‘Well, they wouldn’t eat pigs. But the pigs ate them. They’ll eat their way through flesh, guts, bone – you name it. They have trouble with teeth and hair, but everything else-’
Priscus stopped suddenly. We looked at each other and then back at the feasting pigs.
‘Do you suppose-?’ I asked.
‘It’s a possibility – a distinct possibility,’ said Priscus.
‘You there,’ I called to the slave, ‘when was all this shit last raked out?’
Not for a while, came the answer. If it didn’t rain again, it was something for the day after next.
‘Get wide-meshed sieves from the kitchen,’ I ordered.
We watched as the slave, down on his knees, began work in one corner of the sty. Two big handfuls of shit scooped up and pressed through his sieve into a bucket. The remaining straw and other residue carefully picked through. The bucket taken out and emptied. Then back on his knees.
‘This will take for ever,’ Priscus said.
‘It might take all day,’ I agreed. ‘The problem is, I don’t want the household alerted yet to the possibility. But we do need more hands.’
The two Black Agents read the look in my eyes and stepped back, horror and disbelief stamped on their faces.
I pulled out a scented cloth from my robe and held it to my nose. ‘Priscus, I have a request to make of you,’ I said lightly.
54
As if I were playing dice, I rattled the box as I emptied it on to the Emperor’s desk. Five indisputably human teeth bounced on to the polished wood. Phocas took up the least decayed of them and held it against the light.
‘Without seeing them in the Permanent Legate’s head,’ he began, ‘I wouldn’t like to guess whose these might be. But it’s an interesting possibility.
‘So, my two brave champions, you’ve started bringing me answers. Indeed, I think it calls for drinks all round.’
We drank deeply.
Priscus had met unexpected resistance when ordering his men into the pigsty. Orders hadn’t worked. Threats hadn’t worked. He’d eventually had to borrow gold from me for a bribe, and then offer more as a bounty. At last, though, they’d joined in the fun.
‘Dear me, no,’ I’d said after enough teeth had been recovered, ‘I couldn’t possibly have your men in my bathhouse.’
So off they’d been sent to sit in the chill waters of a fishpond. Their uniforms would have to be burned. Unless they could find their way into a steam room, their bodies would stink for a month.
Priscus now sat happily beside me, basking in the sun of Imperial approval.
‘Young Alaric is sharp,’ he said. ‘He almost got there before me.’
‘The question remains, of course,’ said Phocas with a leer at Priscus, ‘ who fed His Excellency to the pigs?’
‘I am convinced, sir, that it was the official Demetrius and some other person as yet unknown,’ I answered.
‘So you assure me. But have you found this Demetrius?’
I looked at Priscus.
‘My dearest Father-in-Law,’ he said, ‘even in its present chaos, I’ve had the City searched and searched. No one fitting the description given has been found. Perhaps if we could do as Alaric suggests, and search the Monastery of St John Chrysostom…’
‘I’ve told you both already,’ Phocas snapped with a sudden turn of ill humour, ‘that the Holy Fathers of St John are not to be troubled with any enquiries. You’ll find no one called Demetrius in their house.’
Priscus bowed and changed the subject. He spoke now about the treble ring of defence he’d organised for the streets.
A secretary entered with a pile of documents. A slave carried more behind him.
Phocas sighed. ‘Alaric, go back to your searches,’ he said.
He looked over at Priscus. ‘And you have your own work that needs attention. We’ll talk properly about the defences over dinner.’
‘We make such a wonderful team, don’t you think, my great blond stunner?’ Priscus asked.
I looked down from our position on the land walls to the vast army encamped in the old suburbs. A man wearing the purple stripe of a senator caught my eye. He was standing well out of artillery range while, beside him, a slave was flashing a coded message with a mirror against the sun. It might have been for any one of the thousands of men who looked silently back from the safety of the walls.
‘What do you think he might be saying?’ I asked, avoiding the question.
‘It could be orders to their people inside the walls,’ Priscus said. ‘Or it might just be a bluff to demoralise an already demoralised people.’
He was right about the changing mood within the City. The excitement of putting on makeshift armour and strutting about with weapons was beginning to wear off. So far as anyone could tell, the whole Empire was now behind Heraclius. And these were fighting soldiers, all taken from the frontiers.
It no longer sounded so comforting to hear that Heraclius would have to move fast before pestilence and hunger arrived in earnest in his camp – or before the denuded frontiers wholly collapsed. We now expected that there would be an attack very soon, and knew that, whatever might be said of Heraclius himself, he had some good generals around him to lead it.
The flashing went on and on. If instructions were being sent to the city, they were frighteningly detailed.
Priscus kissed his hand and waved at a man who sat on horseback behind the Senator. ‘I was at school with him, you know,’ he said cheerfully. ‘He and his friends beat me to pulp when I put the word round that he was fucking a wax image of the Patriarch. How about a little drinkie? Just a small one to guard against the coming chill? There’s a nice establishment by the Church of Saint Anna. And I have a proposal that may interest you.’
We sat in a cosy upstairs room in the wine shop. The owner fussed silently round us with glass pitchers of white wine and dishes of toasted bread covered in olive paste.
‘This can’t be as long as I’d like it to be,’ said Priscus when the man had left. ‘I’m about to engage in urgent business. What I want to ask is if you’d like to share that business.’
I looked back at him in silence.
‘It seems the fucking old eunuch has won for the moment,’ he said, heating his knife over a candle. ‘When I married my charming Domentia and became Heir to the Empire, I thought I’d won the biggest prize in the universe. “Priscus,” I told myself, “you’ve jumped straight over those tossers who held you back in military and civil life. You’ll be Number One in no time at all. In the meantime, you’re just one down from the top.” Then I found that Theophanes stood in my way at every move. He’s the one who made sure I didn’t get made Commander-in-Chief of the field armies. He saw to it that my roving commission through the Eastern Provinces didn’t get me farther than Ancyra. For years now, he’s had the ear of Phocas. He’s been watching me and reporting on me, and dropping poison with each honeyed phrase about my abilities. Fuck him!’
Priscus squeezed a pinch of another powder on to the hot knife and breathed in the fumes. His gasp of ecstasy over, he looked up again.
‘Fuck the old eunuch,’ he repeated. ‘I wish he’d burst from all the food he shovels into his gullet.’
‘He is, I’m told, a most remarkable administrator,’ I said, rubbing in the salt.
‘Administrator?’ Priscus spat with venomous contempt. ‘If I had my way, he’d still be singing in the travelling brothel that brought him to Constantinople. Yes, that’s a talent I’ll not deny him – “Watchman at the Gates of Love”: a fitting description of someone whose balls were rotting in some Bostra cesspit before I was born!’
He paused with a little smile as my mind went into motion. Martin and I rarely spoke of what had happened in the Great One’s tent. Neither of us had mentioned it again to Theophanes. He himself would never have breathed a word. That left…
‘Yes, my dearest boy,’ said Priscus with an expansive wave – his cheerful mood was restored – ‘I was there.
Sadly, I had business outside the tent that deprived me of your own most remarkable performance. But I had a fine view of the musical cabaret. For the first and probably the only time in my life, I was impressed by the old eunuch’s abilities.’
Cup in hand, I sat still. I was aghast at the revelation.
‘I never once thought it was you behind the curtain in the Great One’s tent,’ I said. ‘I thought it was one of Heraclius’s men.’
‘And you may be sure, my dearest Alaric,’ Priscus said with a stretch of his arms, ‘that it was someone from Heraclius. I was there on business relating to the captives and their eventual release. It was quite a surprise when you were all marched into the Monstrous One’s presence. I barely had time to get behind that curtain.’
‘So it was you who was negotiating with Theophanes outside the tent,’ I said. ‘In exchange for his life, he agreed to help you kill the Permanent Legate. He was the only one with access. And that would get you in deeper with Heraclius.’
‘Brains and beauty.’ Priscus smiled, raising his cup in a mock toast. ‘Of course, I needed you and your freedman dead. I couldn’t risk even the slightest chance that you’d spotted me. The eunuch was very persuasive when it came to getting his own skin spared. You two, however, were decidedly surplus to requirements.’
‘I suppose that explains why you’ve been so eager to have me killed since I got back to the City,’ I said.
‘Oh, that was nothing personal, dear boy,’ Priscus said with a smile. ‘That little scene in church was merely tying up loose ends. I got the old eunuch to kill the Permanent Legate. When you got the job, you had to go the same way. There’s no point in bumping off a Permanent Legate if he’s immediately replaced.
‘Getting you murdered in the Great Church, and in the Imperial Presence, would have dropped my Divine Father-in-Law right in the shit with everyone.’
‘Are you not forgetting, My Lord,’ I asked mildly, ‘your attempt on me via Agathius in the Legation, your attempt via those Syrians last night, and your efforts with the Emperor?’
‘I don’t know anything about last night,’ came the airy reply. ‘As for Agathius, I’d like to know what became of him. My guess is that he’s holed up with Demetrius. If only we’d been able to get hold of either of them, it would have been a sword held right over the old eunuch’s head. With him neutralised, I could have gone through with my plan of surrendering the city once the gates were open. As it is, killing the Permanent Legate will have been my latest service to Heraclius. That alone should keep me in his good books.’
I looked at him. Was he telling the truth? He appeared to be. Having admitted to a murder attempt in the Great Church, he would hardly deny anything more seemly.
But Priscus continued: ‘My latest service unless, my dearest, you’ve managed to learn what Theophanes was up to with Justinus of Tyre. I thought for a while he had the means to betray me to Phocas. It seems he had other information – information Heraclius was willing to pay through the nose to get.
‘Any ideas about what he did know? Did His Magnificence ever take you into his confidence on that one? Do you fancy a meeting with the next Emperor? I’ll be with him come dusk.’
I ignored the invitation. ‘What I can’t understand’, I said, ‘is why you’ve changed sides. You might be useful to Heraclius at the moment. Do you really think, though, that he will spare your life once you’ve helped make him Emperor?’
Priscus looked thoughtfully over to the closed door and then to the shuttered window.
‘There are many things you don’t understand,’ he said quietly across the table.
I had to lean forward to catch his further words. ‘The deal is that I give him the City’, he said, ‘and he gives me an army to use against the Persians. Be assured I’ll soon be turning on him.
‘The best I can hope for while Phocas lives is to be a glorified chief of police. The way he carries on, he’ll live for ever. Long before then, he’ll have no Empire left to hand over. All things considered, Heraclius is a much better bet.’
I scarce knew where to begin. It seemed to me then that he was a walking illustration of what too many mood-altering substances, consumed over too long a period, can do to the understanding.
I changed the subject. ‘Why do you ask me to defect with you?’ I asked.
Priscus smiled again. ‘Because, my darling little god,’ he said, ‘now you’re in the know, what else can you do but stick with me?’
‘That begs the question, My Lord,’ I said, ‘why you have put me in the know.’
I thought for a moment of killing Priscus but soon dismissed it. He was also armed, and he might be no fool with a sword.
He spoke again: ‘Why don’t you join us? I’m sure I could put in a word with Heraclius. He’s not very bright, you should be aware. Once I’m Emperor, I’ll reopen the University and make you its chancellor.’
Seeing the scorn I couldn’t keep off my face, Priscus continued: ‘And, of course, there are other openings for you at my court. You know that we make a great team. Relieved of the duty to have you killed, I’d find you even more madly attractive than I have so far. I’m not as young as I used to be, but I can still teach a thing or two about mattress acrobatics.’
This really was too much!
‘My dear Priscus,’ I said when I’d recovered use of my voice, ‘you should be aware that the only bodily fluid I might want to discharge near you is vomit.’
As if I’d spat at him, he shrank back in his chair. A look of rage passed over his face. Then he was all smooth serpent again.
‘Be that as it may,’ he said, ‘you’ve lavished enough tenderness these past few months on some of my spawn.’
I felt as if I’d had a stiletto of ice pushed into my stomach.
‘And what in the name of shit,’ I snarled, ‘do you mean by that?’
‘Isn’t it obvious?’ Priscus said slowly and emphatically. ‘Your darling Maximin is one of my bastards. You say he was picked up near dawn outside the Mary Magdalene Church? It’s surely no coincidence that I had a boy child left in the same place at probably the same time – I’m sure we’d agree on the date if we bothered comparing notes. I let the bitch slave-girl carry her belly-load about until she shat it out. When I saw the scrawny thing, I had her throat cut and the baby dumped.
‘Yes, my darling boy – I’m the father of the thing you love most in this City. And when I’m Emperor, I may have to take it back from you. It might not do to have a grandson of Phocas as my heir.’
‘You’re a fucking liar, you shitbag Greekling!’ I shouted in Latin. Because he spoke it, I suddenly found Greek too dirty a language for my lips.
‘But you know I’m telling the truth – don’t you?’ he said, still in Greek. ‘Now you go back to your Legation and look on your beautiful adopted son. If you want to spare yourself a whole mountain of grief – and him too once I’m Emperor – you’ll throw him to those pigs.’
Priscus got up. ‘I’m sure we still have much to discuss. Perhaps we’ll continue this conversation when we next meet. Perhaps it will be in circumstances similar to those I intended on our first meeting. But for the moment, I have other, more pressing business to attend to.’
By the time I’d gathered myself sufficiently to follow him from the wine shop, he’d vanished.
As I staggered through the gate to the Legation, I heard the first word on the streets that the Caesar Priscus had somehow found a way out of the City, and that he’d gone over to Heraclius.
55
Martin looked at the child again. ‘There is a certain resemblance,’ he said in a doubtful tone.
‘Of course there’s a resemblance, you dickhead,’ I hissed. With his eyes shut, Maximin was a smaller version of Priscus. It was astonishing how I hadn’t noticed this before.
‘Where’s your God now? The moment you found that child by the church, you sealed our death warrant.’
‘Shut up, or you’ll wake him,’ came the reply. Martin carefu
lly pulled the covers back. He turned to face me. For all the concern he showed, I might have been telling him about a crate of spoiled papers.
‘Besides,’ he added, ‘I only picked him up. I recall it was you who insisted on adopting him. And you did adopt him,’ he continued with a sudden intensity. He’d switched into Celtic. ‘Under the laws of every nation, including even yours, the father of a child is the man who takes it as his own. Fatherhood comes from acknowledgement, not from fucking. That child is yours and yours alone.’
‘That isn’t the point,’ I said. I’d not let Martin see the tears I was forcing back as I repeated his point again and again to myself. ‘The point is that we’re in the deepest shit you can imagine. This is the natural child of the second biggest traitor in the Empire. In a few days, he may again be the child of the second biggest man in the Empire. Where does that leave him or us? Now, do please shut up about your God. If He had any hand in this, it shows at least an unorthodox sense of humour.’
‘Fuck them!’ Martin spat. I looked up in shock at the unexpected obscenity. ‘Do you suppose it was mere chance that I went to that place and at that time? Had I ever been there before? Had I ever taken notice of a foundling before? Was it chance that I brought him home? Was it chance that you adopted him on the spot? Was it chance that you called him Maximin without the shadow of a thought?
‘Was any of this chance? It was the Will of God, I tell you!
‘It was God who willed me to send the Court Poet early into His Presence. Once He had arranged for me to be in the right time and place, all else followed with the same certainty as a branch struck by lightning crashes from a tree. You can laugh at me with your mind full of the muddy thoughts of the ancients. But you know I’m talking sense.
‘I tell you’ – he dropped his voice as the child stirred – ‘I tell you that God is guiding our every move towards some Holy Purpose. You can forget Phocas and Priscus and all the rest of them. If God be for us, who can be against us?’
The Terror of Constantinople a-2 Page 35
