‘You are each, as of this moment, free. You are free to go when and where you please. In a moment, I must leave you on official business. When I am gone, Martin will give each of you a purse of gold and silver to start you in your new lives. It is my advice that you should stay in this Legation so long as it remains safe. If, in defiance of all law and all religion, it is entered by any hostile force, I advise you to leave at once. You must offer no resistance.
‘Gutrune’ – I turned to her and spoke in the simple Lombardic she was happiest with – ‘if it is necessary for you to leave the Legation, I want you to take Maximin with you. If possible, you will return him to Martin. If this is not possible, I wish you to bring him up as if he were your own child. Martin will make additional financial arrangements to cover this eventuality.’
I raised my hand for silence. I had no time for extended thanks. Besides, I have never encouraged emotional scenes where they could be avoided. I had cleared my own accounts, and that would have to be an end of the matter. I embraced each free citizen as I handed out the deeds.
In a babble of ‘God be with you!’ the room emptied.
‘Can you help me back on with this thing?’ I asked Martin, pointing at the breastplate. ‘I have no idea how to tie all these leather straps.’
‘Can’t we just run away?’ Martin asked with a shaking voice. ‘Surely we can disguise ourselves and hide out in one of the Latin districts. We can come out again when all this is over. Can’t you see that Phocas is sending you to your death?’
‘That seems to be part of his intention,’ I agreed. ‘Perhaps he wants to make a better job of it than he made last night with those Syrians. More likely, though, he just wants someone to slow things down in the streets while he prepares his own Thermopylae in the Imperial Palace.’
I silenced whatever comment Martin had begun.
‘Listen,’ I said, dropping from pure habit into Celtic, ‘Phocas tells me he’s armed his eunuchs, and plans to lead them in a fight to the last at the entrance to the Throne Room. For the moment, he has enough control in the city to be able to track me down if I try making a dash for it. Once Heraclius is through the gates, however, I doubt I shall be the only defender buggering off out of sight.
‘Now, Martin,’ I went on, fixing him in the eye, ‘what I said to the slaves goes for you as well. I want you out of here at the first smell of trouble. Take whatever you need to get back to Rome. If you can get the child back to Gretel, so much the better.’
‘You have very little respect for my courage,’ he said, his exalted tone returning. ‘Perhaps I don’t always acquit myself well in the presence of the unexpected. But I know my duty.’
I cut him off. ‘Your duty’, I said, ‘is to take that child back to Rome. Beyond that, you look to your own safety. We don’t know for certain it’s all up for Phocas. If it is, I’m more likely to get out safely if I’m alone. We’ll have dinner in Rome yet. I’m sure you can persuade Sveta not to poison me.’
Martin ignored me. ‘I bought a relic of Saint Victorinus when we got back to the City,’ he said. ‘It is attested by the Holy Fathers of his own monastery. I want you to wear it when you go out on the streets. He saved you once before.’
‘My dear Martin,’ I said, trying not to laugh at the shrivelled finger he passed across the desk. ‘Put that thing back in its box.’
‘Then we shall all pray for you,’ he said.
‘I’m not going to my death just yet,’ I reminded him. ‘I’ll be back at dawn.’
57
After several months in the place, I’d come to take the sheer size of Constantinople for granted. Now I was put in charge of its defence, I was brought back to my first realisation. There are nearly ten miles of wall to cover. As I keep saying, the City walls are impregnable; and, as hardly a decade goes by without one of more attempts to breach them, they are always kept in excellent repair.
My problem, though, was a shortage of men. Just about all the officers in the garrison and in the City Guard had now deserted. Phocas had caught a few and hanged them, but that didn’t solve the immediate problem. Many of the common soldiers were staying at home, and there was no way of getting them back on duty in time for the expected attack. The rest made it clear to me that they’d do their minimal duty of holding the walls, but would do nothing to endanger their own lives.
I might be its Count. Bugger me, though, if I saw one member of the Palace Guard.
When Priscus had been told to recruit the citizens to mount an internal defence, that had been largely to keep everyone busy and take their minds off the coming struggle. No one had seriously expected that this line of defence would be needed. Now it was the only line of defence. The Green Faction, under old General Bonosus, was looking after the Main Harbour. The Emperor had dug his younger brother out of a brothel to muster the few regular troops who remained in the City.
As head of the City’s defences I’d spent much of the night hurrying from barricade to barricade, inspecting them and giving little speeches of encouragement. The outer barricades had been largely deserted, and I’d moved the few armed citizens who were there back to a smaller line around the central areas. Some of these obeyed. Many others, I later discovered, had gone off home.
The only enthusiasm I found was among the university students. They had no commitment to Phocas or to anyone else, but the thought of a good fight was far more exciting than reading up for examinations. I bumped into them as I came away from the Eleutherian Harbour, where I’d been watching brightly lit ships darting about some business which the decrepit veterans assigned to my staff were unable to explain.
‘Have any of you read much military history?’ I asked after draining one of the wine jugs offered me. I’d paid little attention to battles myself, except in Thucydides and a few other historians, where they are integral to the text.
‘No,’ answered one with a piping voice – he looked about fifteen – ‘but an uncle of mine did once write a poem about Saint Sebastian. It had lots of killing in it.’
‘That will have to do,’ I said. ‘Now listen,’ I told the whole group. ‘I don’t doubt Heraclius will get into the City. When he does come, it will probably be from two or more directions at once. Therefore, we don’t go out of the main ring of barricades. Go outside, and we’ll be cut off in no time. I want you gathered by the Great Church when news comes of an attack. We then go together to whatever place needs additional defence. We fight together. We stay together. We don’t face the enemy at any time in open terrain. We pick them off half a dozen at a time, and preferably from behind.’
I knew nothing yet of generalship in the regular sense, but I had led that band of ruffians on the Wessex borders with reasonable success. Defending a gigantic city with a thousand miles of streets was beyond my present abilities, but I felt some comfort in having my own group of irregulars.
I made a literary speech about deathless glory. Then I sent everyone home to get some rest.
The Great Church was crowded when I arrived there. With bonfires to keep off the night chill, hundreds lolled on the pavements of the square outside, eating and drinking. It was hardly a merry occasion, but the drink had cheered everyone.
Theophanes caught up with me as I was admiring myself in a shop window. He was alone.
‘Aelric,’ he said, puffing at the exertion of having to move quickly around the City without his chair – ‘Aelric, I want you to know that this wasn’t any of my doing. All I wanted was for you to stay in the Legation and wait on events. My juggling has not worked out as expected.’
‘What’s done is done,’ I said and waved dismissively. ‘But what are your plans now? Have you come to volunteer for a place at the barricades? You’re a neat hand with a dagger, as I recall.’
He smiled grimly. ‘You don’t seem to understand the seriousness of what is happening,’ he said.
‘I understand perfectly well what is happening,’ I snapped. ‘As ever, I don’t understand why it is. Now, Theophanes, since I hardly think you’ve come here with any new revelations, I’ll simply ask what I can do for you.’
Theophanes looked quickly around. There was no one in hearing distance. He leaned close to me.
‘There is a little monastery by the Pantocrator Church – it’s the one close by the old wall of Constantine,’ he
