The Terror of Constantinople a-2 Read online

  ‘I’m going out for a walk,’ I said, standing up. The copying slave opposite me stood too and bowed low. ‘If you can have the third and fifth books of this copied by tomorrow morning, I shall be grateful,’ I added.

  I looked around the room. Every head was bent intently over whatever text was being read and memorised. There was an unbroken murmuring, as of prayers in church, of those who, in the ancient manner, sounded the words of what they were reading. No one looked up. No one seemed to notice as I walked out into the blistering sunshine.

  As my eyes adjusted to the light, I looked about the crowded square. Naked children danced and squealed happily in the central fountain. Dressed in white, the humbler citizens went about their business in or outside the buildings of unsurpassable opulence that fronted the square. Persons of quality, of course, were carried about in open chairs. One of these, I was sure, had been among those I’d seen on my progress up from the Senatorial Dock. I gave him a hesitant smile. He looked straight through me as the slaves hurried him past.

  I stood back to avoid a crowd of jabbering Syrians, and nearly fell under a closed chair.

  ‘Do please forgive me, My Lady,’ I said, pulling off my cap. I could see a dark shape behind the gossamer curtains and feel a long and intent glance that took in the whole of me. I stood more upright and smiled. An ebony stick reached through the curtains and tapped the largest slave on his back. In a moment, the chair had moved forward and was buried in the crowds.

  I thought to do a spot of shopping before lunch. At least in Middle Street there were people who would talk to me, even if it was only about the quality and price of merchandise. Instead, as I wandered aimlessly through the wide but crowded streets of the city centre, I found myself before the dark Ministry building that I’d vaguely hoped I might never see again.

  I can’t say what I was doing there. Perhaps it was because one of the only two persons I knew in the City beyond my own household was hard at work in there. He’d been at his most courtly over lunch the day before. Would Theophanes welcome an unannounced visit now?

  I swallowed. I made up my mind and stepped towards the open blackness of the gateway that led inside. Like everyone else, I ignored the permanent demonstration outside. Like everyone else, I paid no attention to the graffiti that were still being removed from the previous night.

  ‘State your appointment, citizen,’ said one of the two guards who suddenly barred my way. ‘If you’ve a written denunciation to make, you place it in the urn outside the gate.’

  ‘I have an appointment with His Magnificence Theophanes,’ I lied.

  Unimpressed, the guard said something to his colleague about foreigners. He pointed brusquely to a queue that stopped outside a curtained opening.

  ‘When you get to the front of that,’ he said, ‘you take off your outer clothes. You put your shoes in the box provided. When you go in, have your papers ready. When you are stripped for the search, you stand with your legs apart and your arms spread. If you need an interpreter, tell the clerk. One will be provided.’

  Shuffling forward in that queue was a depressing experience. No one spoke. No one looked at anyone else. I did think to turn and walk out again but a woman in front of me who tried that was stopped and pushed back to the end of the queue. By the time I got to the front, I was in no mood to do other than meekly take off my coat and shoes and walk through the curtain.

  ‘Strip and bend over,’ one of the clerks said in a hoarse, gloating voice. I gritted my teeth and reached for the brooch that secured my inner tunic.

  ‘Sir, sir,’ another of the clerks said with a scared wave of the residency permit I’d given him. They huddled over the thing and looked up at me.

  ‘If you come here in future without an appointment,’ Alypius said as we reached the corridor where Theophanes had his office, ‘you show your papers at the main gate. You will then be brought straight up. Otherwise, you will be taken to a private waiting room.

  ‘You will say nothing to His Magnificence of what has happened. He has more important things to concern him. You will sit quietly until he has dealt with the matters in hand.’

  Inside the office, Theophanes was hard at work. Three junior eunuchs stood before his desk pulling out letters from a basket. As I entered, one of the eunuchs broke a seal and scanned the contents. He read in a flat voice:

  ‘His Eminence Michael of the Lucas family is denounced by his younger son for publishing treasons in his sleep. He is declared to have called out two nights ago that the Emperor Maurice of foul memory was unjustly deposed and murdered, and that the Great Augustus who rules in his place is possessed by a demon who has prompted him to deliver all the lands of the Empire to the Persians and barbarians.’

  Theophanes took the letter and read it in full. ‘The young man is ambitious to possess more of his father’s goods than would come to him in the natural course of things,’ he said in a bored voice. ‘Have Michael taken in. He will be deprived of one-half of all he has and then flogged through the Circus. One-half of the fine will be handed to the son. Michael will otherwise be released to continue with supervising the repair of the city aqueducts. He is advised in future to consult an apothecary for the means of sleeping more soundly at night.’

  The next denounced person wasn’t so lucky. The accusation was more serious. He was to be taken in and committed to the care of the Caesar Priscus – that is, to the Emperor’s son-in-law. The eunuch dealing with this case drew a black cross on the letter and dropped it into another basket that stood half full on the floor.

  So they worked through the list. Wives were denouncing husbands, neighbours and business rivals each other. Some of the denounced were persons of great quality, others from the mercantile and intellectual classes. Sometimes with an explanatory comment, sometimes with none, Theophanes passed judgement on all. In two cases only were denunciations rejected as frivolous. In all others, at least a fine was imposed – more often, a fine and mutilation. Around half were remitted to the attention of Priscus, whom I’d been told by Martin was author and chief agent of the Terror. Some were to be sent to the Emperor himself.

  At length, Theophanes looked in my direction. He composed his features into something that approximated a smile and waved me forward.

  ‘That will be all,’ he said to the eunuchs. ‘We shall deal later with the Antioch business.

  ‘Allow me, my dearest Alaric, to help you to some wine,’ he said. ‘I regret that I have not so far been all that could be desired of a host. But you will understand that the repression of treason is the highest duty of all who serve the Empire.

  ‘The usurping traitor Heraclius has found his way to Cyprus. His followers here in the city have redoubled their efforts, and are recruiting fools and the disaffected of every condition.’

  ‘Was that the case with Justinus of Tyre?’ I asked, dropping my voice to a whisper. ‘And is it so with all those lives I’ve just watched you smashing up?’ I was aghast. I hadn’t known exactly what Theophanes did when he wasn’t entertaining me. But I hadn’t imagined it was anything so gross as this.

  Theophanes looked sharply at his assistant, Alypius, who went over to the door. He opened it and looked out to right and left. He looked back. Theophanes nodded. Then Alypius went back outside and stood there, leaving the door very slightly ajar.

  ‘Alaric,’ said Theophanes, speaking low, ‘you must by now be aware that we do not do things here in Constantinople as they are done in Rome. This is not a small provincial city, surrounded by barbarians and left largely to the governance of the Church.

  ‘You are here on business for His Holiness in Rome. As such, you are under the highest protection. His Holiness our own Patriarch is less safe in his palace than you are with the backing of the Lateran. But you must learn not to interfere in matters that do not concern you or your mission. And when I say not to interfere, I mean also not to notice that certain things may be happening around you.’

  ‘Is that why everyone’s been warned
off me?’ I asked. ‘Is that why I’m to be treated as a leper by everyone else in the city?’

  Theophanes looked hard at me. ‘Alaric,’ he sighed, ‘the traitor Justinus was accused and convicted by wholly regular means – means that long predate the present emergency. He has disappeared from the face of the world. His goods have been confiscated. His wife and household have been turned into the street. All that remains to show that he ever lived at all is the number that you may have noticed on the bills of auction posted in the financial district – and I know that you were there the morning before last with the Jew Baruch.

  ‘As for his body, it may have been left out in the streets for clearing away by the public slaves. Or it may be swinging from the City walls. Do not even ask me what has become of it. His treason was dealt with outside my jurisdiction. I do not make it my business to look outside that jurisdiction.

  ‘So far as I can tell, the man was most inconsiderate in dragging you into his affairs. I will not waste time in asking if you really did know the contents of that now destroyed letter. I will only remind you of the pressing duties that lie among your books. His Excellency the Dispensator assures me that these duties should not detain you in the City beyond the end of this month. You will surely agree that nothing should be permitted to keep you from them.’

  ‘So, who is this man Sergius?’ I asked for the second time.

  It was later, and I was back in the Legation with Martin. He rinsed his mouth again and spat more bloody wine into the bowl that a grinning Authari held under his chin. My promise that it wouldn’t hurt had been optimistic. But the dentist had been and done his work, and Martin would soon get over the pain and trauma of the extraction. For the moment, though, he was out of sorts with me.

  He put the cup down and looked at me through tear-filled eyes.

  ‘I didn’t say I knew him,’ he said. ‘I heard his name from one of the copying clerks. If he’s the man who spoke to you in the University canteen, you’ve encountered someone really big in the Greek Church. He’s the leading authority among the Patriarch’s advisers on the Monophysite heresy. And I’m told he’s leader of the party that doesn’t want us here. They don’t believe we were sent to clarify the meaning of the Creed. They think you are an envoy from the Pope to negotiate a deal on the Universal Bishop title.’

  Martin spat again and looked back at me. ‘But you say you only met him this morning,’ he said. ‘You seem to have been with him quite a while.’

  ‘I went shopping afterwards,’ I said hurriedly. ‘I know you don’t approve of opium pills. But the unrefined resin, heated over charcoal, can be most comforting…’

  Martin wasn’t interested in that either. He must by now have spat out enough of our best wine to pay his rent for a month in Rome. But the thought of something that might take the pain clean away seemed somehow to strike him as improper.

  I looked out of the window. Perhaps I had been a fool to drift off to Theophanes like that. But it had been incidentally useful. Without trying, I had gathered up at least two facts in one day. The problem was to work out how everything fitted together.

  The Dispensator was up to something, but hadn’t thought it necessary to let me know what it was. That had been obvious back in Rome. Now it was clear that Theophanes was up to something, too. And whatever that thing was, it was important enough to justify diverting him from what was currently the most vital job in the Empire. For once, the Greek Church was refreshingly straightforward in its motivations – even if only because my own motiv ations had been misapprehended.

  I looked back at Martin, who was glaring into a mirror. Since he never smiled, the gap in his front teeth would never show. The look on his face, even so, would have curdled milk.

  ‘I’m having dinner with Theophanes again tomorrow night,’ I said, now in Latin. For all he understood of our situation in any language, Authari was looking annoyed at being cut out of the conversation. ‘It will be in that same restaurant by the Ministry. He wants a report from me on the political situation in Kent. He also asked me to remind you about the written account of affairs in Ireland and the Celtic areas of England.’

  Martin put the mirror down. ‘And you’ll give him what he wants?’ he asked. ‘Don’t you think it’s all very suspicious? Haven’t these people enough to worry about nearer home? Britain dropped out of their world two centuries ago. Ireland was never in it. Don’t you wonder what is going on?’

  ‘You know I’m eaten up with curiosity,’ I said, now peevish. ‘I will get to the bottom of this before we’re finished here, but I’ll also give Theophanes whatever he wants.

  ‘You’ve been whining at me ever since we got here about not upsetting anyone. If the eunuch wants a map of Canterbury, I’ll draw him one. If he wants one of London, I’ll make something up. It’s the same with diplomatic relations between the barbarian kings in the old Western Provinces, and the flux and reflux of heresy there.

  ‘Whatever he wants, I’ll give him. You’ll do the same, whether you have any current information or not.’

  And so we continued about our work. That open permit Theophanes had pulled out with such a flourish had been a sentence of solitary confinement. The main difference between it and prison was that my place of confinement followed me about. I had Martin. I had my slaves. I had formal dealings with all those assigned to assist in our mission. I had discussions with Baruch about making money without ever making any. And that was it.

  It all, even so, had its convenient side. With nothing else to distract me by day, I had no choice but to throw myself heart and soul into the work of collecting materials.

  Given this kind of consolation, you can get used to most things. Day followed day, and the sun grew hotter. Our work gave shape to our lives, and Martin and I soon barely noticed the Terror around us or the almost general shunning that insulated us from it.

  13

  Or so it continued until one morning late in August.

  I was sat in the University Library. As ever, I sat alone. One of the books Epicurus had written on the good life had finally been located among the reserve stock. I was half into it when Theophanes came into the reading room.

  He was announced by the collective intake of breath and the shuffling as several people stood for their formal bows. With a benign look around him, Theophanes waved everybody back to work.

  ‘I came as soon as I heard the terrible news,’ he said. ‘No, my dear friend, please do not trouble yourself with rising in my presence. This is an informal visit.’ He sat down at my reading table. The cane chair bowed under his weight, but held.

  I looked at him and thought hard. My favourite writer on his favourite theme had taken me clean out of Constantinople. Had Antioch declared for Heraclius?

  ‘Oh,’ I said eventually, pulling myself back into the present, ‘you mean the roof tiles. That could have been nasty. But I knew that warning slide overhead well enough to get away in plenty of time. Shame about the old woman, though.’

  ‘Alaric,’ he said with slow deliberation, ‘whatever may be the case in Rome, roofs here in Constantinople do not shed their tiles on passers-by. I am informed that every pin had been removed.’

  ‘Oh!’ I said again. I tried to add something to break the resulting silence, but nothing came.

  ‘What can you tell me about the man who engaged you in conversation at that very point in the street?’ Theophanes asked.

  ‘Not much,’ I said. ‘He was in early middle age. He might have been balding – though the hood made that hard to tell. He was well-spoken, but I think his accent was from the East. He wanted me to interpret a new law set up on the wall.’

  ‘And you think nothing out of the ordinary that a stranger should stop you and ask for a Latin translation?’

  ‘Not at all,’ I replied. ‘Latin may be the official language of the Empire, but it’s gone decidedly out of fashion in the Imperial capital. I often wonder why you don’t just publish everything in Greek and have done with it.’
r />   In support, I looked down at the uncluttered areas of my table. Generations of students had worn it to a dull gloss. What were obviously the older comments carved into the wood were all in Latin. The more recent ones were invariably in Greek. You could write a book about change in the City on the basis of that table. But I won’t.

  Theophanes gave a mirthless smile. He turned to Alypius – as ever by his side – and spoke rapidly in a guttural language I’d never before heard. With a curt answer in the same tongue, Alypius was off. Theophanes turned back to me, now with one of his most charming smiles.

  Of course, I’d been suspicious at the time. That stranger had jumped back before the noise overhead, and had been off very sharp. But whatever Theophanes might care to say, roofs did give way, even in the City.

  So, at least, I tried forcing myself to believe. A murder attempt in Rome was one matter. I was at home. I had friends. I understood my surroundings. I was in control of my life. If someone tried to end that life, I knew exactly how to respond. In the street, I could carry weapons. My home was fortified.

  Murder attempts in Constantinople were different. They rubbed in just how dependent I was on one man whose interests were as beyond calculation now as they had been at the Senatorial Dock.

  I smiled weakly back at Theophanes. I tried again to place his accent, but couldn’t. His Greek was admirable. For all his courtliness, he always avoided the diffuse pomposity of the educated. But I’d never imagined he might be a native speaker. He didn’t sound Syrian or Egyptian, but was undoubtedly from the East.

  ‘Your stay in the city’, he said with an abrupt return to a ceremonious manner, ‘has been prolonged somewhat beyond our expectations. While your presence is a source of infinite pleasure to us all, and to me in particular, I have for some while now been looking forward to discussing when and how you intend to go back to Rome. A sea journey might present certain difficulties at the moment. But an armed guard along the whole length of the Egnatian Way is yours for the asking.