The Ghosts of Athens (Aelric)

by Richard Blake

  I watched his dithery progress down the hill. Show Martin a sword, and he might faint away with terror. Give him the job of producing order out of chaos, and he’d generally shine. I thought briefly about the thickness of our own main gate. I wondered yet again if the residency had any deep cellars, and if access to them might somehow be concealed from an armed break-in. But this was something best looked at in person, and while the light held up. As Martin went out of sight behind one of the monasteries, I turned back to the others.

  More of the militia leaders had appeared, and Priscus was explaining something about the western gate. Their heads were coming closer and closer together over the map.

  Chapter 42

  ‘I rather think the hour is up,’ the Dispensator said, now beside me. ‘Shall we not resume proceedings?’

  I stared past him. ‘I think His Grace the Bishop of Nicaea will now put in an appearance,’ I said.

  And Simeon it was. Dressed in his full clerical finery, he staggered in the heat and from the effort of running uphill. He stopped for a moment and waved his stick at a couple of small, very dark boys who’d got in his way. As they danced out of reach, he hurried forward again, and picked his way over the stones that littered the clearing at the top of the hill.

  ‘The end is upon us!’ he cried in shrill terror. ‘The hour of repentance is come!’ He tripped over a stone, but clambered straight up. He gave one look at the sight beyond the walls and raised his arms. ‘“For the great day of His wrath is come; and who shall be able to stand?”’ he now squealed. He sat down heavily on the ground and poured a handful of dust over his head. It spoiled what was left of his hair styling, and settled on his face where the tears had been running.

  I stood over him and glowered. ‘And where, My Lord Bishop,’ I asked with quiet menace, ‘have you been all day?’

  His answer was another desperate look at the gathering mass beyond the walls, and several more verses from Revelation.

  I finally gathered that he’d been watching a continual stream of refugees, from round about and from Decelea, entering through both gates. It seemed, as he’d listened to the tale of horror that Decelea had become, that he’d lost all sense of time or of his duties. He’d now come up here, I gathered, because, unless he took the more punishing route up to the Acropolis, or grew a pair of wings, the Areopagus was the highest point in Athens.

  The Dispensator gave him a very cold stare before looking away. ‘There is, I believe,’ he said to me, ‘a most ingenious metaphor yet to be heard in Gundovald’s speech. I am told he began work on the text in March. I can understand your concern at its lack of superficial relevance. But his kinsmen in the Frankish royal house would not be pleased to learn that it was never delivered in full.’

  As good a reason as any, I thought, to get back under cover. There was sod all I could do out here. This was definitely a job for Priscus – and one he’d surely do to the best of his considerable ability.

  But Simeon had now started a bubbling laugh. ‘We’re under siege,’ he sobbed. ‘You can’t go on with the council.’

  ‘I must remind you, My Lord Senator, that the hour is up,’ the Dispensator said with flat finality. He gave Simeon a contemptuous sniff.

  Simeon responded by bursting properly into tears. For once, they were making full sense to each other without any need for interpreters.

  Behind me, I heard Priscus laugh. ‘If you don’t want a good, hard kicking, dear cousin,’ he called over, ‘you’ll do as you’re bleeding told. If Christ has a Single Will, the rest of us can at least agree on our duties.’ He stood up and pointed at the old court building.

  ‘My Lord Fortunatus,’ I whispered, ‘please take His Grace of Nicaea inside. Please also apologise for me over the continued delay. I will rejoin you as soon as I can.’

  The Dispensator nodded.

  I watched as he got Simeon over the stones and hurried him past the Monastery of Saint Dionysius the Areopagite. Outside the meeting hall, the street was crowded with a mob of bishops. I saw one of them climb into a carrying chair. Another was trying to pull his robes off. The Dispensator got to them before they could all run away. But I could doubt if even he would be able to get everyone back inside and seated in readiness for the session to resume.

  I walked over to where Priscus had gone back to jabbing a finger at his map. His militia people bowed to me and stood respectfully back. ‘So we definitely are working together again,’ I said in Latin. I looked down at a chorus of screams beyond the walls. But the dust was now too general for me to see its cause. ‘Can I take it that you switched last night, when you saw the flickering from Decelea?’

  Priscus grinned back at me.

  There was nothing new to be learned from putting this into words. But it was worth spelling out for the avoidance of any doubt. ‘The deal now is,’ I added, ‘that I give you a free hand in the defence of Athens. You keep your nose out of Church business. If the walls don’t give way, we can both go back to Constantinople covered in glory. The Great Augustus can forget all about whatever may have happened in Alexandria. That bag of eunuch shit can look on in helpless rage as a few palace trinkets get melted down to commemorate what we’ve achieved in Athens.’

  Priscus smiled and gave me a gentle nod. ‘We stand or fall together, dear boy,’ he said.

  If I hadn’t known him better, I’d almost have believed him.

  I looked down the hill again. The Dispensator still hadn’t got everyone back inside. Instead, he was deep in conversation with Simeon through the Bishop of Athens. As I was about to go down towards them, the Dispensator took Simeon roughly by the arm and pointed up in my direction. I looked past them to the foot of the hill. My heart skipped a beat as I saw the dark and silent crowd pressing forward. At the least, it looked as if there would be yet another delay before Gundovald could get back into his interminable speech.

  As convenor of a Church council, it just wouldn’t have done to come out with a sword. Priscus was armed. So, after a fashion, were his militiamen. I had my own three guards who hadn’t gone off with Martin. That didn’t add up to much of a defence against a mob of several hundred of the Athenian lower classes.

  But I made an effort to look confident. ‘Be about your business,’ I called out. ‘The city defences are in good hands.’

  There was a low muttering of anger. The crowd parted and someone stepped forward. ‘You’ve brought them here,’ he said in more or less comprehensible Greek. He pointed at me and then at Priscus. ‘What have you done with the Boss?’

  ‘If you are referring to His Excellency the Count of Athens,’ I said very slowly, ‘it is he who has withdrawn from his duties. If any of you have information as to his whereabouts, a reward will be paid. If you have nothing else to say, I do suggest you go back about whatever business occupies you by day.’

  I paused to draw breath and for a shift of tone. ‘But, men of Athens,’ I now cried, ‘the barbarians are at the very gates of your city. Both duty and interest surely require us to set all differences aside and work together for the common good. Let us—’

  Any thoughts I might have had of repeating my oratorical triumph of the morning came to an end as a stone thudded hard into my chest and I found myself sitting in the dust. I sprawled left just in time to avoid another stone aimed at my head, and I heard it land somewhere behind me. Someone far back in the crowd laughed unpleasantly, and everyone took a step forward. I saw a man at the front bend to pick up another stone. I scrambled to my feet and hurried over to where the Dispensator was standing in the doorway of the court building.

  ‘Best get everyone inside,’ I said. ‘I’ll see what I can do out here.’

  I might have sounded more in charge of things if I hadn’t now tripped over one of the uneven steps and fallen straight into his arms. He steadied me and pushed me under cover. He gave me a funny look and walked into the street. Paying no attention to the stone that brushed the sleeve of his best robe, he raised both arms to the cowering bish
ops who hadn’t already got themselves inside. I heard another stone slap against one of the walls. I heard another go high and rattle against the tiles of the roof. Sword out, Priscus had got himself and his men under cover of a bricked-up porch. What good they’d do against this lot I couldn’t say. But one of the older bishops had dropped his walking stick. I bent and picked it up. It might be good for something.

  ‘Get that door shut!’ I called in Latin as yet another stone landed at my feet and I went over beside the Dispensator, who was looking annoyed at the further disruption. I was about to suggest a quick dash inside. If we barred the doors, the mob might eventually decide not to try breaking in after us.

  But Priscus had now finished his conference with the militia heads. He stepped out from the porch, sword in one hand, my convenor’s bell in the other. He stopped in the middle of the street and ignored the roof tile that landed at his feet. He turned and grinned at me. I wondered how he’d got the bell from where I’d left it. But he stepped a few paces towards the mob that was continuing to move steadily forward, clubs in hand, looks of twisted hate stamped on their faces. He laughed into the faces and began ringing the bell. It sounded loud in the still air of the afternoon, and the mob came to an uncertain halt. As I wondered if he’d gone raving mad, I heard a shuffling from up the hill. They came from the top of the hill, where I hadn’t seen them. They came from the side streets, which is where they must have been sitting about all day. It looked at the time as if they really had emerged like armed men from the dragon’s teeth in the legend of Jason. But, as the bell stopped ringing, and Priscus raised his sword, the several dozen armed men from the better classes of Athens formed a dense and organised mass in the street, and stood waiting for instructions.

  ‘You have a choice,’ Priscus cried at the mob. ‘You can get back to your filthy burrows, and leave your lives to the defence of your betters. Or you can suffer the penalty of those who really piss off the Commander of the East.’ He looked round at his men. Some of them had swords. Some had long, spiked clubs. Some had bows with arrows already in place. He looked back at the mob, which still hadn’t come forward, but didn’t look inclined to disperse. He laughed and put himself at the head of the militia. ‘If these vermin really mean business,’ he said, ‘so do we! Keep together – no falling out for any purpose – but we go forward and kill until the streets are clear.’

  The Dispensator took hold of my arm. ‘I think we can leave things with the Lord Priscus,’ he said.

  As he drew me back inside, I continued looking at the opening moves of a street battle that, with Priscus on one side, could have only one outcome. The men right at the front of the mob did make some effort to stare back. But those behind were already making a quiet bolt for the side streets that radiated from the bottom of the hill. And then the front men themselves turned and ran.

  And that was it. Priscus sheathed his sword and bowed in our direction. ‘I can’t answer for the enemy outside the walls,’ he called out. ‘But the enemy within should take no further interest in your exploration of the Nature of Our Lord and Saviour.’

  His men put away their weapons and let up a happy cheer.

  The Dispensator was plucking harder at my sleeve. ‘My Lord Gundovald is ready to take up his speech again whenever you choose to reconvene the council,’ he said.

  I nodded and forced myself not to hurry forward as we walked back inside.

  I should have expected there would be a trap. But the immense length and irrelevance of his text, combined with an inclination to dwell on external events, had left me unprepared for when Gundovald finally looked up and began to speak extempore. Much of this was as irrelevant as his text. Three sentences, however – uncharacteristically clear sentences, I might add – had skewered me on one of my weak points. Back in Constantinople, I’d dithered for months between making up a doctrine of a Single Will and making up a similar but separate doctrine of a Single Energy. I’d finally decided on a Single Will because it had a more logical neatness, and because it was better calculated to turn Monophysite heads. Now the old fool had raised the possibility of a Single Energy, and gone straight on to cite the Acts of two ecumenical councils against it. Luckily, without Martin there to assist, the duty interpreter had so mangled his words that the Greeks were unaware of what he’d really said. But the Latin delegates were beginning to look as if they might start thinking for themselves.

  I was coming to the second half hour of the water clock in my speech of clarification. The interpreter was totally lost, and reduced several times to consulting with his colleague for the right words in Greek – and a fat lot of good that did him or his listeners: his stammered paraphrase was as wildly off mark as an arrow shot by a dying cripple. But I had to stamp out the fires of doubt among the Latins.

  ‘You will find the same declared clearly in the eighth chapter of definitions to the Acts of the Council of Constantinople held in the reign of the Great Justinian of august memory.’ Here, I shut my eyes and made my best job of translating the relevant passage from memory into Latin. ‘Moreover, before coming to any conclusion about particular facts of orthodoxy, I would remind the most learned fathers here assembled of the rules by which orthodoxy is distinguished from heresy. A man may depart from orthodoxy in two ways. First, he may deny the Gospels outright. Second, he may deny those logical inferences from the Gospels to which he chooses not to submit. A heretic departs from orthodoxy in the second of these ways. As such, he remains within the True Faith, though in more or less grave error.

  ‘I do venture here to correct a verbal slip of the most learned Bishop in his definition of apostasy. An apostate does not deviate from orthodoxy. Rather, he moves from a position of belief in the Gospels to a position of disbelief. Apostasy is further to be distinguished from heathenism and blasphemy. A heathen is one who has never believed in the Gospels. A blasphemer may or may not believe in the Gospels, but always treats them and all based upon them in a manner that causes deliberate scandal among the Faithful.’

  There was a loud breaking of glass overhead, and a large stone crashed on to the floor a few feet to my left. A few shards of broken glass settled on my robe. I raised my arms to quell the rising panic within the hall and looked at the Dispensator. He shrugged and got up. Just before the main door, he turned and made a long bow to me. Listening in the silence that followed, I heard a shouted order that wasn’t from Priscus, followed by a scream of pain. I swallowed and tried for a smile as I looked round the hall. The interpreter had vanished under his table, and the minute clerk had thrown down his stylus in despair. But the Dispensator was now back in the room. He shook his head and sat down again. Another moment, and he was scratching away with his stylus as if there had been no disturbance.

  I looked at the water clock. This session had been prolonged far beyond what I’d expected. But I pulled my thoughts together and continued: ‘If I may return to the main issue, a man can be a heretic either from ignorance or by act of the will – that is, he may be a material or a formal heretic. So far as material heresy is not an act of the will, it cannot be regarded as a sin. Therefore, the fanciful theology of women or of the lower classes should be corrected whenever encountered, but not punished. However, any person of intelligence and learning, who is made cognisant of his deviation from orthodoxy, and who persists in his deviation – he is rightly considered a formal heretic, and may anathema fall upon his head . . .’

  So I spoke on in the still and heated air, to a rising chorus of shouting and screams from the street outside. There was a trumpet blast, and now the clatter of what may have been a single horse. From the intense look on his face, the Dispensator might never have been out of the room. Certainly, he’d not be followed by a hundred enraged and stinking beggars, come to beat us all to death. Even so, the Greeks, who now had not the smallest notion of what I was saying, sat looking nervously at each other. A few twisted their beards with the strain of all that had happened and was still happening. Others fell into various mode
s of silent prayer. But I had little doubt the militia was winning. If Priscus was right, and the barbarians wouldn’t attack until at least the following day, this was just the right excuse for imposing order on the city. Once the barbarians did move against us, we couldn’t afford a rising of the urban trash behind us. As I reached a dramatic pause in my discourse on the various meanings of ‘Person’, I looked again at the Dispensator. He caught my look, and stopped scratching away on his oversized wax tablet. He stared briefly back, one of those thin and mildly triumphant smiles on his face.

  Someone at least was enjoying himself.

  Chapter 43

  In its best age, I’ve already noted, the Athenian taste ran to buildings small but perfectly formed. The great Temple of Jupiter was an exception. Though not big at all by the standards of Rome or Constantinople, it was vast in Athenian terms. Its bulk loomed high over the wall that it nearly joined. Then again, it had been started by the tyrant Pisistratus as a symbol of his might. It had then been left unfinished by the democracy that followed the downfall of his son – too expensive and now too old-fashioned, I could suppose. After seven hundred years, it had been completed by Hadrian on his celebrated visit. No expense had been spared, I’d once read, and the archaic design had been followed as if all the improvements in construction of the intervening centuries hadn’t taken place. Now, its outer colonnade had been bricked up on its conversion to some other use, and it was surrounded by other low buildings that made the original plan hard to follow.

  ‘Oh, there is a sort of administration here that’s independent of Nicephorus,’ Priscus said with an airy wave. ‘Don’t ask me what it actually does. But we can be glad that, in the chaotic administration of the Empire, not every city council has been abolished.’

  I nodded and bowed to avoid knocking my head on a low point in the ceiling. Normally, after four days in a city, I’d have made a full inspection of how it was administered. If I was still pretty much in the dark about Athens, this was the natural effect of having concentrated on religious affairs – and on staying alive.