40
After a long wait outside his office, we were ushered into the Imperial Presence. Phocas sat at his desk, giving responses to a mass of letters and petitions. Secretaries surrounded him, taking down his brief words for the usual writing up into more cere monious utterances.
Theophanes had made sure to tell us that there was no need for the usual prostrations in a matter of utilitarian business. We nodded respectfully at Phocas as he looked towards us. He pointed at two chairs against a wall as he continued work with his secretaries.
Theophanes went and stood beside him.
‘Have the man torn apart by hyenas in the Circus,’ Phocas said in a low monotone, discussing someone presumably accused of treason.
The secretary scribbled a note in the margin of the papyrus sheet. He added the sheet to a pile on a wheeled table beside him, then reached into a bag for another.
Phocas stopped him. ‘Correction,’ he said, taking hold of the anonymous denunciation. ‘Have that done to his wife and children. Make him watch. Then have him blinded and put in the Monastery of St Placidius. There he can await our further pleas ure.’ He paused, taking one final look at the denunciation. ‘Total confiscation of goods,’ he added. ‘Refuse any Petition of Share if the informant comes forward.’
He raised a hand to indicate that the matter was closed and moved on to the next one. Should the Army of the Euphrates be ordered to Constantinople? It could be used here against Heraclius, who was now sending further contingents over from Abydos to complete the encirclement.
Phocas got up and walked over to a mosaic map of the Empire that covered the far wall away from the windows. This was an old map that showed the Empire as it had been in ancient times, including the Western Provinces and even Britain. He put up a hand to trace the length of the Euphrates frontier with Persia.
‘Leave the army where it is,’ he said at length. ‘It can’t arrive here in time to serve any useful purpose. In any event, it’s all we have left to cover Syria. Whoever is Emperor come the next moon, he’ll need something there to stand against Chosroes.’
He laughed unpleasantly as he turned to face me.
‘You stay,’ he said, raising his voice. ‘Everyone else – out!’
He pointed at Theophanes. ‘That includes you.’
Theophanes opened his mouth to speak but thought better of the idea. He bowed low and followed the secretaries out, closing the door softly as he went.
Before it closed, Martin turned back and stared at me, a frightened look on his face. I tried a smile of reassurance. I don’t think it worked very well.
Phocas returned to his desk. He motioned me forward. He looked at the wine jug beside him, sighed and looked away.
This wasn’t the jolly creature who’d charmed me during lunch at the Circus. It wasn’t the hieratic image who’d presided over the races. It was the bureaucratic, supremely powerful Ruler of the World – or whatever of it still paid attention to His Word.
Phocas took up a sheet of parchment. On it was a list of names, all with black marks against them.
‘Do you see these names?’ he asked in a smooth voice. ‘Every one of these is of someone who wants to be Emperor in my place. Do you want to be Emperor?’
‘No, Your Majesty,’ I said, trying to keep my voice level. ‘I’m just a barbarian, here on business for Holy Mother Church.’
‘Perhaps I believe you,’ came the reply. ‘I didn’t want to be Emperor when I was your age. Fate can play strange tricks on a man if he lives long enough. But I do believe you. People like you don’t want to be Emperor. All you ever want to do is to feast on the rotting entrails of the Empire.’
Phocas took up another sheet of parchment. It was covered on one side in a tiny Latin script.
‘Alaric of Britain,’ he began, speaking Greek in a voice of quiet menace, ‘I have in my hand a signed request from the Exarch in Ravenna for your immediate removal to his presence. You are accused of a fraud on the Sacred Treasury.’
He pushed the sheet towards me. I read it with freezing insides. My knees shook with the unexpected shock. My idiotic associates had sold half the shares in that Cornish tin shipment to a consortium of Jews and Armenians backed by the Exarch. His agents in Cadiz had got wind of our scheme. It was they who had bought the shipment. They had then observed the reloading of the ships.
The Ravenna contract had been voided. The tin was forfeit. My associates had decamped from Rome to take shelter in Pavia with the Lombards. I was wanted for questioning and trial in Ravenna.
‘You do realise, I think,’ Phocas continued in a more conversational tone, ‘that you are in the technical sense a traitor. I could have you flayed alive in the Circus for this. And that’s without dragging up another matter from outside Ravenna that I may still regard as pending.’
He got up again and went over to a cupboard. He took out a golden key from his robe and opened the ivory doors. Inside was what looked like a golden birdcage. This he pulled out on a sliding shelf.
It was a cage. But instead of real birds, it contained three golden and ivory figurines of birds. He pulled at a wheel and pushed a lever. As he stood back, there was a whirring of little gears, and the room was filled with the sharp, artificial singing of birds.
It was an odd accompaniment to a death sentence. Oh, if you set aside the bathing and more frequent changing of clothes, the main difference between Phocas and the Great One was that the second had to rule somewhat more by persuasion than the first. This man could, if he pleased, do the most awful things to me.
But the chances were that it didn’t please him. If he’d managed a shock just as great as I’d had in the Great One’s tent, I was recovering much faster. I was angry at how those duffers back in Rome had, despite my urging, overreached themselves. I was vaguely apprehensive of a crushing fine. But I didn’t really expect I’d be used any time soon as a warm-up for the chariot races.
‘Come over here,’ said Phocas, speaking softly. He beckoned me close. ‘Come and stand by this little miracle of workmanship. Beautiful, isn’t it?’ he said, pointing through an opening under the cage at a spinning wheel. ‘It was made for Justinian whose grand design was to reconquer all the lost Western Empire.
‘Do you know that, following the reconquest of Italy, he even had plans drawn up for an assault on Britain?’
We looked a while at the little birds. I watched in fascination as they opened and shut their mouths and fluttered their golden feathers.
Phocas spoke again, now in Latin. ‘I want to know what really happened in the Great One’s camp.’
So that was what he wanted. I stepped back to gather my thoughts – those artificial squeaks and trills were beginning to annoy after their first surprise.
‘No, Alaric,’ said Phocas, pulling me gently forward. ‘You will watch these birds as you answer. Speak into their sound. And you’ll speak softly. I’m not deaf yet.’
I thought quickly. What to do? On the one hand, repeating the lies Theophanes had imposed on the world would probably put us both straight under the Ministry. On the other hand, the truth wasn’t much to his advantage. And disclosing it might not be much to mine, if Theophanes should survive to hear about it.
That was if Phocas chose not to take against me on account of it.
‘You were observed, you know,’ Phocas prompted me. ‘You were seen from the Monastery of St Euthemius as the three of you came away from the Great One.
‘An ant doesn’t fart in this Empire but I don’t get some wind of it. Don’t you imagine otherwise. I want to know what happened with the Great One,’ he said, dropping his voice still lower. ‘I want the full truth. I know when people are lying to me. Give me the truth if you rightly understand your interest.’
I swallowed and took what seemed the least risky option.