Spring on the ground and are gone. See, following after,
Barely giving contest, how his opponents falter,
All their long strides failing, as, claw-like, agony catches
Hold of their chests. See him alone in the heat of the morning
Make for the finish. Lord Nicetas — Swift as Achilles. .
So he carried on through another hundred lines or so to the end, before lapsing into a simper for the burst of applause that Nicetas led.
‘Blessings on Leander,’ a fat eunuch shrilled, ‘wondrous servant of the Muses.’
‘And blessings on Nicetas,’ came the chanted response from the rest of us, ‘great and victorious hero — the New Belisarius!’ The great and victorious hero raised his walking stick for another round of applause. This given, there was a determined rush for the wine tables, and I found myself alone with Nicetas and his poet.
‘Don’t you think Leander is magnificent?’ Nicetas grated. It was hard to know if this was a question or an accusation. Coming from Nicetas, it was probably both.
‘I’ve never heard the rhythm of hexameters made so obvious,’ I answered cautiously.
‘Exactly!’ he cried with an emphatic snort that ended in a cry of pain as he moved and one of his legs dropped off its stool. ‘If you ask me,’ he went on in an ill-natured mutter, ‘I’m sick to death of those rules about long and short syllables. I can’t hear them in Latin or in Greek, though I was flogged every day for years. You’ll agree that Leander has much improved on the ancients. I’ve always wondered how they could sit through the poetry of their own age. I certainly can’t abide it.’ He raised his voice again. ‘What this Empire needs is a renewal of the arts. How can I inspire men to win battles when they have no poetry ringing in their ears?’
‘Absolutely! Well said!’ Someone behind me cried through a full mouth. There was another cry of agreement on my left. I nodded politely. The true answer, of course, was that our armies were more likely to win if he wasn’t leading them. But he’d put on an almost convincing show of concern when I was made to explain the previous day’s murder attempt on me. Who was I to cast the first hard look of the evening?
‘My Lord’s patronage of the arts is an example to us all,’ I said. Nicetas glowered at me, before prodding Leander with his walking stick. This got a quiet repeat of the running track passage. In a break for Leander to sip delicately at his wine cup, I clapped very softly, and smiled and nodded. ‘Would My Lord excuse me a moment?’ I asked. ‘I must see how my son and his friend are getting on.’
Theodore was enjoying himself. I’d heard that much from a dozen yards away and in spite of the mass of sweaty bodies that separated us. ‘You see, it’s absolutely necessary,’ I heard him call at the top of a still-unbroken voice, ‘to regard Our Lord Jesus Christ as both Man and God and joined together in a Perfect Union. To see it otherwise is not merely heresy but also an inability to recognise the promptings of reason.’ I embraced Paul, first deputy of the City Prefect, and, avoiding being dragged into conversation with his increasingly doddery father, came upon Theodore beside one of the wine tables. He’d got Antonia wedged against a column. He also had her by one of her sleeves. His tendency to spray saliva when excited was on full display.
‘I trust you’re enjoying the recital,’ I said. Theodore nodded eagerly without taking the cup from his lips. The front of his robe was already stained and sopping wet. He looked into his cup. Before he could open his mouth to speak, a serving slave had noticed and was giving him yet another refill. ‘Should you not be mixing that with three parts water?’ I asked with vague concern. The wine I’d seen poured was a very dark red. Even I didn’t knock it back like this — not in public, anyway.
‘But it has the most refreshing taste,’ came the silly answer. ‘The Lord Eunapius assures me the taste is ruined by water,’ he added in a voice that ended in a slur. He let go of Antonia and moved to take a step forward but clutched at the table for support. Time, I decided, to take him by the arm and get him out of the room. I’d left our chair in the main courtyard. I could sit him in it and rely on the carrying slaves to keep him there till he passed out. But I was looking at Antonia. Her own cup in hand, she seemed to be glowing from within. I tried to think of a careless remark and found that my chest was beginning its funny trick with light. Taking both arms from the table, Theodore tottered closer to me. ‘Antony says the poetry was the finest thing he’d ever heard,’ he said thickly. He burped, opening a pathway between my nose and the contents of his stomach.
I heard a sneering laugh behind me. ‘Then I will say that your son’s friend has taste as well as elegance of form.’ I turned and made myself smile at Eunapius of Pylae. He licked his lips just as more white lead slid off his cheeks. He washed it down with another mouthful of wine and continued staring at Antonia. ‘Did I hear right that young Antony is from Trebizond?’ he asked with an upward motion of his eyebrows. ‘You will surely be aware that I have estates close by there. How could I possibly not have come across so fine a young man as Antony?’ The faint and satirical emphasis he put on man set me thinking. Either he’d seen straight through her disguise or he knew something.
Eunapius grinned and shuffled closer to Antonia. Looking surly, Theodore managed to get himself between them at the last moment.
‘My dearest friend, Eunapius,’ I said, leading him as if without thought into the crowd of braying Senators, ‘I’ve been thinking hard, ever since our last meeting, about your suggestion of mixing copper into the new silver coins. Do you really think a mixture of two-fifths would not be noticed by the people?’ He looked suspiciously back at me. I was saved from listening to more of the stupid idea he’d been putting to Nicetas by the arrival of a spotty boy, who pushed a message into his hands. We were in a place of comparative darkness and Eunapius had to move the thin sheet of wood close to his face to read what it said. I played with a fold of my toga that had come loose and pretended not to watch a face that had gone suddenly tense.
He scratched the fingernails of his right hand across the waxed surface of the message. ‘I’ll answer this in person,’ he said to the boy. He looked at me and put a crooked smile on his face. ‘My Lord will forgive me,’ he said, ‘if business calls me temporarily from the finest conversation I have yet heard in this most glittering event.’ He twisted round to see where Antonia had gone. Listening to more of his slurred chatter about the Council of Chalcedon, she was quietly steering Theodore away from the wine table.
I watched Eunapius pick his way through the room. It was a long exit. He left no one important unapproached. In every ear he whispered something of about the same length. Nobody, however, seemed to be that friendly in return. He smiled and fawned and ran his fingers over woollen senatorial sleeves. The best he got in return was the distant politeness you show to someone you might know, but whose face you can’t quite recall. At last he was between the two black eunuchs who guarded the door and the room seemed to brighten by his leaving it.
No chance yet of my own exit. I had my sleeve grabbed by someone who rambled on about a set of trusts into which he’d conveyed his property — something to do with stopping his son from giving it away to the Church. Because of that, he’d taken a bad hit from the land law and been compelled to give two-thirds away, rather than the half normally required. I listened with a pretence of sympathy. If I’d been able to understand his account of the trusts involved, I might even have suggested an approach to the Treasury for an ex gratia compensation payment.
‘Don’t talk to me about the Gracchus brothers!’ someone snarled softly behind me. ‘They were men from our own order. They never tried to strip us naked. If you must talk about the olden days, this young fucker’s another Spartacus. It’s now or never — now or never, I tell you.’ He gave a yelp as if he’d been punched in the stomach. The conversation behind me fell silent, before taking up again as a bored discussion of the improved strain of silkworm some missionaries had carried back from the East.