The Ghosts of Athens a-5, page 28
part #5 of Aelric Series
‘I wish Your Grace Godspeed through the streets of Athens,’ I’d said to Simeon as we finally bundled him into his chair. I’d drawn breath and continued in oratorical tone: ‘I think we can both agree on desiring a homeward voyage before the sea lanes become really impassable. Can I therefore count on your assistance in getting this council over and done with before the month is out? My enquiries suggest that you have a certain closeness with His Grace of Ephesus. I will leave you to arrange matters with him as you see fit — with him and with the other Eastern bishops. You know the council will begin tomorrow, after Sunday service. If our next Sunday service can celebrate a smooth consensus of opinion between Greek and Latin Patriarchates, you may be assured that neither I nor the Commander of the East will forget your own part in bringing this about.’
Priscus had confirmed this with a great slobbering kiss, and then a parting kick at the biggest of the carrying slaves. ‘If there is a “next” Sunday service,’ he’d giggled into my ear, ‘even you might join in the prayers of thanks.’
We’d watched as the flaring procession made its way through the Forum of Hadrian. Then we’d watched as slaves had closed and barred the only gate into the residency. Now, in darkness, we were walking through its dark interior.
‘They might have been strays,’ Priscus now said, referring to the children I’d seen out by the tomb. ‘But, if you saw one family of them, it does mean the passes are open. It’s a matter of time.’ He stopped suddenly and doubled over for a long coughing attack. We’d moved into a shaft of moonlight from one of the overhead windows. In this, I saw the dark streak on his bandage.
‘You need a doctor,’ I said. ‘Don’t try telling me again this is seasickness.’
Priscus stood up and leaned against one of the locked doors. ‘If you have any sense in that pretty young head of yours,’ he whispered, ‘you’ll not go round telling people how the Commander of the East is indisposed. I was able to inspect what passes here for a militia this afternoon. With me at their head, those duffers might just hold the walls. Do you want them in a panic?’
I swallowed. In Constantinople, in Alexandria, in Egypt, and on the whole voyage to Athens, I’d done everything short of pray that Priscus — as much my fly in the ointment as I was his, my sworn enemy, my backstabbing opponent in every measure I could urge on poor, stupid Heraclius — might fall down dead of something. Now it was looking as if I’d get what I wanted, I really would make a point of praying in church for his recovery.
We continued along the corridor. After a few paces, Priscus stopped again to clear his throat. He spat into the darkness. He laughed and took my arm to help him forward. ‘When will you officially notice that Nicephorus has abandoned his duties?’ he asked.
‘He seems to have done bugger all when he was about,’ I answered. ‘Unless anyone important makes a fuss, I think we can overlook his absence for another few days.’
We’d now come into a long room that had a side window at the far end into the courtyard. Through this came another hint of distant red. ‘I know that Martin’s been urging you to scarper since before we got here,’ Priscus said with a recovery of strength. ‘We can agree that Nicephorus had no orders to arrest you on the docks. But you really can’t deceive yourself that you’re in the clear. All that guff you spoke to dear Simeon about the Imperial Constitution doesn’t touch the fact that you serve an absolute and arbitrary despot who may still have something nasty in mind for you. So do tell me, dear boy — why hang about when you could be straight out of here?’
‘Because I swore an oath to Heraclius,’ I said. ‘And because I have an overriding duty of service to the Empire so long as I’m in a position to do any good at all.’ I was saved the trouble of continuing by a sudden explosion from Priscus that was part laugh, part sneer.
‘Duty?’ he gasped when he was able to speak again. ‘Duty to that shambling wretch in Constantinople? I have duties to family and class. You have a choice.’ He waved at a mass of damp cobwebs overhead that hadn’t yet been cleaned. ‘This whole Empire is no better than Athens itself. Whatever it may once have been, it’s nothing more than a ghost of what the old poets and philosophers laid down for it. If it’s any better than Persia, or even the less chaotic barbarian kingdoms, I haven’t yet noticed. You tell me what lies between savages like me and those lunatic priests that is worth saving.’
I didn’t break the silence that followed.
‘Oh, well,’ he took up again, ‘it’s so nice that we’re working together again. Even if I am thinking back just one month or so, to when we did so well in Egypt, it will be just like the old days — don’t you think?’
‘Yes,’ I said. Since he was no longer holding on to me, he didn’t feel my shudder.
Chapter 39
‘I said I wanted every door opened,’ was my curt reply. The slave bowed and looked again at the door in the cupboard. ‘If you have to break it open, please do. However, I want every effort made first to pick the lock.’ Martin tagging along behind me, I walked back along the corridor towards one of the courtyard doors.
Out in the courtyard, and once I was used to the dazzling sunshine, my first sight was of Maximin. He was cackling like a mad thing as young Theodore pushed him higher and higher on a swing that had been lashed to a tree branch. I stopped and smiled at the happy scene. Theodore’s clothes were too big for him, and he was sweating in the morning sun from an effort that, even slightly increased, would pitch my son straight out of his enclosure on to the dried mud.
‘This place is a stinking hovel!’ Sveta hissed in my direction. She’d spoken in a Latin that I could be sure none of the slaves could understand. Still, I chose to assume she’d been directing herself at Martin.
‘Please, my dear,’ he quavered back at her. ‘We did agree-’
She silenced him with a blow to the side of his face that still had an ear. ‘Don’t you “please dear” to me!’ she snarled. ‘The whole place stinks. And, now we’re at least unpacked, your lord and master is sending us to Corinth — no doubt to somewhere ever dirtier.’ She drew breath. Then, with the lack of reasoning ability you get in women, went back to complaining about the residency. ‘If he was half the man you think he is, he’d have got us moved right out of this slum. It’s too dirty even for the rats.’
I was pretending not to have heard this — though she’d had a point about rats: why were there none at all? — when I was almost knocked over by a smell that took me back to the mass graves of Alexandria before they’d been covered over. I poured half a bottle of scent on to a napkin and clamped it over my nose and mouth.
‘Ah, the latrines are being cleaned out,’ I said with a muffled attempt at cheer. Their unopened smell at twenty paces had been quite enough for me, and I’d so far avoided a direct visit, making my own offerings into a brass chamber pot. But these were, I had no doubt, civilised latrines. Once in working order, they’d be flushed by as continuous a stream of water as could be arranged from what remained of the aqueduct. Then, we could have oiled and scented sponges, and try to imagine ourselves in a place for persons of quality.
I was thinking of the possibility of getting water into the bathhouse, when Sveta pushed a reddened forearm in my direction. ‘Not a rat to be seen or heard,’ she went on in grim fury, ‘but more bees than you’ll find in a hive.’
‘But Sveta, my dearest love bucket,’ Martin managed to get in while she drew breath, ‘Athens is famed for its honey.’
‘Honey?’ she said with a flat menace I’d heard only once before, when she’d learned that I was proposing to take Martin out of Alexandria into the south of Egypt. ‘Don’t talk to me about honey. Don’t you care if your own child is eaten alive by nasty little bees?’ She dropped her voice and looked in my direction. It was to no effect. I’d have heard her clearly enough from deep inside the residency. ‘And don’t you think you can tell him something about that bloody witch?’
With his own nervous look in my direction, Martin tried to put his arms about her.
But she broke free and raised her voice again: ‘Oh, I should have listened to my mother, God rest her soul. If she could see me now. .’
I heard the warning cry just in time to avoid a shower of sweepings thrown from one of the upper windows. I stepped aside and took the opportunity to get as far out of hearing as I could manage.
‘I trust you are feeling well this morning?’ I said to Theodore, who was still pushing on the swing.
‘Oh, yes, My Lord,’ he cried, bowing just low enough for the now unattended swing not to knock him dead on its recoil.
‘Excellent,’ I said. I paused and put the napkin back to my face as a shift in the wind sent invisible but dizzying fingers of sewer smells in our direction. ‘I trust the Lady Euphemia is happy with the attendants I have assigned to her,’ I said finally.
Seemingly unaware of the smell, Theodore bowed again and smiled. ‘Indeed, My Lord,’ he said. ‘My mother will thank you in person, but regrets that the full daylight is bad for her eyes.’
I smiled. She’d crawled out of bed to splash water over herself shortly before dawn. If she now stirred from her own bed before noon, she’d confirm I hadn’t been sufficiently inventive in the night. Even thoughts of the fallen Decelea hadn’t taken the edge off my lust. Now, the mere recollection of all we’d managed set off an entirely delicious twinge in my loins.
I nodded and left Theodore at play with Maximin. Careful not to trip over the ridges of dried mud, I picked my way across the main part of the courtyard. There had been a sizable lawn here, and flower beds, and a nice marble fountain in the middle of it all. The fountain remained, though silent now, and choked with years — perhaps generations — of rotted-down compost. Still holding the pitcher on his shoulder, the naked boy who was the main part of the fountain stared back at me with the blankness the ancients had generally preferred in their art. I stopped about a dozen yards from what I took to be Euphemia’s window. It had been opened outward a few inches to let in air, and the blind was fully up inside. Impossible, of course, to see anything by day through those thick, greenish pieces of glass. But did I have the impression of being watched? I gave one of my charming smiles and bowed. A shame I had no excuse for going into the building and upstairs to continue what I regarded as unfinished business. Far behind me, I could hear Sveta’s voice rising to one of her cold furies, and Martin’s answering wails of embarrassment. Maximin was laughing again fit to burst.
‘Oh, there you are, dearie.’
I turned and looked at Irene.
She made a sort of bow and stepped away from what had turned out to be a soft patch of ground. ‘This cleaning doesn’t have no end,’ she said. She swore and snatched at a bee that had flown too close by her. She held it between forefinger and thumb of her right hand. With her left she pulled off its wings and legs. She popped it in her mouth and chewed thoughtfully. ‘It does the rheumatics a power of good,’ she explained with a smile that showed pieces of black on her teeth.
I patted a lock of hair back into place that had fallen down when I nearly tripped over a bush. I frowned. ‘I thought we had agreed,’ I said, ‘only to clean the places that will definitely be used. I am most grateful that you have chosen to move in and supervise the slaves. But there is a limit to how many more of your slaves I wish to buy.’
She came over beside me and looked up at the window. ‘She’s a right peach of a girl, don’t you think?’ she asked. ‘I’ve given meself a room near to hers — in case she gets lonely, like.’ She pursed her lips and only just managed to stop herself from nudging me with her elbow.
I coughed to hide a smile I didn’t think I could suppress. Loneliness would be the least of Euphemia’s problems. ‘But Irene,’ I asked, ‘surely your husband will be missing you?’
Her reply was a disapproving sniff.
I had a sudden thought. ‘You told me the other day you didn’t believe any of the stories about this place,’ I said. ‘Any chance of a few details?’
I waited for her to take the bait. But all I got was another sniff and a comment about the overriding importance of business. Without any pretence of a bow, she walked off to continue her shouted instructions. There was an answering cry from one of the upper windows and another shower of dirt. I looked up again at Euphemia’s window. I heard Sveta’s voice raised in another shrill rebuke.
I turned and made my way towards the happy couple. Sveta had run out of insults, or at least of breath to voice them, and was contenting herself with a vicious look in my direction. I walked past her in the direction of one of the secondary courtyards where I might have a carrying chair waiting for me.
I was about to round the corner, when Priscus stuck his ghastly face out of a window. ‘Ah, young Alaric,’ he croaked with better cheer than I might have expected, ‘if you can spare the time, I’ve something wonderful to show you!’
‘We thought it was a door leading to some storage rooms,’ the slave explained in one of the more northerly Slavic dialects. ‘It was only when we got it open and found the other door that we realised it was something else.’ He stood back and motioned at the blackness within the opened door. We were on the ground floor of the left block. The library was directly above us. I’ve said that the glass dome was supported by four columns. The combined weight, plus that of the floor and its bookracks, I could now see, was supported by a set of brick arches. Every other of the arches was just a storeroom. This one really was different. I walked towards the far door that had now been opened and sniffed at the stale air. There was a smell of damp brick dust and of undisturbed cold. I stood back and examined the door. It was of heavy wood, reinforced with bands of rusted iron. The heavy bolts that had secured it from the outside were also rusted, and must have required the strength of two men to force them back. How many other doors concealed by doors might there be within this building?
‘Needless to say, the lazy bastards wouldn’t go in,’ Priscus added in Latin. He grinned and leaned on a broomstick he was using to get himself about. ‘It takes someone of proper nerve to explore those hidden delights.’ He switched into Slavic and called for pitch torches. He turned back to me. ‘Shall I go down first?’ he crooned. ‘It will, after all, be my second visit. Or would the Lord Alaric take his turn to show he wasn’t afraid?’
How I avoided sliding straight down those crumbled steps isn’t worth narrating. But I stepped at the bottom into a six-inch depth of cobwebs and nearly sprained an ankle on what felt like a brick floor. Priscus barked another order, and two slaves moved reluctantly past me. They stood each side of the little chamber and held up flaring torches.
‘Every palace has one, wouldn’t you agree?’ Priscus asked, now back in Latin. ‘Doesn’t even your dear nest in Constantinople have one for those slaves who don’t pay attention to your words of gentle admonition?’
I ignored the laugh that turned into an attempt to clear his throat. I ignored the splatter of doubtless bloody phlegm on to the cobwebs, and looked about.
Just because nearly everyone of importance has endorsed it, and just because I’ve never deprived myself of its practical advantages, doesn’t make slavery other than a disgusting institution. Yes, I hadn’t made use of such a place as this. I can say that I’ve never done this to a slave. But there’s no denying that the good behaviour of your own slaves rests ultimately on the knowledge that these places do exist, and are sanctioned by the laws and customs of every civilised race.
This end of the dungeon was so low that I had to stoop to avoid knocking my head. Its other dimensions were about eight feet by twelve. Still in their manacles, two of the skeletons lay where death had overtaken them. The others had been pulled apart, and it was only from the manacles that I could tell there had been another three. I bit my lip and stared at the closest of them. Half concealed in the mass of filth that lay over the cobwebs, the skull might have been of a child or a small woman. I looked further along the wall, at one of the skeletons that held together. It still nursed what looked like a gnawed wooden pitcher.
‘What bastard could just have left them here?’ I breathed as if to myself.
Priscus heard me and laughed, now with more success. ‘Why ask questions that can’t be answered?’ he said in a firm and mocking voice. ‘How often have you used these very words?’ He suppressed a cough and stepped forward. I heard the dull tread of his velvet shoes as he hurried over to the skeleton in good order.
I followed him into the overpowering smell of must. All dead matter had long since decayed into its constituent atoms. Even so, I made sure to breathe in through my mouth.
‘Just look at this, dear boy,’ he cried. He twisted round to see me and beckoned me eagerly forward. ‘Come and see what refinements the ancients knew and we have forgotten.’
I took a deep breath and took another step. I tried not to think of my ruined shoes. I did manage to avoid looking at the two slaves, who stood unmoving with bowed heads, torches held out before them.
Priscus tugged one of the manacles free of the wrist it had enclosed for what may have been centuries. He tossed the bones into the dirt and stood up. ‘This really is lovely, don’t you think?’ he asked.
The manacle was of a design I hadn’t seen before. What I’d always seen was essentially a broken ring that was screwed or locked together round a limb. This was something much more complex. It can be best described as a hinged bracelet welded to a chain. When fully outstretched, it resembled the antlers of a stag beetle. As you moved them closer, one part passed inside the other. Every inward movement was attended by the click of a ratchet. The two parts went together, but wouldn’t pull apart. The only way to get them back to their original position was to push them fully together, after which they continued freely back on themselves.
