I ignored the invitation. ‘What I can’t understand’, I said, ‘is why you’ve changed sides. You might be useful to Heraclius at the moment. Do you really think, though, that he will spare your life once you’ve helped make him Emperor?’
Priscus looked thoughtfully over to the closed door and then to the shuttered window.
‘There are many things you don’t understand,’ he said quietly across the table.
I had to lean forward to catch his further words. ‘The deal is that I give him the City’, he said, ‘and he gives me an army to use against the Persians. Be assured I’ll soon be turning on him.
‘The best I can hope for while Phocas lives is to be a glorified chief of police. The way he carries on, he’ll live for ever. Long before then, he’ll have no Empire left to hand over. All things considered, Heraclius is a much better bet.’
I scarce knew where to begin. It seemed to me then that he was a walking illustration of what too many mood-altering substances, consumed over too long a period, can do to the understanding.
I changed the subject. ‘Why do you ask me to defect with you?’ I asked.
Priscus smiled again. ‘Because, my darling little god,’ he said, ‘now you’re in the know, what else can you do but stick with me?’
‘That begs the question, My Lord,’ I said, ‘why you have put me in the know.’
I thought for a moment of killing Priscus but soon dismissed it. He was also armed, and he might be no fool with a sword.
He spoke again: ‘Why don’t you join us? I’m sure I could put in a word with Heraclius. He’s not very bright, you should be aware. Once I’m Emperor, I’ll reopen the University and make you its chancellor.’
Seeing the scorn I couldn’t keep off my face, Priscus continued: ‘And, of course, there are other openings for you at my court. You know that we make a great team. Relieved of the duty to have you killed, I’d find you even more madly attractive than I have so far. I’m not as young as I used to be, but I can still teach a thing or two about mattress acrobatics.’
This really was too much!
‘My dear Priscus,’ I said when I’d recovered use of my voice, ‘you should be aware that the only bodily fluid I might want to discharge near you is vomit.’
As if I’d spat at him, he shrank back in his chair. A look of rage passed over his face. Then he was all smooth serpent again.
‘Be that as it may,’ he said, ‘you’ve lavished enough tenderness these past few months on some of my spawn.’
I felt as if I’d had a stiletto of ice pushed into my stomach.
‘And what in the name of shit,’ I snarled, ‘do you mean by that?’
‘Isn’t it obvious?’ Priscus said slowly and emphatically. ‘Your darling Maximin is one of my bastards. You say he was picked up near dawn outside the Mary Magdalene Church? It’s surely no coincidence that I had a boy child left in the same place at probably the same time – I’m sure we’d agree on the date if we bothered comparing notes. I let the bitch slave-girl carry her belly-load about until she shat it out. When I saw the scrawny thing, I had her throat cut and the baby dumped.
‘Yes, my darling boy – I’m the father of the thing you love most in this City. And when I’m Emperor, I may have to take it back from you. It might not do to have a grandson of Phocas as my heir.’
‘You’re a fucking liar, you shitbag Greekling!’ I shouted in Latin. Because he spoke it, I suddenly found Greek too dirty a language for my lips.
‘But you know I’m telling the truth – don’t you?’ he said, still in Greek. ‘Now you go back to your Legation and look on your beautiful adopted son. If you want to spare yourself a whole mountain of grief – and him too once I’m Emperor – you’ll throw him to those pigs.’
Priscus got up. ‘I’m sure we still have much to discuss. Perhaps we’ll continue this conversation when we next meet. Perhaps it will be in circumstances similar to those I intended on our first meeting. But for the moment, I have other, more pressing business to attend to.’
By the time I’d gathered myself sufficiently to follow him from the wine shop, he’d vanished.
As I staggered through the gate to the Legation, I heard the first word on the streets that the Caesar Priscus had somehow found a way out of the City, and that he’d gone over to Heraclius.
55
Martin looked at the child again. ‘There is a certain resemblance,’ he said in a doubtful tone.
‘Of course there’s a resemblance, you dickhead,’ I hissed. With his eyes shut, Maximin was a smaller version of Priscus. It was astonishing how I hadn’t noticed this before.
‘Where’s your God now? The moment you found that child by the church, you sealed our death warrant.’
‘Shut up, or you’ll wake him,’ came the reply. Martin carefully pulled the covers back. He turned to face me. For all the concern he showed, I might have been telling him about a crate of spoiled papers.
‘Besides,’ he added, ‘I only picked him up. I recall it was you who insisted on adopting him. And you did adopt him,’ he continued with a sudden intensity. He’d switched into Celtic. ‘Under the laws of every nation, including even yours, the father of a child is the man who takes it as his own. Fatherhood comes from acknowledgement, not from fucking. That child is yours and yours alone.’
‘That isn’t the point,’ I said. I’d not let Martin see the tears I was forcing back as I repeated his point again and again to myself. ‘The point is that we’re in the deepest shit you can imagine. This is the natural child of the second biggest traitor in the Empire. In a few days, he may again be the child of the second biggest man in the Empire. Where does that leave him or us? Now, do please shut up about your God. If He had any hand in this, it shows at least an unorthodox sense of humour.’
‘Fuck them!’ Martin spat. I looked up in shock at the unexpected obscenity. ‘Do you suppose it was mere chance that I went to that place and at that time? Had I ever been there before? Had I ever taken notice of a foundling before? Was it chance that I brought him home? Was it chance that you adopted him on the spot? Was it chance that you called him Maximin without the shadow of a thought?
‘Was any of this chance? It was the Will of God, I tell you!
‘It was God who willed me to send the Court Poet early into His Presence. Once He had arranged for me to be in the right time and place, all else followed with the same certainty as a branch struck by lightning crashes from a tree. You can laugh at me with your mind full of the muddy thoughts of the ancients. But you know I’m talking sense.
‘I tell you’ – he dropped his voice as the child stirred – ‘I tell you that God is guiding our every move towards some Holy Purpose. You can forget Phocas and Priscus and all the rest of them. If God be for us, who can be against us?’
If Martin had thrown the wine jug out of the window, and slapped my face and called me names, it wouldn’t have had the same sobering effect as this latest outpouring. But what reply was there to it all?
We looked silently at each other for a long moment. Then I walked out on to the balcony and sat at the little table, trying to think through the practicalities of the situation.
‘Drink this.’ Martin pushed a cup of warmed fruit juice to my lips. ‘You’ll get cold out here otherwise.’
We sat for a very long time without speaking. The sky turned from purple to black. Dogs barked in the distance. The wind blew softly on my face.
At last, I got up and went back inside. Maximin was now awake. He smiled as I approached him, lamp in hand. I looked down at him. I put the lamp on the table beside his cot and took him into my arms. I breathed in the slightly shitty smell of the only son I’d ever managed to hold.
I tried to control the spasms, but wept uncontrollably. The tears burned my eyes and I buried my face in Maximin’s blanket.
‘You’re mine, you’re mine,’ I said again and again. ‘You’re mine, and I’ll kill anyone who tries to take you from me.’
After what seemed another age, I felt Martin beside me. ‘Aelric,’ he said softly in Latin, ‘I’ve sent down for hot water. There’s a messenger from Theophanes. You must wash your face.’
