I stepped back from the wall and looked down to where Martin was now standing with Theodore. They must have heard the noise, but were deep in conversation about something that took their whole interest. Priscus, though, wasn’t finished.
‘Can you tell our young friend,’ he asked, ‘why these two-legged animals are so ugly?’ He now looked at Nicephorus and waited expectantly.
The Count bit his lip and tried to lick moisture on to his dry lips.
‘Come on, Nicephorus,’ he added with cold and silken charm. ‘You may be Count of Athens. But we both stand far above you in the Imperial pecking order. You’ll do well to answer when you’re spoken to.’
Nicephorus now managed a sickly smile. ‘There is a story,’ he said, ‘that, in ancient times, the common people of Athens and all their posterity were blighted with a curse of ugliness. They are said to have offended a being of great power.’ There was a loud scream from within the theatre. He stopped and looked over the wall. ‘Is My Lord not satisfied with his tour of Athens?’ he asked with desperate politeness. He waved vaguely over the jumble of ruined or converted buildings that spread below us all the way to the new wall and beyond.
‘Your stewardship of Athens is most impressive,’ I said blandly. Indeed, so far as Athens had been left with any machinery of justice, this was probably it. If Nicephorus chose not to pay attention, it wasn’t my business to act in his place. I put those increasingly horrible screams out of mind and smiled easily back at him. Our eyes met. Still smiling, I looked long into his strained, sweaty face. I thought for a moment that he’d stand up to my stare.
Then, just as I was about to be really impressed, his eyes took on a renewed shifty look, and he looked away. But he recovered fast. He laughed and stamped his foot. He looked at Priscus, who was momentarily out of action with more of his Eastern bug juice.
‘Then all is excellent!’ he said with another forced laugh. ‘Shall we not make our way back to the residency?’ Except his whole manner dripped beast and weakling, you’d hardly have recalled the shrill, supplicating figure of the night before.
I stayed behind to help Priscus down. As his grip loosened on the top stones of the wall, he ignored my outstretched hand. ‘Alaric,’ he said through suddenly chattering teeth, ‘I hope you’ll take advice from a somewhat older man who’s had more experience than you of the civilised world.’ He stood upright and put his flask away. ‘Don’t think any more about these local customs. Believe me, dear boy,’ he added with sudden earnestness — he even dropped his voice as if someone might be listening, ‘Athens is an ancient city, filled with ancient sins. Things happen here that are often best overlooked. Your capacity for overlooking what everyone else can see is legendary. You should now hope it doesn’t fail you.’
Chapter 26
I sat down at my desk and fished inside my tunic for the bronze key that I’d hung about my neck. I pushed the chair back and bent down to look at the pattern of bright scratches round the lock. I pulled again on the handle of the compartment. Holding it at the proper angle, I pushed the key firmly in. It failed to engage. I muttered an obscenity and pushed it in again. Standing on the other side of the desk, Martin opened his mouth to speak. This time, though, the teeth of the key did engage with the teeth inside the lock. With a gentle click, the lock moved out of position. I pulled the handle and got the compartment open.
Like everything else in the residency, my desk was long past its best, but had been made in the most luxurious style. It was of cedar wood and ebony, with ivory inlays and the remains of a silver inkwell that had been built in. It had one cupboard underneath, that went right down to the floor and, now the legs were a little rickety, gave useful additional support. Between where this started and the desktop was a curious sliding compartment. It was a kind of box that pulled out. This is what I’d now opened. I lifted it fully out and put it on the desk.
‘The gold. .’ Martin whispered.
I took out the heavy cloth bag and emptied its contents on to the desktop. Martin snatched at one of the more circular pieces before it could roll on to the floor and added it to the shining heap. In silence, I scooped the gold closer and arranged it into stacks of twelve. I scattered it again and rearranged it in tens. I added the tens together into twenties and then into forties. I moved them all into a narrow circle and stabilised them by placing a waxed tablet on top.
I looked up. ‘Nothing missing,’ I said.
Martin swallowed and sat down. I lifted the tablet off and took a few coins from the highest pile. I added these to the lowest. The tablet no longer wobbled back and forth when I replaced it. Though a decentish sum — especially in a place like Athens, where all prices were lower than in the great cities — this was, until we got over to Corinth, all we had. When drawing enough in Alexandria for reasonable travelling expenses, I’d specified good, current solidi. Even so, about half of them had dated from the reign of Phocas — some of them from the unfortunate Maurice who’d been done in so horribly by the Tyrant — and a few had been clipped and sweated to the point where they’d never pass again other than by weight. But, if the bag had undeniably been moved from where I’d put it, none of the gold was missing.
‘I think it’s my commission he was after,’ I said. I picked this up and showed where it had been rolled up again from the wrong end. ‘I think we can rule Priscus out. He admitted he was in here to read the Governor’s letter. And, if he had stopped for a full search, he’d not have made this mess of it. Nicephorus left with us and came back with us. I’ll eat their cooking if you can show me that the slaves can read, or could resist pinching at least a few of these coins. That leaves us with some person or persons unknown. I might lay money on Balthazar. Or I might not.’ I picked up the gold, one pile at a time, and dropped it back into the bag. I thought and took some out again. I put the bag into the compartment and pushed this back into place. I locked it.
I glanced once more about the office. Martin still hadn’t found the time to arrange my things properly, and the closed and opened boxes of documents lay more or less as we’d left them in the morning. But, if nothing seemed to be missing, it was reasonably clear that everything had been touched. The following day, I decided, I’d get a key made for the lock to my whole suite of rooms. And that was all I could say for the time being. I twisted in my chair and picked up the long and venomous letter of complaint from the Dispensator. I’d found this lying on the floor just inside the main entrance when I returned from looking about Athens. ‘A most slovenly way to deliver letters,’ I’d said to Martin while bending to pick it up. ‘Whoever brought it might at least have set foot inside the residency.’
I skimmed down the letter, looking for the relevant passage. ‘I believe the Western delegates have been accommodated by the Bishop of Athens,’ I said. ‘Since he is subject to Rome, this is an internal matter in which I don’t propose to get involved. It seems, however, that the interpreters have been provided by us. Not surprisingly, Nicephorus has got them on the cheap. The mad one, I think, is called Felix.’ I looked again at the letter. Yes, his name was Felix. The Dispensator’s pen had spluttered on the irregular surface of the papyrus as he wrote it. He’d underlined it three times, then had appeared, from the smoother writing that followed, to have paused to sharpen his pen. I could easily imagine the cold stare down at the name. ‘We need to get this sorted. I propose a visit to wherever Felix lives at dawn tomorrow. We’ll catch him in bed and give him a good talking to about his duties.’
I stared up at nothing in particular. The answer to all these complaints seemed to be that no time or planning had been put into this council. This wasn’t an ecumenical council, which can take years and years to call together. But nor was it a dinner party. It must have been called with barely enough time for everyone to get to Athens. Not surprisingly, everything was in chaos. I’d not have credited even Heraclius with that level of stupidity. In this, if in nothing else, he’d exceeded all expectations. I might have taken the Dispensator aside and explained all this to him. Behind those cutting phrases, though, was the anger of a man who’d been called away from where his word was something like law, to where he was dependent on others — even down to communicating with most of these others.
I was about to speak again, when there was a faint scratching on the door. I quickly dropped the letter on to the exposed gold. ‘Come in,’ I called.
The door opened, and what can be best described as a poker topped with a black wig looked in. ‘Oh, there you are, dearie,’ said Irene. She opened the door wider and stepped into the office. Still wearing the old military cloak that had let me take her at first for a man, she looked as if she’d come straight from the market where I’d bumped into her earlier that afternoon. Without stopping to bow, she came forward and sat herself lightly on one of my unopened packing boxes. ‘If you’ll pardon my advice, that slave of yours is in need of a good whipping. He led
