what might be happening seven hundred miles away in Constantinople, I opened the door into my bedroom.
There was a sudden smell of beeswax. I heard the creak of leather bed straps. I looked at the dim but smooth shape on the uncovered bed. ‘Your secretary’s wife was most pleased to accept Theodore’s offer of help in the nursery,’ Euphemia said with a slightly nervous giggle. ‘He will sleep there until further notice.’
‘He’s a good boy,’ I said. My fingers shook slightly as I untied the cords that held my outer tunic in place. It couldn’t be seen in this light, but I reached up automatically to tap the much reduced swelling on my nose. ‘You must let Martin direct his reading. He can be a most excellent schoolmaster. His father was the best in Constantinople.’
She giggled again as I pulled my inner tunic over my head. ‘You must think me a most abandoned woman,’ she said.
‘I’ve been hoping no less all day,’ I replied. I turned the lamp full up and stood beside the bed.
Chapter 29
I looked up from my prostration into the blackest face imaginable.
‘You failed me in Alexandria,’ Heraclius whined. ‘All I then asked was that you should get Greek and Latin Churches to agree that probably manifest heresy might be orthodox. And you failed me again.’
I tried to speak, but no voice came as the Emperor got up from his throne and stepped over me. Court protocol didn’t allow me to get up yet. Instead, I crouched on all fours, looking at a mass of purple cushions.
The gong struck, and I could finally get up. Heraclius now sat on the far side of the Great Hall of Audience, every bishop he’d called to Athens ranged about him. I felt the blockage clear from my throat and was able to speak. ‘If I was never meant to succeed, how can you blame me for failure?’ I shouted.
My answer was a burst of laughter that went on as if without end.
Acquittal was beyond hoping. Perhaps I could beg for mercy — if not for myself, then at least for mine. I hurried over and fell down for another prostration, and tried to think of the best form of plea. Should I be the manly young Alaric? Or should I just squeal and babble? What was most likely to move these bastards?
I heard the grind of machinery as I raised my face from the carpet. The throne had now been raised about six feet, and all I could see when I finally stood up again was purple flesh bulging over the red leather boots.
‘Who are you to question the workings of power?’ Heraclius asked from aloft. ‘If I command you to do something, I expect it to be done — even if I command others to frustrate you.’
There was more laughter. The bishops had now been joined by the whole of the Imperial Council and what may have been the whole of the Senatorial Order. Already large, the Great Hall of Audience had expanded somehow to the size of the Great Church. The laughter came in massed bursts, and echoed from the impossibly high ceiling.
I put aside all thoughts of protocol. The hall had expanded still further, and contained everyone in Constantinople above the lowest class. It even managed to contain people who’d died years before. Every one of these was dressed in white, and had a nimbus about his head. I stepped forward to approach the distant throne. As I came close, I saw the bishops shrink back as if I’d carried a sword. I looked up at Heraclius.
‘I could have you shut away in a monastery,’ he sobbed. ‘I could have you blinded. I could have your tongue slit in two to make you resemble the serpent that you truly are. Behold, however, the Mercy of Caesar!’ He looked down at two heralds. There was a sheet of parchment held out for them by one of the black eunuchs.
‘It is the judgement of our Great Augustus,’ they read in unison, not trying to keep the laughter from their voices, ‘that you be taken to the topmost roof of your palace, there to look down for the space of one hour at the manifold glories of the Imperial City; and that you be taken thence to the land of endless night and of endless cold that was once the fruitful Province of Britain; and that you there be turned loose among the filthy and unlettered savages who are your rightful people; and that infamy attend your name in the Empire, and that death attend your return to the Empire.’
As they ended the sentence, there was wild applause and cheering. I wanted to stand upright and look defiance into every face. But I was only pushed from behind for another grovel. The laughter and the cheering went on and on. It left off any echo, and I felt a chilly breeze on my exposed neck, as if I were now in the Circus, and my sentence were being pronounced before the whole assembled people of Constantinople. .
I woke in my bed to the sound of wolves howling in the distance. I had the impression that Euphemia had been shaking me for some while, but was only aware of this as I came fully back into the present.
‘You were crying in your sleep,’ she said. ‘Were you dreaming?’
The lamp was long since gone out, and there was no sign of dawn. But I sat up and reached to where I knew there would be a cup of water. I drank and wiped my sweaty face on the sheet. ‘It was nothing,’ I said, ‘just a dream.’ I pressed my eyes shut and put it all out of mind. Of course, it had been just a dream. All else aside, when did the real Heraclius
‘Were you dreaming?’ she asked again.
I made a non-committal reply and drank more water. It was rather brackish. But Euphemia was now sitting up and had her arms about me, as if to protect a frightened child. ‘Do you believe that dreams are a communication with some higher force?’ she asked.
I put the dream itself out of mind and gathered my thoughts. ‘Dreams are nothing more than a distorted continuation of waking thoughts,’ I said. ‘They contain no new sensory impressions. They can suggest new ideas that might otherwise have remained overlooked. But they are generally so connected with waking concerns, that they cannot be regarded as other than unshackled trains of thought. If not that, they are just inexplicable fancies. There is never any outside cause to them.’ Because I was still not fully awake, my self-control hadn’t its usual rigidity, and I found myself wondering about the balance in this dream between fancies and new ideas.
Euphemia smiled and sat a moment in silence. ‘The howling disturbs you?’ she asked with a change of subject.
The short answer was that it did. Even if wall after wall stood between us, the sound those black and vicious creatures made took me back to my earliest childhood in Kent. Perhaps a year after my mother had been dumped with us in Richborough, there had come a winter as cold as anyone could remember. Then, the wolf packs had streamed through every breach in the city wall, and I’d lain awake every night, hearing their snuffling and scratching outside our barricaded door. We were among the lucky ones. We might not have had much of a roof, but we still had four walls. Almost every night, I’d heard the wild screaming of those who were old or manless and whose defences had failed, and who were devoured in their beds. Had this somehow been the cause of that stupid little dream?
I got up from the bed and felt my way to the brazier in the centre of the room. I got hold of the poker and jabbed at the invisible embers. As they came back to life, I put oil into the lamp and got it alight.
Euphemia lay naked on the bed. She sat up and looked back at me. ‘I haven’t seen you properly in the day,’ she said. ‘But your eyes are so light here, they must be a very pale blue.’ She looked harder at me. ‘How old are you?’ she asked.
‘Twenty-two,’ I said. I felt a tremor of renewed lust and sat heavily beside her. ‘Shall we — shall we do it again?’ I asked.
‘Again?’ she cried with mock alarm. She laughed. ‘Have I not yet satisfied My Lord?’ She laughed again and pushed me gently back. ‘Twenty-two,’ she said, now thoughtful. ‘Except for your exalted status, I’d surely have thought you a little younger. There must be an interesting story behind your progress.’ I said nothing and she dropped that line of questioning. ‘But were you not sad to leave Constantinople and come down to this shrivelled husk of a city?’
I nodded, and wondered how she could have come so close to guessing what my dream had been about. But
