The Ghosts of Athens (47 page)

The Dispensator suddenly smiled and lifted his cup. ‘I have already spoken with the Lord Priscus,’ he went on in a different tone. ‘Further to his fittingly humble request, I have given orders for every monk in the city to work under his directions for the building of a second wall behind the weak point in the fortifications.’

I decided not to try looking surprised. He smiled again. With luck, I really might have got him. Or was there something just a little too warm and knowing about that smile?

‘The Commander of the East does not fall below his reputation,’ he continued. ‘His idea of creating a killing field within the walls is most ingenious. Like the drawing of blood from a diseased body, it will be used repeatedly to relax the pressure elsewhere.’

There was a knock on the door. Without bothering to wait, Irene walked in. ‘You’ve got to come back with me to the residency, love,’ she said in Greek. She looked at the Dispensator and bowed about half an inch.

‘Go away!’ I snapped. She was the last person I wanted to see. The Dispensator was already on his feet and looking outraged. ‘You should know women can’t just walk into a monastery.’

‘Well, suit yourself, dearie,’ she said with a shrug. She reached into her satchel. ‘The slave who was clearing out the Count’s office found these underneath the charcoals in one of the braziers.’ She took out and untied two waxed tablets. Safe between them were a few scraps of charred papyrus. ‘They might be important.’

I sighed. Whatever importance they had, I’d never get from here to the residency and then back to the Areopagus in time for the afternoon session. I’d see what she had. Unless they told me something of the utmost urgency, they’d have to wait till evening. I took the scraps and spread them carefully on the table.

‘The very walls resound with evil,’ I read with much squinting. ‘I sit alone . . . The rats depart
. . .
The Dark One lays siege
.
. .’ I looked up. ‘These other words appear to be in Syriac writing,’ I said. ‘Are you able to tell me what they mean?’

‘The Lady Euphemia don’t read no Syriac,’ she said with a loving smile. ‘But that dear little boy of hers tells me it’s some devotional hymn. It’s about the ending of all space and time, though not the return of Jesus Christ.’ She crossed herself and squinted at the Dispensator, who glowered back at her.

I looked again at the scraps. There were other words and phrases in both Greek and Syriac. But they were too fragmentary to make sense without a long inspection. It was all in the hand of a man unused to writing for himself. Even making this allowance, there was something unhinged about the shape and direction of the Greek letters. If Nicephorus had been writing with his left hand, they might have been formed with less appearance of some overpowering emotion.

‘Is there more of this?’ I asked.

Euphemia nodded. She added that the other scraps made no sense at all, but she’d had them set on a limestone table and covered over with large pieces of window glass.

I nodded my approval. I nodded again as she explained that she’d put the office off limits to further cleaning and had locked the door. I’d overlook that she was ploughing as hard as any woman could in my own furrow – there was no doubt she was a woman of sense in more than just business.

‘My Lord will forgive me if I wear my plain robe for the speech,’ the Dispensator broke in. ‘His Holiness is Servant of the Servants of God. It would never do for his representative to address a council in a spirit of less than the meekest humility.’

Meek humility!
I fixed my gaze on the icon of Saint Peter that was the one splash of colour on the otherwise bare walls, and tried desperately not to laugh. If he’d got himself up from head to toe in purple silk, but omitted that astonishing text I’d finally wheedled out of him, meekness and humility might have been a more appropriate description of what the Dispensator had in mind.

He looked carefully into my face. He smiled again – and, once again, it was suspiciously warm. ‘The Lord Priscus may have his reasons,’ he said lightly. ‘But I fail to see why the Lord Bishop of Athens cannot attend this afternoon’s session.’

‘I understand that Priscus has need of him for dealing with the monks,’ I said with what I hoped was a casual shrug. ‘Several of the abbots have objected to the wholesale commandeering of so many of their men. But, since the common people of Athens won’t lift a finger for the defence, the Lord Bishop is needed to explain the plenary nature of your instructions.’

‘It is a shame,’ he said with the mildest possible frown, ‘that, apart from you and Martin, the Lord Bishop is the only one of us fluent in both Imperial languages. Without his presence, it seems the Greeks will have to rely wholly on the interpreters.’

I gave a regretful smile. I’d not have described the Bishop of Athens as ‘fluent’ in Latin – the best I could say was that it was slightly less eccentric than his Greek.

‘Still,’ the Dispensator said, ‘the needs of defence must be respected.’

I stood up and watched as Irene finished putting the scraps away. Anything regarding Nicephorus was important. But this really would have to wait. ‘It will be only fitting, My Lord,’ I said, ‘if I lead you with my own hands to the speaking lectern.’

‘I tell you, he’s gone out again looking for trouble!’ Gundovald quavered from his bench in the street. He was still outside the meeting hall. So was everyone else. Leading them into battle outside the walls would have been easier than ushering them through that open door into the relative cool and darkness.

‘My Lord Bishop,’ I said impatiently, ‘your secretary has been borrowed for the day by His Magnificence the Commander of the East. I understand he is needed for his – for his ability to take notes in Latin.’ Why Priscus should want to make notes in Latin wasn’t a matter I cared to discuss.

‘Oh, but he’s been back since then,’ came the reply. ‘If he’s gone off again, it’s in search of loose women.’ He put his hands together and muttered something pious and disapproving. ‘He’s the son of the King’s Mayor. I can’t take him home covered in open sores.’

I called over one of my slaves. ‘You’ve seen the boy,’ I said. ‘There can’t be many like him in Athens. Take two of the younger men and make a search of the inns and brothels. If they’re still closed, just walk in. When you lay hands on him, bring him straight back. Don’t even bother getting him dressed.’ I laughed at the thought of that small and unclothed figure – and it would be a diversion from the council to see it – and turned back to Gundovald. ‘I’m having him brought here,’ I said. ‘Now, please – I do most earnestly beg of you – get inside that building. All else aside, you’ll get sunstroke out here.’

I looked over the closed faces of the Greeks. ‘The last one of you through that door,’ I hissed, ‘is no friend to me or the Lord Priscus.’

A few of them tried to stare back at me. But the last one to bolt for the door tripped over his robe and had to crawl the last few feet in the dust.

With a gentle splash, and then a gurgle before it settled down into a steady, regular dribble of water into the glass collecting bowl, the clock was put in motion. As Gundovald was finally prodded from behind into silence, I stood up from my chair and bowed. There was a rustling of cloth and some scraping of the chairs and benches, as everyone stood up and bowed at me. I’d sent Martin back with Irene on some made-up errand. I was, I could say with reasonable assurance, the only man present, aside from two heroically useless interpreters, fluent in both Greek and Latin. I smiled and stepped down off my platform. Ignoring the protocol, I walked into the semicircle of seats and opened in Latin.

‘Reverend Fathers,’ I called with a dramatic sweep of my arm, ‘you will be aware of a possible difference between the Latin and the Greek branches of the Universal Church. While no Greek theologian of general note has definitely pronounced yet on the issue, the most learned Hilary of Milan is said to have declared that the faculty of willing is, by necessity, an aspect of Our Lord’s Nature, and not of His Person. If this be the case, Jesus Christ may be said to possess a Human as well as a Divine Will – one for each part of His Nature.’ I stopped beside a deacon who represented the Bishop of Constance, and tried not to scowl at him. If he’d been a Greek, I’d already have marked him down for a transfer to somewhere perfectly horrid for the trouble he’d managed to cause me. I stared up at the eye of the dome far overhead and at the dark blue of the sky far above that, and looked down again, a friendly smile now on my face.

‘But I am familiar with the sermon preached by Hilary,’ I started again very smoothly. I stopped again for the interpreter to come out of his stammering attack. As I’d expected, he was again putting me so badly into Greek that his grasp of Latin could easily be doubted. ‘The sermon was not corrected by Hilary before he was called unto God by a visitation of the plague. It may, therefore, be doubted if so definite an opinion was ever truly in his mind.’

I was about to move to my last point, when there was a sudden noise outside. It began as a blare of distant horns that went on and on. As that came to a close, the thunderous cheering continued. It all underlined how close we were to every part of the walls, and of how utterly and deeply surrounded we were. The oldest and most doddery in my audience could have eased himself out of the hall and climbed on to one of the wooden platforms before the noise of the Great Chief’s arrival had begun to die away.

But this was, in the immediate sense, a matter for Priscus. I stared about the room and waited for everyone to come back to order. Simeon had covered his eyes and was bobbing up and down in his place. One of the Latin bishops yawned and pulled a face at the Bishop of Ephesus, who was dabbing sweat from his forehead.

I held up both arms for attention. ‘An opinion of far more decisive weight than some reported utterance,’ I said with loud cheer, ‘is that of the Universal Bishop, His Holiness of Rome.’ Worse luck, the interpreter had got the hated – if possibly defective – title spot on in Greek. But I stared down the sour looks it produced, and went on with my introduction of the Dispensator. All the Western delegates nodded their approval. I’ll swear the man himself purred, and I stepped over to him and, as promised, led him to the speaking place.

I went back to my chair. I bowed to the Dispensator. He bowed to me. He dumped a thick pile of very pale and uncurled papyrus on to the lectern and cleared his throat. Holding their own texts, the interpreters stood with their backs to him. I smiled and leaned forward in my place.

‘If My Lord pleases,’ I said . . .

I got back to the residency as the sun was lengthening all its shadows. As I’d commanded, the swimming pool placed in one of the secondary courtyards had been cleaned out and refilled. The bathhouse, I’d again been assured, would never do service in its present state of repair. But this would do in its place. I sent my guards off for beer with the other slaves and made my way to the pool. All alone, I threw my clothes off and jumped into the cool water. I swam fifty lengths and tried not to think of anything connected with Church or state. I climbed out and jumped back in. I swam down to the deepest point and tried to pick up what I’d thought was a coin. It was only a chip in the green tiles. I came up and did a back somersault. I let the air out of my lungs and sank back into the depths. The pool was about twelve feet deep in the centre, and I sank slowly. I felt the growing pressure of the water on my ears. I was aware of the cold silence about me. I felt my knees make contact with the bottom, and could feel my whole body settle slowly on the smooth tiles.

I opened my eyes and looked up at the shimmering surface. It wasn’t quite the wildness and infinity of the sea off Richborough. But it was enough, so long as I kept my thoughts out of reach, to let me pretend for just a moment that I was still a boy in Kent – a boy with no other problem than how to fill his belly for dinner, and how to parse the Latin old Auxilius had earlier recited, clause by clause, into my head.

One look, as I resurfaced, at the still dazzling blue of the afternoon sky brought me out of that fantasy. But I did another back somersault and thought of something obscene from Aristophanes. That made me laugh so much, I breathed in a half lungful of water. I coughed it all out and took another deep breath. I went under again and swam over to the shaded end of the pool without coming up. I turned and kicked against the smooth wall and swam back. I’d have made it to the other end. But I was alone and had nothing to prove, and my head was beginning to feel light from the shortage of air.

As I came up, I realised I wasn’t alone.

‘Aelric,’ a voice quavered from the far end of the pool.

I turned over on my back and watched Martin pick his way carefully along the age-pitted marble. He stopped at the nearest point to me and waited for me to swim the last few yards that separated us. As I looked up at him, the sun dipped behind his head.