I clenched my fists. ‘You have walked two miles through Constantinople, and dressed like something out of Menander, to tell me this?’ I asked, trying not to shout. ‘Fuck off home, Priscus. You’ve taken enough risk with all our lives.’ I wouldn’t even ask how and what he’d heard about my visit to the astrologers. That could wait.
Priscus took a deep breath and blew his veil outwards. ‘Of course, I do have more to say, my dear — really important stuff that will put you in a much better mood with me. Have you ever wondered. .?’
With a loud click, the window opened behind me. I stepped sideways to avoid being brained by it. Inside the room, Nicetas had been pulled back to his feet. Leaning unsteadily on the back of his broken chair, he was surrounded by his more determined hangers-on. ‘I will give you Leander’s Lyric Hymn to the Virgin,’ he cried. ‘Hear what beauties a true poet can achieve.’ Eunapius threw himself to his knees and lifted his arms in a show of exaltation. Paying no attention, Nicetas wobbled forward on his stick to where Leander had given his performance. After a long, ragged breath, he recited:
Who aloft in the heavens rose
on fluttering waxy wings
and dared the cloudless realm
of Phoebus Apollo breach
sure for presumption
earned his mother’s stony embrace.
Thee almighty protectress wise
by Heaven’s decree to blaze
with sempiternal flame
so ending our darkness sent
equal the danger
so it seems of seeking to see.
O victorious all against
in battles unequalled those
by darkness granted sway
O Lady of might serene
Mother of Jesus
ever splendid Vision of Light!
Nicetas greeted the rapturous applause with a loud tapping of his stick. Everyone who hadn’t already scarpered hurried over to join in the shouted acclamations. He collapsed into a new chair someone had brought forward. His monk would soon be at work again. I turned and looked into the darkness. Priscus was gone. In his place, Leander was fiddling with a lock of his greasy hair. ‘It was an historic mark of My Lord’s favour,’ he slimed at me, no longer hiding his Egyptian accent, ‘that these humble verses were taught to every staff officer to sing to the men before the Battle of Antioch.’
‘Did they finish the song during or after the retreat?’ I sneered. ‘Oh, and didn’t Icarus fall into the sea?’
Hands folded across his chest, Leander bowed silently. ‘I have been sent, My Lord Alaric, to thank you for the return of something most valuable to the Lord Nicetas.’
I stopped looking about for Priscus. After waiting all evening for an approach of this sort, I’d been ready to dump all suspicion that he so much as knew about the cup. If Eunapius was up to something — that much was clear as day — I’d seen it confirmed that Nicetas couldn’t conspire his way out of a chamber pot. Here now was Leander, bearing a request that no longer made sense, but that would need somehow to be fitted into a revived hypothesis.
Someone inside was starting up on a flute. Someone else joined in with a drum. At once, a regular padding of bare feet on marble indicated the black girls hadn’t just been brought out for ornament. It was a bastard evening. I’d endured the whole recitation at a distance that almost exposed me to Leander’s garlicky breath. I was now stuck with him again to miss the one compensating entertainment. The modern Callimachus waited for a break in the squealed, swaying rhythm that streamed from the open window. He leaned forward. ‘Since I have often had the honour to be welcomed into My Lord’s private quarters, I am able to confirm that she is a most headstrong girl. If she has caused you any trouble, I am authorised to apologise with the utmost sincerity.’
I had my back to the window. That meant I had a better view of Leander than he had of me. When I still said nothing, he smiled nervously. ‘After she rejected the wholesome discipline of her father’s household, she was sent to be instructed in the ways of humility by the nuns of Saint Tomalina in Trebizond. Even so, she escaped and returned to the scene of her old debaucheries in Constantinople. She was apprehended and brought home. Before she could be returned to the holy sisters, there to await an introduction to her future husband, she escaped again. That was the night before last. It was feared that she might be preparing a complete change of identity. My Lord wishes me to assure you that, now you have returned her, she will be more closely watched until she can be locked into the female quarters of some other house.’
A dozen yards to my right, I heard Theodore carried out. The change of air must have revived him. Still speaking Syriac, he called loudly on God to blind him, so he could look no more on the perfect beauty of Antony. He was cut off in mid-flow by a slap to his face. Samo grated at him in Latin to shut up if he didn’t want a stick taken to his bare arse. The boy gave way to moaning sobs of ‘Antony, Antony — how I love you, and how I sin!’ Luckily, that too was in Syriac.
I nodded at Leander. There was an intellectual neatness in what he’d said. I no longer needed to revive an exploded hypothesis. And Theodore had given me time to ignore the chill spreading out from my chest. ‘I am always the most devoted friend and servant of the Lord Nicetas,’ I managed to say in a voice that didn’t waver. ‘I am also much in your debt for the goodness you have shown in bringing me news that the girl is now reunited with her loving father.’
Leander bowed again and smirked. Inside, there was a burst of applause, and the musicians turned to one of the slow dance tunes popular back then in the brothels of Syria. ‘Does he ever go to bed?’ I asked, allowing myself one flash of temper. Played out to its last variation, the dance tune could last all night.
Leander shook his head. ‘The Lord Nicetas has been assured that, if he lies down to sleep, he will stop breathing,’ he explained. ‘It is his custom, therefore, to sit upright in chair through the night, sleeping and waking as the holy fathers who surround him direct.’
I controlled a sudden urge to burst out laughing. I bowed to Leander. As a poet of sorts, he was partly outside the usual hierarchies. ‘Your conversation is always a delight,’ I said, ‘However, I feel obliged to take my leave of His Magnificence the Commander of the East.’
I stepped back from kissing Nicetas on the lips. ‘You really are my dearest friend,’ he replied without moving his lips. ‘But, if it can’t be the rectorship, Leander must have a job that will give him official status and a salary. You know that only you can seal that manner of appointment.’
I bowed low before the man who, in his cousin’s absence, was supposed to be Regent. ‘There was a time when the Treasury had a department of correspondence,’ I said quietly. ‘That was when Latin was still the official language and the clerks needed to be trained in the appropriate phraseologies. I could revive the post of director for Leander. The salary isn’t much, but would give him the right to present birthday wishes to the Emperor. We could interpret that as the right to present birthday odes.’
Looking relieved, Nicetas signalled to his eunuchs. They got him from each side and pulled him to his feet. ‘Let it be known,’ he cried weakly, ‘that our most beloved friend Alaric has opened poetic hostilities this night with Leander. At our next recital, Leander will make his reply.’ He leaned on me in what might pass for an embrace. I smiled at Timothy and pretended not to notice the scared, apprehensive faces of those who hadn’t already gone home. Nicetas sat heavily back in his chair and nodded at Leander, who went into a long and reverential bow in my direction. That got me more nervous looks. There were even angry murmurs when Nicetas stayed on his feet while I backed out of the room. One of the black girls who’d been playing with each other in the recital space broke into an exaggerated orgasm. I don’t think anyone paid attention.