‘I am Demetrius,’ he said, ‘Acting Head of the Legatorial Secretariat. I report directly to His Excellency.’
He went on to explain in a Latin so slipshod he might have been a tradesman that the Permanent Legate remained indisposed.
I looked at him. A small man in late middle age, with the movements of a startled bird and a face that had somehow escaped any touch of the sun, this official stood out from his colleagues partly on account of his greater age, and partly because, while their beards had the lush fullness of the Greeks, his own was either kept short or of recent growth.
It was evident he wasn’t a Latin. Nor did he sound Greek. His Excellency doubtless would send for me when he was less indisposed, he added. In the meantime, I should settle into the little room he’d found for me beside the kitchens and rest myself from a journey that must have rivalled that of Ulysses himself from Troy. As the Legation slaves had other duties, it was my good fortune to have brought enough of my own to attend to my ordinary needs. They could be accommodated in the corridor outside my room.
I glanced at Theophanes. Was that a look of sour impatience? Hard to tell. It was there for a moment, then he was all charming smiles again.
‘Demetrius is surely mistaken,’ he said. ‘I am sure that His Excellency the Permanent Legate had in mind for young Alaric and his party to be given the distinguished visitors’ suite on the upper floors.’
Demetrius himself pulled a face that wasn’t so fleeting. But it was obvious that no one argued with His Magnificence the Great Theophanes. He bowed and threw a look at one of the other officials, who promptly vanished.
‘Most sadly, the work of the Great Augustus calls me away,’ said Theophanes with a brief glance at Demetrius. He would leave me for now, he added, but would send for me after lunch the following day to discuss my schedule and attend to the necessary paperwork for my stay.
After more embracing and protestations of mutual regard, he was off with his little army, leaving us alone with the Legation officials. The hall seemed to grow duller by his leaving it. The officials there remained awed, though, and did their best to improvise a reception that anyone could have seen was not on their list of instructions.
6
I never did find out what Demetrius had intended for me. The suite Theophanes had ordered him to give me was a self-contained unit within the Legation. Branching off to the left from the back of the entrance hall, and covering two floors, it had its own access from the hall. It might have been an apartment in a residential block.
‘Good for defence,’ Authari whispered, for the moment forgetting he was no longer at the head of a Lombard raiding party. ‘I’ll guess the main building could hold off an army for days.’
I silenced him with a frown, and followed Demetrius up the stairs.
On the upper floor, there were about fifteen living and business rooms, some interconnected. All were approached by a corridor lit during the day by glass bricks set into the roof above. There could be no windows in the corridor, as they’d have looked out into the main square, and compromised the security of the Legation.
The doors that led off the other side into the rooms of my suite were all of solid wood with locks that turned from both sides. The rooms looked inward over the central gardens. The ground floor covered the same area, but the connecting corridor had no natural light except when the doors were open to the rooms leading off it. These were to be the quarters for my own slaves, and had a little kitchen that made me independent of the main household.
Right at the end of the corridor was a bathhouse and furnace that would be for my use.
Outside the main reception room and my own bedroom next door was a balcony. A bronze staircase led down from this to one of the central gardens, where trees and a fountain promised relief from the blazing summer heat. Looking out from the window of my office, I saw five monks shuffling about in a garden beyond this with watering cans and various garden implements.
Thinking back to Authari’s comment, I wondered if this might be a weak point for defence. I put the thought from my mind. This was Constantinople, not Rome. On the whole journey up from the dockside, I hadn’t seen a single fight, let alone a killing.
The upper rooms were placed to catch the morning sun, but had ceilings high enough to make the afternoons bearable. They were furnished with a taste and luxury that any self-respecting priest would have denounced as a mortal sin. But although it was Church property, the Legation was the place from where the Pope spoke through his representatives to the Emperor himself, and where, from time to time, the Emperor and the greater dignitaries would have to be entertained. For reasons of obvious prestige, its splendour could not fall below a certain level.
As we entered the suite, a few slaves and even officials were running frantically about with dusters and aired linen. Demetrius fawned around me, trying to divert my attention from the obvious change of accommodation.
‘We trust the young citizen will not be overcome by the splendour of these rooms,’ he said in his poor Latin. ‘We is told that Old Rome has not a single working bath in these last days of the world. Here, the young citizen has his own all for himself.’
I sniffed, and asked to see the toilet. Very important things are toilets. Forget beds and chairs, which can always be found at short notice. The toilets tell you exactly how civilised a house is, and your own position within it. I had to admit these ones did me proud. The fittings were of marble with four seats of polished ebony. A channel ran under the seats, for water to carry away the waste. Another channel ran in front to give continual water for the wiping sponges that were set on sticks of elegant design.
The glazed tiles that covered the floor and the lower walls were of a variegated blue. The plaster that ran above these was a dark and luxurious red. There had once been a fresco on the wall opposite the window, but this was now painted over in the same red, and I was unable to see what images or designs it had once had. The only evidence for it was a few patches of colour that had leached through the red.
Demetrius had to grope about to find the handle that turned on the water. With a gurgle that sounded like a belch from the depths of the Legation building, and then a hiss that died to a gentle splashing, the water burst up in a slightly higher point of the latrine. At once, as the water flowed through its appointed channels, the room came to life. The little tiles of the channels turned from dull to various shades of sparkling blue. The glazed tiles of the lower walls bounced back the shimmering light thrown up from them.
Come the winter months, ducts set beneath the floor would carry heated air from a central boiler to keep the latrine warm. For the moment, the gentle but continuous trickling of the water would keep it cool on the hottest days. This was a room appointed both for practical use and for mental reflection. I felt I’d be spending a fair bit of time in here.
I smiled inwardly as I realised Demetrius had pulled a muscle by reaching about for the lever, and his hands were covered with dust. He stood facing me, a suppressed wince on his face and evidently resisting the urge to hop from one foot to the other in agitation. So I sent him off with orders that Martin’s bed should also have clean linen and that the slave quarters should be provided with all that fitted my status as a halfway guest of the Emperor.
Walking backwards, he bowed out of my presence. I had a most gratifying sight of the confusion on his face as he bumped into Authari. Our kitchen cupboards might be bare. It was plain, though, Authari had found the wine store.
Back upstairs, while Martin supervised the unpacking and disposal of our baggage, I went into the main office and sat at a great ebony desk inlaid with gold and ivory. On this, a leather bag marked for my attention contained letters from Rome. Some were impressively recent. The roads hadn’t been so impassable after all. At least the post was now getting through again.
There was something about the Cornish tin business. As it was in code, it would be interesting. But it could wait. I rummaged in the bag and pulled out a thick letter from the Dispensator. I went over by the window for a better look at the microscopic writing.
Apparently, the Bishop of Ravenna had found a whole nest of heresy under his own nose. His most senior
