It was too late. The boy was smitten. From the look on his face, he loved Antony with total boyish devotion. If I told him anything without careful preparation, he might never get over the shock. I walked past Antonia for a towel and tied it about my waist.
‘I came down,’ Theodore said in a voice that seemed on the edge of trailing off, ‘to ask if Antony would like the green silk you gave me for my birthday. Siegmund is sure it will fit him.’
I nodded. ‘I’ll call the tailors in tomorrow,’ I said. ‘For tonight, though, I agree the green silk will go nicely with his eyes.’ I looked into Theodore’s closed and faintly suspicious face. I’d barely started my interrogation of Antonia but Theodore wasn’t moving. I got up. ‘I have important business,’ I said with an involuntary glance at the mirror I was still holding. ‘If anyone needs me, I shall be in my office.’
I paused for the clerk to soak more ink into his pen. It gave me time to complete the passage I’d been forming in my head. It was a nuisance that his weak chest had kept Sergius in his Nicaea residence far beyond the passing of winter. Until he returned, the usual understandings we could reach together without too many words had to give way to a careful balance in writing between clarity and circumlocution. I took a deep breath and looked for inspiration at an ivory of Cupid making love to Psyche.
‘As for the insistence of the Lord Bishop Longinus on a duality of will in Jesus Christ,’ I dictated, ‘this may not as yet be unorthodox, and the chapter in the decrees in the Council of Chalcedon to which he continually refers may not contradict him in their plain sense. Nevertheless, he has been made unofficially aware of the preliminary questions agreed at the closed Council of Athens. Even if he has not spoken out in public against a single will, I find his general attitude unhelpful. We are at one in asserting that such preferments between sees are a matter for the Lord Patriarch, and not for the Emperor or his ministers, to decide. It is, however, my personal opinion that the excellent missionary work overseen by Longinus among the Slavs should not be interrupted by his translation to a bishopric deep within the Home Provinces.’
I paused again and leaned back in my chair. ‘Put that between the eleventh and twelfth paragraphs of my letter to the Patriarch,’ I said. The clerk bowed and brought his waxed board over for reading. I scratched one word out and put in another. It made no change to the overall sense but avoided a distasteful clash of consonants. I looked over the whole addition and smiled. If he thought he could poke his nose into matters of church doctrine best left with me, His Grace Longinus could go jump a foot in the air. I’d not have him yapping at me from a place as central or as cushy as Stauropolis. He could stay put in Larissa. Given luck, one of the barbarians he was trying to convert would knock him on the head. Unless he’s made his position clear in writing, a dead martyr is always better than a live troublemaker.
I got up from my desk and carried a letter over to the window. The daylight was going, and someone in the Food Control Office had been showing off how many words he could cram on to a half sheet of papyrus. I looked at it and sniffed. I went with it to the clerk’s writing table. I dropped it in front of him. ‘Proposal rejected,’ I said. ‘I wrote a memorandum last August on the futility of price controls. Find it and adapt the relevant passages into a reply. Also, I want the man’s head of department in this office on the third hour of light on Friday. Tell him to bring a complete listing of his clerks and their functions.’
I was pulling a face over some spelling mistakes in another document when the door opened and Theodore and Antonia crept in. I blinked and looked at Theodore in the fading light. Though I’d set half a dozen slaves on forcing him through the faster actions of the bathhouse and on getting him dressed, he still managed to look dirty. Antonia had been unjust about Samo’s abilities. She’d been got up as the most astonishingly lovely young man. I looked at her and my heart beat faster. I looked at Theodore and realised again that he was totally and irreparably lost. I could have fancied Antonia in either sex. This silly boy would never have looked at Antonia. How long before he started feeling guilty about his passion for Antony? I felt a stab of pity, then of guilt. If I explained the whole plot to him when it was over, I might bring him to a reasonable view of things. I knew I wouldn’t. How long before Martin was back? He’d have sorted this in no time.
‘You look very fine, father,’ Theodore said stiffly. I glanced down at my senatorial toga. After six hundred years of changes in manners and faith and language, you might call it an affectation still to be dressing up like Cicero. But I was undeniably a noble sight. The purple stripe suited me no end. I felt almost happy to look at it. I was too young for the Senate, and I might be expected to cheer and clap tonight at an epigram on the fact by that worthless arse-licker Leander. I’d bear up in the knowledge that I looked absolutely lush.
‘The chair is waiting downstairs in the hall,’ Theodore added. ‘Do you think it would be an easier balance for the carrying slaves if Antony and I sat together opposite you?’
I nodded gravely. I hadn’t expected him to notice how heavily armed the slaves were. In his present state, he might not have noticed an earthquake. It had its uses. One of his many points of resemblance to Martin was a dislike of violence. ‘Your consideration for others does you credit in this life,’ I answered, ‘and will surely be rewarded in the next.’ I glanced at Antonia. She was looking troubled. Well she might. But for her, Theodore would be settling down for his evening prayers.
Chapter 32
After a supper that might have been put together from the leftovers of his feast for the rabble, I was stuck in the place of honour beside Nicetas. His legs, swaddled in more bandages than I’d seen on Egyptian mummies, were propped on two ebony footstools, and I had the best smell in the room of flesh that any competent doctor would have uncovered in half a wink and left to dry out. Though it had been dark for hours, the night was sweltering. No hint of a breeze came through the open windows and the forest of candles that burned overhead completed the resemblance to a steam room. It could have been worse, I’d thought, as a semi-nude black girl came over to stand beside us with a fan. She was a better sight than the hard, scowling faces the rest of the audience had turned in my direction. It then did get worse. One politely lecherous look from me and she’d shuffled behind Nicetas. I was left with nothing else to do but try for a look of awed enthusiasm and pay attention to the latest masterpiece by Leander Memphites. Oh, for another quarter pill of opium to replace the one that had so completely, and so long ago, worn off.
It still could have been worse, I kept assuring myself. Leander might have composed five books in praise of Nicetas rather than just four. And we were approaching the climax of Book Four — that is, I hoped we were. Leander had dropped his usual simper and was steadily raising his voice till his Egyptian accent showed through like the sweat on the underarms of his tunic. Yes, we were getting there. After a worrying descent of his voice to describe and praise the main churches in Carthage, he ripped his tunic open from the neck downward to show an unshaven and distastefully flabby chest and, his face taking on the look of a man who’s trying to defecate and knows that he won’t, moved into an exultant squawk:
As in some stadium ancient, behold a beautiful athlete.
See the Lord Nicetas! Splendidly onward he rushes,
Kicking the dust to clouds, as his feet, so fleetingly sighted,