The Terror of Constantinople a-2 Read online

  As the furthermost windows of the Legation’s right arm disappeared behind the bulk of the dome, I heard the outward swing of shutters and a hissed command in the language Theophanes had spoken in the library.

  If I jumped straight down to the balcony at the first safe point and dodged inside, I might not be seen.

  17

  ‘And where the fuck have you been?’

  His face making up for any lack of volume, Authari stood on the balcony. He must have been watching me all the way back from the dome.

  Normally, you expect a certain dignity where exchanges with slaves are concerned. But these weren’t normal circumstances, and Authari wasn’t a normal slave.

  ‘Let’s get inside,’ I whispered. ‘I think we can be seen out here.’

  As we stepped into the dim light of my office, I looked back once. Far over, in one of the last rooms of the Legation right arm, there was still a light burning.

  Was that a face looking back at me? It might have been a trick of the moonlight.

  ‘You’re back early, Martin,’ I said, trying to sound nonchalant. I glanced at the wine jug to see if it had been refilled. No such luck!

  ‘I’m back late, Aelric – very late,’ Martin said. His face was ghastly in the moonlight that streamed into the room. Was that his blue robe he was wearing? I wondered vaguely to myself. I thought he’d gone out in the yellow one.

  But he continued: ‘We’ve been hunting the place down for you. If I hadn’t seen you staggering round like a drunk on that ledge, we’d have raised the alarm. We were terrified for you up there. Please don’t do this again.’

  I ignored the slight on my balancing abilities. Before I could think of a reply, Martin spoke again: ‘Did you see the Permanent Legate?’

  ‘No,’ I said. I thought briefly whether to say more and I decided not to. There had been a thawing of relations lately between Martin and Authari. On the one hand, it had saved me the endless trouble of mediating their spats. On the other, I was beginning to appreciate the value of ‘divide and rule’.

  Besides, I needed time to sit down and think all this through. I was like a fisherman who’d set out to catch a meal and had pulled up a feast.

  ‘Do you know how dirty you are, Master?’ Authari asked, his temper back under control.

  I looked down at my naked body. I was black with filth. Aside from the general rubbing off of lead on me, the bird shit clung like an oily gel. A trickle of sweat that started from my chest was carrying bits of it on to the floorboards.

  ‘We can’t get a silent bath arranged,’ Martin said. ‘Authari, I’ll help you with cold water and sponges.’

  They looked at each other. It was as if they were taking up a conversation I’d interrupted.

  ‘No,’ I said, suddenly cold with the ebbing of the excitement. ‘There’s plenty of water running through the latrine. I’ll scrub up in there.’

  I heard a subdued wailing from some other room in the suite.

  ‘What in God’s name is that?’ I asked weakly. I was suddenly too exhausted to feel the alarm I felt I ought.

  ‘Let’s get you clean first,’ Martin replied edgily.

  I looked down at the baby boy. He couldn’t have been more than a day old.

  With infinite tenderness, Martin wrapped him in the sheet and laid him back on his bed. Authari took up the sponge again and was squeezing milk into the little open mouth.

  ‘He was lying all alone in the porch of the Mary Magdalene Church,’ Martin explained again. ‘There were some dogs sniffing at him. I couldn’t leave him.’

  It was impossible to know who’d dumped him there. The mother would never come forward to say.

  ‘Well, you can’t keep him here,’ I said firmly. ‘You’ll have to take him back to St Mary’s. Let someone else take him. There’s always someone out there trawling for boys.’

  ‘Oh please,’ Martin gabbled, ‘please don’t say that.’

  ‘He was dumped too late already, Master,’ Authari broke in. ‘He’ll have to survive the dogs before he’s any chance of a foundling hospital.’

  A foundling hospital? With beggars dying in the streets, the most likely outcome was that some priest would baptise the boy to save him from the fires of Hell, and then clap a hand over his nose and mouth.

  ‘What is to become of him?’ Martin asked.

  What answer was there to that? I looked down at the boy again. I thought of my pregnant Gretel. I thought of Edwina and my living child. I swallowed and looked away.

  ‘We’ll look after him, Master,’ Authari added. ‘He’ll be no trouble to you. He can stay in the slave quarters below. You won’t know he’s down there.’

  ‘Then we’ll need a wet nurse,’ I said. ‘He’ll need to be fed.’

  Those weren’t the words I’d intended. What I had intended was to order the child to be put back early the next evening and was astonished even as I uttered them. It was like watching a close friend say something unexpected.

  Having said these words, though, there was no going back.

  ‘Martin,’ I added after a pause, ‘go to the slave market tomorrow. I’m sure you’ll pick up someone. You know where the key is to my strongbox. Take what you need from there. Do make sure to buy someone in good health.’

  I cut off their excited babble and continued: ‘I take it you will adopt the child as your own. That, or you’ll rear him as a slave.’

  Silence.

  Martin’s wife would never allow him to adopt – not with their own child. He was plainly thinking of Sveta’s scolding voice. As for enslavement:

  ‘Such is against the laws of the Empire,’ Martin said with sudden pedantry. ‘If you pick up a foundling, its status is automatically freeborn.’

  I gave a cynical laugh. ‘That’s what the lawyers say. Didn’t they also tell you and your father that enslavement for debt had been abolished? You really should ask the brothel keepers where they get their stock.’

  If Martin wanted a boy slave, he had one here for the taking. But he still wasn’t interested.

  I looked hard at the child. No longer crying, it lay calm before me, eyes still squeezed shut. It was very, very small.

  ‘Your next act of goodness’, I said slowly, ‘will have rather more thought about the practicalities than this one.’

  I paused for silence. Then: ‘I will adopt the child myself. I don’t know if I’m of age yet to do that sort of thing within the law. But the Law of Persons can be flexible if approached in the proper way.’

  I bent down and scooped the child into my arms. ‘I accept this child as my own,’ I said, speaking loud. It really was like watching someone else. ‘I name him’ – I thought quickly – ‘I name him Maximin after the dear man who saved my own life as an act of charity.’

  Yes – that was right. I thought back two years to that time in Kent, when Maximin had walked all day through the rain to snatch me back from King Ethelbert. But for him, I’d be dead by now. And that was if I were lucky.

  It was right that I should rescue someone equally helpless, and that I should call him Maximin.

  I brought the child’s head up to my lips. After so much cold scrubbing downstairs, I was more than usually sensitive to the sudden warmth. A strange lump came into my throat as I breathed in the babyish smell. I wanted to add some formal-sounding declaration of paternity. But I found I couldn’t speak.

  I put the bundle down again and walked quickly from the room. As I went back down the corridor to my own bedroom, I could hear Martin and Authari fussing over my Maximin. He would need a room on the upper floor now, Authari said. Martin replied in a dreamy voice that was part relief and part something else.

  Had I lost face? I asked myself as I undressed for what remained of the night. Had I shown weakness? Perhaps I had. But I didn’t feel that it mattered.

  I was woken by the sound of banging outside my window. The sun was still low in the sky, and there were long shadows that kept the gardens overcast.

  Standi
ng on the balcony, I looked along the line of windows towards the dome. There was a long ladder going all the way up to where the ledge above the windows joined the dome. Slaves were hard at work, fixing an elaborate contraption of spiked railings.

  How the thing had been put together in such a short time was beyond me. But there would be no more night wanderings around the outside of the Legation.

  One of the slaves noticed me. Holding the ladder carefully with one hand, he touched the other to his head and bowed as best he could.

  I nodded and looked away. In the enclosed garden just below the balcony, those five monks were at work again. They seemed to be under a vow of perpetual silence. When I’d spoken to the one I had seen looking up at me on the first day, he’d drawn his hood closer over his face and turned away from me. Was he watching me now, as I stood observing the slow and rather haphazard tending of the flower-beds?

  I stepped back inside. I needed to think all this through. Why had Theophanes killed Justinus of Tyre? What had been in that letter? Above all, what was the nature of this agreement between him and the Church? If it involved suppressing the African revolt, why be so frightened of the Emperor? What was that stuff about bribing the Lombards?

  And where did I fit into this scheme of things? Theophanes had confirmed I was useful, and so worth keeping alive. But for what purpose and for how long?

  My thoughts were interrupted by the sound of Maximin crying in the room next but one to mine. With a jumble of recollection, I realised it hadn’t been a dream never mind what had happened in Kent nor what might in Rome: I really was a father.

  ‘God’s tits!’ I muttered. I looked round for something to drink, but found only lemon water. I threw on a dressing gown and stepped out of the room.

  Authari was folding a fresh napkin for the child. There was a bright shitty smell all around. Martin was making a proper mess with the milk and sponge. Every so often, he was getting a drop into the child’s mouth and the cries turned to an odd gurgling.

  As I entered the baby’s room, Martin stood. I motioned him to continue. One way or another, my son had to be fed.

  I looked at Maximin in the light of day. Babies by nature are never beautiful, and he was gasping and choking as if in a fit. Even so, he seemed to be shining slightly.

  I forced my eyes away. I might be his father, but I also had a position to maintain.

  ‘When you’re ready,’ I said, ‘we’ll go off to market together. I feel I ought to choose the nurse. I want one who doesn’t know any civilised language. I don’t think you need ask for my reasons.’

  ‘Indeed, sir,’ said Martin. ‘Would you allow me to buy your son a rattle?’

  ‘Of course,’ I said – ‘though he’ll not be in need of that for a while.’

  As we were leaving, a messenger arrived from the Ministry.

  ‘Do tell His Magnificence,’ I said, fighting to keep my voice steady, ‘that I expire with joy to receive his invitation. I will join him tonight for dinner at the usual place.’

  I settled on a fattish, rather plain woman who spoke Lombardic but came from somewhere more remote. Her own child, the dealer said, had ‘died’ on the journey to market. She’d be the ideal nurse.

  Ideal she was. I wanted a nurse for my son, and only that. If I wanted sex, I’d continue to send out for it. I did have certain duties to Gretel, you’ll understand.

  As I finished paying up and giving the delivery address to the dealer, I felt another nervous twinge about Gretel. She’d go off like a volcano when she heard the brief message I’d dropped earlier into the collection bin.

  The problem with women is that, unless you beat them all the time – and I’ve tended to neglect that side of my duties – they always get ideas above their station.

  But what was done couldn’t now be undone. Indeed, I’d just allowed Martin to arrange the baptism for the day after next.

  It’s surprising how much you need for a child of the higher classes, and how much it all costs. It’s all silk and linen and things of horn and lead, and polished wooden boxes for storing it.

  I made sure to pick up another nice present for Gretel – a rope of black pearls I was assured had come from England. They might calm her down. Or they might not. Still, I told myself, I’d not have to face her until the autumn. Perhaps, I could ask the Dispensator to get us married in front of the Pope…

  After my bath, as he dressed my hair, Authari hummed a cradle song of his people. I’d laughed several times in the bath and splashed water over the side.

  The other slaves smiled as they went about their business. Even one of the Legation officials gave me a less than usually sour look as I passed him on my way to the chair Theophanes had sent from the Ministry.

  Martin had retired to his room to pray. It was nice to know that, after yesterday’s wobbly, he was back on praying terms with God. Doubtless, I thought, he’d be asking God to overlook my numerous sins in return for one act of charity.

  Perhaps He would.

  18

  Theophanes got to his feet as one of his eunuch clerks burst into the private dining room. He’d just reached the really interesting part of his lecture on the correct application of gold leaf to the face. Now, he was all official coldness.

  Puffing slightly, the clerk dropped a message on to the table and stood back.

  Theophanes broke the seal and read in silence. There was a hard, impassive look on his face. My stomach turned to ice. Had I after all outlived my usefulness? I put my cup down and put my hands under the table to hide their tremor.

  ‘Alaric,’ he asked in a voice that hovered ambiguously between the friendly and the official, ‘are you aware of last night’s murder?’

  I shook my head. I’d seen how everyone in the slave market was passing the official news bulletin around with greater than usual interest, but had been too involved in my own affairs to get a copy for myself.

  ‘I am surprised you have heard nothing. This was perhaps the most horrid crime the City has known all year. The Court Poet to His Late Imperial Majesty Maurice was found this morning in the St Antonia Park. His neck had been broken in a struggle with some person or persons unknown. We believe this happened around the midnight hour.’

  He handed the message to Alypius, then turned back to regard me with the same cold expression. I shifted uncomfortably in my chair. A moment before, Theophanes had been at his charming best. Now, was he trying to fit me up for murder? It would get me out of the way for what I might have overheard the night before.

  Should I just confess everything? Should I tell him all I’d overheard and assure him I knew nothing more? I could promise silence. I could plead for expulsion from the City.

  Yes, I could certainly plead for that!

  If my throat hadn’t been so dry of a sudden, I’d have opened my mouth there and then and started babbling. That stare was terrifying in its blankness.

  Just then, it shifted back to eunuchy softness.

  ‘But my dearest Alaric,’ he said, ‘you have nothing to fear. The poor man was quite elderly and much given to seeking the friendship of strangers in the quiet places of our great City. I cannot imagine that you would ever find yourself in such danger. And we do now have a suspect. That message’ – he nodded towards the sheet Alypius was still holding – ‘is notice of the arrest.’

  ‘Your efficiency is surely an inspiration to the whole universe,’ I said, trying to keep my voice from a croak. Had I been able to trust my hands, I’d have grabbed at my wine cup.

  ‘But you flatter me,’ said Theophanes with one of his most benevolent smiles. ‘It was my intention to make my apologies and to leave you to finish dinner with none but the serving slaves for company. However, your kind words, and the recollection of an interest you have more than once expressed in my work for the common good of the Empire, suggest you might welcome an invitation to come with me, even at this late hour, to the Ministry, where the suspect awaits my interrogation.’

  If I’d been able
to think of a polite way of saying ‘No thank you’, I’d have come out with it on the spot. Go with him to the Ministry? And what on earth was someone of his seniority doing in charge of some petty murder investigation? The victim had been a retired minor functionary of a dead and disgraced Emperor.

  Besides, I wanted to go home and join Martin and Authari in looking at Maximin. I wanted to send them to bed so I could continue looking at him by myself.

  I realised Theophanes was staring at me again. To people like him you refuse nothing.

  ‘I’d be honoured,’ I said, now finishing my wine.

  Was that a smile I saw as Alypius coughed into his sleeve?

  As we rounded the corner into the Ministry square, I could hear a chatter of voices. The demonstrators were praying together before breaking up and going home for the night. The voices fell silent as we came into view. The sight of Theophanes and a police guard appeared to subdue even these desperate souls. One old woman, however, still came forward. She clutched at Theophanes, catching his right sleeve.

  ‘Where is he?’ she pleaded in the cracked voice of the very old or slightly mad. ‘When will he come home?’

  Theophanes gently prised her hand loose and patted it.

  ‘Go home, my poor woman,’ he said gently. ‘Your son is not inside. You have no son. You never had a son. Please accept my deepest sympathies. Go home before you take chill. The evenings are not as they were.’

  She fell back with a deathly look. Her mouth opened to speak again, but no words issued. We turned from her and walked into the Ministry.

  Though all was quiet outside but for the demonstrators, the clerks in the Ministry were still hard at work. There was the same rush of activity in the main hall that I’d seen on my first visit. One of the clerks was waiting for us. He bowed low before Theophanes.

  ‘The young man is with me,’ Theophanes said in answer to the unspoken question.

  We passed by the staircase leading up to his office. Instead, Theophanes led me to the far end of the main hall and into a corridor of closed doors. Carefully dimmed lamps were fixed beside each door. On each was screwed a small brass plate, giving one or more names, though no functions. At the far end, bright light streamed from an open door.