seven pairs of legs creaked as everyone else got slowly up and bowed. ‘Gentlemen,’ I said in Latin, ‘this session is adjourned for one hour of the water clock.’ I repeated myself in Greek. Without waiting for Martin to untangle himself from the mass of unrolled papyrus that now covered the bound volumes of earlier council proceedings, I stepped down from the platform and made for the exit.
I balanced on the topmost stones of the ruined wall and looked down from the Areopagus Hill. Part of the view was blocked by the still higher Acropolis. Otherwise, I had an unbroken view over Athens to its wall and beyond. I shaded my eyes and looked again.
‘They must cover the ground as far as Piraeus,’ I muttered in Latin. I turned and looked to my right. The sea of wagons and moving humanity stretched almost as far as I could see before the great single cloud of dust became impenetrable.
‘Still not twenty million of the buggers,’ Priscus said back at me. ‘We can be sure of that. But I’d not try counting them.’ He sniffed and clutched harder at the slave who’d been supporting him as we walked up the hill.
‘I suppose they’re here to demand food,’ I said, keeping my voice low and neutral. ‘The question, then, must be how long they can stay here before they run out of what food they have.’
‘Spot on, dear boy,’ came the reply. ‘But it depends how much they managed to loot from Decelea. It also depends how much we have in the warehouses.’ He nodded down at what now looked a pitifully insubstantial city wall. ‘They’ve no talent for siege warfare. We held Thessalonica for three years with four hundred men. If they took Decelea, I don’t imagine the walls were in better repair than when I last inspected them. So long as they don’t realise they could batter parts of our wall down with a few hundred men in the right formation, I think we can sit this one out.’
Priscus let his face break out on a grin as he found himself a round stone of the right size and sat on it. I felt sweat running in a continual trickle down my back. I could try telling myself it was the effect of sunshine on several yards of quilted blue silk. But there had been too many moods of doubt or hypothesis in what he said. Outside Athens, there might be a whole people on the move. They were flowing about our wall like water round a stone. The wall enclosed an area perhaps three-quarters of a mile across at the widest. Even if it didn’t fall inward at the first push, it was surely too long to hold if attacked at too many points. But the area it enclosed was too small for anything approaching defence in depth.
I jumped down and sat on another stone beside Priscus. I found myself looking over at the Acropolis. A thousand years before, the Persians had taken this. Back then, however, it had been guarded by a wooden palisade. Since then, it had been surrounded with proper walls. As originally built, the Propylaea had been a weak point. Since the first barbarian siege, though, this had been strengthened. Could we withdraw to the Acropolis and hold that? I wondered.
Priscus looked into my face and laughed. ‘Good for a last stand,’ he said, nodding over at the collection of white buildings. ‘Unless it starts raining again, though, there’s a problem of water.’
‘You told me you provisioned the citadel of Trampolinea,’ I said, ‘by setting up a block and tackle to carry up water.’
He grinned and scratched under his cloak. ‘We had regular soldiers there,’ he said. ‘That meant we could largely ignore public opinion. Athens will be defended by its own people. Show any lack of confidence about the walls, and you’ll have the barbarians looking in at you, and rioting behind you.’
I changed the subject. ‘We’ll never get them to Corinth,’ I said.
His face darkened as his mind came back to the obvious. Such danger as we might run personally was an occupational hazard. But how to keep everyone else safe?
I rubbed my eyes and looked back down the hill. Sure enough, there was Martin walking towards me, deep in conversation with the Dispensator.
‘Don’t look round please!’ I urged inwardly. ‘One look round, and you’ll shit yourself in public.’ I got up and readied myself to take Martin aside.
Priscus cleared his throat and spat. I looked thoughtfully at the bloody gob that had gathered in a bright ball on the dust. ‘Sooner or later,’ he said in the tone of one who labours against a coughing fit, ‘someone will come forward for a parley. We’ll try and organise it by the northern gate. The wall’s at its strongest there.’
Martin didn’t disgrace me. When he did eventually look round, he simply pulled a face and went into some patter about the Will of God.
Ignoring him, the Dispensator hurried forward and scowled at me. ‘I regard this as an insult to His Holiness,’ he announced.
I opened my eyes wide and looked at him. Then I realised he was referring to Simeon’s absence.
‘My Lord, if I might draw your attention to what is happening beyond the walls,’ I began.
He darted a glance to where I was pointing and gave a longer inspection to the wall. He looked for a moment over the swirling masses of humanity and snorted. ‘This is a matter for you in your secular capacity,’ he said. ‘Bearing in mind what I heard on my arrival here, I am not at all surprised if we are now under siege. My own concern, however, is how a council of the Greek and Latin Churches can proceed when the leading representative of the Greek Patriarch will not attend even its opening session. I feel increasingly that my time is being wasted, and am strongly inclined to say as much in my report to His Holiness.’
‘I am myself puzzled by the Lord Bishop’s absence,’ I said with diplomatic concern. ‘I am sure it has a good explanation, and I can promise that it will not be repeated. And I think his colleagues are all agreed on the value of what has been said today by their Latin brethren.’
The Dispensator scowled again and sat down on the stone I’d vacated. Having nothing else to do, he looked harder at the barbarian tide that surrounded Athens on every side. Somehow, the wall now seemed even longer, and its enclosed area even smaller. There was a distant sound of cheering to the north. A line of horsemen had emerged from the dust. They were carrying long pikes held upward, and were followed by half a dozen large wagons. I saw them bumping and pitching as they came off the road and made for an open space about a hundred yards from the wall. As they all came closer into view, I saw that each of the pikes was topped with a severed head.
‘So these are the Avars,’ the Dispensator said, now with mild interest. ‘They attempted an invasion two years ago of Italy. It was serious enough for the Lombards to break off their siege of Rome, and for us to agree not to counter-attack while they marched north to resist the invasion.’
‘We are fully aware of your dealings with the Lombards,’ Priscus broke in. ‘The Great Augustus does not always approve.’ He’d made a vague effort at the menacing, but his main attention was now taken up with a large map of the city defences that he’d been given by someone who wore a cooking pot on his head in place of a helmet.
The Dispensator gave one of his chilly smiles and turned his inspection back to us. ‘Be that as it may, My Lord Priscus,’ he replied, ‘the Lombards do occupy much of Italy, and we have given up any hope of Imperial help in removing them. Besides, even if enslaved to the damnable heresy of Arius, they are Christians. These people’ — he waved a hand to the still gathering mass beyond the wall — ‘are, excepting a few of their Slavic allies, heathens. When I negotiated his lifting of the siege, the Lombard King assured me they practised both human sacrifice and cannibalism.’
That was news to me. But there was no doubt the Avars were savages. By comparison, the Lombards were almost genteel. I gave a curt bow and went over to where Martin was looking glum.
‘Get up,’ I whispered, offering a hand. He looked up from where he was sitting on the ground. I did think of assuring him that we were all perfectly safe behind the city wall. But he knew me too well to believe anything I might say about that. ‘I want you to hurry back to the residency,’ I said. ‘Take two of the armed slaves who came out with us. Do tell Sveta to stop her packing.’ I looked carefully at him.
He swallowed and gave a slight bow.
‘Also,’ I went on, ‘I want to make sure that the supplies we bought yesterday are properly stored.’
I watched his dithery progress down the hill. Show Martin a sword, and he might faint away with terror. Give him the job of producing order out of chaos, and he’d generally shine. I thought briefly about the thickness of our own main gate. I wondered yet again if the residency had any deep cellars, and if access to them might somehow be concealed from an armed breakin. But this was something best looked at in person, and while the light held up. As Martin went out of sight behind one of the monasteries, I turned back to the others.
