Terror of Constantinople (18 page)

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.

    Standing 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.

    The first thing I noticed as I walked into the windowless room was an icon, high on the wall, of Christ in His most forbidding Majesty. Otherwise, the walls were of bare plaster. The only furniture in the room was a small table with three chairs. The light came from a tight array of lamps hanging from the ceiling.

    Theophanes had motioned me in before him while he spoke to one of the hushed attendants outside. Alypius settled me into one of the chairs and then sat himself across the table from me.

    So when, and of whom, was this interrogation to be? I tried not to ask myself. Because I could think of no reason for subterfuge from Theophanes, I willed myself not to speculate on what I was doing in this room.

    Alypius looking fixedly at nothing in particular behind my left shoulder, we sat for what seemed an age without speaking. At last, the door widened and Theophanes came into the room.

    ‘My dear young friend,’ he began with easy charm, ‘I do so regret having brought you here for nothing. But I am now in no doubt that the interrogation would be distressing to one of your youth and sensitivity. It is sad how much moral, and even physical, harshness these matters often require.’

    So it wasn’t just the basement they used for torturing people.

    In a fair imitation of his own manner, I thanked Theophanes for his great consideration and assured him of how comfortably I was seated.

    ‘I would release you now from my invitation,’ he said with a smile, ‘and allow you to go home to your bed. But the streets are less safe at night than I might wish. And it will take me a few moments to deal with outstanding business before I can arrange for an armed guard to escort you back to the Legation.’

    ‘I wouldn’t hear of it!’ he said, in reply to my suggestion that I could make my own way back. ‘While you remain my personal guest, you must accept my personal concern for your safety. I really do not think I shall be more than a few beats of the heart about my business. I am sure you will find Alypius excellent company.’