The Ghosts of Athens (17 page)

The other three blocks that surrounded the courtyard were all of two storeys. The ground floors had originally been given over to slave quarters and kitchens and offices. The upper floors seemed to be smaller copies of the grand front rooms or of the living rooms. This arrangement may have been intended to match the custom in the wealthy houses in every great city where it isn’t hot all year round. In the summer months, the household would have moved upstairs to catch the sunshine and whatever breeze might blow. In the winter, it would have been downstairs for the heating.

The main difference was that none of the upper rooms seemed to have been divided. On second thoughts, the place did look as if it had been looted. Chairs and other furniture had been ripped apart for their gilding, and left in heaps of dust-covered wood. Busts had been pulled from their niches and left broken on the floor. Even door handles had been cut away where they might have been of some valuable metal. The padding of my feet on marble tiles or what had once been polished wood echoed round the bare rooms that lay beyond the library. Every so often, the lightning illuminated the utter bareness of furnishing, and the sound of thunder on bare walls and ceiling added to the effect. If anyone had lived here in ages, I’d have been surprised. I was here now only because, assuredly, there was someone else up here.

I passed through what might once have been a lavishly arranged dining room, and through various other public rooms. Between the lightning flashes, my lamp threw dim and flickering shadows against the walls. In one room, a lightning flash brought me face to face with a life-size statue of Demosthenes. It was still painted, and gave me more than a momentary shock. I made myself stop and look at this, and laughed to settle my nerves. It was a marble copy of a bronze original. I could tell this from the expansive waving of both arms. One of these had needed support from a rod of painted metal that ran discreetly from hip to wrist. The eyes may once have been set with semi-precious stones. Of course, these had been prised out, and I looked into pale, empty sockets.

In another room, I found myself staring at the remnants of a mural. Most of the plaster had fallen away in sheets that had crumbled on the floor. But the central group remained of a man and woman with a young boy. They stared back at me with the big, mournful eyes of the modern style. The boy held up a waxed tablet and an iron stylus. There might have been other family members. But only these now showed. Once or twice, I was saved only by accident from stepping on heaps of broken glass or ceramic. I’d been silly, I told myself, not to go back to my room at least for a pair of sandals.

It wasn’t on my way, but I let myself stop for a long inspection of a side room that had once been some manner of court. The vaulted ceiling was covered in an elaborate mosaic showing the trial of Socrates. Many of the little tiles had dropped away, and lay on the floor in heaps where someone appeared to have swept them and then failed to gather them up. Though stained now with water leaks from above, the walls had been painted a uniform dark that drew attention to the brightness of the ceiling. On a platform at the far end, the judgement chair was of cracked ebony. There had been inlays of gold or ivory. But these were now missing. The other tables and benches were arranged in the usual manner. On a low table beneath the judgement chair, I saw the faded remains of a transcript. Years of damp and sunlight had wiped the text almost clean. Only individual words and fragments of words remained to suggest that the court had last been used to try a case of testamentary fraud. So far as I could tell, the case had been adjourned so the lower-class witnesses could be tortured. If it had ever been resumed, it wasn’t in here.

The Imperial bust was of the Great Justinian. That suggested things had been interrupted by a sudden appearance in court of the plague that had swept away half the Empire and permanently diminished even Constantinople. I closed my eyes and imagined the terrified scraping of chairs and muttering of the formal adjournment as all must have run from a place where someone had collapsed in the trembling fit that usually announced the arrival of plague. Until then, the palace may have been a living administrative centre, with clerks toiling in every room and a continuity of life unbroken since ancient times. After then, it may never have been the same.

What had led me out of my way was the trail of little footprints in the dust. They began just inside the door and went hesitantly about the room. They’d stopped before the judgement chair. It looked as if someone had been trying to pick up one of the cushions of dark silk that had been arranged there for the judge’s comfort. It hadn’t been a successful act. The cushion that was lifted out of its ancient place had burst and sent crumbled wool all over the floor. From here, the footprints led straight out again. I bent down to look at the little prints. Reasonably fresh, they showed the bare feet of a woman or a child.

I straightened up and stretched cold muscles. It was hard to say how long I’d been wandering about. Once I was out of the library, I had thought the storm was passing away. Instead, it had come back, and was reaching another climax. Except I was on the upper floor somewhere in the left block of the palace, it was hard to say exactly where I was. It was a long courtroom, and, unlike with the library, its length went into the block rather than along it. This surely indicated another mass of rooms that I hadn’t yet seen. I went back out into the corridor and looked from the side window into the courtyard. A handy flash of lightning told me I was nearing the end of this block. Another dozen yards or so, and the corridor would swing right into the far block, and I’d surely be approaching where the light had been shining.

I went down a long corridor lined with doors to what had probably been individual sleeping quarters. I reached the far side of the palace from my room, and counted myself down another long corridor. At the fifth door, I paused and listened. These were thick doors, lined probably on both sides with leather. Never bright since refilling, my lamp was beginning to flicker in one of the more vigorous draughts. Feeling suddenly nervous, I lifted my right hand and knocked gently on the now brittle leather.

I thought at first I’d picked the wrong door. I knocked again, now harder. I was about to move on, when I felt the slight impact of someone pushing against the door from the other side.

‘Who is it?’ a woman called. It was a low voice, with just a trace of alarm. Except she wasn’t likely to be a slave, it was hard to say anything through two inches of padded wood about the owner of the voice.

‘I am the Senator Alaric,’ I answered, trying to keep my voice steady. ‘I arrived here this morning. I rather hope the Lord Count made you aware of my presence.’ There was a long silence. Embarrassed, I was thinking what else to say, when I heard the scraping of an inner bolt. The door opened inward a few inches. Silhouetted against the inner brightness, a face looked out at me. ‘Your husband didn’t tell me he had his family with him in Athens,’ I said.

The woman stood, looking out in silence. Then she pulled the door fully open. ‘My Lord is mistaken,’ she said. ‘The Lord Count is not my husband.’ She stopped and smiled shyly. ‘But my late husband’s brother would surely be displeased to know that I had opened my door in the middle of the night to a perfectly naked young man – Emperor’s representative or not.’

She had me there. I’d clean forgotten I was unclothed. With a blush and a mumbled apology, I turned and got the sheet unfolded and hastily wrapped about my middle. I was just in time to avoid showing Nature’s inevitable salute. From what I could see of her, the Count’s sister-in-law wasn’t at all bad-looking. About thirty, and with the faintly dark looks of the East, she was the first woman I’d seen since leaving Alexandria. Sveta, of course, didn’t count – nor the elderly cook Priscus had tried to beat. If she’d been a slave, I might have honoured her with a request before setting down to business. But you don’t begin an acquaintance with free women of the higher classes by suggesting a quick jump into bed. On the other hand, she hadn’t squealed and made all the usual fuss. Now, she stood in the still open doorway, plainly inspecting the uncovered upper parts of my body. I was suddenly aware that my last depilation had been in Alexandria. I was showing areas of blond stubble on my chest and lower arms that suggested anything but my exalted station. I resisted the urge to unwrap the sheet and rearrange it in the semblance of what the Greeks had worn in ancient times. Unless I turned round again and showed the comical whiteness of my bottom, it would have revealed my interest far too plainly.

While I was thinking of anything to say that wasn’t ludicrous, I heard within the room the staccato sound of a child’s coughing. ‘Your child is sick?’ I asked.

Again, she smiled. She stepped back from the door and motioned me into the room. There was a strong smell of something aromatic in the little brazier that kept the room warm.

‘Not my child,’ she said. ‘Not, at least, my own child.’ She led me over to a small bed, where a child was twisting and spluttering in its sleep. ‘My husband left me with a son from his first marriage. I am all the poor child now has.’ She sat down beside the bed and fussed with the blankets. ‘You might say he is all I now have.’ She smiled sadly and stroked the boy’s dark hair. As there was more lightning and I waited for the answering thunder, he groaned and threw off the blanket that had been tucked underneath him.

I stood back from the bed and looked about the room. Though large, it was plainly furnished. There were some book rolls of the old kind and a box of toys. There were a few unmatched chairs and a table. I took it that this was the child’s room. His stepmother must sleep in the next room. There was another door in the room that probably led through to this.

‘There are no slaves to assist?’ I asked.

Her answer was a shake of the head. It was a final and, so far as I could tell, an entirely reasonable denial. I could see it would be worthless to ask if she’d heard anything in the main block. It was too far away. Plainly, she’d been wholly involved with caring for the sick child.

‘The Lord Count has long lamented that his budget leaves him without means to afford such comforts. The household slaves do what they can to help. But they are now assigned to guests of considerably more importance.’ She got up and crossed the room to play with the wick of the single lamp.

‘I do most earnestly apologise,’ I said, ‘for disturbing you so late at night. But Nicephorus did give me to understand that we were the only other residents here apart from himself.’ I paused and chose my words. ‘If you will allow me to speak with the Count, I will ask for you and the boy to join us for meals. I’m sure no scandal would be caused. I have no doubt you had the freedom of the residency before we arrived. It would sadden me to think that you were both confined now to these rooms.’

The woman looked back from attending to the lamp and smiled more brightly. ‘The Lord Count is my only kinsman,’ she said. ‘That does not make him my keeper. I am a widow, and am free to come and go as I please. I have stayed up here only because my presence might have been thought an inconvenience to yourself. And it would please me to be able to eat in comfort.’ She came and stood again beside the bed. ‘I do believe I heard young children crying after you had entered the residency. If so, Theodore would surely delight in their company. He sees no children of his own age. Even much younger children would be a joy for him.’

I took a few steps backwards in the direction of the door. You can always be sure when you think you fancy someone rotten. You can usually be sure when you think someone fancies
you
rotten. I was pretty sure on both counts. For the moment, it wouldn’t do to outstay my welcome. Besides, there was something faintly unpleasant about that aromatic smell. There was a hint of beeswax about it, and of something much dryer and sweeter that I couldn’t place. The woman seemed unaware of it. But if it was intended as medicine for young Theodore, she’d long since have grown too used to it to notice the smell.

I turned various stratagems over in my mind. ‘I regret that I didn’t catch your name,’ I finally said. There was a very white flash of lightning.

She laughed, now happily. ‘Then you must forgive my want of manners,’ she said once the thunder had done its work. ‘I am Euphemia, born and married in Tarsus, widowed in Hierapolis, now transplanted to Athens.’

‘Then, My Lady Euphemia,’ I said with a bow, ‘I am delighted to make your acquaintance.’ Without bothering to die away, the storm seemed now to have stopped. I could hear the rain, no longer driven by wind, pattering gently on the window panes. A perfectly irrelevant thought crossed my mind. That disembodied voice in my dream had addressed me not in Greek, nor even in Latin, but in English. How very peculiar!

The storm really had ended, and ended as abruptly as a water jet is turned off. Now, as I went back through those desolate rooms, the clouds vanished and the still and silvery light of a fullish moon streamed through every window. Now in what would, but for the continued splashing of water from a dozen entry points overhead, have been complete silence, I padded over floors of various covering. The relative silence and the new patterns of light and shadow made it seem I was in a different place entirely. The family mural shone with a brightness that bleached all colour from the faces. Except for the outstretched right arm, Demosthenes stood in darkness. Every statue that remained and every moulding on the ceilings and walls threw still and impenetrable shadows.