as if in a fit. Even so, he seemed to be shining slightly.
I forced my eyes away. I might be his father, but I also had a position to maintain.
‘When you’re ready,’ I said, ‘we’ll go off to market together. I feel I ought to choose the nurse. I want one who doesn’t know any civilised language. I don’t think you need ask for my reasons.’
‘Indeed, sir,’ said Martin. ‘Would you allow me to buy your son a rattle?’
‘Of course,’ I said – ‘though he’ll not be in need of that for a while.’
As we were leaving, a messenger arrived from the Ministry.
‘Do tell His Magnificence,’ I said, fighting to keep my voice steady, ‘that I expire with joy to receive his invitation. I will join him tonight for dinner at the usual place.’
I settled on a fattish, rather plain woman who spoke Lombardic but came from somewhere more remote. Her own child, the dealer said, had ‘died’ on the journey to market. She’d be the ideal nurse.
Ideal she was. I wanted a nurse for my son, and only that. If I wanted sex, I’d continue to send out for it. I did have certain duties to Gretel, you’ll understand.
As I finished paying up and giving the delivery address to the dealer, I felt another nervous twinge about Gretel. She’d go off like a volcano when she heard the brief message I’d dropped earlier into the collection bin.
The problem with women is that, unless you beat them all the time – and I’ve tended to neglect that side of my duties – they always get ideas above their station.
But what was done couldn’t now be undone. Indeed, I’d just allowed Martin to arrange the baptism for the day after next.
It’s surprising how much you need for a child of the higher classes, and how much it all costs. It’s all silk and linen and things of horn and lead, and polished wooden boxes for storing it.
I made sure to pick up another nice present for Gretel – a rope of black pearls I was assured had come from England. They might calm her down. Or they might not. Still, I told myself, I’d not have to face her until the autumn. Perhaps, I could ask the Dispensator to get us married in front of the Pope…
After my bath, as he dressed my hair, Authari hummed a cradle song of his people. I’d laughed several times in the bath and splashed water over the side.
The other slaves smiled as they went about their business. Even one of the Legation officials gave me a less than usually sour look as I passed him on my way to the chair Theophanes had sent from the Ministry.
Martin had retired to his room to pray. It was nice to know that, after yesterday’s wobbly, he was back on praying terms with God. Doubtless, I thought, he’d be asking God to overlook my numerous sins in return for one act of charity.
Perhaps He would.
18
Theophanes got to his feet as one of his eunuch clerks burst into the private dining room. He’d just reached the really interesting part of his lecture on the correct application of gold leaf to the face. Now, he was all official coldness.
Puffing slightly, the clerk dropped a message on to the table and stood back.
Theophanes broke the seal and read in silence. There was a hard, impassive look on his face. My stomach turned to ice. Had I after all outlived my usefulness? I put my cup down and put my hands under the table to hide their tremor.
‘Alaric,’ he asked in a voice that hovered ambiguously between the friendly and the official, ‘are you aware of last night’s murder?’
I shook my head. I’d seen how everyone in the slave market was passing the official news bulletin around with greater than usual interest, but had been too involved in my own affairs to get a copy for myself.
‘I am surprised you have heard nothing. This was perhaps the most horrid crime the City has known all year. The Court Poet to His Late Imperial Majesty Maurice was found this morning in the St Antonia Park. His neck had been broken in a struggle with some person or persons unknown. We believe this happened around the midnight hour.’
He handed the message to Alypius, then turned back to regard me with the same cold expression. I shifted uncomfortably in my chair. A moment before, Theophanes had been at his charming best. Now, was he trying to fit me up for murder? It would get me out of the way for what I might have overheard the night before.
Should I just confess everything? Should I tell him all I’d overheard and assure him I knew nothing more? I could promise silence. I could plead for expulsion from the City.
Yes, I could certainly plead for that!
If my throat hadn’t been so dry of a sudden, I’d have opened my mouth there and then and started babbling. That stare was terrifying in its blankness.
Just then, it shifted back to eunuchy softness.
‘But my dearest Alaric,’ he said, ‘you have nothing to fear. The poor man was quite elderly and much given to seeking the friendship of strangers in the quiet places of our great City. I cannot imagine that you would ever find yourself in such danger. And we do now have a suspect. That message’ – he nodded towards the sheet Alypius was still holding – ‘is notice of the arrest.’
‘Your efficiency is surely an inspiration to the whole universe,’ I said, trying to keep my voice from a croak. Had I been able to trust my hands, I’d have grabbed at my wine cup.
‘But you flatter me,’ said Theophanes with one of his most benevolent smiles. ‘It was my intention to make my apologies and to leave you to finish dinner with none but the serving slaves for company. However, your kind words, and the recollection of an interest you have more than once expressed in my work for the common good of the Empire, suggest you might welcome an invitation to come with me, even at this late hour, to the Ministry, where the suspect awaits my interrogation.’
If I’d been able to think of a polite way of saying ‘No thank you’, I’d have come out with it on the spot. Go with him to the Ministry? And what on earth was someone of his seniority doing in charge of some petty murder investigation? The victim had been a retired minor functionary of a dead and disgraced Emperor.
Besides, I wanted to go home and join Martin and Authari in looking at Maximin. I wanted to send them to bed so I could continue looking at him by myself.
I realised Theophanes was staring at me again. To people like him you refuse nothing.
‘I’d be honoured,’ I said, now finishing my wine.
Was that a smile I saw as Alypius coughed into his sleeve?
As we rounded the corner into the Ministry square, I could hear a chatter of voices. The demonstrators were praying together before breaking up and going home for the night. The voices fell silent as we came into view. The sight of Theophanes and a police guard appeared to subdue even these desperate souls. One old woman, however, still came forward. She clutched at Theophanes, catching his right sleeve.
‘Where is he?’ she pleaded in the cracked voice of the very old or slightly mad. ‘When will he come home?’
Theophanes gently prised her hand loose and patted it.
‘Go home, my poor woman,’ he said gently. ‘Your son is not inside. You have no son. You never had a son. Please accept my deepest sympathies. Go home before you take chill. The evenings are not as they were.’
She fell back with a deathly look. Her mouth opened to speak again, but no words issued. We turned from her and walked into the Ministry.
Though all was quiet outside but for the demonstrators, the clerks in the Ministry were still hard at work. There was the same rush of activity in the main hall that I’d seen on my first visit. One of the clerks was waiting for us. He bowed low before Theophanes.
‘The young man is with me,’ Theophanes said in answer to the unspoken question.
We passed by the staircase leading up to his office. Instead, Theophanes led me to the far end of the main hall and into a corridor of closed doors. Carefully dimmed lamps were fixed beside each door. On each was screwed a small brass plate, giving one or more names, though no functions. At the far end, bright light streamed from an open door.
