Terror of Constantinople

by Richard Blake

  ‘In virtue of this,’ I continued, ‘I release you from your vow for the purpose of my audience with you.’

  At this, the Abbot looked up. I thought for a moment he’d open his mouth and scream obscenities before attacking me. Instead, he clasped his dirty fingers harder together and looked back down.

  ‘We are aware that His Holiness of Rome stands at the head of all the Patriarchs,’ the clerk replied smoothly. ‘By law, he has primacy of place. And you have full authority on his behalf to make such a release. However’ – the clerk was beginning to enjoy himself – ‘Constantinople is not Rome or the West. You are within the jurisdiction of another Patriarch. Any communication from His Holiness in Rome must be passed through the office of our own Patriarch, who will, I have no doubt, be pleased in due course to send it down for our own miserable attention.’

  Dear me – how very troublesome that the Greek Patriarch was indisposed!

  I tried yet again: ‘Then you will surely accept that I speak also with the authority of our Most Sacred Emperor. I need to ask questions of the Reverend Father. He would not wish to impede the urgent business of the Empire?’

  ‘Indeed not!’ the clerk exclaimed, raising his hands in mock horror. ‘We are loyal citizens of the Empire. As such, we must without question obey every lawful command of His Majesty. If we choose not to obey commands unlawful to our faith, we are still obliged as citizens to stretch our necks meekly forward for the sword of execution. But we are convinced that His Most Sacred Majesty would never issue an unlawful command. You might therefore wish to return to him to seek a clarification of your warrant.’

  I gave up on the Abbot. It was hard to imagine how he could run a monastery without opening his mouth. But there was no shaking their story in the time I was willing to give them before Heraclius broke into the city and the murder investigation was redundant.

  ‘Then perhaps you, sir, might be able to assist me,’ I said to the clerk. ‘There are several monks from your Order who with great kindness and diligence have been looking after the garden at my Legation. The last time they were definitely there was on the day before His Excellency the Permanent Legate was brutally slain. I appreciate that they cannot answer any questions put to them with regard to what they might have seen that day. But it would be most useful if I could have their names and if I could at least see their faces.’

  ‘I do regret’, the clerk replied in a voice that sounded only just the wrong side of genuine, ‘that I am not at liberty to comment on any aspect of our internal management. Only the Reverend Father can do that.’

  I looked again at the Abbot. Had I misjudged him? Was that anger he was suppressing, or the urge to burst out laughing?

  ‘That wasn’t very productive,’ said Martin in Celtic. We stood in a second-hand bookshop that I hadn’t yet seen. It was coming on to rain, and I’d decided to take shelter there until a chair could be procured.

  ‘On the contrary,’ I said, ‘it was most productive. I fail to see how Demetrius could have slipped out of the Legation unless dressed as one of these monks. It may be the same with his accomplice. My suspicion that he is inside those walls isn’t yet confirmed. But it has been strengthened.’

  ‘But, surely,’ Martin asked, ‘if he thinks you know that, he’ll now move on.’

  ‘Look over there,’ I said, pointing at a Black Agent who was trying without much success to look inconspicuous in a doorway. ‘I’ve had one stationed near every known entrance to the monastery. Demetrius might get out through some hidden tunnel. But with Black Agents combing the city for him, there’s nowhere else for him to go.

  ‘What I do next is get a permit out of Theophanes or the Emperor for a search. Give me Demetrius and I’ll have the truth out of him. Then I’ll pass him to Priscus to die under questioning.’

  I turned to the bookseller. ‘Now, you listen here, my good man,’ I said, back in Greek and holding up a battered, crumbling roll of papyrus, ‘I know exactly how much these old things are worth. For this and the five others I’ll give you one quarter solidus. I’m doing you a favour to take them off your hands. Have you bothered opening any of them to see what loathsome blasphemy they contain? Sell them to me, and I will compose a refutation of their contents before destroying them. Keep them, and I will denounce you to the Prefect.’

  The bookseller sniffed at my threat and told me that he might have other things of interest to me in his back rooms. He’d picked up a senator’s entire library at auction. He shuffled away, in the certain knowledge that I’d follow him.

  As we haggled over the price of what I had found, Martin darted around to try and stop one of the chairs. But I was hardly thinking of the rain now coming down in sheets. I was thinking even less of the investigation.

  As I pulled out roll after roll – no modern books here with pages bound in sections – the bookseller raised his prices. I just couldn’t keep the look of greed off my face. When I got to Porphyry’s banned attack on the Christian Faith he began demanding a solidus per roll.

  But you should never not buy a book. You might never see it again. I negotiated hard, but I did so from an obviously weak position. In the end I got everything for twenty-five solidi, and the bookseller threw in as a freebie some of the anti-Christian writings of Celsus – one of the last big Epicureans, you know – that I’d already seen in the University Library but hadn’t, dared pass over for copying.

  The second-hand book trade, the man assured me as I hesitated, was completely unregulated in Constantinople. You could buy what you liked, he said, and no record was taken for the authorities to add to your file. I’d heard this before, but had never bought any books such as these.

  By the time I’d arranged for their delivery, Martin was soaked and the chair-men were muttering about their waiting charge. But I was content. I wiped the book dust off my hands on the curtain of the chair and settled back for the journey home through the wet, militarised streets of the city.

  Martin might be grumbling as he walked along beside me. But it had turned out so far a very productive day.

  49

  The light was gone. So too the rainclouds. The stars again looked down from a perfectly clear autumnal sky. The bright crescent of a new moon was climbing among them.

  Yet another shift in the wind, and the cold spell had come to an end. Woollen overclothes and a jug of warmed red wine were all that were needed to sit outside. For light, we had an enclosed lantern with glass sides.

  Martin had found the roof garden on one of his tours of the Legation. It was a railed square, about ten foot by ten, cut into the roof. You reached it by going to the end of the corridor which ran past the Permanent Legate’s rooms. Here, a door just like all the others led not to another room but to a staircase leading straight up.

  It was a fine discovery. Sitting up there by day gave an unbroken view of the city. Look in one direction and you could see straight over to the Great Church, and in the other the main public buildings. Look aside from the central area, and you could see right over the city, either to the bleak countryside that stretched beyond the old suburbs outside the land walls, or to the sea and then to the shores of Asia.

  At any time of day, it was about as private as could be desired.

  Martin was first to break the long silence. ‘Antony tells me’, he said, ‘that every division in Egypt and every Syrian division not actually fighting the Persians has been brought in for the siege.’

  He waved over the rooftops at the continued darting of lights on every stretch of water we could see.

  ‘There won’t be an assault,’ I replied, quoting Priscus. ‘The walls are impregnable. The question is when and how the gates will be opened. But this brings us to the matter in hand,’ I added, reaching into my bag. I pulled out a single sheet of papyrus, rolled and held in place by a leather band. I handed it to Martin and waited for him to read it.

  He looked up, confusion on his face. ‘What are you trying to do?’ he asked.

  ‘You’ll
see that it bears both the legatorial seal and that of Theophanes,’ I said. ‘His seal gets you out of the city. Mine will get you through the Heraclians and across the water to Chalcedon. I’ve made up a purse for your immediate needs, and I’ve had Baruch make out drafts in your name.

  ‘I want you and Maximin and Gutrune to be at the Eugenian Gate first thing tomorrow. You’ll show this permit to the guards. They’ll have had instructions from Theophanes. Then you approach the most senior officer outside the walls for help with the onward journey.

  ‘You get into Chalcedon. If possible, you move on to Nico media. You wait for things to settle. If they’ve gone badly back here, you get yourself, Gutrune and the child to Rome by whatever route you think the least unsafe.’

  Martin waved impatiently at me. ‘There’s pestilence outside the walls,’ he said. ‘I was looking over them earlier. I could see the bodies being carried away from the main camp – dozens at a time. Will you expose Maximin to that?’

  ‘And do you suppose’, I retorted, ‘it will be any safer here once I’ve winkled Demetrius out of that monastery? Theophanes likes me far too much to kill me unless he must, but I am pushing rather close to that “must”. Besides, nowhere in the city will be safe once the street-fighting starts.

  ‘You go without me, and you go tomorrow.’

  ‘I won’t leave you.’ Martin’s voice was shrill. ‘With no one around you to trust, you’ll be dead within a day.’

  I sipped at my wine and chose my words. ‘Martin,’ I said, ‘I wish you hadn’t raised the question of trust. But now that you have, I really must ask what trust I can have in a man who’s been spying on my every move since we arrived in Constantinople? Spying on my every move and reporting it to Theophanes!’

  If I’d punched him hard in the stomach, he’d not have looked more winded. I refilled his cup.

  ‘No, Martin – you just sit there and listen to me,’ I said, cutting off a weak attempt at interruption. ‘I could list dozens of occasions when Theophanes knew what we were about before I told him. But I can’t be bothered. I decided a long time ago that you were feeding him information.’

  I stood up and looked over the rail at the build-up of forces. Little as I knew then of war, I wondered at how feebly the City was defended. Phocas had no navy for open-water fighting. But he had enough ships to block the Straits to this sort of operation. It was going ahead without interference.

  I turned back to face Martin. He was slumped forward in his chair and crying softly. I took his hands in mine but he turned his head away and continued crying.

  ‘Martin,’ I said softly, ‘there was one mystery in this City that I did clear up almost at once. I still don’t know who was behind the curtain in the Great One’s tent, but I’m sure I know who was breathing down my neck two months ago in the Ministry.

  ‘I don’t suppose you could see how I was nearly pissing myself with fright as I sat there with Alypius, half expecting at any moment to be dragged to the basement. Afterwards, as I walked home, I realised I’d been got there so that Alypius could pass on a warning from Theophanes against further snooping.

  ‘But it was the note from Theophanes next morning about that cot for Maximin – that plus your own uncharacteristic behaviour with the wine and opium – that aroused my suspicions.

  ‘You killed the old Court Poet, didn’t you? Theophanes knew you’d done it, and put the frighteners on you by shoving me in that room. I imagine you told him you could brave any horrors he might subject you to in the dungeons. But you couldn’t face me, and he had me there ready at hand, just in case that was needed to break you.’

  But for the occasional breeze and the faint sounds of the city and those passing and re-passing ships, we sat in silence. Martin looked at me and opened his mouth. Then he looked down again. At last, he found his words.

  ‘The old eunuch threatened to expose me in front of you. He said you might be roped into the trial. He said he couldn’t guarantee your safety or that of Maximin. You’ve seen for yourself the terrible looks and words he can manage when he isn’t trying to charm.’

  ‘The man was Court Poet under Maurice,’ I said. ‘I suppose he had a hand in smashing you and your father up.’

  I poured out more wine for us, and drew my cloak about my legs. Martin looked up at me and smiled.

  ‘You know,’ he said, ‘I didn’t want to come back to Constantinople. I knew it would be a disaster. Even so I really did hope, before we arrived, that I could stick close by you and behave as if I’d never been here before. Then the eunuch had us to lunch and made me dig up all those memories of what happened before.’

  ‘You mean’, I asked, ‘that Professor of Rhetoric done over on some more than usually inventive charge of treason?’

  ‘That’s the one,’ said Martin. ‘He led the pack against my father. It wasn’t all his own money he put up to pay off our debts. But he collected it. He issued the bankruptcy petition when we couldn’t pay. You should have seen his face when we met in court.’

  Martin closed his eyes and thought back to that dreadful day. He wasn’t up to explaining the details of the case as it unfolded. But I managed to reconstruct for myself that the Anthemius petition had been an excuse to involve the tax authorities. Without Anthemius to push them, they’d have waited, reasonably sure the tax bill would be paid. With the matter in court, they had to hurry forward to grab what they could. That had allowed the ban on enslavement for debt to be set aside.

  They’d got their cross petition granted without a hearing and without any hope of appeal or delay of execution.

  Martin and his father had gone in as free men. They emerged as bound slaves. People they knew turned from them as they were marched along the street to the market. His father had collapsed and died as he stood on the slave block. Anthemius had made a derisory bid for Martin – the sort of bid that pulls down the final selling price.

  ‘I couldn’t get Anthemius,’ Martin continued after another reverie, ‘but I could make a start on the others. I might never have acted at all, but for an accident.

  ‘I was called in by Theophanes a few days after your first brush with Priscus in that restaurant. We met in his office, where he told me of his concerns for your safety. We agreed that you were still very young, and without any experience of City ways. He asked me to keep an eye on you – not spying, you understand. I’d never have spied on you. He just wanted me to guide you away from trouble and report any possible dangers to him in advance.

  ‘When I was still considering whether I could in conscience do as he wanted, he was called out of the room. I’d seen my security file on his desk as I sat down. He forgot to take it with him. So I had a good look.

  ‘We’d already discussed the bankruptcy, and he’d explained that there was nothing he could do after so long to ensure any restitution of property. But I knew the file must contain the names and addresses of the people Anthemius had got on his side. I committed all the details to memory and then rearranged the file so it wouldn’t look as if I’d touched it.

  ‘I was lucky. I’d no sooner got everything right than the eunuch came back into the room.’

  I took another sip of wine. Where this sort of thing was concerned, there must have been more intelligent lapdogs than Martin. He’d waited, he explained, until Theophanes ‘must have’ forgotten his carelessness with the file. The evening after he brought Maximin to me, he’d put his plan into execution. He’d followed the Court Poet as he went out on the pull, and bashed his head in with a half-brick.

  Afterwards, he had shambled round the outer central districts of Constantinople, covered in blood and doubtless apologising out loud to God, before tripping over the bundle that turned out to be Maximin.

  Somehow – Martin swore he couldn’t think how – Theophanes had known he was the killer.

  Their next interview I’d already guessed. Once Martin was broken down by all the terrors Theophanes could imply with a turn of his mouth, it had been agreed that the murder w
ould be overlooked. Of course he’d also impressed on Martin the need for much closer surveillance of me and regular reports. So it had all gone from there.

  I should have been outraged. But one has to be reasonable. No harm had been done. Perhaps Martin had even kept me out of danger, which might not have been the case if I had been spied on by some copying clerk who might actually have stumbled on something.

  ‘Tell me, though, Martin,’ I asked with a sudden thought. ‘Did Authari know about the killing?’

  ‘He grabbed me as I came back into the Legation,’ he said. ‘He helped me get the blood washed off. It was then that we noticed you were missing. He was a truer friend than I’d ever realised,’ he added mournfully. ‘And we had so little time to be friends ...’

  ‘Very well,’ I said, fixing Martin in the eye, ‘I am hurt. But I forgive you.’

  He swallowed. ‘Thank you, Aelric,’ he said. ‘That does mean much to me. I know that God will be less forgiving. I have committed the most unpardonable sin. That means ...’

  For a moment, he had lost me. I’d forgiven him for the betrayal. But now that he’d mentioned it, I thought to pull rank and give general absolution. Then again, Martin had never really accepted me as the Pope’s representative in anything. But it was only for a moment he’d lost me.

  ‘Oh, as for the killing,’ I said, cutting off his talk of hellfire, ‘I shouldn’t worry about God. The man was fair game by any custom. And having looked through some of his poems, I can’t say you deprived the world of genius or even taste.

  ‘Is the work finished yet?’ I asked. ‘Are there any remaining on your list?’

  ‘Two,’ he said. ‘Theophanes did say he would see to them. But nothing has happened yet.’

  ‘Well,’ I sighed, ‘you’ll have to leave them until your next visit. This time tomorrow, you’ll be with Maximin across the water in Chalcedon.’

  ‘I’m not leaving the city without you,’ Martin insisted again. ‘It was my prayers that got us out of the Yellow Camp. I committed my soul to God and myself to His service. I don’t yet know what that service must be, but I feel it concerns you. As you said to me outside the walls, we came together, and we go together.’