Michael scoured the bowl to get the last of the sauce out. The spoon scraped the metal like a knife being sharpened.
She needed more time. Choices swirled around her head, offering infinite consequences, but no answers. In the fog, her mind went back to some of the mundane places she’d been in her life: a warehouse in Bosnia, a technical school in Rwanda. Places that the full authority of the international community had once declared safe havens. Thousands had gone there – trusting, praying, clinging to hope until it was too late. The only haven for most of them had been the silence of a mass grave.
‘Where are you going to go?’ she asked. Buying time.
‘There’s a man in Belgrade who knows about this kind of thing,’ Michael said. ‘I took some photographs of the tomb; I want to see if he has any ideas.’
And the moment he said it, she knew she would go to Belgrade – and, afterwards, wherever else this mad chase led. Not to save the world, or for love of Michael, or revenge, but because the only choice she had was to wait or to run. And she was tired of waiting.
Michael turned the knob on the stove and the flame went out.
XXVIII
EVEN IN MAY it’s cold before the sun comes up. Constantinople is a city of shadows: footsteps echo on the empty colonnades, the statues seem to come alive. A hundred feet in the air above the forum, Constantine watches me from the top of his column. Thirty feet tall and every inch the god: naked, with a radiate crown whose long spikes reach out to meet the dawn. He carries a spear in one hand, the orb of the world cupped in the other. The engineers mounted it on the column in a single night, so that when the sun came up next day Constantine had appeared above the city as if from heaven. I heard the Christians were furious.
The city feels empty. Constantine left for his war three days ago, dressed in golden armour and drawn in a gilded chariot by four white horses. In his hand was the
And now it’s time for another departure. Symmachus leaves today on the boat to Piraeus, with an onward journey to some anonymous rock in the Aegean. I’ve come to see him off. I feel I owe him that much.
I descend the steep steps between two warehouses and come out on the quay. And at one end, where a ladder leads down to a waiting skiff, four soldiers from the palace guard stand swapping dirty stories.
I approach. ‘Is Aurelius Symmachus here?’
None of them recognises me, or salutes. They’d still have been children the last time I stood in front of a legion. The sergeant eyes me cautiously, just in case I make trouble.
‘Who wants to know?’
‘A friend of the Augustus.’ I show them the ivory diptych Constantine gave me and they snap to attention.
‘Not arrived yet,’ the sergeant says. He glances at the sky. ‘He’d better be here soon. My shift ends at dawn.’
‘There’s that one,’ a soldier adds. He points to a figure lurking in the doorway of a grain warehouse, the hood of his cloak over his face. ‘He was looking for the prisoner too.’
The figure hears our conversation and steps out of the doorway. The hood drops back: it’s Porfyrius. He seems to have aged in the last week. The theatrical energy I remember from Symmachus’s garden has been subdued; the spark in his eyes has dimmed. To my surprise, he embraces me like an old friend.
‘We old men should stick together,’ he says. ‘Before the young drive us out completely.’
He steps back and gives me a searching look. ‘I heard you didn’t approve what they did to Symmachus.’
‘The Augustus judged the case himself.’
‘You’d have thought if Symmachus wanted to make it so obvious, he’d just have confessed.’
Is he trying to make me say something incriminating? I glance around at the busy wharf: a stevedore sitting on an amphora eating a wrapped pie, a shipping clerk tapping his stylus on a tablet. Wherever you go in this city, there’s always an audience. Best to say nothing.
‘I heard the slave’s testimony was decisive,’ Porfyrius persists. ‘Did you interrogate him yourself?’
I wish I had. Whoever set up Symmachus, the slave was the key.
‘He was tortured in the palace. By next morning, he was on his way to the silver mines in Dardania.’ I open my hands. ‘Sometimes Roman justice moves too quickly for an old man to keep up.’
He nods – it’s as much as he’ll get from me. ‘But you still came to see Symmachus off. It’s good of you.’
‘The Augustus will want to be sure he’s really gone.’ I meant it as a joke, but it comes out sounding cruel. Porfyrius steps back a little.
‘No doubt on that score. Symmachus is a Stoic – he’ll leave with dignity, if nothing else.’
But there’s still no sign of him. The sun comes up; the soldiers grumble. Crates of fish get carted up the road to the market. Porfyrius starts to pace the quay, glancing up the hill expectantly.
The sergeant comes over to us. I have the Emperor’s commission: suddenly, I’m an authority.
‘He was supposed to be here an hour ago. Should we go to his house?’
I’m getting tired of waiting. ‘I’ll go.’
