him.’
Oh, fuck! I froze with horror. For the first time, I realised that every pair of eyes on the platform was swivelled in my direction. If this was how Priscus wanted his revenge for that birthday sneer, he was excelling himself. I could see from the corner of my eye that he was allowing one of his nostrils to twitch. If he’d been splitting his sides with laughter, it wouldn’t have shown his mood to better effect.
I swallowed and forced all thought of the Leontius documents out of my head. There was no point, though, even trying to loosen the knots in my stomach. I kept my face rigid and thought quickly. In Constantinople, I’d sat any number of times below Heraclius in the Circus, and watched him debate with the people. It could while away much of a dull afternoon to hear his whispered instructions to the herald, and see how close he was sticking to the line agreed in advance. However, if I’d done as much as anyone alive to set these lines, I’d never yet been called on to whisper the instructions myself. I looked again over the expectant mob, trying desperately to pull together the main facts of a report that hadn’t got half my attention as I drowsed by the swimming pool.
‘Tell them,’ I muttered uncertainly to the herald, ‘there is grain aplenty in storage. So long as no one demands extravagance, there is no reason why anyone should starve.’ I don’t know how the man heard me, but he did. I swallowed again and waited for him to finish. At least I didn’t need to get up and speak. The resulting stammer would have brought on disaster straight away.
‘Tell them,’ I added at last, ‘we’ll pay for the child’s funeral as an act of grace.’
And so we were in business. As often as the herald translated my words into the appropriately slow and ceremonious phrases, and the gong sounded to confirm the reply was ended, so another of the two-legged vermin before us would be put up to a reply or further demand. This was the main difference with Constantinople. There, the Circus Factions had their ritual chants to mix and match as their leaders found appropriate. Here, it was individual voices. But there was, I soon discovered, a limiting etiquette. If it was obvious a prole was using his own initiative to call out a protest or question, no one would make a fuss if it was ignored.
‘It is the Will of Caesar,’ the herald explained as we got to the matter uppermost in the thoughts of every mob, Greek or Egyptian, ‘that the grain be transported to the Imperial City that sits on the waves between Europe and Asia. As the Great King Xerxes had those waves scourged for the destruction of his boats, so equally in vain shall we contest the decision of the Lord’s Anointed. The grain ships must go. They will go.’
‘And how, then, shall the finest seed of Alexander be fed?’ someone called out from about twenty feet into the crowd. He stumbled over the unfamiliar words he’d had whispered into his ear. And ‘finest seed of Alexander’! Even now, that shrivelled husk in the Library basement could have fathered better semblances of the human race than this gathering of lice. But I’d finally got my facts and figures straight. By doubling every number in that report, and counting as already present what could be moved in from the smaller cities, I was able to create an impression of plenty in the public granaries. I’d rather have stuck to the more likely bare adequacy – more likely, that was, assuming the black fungus didn’t spread too much further. But with those ships on show to anyone who could get through the cordon into the Harbour, we needed more than claims of adequacy.
Someone came back with a detailed question about grain requisitions in the Eastern Delta. It was the sort of question that required inside knowledge. But what could surprise anyone about that? I had an answer to this that was almost the truth. Certainly, no one had the means to doubt it. We moved to another detailed question, and then to another. They came in almost logical order. My impression was that very little was said in this debate. That’s an impression, though, that every public speaker seems to have. Even taking into account how everything went through the herald, we did cover a lot. Every so often, there was a tremor in the lighting as the sun moved from one mirror to another. And a mood that had started out as at least belligerent had moved through the sceptical to the barely discontented.
‘His Highness the Viceroy will be thirty this coming Wednesday,’ I whispered. I lowered my voice still further in the new silence of the Hall. ‘Be vague about quantities, but announce a free distribution of flour – no, of fresh bread – for that day.’
That got us our first cheer of the afternoon. With every pause in the herald’s ritualised description of the grinding and kneading and baking of the corn, the acclamations rang out. I breathed an involuntary prayer that no one would ask what was on offer once the Christmas distribution had been eaten up.
No one quite did – but the meeting wasn’t yet ended. Someone over by the statue of Alexander asked if the natives were to get the same. A tricky question, this. If I said yes, there’d certainly be nothing left for later distribution. And this might lead to the question I wanted to avoid. If I said no – I thought of what I’d seen earlier in the Egyptian quarter. It felt as if every pair of eyes in the Hall that could see past the herald was focused on me.
‘Tell them the natives get whatever is theirs by custom,’ I breathed so softly, the herald had to sway back a little to catch the words. The exact meaning of what I’d said could depend on circumstances. ‘But announce a three-seventh subsidy on the price of beer to go with the free bread.
‘Oh’ – I thought quickly about another of the reports I’d had read out to me: we needed something to focus attention on the absolute present – ‘and announce a distribution of one pitcher of oil to every man who presents himself today at dusk before the Church of the Virgin.’ If I worked the warehouse slaves through the night, the natives could have theirs first thing in the morning. For the moment, though, it could be made to seem a Greek privilege.
And that swung them round. As the cheers died away and the gates at the far end of the Hall were pulled open, the herald was crying out in a voice of bright cheerfulness that everyone should go and get ready for the Evening Service, where he could give thanks for the ever-flowing bounty of the Imperial government.
‘Well,’ said Nicetas, stretching his arms as he moved for the first time that afternoon, ‘I think that went rather better than expected.’
The Master of the Works agreed. Another Council member praised my mastery of the relevant facts. Another began some turgid paean to my ‘matchless eloquence’. No one bothered asking what might have happened if the landowners had really wanted a riot. Without turning, I could hear Priscus sniffing up one of his milder powders.
We were alone in the Hall. The herald had jollied nearly everyone out, and the guards had pushed the few lingerers into the street. It had been a fine sound as they locked and barred the gates. I loosened my sweaty clothes and allowed what passed for fresh air to get at my body.
‘Oh, Alaric,’ Nicetas continued with a look away from me, ‘you will be pleased to know that I am minded to seal the orders for the grain fleet to depart. His Holiness the Patriarch has finally decided that the day after tomorrow will be our time of greatest blessing. It will be the day of Saint Lupus. He was very good to Heraclius and me when we set out from Carthage. I still have the relic with me that we used to calm the storm on our second day.’
He stretched out his right leg and groaned. As if from nowhere, one of his monks appeared with a box of something I doubted was medicinal by any reasonable definition. Was it worth raising the matter of the redistribution warrants? I asked myself. Best not, I answered. With Nicetas, it was one thing at a time at best, or nothing. I sipped at the wine cup someone had put into my hand.
‘No point, I suggest,’ Nicetas said again, ‘getting out of these fine clothes. I invite everyone to attend Evening Service in my own chapel, and then dinner afterwards. No dancing girls, in view of what day it is. But the new priest who’ll read from Saint Basil between the courses has a most beautiful voice.
‘What is that still doing here?’ he asked, breaking off and looking down the Hall.
It was the child’s body. It had served its purpose, and, in the rush to get out, had been dumped. There was other debris left behind. But that little bundle in the stained cloth, its blue-spotted arm still poking out, must have been contributing most to the smell that lingered in the air.
‘Get this place cleaned up,’ the Master of the Works said to one of the senior slaves. ‘We’ve a presentation here from the schoolchildren of Naucratis.’
As he spoke, the light from overhead suddenly gave out. I looked up at the mirrors. Every one of them was now dull. I looked back down and blinked in the gloom. There was a peal of distant thunder. I felt a draught on my bare chest.
‘Ah, that was our reserve plan,’ said Nicetas, still jolly though his monk was massaging relic oil into the raw flesh of his leg. ‘I did ask His Holiness the Patriarch to pray for rain. If you couldn’t persuade the mob to go away, the weather would disperse it. I think you’ll agree the storm is right on time.’
