‘Exams coming round, you know,’ one of them had said with a sweaty glance around the canteen. ‘Nice robe,’ he’d added, with a nod at the thing I was wearing.
‘What is the procedure of these examinations?’ I’d asked of the one person left seated in the canteen. He sat alone at the next table with a plate of bread and cheese. Quite a bit older than the others, he’d smiled coldly and brushed the crumbs off his robe of severe but expensive cut with long and very white fingers.
‘Somebody from the East once told me’, he’d said in a quiet voice, ‘a story about the Great Alexander that probably isn’t true but is worth repeating. Apparently, he was let down into the Red Sea in a glass container, and passed a long while watching the fishes and other sea creatures swim about him. They could see each other, but never touch.
‘If true, that was as it ought to be. Neither could be anything but dangerous to the other. The glass wall was to protect both.’
‘Who are you?’ I’d asked.
‘My name is Sergius,’ he’d answered with another cold smile. ‘I am presently attached to the office of His Holiness the Patriarch.’
Now he mentioned it, I’d thought, he did have a rather clerical look about him. What was he doing here?
‘Now, Alaric, “citizen” from the temporarily alienated British Provinces,’ he’d continued, ‘I hadn’t expected to see you other than in the Patriarchal Library. But I’m aware that you have much work to do in the City. If there is anything I can do to help expedite this, please feel free to approach me. Are the librarians less than attentive to your needs? Have they kept you waiting unreasonably for any of the somewhat unusual books you have been ordering?
‘I think not. This being so, I suggest you finish your wine and return to your table, where work of what I have no doubt is the highest importance to Church and Empire awaits your doing.’
With that, he’d been off. Now, back at my table, I was trying to return to the vanished age of light and freedom that had earlier seemed to blaze from the lectures of Carneades on the unknowability of the truth.
‘I’m going out for a walk,’ I said, standing up. The copying slave opposite me stood too and bowed low. ‘If you can have the third and fifth books of this copied by tomorrow morning, I shall be grateful,’ I added.
I looked around the room. Every head was bent intently over whatever text was being read and memorised. There was an unbroken murmuring, as of prayers in church, of those who, in the ancient manner, sounded the words of what they were reading. No one looked up. No one seemed to notice as I walked out into the blistering sunshine.
As my eyes adjusted to the light, I looked about the crowded square. Naked children danced and squealed happily in the central fountain. Dressed in white, the humbler citizens went about their business in or outside the buildings of unsurpassable opulence that fronted the square. Persons of quality, of course, were carried about in open chairs. One of these, I was sure, had been among those I’d seen on my progress up from the Senatorial Dock. I gave him a hesitant smile. He looked straight through me as the slaves hurried him past.
I stood back to avoid a crowd of jabbering Syrians, and nearly fell under a closed chair.
‘Do please forgive me, My Lady,’ I said, pulling off my cap. I could see a dark shape behind the gossamer curtains and feel a long and intent glance that took in the whole of me. I stood more upright and smiled. An ebony stick reached through the curtains and tapped the largest slave on his back. In a moment, the chair had moved forward and was buried in the crowds.
I thought to do a spot of shopping before lunch. At least in Middle Street there were people who would talk to me, even if it was only about the quality and price of merchandise. Instead, as I wandered aimlessly through the wide but crowded streets of the city centre, I found myself before the dark Ministry building that I’d vaguely hoped I might never see again.
I can’t say what I was doing there. Perhaps it was because one of the only two persons I knew in the City beyond my own household was hard at work in there. He’d been at his most courtly over lunch the day before. Would Theophanes welcome an unannounced visit now?
I swallowed. I made up my mind and stepped towards the open blackness of the gateway that led inside. Like everyone else, I ignored the permanent demonstration outside. Like everyone else, I paid no attention to the graffiti that were still being removed from the previous night.
‘State your appointment, citizen,’ said one of the two guards who suddenly barred my way. ‘If you’ve a written denunciation to make, you place it in the urn outside the gate.’
‘I have an appointment with His Magnificence Theophanes,’ I lied.
Unimpressed, the guard said something to his colleague about foreigners. He pointed brusquely to a queue that stopped outside a curtained opening.
‘When you get to the front of that,’ he said, ‘you take off your outer clothes. You put your shoes in the box provided. When you go in, have your papers ready. When you are stripped for the search, you stand with your legs apart and your arms spread. If you need an interpreter, tell the clerk. One will be provided.’
Shuffling forward in that queue was a depressing experience. No one spoke. No one looked at anyone else. I did think to turn and walk out again but a woman in front of me who tried that was stopped and pushed back to the end of the queue. By the time I got to the front, I was in no mood to do other than meekly take off my coat and shoes and walk through the curtain.
‘Strip and bend over,’ one of the clerks said in a hoarse, gloating voice. I gritted my teeth and reached for the brooch that secured my inner tunic.
‘Sir, sir,’ another of the clerks said with a scared wave of the residency permit I’d given him. They huddled over the thing and looked up at me.
‘If you come here in future without an appointment,’ Alypius said as we reached the corridor where Theophanes had his office, ‘you show your papers at the main gate. You will then be brought straight up. Otherwise, you will be taken to a private waiting room.
‘You will say nothing to His Magnificence of what has happened. He has more important things to concern him. You will sit quietly until he has dealt with the matters in hand.’
Inside the office, Theophanes was hard at work. Three junior eunuchs stood before his desk pulling out letters from a basket. As I entered, one of the eunuchs broke a seal and scanned the contents. He read in a flat voice:
‘His Eminence Michael of the Lucas family is denounced by his younger son for publishing treasons in his sleep. He is declared to have called out two nights ago that the Emperor Maurice of foul memory was unjustly deposed and murdered, and that the Great Augustus who rules in his place is possessed by a demon who has prompted him to deliver all the lands of the Empire to the Persians and barbarians.’
Theophanes took the letter and read it in full. ‘The young man is ambitious to possess more of his father’s goods than would come to him in the natural course of things,’ he said in a bored voice. ‘Have Michael taken in. He will be deprived of one-half of all he has and then flogged through the Circus. One-half of the fine will be handed to the son. Michael will otherwise be released to continue with supervising the repair of the city aqueducts. He is advised in future to consult an apothecary for the means of sleeping more soundly at night.’
The next denounced person wasn’t so lucky. The accusation was more serious. He was to be taken in and committed to the care of the Caesar Priscus – that is, to the Emperor’s son-in-law. The eunuch dealing with this case drew a black cross on the letter and dropped it into another basket that stood half full on the floor.
So they worked through the list. Wives were denouncing husbands, neighbours and business rivals each other. Some of the denounced were persons of great quality, others from the mercantile and intellectual classes. Sometimes with an explanatory comment, sometimes with none, Theophanes passed judgement on all. In two cases only were denunciations rejected as frivolous. In all others, at least a fine was imposed – more often, a fine and mutilation. Around half were remitted to the attention of Priscus, whom I’d been told by Martin was author and chief agent of the Terror. Some were to be sent to the Emperor himself.
At length, Theophanes looked in my direction. He composed his features into something that approximated a smile and waved me forward.
‘That will be all,’ he said to the eunuchs. ‘We shall deal later with the Antioch business.
‘Allow me, my dearest Alaric, to help you to some wine,’ he said. ‘I regret that I have not so far been all that could be desired of a host. But you will understand that the repression of treason is the highest duty of all who serve the Empire.
‘The usurping traitor Heraclius has found his way to Cyprus. His followers here in the city have redoubled
