The seizure over, the ecstatic look fading from his face, Priscus leaned forward with renewed concentration. ‘I do think, my sweetest boy,’ he said, ‘you were one of the last people to see Justinus alive.’
My eyes suddenly gave up on their tendency to see Priscus as two people. I looked hard at his now unified face.
‘You will appreciate, My Lord Priscus,’ I said, choosing my words carefully, ‘that I had other things on my mind while we travelled to the Ministry. In any event, I suspect he was dead on arrival.’
‘You suspect wrongly,’ said Priscus with a smile. ‘But I was unable to question him as I wanted.’
‘But you have his letter,’ I said, cold sweat running down my back – ‘his sealed letter that you took up?’
‘I have it still,’ he said. ‘Unfortunately, it seems to be nothing more than a statement of account from a bank in Syracuse. That is no more than I’d expect of a shipowner handling trade with the West.’
‘With all respect to My Lord Caesar,’ a voice trilled behind me, ‘your presence is urgently desired by the Great Augustus.’
I looked round. It was another of the eunuch clerks I’d seen around Theophanes. He stood overshadowed by two armed guards.
‘The clerk Alaric is to be escorted back to his bed,’ he added.
Priscus scowled. I was sufficiently alert myself to glower at being called a mere clerk.
‘I suppose I’m expected to report on how many bricks I’ve made without straw,’ Priscus said, speaking loud. ‘Still’ – he dropped his voice – ‘you can give my best wishes to His Excellency the Permanent Legate. Do tell him how greatly I miss his company.’
He smiled. ‘But please, don’t say I miss him that greatly.
‘Now, you run along home like the good little boy you surely are. I’ll get your nice Uncle Theophanes to come and tuck you in.’
36
Once more in the Legation, I managed to light the portable stove in my room. It wasn’t yet cold enough to justify firing up the main heating. I dragged it to stand between my bed and the unshuttered window.
Now somewhat muted, the sounds of merriment still floated through the window. I dropped my clothes on to the floor and climbed back into bed. With an effort of will, I drifted into a gentle doze. I should have gone looking for the opium pills, I thought, but finally decided it was too much trouble.
Despite the chilly air that drifted over from the window, I felt too hot in bed so I threw back the covers. I tossed from side to side, rolling the undercovers into a ball. I was glad of the draught from the open window. Closed in with that stove, I’d have felt stifled.
I finally found some comfort lying naked on the cool, polished boards of the floor beside my bed. There was no moon visible. Instead, there was a dim light from the sea of glittering stars that shone through the window from a clear autumnal sky. Another month, and the sky would be overcast by the smoke of a hundred thousand charcoal burners. For the moment, the stars glittered beyond the window like diamonds on black silk.
Looking deep into the square of starry blackness, I thought of those beautiful lines written so long ago by Sappho, the only woman poet of any genius:
The moon has set. The many stars
Have passed beyond the midnight hour.
And, here in bed, I lie alone.
It must have been twelve hundred years since those words were first uttered. Since then, nearly fifty generations had come and gone. Empires had risen, had blazed at their zenith as bright and apparently permanent as the stars in that sky, but had eventually fallen into decline.
The Old Faith that had so comforted Sappho had also grown decadent and passed away. The New Faith of the Jewish carpenter had taken its place. It was impossible to know how these words had sounded amid the fountains and perfect buildings of ancient Mytilene when they were first written. But they could still be appreciated by those prepared to make the effort.
And beyond the words, the stars on which she had looked remained. They were the same stars on which the first rational being of all had looked in some remote past. They were the stars on which the last rational being would, in some perhaps still more remote future, choke out his final breath.
They had shone for Sappho. They shone for me.
I thought of Gretel in far-off Rome. I suddenly missed the living warmth of her body and I wondered about the progress of my unborn child. It, too, would see those stars. It, too, would come to know the words of Sappho.
Sleep came at last. But it still wasn’t the sleep of rest. Still, it was a night for dreaming.
I dreamed that my Gretel was standing over me. She reached out to me with arms white as if bathed in moonshine. Her white-blonde hair gleamed in the bun she had taken to wearing in imitation of the better classes when it became clear that she was about to join them.
I tried calling to her, but my voice had no sound. She smiled and looked away. Our hands touched for a moment and I fell back weak with delight and a feeling of exaltation I can’t describe.
Gretel pointed her arm one last time at the open window. Her lips moved noiselessly. I thought she was trying to say the word ‘Beware!’ Then she left the room through a door that had appeared where none was before. She didn’t look back.
As if a lamp were turned down, the room dissolved into blackness and I drifted deeper into sleep. Every so often, as I came towards waking, I noted how the sweat on my body had dried. But I was still sufficiently comfortable on the floor not to bother with movement.
I thought I dreamed that a face was looking into the room. It made itself apparent as a greater blackness that obscured the sky beyond. Someone stood on the balcony outside the room, looking in through the upper part of the door. There was a click of the lower door, and I could sense the presence of someone actually inside the room.
My nipples went stiff in the sudden chill of the draught from the open door and I was now fully awake. I hadn’t been dreaming. There was someone in the room. I could hear the gentle rise and fall of his breath.
I lay still. As yet, the intruder could see nothing. Even I could see only his body framed by the window. Then, as he moved, I saw the dull glitter of steel in the starlight.
‘Die, fucker,’ he snarled softly, throwing himself on to the bed. I saw him stab again and again at the rolled-up bedclothes. As he stabbed and sliced like a man possessed by some drug, he switched into a language that I think was Syriac.
Then, another snarl – this time of frustration, as he realised the bed was empty. There was a moment of silence before the intruder was back on his feet and casting around for his bearings.
I thought I might try sliding under the bed but he’d surely see the movement now that his eyes were adjusting to the darkness. Another moment, and he’d see me on the floor.
There are times – travelling, for instance – when you’d be mad to do other than keep weapons by you at night. At home, it’s never been my habit. It’s far more likely that you’ll do yourself or some unfortunate slave an injury than save yourself from nocturnal assault.
Naked and unarmed, I leapt silently to my feet. I snatched at one of the sheets and draped it round myself, then danced back against the wall opposite the door. The window was on my right.
‘Authari,’ I cried, ‘come quickly. Murder, murder!’ I added, raising my voice to a shout.
‘What the fuck?’ I heard the intruder snarl. He sounded puzzled and alarmed. But, after just a momentary pause, he was at me, raking forward with his knife. He must have been able to see as little of me as I could of him. Except for the glitter of his knife in the starlight, I might have been fighting with a shadow.
I dodged along the wall closer to the window. I grabbed at a vase of flowers and threw it at his head. It missed, making a dull thud on the floorboards, followed by a spattering of water. I picked up the little table on which the vase had stood and jumped forward, waving it like a club. He came at me again, parrying the table with his left hand.