The Ghosts of Athens (54 page)

I do believe the convention, at this point in my story, is for me to explain how I gave way to despair – how I finally called on God for help, and how, when nothing happened, I wept the tears of the young and bright and beautiful who knows exactly what will be done to him. Perhaps I should also describe how I tried and failed to bite off part of my gag and choke myself on it. But, since you know that I’m sitting here in Canterbury, seventy-odd years after the event, in a good light and with a cup of strong French red beside me, would you really have me slow down what is already a somewhat protracted narrative? I think not. So, let’s hurry over those sleepless and embarrassing hours that I passed between about midnight and shortly before the first light of another dawn, and move straight to the matter of my escape.

I thought at first the gentle sawing on the ropes that held my hands behind me was part of the torment. Ludinus was no match for Priscus when it came to breaking a man. But he’d certainly enjoy strutting about in front of me, promising to reconsider my end if I only sucked off my guards or whatever. But it was a child’s hand that pushed my wrist out of the way as the knife cut deeper into the restraining knots.

The girl I’d fed beside the tomb of Hierocles now knelt before me to cut at the leather band that held in the gag. She put a finger to her lips as it came free. She pressed the knife into my hands and watched as I cut my legs free. She pointed over past the big tents. ‘There are horses over there,’ she whispered. ‘There’s only one man to look after them.’ As silently as she’d come over to me, she stole back into the darkness, leaving me wholly alone in a camp where everyone who mattered was fumbling about pissy drunk where not already asleep.

The horses neighed with soft alarm as I turned over the dead body of the man who’d been supposed to guard them. Priscus must have got him from behind and snapped his neck before he was even aware of those strong and bony hands. He wasn’t a big man, and his clothes were a tight fit on me. But I was already as filthy as any other barbarian, and I’d easily pass as one of the Germanics who’d taken service with the Avar horde. I looked for a while at the largest of the horses. If I set out now, I’d not be missed until I was nearly back under the walls of Athens. We must have come well past the ruins of Decelea. So far as I could tell, we were some way into the first of the mountain passes. But Athens could be no more than a few dozen miles back along the road.

I patted the horse and whispered something soothing. I looked up at the sky. It would be dawn soon enough. Then, the less utterly hung-over barbarians would be up and shambling about. Every time I let myself think where I was and what I still hadn’t fully escaped, I’d give way to another attack of nerves. Even the very young don’t bounce back at once from that. Then, as I was about to swing myself on to the horse and make my best getaway, I heard the unmistakable voice of Nicephorus.

It came clearly through the silence of the fading night. ‘You
must
take me to the Great Chief,’ he pleaded in Greek. ‘I have information of the utmost importance.’

‘Oh, shut the fuck up, you bastard Greekling!’ came the answer in Slavic.

There was another babble in Greek, followed by the sound of a blow and then a squeal of pain.

If only I’d got straight on that bloody horse, I’d now be fifty yards beyond the camp, and I’d never have heard Nicephorus. You’ll understand that I’d still have been shitting myself from terror, if only I’d had anything left inside me to void. If I shut my eyes, I could still see Ludinus gloating into my face, and Priscus finishing what he’d begun. But I stepped away from the horse and looked up again at the sky. If Aelric of Richborough would already have been out of the camp, the Lord Senator Alaric had been told of work that needed to be done. Even so, I stood a while longer beside the horse. Grinding my teeth with annoyance took my mind off the less creditable fact that I’d broken out all over in a sweat, and I was trembling almost beyond control. But I did eventually step away from the horse. What other answer can you give when duty calls this plainly?

‘Who dares disturb the repose of the Grand Chamberlain?’ Ludinus called in his grandest voice. It was a wasted effort. The barbarian who’d caught Nicephorus obviously hadn’t a word of Greek, and Seraphius, who did know Slavic, was lying dead somewhere out of sight. I stepped back out of the light of the turned-down lamp and let the barbarian try explaining himself now in broken Latin. Needless to say, the Grand Chamberlain Ludinus had never soiled his ears or tongue by learning any of the former Imperial language, and this wasn’t a conversation that got very far.

I’d already smeared dirt over my face, and, so long as I kept my mouth shut, I’d just be accepted as another barbarian who was tagging along beside the man who’d laid hands on the Count of Athens. Nicephorus hadn’t noticed me. Since he thought I was trussed up and awaiting his further instructions, there was no reason why Ludinus should give me any attention at all.

‘I don’t understand,’ Nicephorus now broke in. ‘Who are you?’ He pulled anxiously on his beard and looked round the partitioned-off area of the big tent where the eunuch had been housed. Like everything else in the camp, it was dirty and still clammy from the endless rains. But those brightly coloured rugs and hangings, and the profusion of glass bottles and the gold and ivory of the furniture, spoke of something beyond the comprehension of anyone who wasn’t in on the secret. I had been wondering on and off how much Nicephorus knew of what was happening. One brief and sideways glance at him, and I could be sure that, whatever else might have been in those Imperial letters he’d burned, it hadn’t been news of this.

Nicephorus licked very dry lips and looked away from a jewelled icon of the Emperor that had claimed his attention. ‘If you aren’t Kutbayan,’ he whispered, ‘who are you?’

Ludinus sat up in his low bed and stared back at Nicephorus. ‘A more appropriate question, my good fellow, is who are
you
?’ he asked more grandly still. As the mumbled explanation started, and stopped, and started again, he fussed with his pillows and put on to his face the sort of friendly smile you only ever see in a court eunuch who has something nasty in his heart.

Suddenly, he sat forward, his mouth hanging open. He put up a hand for silence. ‘You are telling me,’ he asked, ‘that there is a secret way into Athens?’ He threw a suspicious look in our direction, and I stepped politely back deeper into the shadows. ‘Who is that man behind you?’ he asked us both in a clear but conversational tone. The barbarian nodded and bowed. I forced myself to keep looking down at the compacted dirt floor of the tent. Ludinus stared at us a little longer, then simply motioned us out.

‘I don’t think I’ve seen you before,’ the barbarian said as we stood outside the tent. We were now deep into the first light of morning. I put my soft and manicured hands behind my back and smiled.

‘We all came in the other day,’ I said in a strong Lombardic accent. ‘You don’t keep us away when there’s raping and burning and killing to be done.’ We both laughed. Bearing in mind the vast numbers who’d come south, there was no reason why anyone should have seen me before. But I’d keep things vague. We fell silent, and I tried not to show how I was straining to hear the mostly whispered conversation a few feet away from us. If it was easy to guess its general nature, though, all I heard was a few cries of fright from Nicephorus, and a single burst of contemptuous laughter from Ludinus.

Now might have been the moment to jump the barbarian from behind, and to take his sword and go back in and settle those two bastards once and for all. But, if he chatted away easily enough about the joys he’d found in Decelea, the barbarian was standing back from me, and kept a hand near his sword.

I was about to suggest a quick search for beer among the dark and much smaller tents that surrounded us, when the leather flap went up, and Ludinus was blinking in the daylight. ‘Hold this man fast,’ he said in Greek. Neither of us moved. He sighed and muttered something about the missing Seraphius. ‘We have immediate business with the Great Chief,’ he added, still in Greek. This time, he spoke the name – ‘Kutbayan! Kutbayan!’ – and pointed to what I’d previously taken as the outer ring of tents, but that now showed itself as the nearest row in a great sea of tents that stretched into the unknown distance. And I’d thought it was all the barbarians under the walls of Athens. If not twenty million on the move, my own guessed figure had been childishly out.

I looked down again at the ground, and let the barbarian set hands on Nicephorus and shove him in the right direction. Ludinus looked angrily about – doubtless for Seraphius, but didn’t shout for him. Instead, he snorted and muttered something under his breath. Leaving us to follow at a slight distance, he set off in his courtly hobble along a narrow path that led between the greater mass of tents.

The whole world over, barbarians are filthy and chaotic in their living arrangements. I can’t say how long these had been camped here. But it was long enough for the surroundings to have been made into the usual sewer. We moved through hundreds – no, thousands of small tents. Most of these were still silent. Now and again, though, there was a woman or a few children trying to get a fire going. These were the lucky barbarians. Heaped up in the open, beyond the wide path through which we were moving, like logs stored for winter, what may have been thousands or tens of thousands of the thin and shrunken kept up as best they could the sleep that is the last refuge of the unhappy.

I could feel the opening heat of the sun behind me as we finally came to a wide avenue. There were no tents lining this, but rather a double row of bonfires, all dying low. Before each of these, I could see a huddle of stakes set into the ground. From each of these hung a scorched and naked body – men, women, sometimes a couple of children lashed together in a forced embrace. All were dead. From all about came the smell of roasted meat.

I didn’t dare to look properly about. Ludinus, though, did. He came to a stop beside a clump of five children who might have been tied up beside their mother. He walked slowly round the group, tittering softly into a dirty napkin. ‘Behold the justice of the Great Kutbayan!’ he trilled to a very silent Nicephorus. I thought for a moment he was looking into my face. And he was – but only to see if I was as pleased by all this as he was.

‘But,
why
?’ was all Nicephorus could whisper by way of reply. It was as if he’d really thought the common people of Athens were the limits of human degradation. If so, he’d never seen barbarians in their natural state. You could easily see the realisation that, if he’d thought the Athenians were his friends, no one here was likely to harbour kind thoughts for him of any kind. ‘What could they have done to deserve this?’

Ludinus smiled and stopped beside one of the largest of the slow-roasted bodies. ‘Why?’ he gloated. ‘Because they were alive and in the way – and because power is nothing unless it is used.’ He moved with surprising lightness of tread to another group of dead children. One of these had been torn apart by what may have been one of the braver wolves. They others were still tied in place, mouths open from their last piteous cries. ‘You will be pleased to know, my dear little Count of Athens, that my last action before leaving Constantinople was to have the Patriarch himself and all his friends placed under house arrest. When I return, it will be with the heads of My Lords Priscus and Alaric – and I already have these in the bag, I can tell you.’

He giggled again, and now moved away from the bodies to push his face close to Nicephorus. ‘Nothing will then stop me from reordering the whole Empire so it can shine once more in its ancient glory. I will myself take the field against the Persian savages, and hurl them all the way back to Ctesiphon. Do you remember how, back in the days of the Great Justinian, it was the eunuch Narses who led the armies to victory when the professional generals had miserably failed? Be assured that the name of Ludinus will be the latest and most glorious in the roll of honour. Ours shall be evermore known as the Age of Ludinus. Heraclius himself will be nothing beside that!’ He stopped and stretched his arms out to the rising sun. He took out his napkin again and wiped away the drool that was running uncontrolled from between his flabby lips. ‘Truly, there is room only for one sun in the heaven,’ he added with a dramatic flourish of his hands.

To his credit, I saw Nicephorus shift nervously from one foot to the other. ‘But, Your Magnificence,’ he said, ‘we did agree on the list of those who should be saved after the fall of Athens—’

He was interrupted by a long titter. ‘We will bear your list in mind,’ Ludinus said. ‘But you shall certainly have your wish for Athens to be cleansed with fire. From what you tell me, fire is the least that it deserves!’ He laughed again and hugged himself.

From what I could see of his back, Nicephorus was having second thoughts. But it was too late now to pull back. The big leather tent of Kutbayan was only a few dozen yards away, and the guards who stood before its closed flaps were casting looks of mild interest in our direction.

It was also too late for me to act as I’d been hoping I might. Except with the knife that girl had given me, I was still unarmed, and the barbarian was both huge and fully armed. I am sure that, if I could remember and then describe every step of the way between the two tents, we could agree that certain opportunities had arisen. But I was far from at my best. If I did, at the time, see a couple of opportunities, it was always after they’d passed. It was as much as I could do to resist the urge to run back to the horses and keep walking in the right direction. I’ll say that I did find one possible opportunity as we approached the tent of Kutbayan. It was as the barbarian stopped and bent down to fiddle with the straps on his boots. I might then have got him from behind. Then, I could have butchered that piece of eunuch scum and offered Nicephorus his life if he’d make off with me. But it really was too late now. We were in full view, and I just couldn’t bring myself to an attack that, even if successful, would amount to suicide.