‘I said I wanted
Out in the courtyard, and once I was used to the dazzling sunshine, my first sight was of Maximin. He was cackling like a mad thing as young Theodore pushed him higher and higher on a swing that had been lashed to a tree branch. I stopped and smiled at the happy scene. Theodore’s clothes were too big for him, and he was sweating in the morning sun from an effort that, even slightly increased, would pitch my son straight out of his enclosure on to the dried mud.
‘This place is a stinking hovel!’ Sveta hissed in my direction. She’d spoken in a Latin that I could be sure none of the slaves could understand. Still, I chose to assume she’d been directing herself at Martin.
‘Please, my dear,’ he quavered back at her. ‘We did agree-’
She silenced him with a blow to the side of his face that still had an ear. ‘Don’t you “please dear” to me!’ she snarled. ‘The whole place stinks. And, now we’re at least unpacked, your lord and master is sending us to Corinth — no doubt to somewhere ever dirtier.’ She drew breath. Then, with the lack of reasoning ability you get in women, went back to complaining about the residency. ‘If he was half the man you think he is, he’d have got us moved right out of this slum. It’s too dirty even for the rats.’
I was pretending not to have heard this — though she’d had a point about rats: why were there none at all? — when I was almost knocked over by a smell that took me back to the mass graves of Alexandria before they’d been covered over. I poured half a bottle of scent on to a napkin and clamped it over my nose and mouth.
‘Ah, the latrines are being cleaned out,’ I said with a muffled attempt at cheer. Their unopened smell at twenty paces had been quite enough for me, and I’d so far avoided a direct visit, making my own offerings into a brass chamber pot. But these were, I had no doubt, civilised latrines. Once in working order, they’d be flushed by as continuous a stream of water as could be arranged from what remained of the aqueduct. Then, we could have oiled and scented sponges, and try to imagine ourselves in a place for persons of quality.
I was thinking of the possibility of getting water into the bathhouse, when Sveta pushed a reddened forearm in my direction. ‘Not a rat to be seen or heard,’ she went on in grim fury, ‘but more bees than you’ll find in a hive.’
‘But Sveta, my dearest love bucket,’ Martin managed to get in while she drew breath, ‘Athens is famed for its honey.’
‘Honey?’ she said with a flat menace I’d heard only once before, when she’d learned that I was proposing to take Martin out of Alexandria into the south of Egypt. ‘Don’t talk to me about honey. Don’t you care if your own child is eaten alive by nasty little bees?’ She dropped her voice and looked in my direction. It was to no effect. I’d have heard her clearly enough from deep inside the residency. ‘And don’t you think you can tell him
With his own nervous look in my direction, Martin tried to put his arms about her.
But she broke free and raised her voice again: ‘Oh, I should have listened to my mother, God rest her soul. If she could see me now. .’
I heard the warning cry just in time to avoid a shower of sweepings thrown from one of the upper windows. I stepped aside and took the opportunity to get as far out of hearing as I could manage.
‘I trust you are feeling well this morning?’ I said to Theodore, who was still pushing on the swing.
‘Oh, yes, My Lord,’ he cried, bowing just low enough for the now unattended swing not to knock him dead on its recoil.
‘Excellent,’ I said. I paused and put the napkin back to my face as a shift in the wind sent invisible but dizzying fingers of sewer smells in our direction. ‘I trust the Lady Euphemia is happy with the attendants I have assigned to her,’ I said finally.
Seemingly unaware of the smell, Theodore bowed again and smiled. ‘Indeed, My Lord,’ he said. ‘My mother will thank you in person, but regrets that the full daylight is bad for her eyes.’
I smiled. She’d crawled out of bed to splash water over herself shortly before dawn. If she now stirred from her own bed before noon, she’d confirm I hadn’t been sufficiently inventive in the night. Even thoughts of the fallen Decelea hadn’t taken the edge off my lust. Now, the mere recollection of all we’d managed set off an entirely delicious twinge in my loins.
I nodded and left Theodore at play with Maximin. Careful not to trip over the ridges of dried mud, I picked my way across the main part of the courtyard. There had been a sizable lawn here, and flower beds, and a nice marble fountain in the middle of it all. The fountain remained, though silent now, and choked with years — perhaps generations — of rotted-down compost. Still holding the pitcher on his shoulder, the naked boy who was the main part of the fountain stared back at me with the blankness the ancients had generally preferred in their art. I stopped about a dozen yards from what I took to be Euphemia’s window. It had been opened outward a few inches to let in air, and the blind was fully up inside. Impossible, of course, to see anything by day through those thick, greenish pieces of glass. But did I have the impression of being watched? I gave one of my charming smiles and bowed. A shame I had no excuse for going into the building and upstairs to continue what I regarded as unfinished business. Far behind me, I could hear Sveta’s voice rising to one of her cold furies, and Martin’s answering wails of embarrassment. Maximin was laughing again fit to burst.
‘Oh, there you are, dearie.’
I turned and looked at Irene.
She made a sort of bow and stepped away from what had turned out to be a soft patch of ground. ‘This cleaning doesn’t have no end,’ she said. She swore and snatched at a bee that had flown too close by her. She held it between forefinger and thumb of her right hand. With her left she pulled off its wings and legs. She popped it in her mouth and chewed thoughtfully. ‘It does the rheumatics a power of good,’ she explained with a smile that showed pieces of black on her teeth.
I patted a lock of hair back into place that had fallen down when I nearly tripped over a bush. I frowned. ‘I thought we had agreed,’ I said, ‘only to clean the places that will definitely be used. I am most grateful that you have chosen to move in and supervise the slaves. But there is a limit to how many more of your slaves I wish to buy.’
She came over beside me and looked up at the window. ‘She’s a right peach of a girl, don’t you think?’ she asked. ‘I’ve given meself a room near to hers — in case she gets lonely, like.’ She pursed her lips and only just managed to stop herself from nudging me with her elbow.
I coughed to hide a smile I didn’t think I could suppress. Loneliness would be the least of Euphemia’s problems. ‘But Irene,’ I asked, ‘surely your husband will be missing you?’
Her reply was a disapproving sniff.
I had a sudden thought. ‘You told me the other day you didn’t believe any of the stories about this place,’ I said. ‘Any chance of a few details?’
I waited for her to take the bait. But all I got was another sniff and a comment about the overriding importance of business. Without any pretence of a bow, she walked off to continue her shouted instructions. There was an answering cry from one of the upper windows and another shower of dirt. I looked up again at Euphemia’s window. I heard Sveta’s voice raised in another shrill rebuke.
I turned and made my way towards the happy couple. Sveta had run out of insults, or at least of breath to voice them, and was contenting herself with a vicious look in my direction. I walked past her in the direction of one of the secondary courtyards where I might have a carrying chair waiting for me.
I was about to round the corner, when Priscus stuck his ghastly face out of a window. ‘Ah, young Alaric,’ he croaked with better cheer than I might have expected, ‘if you can spare the time, I’ve something
‘We thought it was a door leading to some storage rooms,’ the slave explained in one of the more northerly Slavic dialects. ‘It was only when we got it open and found the other door that we realised it was something else.’ He stood back and motioned at the blackness within the opened door. We were on the ground floor of the left block. The library was directly above us. I’ve said that the glass dome was supported by four columns. The combined weight, plus that of the floor and its bookracks, I could now see, was supported by a set of brick arches. Every
