I didn’t. But I was interested to hear more about her father’s confession of treason. I said nothing. ‘After the audience,’ she took up again, ‘I was getting ready to go away when I heard those men from Pontus complaining about Eunapius. They must have been twenty feet away in a dispersing crowd. But I heard them as clearly as you can hear me. Before I could realise what I was doing, I’d pushed my way through to them and taken their case. I didn’t know what to do next. It was Simon who came up behind me and said which way you’d be going. I was sure he didn’t recognise me. Everything after that you know. It was fate that brought us together. No one can ever tell me otherwise.’
I sat awhile in silence. I thought hard. ‘Did your father really say he’d be Emperor?’ I asked. I was probably clutching at air. But, if I could never marry an Emperor’s niece, I might be able to beg for the daughter of a fallen traitor. In part, this would depend on whether her loathing of Nicetas was a settled or a brief embitterment.
‘I told you he’s a traitor,’ she said. ‘And I know exactly what I’m saying. I stood outside a door left ajar and heard Eunapius assure him it was all in the bag and he didn’t need to lift a finger. That was the same Eunapius I met tonight.’ I leaned forward into the moonlight. She caught the look on my face. ‘The reason I told you yesterday I’d go with you to see Heraclius was so I could tell him the truth about Daddy. You don’t know what he did to Mummy,’ she ended.
I thought again. With anyone else but Nicetas, the facts she claimed would have jarred so much with what I’d seen for myself that I’d have to reject her claim. But it was easy to believe that Nicetas was half inclined to go along with a plot someone had brought him, and also willing to fit himself round the established order. One moment he’d be fantasising about tying me to the rack, another begging favours off me for his poet.
‘Didn’t you notice that Theodore is sweet on you?’ I asked, changing the subject. I’d have to think this through. Nicetas wouldn’t think to come knocking on my door for ages, if at all. In the meantime, Samo could outdo himself with keeping Antony as my guest.
She ignored the question. ‘That wasn’t a woman who interrupted things, was it?’ she asked.
I stared ahead at the moonlit view I had of lower Constantinople. ‘Does cross-dressing offend you?’ I asked with a smile.
Antonia fell silent. ‘Will you stop being angry with me if I tell you that I saw Simon again this evening?’ she asked. ‘I can prove everything I’ve told you.’
I took my arm away and looked at her. ‘If you’ve wasted any more time than it’s taken to tell me this,’ I said sharply, ‘I shall be very angry indeed. Will you share the details with me?’
She did share them and did it rather better than she had the previous day. Once into the courtyard of her father’s palace, she’d heard men talking and taken shelter behind some roses. She’d heard Eunapius let out a cry of alarm and had looked out to see him with Simon. She’d been too wrapped up in keeping her scared breathing under control to overhear all that was said. But she had heard Simon announce a meeting for the eighth hour of this night.
I stared up at the moon. It was about an hour after midnight. Assuming Antonia had heard right about the eighth hour we had another hour to go — bearing in mind we were now a month beyond the spring equinox, it wouldn’t be a very long hour.
‘Any chance they discussed where this meeting was to be?’ I asked.
She smiled uncertainly. ‘They might have,’ she said.
‘Either they did or they didn’t,’ I said evenly. ‘If not, we might as well go home and wait on events.’
She reached out and took my hand. ‘If I tell you where the meeting will be,’ she asked, ‘will you promise to take me there?’
I got up and stepped down to the street. ‘No,’ I said with a firmness I should have used earlier in the day. This was why she’d waited so long before ‘catching up’ with me. I was in the shadow of the Milestone, so put the scowl into my voice. ‘You will tell me what you know. I will then take you home before coming out again with Samo. You should know that this matter isn’t a game. I suggest you should stop treating it as one.’
‘If I tell you, you’ll have to take me with you,’ she said defiantly.
‘I’ll take you home!’ I said. I had an hour at most to get wherever the meeting was to be. She knew Constantinople. Had she already made it impossible to get her to safety and get to the meeting? ‘Look, Antonia, it’s dangerous,’ I said, now trying for a reasonable tone. ‘If you insist on coming with me, you’ll put me in danger as well as yourself. If there’s fighting to be done, or running away, I need to move quickly. Did you learn nothing yesterday?’
She said nothing. Her face was in shadow. I could almost hear the time gurgling away through one of my expensive water clocks. I sighed. Boys want money, or freedom. Quite often, if you have looks or charm, girls want nothing at all. Women always make you choose. The choice Antonia was putting to me was outrageous. For all I knew, Eunapius and Simon would soon be making everything as plain as day and within a few hundred paces of where I now stood. All else aside, she might be throwing away her only chance of never setting foot again in that Trebizond nunnery.
I reached out with my right hand. ‘We’ll go home,’ I said calmly. ‘My Jews will be with me late tomorrow morning. They will tell me all I need to know.’
She took my hand and jumped down. She put her arms about me and kissed my cheek. I put my own arms about her and felt suddenly clumsy. ‘Alaric,’ she whispered, ‘Simon said the meeting would be in one of the lecture halls in the Baths of Anthemius. I know a secret way in that the poor use now you’ve put all the prices up.’
Chapter 36
Built in more prosperous and leisured days, the Baths of Anthemius still counted as a world in itself. Except I’d recently ordered it to be closed between sunset and dawn, you could spend your whole time in that vast complex and never see need to go outside. It had shops, restaurants, and a church, and a library and brothels. Once you’d paid your entrance money, there were free lectures on mathematics and history, and poetry recitals and performances of comic plays, and readings of such news as the government thought fit for public consumption. There was also the biggest heated pool in the known world and a gymnasium that, fitted out with the best nude statues taken from Olympia before the earthquake, doubled as an art gallery. Just providing marble for the vast central hall had left every former temple in Ephesus a shell of exposed and crumbling brick.
Now I’d taken the Empire’s finances properly in hand though, the Baths were locked up and in darkness. Before noon the next day, the disused drainage tunnel Antonia had shown me would be bricked off and rendered at both ends. If they wanted a bath, the poor could stick to the cold pool outside. No wonder raising the entry charges hadn’t so far reduced the number of times we had to change the hot water.
As we stepped into the central hall, I put a hand over Antonia’s mouth. ‘If you must speak, do it softly and into your clothing.’ I said, covering my own mouth to avoid an echo. The tunnel had been completely dark and I’d had to trust her assurances that it was safe to pass along. Here, the windows in the dome far above let in enough light from the moon and stars to give bearings. There were four arched doorways, three of them leading to different areas of the sprawling complex. I looked hard at the bronze group of Hercules and Antaeus. If she’d heard right, the exit we needed was the one to which Antaeus was pointing with his right leg. ‘Either lift your feet properly, or take your shoes off,’ I breathed. I took Antonia by the hand and led her away from the worn limestone paths along which visitors were made to keep by day. Within our dark outer clothes, we’d show in this light as black on black against the porphyry cladding of the lower walls. We made our way towards the memorial Heraclius had set up to the unfortunate Emperor Maurice and his five murdered sons.