The Dispensator grunted and held the message out for me to read. I took it into hands that, try as I might, still wouldn’t stop shaking, and translated: ‘The mob is trying to break into the main granary. The monks of Saint John beg to be dispensed from their obligation not to draw blood.’ Either they hadn’t noticed that Priscus was back, or they’d chosen to stay under Church control.
I handed the sheet back and straightened up. ‘Give me one of your pens,’ I demanded of the secretary. After a nod from the Dispensator, I scribbled the required permission on the back of the sheet and watched as the secretary squeezed himself back into the fissure that led to the residency.
‘So you think Nicephorus and Balthazar weren’t just using the place as a convenient means of access?’ I asked with a return of my own to some earlier stage in our long and disordered conversation. ‘You think they were running things from down here?’
The Dispensator looked back along the tunnel. ‘While searching for you and Priscus,’ he said, ‘I made a full inspection of this place. I cannot say that I was pleased by what I found.’ He put up a hand to silence any questions. ‘I have been in Athens just fifteen days, and have been mostly unable to follow anything said in my presence. But I have now had the chance to speak properly with His Grace the Bishop of Athens, and with Martin. I do not like
‘Where is Euphemia?’ I broke in. I was silenced by a cold look. I stepped back from him and waited obediently for him to continue.
‘The creature of whom you speak has withdrawn herself from the residency,’ the Dispensator said with quiet emphasis. ‘You may be assured that I have neither seen not set hands on her. Where she has gone is her business, and I do not suggest that you should make enquiries of her whereabouts. To be sure, no one whom you may command to begin a search will obey you. I have now moved into the residency, and I propose to ensure that you concentrate on your proper duties, which are to complete your chairing of the council and to assist in the defence of Athens.’
I let him go first through the narrow opening towards the residency. The tunnel itself had been transformed by a few dozen lamps. This long fissure was as horrid now as when I’d first pushed through it with Priscus behind me. But I kept my nerve by explaining in full the equal but different horror of our position: how we’d all been marked down by Heraclius himself for destruction, and how there was no certainty that any degree of success in Athens would change his mind.
The Dispensator was still questioning me about probable events in Constantinople when I stepped, right behind him, into the residency cellar and came face to face with Martin.
There was still a tremor in his voice. But he did manage to control himself. He looked at the Dispensator. ‘The Lord Priscus sends greetings, and begs that you may join him on the walls to discuss a matter of some delicacy.’ He gave me a despairing look, before handing me a stack of documents for my immediate attention. The top one was an order for looters to be summarily hanged. I’d seal this in my office. Together, we’d all of us hold the walls somehow. What happened after that could be faced as and when.
I lay back and waited for the long and luxuriant glow of another orgasm to reach its end. At last, I sat up and pulled Euphemia towards me. I tried to look into the faint outline of her face. ‘I can hide you for the time being,’ I said with slow emphasis. ‘Tomorrow, or the next day, however, I must insist on your reappearance in this building. Then, we will go together out into the sunlight, and you’ll stop behaving like some Syrian monk who’s been too long on the top of his pillar.’ I shut off her objections with a gentle slap to the face. As agreed, she had slipped away the moment I was through that doorway. Where she’d hidden herself I didn’t think to ask. But I had to stop a lunacy that was sending even the Dispensator into holy terrors. It would get her killed. It would bring me into scandal.
‘Your name is Euphemia of Tarsus,’ I went on. ‘You arrived here at the invitation of Nicephorus. You have a child to look after. If you want to see Constantinople, you’ll be well advised to put all these childish fancies aside.
‘And is My Lord proposing to make me his wife?’ she asked with an apparent burst of sanity.
I looked harder at her in the gloom. I’d not answer that I had higher ambitions, when I eventually did marry, than a provincial widow — even if the sex was heavenly. But it was a reassuringly female question. I was thinking of what answer to give when I heard another long and muffled roar of collective anger from somewhere outside the building.
‘I think it is the common people again,’ Euphemia said. ‘They spent all night trying to burn down the houses of everyone who is defending the walls. It may be that they have again found someone to kill.’
I reached out for where I’d left my wine cup and took a long sip. I got on to my knees and pulled her towards me again. There was time yet before she had to go back into hiding, and I was uneasy from thoughts of what might so easily have already been my fate before the walls of Athens.
Chapter 57
As the sun rose on my eighth day since stepping ashore at Piraeus, I made my way to a resumed council through streets that were littered with uncollected bodies. If it hadn’t been for the grim-faced monks and the few armed civilians who’d been taken away from holding the walls, I might have thought Athens had already fallen to the barbarians. But I’d just walked the whole circuit of the walls with Martin, and watched the masses of armed men who were now coming together in loose formations outside the range of our arrows.
‘The Lord Priscus expects an attack before noon,’ the Dispensator had said when he could spare time from fussing over the placing of an aged catapult that might have done us better service by being set alight and thrown on to the heads of any attackers. ‘We can agree that there will be no attempt at a parley by Kutbayan. His instructions are to break in and destroy us all. But, so long as we can keep the barbarians from setting hands on this stretch of the wall, Priscus believes we may be able to repel an attack in not more than two other places.’ The Dispensator had then allowed himself a long inspection of the gathering masses, before changing the subject to a reminder of the Pope’s right to his title.
That had been right after the dawn. I now stood with Martin in the shadow of an equestrian statue, and waited for the monks to pull away the bodies that choked the entrance to the narrow street we had to enter. Every one of them clubbed to death in a manner that avoided any shedding of blood, there were enough bodies for the smell of corruption that already came from each to justify a napkin soaked in my strongest perfume.
‘I’ve counted a hundred and fifty,’ I said with a wave at the handcart that had now been produced. ‘Assuming an even distribution of bodies across the city, it looks as if Athens will be in need of a new lower class.’ It was a feeble and a wasted joke.
Martin swallowed and looked without answer at the two armed slaves I’d brought with us. ‘The Bishop of Athens told me many things yesterday morning,’ he said in a nervous whisper. ‘He said the common people are persuaded that any breach of the city walls will bring all the statues in Athens to life. These will then repel the attack without any effort on their part.’
There was no answer needed to that. I waited for the handcart to be pushed aside, and led the way in silence.
Except for the shouted acclamations in two languages, my two-day horror among the barbarians might have been a dream. There was the minute clerk with his stack of waxed tablets, there the assembled churchmen, each in his accustomed place. In my absence, the Dispensator had taken charge of the council, only to adjourn it till further notice. Now it was back to business. I held up my hands for silence and looked again at the list of questions that had been written in many hands on the sheet of papyrus Martin had given me.
‘Reverend Fathers,’ I cried in Greek — and Martin was now interpreting — ‘let me begin with the question of Nature and Persons and Will and Substance.’ I looked about the room. There was the buzz of just one fly in the still air. Sooner or later, this too would go out for the richer pickings to be had in the streets. I smiled easily and fixed a look on the pale and very troubled face of old Gundovald. He was still fussing over his lost boy, and looked set to start another burst of weeping. I looked instead at Simeon. After his first day of terror, he’d settled down rather
