The Ghosts of Athens (Aelric)

by Richard Blake

  There was no need, however, to let it sink in fully. I was here at the moment more to impress than to persuade. Suddenly aware of the water clock that was gurgling away beside the minute clerk, I stared down at the quotation from Pope Gregory of sainted memory. From a technical point of view, I’d have done better to quote Sophronius of Miletus. But, after all the foregoing, I needed something in Latin. Before we could reach out to the Syrians and Egyptians, we’d have to pull Greeks and Latins much closer together than they’d been in over a century.

  Martin’s voice had for a while been grating slightly from the strain of interpreting a message that had to be perfectly rendered in both substance and form from Greek into Latin. It would have been better for him if I had prepared a text in advance and let him work on it. But he’d get through my speech without serious trouble. We’d have to trust the local interpreters not to bugger up the rest of the council. It was a rest for both of us to do Gregory in Latin. It was simple work for Martin to put Latin into Greek. The mechanical act of reading gave me time to think of the next long sentence I had in mind. This one, I’d decided on the spot, would have a double subject, and I’d give each of them three levels of subordination.

  And that’s what I now brought out. It was not a total success in my own view. The idea had been to bring out two subjects that, like the Nature of Christ, would be both fused and distinct. Sadly, I threw in an adverbial phrase that I discovered almost too late was properly attached to neither subject. I rescued the slip with a separate clause that broke the iambic rhythm and had a rather alliterative and even a trashy sound. But Martin corrected this in his Latin version. The Greeks either didn’t notice, or didn’t feel inclined to notice. They went instead into another controlled riot of applause and led me into my final passage: ‘And so, My Lords, I have, to the best of my ability, covered the issues that we have been called here to discuss. I must emphasise again that this is a preparatory council – in which the finest minds of the Church have been brought together not to reach a full conclusion, but instead to decide if these issues are worth putting before an ecumenical council to which the heretics will be invited. Of course, the Emperor has empowered you to reach a full conclusion in the negative sense. If you decide that there are no issues to discuss, years of theological speculation, directed by Caesar himself, must come to a sudden halt.’

  My voice faltered slightly here. This hadn’t been intended. I fought at first to control the slight break to the smooth flow of words. Then I realised what a good rhetorical device this would be. It might bring home to everyone the possible consequence of using the free judgement I was allowing them to reach an unwelcome decision. I stole a look at one of the Asiatic Greeks. Though he’d never been advanced beyond a decayed see in the middle of nowhere, he was probably the most brilliant living theologian in the Church as a whole. If he wanted, he could turn this council into a screaming mob. But he was looking back at me with courtly politeness. I made a note to offer him preferment to Halicarnassus. With his frenzied asceticism, the present Bishop there couldn’t last much longer.

  I took another deep breath and continued: ‘But if it is your considered opinion that these issues deserve a full hearing, they will eventually be put to an ecumenical council . . .’ I was now reaching the end. What I had to avoid was the clear implication that a ‘yes’ here would turn any main council into a formality. Everyone must have realised that this was the intention: after all, why call ‘the finest minds’ together simply to decide if the main question was fit to be picked over by all and sundry? But I wanted the option both of a done deal and of plausible deniability should our needs suddenly alter.

  And now I was definitely finished. I sat down to another storm of applause. Men ran forward to embrace my knees. I nodded grandly at the shouted acclamations. Slumped over his own lectern, Martin had the look of a man who’s just been acquitted in court of something horrid. Well he might. Well he might, indeed. His public duties could now be far gentler. A slave had come in to the room to reset the water clock. I glanced at the list of agreed speakers. Some of these had picked up enough of the superior gossip in Constantinople to have had some inkling of what I was about. For most of them, what I’d just said must have come like a thunderclap. What anyone would say between now and the final session was a mystery. But the main consult could now begin.

  Chapter 41

  Thinking of Diogenes on my way here had called to mind one of those possible, if slightly improbable, stories of the old days. Apparently, Plato had set all his acolytes in a twitter with his definition of man as an ‘unfeathered biped’. He was still basking at his next lecture at the applause this had got him when the naked and half-crazed cynic burst into the lecturing area with a plucked chicken. ‘Look, Plato,’ he called in a loud voice, waving the chicken over his head, ‘look, I’ve found you a man!’ Doubtless, he’d got himself straight on to the list of those who’d have to be clubbed to death in a cellar if ever Plato got his perfect society. The only public response, though, was an amendment of the definition of man to an ‘unfeathered biped with broad toenails’.

  I’d been presiding in this now baking hall for what seemed an age. My opening speech had been the high point in the day’s proceedings. This over, we were soon into the hard grind of the other speeches.

  When you’re enthroned at almost Imperial height, and every speaker has to address himself to you from a position where everyone else in the room is looking at you, it puts nodding off out of the question. So I’d passed much of the morning and most of the afternoon thinking of Diogenes, and wishing he could burst in on us with any disruption – witty, profound, or merely obscene. I moved sweaty feet under my robe of office and stole a glance at the note I felt I’d made a month before. ‘My Lord Bishop,’ I said in a tone that evil old Phocas himself couldn’t have found offensive, ‘you have now been speaking for three hours of the water clock. There are seven other speakers on my list, and the sun is moving against us. Would it be possible for you to summarise your remarks?’

  Gundovald of somewhere close by Marseilles looked up from his text and gave me the smile of an aged timewaster. ‘Oh, but Your Magnificence,’ he said in sweet rebuke, ‘the citation from Pope Gregory of sainted memory is wholly appropriate. If I may continue with the second page—’

  ‘But My Lord Bishop,’ I hurried on with inflexible charm, ‘I can promise the whole extract from his sermon will be inserted into the official record. Can I, however, draw your attention back to the matter we are currently supposed to be investigating? This is whether the ninety-fifth Canon of the Council of Agrigentum can be taken, in its Latin version, neither to imply nor discount a Single Will as well as a Single Nature for Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ?’ I stopped for the interpreters to put this into Greek, and then for a mutter of answering prayers from the Greeks. I looked about the room. As I’d allowed, the Dispensator was seated right at the front of the gathering at bishop’s height. He’d been following Gundovald with rapt attention – well he might, as it was a Pope being cited – and was now taking notes with such force that his stylus cut through the wax and was scratching loudly on the underlying wood. I let my eyes come to rest on an empty place a few yards to his left. I’d not bothered waiting for Simeon to put in an appearance. I’d not commented on his lack of so much as a written apology. I’d do more than slap the insulting old loon’s face the next time we were alone. Transfer to a frontier monastery wouldn’t be the half of what was waiting for him when he touched dock in Constantinople. He’d never set eyes again on that nice episcopal palace in Nicaea.

  Gundovald was still looking for the right beginning to his answer. I thought round for some helpful prompt that couldn’t be taken for a slight. Perhaps I should have let him run on. I could feel a slight but insistent buzzing in my loins. Of course, only Diogenes could have got away with active wanking in public: ‘If I could but stop being hungry by rubbing my belly!’ he’d famously responded to the complaints. But I was beginning to fee
l that I might take myself off without hands if I thought hard enough about Euphemia.

  But why bother with Euphemia? If old Gundovald was a timewaster, his secretary was decidedly worth a second look. I’d been aware of him since the old man had walked creakily over to the speaking place. Like a focusing of eyes in the sunlight after a nap, I’d gradually realised how much the boy looked like a younger, smaller version of myself. Without any sense of a crossing point from one to the other, interest had ripened to lust. I might seduce him over the next few days, against the time when Euphemia would start using her time of month as an excuse for sleeping at night. In any event, he and she could now alternate in my thoughts till I’d brought myself quietly to boiling point. Then I could think of myself.

  Yes, I decided, I’d give way to the old dear. I could then set my face like stone and keep myself occupied till the clock ran out of water again and I could call a break to proceedings.

  I had my mouth open to speak when I felt a gentle plucking at my left sleeve. ‘Your Magnificence,’ a voice breathed in my ear, ‘the Lord Priscus would ask a moment of your time.’

  Typical of Priscus to piss all over my one bright patch in this horrid afternoon, I thought. I stood up. Forty-seven pairs of legs creaked as everyone else got slowly up and bowed. ‘Gentlemen,’ I said in Latin, ‘this session is adjourned for one hour of the water clock.’ I repeated myself in Greek. Without waiting for Martin to untangle himself from the mass of unrolled papyrus that now covered the bound volumes of earlier council proceedings, I stepped down from the platform and made for the exit.

  I balanced on the topmost stones of the ruined wall and looked down from the Areopagus Hill. Part of the view was blocked by the still higher Acropolis. Otherwise, I had an unbroken view over Athens to its wall and beyond. I shaded my eyes and looked again.

  ‘They must cover the ground as far as Piraeus,’ I muttered in Latin. I turned and looked to my right. The sea of wagons and moving humanity stretched almost as far as I could see before the great single cloud of dust became impenetrable.

  ‘Still not twenty million of the buggers,’ Priscus said back at me. ‘We can be sure of that. But I’d not try counting them.’ He sniffed and clutched harder at the slave who’d been supporting him as we walked up the hill.

  ‘I suppose they’re here to demand food,’ I said, keeping my voice low and neutral. ‘The question, then, must be how long they can stay here before they run out of what food they have.’

  ‘Spot on, dear boy,’ came the reply. ‘But it depends how much they managed to loot from Decelea. It also depends how much we have in the warehouses.’ He nodded down at what now looked a pitifully insubstantial city wall. ‘They’ve no talent for siege warfare. We held Thessalonica for three years with four hundred men. If they took Decelea, I don’t imagine the walls were in better repair than when I last inspected them. So long as they don’t realise they could batter parts of our wall down with a few hundred men in the right formation, I think we can sit this one out.’

  Priscus let his face break out on a grin as he found himself a round stone of the right size and sat on it. I felt sweat running in a continual trickle down my back. I could try telling myself it was the effect of sunshine on several yards of quilted blue silk. But there had been too many moods of doubt or hypothesis in what he said. Outside Athens, there might be a whole people on the move. They were flowing about our wall like water round a stone. The wall enclosed an area perhaps three-quarters of a mile across at the widest. Even if it didn’t fall inward at the first push, it was surely too long to hold if attacked at too many points. But the area it enclosed was too small for anything approaching defence in depth.

  I jumped down and sat on another stone beside Priscus. I found myself looking over at the Acropolis. A thousand years before, the Persians had taken this. Back then, however, it had been guarded by a wooden palisade. Since then, it had been surrounded with proper walls. As originally built, the Propylaea had been a weak point. Since the first barbarian siege, though, this had been strengthened. Could we withdraw to the Acropolis and hold that? I wondered.

  Priscus looked into my face and laughed. ‘Good for a last stand,’ he said, nodding over at the collection of white buildings. ‘Unless it starts raining again, though, there’s a problem of water.’

  ‘You told me you provisioned the citadel of Trampolinea,’ I said, ‘by setting up a block and tackle to carry up water.’

  He grinned and scratched under his cloak. ‘We had regular soldiers there,’ he said. ‘That meant we could largely ignore public opinion. Athens will be defended by its own people. Show any lack of confidence about the walls, and you’ll have the barbarians looking in at you, and rioting behind you.’

  I changed the subject. ‘We’ll never get them to Corinth,’ I said.

  His face darkened as his mind came back to the obvious. Such danger as we might run personally was an occupational hazard. But how to keep everyone else safe?

  I rubbed my eyes and looked back down the hill. Sure enough, there was Martin walking towards me, deep in conversation with the Dispensator.

  ‘Don’t look round please!’ I urged inwardly. ‘One look round, and you’ll shit yourself in public.’ I got up and readied myself to take Martin aside.

  Priscus cleared his throat and spat. I looked thoughtfully at the bloody gob that had gathered in a bright ball on the dust. ‘Sooner or later,’ he said in the tone of one who labours against a coughing fit, ‘someone will come forward for a parley. We’ll try and organise it by the northern gate. The wall’s at its strongest there.’

  Martin didn’t disgrace me. When he did eventually look round, he simply pulled a face and went into some patter about the Will of God.

  Ignoring him, the Dispensator hurried forward and scowled at me. ‘I regard this as an insult to His Holiness,’ he announced.

  I opened my eyes wide and looked at him. Then I realised he was referring to Simeon’s absence.

  ‘My Lord, if I might draw your attention to what is happening beyond the walls,’ I began.

  He darted a glance to where I was pointing and gave a longer inspection to the wall. He looked for a moment over the swirling masses of humanity and snorted. ‘This is a matter for you in your secular capacity,’ he said. ‘Bearing in mind what I heard on my arrival here, I am not at all surprised if we are now under siege. My own concern, however, is how a council of the Greek and Latin Churches can proceed when the leading representative of the Greek Patriarch will not attend even its opening session. I feel increasingly that my time is being wasted, and am strongly inclined to say as much in my report to His Holiness.’

  ‘I am myself puzzled by the Lord Bishop’s absence,’ I said with diplomatic concern. ‘I am sure it has a good explanation, and I can promise that it will not be repeated. And I think his colleagues are all agreed on the value of what has been said today by their Latin brethren.’

  The Dispensator scowled again and sat down on the stone I’d vacated. Having nothing else to do, he looked harder at the barbarian tide that surrounded Athens on every side. Somehow, the wall now seemed even longer, and its enclosed area even smaller. There was a distant sound of cheering to the north. A line of horsemen had emerged from the dust. They were carrying long pikes held upward, and were followed by half a dozen large wagons. I saw them bumping and pitching as they came off the road and made for an open space about a hundred yards from the wall. As they all came closer into view, I saw that each of the pikes was topped with a severed head.

  ‘So these are the Avars,’ the Dispensator said, now with mild interest. ‘They attempted an invasion two years ago of Italy. It was serious enough for the Lombards to break off their siege of Rome, and for us to agree not to counter-attack while they marched north to resist the invasion.’

  ‘We are fully aware of your dealings with the Lombards,’ Priscus broke in. ‘The Great Augustus does not always approve.’ He’d made a vague effort at the menacing, but his main attention wa
s now taken up with a large map of the city defences that he’d been given by someone who wore a cooking pot on his head in place of a helmet.

  The Dispensator gave one of his chilly smiles and turned his inspection back to us. ‘Be that as it may, My Lord Priscus,’ he replied, ‘the Lombards do occupy much of Italy, and we have given up any hope of Imperial help in removing them. Besides, even if enslaved to the damnable heresy of Arius, they are Christians. These people’ – he waved a hand to the still gathering mass beyond the wall – ‘are, excepting a few of their Slavic allies, heathens. When I negotiated his lifting of the siege, the Lombard King assured me they practised both human sacrifice and cannibalism.’

  That was news to me. But there was no doubt the Avars were savages. By comparison, the Lombards were almost genteel. I gave a curt bow and went over to where Martin was looking glum.

  ‘Get up,’ I whispered, offering a hand. He looked up from where he was sitting on the ground. I did think of assuring him that we were all perfectly safe behind the city wall. But he knew me too well to believe anything I might say about that. ‘I want you to hurry back to the residency,’ I said. ‘Take two of the armed slaves who came out with us. Do tell Sveta to stop her packing.’ I looked carefully at him.

  He swallowed and gave a slight bow.

  ‘Also,’ I went on, ‘I want to make sure that the supplies we bought yesterday are properly stored.’