‘Alaric, I’d like to ask you a question,’ Priscus announced one late afternoon. Outside, it was raining and the barred window had no glazing to keep out the chill. After a fair beginning, the conversation had languished. All Priscus could bring out was another of those ghastly anecdotes that showed what a good idea it had been in general to lock him into this cage. As for me, I was depressed by news of another campaign mishandled by Nicetas — this one had let a Persian army deep into the Home Provinces and, only after much loss of life and property, had a confederation of my local militias eventually forced a retreat.
I looked away from a stain on the table cloth that reminded me of a map of Britain. ‘By all means,’ I said, trying for an interest I didn’t feel. I was thinking of an excuse to make a dash back inside the City before the rain came down in the volume that, before it darkened, the sky had seemed to be threatening.
‘The philosophers and priests teach that it doesn’t,’ he said after fumbling with his wine cup. ‘But do you think the end ever justifies the means?’
I put my own cup down. ‘Yes,’ I said. By tacit agreement, we’d long since given up on trying to deceive each other. If we were lurching into a symposium, we might as well both be honest in ways that would have shocked Plato. ‘The end does justify the means if a number of conditions are satisfied. First, the end must be worth achieving as reasonably understood. Second, the means chosen must be reasonably likely to achieve the end. Third, they must be the most economic means available. Fourth, they mustn’t involve reasonably foreseeable costs that outweigh the expected benefits of the end. Answer yes to all of these, and the means are justified.’
Priscus smiled. ‘A good philosophy for a saint or a villain,’ he said. ‘In Persia, you lied and killed and betrayed. Because you then kept telling yourself how it would keep your beloved farmers digging their fields in peace, I don’t suppose you have any trouble, now you’re back, in thinking yourself an honest man. I’m sure you still think yourself a better man than me.’
‘Fewer bodies,’ I answered, ‘even allowing for age. Less enjoyment, too, in producing them.’
He arched his eyebrows. ‘Dear me, Alaric — so little understanding of your truest friend!’ He stood up and, as if from habit, went over to put his ear close to the door. ‘Listen,’ he went on, ‘if I’ve usually killed with pleasure, I’d like you to tell me when I’ve ever been known to kill from pleasure.’ He stopped and sat down with a sudden loss of energy. ‘What I did outside Simonopolis got me black looks from all and sundry in the Imperial Council. But I lifted the siege with fifty dead on our own side. The Avar horde I sent streaming back towards the Danube left ten thousand of their own dead to be fought over by the crows. Compare that with the irreplaceable armies Nicetas is about to piss away in Syria.’ He poured himself more wine.
‘If you’re wondering what’s put me in the mood for moral philosophy, be aware that today is my sixty-eighth birthday. You may think this a very advanced age. I never believed I’d make it so far. But you’ll pardon me for wondering how I shall be seen a hundred years from now. That I ended up in this place will be less important to the historians than what else I did.’ He got up again and beat his chest. The response was a dry cough that terminated in itself. He laughed. ‘I also can’t help wondering if I haven’t been reserved for some final achievement.’
He laughed again. Visiting time would soon be over. I’d have to hurry if I wanted to get back before the guards I’d bribed at the Military Gate went off duty.
Chapter 22
It was Good Friday in 614. I’d spent all afternoon with Heraclius and everyone else of importance in the Great Church, listening to a mournful sermon from the Patriarch. The sufferings of Christ had been his overt subject. Every mind, though, had been on the news, drifting in with every post, of the catastrophic defeat Nicetas had managed for us in Syria. After that it had been a gambling party, where I’d stripped a couple of young heirs so naked their fathers would have to come begging my indulgence the next morning. Then it was home for a nightcap of triumphant sex with pretty young Eboric and his brother. All was as it should be when, at some time in the deepest part of the night, I was woken by a cold and bony hand clamped over my mouth.
‘Not sleeping with a knife under your pillow,’ Priscus wheezed. ‘is an affectation I beg you to reconsider.’ He took his hand away. I sat up and blinked in the light of the dimmed lamps. I looked about, trying to make sense of things. I was in my own bed. The boys must have gone back to the slave quarters.
I got out of bed and stood facing Priscus. ‘What the fuck are you doing in my bedroom?’ I demanded.
‘Dearest Alaric, it did used to be my bedroom,’ he said. ‘I see there are ways about this building you still don’t know. You evidently don’t know about the very secret entrance. It’s as dusty as when I last used it.’
I began to feel panicky. Visiting a traitor in his place of confinement was something you promised not to do again if it came to the Emperor’s attention and he chose not to be pleased. Harbouring one at home was treason. Priscus reached for one of the darker bed covers and threw it at me. ‘Come over here and look,’ he said. We went together to the balcony window. Even before he’d got the door open, I could see the glow of fires that blazed from a dozen points beyond the land walls of the City. I leaned over the balcony and looked right. It seemed the abandoned suburbs were a sea of flames.
‘While the cat’s away, the mice will play,’ he jeered. ‘It may be purely opportunistic. It may be that the alliance you broke up between them and the Persians has been revived. Whatever the case, an Avar raiding party has made its way into Thrace, and is killing and burning right up to the land walls.’ I followed his pointed finger to the north-west. The wide splash of bright fire could only have been the Fortified Monastery. He sat down on the floor and went into a coughing fit that owed more to the smoke he must have inhaled than to any return of his sickness. ‘Don’t ask how I got out,’ he said weakly. ‘I came into the City with the last crowd of refugees before the gates were closed again. Where else could I have gone after that but to the home of my beloved friend Alaric.’
As he spoke, there was a sound of shouting deep within the palace. Priscus climbed to his feet again and pulled out a knife already dark with blood. I heard the door fly open in the big antechamber to my bedroom and felt my heart jump into the back of my throat. But it was only Martin. ‘Aelric, wake up!’ he cried in Celtic. ‘The Barbarians are breaking into the City. Everything’s on fire.’ I shoved Priscus behind a curtain just in time. I was no sooner away from the window when Martin burst in, a lamp in his shaking hand.
I took hold of him and led him out on to the balcony. ‘It’s only a raid, Martin,’ I said soothingly. ‘No one can break through the walls. We’re perfectly safe.’ He stared for a long time at the distant fires and his shoulders sagged with the relaxing of tension. ‘It really can’t be more than a few hundred men on horseback,’ I urged. ‘They’ll be gone by morning.’ I took him back inside. ‘Now, go down to the nursery and make sure the maids don’t start a fire as they run about. I have work to do in here and I don’t want to be disturbed.’
I locked the door behind him and walked slowly to my bedroom door. ‘There’s food and drink out here,’ I said. I turned up one of the lamps and sat down. Limping from a sprain I supposed he’d picked up on his dash for the walls, Priscus came forward and took the wine I’d poured. ‘Now you’re officially dead, you are free to go where you will,’ I said. I could have kept up the pretence, with talk of gold and horses. But my heart had sunk back to its normal place and now somewhat lower.