I waited for the clerk to finish making notes on wax that was probably melting in the heat of my official garden. ‘Send notice of my decision to the Lord Caesar Nicetas,’ I went on with a sigh. ‘Draw attention to my compliance with the Emperor’s Standing Order made on the Feast of Stephen in the second year of his reign. Make sure to get a receipt from the Lord Caesar’s secretary.’ A useful requirement, that, as the notice wouldn’t be read by His Magnificence the Lazy Turd. I thought about the depleted shipment of silver to Ravenna. I hadn’t made any definite promise to the Exarch of how much subsidy he’d get. But the shipment I was now making was barely more than a token of our continued interest in Italy. ‘Tell the Lord Exarch,’ I added, ‘that he is at liberty to approach His Holiness of Rome for another contribution to Imperial defence. He is permitted, in return, to overlook the Pope’s dealings with the Lombards in respect of their withdrawal from the Septenna district of Etruria.’ I put my hat beside me on the stone bench and closed my eyes. The sun was turning hot enough for August. ‘Bring me the draft of the letter to the Exarch. I will expand on it in my own hand.’
Another clerk stepped forward with his own load of correspondence. An earthquake had damaged the running track in Aphrodisias. Would the Emperor pay for its repair? ‘No,’ I said. ‘The general remission of taxes to the Home Provinces is the only help we can presently give. Diverting money from the war effort is out of the question. Find the letter I wrote last month to the town council at Nicomedia on a similar request. Adapt it and bring it to me for checking.’ There was a new paragraph I had in mind about the joys of voluntary effort in an age of lower taxes.
‘Your son, Theodore, craves a moment of your time,’ one of the clerks suddenly intoned.
I opened my eyes and focused on the boy. ‘At your age,’ I said, going into Syriac for privacy, ‘you should be wearing no clothes at all on a day like this. But you might at least take off that bloody cloak. Do you want to be ill again?’ He bowed and said nothing. I gave up on the next sentence I was forming. If overdressed, Theodore had put on cleanish clothes. He’d even washed and combed his hair. I wondered if I could manage a paternal smile. Best not, I thought. I had a dozen clerks watching me with close attention. ‘What is it?’ I asked, trying instead to sound friendly.
‘I have a favour to ask of you,’ he mumbled in Greek.
I got up and put my hands on his shoulders. Even through four layers of wool, I could feel how bony they were. Why would the boy not give himself to Glaucus? There were limits to what could be done with a body so naturally unpromising but daily training would put something on those bones. It might also open out his lungs. I smiled into his sallow face, and felt the usual wave sweep over me of pity mingled with guilt. I should have sent him home to Tarsus. I could easily have paid for one of his dead father’s neighbours to take him on. But I’d felt so sorry for him in Athens, once his stepmother was gone.
‘Ask your favour,’ I said loudly. ‘The answer must surely be yes.’ There was an approving murmur from the clerks. Theodore opened and closed his mouth. He turned a shade of pink. He looked round at the clerks.
‘My Lord,’ a new voice called behind me, ‘the map is ready for your inspection.’
I looked away from Theodore. ‘Ready so soon?’ I asked. The drafting office must have been working night shifts to get that ready. I looked again at Theodore. He was no closer to making his request. ‘I’ll be up in my office,’ I said generally. ‘Join me after a half-hour break by the sun dial.’ I took Theodore by the arm. ‘Come on, I said. ‘We’ll talk indoors.’
After so long in bright sunshine, it was a matter of feeling my way to the foot of the backstairs or waiting for my eyes to adjust. I chose the latter. Even this far, a brisk walk had left Theodore wheezing slightly. ‘How is that eunuch who was taken poorly yesterday?’ I asked.
‘Father Macarius was with him at the end,’ came the answer in Theodore’s mournful voice. ‘His skin turned the colour of lead and he cried out that the Devil had taken his soul.’
‘Oh, surely not!’ I said in a voice of what I hoped was firm piety. Obviously, I thought about my cup. Unlike ceramic or wood, you can’t impregnate metal with poison. Both eunuchs had pawed all over the cup. One of them had polished it on his robe. That would have removed anything nasty smeared over the surface. There had been nothing left for me. I made a note to have a proper look at the thing once I was completely alone.
Chapter 25
I looked up from the squares of starched linen that covered half the floor in my office. ‘My compliments to the entire drafting office,’ I said. The young clerk nodded and tried not to look as pleased with himself as he deserved to feel. I took another step back to admire the neatness with which numbers had been turned into blocks of colour. If the basic idea was mine, the Treasury officials had eventually taken it up with an enthusiasm that made its final shape their own achievement. I took a step left and wondered if there had been some defect of scale in showing the Italian provinces. Also, was Syracuse really so far south of Corinth? It didn’t matter. It might even be useful to give Heraclius something he could then correct in some unimportant detail from his own knowledge. What did matter was the correspondence of numbers with colour. That, I could see, was wholly correct.
I smiled at the clerk. ‘Do please arrange for five copies on one-third scale,’ I said. He nodded again and scratched my instruction on his waxed tablet. ‘Oh, and please ask the chief drafting clerk to abstract the main figures from each report and tabulate them on a standard sheet of papyrus. I’ll need eight copies of that.’
We’d given special attention to the Home Provinces. I bent low over a band of pink that began in the foothills of the Taurus Mountains and terminated just short of Halicarnassus. More than ever, the patches and banding of different shades of the same colour struck me as the beginning of a new way of looking at everything in the human and the natural world.
Behind me, Theodore was recovering from the wheezing attack that running up six flights of stairs with me had brought on. I heard him shift weakly on the chair I’d given him. Was he about to start coughing again? It was a bad sign when he coughed. I felt another stab of guilt. But he didn’t cough.
I straightened up and continued looking at the solid edging about all the provinces so far lost to the Persians. ‘Go down to the garden and join the others,’ I said to the clerks. I moved backwards to look at the long purple streak surrounded by uncoloured linen that was Egypt. ‘Tell everyone to start the half-hour break again,’ I added. I suppressed a yawn and glanced at a covered jug of wine. No breakfast, Glaucus had said. That also meant no drinking. I turned my attention to a lead box of stimulants I’d left on my desk. I walked over and opened it. I pulled a face at the acrid taste of the pills. There was a jug of water beside the wine. I’d have to make do with that.
‘You are looking well, My Lord — I mean, father,’ Theodore opened nervously. ‘I expected you would want to rest after the terrible events of yesterday.’ I smiled, and waited for the slight agitation caused by the pills to blot out the hunger pangs. The formalities over, Theodore stood before me and opened and shut his mouth a few times. I could see his nerve had failed him again. Much longer and we’d run out of time. But I kept up the smile till my face began to ache. He looked for a while at the one main document on my desk. This was a folded sheet of papyrus covered in map coordinates. It must have meant as much to him as the characters on my silver cup had to me.