gently. ‘It must surely be the end of times when-’

She broke off again. Then: ‘Oh, my poor husband the Senator. Why couldn’t I be carried off with him?’

I was once more alone. I’d paced up and down in the library until no light came from overhead. I’d crossed over the courtyard to the main part of the house and walked around the rooms on the upper floor. Fresh paint and woodwork, restored mosaics and frescoes – things that until then had cheered me and filled me with confidence in the future – now seemed a kind of mockery. Of course, I’d bought the place with only myself in mind. But I’d soon got used to the idea of a growing household with me at the head of it. I’d shown Gretel where her quarters would be. I’d ordered furniture for the child and looked into the procedure of buying the right sort of wet nurse.

Back in the library, I shouted for Authari. ‘Get me an opium pill,’ I told him. ‘I rather hope you’ve not been dipping down those as well. I have a meeting at the Lateran just as soon as the dawn comes up. With time to get down there, I want you to wake me with enough hot water for a bath and my pink robe – the one with brown roses embroidered on the front. For what I’m about to do, I want to look my best.’

I was so angry as I stepped out into the square that I almost missed the flash of steel. But there’s a difference between almost and not at all. Probably before even managing to nick my arm, he had my sword sticking six inches out of his back.

For a thief, he had the etiquette all wrong. It’s at night, you see, that you kill and then grab. By daylight, you grab and run, and only pull out the knife if you can’t get away. But that was his problem. He was the one on the pavement, gurgling out bloody froth as he sped into the final darkness. Though breathing hard and not altogether with it, I was still on my feet.

‘Hey, you can’t do that here!’ It was one of the armed churchwardens, come up beside me. He pointed down at the now dead man, outrage in his voice. ‘This is Church property.’

He was wrong. I was just outside the Lateran precinct. Here, it was a matter for the Prefect – if for anyone at all.

But I wasn’t up for debate. And Authari had now lumbered up beside me.

‘Fuck off, you!’ he snarled. ‘You leave my master alone – or else.’

‘That will do, Authari,’ I said weakly, putting a hand on his sword arm. I wanted no more trouble that morning. Inside the palace, it had been ‘Aelric this’ and ‘Aelric that’ from the Dispensator, who’d almost wet himself at his triumph. He’d been waiting with his – unsigned – letter of clarification for Marcella regarding my ‘marriage’ in Kent, and with his undertaking to act in my place regarding Gretel if I should be delayed past her time of delivery.

I didn’t fancy another trip into that office. Not over a matter like this.

‘But you’re bleeding, Master,’ said Authari.

I looked down at my forearm. So I was. That had been a savage little knife. It was the sort of weapon that had Murder written all over it. Luckily, the man had got me below the hem of my sleeve. You couldn’t get new silk that year in Rome for love or money.

Authari pulled me across the square to the side not yet reached by the sun, and sat me on a stone bench. He called for wine and biscuits from one of the hawkers.

‘I would have come sooner, Master,’ he explained in a panicky tone. ‘But those friends of his were all about me, jabbering something about His Holiness.’

He sat down heavily beside me and drank half the wine straight off. While that settled another of the fits of shakes that had made me leave him outside the Lateran, I followed his vague pointing. A hundred yards off, the churchwarden was still fussing over the bloody heap. He’d been joined by a couple of monks. Every so often, he was pointing across at me.

Over to their left, there was another crowd of those petitioners. Even as I looked, they melted into the smaller alleyways that led from the square.

Deep beneath the shock and the after-effects of what might have been a shade too much opium, I felt a faint stirring of alarm, and of what now was a creative anger. This wasn’t a matter of thiefly etiquette. The man hadn’t looked at all like a thief. And he’d been far too swarthy for a native: an African, perhaps, or a Sicilian?

I turned back to Authari, whose babble of explanations was now descending into his native Lombardic.

‘I am entirely satisfied you did your best,’ I said firmly, trying to shut him up. ‘Indeed, you may have done me quite a favour. Had you been with me, they might have gone for me some other time and with more success. As it is, forewarned is forearmed.’

Unconvinced, Authari fell silent, his face still dark with shame and the fear of a slave who has slipped up in his duty. I leaned back against the still cool bricks of the wall behind me and gathered my thoughts.

‘Tell me, Authari,’ I said, sipping what he’d left me of the wine, ‘do you know which side it was that grabbed you? And do put your sword away. The only trouble we might have now is from those monks over there.’

He gave me a look of rather vexing stupidity and replied that the men had been talking about His Holiness.

I sighed, but kept my temper. ‘You do know’, I prompted, ‘there’s a civil war in the Empire?’

He didn’t.

‘It doesn’t normally affect us here,’ I continued. ‘Since your people turned up in Italy, the Emperor’s Exarch doesn’t control much more than Ravenna. Under His Holiness, Rome is effectively an independent city-state.

‘Yes, a city-state,’ I mused. ‘After fifteen hundred years, Rome ends its experience of empire more of less where it began.’