The Ghosts of Athens

his pen case. As if by agreement, we paid him no further attention.

That was yesterday. You will not believe, dear reader, how angry I’ve been on and off since then. If I’d but crawled down and slit that tax-gathering bastard’s throat, I’d have got my pin back, and none of this would have been required. But I didn’t, and it’s all my fault if I’m now stuck here like some fly in a web spun by Sophronius.

Or is it really that bad? ‘Since I have none of the materials I’d normally use for checking external facts,’ I said earlier today when Sophronius visited me in this room, ‘you will forgive me if I only describe what I personally witnessed, or can reasonably infer. Other things may not be clearly explained. Indeed, I may not give you exactly what you want.’ His answer was a nod and the beginnings of another gloat. He then fussed about with a crate of papyrus and enough French red to keep a man drunk till Christmas.

He and Theodore will get their account of what is called the Little Council of Athens. And why not? How long have I been promising some account of what I did in Athens? I’ll write it all down, and on the principles I stated to Sophronius. If he ever gets to read it, he’ll surely have kittens.

And that if, I do assure you, is a big one. Sophronius may already be ordering new robes for the preferment he thinks he’ll get from using me. But, if I’ll need to let more time pass since that error of judgement on London Bridge, we’ll see who’s the spider and who the fly. Until then, here it goes: what Old Aelric — also known as Alaric — did in Athens, such a very long time ago. .

Chapter 7

If you think of it at all, my dear reader, I suppose you imagine Athens as a place bathed in the intense light of the Mediterranean. You may also think of the sovereign people, assembled in the market place, and of the matchless eloquence by which, for good or ill, they were swayed. Or you may think of the groves and colonnades where every art and every philosophy was carried to perfection. Or, if you suppose the ancients more sinful than illuminating, you may think of that scene on the Areopagus, where Saint Paul preached to a sceptical gathering about the Unknown God.

Well, that was all in ancient times. I first saw the place on Thursday, 19 October 612. By then, it was rather different. .

Oh, but I’m already running ahead of myself. Let me pull myself to order and begin at the beginning. This was early in the morning of that day. The Imperial galley on which — for what little I suspected it was worth — I was the most important passenger had been riding at anchor off Piraeus since we’d crept in the previous evening. Now, in the first light of dawn that dribbled through the window, I sat alone in my cabin, looking at myself in a little mirror. I was long since used to the continual grinding of timbers. If I listened, I could hear it. Otherwise, it no longer registered. Far above — possibly halfway up one of the masts — a sailor was into the third or fourth stanza of some sea shanty. He sang in one of the Eastern languages, and I hadn’t yet made any study of these. But it had a mournful quality that was feeding my own present mood.

It wasn’t vanity, you see, that had me looking so hard into that mirror. I’ll grant that, at twenty-two, I was at the very summit of health and beauty. I was well worth looking at. Since the weather had turned so horribly against us, I’d almost cheered myself in this cabin by trying on every possible combination of my fine clothes, and I’d been at least satisfied by my appearance in all of them. But my attention was focused now on a spot that covered the whole tip of my nose. If I’d done as the slave suggested, a dab of paint would have covered the thing. Instead, I’d tried popping it before it was ripe, and was now paying the price of acting in haste.

I sighed and put the mirror down. I tried not to listen to that awful and probably endless dirge overhead. So far as it succeeded, the effort only made room in my thoughts for everything else. I looked again at the commission Heraclius had sent me:

You will proceed with all haste to Our most learned and famous town of Athens, it read. There, you shall act as may be made necessary. The Lord Priscus, Our Commander of the East, shall accompany you and do likewise.

And that was it. Unrolled and held open with lead weights, the parchment sheet was about thirty inches by eighteen. On its very dark purple background, the three sentences of my commission, written in gold, took up a single line. Because the Emperor had written this himself, and in Latin, it was surely of no importance that he’d omitted all the usual Greek formulae. Did it matter if he’d missed out all my titles and not called me his right trusty and beloved friend? Did it matter if he’d left off the epithet ever victorious from the mention of Priscus? And — far more important — what did the whole sodding document require of us? I’d never seen anything so vague — not even from Heraclius. After the ship had intercepted us off Cyprus, and turned us west from our homeward voyage to Constantinople, I’d sat looking at the parchment sheet over and over again. I’d told myself until I really believed it, that this was simply the work of someone who was at best semi-literate, even in his own language. Now the voyage was reaching its end, and we’d soon be stepping on to the Piraeus docks, every word of the commission dripped menace.

I let the sheet fall on to my desk and stretched cautiously. My official robe made a bitch of all movement, though was a refuge from the chill. I yawned. If this was the last time I ever wore it, I might as well look good when the Governor had put me in chains and taken off to Corinth. Yes, even if my career was to reach its end in some barbarian-ravaged province in the middle of nowhere, I might as well look good for the occasion. The spot aside, I could be a sight worth seeing.

‘Come!’ I shouted. The door opened. I should have guessed from that hesitant knock that it would be Martin and not the slave with a jug of wine. I glared at him. How he’d managed to gain still more weight on this voyage was a mystery. But he’d managed. The clothes that had fitted him reasonably well in Alexandria were now visibly bulging. In Athens, it was no comfort that he might draw attention from my spot. ‘Have you eaten yet?’ I asked.

Looking as miserable as I felt, he said nothing. But I saw the hungry look he darted at the cheese and stale bread I’d left untouched beside me. I grunted and waved him into the chair opposite my desk.

‘When do you think we can dock?’ I asked.

He shoved a wedge of cheese into his mouth and chewed without visible enjoyment. ‘The Captain is still on shore,’ he said indistinctly. He took a mouthful of brackish water and cleared his throat. ‘I spoke with one of the sailors he sent back for something.’ He swallowed and continued with a faint tremor in his voice. ‘Apparently, the military situation is looking desperate.’

I shrugged again. The provincial authorities, I’d already learned from Priscus, had five hundred troops to cover the entire area south of Thermopylae. If the Spartans had once held up the entire Persian Army there with three hundred hoplites, our own people had long since given up on trying to keep out a rabble of Avars and Slavs. Thirty years of their depredations, and there really was no military situation left to call desperate or otherwise.

‘The harvests have failed in Thrace and beyond,’ Martin explained. I reached cautiously forward and pulled a corner off the dry loaf. I wondered if it was worth trying to eat anything at all. Once arrested, it might be some while before anyone got round to feeding me.

‘Starvation is setting in everywhere south of the Danube, and possibly north of it,’ he added. ‘The word is that twenty million barbarians are on the move, and will sweep through the passes before the month is out.’ He would have said more. But a sudden spasm of fear took hold of him, and his voice fell away.

‘Make that twenty thousand,’ I sneered, ‘and then halve it.’ I put the bread into my mouth and chewed with as much enthusiasm as if a priest had put it there. ‘You know perfectly well that the Empire lost Britain to about that many of my own people — and not all at once. Whatever the minstrels told you in Ireland about the unstoppable flood of yellow-headed giants who dispossessed your ancestors, we weren’t enough to have taken London — not, that is, if you’d done other than scuttle out of the place like frightened chickens.’ I sniffed and ignored the face he pulled.

I was right in my history. The Western Provinces really had been lost to not enough armed men to fill the Circus in Constantinople. They’d crossed the Rhine into a desert produced by centuries of misgovernment, and had been quietly welcomed by the survivors. But there was no point taking issue here and now with the accounts agreed by Martin’s people with the Imperial historians about those unstoppable floods of yellow-headed giants.