The Curse of Babylon (16 page)

Antonia was already round the corner on the far side from where Shahin was giving instructions to his Greek traitor. If the tiny moon was behind us on the right, this meant that we’d be looking west, which was the direction in which it seemed best to try swimming. I rounded the corner and, all else forgotten, I stood beside her and looked in astonished silence.

Though in darkness, we were already passing along the narrow strait that would take the ship into the Black Sea. Not three hundred yards away, Constantinople was a blaze of artificial light. I could clearly see the shape of the Great Church, and of the other high buildings. I could follow the whole line of the sea wall from the beacons that burned every twenty yards along it. It was the most astonishingly beautiful sight. I don’t think any other city in the world could match what I saw. If a man saw nothing else, this alone was enough to tell him everything he needed to know about the size and glory of Constantinople.

Passing so close by the City that a man on board could almost cry out to another man on the walls – and by night – was as audacious as anything I’d yet seen from Shahin. But it made perfect sense. You can’t expect to last long in your enemy’s home waters by skulking from inlet to inlet. Anyone looking out from the walls able to see our shape would assume we were hurrying past in the dark to avoid payment of tolls.

I pulled Antonia closer. ‘Do you see that gap in the lights?’ I asked, pointing. ‘It should be the Emperor’s private harbour. Swim towards the left-hand side. I’ll be close behind you.’ She twisted free and pushed herself harder against the wall. She whimpered something that I couldn’t make out. I took her firmly by the arm and led her towards the rail. ‘We’ll jump together,’ I urged.

‘Not thinking to leave us so soon, Alaric?’ I heard Shahin say from my right. Someone beside him pulled the cover off a lamp and I saw the gleam of a sword in Shahin’s hand.

Chapter 16

‘I told you to kill him while you could,’ Simon cried. He was holding the lamp at waist level. It was easy to see that he was indeed the man who’d brought me the alleged letter from Nicetas. He’d changed out of his fussy robe and was wearing a turban that made him look faintly oriental. But the squint and the bearded face were unmistakeable.

Shahin lowered his sword. ‘There will be no killing tonight,’ he said. He stepped forward. ‘Alaric, things are not entirely as they seem,’ he continued in Persian, ‘Let’s go below to discuss matters like civilised men. You have my personal guarantee of safety. The Great King himself has commanded not a hair of your head to be touched.’ He smiled. ‘Come, dear friend. Come down and have a wash. You can even put your clothes on.’

As he handed his sword to one of his Syrians, I felt two men take hold of me from each side. ‘You can cover the lamp,’ he said in Greek to Simon. ‘We can’t risk being seen from shore.’ He stepped past me, on his way into the deck cabin.

I’d got this far. Nothing short of overpowering force would get me below again. I untensed my body and raised my arms as if to begin pleading. Of a sudden, and relying on the blood that still made me slippery, I twisted free and rounded on the men behind me. One got my knife into his stomach. The other saved himself by sprawling backwards. I tore Antonia from the man who was trying to drag her away from the side and pulled her towards me.

‘You’re going nowhere!’ Simon shouted triumphantly. He stepped towards me, and I saw the glitter of a knife in his raised hand. I think I heard a shouted order from Shahin.

‘Fuck you!’ I snarled. Ignoring his knife, I shoved his left hand hard against his body. That was the hand in which he still carried his lamp. Soaked in oil, his robe caught fire. He jumped back and dabbed at himself, shrieking as yet only with fear.

I hear the rasp of a sword and, in the light cast from Simon’s burning robe, saw a man lunge at me. I went for him with my knife and, with a crunch of iron against teeth, got him through both cheeks. As he fell down in a sobbing scream, Antonia was pulled from my bloody left hand.

‘No killing!’ Shahin bellowed above the babble of shouted Syriac and the screams of those I’d injured. ‘Just keep hold of the girl.’ I turned away from the huddle of armed men who were now retreating from me. Someone had Antonia from behind and was pawing at her breasts. ‘Put the knife down, Alaric,’ Shahin took up again in a loud and desperately calm voice. ‘Put the knife down, or she gets her face carved off.’

Someone had put Simon out and we were down to the light from the sky. But I saw the light reflected in the little knife Antonia had brought with her on deck. She sagged suddenly forward and twisted partly free. I watched as she brought the shining steel up and thrust it with desperate and unerring strength into the man’s right eye. I’d underestimated her in a crisis, I thought approvingly.

Even before the screaming man hit the deck, I had Antonia’s arm again. I threw my knife at someone who was hurrying forward to clutch at me. I took her in both arms and threw myself backwards over the rail. A moment later, she and I were coming up for air in a sea that was like black and liquid ice.

‘Get the boat – the boat!’ I heard Shahin roar above the babble of shrieks from the ship. ‘I want them both alive.’ I caught hold of Antonia’s hair and pulled her close beside me. She’d got herself afloat but was crying out from shock and the cold. She wasn’t up to much directed effort. I looked about for the lights of Constantinople. They seemed much dimmer and more distant at sea level.

Swimming with one arm, I dragged her forward until we had to be out of view from the mirrored lamps that Shahin’s men had now brought up on deck. ‘Get on my back,’ I gasped, taking in a mouthful of salt water. ‘Put your arms about my neck and hold on.’ I stretched my arms into a wide arc and kicked in the direction of the shore. Shahin had seen me swim the Euphrates in July. That’s wholly different from sea swimming at night – sea swimming at night with two arms clamped round your neck. But thoughts of Chosroes were a useful spur. By the time I stopped to see if we were still going in the right direction, the babble of shouts on board the ship was already a few hundred feet away. So far as I could tell, they still hadn’t got Simon’s boat or their own into action. I took a long breath and struck forward again.

Antonia loosened her grip on me. ‘Let me come off you,’ she cried in soft panic. ‘I can swim by myself.’ I slowed again and looked up to tell her not to be so stupid. One look at the shore and I realised what she was getting at. The long strait past Constantinople has a top current and an undercurrent. Their relative strength varies according to the time of day. No one with any sense ever tries to swim there. The currents are too dangerous. Even as I made for the shore, I could see it moving further and further to my right. If we didn’t get a move on, we’d be swept into the wide Propontis.

‘Keep hold of me,’ I said in a voice that shook with cold and a fear I couldn’t control. ‘One big effort and I
can
do this.’ I wasn’t sure I could. But it seemed a fair guess that she couldn’t and that she’d vanish the moment she let go of me. I looked again at the now fast-moving lights on the wall and pointed myself right. Leaving Antonia to hold on as best she could, I strained every muscle as I darted forward. Now I was swimming diagonally with the current, low waves kept sweeping over me. I thought once I’d have to stop to cough out a whole lungful of water. But I kept thinking of a boat rowed by terrorised Syrians, hurrying to get in front of us. I thought of Shahrbaraz and the very stiff bow he’d give me as I was shoved forward into his presence. I thought again of Chosroes. And I thought of the swirling, limitless waters of a Propontis that might begin only a hundred yards to my left. Antonia moving her own body in time with mine, I called on every reserve of strength and swam toward the lights.

I was still swimming when Antonia slid off me and stood up to her waist. I felt cold where she’d been against my back and tipped myself upright. After a boyhood spent swimming in the Channel off Richborough, it was no surprise how warm the sea now felt on the rest of my body – nor how cold I felt out of the water. I crouched down, with my head out of the water and my feet bouncing on the smooth boulders placed all about the sea walls to stop any ship from landing. From what I could see of the wall, we weren’t far from the Golden Gate. When I did finally stand up properly, I should be able to see the night beacon on top of the Marble Tower.

Antonia splashed down beside me. ‘I think they’re coming after us,’ she breathed through chilled lips. I nodded. I’d expected no less. I turned and looked out to sea. The light that was coming closer might be from one of our own patrols. But I didn’t think it was. I shook more water from my ears and tried to listen. The voices were too deliberately low for me to hear other than they weren’t Greek. I felt Antonia take me by the wrist and pull me behind a large boulder. I slipped lower into the water and stared at the crescent moon. We’d got away! There was now the matter of getting back inside the City. I was knocked out. Now I’d stopped moving, the sea was feeling cold again. The wind would make us colder. It would be at least half a mile to the nearest gate and that would be barefoot over ground that some very clever engineers had made difficult to cross in shoes. But sod all this – we’d got away.

‘Alaric!’ I heard Shahin call from perhaps a dozen yards away. I froze with the shock of his voice and sank in up to my neck. He went on in Persian: ‘Alaric! I know you didn’t drown. You’re here somewhere and listening to me. There are matters we need to discuss. I have a deal I should have put to you over dinner. You must believe I am your safest option. Come out and join me in this boat. Bring the girl or leave her. She’s no longer important.’

He drew breath to say more. But I didn’t hear. As he’d been calling out to me in a language she didn’t understand, Antonia was pulling me behind a clump of boulders where the water shelved to about nine inches. At once, her cold lips were pressed against mine, and her body was joined to mine. If I’ve suggested I was wholly worn out from that wild dash through the sea, I’d be exaggerating. I had energy enough to go with Antonia into a world of intense and sustained pleasure, and to stay there for what seemed a very long time.

I moved away from her for the last time and realised we were both up to our waists again in the cold sea. Her face drained of expression, Antonia was staring up at the moon and the wide carpet of stars. ‘You didn’t leave me,’ she said in a wondering voice. ‘You’re the first man I’ve known who didn’t betray me.’

I thought what reply to make. Even then, I was a man who could speak and write to effect in many languages. I might have told her things that a poet would have envied. But the time for words was drifting by. What to say, though? Women are strange creatures. When you aren’t completely certain what to tell them, it’s best to say nothing at all.

I got up and climbed on to one of the larger boulders. I put down a hand to pull her beside me. We sat together in silence. Though I was chilled through from the sea and from all that had gone before that, the City wall was shelter from the wind. Without that, the night was what in England would have counted as sultry. I could remember a night rather like this in Cornwall when, to the distant sound of hunting horns, I’d been diverted from stealing sheep to the final and glorious loss of my virginity. I hadn’t been at all cold then. I’d soon warm up now. I listened for any sound of voices. I heard only the soft chirruping behind me of the night insects. I stood up and looked across the sea. The moon lit up a long streak of water. The stars gave all else a dim and silvery glitter. On the far side of the strait, there were individual gleams of light from the palaces and the better remnants of what had once been the Asiatic suburbs of Constantinople. So far as I could tell, the sea was empty.

Antonia stood up and looked across the sea. After another long silence, she turned to me. I saw her eyes glitter in the starlight. ‘Alaric,’ she said. I waited for what she might have to say. She looked away. ‘What happened?’ she asked in a voice no longer charged with significance. ‘What did those men want?’

I put my arm about her and I felt a tremor run through my body. It went on a long time, and ended in an explosion of unseen light deep within my chest. Not caring whether she could feel anything of this, I smiled and continued looking out over the faintly glowing sea. ‘I currently have no idea,’ I said. ‘But I do plan to find out.’ I pulled her closer. ‘It’s treason and with Persian support,’ I went on. ‘You can be sure of that. The question is how something this big can go on in broad daylight, apparently unseen by the Intelligence Bureau.’

‘Could it have been Eunapius?’ she broke in with an eagerness she didn’t try to hide. ‘Could it have been him and the Emperor’s cousin, Ni – Nicephorus?’

‘Nicetas,’ I corrected her. It was a good question. ‘Did you notice the Greek beside Shahin?’ I asked. ‘He was the one with the lamp. He spoke at this morning’s audience.’

She nodded. ‘He came up to me when I was with my –
my clients
.’ She paused for me to register the slight but defiant emphasis of the words. ‘He pointed me in the direction you’d gone and told me to stay out of sight until I could surprise you outside the walls. I think he’d guessed I wasn’t a man.’