‘Well, I’d stand with him again, any day. So would every man of us.’
It was the high, clear voice of well-bred youth and I identified it as coming from a table close by one of the monuments. Braziers stood around the diners to keep off the autumnal chill, and a canopy was stretched over them in case of rain.
I recognised the speaker as one of the students I’d led into battle. He had a bandage over his head and his right arm in a sling, but he was alive and still jubilant. At the same long table, and on the table beyond that, I saw that the majority of my students were gathered. Even Philip was there, and I was sure I’d seen him take a knock on the head. Martin had been wrong. The students weren’t mostly dead. Though rather battered from the hard fighting, they were mostly still alive. And now they were celebrating.
‘It was like fighting by God-like Achilles,’ another said, with a garbled attempt at quoting Homer. He got a nasty look from an elder sitting opposite him.
‘Oh, I shouldn’t worry about all that stuff – the Tyrant’s dead,’ he called, choosing to interpret the look as nothing other than a reflection on his learning. ‘We’ve all got our amnesty. Besides, isn’t Uncle Flavius planning to be first out of the city to welcome Heraclius when he shows up?’
‘There’s no amnesty for your Golden Alaric,’ the elder said with a knowing sneer. ‘There’s a price on his head – its weight in gold.’
‘I’d like to see anyone try to collect on that!’ the first student interjected. ‘I saw him get away right at the end. There wasn’t a single scratch on him.’
‘Then pray the bugger is dead before Heraclius gets hold of him,’ the elder replied. ‘He’ll regret the hour that riff-raff of veterans by the Great Church put him up for Emperor. I saw the exception list published beside the amnesty. His name was just below that of Phocas’ – the man turned and spat elegantly at mention of the Emperor.
‘As for you’ – he turned back to the first student – ‘you’ve had your fun. From tomorrow, it’s back to the University. If you want that posting to Rhodes, you’ll need to pass those examinations.’
At this, the table fell silent. Then someone recited a long snatch from The Iliad – one of the bits full of fighting and blood – and the whole gathering joined in with varying degrees of recollection and competence.
On the far side of the square, I noticed several men pulling on ropes at an equestrian statue of Phocas. It buckled at the legs, but was too strongly set into the plinth. The bronze would have to wait until day for breaking up into sections and dispatch for coining into money or melting into a more fashionable shape.
I noticed more bodies hanging from torch brackets as I moved on, but the stimulants Theophanes had given me were now having their full effect, and I felt thoroughly jaunty. It was disturbing to be reminded that those idiotic Blues had put me outside the scope of the amnesty. But I was still alive and in one piece. And I had every intention of staying that way.
As I walked from the square into the shadows of a street obviously inhabited by persons of quality, I caught a brief exchange about the whereabouts of Heraclius. Someone suggested that he was already in the palace.
‘Not so,’ came the reply. ‘He’s on his flagship in the Golden Horn. He’ll not be coming ashore until the mess is cleared away.’
In the dim light that showed in the upper windows of most of the houses it was possible to see the hasty messages of devotion and greeting for Heraclius that had been daubed on sheets and hung from each heavy gate.
64
The Jewish district was in uproar when I arrived there. Men were arguing bitterly in the streets. Slaves went about tearing crosses and enamelled icons from the shop signs. Others were fighting to keep them there.
One old Jew caught the hem of my cloak as I walked past him. ‘In the name of our Common Father,’ he cried in despair, ‘can you say anything about what Heraclius intends for us?’
I looked back at him from within the folds of my hood. ‘I am perhaps the last person in the city able to answer that one,’ I said with a gentle laugh. ‘But my advice, for what it may be worth, is to gather a big sum in hard cash and go indoors to wait on events. There may be a return to toleration. Or there may not. It depends on whether Heraclius listens more to his priests or to his money people.’
I turned to go. But someone else came from behind and pulled my hood back. ‘I thought I recognised your voice,’ he said.
I reached for my sword. But Baruch grinned and touched the blue amulet on his turban.
I’d been amazed by the display of blue over at the Great Church. It had never occurred to me that even the Jews had joined the Circus Factions.
‘This is the one, Rabbi,’ said Baruch. He hugged me and kissed both cheeks in his ebullient, Eastern way. ‘If I hadn’t been there myself, I’d never have believed it. He fought like Samson with his ass’s jawbone. He smote those Green dogs good and proper. They ran like the Philistines at Lechi. I killed three myself.’
Baruch looked set to drift into a reverie of smiting but the Rabbi dragged him back to the present with a high-pitched reprimand in what I can now say was Aramaic. Jews in the City all speak common Greek on the streets, you see, but many of them can also speak a couple of Eastern languages which they use when they want to talk privately among themselves.
‘No,’ said Baruch firmly, pulling the conversation back into Greek. ‘No one grasses on the Hero of the Blues. He led us to a draw with the Imperial Army. Besides, he’s a good customer – well, good on the whole.’
He turned back to me. ‘See that piece of offal up there?’ he asked.
‘Yes?’ I said, giving a polite but hurried look at the torch bracket.
‘That was my Chief Clerk, that was,’ he said. ‘I don’t grass on people. People don’t grass on me.’ He dropped his voice. ‘Are you in need of shelter?’ he asked. ‘My bank is safe as any fortress, and I could get you away in the morning. So long as no one looks under your tunic, you can-’
‘Thanks, but no,’ I said. ‘I do, however, have something in mind that would benefit from your help.’
I took him next to a wall and quietly explained what I had in mind. Baruch listened gravely. His eyes widened when I mentioned certain documents that might be of interest. He raised only one objection, and I changed my plan to accommodate this.
‘If you want to help your people,’ I ended, ‘that is probably the best way of doing it.’
‘I’m in,’ he said as soon as I’d finished. ‘Let me go in for a sword.’
‘And get a cloak,’ I hissed after him. I pulled my own hood back on but, noticing a very pretty young woman looking out of a window at me, quickly pulled it half back again and smiled up at her. It may have been the drugs, or it may have been the thought of sodding everything up for several people who deserved no better, but I was feeling in the mood for devilry this evening.
Sadly, the girl was almost at once jerked back from the window, and the shutters were pulled across.
Over by the shore of the Golden Horn, some of the Greens had broken into a wine depot and were drinking their way through several dozen vats of the best wine in the city. Hundreds of them crowded into the narrow streets that ran down to the water. Blissfully happy, their dirty, often hideous proley faces softened by drink, and the knowledge of a betrayal well made, they pissed and belched where they sat. A few, lying in odd positions, looked dead from over-indulgence. Rather more of them were still up to dancing with each other for support, as they croaked a discordant hymn of triumph over the Blues.
A detachment of regular troops stood by the shore, just in case of any disturbance.
Come dawn, whatever trash had survived the celebrations would be cleared off the streets and driven back to their workshops or whatever filthy burrows they inhabited by day. For the moment, they were left to enjoy the fruits of their victory.
‘See how the Greens would make an easy target,’ Baruch whispered in my ear. ‘Shall we not cut a few throats?’
‘We have other work to do,’ I reminded him.
For away from any of the troubles, the Monastery of St John Chrysostom lay in silence. We took up our positions in the doorway of a derelict shop nearby and waited. Baruch muttered a few times about his rheumatism and breathed garlic in my face every time he moved for a scratch. But, dressed in black, we stood still enough to be
