The Ghosts of Athens a-5, page 22
part #5 of Aelric Series
Once more — and I can’t say how many times it had been already — I lay back and arched my body as those unbelievably powerful hands took hold of both my wrists, and I gasped and bit my lips almost to the point of drawing blood in the beginning of another ecstasy that I knew would pass, but that would, throughout its entire duration, seem infinite in both time and nature. Before I passed out of all rational perception, I felt her scented, unbound hair brush against my face. Her lips pressed suddenly against mine, and I felt all her weight upon me. I could hear the wolves still howling, but no longer cared about it, or was properly aware of it.
Chapter 30
Back in ancient times, the streets of Athens were as mean and crooked as of any modern city resettled by barbarians. In the massive improvement works he’d commanded, Hadrian had flattened everything in the centre not hallowed by recollections of the past. But that had been four centuries ago. Since then, we’d had two — perhaps three — devastating raids; and the rebuilding of a now depopulated area had restored much of the original squalor. The sun was peering across from above one of the lower houses when the Dispensator came to a sudden halt.
‘Can this be the house?’ Martin asked uncertainly.
The answer he got was another disapproving look.
I had to admit that, in the labyrinth of streets that lay between the derelict Temple of Apollo and what was now the Monastery of Saint Paul, one box of rendered mud brick appeared the same as any other. In illustrations to the better class of books, Athenian houses are always shown as miniature palaces. If you bother to read the Dialogues of Plato, or any other ancient literature that mentions how even persons of quality lived then, you’ll know that the pictures are not a fair reproduction of ancient ways. Bring him forward a thousand years, and Socrates wouldn’t have felt at all out of place in these surroundings. Of course, he’d have been stoned to death the moment he opened his silly mouth. But he’d have been quite at home otherwise.
‘I have had cause more often than I care to admit,’ the Dispensator said at last, ‘to make my way here. If I have not so far left in any mood of satisfaction, this is most assuredly the house of Felix.’ He sniffed and brought the iron tip of his walking staff down with a gentle thud on the compacted earth of the track between the houses.
I looked pointedly at the step to the door of an abandoned building, and waited for Martin to take the hint and spread his cloak. I waited for the Dispensator to grunt his reluctant thanks and sit down in a shaft of sunlight.
‘You go in,’ I said to Martin. ‘Since the man really does appear to have gone barking mad, it’ll be better if you put him at some ease before we start instructing him in his duties.’ I stood in the shade and stretched lazily. There were some children playing on the other side of a wall. A few late bluebottles were about already to make a nuisance of themselves to a dog who was still trying to sleep. Otherwise, this district of Athens had all the silence you’d expect of a middling slum before everyone is up and about.
I was thinking of the previous night, and of all its endless pleasures, when the Dispensator coughed and looked at me across the narrow street. ‘I was visited yesterday evening by the Lord Priscus,’ he said.
I nodded. Getting Martin out of the residency for our tour of Athens had taken everything short of a slap to the face. Getting him off to the Areopagus had taken a few hard looks. ‘We’re as likely to be murdered in our beds as anywhere else,’ I’d told him. ‘Besides, Nicephorus has no orders, so far as we know, to set hands on you.’ That had given him very little cheer — and could have given him none, bearing in mind the repeated assurances of what Priscus had in mind for him in the event of my fall from the Imperial Grace. Now, if it seemed that Priscus was simply working on the fears of all the delegates, we might be safe enough. After all, what he probably wanted most was me to share in the disgrace back home. Doing away with me might give him an intense if momentary pleasure. But he surely knew that having to explain a dead Legate to Heraclius would only add to his eventual embarrassment.
‘For a Greek nobleman, his Latin is most fluent,’ the Dispensator added.
I nodded again. Unless he made a particular effort, Priscus spoke neither language with much delicacy. I had to grant, though, he had as great a talent for languages as my own. Indeed, I’d now discovered he knew enough Syriac to follow Nicephorus in his more unrestrained moments of terror. Give credit where it’s due — Priscus was a cut above your normal modern Greek.
The Dispensator brushed off a small feather that had settled on his outer robe and cleared his throat. ‘Something I have long wondered, however, is how the son-in-law of the Unmentionable Tyrant could have survived the revolution.’
I smiled. The Dispensator never broke bread without a stratagem. And here it was! The Lateran had its spies everywhere, but still hadn’t fully made sense of the snake pit that lay at the heart of politics in the Imperial capital. I walked over and sat beside the Dispensator. For a moment, our calves met. Then he shifted a little to the right, and there was an inch of space between us.
‘He did switch sides before Heraclius turned up outside Constantinople,’ I said. ‘He betrayed his own defence plans for the City, and made sure that, when the gates swung open, there was a minimum of fighting.’ Since Phocas had bullied me, once Priscus had flown, into making his last stand — and I’d been overwhelmed by the professionals Heraclius had picked up on his journey from Carthage — I’d not go into details here. ‘That earned him a high place in the new order of things. Besides, he is the Empire’s only decent general. Without him to slow their advance, the Persians would already have reached Antioch.’ I paused and spoke carefully. ‘Certainly, but for Priscus, we’d already have lost Egypt.’ No one could deny him that. With or without his arrival in Alexandria, I’d never have got the Viceroy to publish the land law. But Priscus had drawn the Brotherhood into Alexandria, before flattening it. He’d then stopped any invasion of Egypt from across the Red Sea. Without him, I’d have been taking very bad news back to the Emperor. There’d not have been even the pretence of a second chance in Athens.
‘He’s also the head of the old nobility in Constantinople,’ I added. I changed the subject. ‘Did he bring you any alarming news last night?’ I asked, as if I didn’t already know the answer.
Now, the Dispensator gave one of those smiles that verge on the friendly without ever quite getting there. ‘He made me aware of the situation north of Thermopylae,’ he said. ‘This did perturb His Grace the Bishop of Messina. My own response, however, was that we were called here for a purpose that no merely secular difficulty could serve to interrupt.’
I looked up at the very blue sky. Trust the Dispensator to send Priscus away with a flea in his ear. If it meant that Nicephorus and Balthazar might now be pushed into arranging a sad accident for me, that was easier to deal with than standing in the way of several dozen clerics, all on the bolt for Corinth.
As I looked down again and waited for the Dispensator to get to the subject of the defective Universal Bishop grant — and this was plainly uppermost in his mind — I heard the door open to the interpreter’s house.
‘You’d better come in, Aelric,’ Martin whispered in Celtic. ‘It isn’t very good.’
I stood in the larger of the two rooms in the house. Though bare, it was neat and clean. There was an icon of Saint Luke on the longest of the walls. Beneath this were a writing table and the pens and many inkpots of one whose living is words and their exact equivalents in another language. Felix himself sat in bed, a threadbare blanket wrapped about his shoulders. It took a while for my eyes to adjust fully to the darkened interior. I could see at once, though, that this was an old man. He might or might not have been as old as he seemed from his unkempt white hair and beard. There was no doubt his wits weren’t all that were needed of someone employed for his job.
‘But where is she?’ he asked as if repeating himself. ‘She went out with letters for the Lord Count. She should have been back long before evening. Where has she gone?’ He looked up into my face.
I caught the haggard despair in his eyes. Much truth is got from strangers by a course of questioning and observation. Sometimes, like a flash of lightning, it will cross from one mind to another. One look at the face is then enough. I swallowed and ordered myself not to let my shoulders sag.
‘Please stay where you are,’ I said gently. I sat down opposite the old man and took his hand in mine. ‘Tell me — when did your daughter go out?’ Getting a meaningful answer did now take questioning. She might have gone out seven days before. It might have been five. If I really needed to know, I could turn and ask the Dispensator exactly when the man had gone from eccentricity to apparent madness. But the description Felix gave me confirmed what Martin had also guessed.
How do you tell an old man that his only child — a daughter he’d loved, and who’d been his one reason for staying alive in this ghastly world — has been murdered in some obscene and utterly worthless ritual, and then dumped like a scraped-out melon husk? I could have taken the easy path and pretended ignorance. I could have made smooth promises of a search and left the news to be broken by someone else. After all, without a positive identification, I could have told myself, I might be mistaken, and that there was no point in giving what might have been an unnecessary shock. But the birthmark he’d mentioned on the right forearm was undeniable identification. I told the man as gently as I could what had happened.
I was trying again for some words — any words — of comfort, when the Dispensator got up and stood beside the icon of Saint Luke.
‘Felix,’ he said.
The old man looked up bleakly.
The Dispensator raised his arms and stretched them out to the old man. ‘Felix, it is the settled conviction of our Faith that the end of this life is no more than a gateway through which all must pass into a new life. Whether you had gone before your daughter, or she has now gone before you, is a matter of the Divine Providence that it is not for us to question. It is enough for us to know that whatever happens must assuredly happen for a purpose that is ultimately good. Your daughter is with Jesus, and you will, it is the promise of our Faith, see her again on the latter day. I tell you this from my own conviction. I tell you also as representative of the Universal Bishop.’
The old man wept as the sermon continued. But he was no longer looking wildly about. In matters of faith, as in all other matters, you might as well have argued with the waves on Dover Beach as with the Dispensator. Odd to say — and he’d never dressed otherwise, or acted other than as chief functionary of the Pope — but I’d never thought of him as any kind of priest. Now, as I heard that irresistible flow of comfort, I realised what a good missionary the Church had lost when the Lord Fortunatus first took possession of his mean little office in the Lateran. Given that mood of bleak despair, even I might have drawn comfort from his words. A reasonable man must face facts as they are, not as he might wish them to be. Equally, there are times when no reasonable man will challenge false consolation. There is something in what Plutarch said against Epicurus.
‘She will be forgiven her sins?’ the old man asked.
‘There is not the smallest doubt, my son,’ came the reply.
Trying for a devout look of my own, I listened to the conversation. Once or twice, when the poor old creature lapsed into Greek, I had to give a whispered translation to the Dispensator. I was glad he’d come along, to show me the house and join me in the act of bullying I’d had in mind. I could never have managed this flow of commanding comfort. Even Martin could only have had the authority of a firm but untonsured believer. I listened, impressed — and I worked hard to make sense of the incidentals of what Felix had let slip about the nature of his daughter’s dealings with the Lord murdering Count of Athens. They were broken. They were repeated. They were contradictory in their details. The senility that despair can throw like a blanket over an aged mind is one of the few mercies in life. If he was never to recover his wits, and if his days would not now be prolonged, the old man’s suffering would not be all that it might otherwise have been. The bitter despair of the old has no other cure. But I’d learned something.
Chapter 31
‘You have no choice, Aelric,’ Martin whispered beside me. ‘You have to act.’
Still silent, I looked again at the icon of the Risen Christ. He glared disapprovingly back at me from the wooden panel, the Virgin clutching at His left hand, the tomb broken open beneath His feet. I had to grant that, once you accepted the glitter all about us of jewelled relic boxes, and the endless profusion of bright colours, Justinian had employed architects and workmen of great ability to convert the Temple of Athena into a church. You really couldn’t tell that the main structure had been turned round, so it was now entered from the west, nor that the internal columns had been removed to make room for worshippers to stand inside. I’d seen the gold and ivory statue of Athena in Constantinople; it had been placed in the covered Theatre of Oribasius, so the seats flowed round it. Here, it must have been placed behind me, where the main door was now located. I looked up at the ceiling. This had been replaced at some time during or before the conversion, its weight now supported by a couple of brick arches in the modern style.
But there was to be no more thinking about architectural details. Martin drew breath to carry on in his whispered Celtic. I almost wished he could have gone back to insisting on a dishonourable flight from Corinth. I sighed and got in first. ‘He was fucking the girl,’ I conceded. ‘I have no reasonable doubt of that. He was fucking her, and leading her along with all the usual promises. What happened next, though, may be doubted. We might assume this was a sex killing. A man in the Count’s position is able to develop and indulge some questionable tastes. .’
‘You know perfectly well it was sorcery!’ Martin hissed. ‘We both heard that he sacrificed her to whatever demon was being asked to drown us at sea. Why else his behaviour when you found the body?’
I could have thrown doubt on all of this. What we’d heard in the library was at least ambiguous. All that Nicephorus had said and done beside the tomb of Hierocles could make sense on the assumption of a mere sex killing.
The Dispensator, though, had now finished his own long prayer for the soul of the dead, and was standing behind us. ‘God understands all,’ he said in a voice that, however softly he spoke, echoed from the curved ceiling. ‘But I choose to think it both unfriendly and a sign of guilt if your conversation is in a language that neither I nor any other worshipper here can understand. You know, Alaric, that the poor girl was murdered. Will you resist me if I claim the right to all the information you have about her death?’
I certainly would resist him, and I did. Not so buggery Martin. After a few promising evasions and shifty looks, he gave straight in and told the lot, probable sorcery and all.
The Dispensator got down again on his knees, this time beside us, and prayed for what seemed a very long time. ‘We have been called to Athens,’ he finally said, now very grim, ‘to agree some process by which heretics may be reconciled to the Faith as laid down at Chalcedon. I now learn that the Count of Athens himself is in communion with the demons of the Old Faith, and that this communion has not stopped short of human sacrifice. Might I ask His Magnificence the Lord Senator Alaric why this fact has not been reported?’
The plain answer I could have given was that Nicephorus was the normal authority to which these things should be reported. Since that was out, I was the next authority, and I already knew all about his crime. What I did about it was a matter for me alone to decide. I turned and looked nervously about. We weren’t alone in the church. But the five monks behind us had the dark beards and eyes of Easterners. The old women who’d probably come in out of the sun, and were muttering to each other as they carried on with their knitting, also could be trusted not to follow any of the Latin in which we were speaking. The previous day, I’d fixed myself like a cart in some ancient rut. There was justice in its widest sense to be served here. If murder was murder, there was also an empire that had to be saved. We’d save this most effectually by sorting out the Monophysite heresy — not by setting everyone in a twitter with allegations of sorcery.
‘Look, Fortunatus,’ I said, trying to sound reasonable, ‘the moment I’m ready, I’ll have that bastard Count clapped in chains before he can squeal the name of his goddess. He can then be shipped off to Constantinople for trial before the Emperor. But there are, for the moment, other things to consider. .’ I fell silent and began to feel dirtier than ever. I looked back at the icon. You don’t expect a few daubs of paint on wood to give advice on how to govern Church and state. I got no guidance whatever. Like a fool, I turned and stared into the pitiless face of the Dispensator. At once, I felt myself back in his office in the Lateran. I might be His Magnificence the Lord Senator to everyone else. But here was someone who knew just as well as Martin who I actually was. Unlike Martin, the Dispensator would never back down from that knowledge. I looked straight down at the limestone tiles that must have been laid over the ancient floor, and tried to focus on a meaningless graffito someone had scratched there.
‘Alaric,’ the Dispensator said, ‘when Constantine established the True Faith, the demons who had previously deceived mankind were not destroyed. Instead, they were simply displaced from their temples and from the general regard. Ever since then, they have lurked in every dark place, ready to be called back into power by the appropriate words, and given new power by offerings of blood. Sometimes, they will take over the minds of the weak with gifts of carnal knowledge; demons, you will be aware, can assume living forms of great beauty and allure. Sometimes, they will remain invisible, but offer power over things. Christ Himself will not combat their wiles, but has resigned that task to those who freely use their own will and the secular power of the Empire. You are the highest secular power in Athens. I charge you with the duty to act in defence of right, truth and justice.’
