It was a long speech. The year since he’d last called the Senate together had been crowded with events. If none was cause for celebration, custom required many of them to be noticed. I listened, at every pause wondering if he’d carry on along the path I’d laid out for him or if he’d go off on some possibly fatal deviation. After every pause, I heard my own words read back at me. There was the earthquake and tidal wave in the Black Sea, the raising of the dead in Petronella, the loss to the Persians of our last outpost in Cappadocia, the defection to the Persians of a mountain race whose name I’d left out because the Emperor couldn’t pronounce it. No mention of the bloodbath Priscus had unleashed in Alexandria, or of my own unwitting contribution to making it inevitable. Nothing of how we’d saved Egypt from the Persians. Nothing of our saving Athens from the barbarians, or of the triumphant though closed religious council I’d run there. I’d left them out of the speech and no one had thought to put them in. It went on as predictably for me as a lesson read out in church.
We were at the key passage. ‘Come forward, Priscus, my beloved Commander of the East,’ he called. Once or twice during the unfashionably direct and uncluttered prose Heraclius was reading, Priscus had given me a funny look. Now, without looking at me, he got up and walked towards the Throne. ‘Priscus, I resolved when my son was born that there was one man alone in the Empire who was fit to be his godfather. That man was our greatest general — our shield against the Persian menace — and last posterity of a family that, in every generation since the most ancient days of our Empire, had distinguished itself alike in the council chamber and on the field of battle.’
All about, I could hear the collective wiping of sweaty hands on togas. I swallowed and tried not to look at Priscus. He was kneeling with both arms stretched forward and I knew he was struggling not to cough. ‘A few words of advice, however, I ask from my Commander of the East. When a man insults his Emperor, whom does he offend?’ At once, the soft, collective rustle ceased and the room was quiet.
Priscus waited until his fit was past and he had full control of his voice. ‘Who insults his Emperor surely offends God who has appointed the Emperor,’ he managed to answer in a voice that I could barely hear. I darted my eyes to the right. A look of panic on his face, Ludinus was clearly wondering how far he’d get with his monstrous bulk before he was caught in a noose of silver chains.
Heraclius continued: ‘And if a man, through cowardice and negligence, loses one of our choicest provinces to the enemy, and rages like a ravening animal through the second city of our Empire, should he receive a lenient sentence?’ There was a long pause, then Priscus answered in a cowed stammer that I couldn’t hear. By now, Heraclius was on his feet. Still reading from his text, he raised his voice. ‘In every evil the Empire has suffered, you were involved as author or accomplice. You betrayed your lawful Emperor, Maurice of lamented memory, and helped bring to power Phocas the unmentionable tyrant. The Tyrant gave you his daughter in marriage, in spite of which you betrayed him to me. You have failed to defend the Empire. You have butchered its citizens. You were a bad son-in-law to one Emperor. You are a bad friend to another.’
In a movement I hadn’t scripted, he snatched up all the pages of his text and threw them straight ahead. Priscus raised his hands up to protect his face and toppled forward. Heraclius stepped over his fallen body and looked about the hushed Senate. ‘I declare Priscus guilty of high treason,’ he shouted. ‘I dismiss him from all his offices. I degrade him from the nobility of the Empire. I confiscate all his goods. I sentence him to be immured for the rest of his life in the Fortified Monastery outside the walls of Constantinople.’
As Heraclius stepped backward until he was just a yard or so in front of me, cries of horror broke out from every corner of the room. A few dozen men rushed forward and stood in a ring about Priscus. ‘Accursed be the traitor!’ they shouted in Latin. Let his name be forgotten. Let his final days be short and filled with bitterness.’ One or two of the men shuffled close to the Emperor and held up their ivory nametags for him to note and remember. Above the increasingly shrill and demented chorus of hate, I heard Priscus break out in a coughing fit. Then I heard someone clear his throat and spit. I heard more hawking and a long groan, as if someone had kicked the fallen man.
‘You certainly know how to keep everyone guessing,’ Ludinus said beside me. ‘For just a moment there, I thought you were going back on our deal.’ His face creased into a smile of relief. Trying not to ruin its double layer of paint, he dabbed at his face.
I looked over his shoulder at the two Imperial Guards who’d appeared and were awaiting my command. ‘The Emperor has found you also guilty of high treason,’ I said, looking at my fingernails. The smile froze on his lip. ‘We decided you weren’t worth a public denunciation. But the particulars will be shown to you in writing. Their burden is your conspiracy with the barbarians to destroy the cities of Attica.’ Without moving my head, I looked up at him. ‘If you make any fuss in here, Ludinus, I’ll have your legs broken where no one can hear you scream. Your sentence is that you are to be taken to Athens, where the survivors from Decelea have been settled, there to serve in the military canteen. If you breathe a word of your real identity, or try claiming that you acted on orders from the Emperor, I have no doubt the unfortunate Deceleans will visit on you the punishment that you deserve.’ I nodded at the guards. ‘Take him away,’ I said softly.
I remained on my stool. I stretched my legs and stared at the silk leggings below the lifted hem of my toga. I didn’t watch as Ludinus was bundled out of the debating chamber — though some of the more reflective Senators had, and were now turning their hard, calculating faces in my direction. The eunuch had deserved his fate. Murder is murder and his hands were red with the blood of thousands. That besides, he’d been a fool — a fool for letting me charm my way past him to Heraclius, and for not having a competent spy in hiding whom I couldn’t then corrupt. I felt more pity for squashed bugs than for this broken eunuch.
A couple of monks had joined Sergius, bowls of steaming water in their hands. Razor in his own hands, the Patriarch was pushing through the ring of Senators. Once he’d tonsured Priscus, the denunciations would cease. Priscus would then be a monk and entitled to some formality of consideration. The man would also have been ruled, by law and by public opinion, incapable of any return to favour. I could have pushed in behind Sergius and watched the infliction of this final punishment. It was richly deserved. From the day he’d got up and walked, Priscus had led a life of the utmost beastliness. Compared with him, Ludinus was clean.
But I didn’t watch the humiliation. Paying no attention to Heraclius, I got up and walked from the room. I hurried though the main hall, crowded with carrying chairs and gossiping slaves, outside into the cold air. I walked a hundred yards along the Triumphal Way and stopped by the terrace overlooking Imperial Square. It was coming on to rain again and I squeezed myself under cover of a bronze Achilles that had been snatched from a derelict temple on Seriphos.
Through a mist of rain that blurred its outlines, I looked over the City. Justice aside, I’d landed an astonishing double blow. A Greek might spend his entire adult life plotting to achieve less than Alaric the underaged barbarian just had. At the next meeting of the Imperial Council, there would be no more Ludinus to spray out policies almost designed to bankrupt the State and impoverish the people. There would be no more Priscus to lead resistance to my creeping demolition of the land-owning nobility. There’d be me and there’d be Sergius. So long as we continued to agree on what was needed, Heraclius would poke his tongue between his teeth and write the lawful form of words on whatever sheet of parchment we chose to set before him.