The Curse of Babylon (45 page)

I slowed to a shuffle as I passed by one of the siege towers and the catapult came in sight. I’d believe Priscus that the siege towers were useless. And, unless it could be got repeatedly up and down the front steps, the battering ram was more likely to injure its users than open any gates. It was the catapult that mattered. I blinked a few times and tried to focus harder in the gloom. For once, I could see, I’d been right and Priscus wrong about something military. This was one of the iron machines we’d lately set up on the land walls. Given the right setting of the angle bars and the right degree of torsion, it could throw a fifty-pound ball to hit a point somewhat lower than any of the balconies. A few dozen of these hitting on one point would bring down at least part of the front wall. Properly handled, a smaller catapult than this could knock through stone like a mason’s hammer. It could turn brick to clouds of choking dust. It could shoot a chain of iron balls at ground level and slice advancing men in half. Even after his army had run away, five of these had almost won the Battle of Antioch for Nicetas. Sad for us they’d fallen into Persian hands. I could laugh and poke my tongue out at anything else. This darkly glittering monster couldn’t be left in place.

I stopped where I could get a proper look at things and lifted my arms in prayer. The most obvious weak point in the catapult was its bowstring – I call it a bowstring, though it wasn’t far off an inch of plaited silk strands. Cut through this and you’d need special machinery to pull the torsion springs back far enough for a replacement to be fitted. This was assuming a replacement could be found. A raking blow with my sword and we could go back to toughing things out till Heraclius chose to grace his capital with his renewed presence.

Now I could be sure there were only three of them, the guards weren’t a problem. The real problem was fleshing out the plan I’d thought over between coughing fits in the Great Sewer. I needed an unhurried go at the bowstring and a safe escape afterwards. How to get that? I glanced under the colonnade. I only saw him because I was looking; but Rado, still as a cat before a mouse hole, was looking back at me. He was expecting something clever.

A voice called out nervously on my left: ‘Has he decided
anything
yet?’

Leander of Memphis stood with his back to the main source of light. But I could almost hear the cold sweat on his face. ‘I was nearly killed when the night attack went wrong,’ he added, coming forward another step. He lowered his voice. ‘Of course, I’m not scared to die in the service of My Lord.’ He struck a pose and tried for one of his poetic growls. ‘But it’s the lower people, you see – many of them have said they won’t be coming back tomorrow.’

Chapter 45

I stared at Leander. Was this a nuisance? Or was it one of those strokes of luck so great and so bizarre that it’s hard to know what use to make of it. I bowed slightly, wondering how best I could play for time. ‘The Lord Nicetas instructs you to continue about your duties,’ I said in my best Syrian accent. It was just the sort of answer you could expect from Nicetas in an emergency. I watched Leander’s shoulders sag and racked my brains for what to do with him. Enticing him under the colonnade for a quick blow on the head seemed the easiest option but might be a waste of a good opportunity. ‘He wishes to be told, however, why the catapult has not been tried again. Treason has been committed in removing it from the walls. It was not carried here to stand as an ornament.’

‘Oh, but nothing can be done till morning!’ Leander groaned. ‘Didn’t His Lordship get my last message?’ I shook my head. No cause for suspicion here. He knew Nicetas. He dropped the question. He hopped lightly across the last few yards that separated us. ‘The man with the instruction book got frightened when people said they’d hang him,’ he explained. ‘He went home ages ago but said he’d try to understand all the hard sums in his book in time for a morning attack.’

I thought quickly. The plan I’d had in mind was dead. Time to make up another. ‘Let me see the catapult,’ I said, putting a note of involuntary interest into my voice. Leander stepped back and bowed.

I’d known one of the guards was listening to us. He’d been watching me from the moment I stepped out of the shadows. ‘You just keep away from that thing,’ he warned us. ‘You heard the orders.’

Leander took his hat off so he could give a haughty toss of his head. ‘My good man,’ he said, ‘your orders come from a youthful clerk, who takes his orders from me. And
I
represent the Lord Nicetas. Your new orders are to stand aside and allow your betters to go about their business.’

‘Well, don’t you go messing about with that thing,’ the guard said flatly. ‘It’s done enough harm already.’ He waved at the other two guards. ‘Come on. I don’t fancy being anywhere near if those two jokers let that thing off again.’

I watched the three men shamble towards one of the more distant bonfires. For the first time in two years, I was beginning to see some merit in the New Callimachus. Kissing him was out of the question. But I’d make a point of not killing him unless I really needed to.

Leander climbed up and balanced unsteadily on the catapult’s wooden stock. He pointed at one of the bow arms. ‘It’s really just a big bow,’ he said learnedly. ‘But, when you’re shooting arrows, it’s the bow itself that gives the tension. This is much cleverer. Can you see how its arms are buried in those elaborate twistings? They look like elongated balls of wool, but are many rods of coiled bronze.’ I said nothing but moved closer to the silken cord. The guards were far off, and had their backs to us. Leander’s most likely response when I pulled my sword out would be to shit himself. I wondered again how much noise the torsion springs would make when they snapped back into place. Thanks to Leander, it probably didn’t matter.

He noticed where I was looking, and laughed. He climbed down again beside me. ‘Yes, Father, it
is
a gigantic bowstring. You put your stone ball in the special pouch woven into its centre. Now, you don’t pull the string back by hand. Instead, you attach it to the hook in this block of wood. This thick rope here pulls the block back. You wind the rope back by turning that big wheel thing.’ He pointed again at the torsion springs. ‘When the bowstring is wound fully back, the wooden arms come back as well, and they pull the bronze twistings back.’ He laughed. ‘You can’t imagine how powerful those twistings are. Four powerful men can’t move one of them even an inch. Winding them back needs two men with wooden levers to pull on the big wheel. When the tension is released, they spring back too fast for the eye to see.’

He paused for breath and struck another pose, this time, pushing his fingers between the strands of the nearest torsion spring. ‘I tell you, Father – and I tell you as a man filled with ancient learning, who helped interpret its instruction book into the common Greek of our own age – this is the
ultimate power in the universe!?
’

‘My son,’ I said, nearly forgetting to sound foreign, ‘are you not overlooking the power of Him who stands above all earthly powers?’

I was expecting a long whine of piety and a convenient upward glance. Instead, with a sudden lapse into glumness, he sat down on the stock. ‘But is there no one to talk His Lordship into a diplomatic solution?’ he asked. ‘Has he forgotten it’s his own daughter who may be destroyed if the power of this thing is fully unleashed?’ He covered his eyes. ‘I’ve known her since she was just a little girl. Nicetas can’t be serious about giving her up to the mob.’

Eyes still covered, he fell into a fit of horrified sobbing. It was long enough for me to check what I’d briefly felt when stroking the bowstring. Yes – the silk strands were cut at least three-quarters through each side of the central pouch. This wasn’t anything you might expect from clumsy use. Someone had cut it from underneath. Gently, I pushed a fingernail into one of the notches. Perhaps three-quarters through was an understatement. I’d already seen that the torsion springs were set to maximum stretch. Pull it back as far as the first trigger mechanism and the string would certainly fail. Tensed as it presently was, it might go at any moment. I pulled my hand back from the string and stepped away from the machine. Leander was right about the torsion springs. They were enormously powerful. If the bowstring snapped, they’d send its two lengths whipping about like flexible razors. I’d heard of one battlefield accident where an operator’s head had been sliced off.

‘So the assault is to be at dawn?’ I asked.

Leander looked up and spread his hands. ‘I was hoping you would tell me that,’ he said. He covered his eyes again and uttered an almost poetic groan. ‘If we don’t get proper orders soon, even those who bother coming back will only stay for breakfast. I don’t want this thing to be used again. But what are we all to do if the revolution goes out like a lamp exhausted of its oil?’ He put his hands down. ‘Oh, Antonia,’ he sighed, ‘if only, for the first time in your life, you’d done as you were told. You’d soon have got used to Eunapius!’

I stepped further away from the catapult. In his genuine despair, Leander was rocking back and forward on it. I could almost fancy I was looking at the remaining strands as they snapped, one at a time. No point in asking who’d set things up for a catastrophic failure. I turned and stared at the looming mass of my palace. When I got back inside, I’d call him names for keeping another of its hidden doorways to himself. I’d pointedly not ask how he’d got past the guards. There could be no spoiling his present fun, however. He must be somewhere up on the roof, hugging himself and breathing self-endearments, as he beheld what an utter fool I’d been made to feel. All the way here, I’d been turning over what to say to Antonia when I got back. ‘Wake up, dearest,’ I’d been thinking to call. ‘Don’t worry about the catapult. I’ve just slipped out and disabled it.’ Nonchalance on one side, astonishment on the other – a nice long fuck to keep us happy till dawn, and then a clear view of baffled rage, or even death or dismemberment, brought on by the ever-resourceful as well as beautiful young Alaric. Oh, I’d have Priscus for this!

But it wouldn’t be a wasted journey through the night, I suddenly told myself. I looked again at Leander. ‘Two men travelling together are surely better than one at a time like this,’ I said. ‘Why not come back with me, my son? You could speak the message of peace and diplomacy directly to the Lord Nicetas. Will he not still be awake? Does he not hang on your every word?’

‘He did tell me to stay put and wait for instructions,’ came the hesitant reply. Leander looked about at what little there was to see in the gloom of the Triumphal Way. ‘And the important men about him won’t like anything that sounds like a compromise. But I can’t say I like it out here all alone. Some of these people have rough ways.’ He brightened. ‘And, if you don’t like the idea of going back alone, I suppose I could come with you as protection. A man of the church shouldn’t be expected to risk himself alone in these streets. You never know what might happen on a night like this.’

‘Indeed, my son,’ I said. Unmoving in the darkness, Rado hadn’t enough Greek to follow the discussion. I’d have to trust him to guess what I was about and play along.

I didn’t fancy stepping any closer to the catapult. Leander had stopped rocking back and forth on it, but was now kicking his heels against the stock. I stretched out my arm. ‘Come with me, my son,’ I said. ‘All that can be done in this place you have done well.’ I waited for the faint look of doubt to vanish from his face. There was a five-foot space behind the statue of Cicero. Any vagrants sleeping there could be sent packing with a few coppers.

I shuffled into a more comfortable spot on the ledge and leaned back against the chilly bronze. ‘I won’t tell you again,’ I said. ‘If you don’t keep your voice down, my friend will have no choice but to cut your throat.’

The light here was just good enough for me to see Leander run his fingers again through his hair. ‘But you’re mad,’ he said, now in soft panic. He’d tried that argument already, without effect. He cast round for another. ‘How do you know I won’t betray you the moment we’re in the palace?’

Good point – though also easily answered. ‘The young man with the hood still over his face knows who you are and what you look like. All you know about him is that he’s rather big and has a talent for holding a knife to your throat. Aside from him, my household is filled with slaves and freedmen I’ve always treated well and who have more than a certain regard for me. This, I hope you’ll agree, makes for an imbalance of power you should keep continually in mind. If anything happens to me, you’ll be dead meat the moment you show yourself in public.’

I put a smile into my voice. ‘Now, let me go over again what I’ve told you. This time, if you don’t keep begging for mercy, you might understand it.’ I waited for him to finish slobbering more wine from his flask. Scaring him was easy – and there would be more of that to come. But I really needed him at least minimally on side.

‘The City mob doesn’t count,’ I said, starting over. ‘Your boss can’t be Emperor. The Army wouldn’t hear of it. He won’t carry the respectable classes after a night like this. Unless someone brings him round before it’s too late, he’ll be nursing two blinded eyes in the Fortified Monastery, and his poet will get all the blame for sending him as mad as everyone thinks he must be. That means
you
, Leander. Even if Heraclius is tender to his cousin, he’ll think nothing of having you racked to death, or torn apart by hyenas in the Circus. We are talking about high treason, after all.’