The Philosopher Prince

by Paul Waters

  I had tried all the usual ruses as we descended from the mountains – calling that I needed to relieve myself; and, at another time, crying out that the thongs that bound me were too tight and I could not breathe, and did my captors want no more than a corpse to deliver up to the notary?

  At this they had briefly checked my bonds. But they were no common troopers, and were wise to such tricks. Little wonder, I reflected, if they had spent any time working for the notary: they would have heard all manner of pleas for mercy. Seeing this in their hard faces, I did not abase myself further by crying and begging. I knew it would do no good. I tried not to think of what awaited me.

  I was unloaded from the pack-horse. My ankles were carefully hobbled, bound one to the other with leather horse-straps. Someone, I thought with grim satisfaction, had decided I was dangerous. I wondered whether they would muzzle me too, like a vicious dog. But this they did not do.

  After this, when my captors were satisfied, I was led to the pavilion with its imperial banner.

  All the while, Rufus had stood looking on, shuffling and biting his lip. Now the guard-captain said sharply to him, ‘You too.’

  He almost started back. ‘Me?… But why?’

  ‘Because he asked for you,’ the man said with blunt harshness. They all knew what Rufus had done; and no soldier likes a traitor.

  So we advanced – Rufus glancing uneasily about him; and I like a bound animal, with a sword-point at my back, and the dark open doorway of the pavilion ahead of me, like the mouth of hell itself. It was a cold, clear day. Inside, under the heavy leather of the tent, the light was dim. In a corner, charcoals glowed blood-red in an iron basket. There was a trestle table and a chair; and in the chair, sitting as still as a cat, was the notary.

  He was half-turned away. Between his long fingers he was holding a writing-stylus. The guard had spoken; but for a few moments he resumed working at some document spread before him. Then, calmly, with finical care, he set the stylus down on a little stand of carved ivory, eased back his chair, and stood.

  His eyes passed over me, taking in the ties and straps. He was wearing a close-fitting felt cap against the cold, and a long robe of featureless black wool. He did not smile or laugh out in his triumph; yet all the same I sensed the satisfaction in his thin, olive-grey face.

  His eyes shifted to Rufus, and beside me I perceived the boy’s shock. Whoever had dealt with him up to now, it would not have been the notary himself.

  ‘Where is the other one?’ he asked suddenly.

  I heard Rufus swallow.

  ‘It was too difficult to get them both,’ he pleaded, taking a step forward and spreading his hands like a supplicant. ‘But this is the one you wanted most… the man said this was the important one.’

  The notary looked at him coldly, taking his measure, reading his weakness and his fear. The silence unnerved Rufus; he drew his breath and began, ‘But I—’

  But before he could go on, the notary silenced him with a voice like a lash. ‘I asked for both, yet you bring me one. Now one will have to suffice. Go now – get out and leave us. You will be given gold, or whatever it is you want.’

  He waited until Rufus had hurried out. Then he turned. Moving with his odd, precise steps, he crossed to the latticed fire-basket with its burning coals. The heat had made the iron basket glow.

  For a moment he paused beside it, seemingly warming his hands. Then he reached down, and slowly, from the lower half of the basket, where the fire was hottest, he drew out a metal rod and held it up. It was twisted at one end, like a farrier’s hoof-knife, but longer, with a protecting handle, so he did not burn himself.

  ‘Did you think I had forgotten?’ he said, turning to me. ‘I had not. My enemies never escape me.’

  ‘I had finer things to think of.’

  ‘Ah, yes,’ he said amused, ‘your philosopher-prince Julian – another young fool, who will soon be crushed.’

  He turned the implement in his hand, eyeing it closely, as a gem-cutter might examine some precious stone.

  ‘I can feel your fear,’ he said, in his smooth voice. ‘I can smell it.’

  ‘You are a monster.’

  ‘I am an artist. And I am powerful. Do you know why? – But no, how could you? You do not understand the depths of power. I am powerful because the powerful need me. I am necessary. The weak, and the fastidious, avert their gaze. That is my strength. I dwell where they dare not look.’

  ‘And,’ I replied to him, ‘it has turned you into what you are. You take pleasure in it, and seek words afterwards to justify your pleasure. You are corrupt. No man could live with what you do and remain sane. It is only tyrants who need creatures such as you.’

  I suppose he had expected me to beg for my life, and I guessed from his face that it was seldom that his victims answered back as I had. Now his mouth hardened. For a moment he was silent; then, with a sudden turn, his arm sprang out and he struck my naked upper-arm with the rod from the fire.

  I cried out from the pain. Through clenched teeth I said, ‘Is this your proof, or mine?’

  ‘How simple you are!’ he murmured. ‘I have humbled men far stronger than you. Do you really think you can withstand me with your empty show of bravery? I will flay your dignity away, layer by layer, and you will be screaming out for death long before I have finished my work. You have no conception of how slowly time can pass.’

  My mouth was dry. I swallowed. He saw this, and smiled.

  ‘Then have it done,’ I said.

  ‘Oh yes, it will be done. But not here.’ He set the rod aside. ‘Other matters are pressing. We shall wait until Constantinople, where my workroom is. There you shall know the true extent of my art… Guard, take him out!’

  I was held in a barred, wheeled cage, chained like a captured beast. Seeing I was not to be killed at once, someone threw me an old blanket, and gave me a dish of bean-broth. We set off next day at dawn, down from the foothills into the plain of Thrace, with the men on horseback, and the notary riding in a shuttered carriage. Rufus I did not see.

  We came to Philippopolis, and spent the night in a military barracks on the outskirts of the city. The barracks was almost deserted, and I supposed the same must be true throughout Thrace, as far as Constantinople itself. Julian’s speed had taken the emperor unawares.

  But, for me, this knowledge was of no use. My captors were taking no risks. No doubt they knew what they could expect, if they failed the notary.

  I found I noticed every tiny thing – the wheeling flocks of swallows against the sunset sky; the scream of a kite at dawn. I thought of death, and the gods, and of Marcellus, whom I should not see again. It would be many days before he knew even of my absence, and then he would have no way of telling where I had gone. Rufus – or, more likely, whoever had guided Rufus – had been clever, sending him off to the hills while I went elsewhere to Succi. In my mind, I saw him searching the bluffs and gorges, supposing I had fallen; and for this I grieved.

  We travelled onwards, following the imperial highway along the Hebrus river.

  At Hadrianople a man in an official’s garb with a loud, pompous voice came asking after the notary. I caught no more than a few distant words. When the guard next came with water and food and pushed it under the bars, I asked what the man had wanted.

  ‘Nothing to concern you,’ he answered as he walked away. ‘Government business. Shut up.’

  Whatever it was, shortly after, I saw the notary hurrying off with the official, his gliding form silhouetted against the flaring night-torches. My instinct told me something was wrong. But no one behaved naturally in the presence of the notary; and in the end, when I saw the notary return and everything proceeded as before, I told myself I had allowed hope to cloud my judgement.

  In my waking hours I told myself I could withstand the notary’s tortures; but with the night came the knowledge of my vanity. Even the guards treated me with a kind of respectful fear, avoiding my eyes, as though I were a bad omen, a portent of dark
terrors best kept away.

  The following morning we set out once more, along a road lined with tall cypresses and fruit-orchards. It was early still. A daytime moon showed large and low in the cloudless sky. I sat propped against the bars of my wagon, thinking of what Julian had once said: that the heavenly bodies, the sun and moon and stars, were images of the invisible gods, which our minds might touch. A stillness had come over me that morning, and for a short while, even in my wretchedness, my spirit lifted and I knew that the notary’s world, for all its pain and power, was a lie – it was a mean, circumscribed, shard of a vision; terrible, but false.

  I gazed out, thinking these thoughts. Some way off, descending along a side-track from the low surrounding hills, an old man was leading a train of mules laden with baskets and amphoras. He paused and idly stared, and his eyes settled on mine. Though his face was wizened as the bark of an old cedar, his eyes were full of life and power. I felt it, even from so far; and in spite of myself I smiled and raised my hand. He gave a stern nod in acknowledgement, then looked away and pointed.

  It seemed so odd that he should do this that I shifted myself round to see. On the road ahead, from the direction of Constantinople, a company of cavalrymen was approaching, on fine Cappadocian horses with scarlet saddle-cloths and gleaming headstalls. The men were uniformed; but at their head was a man dressed like the notary, all in black.

  He gestured for us to halt; then called out, asking for Paulus. I saw Paulus glance out from the little shuttered port of his enclosed carriage; then both men disappeared inside. I could not make out what they discussed; but at one point, from the small square open window, there came the sound of voices raised in disagreement, and I heard the notary cry, ‘What, must it be now?’

  Presently the two men emerged from the carriage, both with pinched, troubled faces. The second notary’s eyes slewed over the line of mounted guards, and rested on the wagon where I was sitting. Turning he said, ‘I shall take the prisoner.’ But at once Paulus snapped back, ‘No, he will stay with me.’

  Whether the second man was junior to Paulus I could not tell. But it was clear he was awed by him, or afraid. ‘As you wish,’ he said, after a pause.

  Guards came. One opened the great iron padlock of my cage and ordered me out. He ignored me when I asked what was wrong; but the guard behind him, the one who had brought me food and water at night, muttered, ‘The notary must go at once to Asia, to the emperor.’

  ‘And me?’

  He shrugged. ‘You go with him.’

  After this I was bound less firmly, for from here I had to ride, the caged wagon being too slow.

  We took the road due south, following the Hebrus river. There was an air of urgency; and, with the urgency, something else I could not quite gauge – fear, perhaps, or foreboding; a sense of something momentous beyond the horizon, which the guards had not been told of. Even the notary was preoccupied and impatient; and I was almost forgotten, though from his place at the front I heard him order that my bonds be checked, and that two men should ride each side of me to guard me.

  Eventually we reached the mouth of the Hebrus and the sea. Here a fast imperial cutter was waiting. In the confusion of boarding, I overheard enough talk to know where we were bound: we were going to the emperor. Constantius, it seemed, was returning from Antioch to Constantinople with the court and army. He had paused near the city of Tarsus. But why the notary was so urgently required I could not tell. The pilot was ordered to make all haste; and for three days we proceeded south and east, around the coast of Asia with its inlets and purple, wooded coastline.

  But after we had passed the city of Knidos, where we spent the third night, the wind suddenly changed, and from the tiny, barred window of my cell in the hold I saw long fingers of pewter cloud extending up from the south. Soon the vessel began to roll, and I heard the rowing-slaves complaining that the sea was coming in at the oar-ports. But we did not reduce speed.

  Presently I heard footfalls on the ladder, and the pilot appeared on the steps. For a few moments he paused in the poor light and regarded me curiously from a distance; then walked across and looked in at the bars of my cell.

  I had noticed him on deck when I was led aboard. He was a brisk, grizzled sea-hand, the kind I had met often as a boy when I worked with my uncle in London, the sort of man who knew his trade, and said little that was not to the point. I had seen at once he did not like the notary’s overbearing tone.

  Now he said, ‘The notary says you are dangerous. Are you?’

  ‘Only to my enemies,’ I answered.

  He gave me an appraising look, then asked what was it that I had done to displease the emperor. When I told him he said, ‘It is rumoured that Julian honours the old gods, even though he was reared a Christian.’

  ‘The rumours are true. The gods are timeless. No emperor’s edict can destroy them.’

  He looked at me with an expression of frowning approval under his beard. He had respect for the gods, like all sailors. He knew enough sea-wisdom to know that nature will not be tamed by man, like a horse under the whip.

  He had not walked off, so I asked, ‘Are we in for a storm?’

  ‘We may be – they come up from nowhere in these parts.’ He seemed to consider for a moment. Then, stepping up, he unlocked the gate of my barred enclosure. ‘Best you come on deck, my friend. You will be safer there.’

  The notary was standing at the far rail, glaring out over an angry, lead-coloured sea. When I appeared he snapped round and cried, ‘Why is the prisoner on deck?’

  ‘A precaution,’ answered the pilot, with a flat edge of defiance in his voice. ‘You said he was important.’

  Just then the deck lurched. The oars rose out of the water as the ship rolled, and from the oar-decks below I heard the rowers shout and curse. The last of the sun vanished behind grey cloud. Our progress slowed.

  ‘Tell them to row faster,’ demanded the notary.

  ‘Fast or slow, oars cannot ply air. I do not know what your skill is, sir, but mine is sailing, and I am telling you that with a roll like this we must alter our course or we shall founder. We will put in at Rhodes until this storm passes.’

  The notary gave him a cold, dangerous stare, not liking the pilot’s tone. His fingers gripped the rail as the ship tilted again.

  ‘Very well; do what you must.’ And he turned away.

  For all his effort at control, he could not quite hide his anxiety. I could almost have laughed. Did he fear death after all, I asked myself, this man who had presided over the deaths of countless others?

  We struggled into Rhodes harbour with the last of the sunset. I was taken off by the guards and locked in a small stone-walled keep behind the shipyard. I saw nothing of the notary; but during the evening one of the pilot’s crew-men came with a dish of fish stew and half a loaf. He was friendly, so after I had thanked him I said, ‘You might just forget to lock the door on your way out.’

  But he shook his head at this, and told me that guards had been posted all about. ‘No one is trusted,’ he said. ‘Eat your food.’

  The storm blew for three days. From my cell I could hear the water roar and break along the harbour wall. By the time we put out to sea again the notary’s impatience was starting to show. But eventually, on an overcast afternoon, we pulled in to the port of Tarsus with its great arcaded front, and ashlar wharves, and lines of warehouses and slipways.

  As soon as we docked the notary rushed ashore, and for a while I was held on the quay with the guards. The emperor, it seemed, had moved on, northwards to the Cilician Gates – the pass that leads through the Taurus mountains to the high Anatolian plateau.

  There followed a long delay while men were sent about the city to search for transport. ‘What are these?’ cried the notary, when they returned with three gaunt, squalid mules. ‘Must I see to everything myself?’

  But the vast imperial entourage had requisitioned whatever horses and carriages there were to be had. Even the wretched mules had cost as
much as fine riding horses.

  We set out north, following the road beside the Kydnus river, with the notary riding on one mule, and his documents and other baggage carried in leather satchels and bound-up wooden boxes on the others. The rest of us trudged after him – I with my wrists bound to one of the guards.

  Ahead, beyond the fields and orchards of the sea-plain, the vast barrier of the Taurus mountains surged up, rising in undulating folds of green and grey to high, snow-capped peaks. And, below the peaks, on one of the distant foothills, centred on a hillside village, there lay spread over the slopes like a gigantic patchwork blanket the tents and covered wagons of the imperial encampment.

  Night was falling by the time we drew near. Across the encampment torches were being kindled. They flared against the deep blue of the evening sky.

  We approached through eddies of wood-smoke from a thousand cook-fires, past cattle-and horse-pens, and store-wagons stacked with all the freight of war. There were tents everywhere, row after row, extending in serried ranks in every direction, until the land sloped away and I could see no more. The air reeked of assembled humankind, of ordure, and of roasting meat. Men called to one another; dogs barked; and somewhere, among the tents, a shepherd’s pipe was playing, picking out a slow lament, amateurish yet haunting, full of simple feeling.

  The notary seemed troubled and preoccupied. I hoped that in his haste he would leave me in one of the tents, or chained outside – where, it seemed to me, my chances of escape were better. But he was not so distracted that he had forgotten his hatred. We continued through the sprawling camp to the village that lay at its centre, and here I was taken to a small square building with hewn stone walls like a fountain house.

  Inside, set into the floor, was a barred grate, and darkness beneath.

  ‘Down there!’ ordered the guard, heaving open the grate while another let down a rough wooden ladder.