Permanent Legate. He’d been with him every day – most recently the evening before, when they’d been going over the accounts of a charitable foundation in Ephesus.
I stopped him at the mention of Ephesus. Hadn’t Theophanes discussed the place with the Permanent Legate? I’d investigate this later.
Alone again, Martin and I searched the room more thoroughly. We kicked at the boards to see if any were loose. We stripped the bed. We tapped carefully along the walls. We pulled the bookcase and the wardrobe away from the wall to make sure there wasn’t any hidden doorway or other point of access.
As I finished dictating my notes, Theophanes arrived.
‘This is a terrible thing,’ he announced in a sonorous voice. ‘A suicide – and of one so high in Holy Mother Church!’
He looked at me, plainly taking in my outdoor clothes. His eyes flickered to Martin and Authari.
‘Not suicide,’ I said, choosing to ignore how quickly he had got here. I gave him the facts we’d gathered. His eyes darted rapidly about the room, taking in the scene.
‘Alypius,’ he rapped in his official tone, ‘I want the Legation sealed at once. No one enters. No one leaves. And I want this room and the whole corridor sealed off.’
‘Theophanes,’ I suggested, taking him aside, ‘you should station someone here in the room – someone you can trust not to mess everything up behind your back. There might be someone hidden in the room. You need to make sure he doesn’t slip away before the room can be taken apart.’
Theophanes nodded. He suggested Authari should stay and keep watch. It would take a while for any of his trusted investigators to get over from the Ministry. For the moment, the Legation officials had to be watched as well as the body.
He gave my outdoor cloak another hard stare and seemed about to remark on it. Instead he arranged his features into their official blandness.
‘I’m afraid the pair of you will need to give the story in person to the Emperor,’ he said. ‘This is a matter of state importance.’
40
After a long wait outside his office, we were ushered into the Imperial Presence. Phocas sat at his desk, giving responses to a mass of letters and petitions. Secretaries surrounded him, taking down his brief words for the usual writing up into more cere monious utterances.
Theophanes had made sure to tell us that there was no need for the usual prostrations in a matter of utilitarian business. We nodded respectfully at Phocas as he looked towards us. He pointed at two chairs against a wall as he continued work with his secretaries.
Theophanes went and stood beside him.
‘Have the man torn apart by hyenas in the Circus,’ Phocas said in a low monotone, discussing someone presumably accused of treason.
The secretary scribbled a note in the margin of the papyrus sheet. He added the sheet to a pile on a wheeled table beside him, then reached into a bag for another.
Phocas stopped him. ‘Correction,’ he said, taking hold of the anonymous denunciation. ‘Have that done to his wife and children. Make him watch. Then have him blinded and put in the Monastery of St Placidius. There he can await our further pleas ure.’ He paused, taking one final look at the denunciation. ‘Total confiscation of goods,’ he added. ‘Refuse any Petition of Share if the informant comes forward.’
He raised a hand to indicate that the matter was closed and moved on to the next one. Should the Army of the Euphrates be ordered to Constantinople? It could be used here against Heraclius, who was now sending further contingents over from Abydos to complete the encirclement.
Phocas got up and walked over to a mosaic map of the Empire that covered the far wall away from the windows. This was an old map that showed the Empire as it had been in ancient times, including the Western Provinces and even Britain. He put up a hand to trace the length of the Euphrates frontier with Persia.
‘Leave the army where it is,’ he said at length. ‘It can’t arrive here in time to serve any useful purpose. In any event, it’s all we have left to cover Syria. Whoever is Emperor come the next moon, he’ll need something there to stand against Chosroes.’
He laughed unpleasantly as he turned to face me.
‘You stay,’ he said, raising his voice. ‘Everyone else – out!’
He pointed at Theophanes. ‘That includes you.’
Theophanes opened his mouth to speak but thought better of the idea. He bowed low and followed the secretaries out, closing the door softly as he went.
Before it closed, Martin turned back and stared at me, a frightened look on his face. I tried a smile of reassurance. I don’t think it worked very well.
Phocas returned to his desk. He motioned me forward. He looked at the wine jug beside him, sighed and looked away.
This wasn’t the jolly creature who’d charmed me during lunch at the Circus. It wasn’t the hieratic image who’d presided over the races. It was the bureaucratic, supremely powerful Ruler of the World – or whatever of it still paid attention to His Word.
Phocas took up a sheet of parchment. On it was a list of names, all with black marks against them.
‘Do you see these names?’ he asked in a smooth voice. ‘Every one of these is of someone who wants to be Emperor in my place. Do you want to be Emperor?’
‘No, Your Majesty,’ I said, trying to keep my voice level. ‘I’m just a barbarian, here on business for Holy Mother Church.’
‘Perhaps I believe you,’ came the reply. ‘I didn’t want to be Emperor when I was your age. Fate can play strange tricks on a man if he lives long enough. But I do believe you. People like you don’t want to be Emperor. All you ever want to do is to feast on the rotting entrails of the Empire.’
Phocas took up another sheet of parchment. It was covered on one side in a tiny Latin script.
‘Alaric of Britain,’ he began, speaking Greek in a voice of quiet menace, ‘I have in my hand a signed request from the Exarch in Ravenna for your immediate removal to his presence. You are accused of a fraud on the Sacred Treasury.’
He pushed the sheet towards me. I read it with freezing insides. My knees shook with the unexpected shock. My idiotic associates had sold half the shares in that Cornish tin shipment to a consortium of Jews and Armenians backed by the Exarch. His agents in Cadiz had got wind of our scheme. It was they who had bought the shipment. They had then observed the reloading of the ships.
The Ravenna contract had been voided. The tin was forfeit. My associates had decamped from Rome to take shelter in Pavia with the Lombards. I was wanted for questioning and trial in Ravenna.
‘You do realise, I think,’ Phocas continued in a more conversational tone, ‘that you are in the technical sense a traitor. I could have you flayed alive in the Circus for this. And that’s without dragging up another matter from outside Ravenna that I may still regard as pending.’
He got up again and went over to a cupboard. He took out a golden key from his robe and opened the ivory doors. Inside was what looked like a golden birdcage. This he pulled out on a sliding shelf.
It was a cage. But instead of real birds, it contained three golden and ivory figurines of birds. He pulled at a wheel and pushed a lever. As he stood back, there was a whirring of little gears, and the room was filled with the sharp, artificial singing of birds.
It was an odd accompaniment to a death sentence. Oh, if you set aside the bathing and more frequent changing of clothes, the main difference between Phocas and the Great One was that the second had to rule somewhat more by persuasion than the first. This man could, if he pleased, do the most awful things to me.
But the chances were that it didn’t please him. If he’d managed a shock just as great as I’d had in the Great One’s tent, I was recovering much faster. I was angry at how those duffers back in Rome had, despite my urging, overreached themselves. I was vaguely apprehensive of a crushing fine. But I didn’t really expect I’d be used any time soon as a warm-up for the chariot races.
