I was thinking, though, of Priscus, Commander of the East. As well as snake and general obstructer, he was also the Empire’s only competent general. He hadn’t lost Cappadocia. If Heraclius hadn’t turned up and demanded a battle, the blockade of the Persians in Caesarea would have finished the war on our terms. If I still couldn’t understand the details of a campaign that involved endless marches from nowhere to nowhere, and that took in half the East, I’d believed Priscus when he said he could have defeated the Persians with never more than a skirmish. I’d now ruined him. The Empire he’d wanted to save would have been an oversized desert, squabbled over by tax gatherers and parasitic landlords. But what use would my alternative be, if it was swallowed up by the Persians one battle at a time?
I turned to stare at the Great Church. Fat lot of guidance that gave me. Once more, though now with rising guilt and misery, I went over reasonings that had seemed quite clear so long as I thought I was for the chop. I’d saved myself at the expense of men who had no claim on me — who had no abstract claim whatever to consideration. But what of the Empire and of its toiling millions I was supposed to be defending? Our fates were connected — but at what price?
I heard a shrill cry to my right. It was Martin, running towards me as fast as I’d seen him move in years. Outside the Senate House, several dozen men in togas were milling about, regardless of the rain.
‘Aelric, Aelric,’ he gasped in Celtic, too knocked out to address me in any civilised language. ‘The Emperor was looking for you. He’s granted you everything he confiscated from Priscus.’ I went forward to catch him before he collapsed and helped him beneath the cover of an upturned shield. I perched him on the rim of a water basin and waited for him to finish struggling for breath. I noticed he was crying. ‘Aelric, before he was taken out in chains, Priscus called to me in Slavic. He said that he’d been straight with you and that you’d made a terrible mistake.’ Not speaking, I looked at Martin. Priscus would say that, I told myself. In a race of men who lied with as much compunction as whores or street beggars, he was the greatest liar I’d ever met. Priscus was a shifty, murdering degenerate. But there was now enough doubt in my mind to finish my decline into self-disgust.
I helped Martin to his feet and got him to a passing chair that was for hire. I had no choice but to stay and receive the gesticulating sycophants. They’d all now seen me and were scampering forward with arms outstretched, regardless of how the rain was spoiling their togas. I smiled and pretended not to notice as the best men in Constantinople kicked and punched each other for the right to be first to throw his arms about the knees of the new and undoubted favourite.
Was not of old the Jewish rabble’s cry -
I quoted softly in Latin -
Hosanna first, and after Crucify?
The following spring, news came back that Chosroes had illuminated Ctesiphon for three days to celebrate the fall of Priscus — and then for another three when he heard that Heraclius had recalled Nicetas from Alexandria to be Commander of the East. With this came a report from one of our spies that General Kartir had been ordered to prepare a direct stab at Constantinople. He was to lead a small and highly mobile force through the mountain passes, before sweeping along the southern shore of the Black Sea. With our main forces already committed in Syria to face Shahrbaraz, we had nothing to put in his way. Heraclius responded by shutting himself away in his palace on the Asiatic shore. I sweated. I dithered. I did everything short of pray for guidance. What are you supposed to do when interest and duty so plainly collide? At last, I put out an announcement in the Emperor’s name that I was being sent off to Rome to negotiate a loan from the Pope. That night, not telling even Martin what I was about, I set out alone.
I didn’t see Constantinople again until the late October of 613.
Chapter 20
Expressionless, the Abbot stared at the seal I’d affixed to my warrant. ‘I don’t recommend seeing him alone,’ he said in the cold voice of a jailor. ‘That he tried to kill a man is beside the point. The sin he has committed against God is not something to be specified in writing.’ He continued looking at the seal. ‘This is not a fit place to contain such evil,’ he muttered.
I shook my head. The man had wasted enough of my afternoon already. ‘You summoned me here on his behalf,’ I said. ‘I see no point in being here unless we can speak alone.’
The Abbot looked closer at the impression I’d made with the Great Seal. If I was here at his request, the warrant I’d thought to bring along gave me unquestionable authority to demand anything I cared. In silence, he made an entry on to a parchment roll, every sheet of which was stitched together and numbered. I wrote my name where he pointed and took in the other entries on the page. I was signing near the bottom. The top entry was dated six months before and recorded a visit sanctioned by the Emperor. The entry immediately above mine went some way to explaining why I’d been called here. I waited while the Abbot went over to a cupboard and took out a single key. ‘He’s been given the room in the tower,’ he said to me as he walked towards the door of his office. ‘I have no authority to search you, My Lord. But you will be aware of the rules governing his confinement.’ I shrugged. We both knew the rules didn’t apply to me. But he was doing his job, and I’d play along.
In silence, he led me past an outer chapel into the main part of the Fortified Monastery. I passed down long and gloomy corridors heavy with the smell of human excrement. Most of the cells appeared to be empty, though here and there I caught faint sounds of praying or of senile or insane giggling. I could have sworn I heard a baby cry somewhere. I could have stopped and listened but didn’t. In a shorter corridor terminated by a bolted iron gate, one of the cells was open. I looked in as I passed. It was a large room and furnished in a manner that, before time and the damp had got seriously to work, had been lavish. One monk sat on a rickety chair, putting books and smaller objects into a crate. Another monk was dabbing the stone floor with a mop. I saw no evidence of a living occupant.
The monk who went before us unbolted the iron gate and bowed as we went by him on to a wide spiral staircase within what I guessed was a much wider tower. We stopped halfway up at a wooden door. The Abbot took out his key and poked it into the lock. He opened it and stood back to let me go in before him. ‘Brother Gondo will remain outside,’ he said. ‘If he hears your voice raised, his orders are to summon the guard. I advise you to remain outside the white line that has been drawn on the floor.’
At first, I saw nothing. The darkness of the corridors and staircase had been moderated by a brace of lamps. Here, the fading light of a winter afternoon was almost wholly shut out by a curtain that hung before the one small window in the cell. I waited for the Abbot to come in behind me and took one of the lamps for myself. I pulled the wick fully up. I waited for the pale and flickering light to show me what I was looking for. After a long silence, I found the malefactor stretched out on a stone ledge that served him for a bed. I thought he was asleep but he was only wrapped in a woollen quilt against the cold. He opened his eyes and looked at me. He sat up and glowered. Behind me, the Abbot cleared his throat. ‘Brother Priscus,’ he said in a curiously soft gloat, ‘your request has been heard and granted. But though it has been suspended, so you may speak collectedly with the Lord Alaric, your daily whipping will resume tomorrow.’ With that, I heard the door swing shut behind me.