Constantinople. You could buy what you liked, he said, and no record was taken for the authorities to add to your file. I’d heard this before, but had never bought any books such as these.
By the time I’d arranged for their delivery, Martin was soaked and the chair-men were muttering about their waiting charge. But I was content. I wiped the book dust off my hands on the curtain of the chair and settled back for the journey home through the wet, militarised streets of the city.
Martin might be grumbling as he walked along beside me. But it had turned out so far a very productive day.
49
The light was gone. So too the rainclouds. The stars again looked down from a perfectly clear autumnal sky. The bright crescent of a new moon was climbing among them.
Yet another shift in the wind, and the cold spell had come to an end. Woollen overclothes and a jug of warmed red wine were all that were needed to sit outside. For light, we had an enclosed lantern with glass sides.
Martin had found the roof garden on one of his tours of the Legation. It was a railed square, about ten foot by ten, cut into the roof. You reached it by going to the end of the corridor which ran past the Permanent Legate’s rooms. Here, a door just like all the others led not to another room but to a staircase leading straight up.
It was a fine discovery. Sitting up there by day gave an unbroken view of the city. Look in one direction and you could see straight over to the Great Church, and in the other the main public buildings. Look aside from the central area, and you could see right over the city, either to the bleak countryside that stretched beyond the old suburbs outside the land walls, or to the sea and then to the shores of Asia.
At any time of day, it was about as private as could be desired.
Martin was first to break the long silence. ‘Antony tells me’, he said, ‘that every division in Egypt and every Syrian division not actually fighting the Persians has been brought in for the siege.’
He waved over the rooftops at the continued darting of lights on every stretch of water we could see.
‘There won’t be an assault,’ I replied, quoting Priscus. ‘The walls are impregnable. The question is when and how the gates will be opened. But this brings us to the matter in hand,’ I added, reaching into my bag. I pulled out a single sheet of papyrus, rolled and held in place by a leather band. I handed it to Martin and waited for him to read it.
He looked up, confusion on his face. ‘What are you trying to do?’ he asked.
‘You’ll see that it bears both the legatorial seal and that of Theophanes,’ I said. ‘His seal gets you out of the city. Mine will get you through the Heraclians and across the water to Chalcedon. I’ve made up a purse for your immediate needs, and I’ve had Baruch make out drafts in your name.
‘I want you and Maximin and Gutrune to be at the Eugenian Gate first thing tomorrow. You’ll show this permit to the guards. They’ll have had instructions from Theophanes. Then you approach the most senior officer outside the walls for help with the onward journey.
‘You get into Chalcedon. If possible, you move on to Nico media. You wait for things to settle. If they’ve gone badly back here, you get yourself, Gutrune and the child to Rome by whatever route you think the least unsafe.’
Martin waved impatiently at me. ‘There’s pestilence outside the walls,’ he said. ‘I was looking over them earlier. I could see the bodies being carried away from the main camp – dozens at a time. Will you expose Maximin to that?’
‘And do you suppose’, I retorted, ‘it will be any safer here once I’ve winkled Demetrius out of that monastery? Theophanes likes me far too much to kill me unless he must, but I am pushing rather close to that “must”. Besides, nowhere in the city will be safe once the street-fighting starts.
‘You go without me, and you go tomorrow.’
‘I won’t leave you.’ Martin’s voice was shrill. ‘With no one around you to trust, you’ll be dead within a day.’
I sipped at my wine and chose my words. ‘Martin,’ I said, ‘I wish you hadn’t raised the question of trust. But now that you have, I really must ask what trust I can have in a man who’s been spying on my every move since we arrived in Constantinople? Spying on my every move and reporting it to Theophanes!’
If I’d punched him hard in the stomach, he’d not have looked more winded. I refilled his cup.
‘No, Martin – you just sit there and listen to me,’ I said, cutting off a weak attempt at interruption. ‘I could list dozens of occasions when Theophanes knew what we were about before I told him. But I can’t be bothered. I decided a long time ago that you were feeding him information.’
I stood up and looked over the rail at the build-up of forces. Little as I knew then of war, I wondered at how feebly the City was defended. Phocas had no navy for open-water fighting. But he had enough ships to block the Straits to this sort of operation. It was going ahead without interference.
I turned back to face Martin. He was slumped forward in his chair and crying softly. I took his hands in mine but he turned his head away and continued crying.
‘Martin,’ I said softly, ‘there was one mystery in this City that I did clear up almost at once. I still don’t know who was behind the curtain in the Great One’s tent, but I’m sure I know who was breathing down my neck two months ago in the Ministry.
‘I don’t suppose you could see how I was nearly pissing myself with fright as I sat there with Alypius, half expecting at any moment to be dragged to the basement. Afterwards, as I walked home, I realised I’d been got there so that Alypius could pass on a warning from Theophanes against further snooping.
‘But it was the note from Theophanes next morning about that cot for Maximin – that plus your own uncharacteristic behaviour with the wine and opium – that aroused my suspicions.
‘You killed the old Court Poet, didn’t you? Theophanes knew you’d done it, and put the frighteners on you by shoving me in that room. I imagine you told him you could brave any horrors he might subject you to in the dungeons. But you couldn’t face me, and he had me there ready at hand, just in case that was needed to break you.’
But for the occasional breeze and the faint sounds of the city and those passing and re-passing ships, we sat in silence. Martin looked at me and opened his mouth. Then he looked down again. At last, he found his words.
‘The old eunuch threatened to expose me in front of you. He said you might be roped into the trial. He said he couldn’t guarantee your safety or that of Maximin. You’ve seen for yourself the terrible looks and words he can manage when he isn’t trying to charm.’
‘The man was Court Poet under Maurice,’ I said. ‘I suppose he had a hand in smashing you and your father up.’
I poured out more wine for us, and drew my cloak about my legs. Martin looked up at me and smiled.
‘You know,’ he said, ‘I didn’t want to come back to Constantinople. I knew it would be a disaster. Even so I really did hope, before we arrived, that I could stick close by you and behave as if I’d never been here before. Then the eunuch had us to lunch and made me dig up all those memories of what happened before.’
‘You mean’, I asked, ‘that Professor of Rhetoric done over on some more than usually inventive charge of treason?’
‘That’s the one,’ said Martin. ‘He led the pack against my father. It wasn’t all his own money he put up to pay off our debts. But he collected it. He issued the bankruptcy petition when we couldn’t pay. You should have seen his face when we met in court.’
Martin closed his eyes and thought back to that dreadful day. He wasn’t up to explaining the details of the case as it unfolded. But I managed to reconstruct for myself that the Anthemius petition had been an excuse to involve the tax authorities. Without Anthemius to push them, they’d have waited, reasonably sure the tax bill would be paid. With the matter in court, they had to hurry forward to grab what they could. That had allowed the ban on enslavement for debt to be set aside.
They’d got their cross petition granted without a hearing and without any hope of appeal or delay of execution.
