There was no need, however, to let it sink in fully. I was here at the moment more to impress than to persuade. Suddenly aware of the water clock that was gurgling away beside the minute clerk, I stared down at the quotation from Pope Gregory of sainted memory. From a technical point of view, I’d have done better to quote Sophronius of Miletus. But, after all the foregoing, I needed something in Latin. Before we could reach out to the Syrians and Egyptians, we’d have to pull Greeks and Latins much closer together than they’d been in over a century.
Martin’s voice had for a while been grating slightly from the strain of interpreting a message that had to be perfectly rendered in both substance and form from Greek into Latin. It would have been better for him if I had prepared a text in advance and let him work on it. But he’d get through my speech without serious trouble. We’d have to trust the local interpreters not to bugger up the rest of the council. It was a rest for both of us to do Gregory in Latin. It was simple work for Martin to put Latin into Greek. The mechanical act of reading gave me time to think of the next long sentence I had in mind. This one, I’d decided on the spot, would have a double subject, and I’d give each of them three levels of subordination.
And that’s what I now brought out. It was not a total success in my own view. The idea had been to bring out two subjects that, like the Nature of Christ, would be both fused and distinct. Sadly, I threw in an adverbial phrase that I discovered almost too late was properly attached to neither subject. I rescued the slip with a separate clause that broke the iambic rhythm and had a rather alliterative and even a trashy sound. But Martin corrected this in his Latin version. The Greeks either didn’t notice, or didn’t feel inclined to notice. They went instead into another controlled riot of applause and led me into my final passage: ‘And so, My Lords, I have, to the best of my ability, covered the issues that we have been called here to discuss. I must emphasise again that this is a
My voice faltered slightly here. This hadn’t been intended. I fought at first to control the slight break to the smooth flow of words. Then I realised what a good rhetorical device this would be. It might bring home to everyone the possible consequence of using the free judgement I was allowing them to reach an unwelcome decision. I stole a look at one of the Asiatic Greeks. Though he’d never been advanced beyond a decayed see in the middle of nowhere, he was probably the most brilliant living theologian in the Church as a whole. If he wanted, he could turn this council into a screaming mob. But he was looking back at me with courtly politeness. I made a note to offer him preferment to Halicarnassus. With his frenzied asceticism, the present Bishop there couldn’t last much longer.
I took another deep breath and continued: ‘But if it is your considered opinion that these issues deserve a full hearing, they will eventually be put to an ecumenical council. .’ I was now reaching the end. What I had to avoid was the clear implication that a ‘yes’ here would turn any main council into a formality. Everyone must have realised that this was the intention: after all, why call ‘the finest minds’ together simply to decide if the main question was fit to be picked over by all and sundry? But I wanted the option both of a done deal and of plausible deniability should our needs suddenly alter.
And now I was definitely finished. I sat down to another storm of applause. Men ran forward to embrace my knees. I nodded grandly at the shouted acclamations. Slumped over his own lectern, Martin had the look of a man who’s just been acquitted in court of something horrid. Well he might. Well he might, indeed. His public duties could now be far gentler. A slave had come in to the room to reset the water clock. I glanced at the list of agreed speakers. Some of these had picked up enough of the superior gossip in Constantinople to have had some inkling of what I was about. For most of them, what I’d just said must have come like a thunderclap. What anyone would say between now and the final session was a mystery. But the main consult could now begin.
Chapter 41
Thinking of Diogenes on my way here had called to mind one of those possible, if slightly improbable, stories of the old days. Apparently, Plato had set all his acolytes in a twitter with his definition of man as an ‘unfeathered biped’. He was still basking at his next lecture at the applause this had got him when the naked and half-crazed cynic burst into the lecturing area with a plucked chicken. ‘Look, Plato,’ he called in a loud voice, waving the chicken over his head, ‘look, I’ve found you a man!’ Doubtless, he’d got himself straight on to the list of those who’d have to be clubbed to death in a cellar if ever Plato got his perfect society. The only public response, though, was an amendment of the definition of man to an ‘unfeathered biped with broad toenails’.
I’d been presiding in this now baking hall for what seemed an age. My opening speech had been the high point in the day’s proceedings. This over, we were soon into the hard grind of the other speeches.
When you’re enthroned at almost Imperial height, and every speaker has to address himself to you from a position where everyone else in the room is looking at you, it puts nodding off out of the question. So I’d passed much of the morning and most of the afternoon thinking of Diogenes, and wishing he could burst in on us with any disruption — witty, profound, or merely obscene. I moved sweaty feet under my robe of office and stole a glance at the note I felt I’d made a month before. ‘My Lord Bishop,’ I said in a tone that evil old Phocas himself couldn’t have found offensive, ‘you have now been speaking for three hours of the water clock. There are seven other speakers on my list, and the sun is moving against us. Would it be possible for you to summarise your remarks?’
Gundovald of somewhere close by Marseilles looked up from his text and gave me the smile of an aged timewaster. ‘Oh, but Your Magnificence,’ he said in sweet rebuke, ‘the citation from Pope Gregory of sainted memory is
‘But My Lord Bishop,’ I hurried on with inflexible charm, ‘I can promise the whole extract from his sermon will be inserted into the official record. Can I, however, draw your attention back to the matter we are currently supposed to be investigating? This is whether the ninety-fifth Canon of the Council of Agrigentum can be taken, in its Latin version, neither to imply nor discount a Single Will as well as a Single Nature for Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ?’ I stopped for the interpreters to put this into Greek, and then for a mutter of answering prayers from the Greeks. I looked about the room. As I’d allowed, the Dispensator was seated right at the front of the gathering at bishop’s height. He’d been following Gundovald with rapt attention — well he might, as it was a Pope being cited — and was now taking notes with such force that his stylus cut through the wax and was scratching loudly on the underlying wood. I let my eyes come to rest on an empty place a few yards to his left. I’d not bothered waiting for Simeon to put in an appearance. I’d not commented on his lack of so much as a written apology. I’d do more than slap the insulting old loon’s face the next time we were alone. Transfer to a frontier monastery wouldn’t be the half of what was waiting for him when he touched dock in Constantinople. He’d never set eyes again on that nice episcopal palace in Nicaea.
Gundovald was still looking for the right beginning to his answer. I thought round for some helpful prompt that couldn’t be taken for a slight. Perhaps I should have let him run on. I could feel a slight but insistent buzzing in my loins. Of course, only Diogenes could have got away with active wanking in public: ‘If I could but stop being hungry by rubbing my belly!’ he’d famously responded to the complaints. But I was beginning to feel that I might take myself off without hands if I thought hard enough about Euphemia.
But why bother with Euphemia? If old Gundovald was a timewaster, his secretary was decidedly worth a second look. I’d been aware of him since the old man had walked creakily over to the speaking place. Like a focusing of eyes in the sunlight after a nap, I’d gradually realised how much the boy looked like a younger, smaller version of myself. Without any sense of a crossing point from one to the other, interest had ripened to lust. I might seduce him over the next few days, against the time when Euphemia would start using her time of month as an excuse for sleeping at night. In any event, he and she could now alternate in my thoughts till I’d brought myself quietly to boiling point. Then I could think of myself.
Yes, I decided, I’d give way to the old dear. I could then set my face like stone and keep myself occupied till the clock ran out of water again and I could call a break to proceedings.
I had my mouth open to speak when I felt a gentle plucking at my left sleeve. ‘Your Magnificence,’ a voice breathed in my ear, ‘the Lord Priscus would ask a moment of your time.’
Typical of Priscus to piss all over my one bright patch in this horrid afternoon, I thought. I stood up. Forty-
