Chapter 35
The wind had made another of its endless shifts of direction. Inside, with all the candles burning away like houses in a city taken by storm, it had continued sweltering till the end. Out here, in the quiet and increasingly unlit streets, I was glad of the cloak I’d put on over my toga. I was tired. Two days running, I’d been scared half out of my wits. I’d uncovered a web of treason the nature and extent of which remained unclear. Where was bloody Priscus? Why come out in that absurd disguise, only to vanish like a ghost?
Except I was tired, none of this mattered. Even before getting my people to check her story, I’d known Antonia was lying. I’d asked, only that afternoon, who her father was. Did it matter if her father turned out to be Nicetas? It did, of course. Anyone else I could have called straight into my office to present with a bill for unpaid taxes. Everyone owed something. No one was ever expected to pay unless he upset someone like me. I could have bought Antonia fair and square. Not so Nicetas. Save by the Emperor himself, he was untouchable. Whenever he wanted, he could have his daughter tied hand and foot and stuffed into a wagon rumbling east. I couldn’t denounce him for treason. Beyond a hint from some scabby old fool who might already have been put out of the way by Simon, I had bugger all evidence of his complicity in anything. Heraclius wasn’t Chosroes: especially against his own blood, he’d expect some grounds of probability. I could go after his creature Eunapius, but the Lord Commander of the East would only throw his hands in the air and plead ignorance. He’d be believed, because no one could doubt someone as thick as Nicetas was telling the truth.
But I could drop the whole line of thought. Heraclius was away. In his place, Nicetas was the supreme power. Antonia would be back scrubbing floors in Trebizond before that changed. And what of that? We’d met. We’d fucked. We’d argued. Theodore might be getting ready to offer up his soul in exchange for what he thought she was. I was His Magnificence Alaric — now of age. The girl dripped trouble from every pore. It was pure accident she’d kept me out of Simon’s hands. Everything else about her was a complication. She’d now overreached herself — no doubt thinking her own father wouldn’t recognise her got up as a man. Who was I to hurry to the rescue? If I tried, I was sure, I could put her and everything concerning her out of mind. Let silly Theodore sob his heart out when Antony didn’t show for breakfast the next morning. If I never saw Antonia again, I was the Magnificent Alaric. I’d know how to keep a stiff upper lip.
There was a faint noise behind me. Priscus? No, not Priscus. However faint, he’d never have made a noise. ‘Might our young lord be lost?’ someone grated in a voice straight out of one of the lower poor districts. ‘Aren’t we a bit tipsy, to be out on our own so late and all?’ Someone else added.
I turned and looked at the half dozen footpads. The closest of them had his cudgel already raised. Doubtless, there were a few knives tucked out of sight. I’d been passing the Central Milestone on my slow walk from Nicetas to the Triumphal Way. Slowly, I turned and went over to sit on the lowest step. ‘Do you know who I am?’ I asked.
‘We might soon find out,’ the man with the club said with a laugh. As I’d expected, sitting down had unnerved them. They stopped edging forward.
For once, I had no money with me. No chance of my usual dealings with the city trash. I flicked my cloak aside to show that I was armed. ‘If you don’t fuck off out of my sight,’ I said mildly, ‘I’ll carve you up so fast, you won’t have time to shit yourselves.’ I’d left my favourite sword with Shahin. This one, though, had served me well that afternoon. When being got ready to leave Nicetas, I’d taken it from the doorman and held it up, so the lamplight could glitter on the many-folded steel of its blade. Bearing in mind the clothes I had on, I hoped I’d not have to use it tonight. One good look at me and the night vermin were slinking off in search of easier pickings.
I waited for the last footsteps to go out of range. I got up and arranged my clothes again. I turned and looked at the Milestone. It gave the name of and distance to every provincial capital in the Empire that the Great Constantine had ruled. London was near the top. So was York. One of the more recent Emperors had fixed a pompous inscription on its base that combined a Greek translation of Vergil with a quote from Revelation. It was a poor moon but looking at the inscription drew me to a graffito someone had chalked on another side of the monument. I thought at first it was about me. I didn’t know whether to feel pleased or disappointed that it wasn’t.
I heard another noise — this time a soft padding of feet coming towards the far side of the monument. I jumped noiselessly up the steps to the base of the inscribed column. Eight feet above ground, and sheltered between statues of Romulus and Augustus, I unsheathed my sword.
The padding of feet stopped. ‘Where have you gone, Alaric?’ Antonia quavered. ‘I did see you, didn’t I?’ She hadn’t lowered her voice. A few yards away, a scared night creature shuffled deeper into one of the flowerbeds.
I jumped down beside her. ‘Run away from home again?’ I jeered in Latin. ‘If I didn’t know him well enough already, I’d have to think ill of your father’s control over his women.’
‘Oh, Daddy’s easy to avoid,’ she laughed, going herself into perfectly fluent Latin. ‘He said he’d beat me half to death, once he was done with Akimba. Silly idea! We used to be lovers, and she kept Daddy busy till I’d crept out of the room.’
Looking at her girly face under a hat that, in itself, might have screamed ‘Rape me!’ I wanted to hit her. Instead, I stamped my foot and put a scowl into my voice. ‘You’re mad if you think these streets are safe,’ I said. What point, though, in nagging? From what Leander had told me, she must have known these streets by night as well as I did. The flash of anger gave way to tiredness. ‘Where do you suppose you’re going?’ I asked.
‘Home with you — where else?’ she said.
I climbed the base of the Milestone again and sat on the uppermost step. I waited for her to join me. ‘Listen, Antonia,’ I said, ‘you’re a renegade nun and you may be the daughter of a traitor. There are limits to the sanctuary my house can give you. Other than that, you’re a niece of the reigning Emperor. You may have noticed that, for all my fancy titles, I’m a barbarian immigrant. How long do you think it would take your uncle to remind us both of that?’
‘But I love you, Alaric,’ she said simply. ‘I will never be parted from you.’ She waited a moment. ‘It’s your turn now,’ she prompted.
I sighed and looked at the moon. ‘I knew it when I found you in the poor district,’ I said, trying to keep my voice steady. ‘I knew it, but didn’t notice the fact for a while. It came on slowly and imperceptibly, like the passing of spring into summer. I was fully aware of it before we had sex. I wanted to tell you afterwards but didn’t know how.’ Since I’d already made a total fool of myself, I could see no benefit in holding back. But there was nothing left to hold back. I’d said it all, and with fewer words than I might scribble in the margin of a report. If I added that I loved her more than life itself, I’d only be inviting her to a suicide pact. I put my arm about her. It was a nice feeling.
‘Alaric,’ she said, now urgent, ‘I said I came to see you yesterday on a whim. That’s true but it was also because, after I’d untied myself the night before, I overheard Daddy saying what he planned to do to you when he became Emperor. I thought if he hated you so much, you must be worth seeing. So I cut my hair off when I was with someone who gave me shelter and got ready to bluff my way past your eunuchs. That was the whim.’ She pressed herself close against me. ‘Alaric, do you believe in fate?’