people soon gave up on removing their clothes first.
For the first time since my arrival in the City, I heard people speaking their minds.
‘The drunken fucker won’t allow negotiations,’ one man said bitterly, pulling his soiled robe over his head. ‘They’d puncture his claims to be in control of events.’
‘Do you suppose we’ll be killed?’ another asked.
‘Well, there aren’t many of these raiders, and they’ll hardly want to be slowed by a train of slaves when they do finally make off. Of course we’ll be killed.’
‘But surely Saint Victorinus will keep watch over us?’ an old woman cried, clutching a wooden crucifix to herself.
‘As he did all the others?’
The discussion trailed off.
Early on the third evening of our captivity, Theophanes opened a new line of conversation with me. So far, he’d kept up his insistence that ransom talks were imminent. But there comes a time when optimism blends into stupidity. And Theophanes was never stupid.
‘Aelric,’ he said softly, having checked that Martin was asleep, ‘I must beg of you the favour of a swift death before morning.’
‘Those are not words’, I replied, ‘I ever expected of Theophanes the Magnificent.’
Nor had I expected him to start using my real name.
‘They are my words now, dear boy,’ he said. ‘I have saved your life once, to your knowledge. I have saved it on other occasions unknown to you. I ask you now to return the favour by ending mine.’
I looked him steadily in the face. It was days since his last toilette. Since then, he’d neither scraped off the painted mask nor been able to maintain it. Rain and sweat had washed the dye out of his hair, and dried rivulets of black stained his forehead and cheeks. The effect was like the wall of a ruined building, where courses of brick show through the cracked and discoloured stucco. But there was an ordered resolution about Theophanes that banished any trace of eunuch effeminacy.
‘Do you see this?’ He held up a stone about the size of a small melon. ‘I want you to knock my brains out as I sleep. You and Martin must then keep away from my body. These animals are not sober enough to have noticed who is with whom. Nor will they make proper enquiries. If I wake tomorrow morning, I shall have to consider it a grave breach of our friendship.’
I took the stone into my hand. It was smooth and cool, and it balanced nicely. It was just the thing for bashing heads in.
The man had a point. If they hadn’t even started yet, there would be no ransom negotiations. It really did seem to be a matter of waiting for these savages to run out of patience and start dispatching us in the manner of their doubtless very brutal choice.
I’d got that much in the afternoon I overheard two of the Germanics speaking together. ‘I say kill them and fuck off,’ one said, spitting to emphasise his words. ‘We can’t stick around here under the walls of the city itself. There’ll be soldiers come out sooner or later, or brung in from the sea behind us. We’ve got a nice stash of movables from this raid. Let’s be off, I say, while we’ve still got hands to carry it.’
‘Not yet,’ the other had said. ‘I heard that slit-eyed yellow fucker – the one what knows Latin. He said the Big Man has something going on. We wait until tomorrow.’
‘I dunno,’ had come the reply. ‘I seed him yesterday talking to the King Phocas people. Those priests was back again. He sent them off with a flea in the ear. “No deal,” he said. Whatever happens, there won’t be no ransoming. We’ve got our share of the gold. Let’s take it and be off. Hermann had the right idea – and you know he never sticks round when there’s real danger.
‘I’ve got a woman with kids back home. She don’t like these Imperial raids. We’re going in deeper each time. She’d have boiling water all over me feet if she knowed we was outside the City. Let’s kill them.’
They’d drifted out of earshot. Nothing had happened since, but it could only be a matter of time before the general nerve snapped.
I hadn’t realised Theophanes could understand any of the Germanic languages. But there seemed no limit to his abilities. It was after listening quietly to the raiders that his mood shifted.
Martin had also understood. He’d spent the rest of the afternoon and early evening praying in five languages. He was for all the world like a man trying different keys in a lock. But none had fitted. No Saint Victorinus had come down with his now armed singing flowers to save us. So Martin had left his stale bread untouched and started on the beer that remained abundant.
‘Come now, Martin,’ I’d whispered, ‘we must set an example for these Greeks. These people won’t kill us. We’re all far too valuable. We’ll surely be sold into slavery at worst. Then we can be bought back out. Directly or indirectly, we’ll be ransomed.’
‘No, Aelric,’ he’d said flatly, giving me a look somewhere between pity at my own naivety and offence at my transparent attempt to deceive him. ‘You know we’ll not be sold. In any event,’ he’d added, ‘I’d rather be dead than a slave again.’
‘I can’t agree,’ I’d replied, trying to keep the conversation going. ‘Slavery must usually be better than death – especially if we can arrange to be bought back out of it.’
‘Bought back, you say?’ he’d replied with a sour laugh. ‘I dare say in Kent, just like in Rome, you can find anyone if you look hard enough for a few days. But do you know just how big the East is? Do you know how long it can take to get messages back even from Ephesus? Can you begin to imagine the distances involved if you get sold into Persia or one of the barbarian realms? And that’s just in settled times. In this world of armed chaos, you’d never get ransomed. Never!’
For a while, we’d sat in grumpy silence. Then Martin had begun again. ‘Do you realise’, he’d asked, ‘what it means to be a slave? You own slaves. I know you’ve read up on the law governing slavery. But you have no conception of what is really meant by all those legal phrases about abolition of personality and the like.’
Another pause, and he’d continued: ‘The first thing they do when you become a slave is break you. When I was sold for the first time, it was like a descent into Hell. We were beaten – beaten if we looked at the dealer when he spoke; beaten if we didn’t. We were stripped naked and made to walk around in the open. We were made to draw lots. On that basis, we were assigned to have sex with each other – in front of everyone.
‘I was made to have sex with a dying old woman, who barely knew what was happening around her. One of the dealers squatted in front of me, and I had to use his shit as a lubricant. Whenever I showed unwilling, I was flogged back into action.
‘One of the others I was with was made to have sex with a dog. When he couldn’t, they beat him to death. It was like with Justinus in that restaurant. I saw someone else have his legs broken for no particular reason. Then he was drowned in a vat of piss.
‘They do this’ – Martin was now speaking fast – ‘they do this partly because they enjoy the sight of so much humiliation. But they do it also to break you into your new status of absolute, unquestioning obedience to whatever orders you are given. Nobody wants to buy an uppity slave. You have to learn that, and learn it fast. You have to forget anything you might have been before your civil death.
‘Don’t tell me slavery is better than death. Rather than go through that again, I’ll choose death any day. But there isn’t any choice,’ he’d finished. ‘We’re to be killed tomorrow. Because there are so many of us, it will be a quick death. I don’t believe they’ll be wanting to spend much time over us. I suppose I’ll squeal like a pig when the first knife goes into me. You know I’m a coward, and I know you despise me for it. But I’m ready for death tomorrow. It won’t be long. If you have any sense, you won’t try making a fuss. Do that, and you’ll get personal attention.’
With that, he’d drained his pitcher of beer and settled down for a siesta. Soon, he’d been snoring away with his mouth open.
24
But let me return to Theophanes and the notion of having me brain him while he slept.
‘Now, Theophanes,’ I said, putting the stone down, ‘if I kill you, who will see to me? You don’t suppose I can
