The Ghosts of Athens (Aelric)

by Richard Blake

  I dithered a moment at the foot of the stairs. I thought of calling up. Instead, I listened hard. No sound. I pinched the wick of my own lamp and waited for it to stop smoking. I set a foot on the first of the marble steps – and pulled straight back. Since I was now relying on the dim light from above, I couldn’t see if it was seed corn or little ceramic beads that had been scattered over the stairs. But it was one of those devices I’d used back home when I needed to plot in some language a spy might reasonably be expected to understand. I held my breath and listened for any sound at all from upstairs. It was pointless with that continual drumbeat of the rain. I bent forward and let my fingers play lightly over the coating on the first and second and on every other step I could reach. It was the sort of cheap beads you put on a string and give to children – or that people wear prominently on their fine church-going clothes to show off their humility. Bare feet wouldn’t crunch on this as boots or even sandals would, but would still make some noise. And little beads would most certainly hurt those ever so civilised and well-pumiced feet. I bent forward again and swept a little space where I could step. Keeping as quiet as I could, I went slowly upstairs, taking the steps two at a time.

  Still alone, I stood amid the wreckage of what had once been a very fine library. One side of its hundred-foot length was taken up with a series of glazed windows. I’d looked up at these from the courtyard and guessed that they meant a library. The unrendered bricks of the big central dome had the sort of reflected gleam on them that said they were of glass. By day, the whole room must have been as light as the open air. The dome was supported by four columns of many-coloured marble. These had once been sheathed over their middle third in bronze. There was still bronze to cover the capitals where they supported the dome. There were even a few traces of gold leaf on the elegant scrolling of the capitals. The middle sheathing, though, was long since gone. Only a paler colour for the marble, and the dark peg holes, showed what had been there. Much of the panelled ceiling that surrounded the dome had come down. Where the plaster still adhered, there were elaborate painting of stars and of gods of the Old Faith, each head within a bright nimbus.

  Back in the days of Herodes – perhaps till quite recently – the library may have contained one of the finest collections in the Empire. Judging from the bookracks that remained, and from where others must once have been, it didn’t seem unreasonable to guess twenty, perhaps thirty, thousand individual rolls.

  But I’ve said I was standing amid wreckage. The four-inch by four partitions in the racks were mostly empty. Many of the smaller racks had been overturned. Chairs lay broken on the floor. Tables had collapsed under various weights. As ever, pieces of glass had come loose from their lead framework, and rain had made its own contribution to the damage. The lighting I’d seen was towards the far end of the room. It was enough to be noticed from quite a distance, though not to give a detailed view of anything. But, even in the dimness, I could see the sad desolation of a grand library. Then there were the continuing flashes of lightning. Between the intense whiteness that blanks out everything, and the sudden darkness before eyes can readjust to the normal light, there is the tiniest moment of illumination. In one of those moments, I looked into what might be a good summary of what Athens had finally become.

  Close by one of the good windows, there was a table that could still be used. It had a chair set to it. Here the lamps were burning – half a dozen of them in an iron holder. As I walked forward into the room, my feet crunched on an area of mosaic tiles that had come loose on the floor. I stopped and looked down to see if there was broken glass there as well. No, it was just dozens of loose stones that had once been the face of one of the Muses. There was no broken glass to worry about. But some of the stones looked sharp. I stepped back and took a longer route to the table.

  There was a taper by the lamps. Cupping this in my hands against the draught that came from every direction, I carried a flame to my own lamp and pressed down the windshield. These lamps had been filled with the cheapest grade of oil, and they let off a nasty, acrid smell along with their rather dim light. But their combined light made a soft and almost welcoming glow. I stood up straight and looked across at the stained murals on the far wall. They showed Athens as it had been at some time in the past; the still unfinished Temple of Jupiter suggested the city in its grandest days. I’d come back for a proper look by day.

  I stood behind the chair and turned my attention to the books that lay on the table. One of these was a roll of the ancient kind. The glue had failed, and the individual sheets of papyrus had mostly separated from each other. I picked one of them up and held it close by the lamps. The bright, aromatic smell of the decaying reeds took me straight back to the time I’d spent in what remained of the great library of Alexandria. Once I’d focused on the light and often faded ink strokes of whatever scribe had produced it, so did the text. It was from the fourth book of the life King Ptolemy had written of his friend Alexander, and this sheet carried his account of the council of war held by the Persian King just before his final defeat. I’d read the whole of this in Alexandria, and it was thrilling stuff. More than this, it had a ring of truth. To be sure, you couldn’t trust any of the passages where Ptolemy himself was in action – but the King had been in a position to get at the full truth about all that had happened, and he’d mostly told the truth unless his own interest was concerned. The last few lines of the page had crumbled, and the next I could find took up the story when Alexander was approaching Persepolis.

  I looked harder and compared the sheets. I’d been right. The council of war was Ptolemy, sure enough. Persepolis was in a different hand and in a more florid style. It might have been Arrian. It might have been some other late author, who’d rewritten Ptolemy and padded his effort with tales of inherent absurdity. This sheet had Alexander in conversation with an owl who was relaying a message from Athena. Vaguely interested, I pushed the two sheets together. There were of slightly different sizes. By all appearances, the reader had gathered up what he could find of Alexander and was going through it all in no particular order.

  The other main work on the table was a huge book of the modern sort. Writing on parchment can be much smaller than on papyrus, and it was hard in this light to see what the book was. Noting how high it was heaped with cushions, I sat on the chair and moved my lamp so close that I had to take care to avoid spilling oil on the pages. I looked up from the wavering text and gave a contemptuous sniff. I found myself staring into a marble bust of Polybius. At some point, this had been knocked from its plinth and then replaced, minus nose and the lower part of its beard. What was left of its features seemed, in the flickering dimness of the lamps, to be twisting into the sneer I could feel spreading over my own face. I looked down again at the text and read with closer attention:

  Now these points being conceded to us, the further point is also clear to any one, that, as Moses says darkness was before the creation of light, so also in the case of the Son (if, according to the heretical statement, the Father ‘made Him at that time when He willed’), before He made Him, that Light which the Son is was not; and, light not yet being, it is impossible that its opposite should not be. For we learn also from the other instances that nothing that comes from the Creator is at random, but that which was lacking is added by creation to existing things. Thus it is quite clear that if God did make the Son, He made Him by reason of a deficiency in the nature of things. As, then, while sensible light was still lacking, there was darkness, and darkness would certainly have prevailed had light not come into being, so also, when the Son ‘as yet was not,’ the very and true Light, and all else that the Son is, did not exist. For even according to the evidence of heresy, that which exists has no need of coming into being; if therefore He made Him, He assuredly made that which did not exist . . .

  Gregory of Nyassa? I hazarded. The references to light and the nature of time were a strong indication. I turned the page – yes, it was Gregory: I’d gone through this with M
artin in Constantinople. Though one of the more ranty of the theologians we’d been pressing for the meaning I needed, he had stood out for his attack on slavery. But who the buggery could be reading this stuff for pleasure? And where was he? Even with this grade of oil, you have to be pretty rich to leave all those lamps burning away like a minor lighthouse. Had he sloped off for a pee somewhere? Had he just vanished like the chancery clerks? I stared again at what was – its inherent absurdity always granted – a most able defence of orthodoxy.

  But I wasn’t creeping, stark bollock naked, about the residency for a spot of midnight reading. It was worth noting that, if there was a copy here of Ptolemy’s Life of Alexander, the library might not be completely worthless. I ignored the tangle of unrolled books that I could now see beneath one of the overturned racks. I ignored the chaotic heaps of modern books of what might have been more controversial theology or just obsolete law texts. They could all wait till the coming of daylight. The wind shifted again outside, and there was a harsh spatter of rain against every one of the windows. As in my bedroom, water splashed through the gaps in the leadwork and added to the puddles on the floor. I refilled my lamp from a flask of that cheap oil, and moved on.

  Chapter 17

  The library was on the upper floor of the left block of the palace. To the right of where I’d been sitting was another door that led further into the block. At some time in the past, it had been locked from the other side, and then smashed open. Some effort had then been made to reattach it to the frame. Now, getting it open more than about eighteen inches caused it to grate on the broken mosaics that covered the floor. I forced it wide open and looked into the darkness beyond. There was a loud splashing of the water that made its way down from a hole in the roof. Its echo told me I was in a room of at least the same size as the library.

  Time, I think, to explain the geography of the place where I was staying. I’ve said it was built by Herodes Atticus. So far as I could tell, he’d tried for a combination of almost Imperial magnificence with something more homely. The result was something of a muddle. The front block of the palace, where it faced on to the Forum of Hadrian, comprised about a dozen very large and high rooms where he could show off his wealth. These were lit by glazed ceiling windows. They were mostly now abandoned or divided into smaller rooms or offices with little regard to the need for natural lighting. Behind these, and facing out into the main courtyard, was a labyrinth of smaller and much lower rooms, lit by side windows or with ceiling windows, or with both. These I supposed were the living rooms for the household. A careful inspection of partition walls and the telltale pattern of the ceiling mouldings might tell what was original to the plan and what had been adapted in the conversion from palace to administrative building. So far, it had just seemed an impenetrable muddle.

  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 t
hat 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.’