The Ghosts of Athens (Aelric)

by Richard Blake

  ‘And I suppose everyone else believes this?’ I asked.

  He shut his eyes and his breathing became slow but regular. I thought he’d drifted into unconsciousness. But he opened his eyes again and, though without success, tried to focus.

  ‘You know she came here just a few years ago with Theodore,’ I said. ‘She’s no more a witch than I am. You’re the fool if you believe other than that.’

  With a great effort of will, he raised a hand and waved his forefinger slowly from side to side. ‘My dear boy,’ he whispered, ‘that tunnel we found is only the beginning of what lies under Athens. The whole city throbs with evil, and you must be the only man in the Empire who can’t feel it. Did your clerical friend tell you how many human remains he found stuffed into that tomb?’ I tried not to step back. He noticed and laughed softly. ‘I don’t suppose he did. After all, since you don’t believe anything, there’s no point even telling you about it. But this isn’t what’s important. Wait till she reappears, and then keep hold of her. You really will find her useful in Constantinople. Just make sure to keep her out of the sun till she’s done her work.’

  He shifted again on his bed and tried to keep his focus on me. ‘But tell me,’ he croaked, now uneasy through the rising waves of oblivion, ‘what do you think happens after death? Do you believe in a Final Judgement? Or do you really believe that death is the end of all things?’

  I thought hard. I’d decided at once what he didn’t want to hear. The real question was how bastardly I felt about his own performance in the barbarian camp. The answer was very. I settled my face into a look of vague piety. ‘We are assured, both by Scripture and by the teachings of Holy Mother Church,’ I said, ‘that death is but the passage to a new and eternal life. Perhaps not now, but eventually, your eyes will close one last time on the world that you have done so much to make into a nightmare. You may then sleep a few days, or a hundred years, or a hundred thousand years. It will all be nothing to you. Finally, though, when the Seven Angels have sounded their seven trumpets, and the Tribulation is passed, Christ will come back in glory, and every tomb will give up its dead. Then, as naked as the day you were born, you will stand before the Throne of God, and you will be judged for every one of your sins. I know you have no doubt that you will be judged truly, and that your resurrected body will be handed over for everlasting punishments beside which all that you have ever done to others will be as the brush of one of the flies that now crawl on your flesh.’

  Yes, it was a bastard thing to do, and I’ll make no excuse. I didn’t even feel the joy he would have felt as I looked down into that white and terrified face. But I guessed that I’d got him at just the right moment. In a while, he’d drift away into dreams that would be of the only hellfire he’d ever know. Between then and his slow return to waking, I had little doubt that he’d pass through every semblance of infinity. Yes, I knew the effects of opium – and I knew why, of all the drugs in his wooden box, opium wasn’t among them.

  I stood up and nodded to the doctor, who bowed respectfully. ‘Will he recover?’ I asked, now in Greek.

  He pulled a face and shrugged. The Lord Commander, he told me with the endless equivocating of his profession, might be on his feet again within a couple of days, and, with increasingly frequent relapses, last another few years. He might, on the other hand, not see out the night. It all depended on the hidden progress of his consumption. He waved vaguely at the icon of Saint Luke that had been placed above the bed.

  I looked about the untidy room. I could have sent the doctor out and begun a search for any secret documents. But I really doubted if there was anything at all to find that I didn’t already know. I was still looking at the door of a small cupboard when I remembered there was real work to be done. I tried to brush away a lock of my hair that was covering one of my eyes. The blood that had soaked into it was now set like something a hairdresser would have envied.

  ‘Tell me if there’s any change,’ I said to the doctor. He bowed low as I walked out of the room. There was still work to be done – and it could start with a bath.

  The long day of battle was fading into the west when I caught up with the Dispensator. He was overseeing some hesitant repairs to our one piece of long-range artillery. This was the machine that fired the six-foot bolts. It had broken down long before the attack was over, and didn’t strike me as likely to see action again. We climbed up the ladder and stood together on the wooden rampart, and looked down from the walls over the carpet of still uncleared death that stretched before us.

  ‘Aren’t those the bodies of rioters killed inside the walls?’ I asked, staring harder into the lengthening shadows. ‘Why are they all naked?’

  The Dispensator nodded absent-mindedly. ‘I read of this in one of the ancient histories,’ he finally said. ‘The barbarians thought we were throwing plague victims at them, and this is what eventually broke their attack.’ He stopped and crossed himself, and began a whispered prayer for his endangered soul.

  But he stood back from the wall and looked at me. ‘I did watch you leading your men into the charge,’ he said. ‘I hope you will not be offended if I say that a professional would have divided his forces, and might have taken fewer losses. Even so, it was most welcoming to the men to see you laughing and shouting at their head. You did well.’

  I must say that I had no recollection of any laughing or shouting. I could remember biting my lip as I ran forward, and raising a very heavy and unfamiliar sword. I could remember a vague satisfaction as I got someone in the neck and went forward into a shower of blood. Beyond that, it was all broken fragments, and these mostly included the moments of relative calm in the slaughter. But, if the Dispensator wanted to think me a hero, I’d not complain.

  ‘If you can spare a few moments tomorrow morning,’ I said, recalling why I was here, ‘I’ve decided to take the sense of the council. It might come to a vote, but I’m pretty sure I’ll carry the majority of the Greeks.’

  The Dispensator looked up at the brighter stars that were coming out, one at a time, in the furthest east. ‘And I suppose you look to me, young man, to save you from the trouble of a vote by directing our own people to shout out as you desire?’ He looked in silence at the sheet of rolled-up parchment that I now held out to him.

  Without the barbarian attack, without confirmation of what was happening far off in Constantinople, it had been my intention to strike a ruthless bargain. But we were now where we were. There is a time for haggling and a time for giving way gracefully to the inevitable. I did hope for a certain gracefulness as I handed over the sheet. Such a pity the drugs I’d taken after the battle to keep going had put a visible tremor into my hands.

  He looked up from his long and silent inspection of the Latin text. ‘And this is a fully accurate translation of the Greek?’ he asked. He brushed a dirty finger over the text in both languages that Martin had written out in his neatest chancery hand. He stroked the wax seal that I’d myself attached with silken threads.

  I nodded and swallowed to try to get some moisture into my mouth. ‘It is an absolutely unambiguous fresh grant,’ I said. ‘You can keep the grant that Phocas made in his last days and I purported to confirm. After all, you never know what force my own grant will have. But, so long as Heraclius hasn’t already sacked me in my absence, His Holiness must, from today, be regarded throughout the Empire as the Universal Bishop.’

  ‘Then we can take the matter as settled,’ he said, keeping his voice neutral. ‘We make no comment on the orthodoxy of your propositions – and will add this to whatever resolution you put before us. Nevertheless, we are persuaded that the propositions in themselves deserve to be considered by a full and ecumenical council of the Church.’

  There was the sudden crack of an arrow that fell short and broke itself on the wall. I stepped behind a wooden screen that had been put up to shelter the defenders.

  Without moving from where he was standing, the Dispensator pursed his lips and rolled the parchment shut and
replaced it within the ivory ring that Martin had found in one of the abandoned offices in the residency. ‘So, My Lord Alaric, we have a deal,’ he said. ‘I do appreciate the difficulties you may still face with the Emperor. But this has, all considered, been a most smooth and predictable transaction. I will take this with me on the ferry to Corinth next Monday. Once back in Rome, I shall await news of your reception in Constantinople.’

  He followed my astonished look over the walls and smiled. ‘I am reliably informed that the Great Chief will make another appearance tomorrow morning. This time, he will call a parley. I will go out and meet him and negotiate his withdrawal. You know that I have negotiated an end to five sieges of Rome by the Lombards.’

  Even to Priscus, I might have suggested that a personal meeting with Kutbayan didn’t sound advisable. But this was the Dispensator. I nodded and made a note to myself that everyone would need to be informed of the further adjournment. I’d reconvene the day after next. That would bring us to Saturday – which was about what I’d imagined in the first place. I was hovering between thoughts of my closing speech to the council, and whether I’d wear the green or the yellow, when I heard the thud of another arrow, this time into the other side of the wooden screen. I stepped hurriedly back behind its cover again, and watched as the Dispensator set off on his continued inspection of the city defences.

  He turned back after a few yards and smiled. ‘I believe the Lord Priscus will eventually take over the defence again,’ he said.

  If he really believed that, he hadn’t just come from the man. But I said nothing.

  ‘However, I do think it appropriate if I am the one who negotiates the withdrawal. Several wives of the Great Chief are of the Faith, and I am confident that he will be more easily persuaded by me than by a Greek whose warlike skill and personal courage are more than compensated by his reputation for double-dealing. Our garrison is exhausted. We cannot rely on keeping the ordinary people quiet. A second attack – this time with all the Great Chief’s force – will not be so easily repelled.’

  ‘So, you’ll empty the granaries into his lap?’ I asked.

  The Dispensator smiled again. ‘Cast thy bread upon the waters: for thou shalt find it after many days,’ was his only response.

  Chapter 59

  Simeon waited till Martin had finished interpreting before snorting with disgust. But the Dispensator had made his intention plain from the beginning. After a long preparatory stage, in which their main symptoms had been palpitations and sweating attacks, my drugs had now settled down to a steady glow. I sprawled on the biggest couch in the library, and looked complacently at my slippered right foot. I heard Simeon put his wine cup down with a sound of scraping on the surface of our one decent table.

  ‘If you believe you can make any sort of deal with that creature, you’re absolutely mad,’ he said. ‘Open those gates, and it will be the end for all of us.’ Sooner or later, he’d go back to being as scared as he had been when the barbarians broke in on the council – or as he’d been once everyone the Dispensator and I had left behind were exposed to the taunts and petty thieving of the urban mob. For the moment, he was just angry.

  ‘My Lord Bishop,’ I said, keeping as diplomatic as anyone might have managed at the end of this ghastly day, ‘we didn’t ask you here this evening to discuss the military situation. That is now in the hands of His Excellency the Dispensator. I need your undertaking that you will ensure the unanimous assent of the Greek bishops the day after tomorrow, and that you will countersign my report to Caesar as I have explained it to you.’

  No good. The man was now on his feet and walking towards the bust of Polybius. Between stuffing food and weapons through the reopened door within the cupboard, the slaves had found time to bring in enough lamps and candles to light the room almost as well as it was by day. There was none of the gloom here you’d associate with the midnight hour. He stepped sideways to avoid a heap of books that hadn’t fitted into any of the racks. Then I saw him stop and put his face close to the damaged bust. There was another snort, and he was coming back.

  He stopped beside one of the larger tables that covered the worst patch of the ruined floor, and took up the casualty list. I’d prepared this in Latin for the Dispensator. But its meaning was clear enough. ‘How did you manage to lose so many men beside the gate?’ he asked with an ill-natured look in my direction. ‘Priscus did tell me he was planning to avoid a direct encounter. From what I hear, you fought with all the skill of a drunken savage. Little wonder you’ve persuaded yourself that opening the gate is our only choice.’ He pulled a very sour face and sat down again in his chair.

  I swung my legs off the couch and sat up. ‘Simeon,’ I began again, still smooth, ‘we did have an agreement . . .’

  ‘Agreement, eh?’ came the sneered reply. ‘You buggered up everything in Egypt good and proper. Don’t suppose bullying us into admitting that black may, after all, be white will make up for that. Don’t ever suppose letting this tonsured barbarian risk getting all our throats cut will put everything right with Heraclius.

  ‘As for these vicious accusations you and Priscus made the other evening – oh, do me a favour!’ He trailed off for a long and bitter laugh of triumph. ‘My dear and soon to be late cousin might have got somewhere with those. Even supposing they are true, a piece of dirt like you will never get close enough to the Emperor to repeat them. So you go ahead, and get your savages to stand up in their clerical finery and agree that black is white. It’s the Greek bishops who really matter in Constantinople. And you’ll get nothing out of us!’

  I pretended to ignore this last burst of ill-humour, and got up and went over to look at the mural. I could see I’d missed a fine chance earlier in the day. I should have waited till Simeon had been skewered by that barbarian before going into action. But that’s life for you – it’s often a catalogue of missed opportunities. Still, I’d not miss out on this one. Behind me, the Dispensator breathed out impatiently, and I heard him whisper to Martin for an explanation of what was being said.

  Still looking at the wall painting of Athens, I told myself that it must show the city as it had been in the time of Demosthenes. According to what I’d read in Dexippus, the colonnade that fringed the whole of the main market place was decisive evidence. As if for the first time, I saw how so much of what was shown here was now just heaps of rubble beyond the modern wall.

  ‘I suggest we should check that they really have withdrawn before we send anyone down to Piraeus to see if the Corinth ferry will come,’ I said in Latin.

  The Dispensator said nothing, and I took this as a provisional assent. If possible, I’d seen more barbarians than ever outside the walls. I’d stood there with the Dispensator until long after darkness had come. Until the light went altogether, we’d seen the irregular columns of men as they came over from the main camp north of Decelea. Even after that, we’d seen the flaring torches as others beyond counting had joined them. More than ever, we were as surrounded as one of those artificial mounds in Egypt that rise above the Nile flood. But the mere knowledge of the coming parley with Kutbayan was turning every mind in the room but one to the matter of how and when we’d be leaving Athens.

  ‘Simeon, has it ever crossed your mind,’ I asked, switching back into Greek, ‘how desperately short we are of money in Constantinople? You can’t fight off the Persians without soldiers, and you can’t employ soldiers unless you have the money to pay them. Now, His Holiness the Universal Bishop has decided to present the Great Augustus with a gift of twelve hundred pounds of gold. The former Western Provinces are not notable for their riches – but the Western Church is very rich. As is proper in these cases, it will be a free gift. There will be no conditions attached. However . . .’ I stepped closer to the painting and didn’t care if anyone watching me might guess that I was smiling. I’d suddenly realised that the mural showed the Temple of Athena with two extra columns on its front portico. I leaned forward and stared at the carefully depicted inaccuracy.


  I turned and gave Simeon a bright smile. ‘You know, My Lord Bishop,’ I continued, looking carefully into his still snarling face, ‘you did call the Pope’s right-hand man a ‘‘gross and vulgar barbarian’’. Of course, you did this only to me, and I’m sure you have no fear of what I might say against you. But you did also insult your Latin Brother in Christ – and to his face, and with the Bishop of Ephesus as a witness. A complaint from His Holiness about your behaviour is unlikely to be ignored by the Emperor. Where do you think he’ll send you – a mountain or a desert monastery? If you like, I could put in a word for you. The former British provinces have a most bracing combination of cold and rain.’

  I could have stood there all night, watching the subtle changes of colour and expression in Simeon’s face. But some threats are best unelaborated – not least when the facts on which they are based are neither wholly nor partially true. I left him in his chair and went over to the window, and looked out into the utter darkness of the midnight hour.

  ‘Have you made notes of your closing speech?’ Martin asked me.

  I hadn’t, but I assured him that it would be very simple. Whether I made it in Greek or Latin, it would take no effort to put it into the other language. Even here, the tension was perceptibly relaxing.

  ‘I have no idea what orders the captain of our own galley was given,’ I said in Latin, turning back to face everyone. ‘But, if he does put in on Monday – or is still in Corinth – I’ll somehow get him to take us to Constantinople. If we can work the rowers at full strength, we should see the Senatorial Dock days and days before a certain other person can be carried back along the main road. I’m assuming, of course, he will be carried. Then again, I don’t assume there will be any horse able to carry his bulk. So long as we can get back in time, I do suspect we can talk Our Lord and Master into a better view of his interests.’