‘So it was you who was negotiating with Theophanes outside the tent,’ I said. ‘In exchange for his life, he agreed to help you kill the Permanent Legate. He was the only one with access. And that would get you in deeper with Heraclius.’
‘Brains and beauty.’ Priscus smiled, raising his cup in a mock toast. ‘Of course, I needed you and your freedman dead. I couldn’t risk even the slightest chance that you’d spotted me. The eunuch was very persuasive when it came to getting his own skin spared. You two, however, were decidedly surplus to requirements.’
‘I suppose that explains why you’ve been so eager to have me killed since I got back to the City,’ I said.
‘Oh, that was nothing personal, dear boy,’ Priscus said with a smile. ‘That little scene in church was merely tying up loose ends. I got the old eunuch to kill the Permanent Legate. When you got the job, you had to go the same way. There’s no point in bumping off a Permanent Legate if he’s immediately replaced.
‘Getting you murdered in the Great Church, and in the Imperial Presence, would have dropped my Divine Father-in-Law right in the shit with everyone.’
‘Are you not forgetting, My Lord,’ I asked mildly, ‘your attempt on me via Agathius in the Legation, your attempt via those Syrians last night, and your efforts with the Emperor?’
‘I don’t know anything about last night,’ came the airy reply. ‘As for Agathius, I’d like to know what became of him. My guess is that he’s holed up with Demetrius. If only we’d been able to get hold of either of them, it would have been a sword held right over the old eunuch’s head. With him neutralised, I could have gone through with my plan of surrendering the city once the gates were open. As it is, killing the Permanent Legate will have been my latest service to Heraclius. That alone should keep me in his good books.’
I looked at him. Was he telling the truth? He appeared to be. Having admitted to a murder attempt in the Great Church, he would hardly deny anything more seemly.
But Priscus continued: ‘My latest service unless, my dearest, you’ve managed to learn what Theophanes was up to with Justinus of Tyre. I thought for a while he had the means to betray me to Phocas. It seems he had other information – information Heraclius was willing to pay through the nose to get.
‘Any ideas about what he did know? Did His Magnificence ever take you into his confidence on that one? Do you fancy a meeting with the next Emperor? I’ll be with him come dusk.’
I ignored the invitation. ‘What I can’t understand’, I said, ‘is why you’ve changed sides. You might be useful to Heraclius at the moment. Do you really think, though, that he will spare your life once you’ve helped make him Emperor?’
Priscus looked thoughtfully over to the closed door and then to the shuttered window.
‘There are many things you don’t understand,’ he said quietly across the table.
I had to lean forward to catch his further words. ‘The deal is that I give him the City’, he said, ‘and he gives me an army to use against the Persians. Be assured I’ll soon be turning on him.
‘The best I can hope for while Phocas lives is to be a glorified chief of police. The way he carries on, he’ll live for ever. Long before then, he’ll have no Empire left to hand over. All things considered, Heraclius is a much better bet.’
I scarce knew where to begin. It seemed to me then that he was a walking illustration of what too many mood-altering substances, consumed over too long a period, can do to the understanding.
I changed the subject. ‘Why do you ask me to defect with you?’ I asked.
Priscus smiled again. ‘Because, my darling little god,’ he said, ‘now you’re in the know, what else can you do but stick with me?’
‘That begs the question, My Lord,’ I said, ‘why you have put me in the know.’
I thought for a moment of killing Priscus but soon dismissed it. He was also armed, and he might be no fool with a sword.
He spoke again: ‘Why don’t you join us? I’m sure I could put in a word with Heraclius. He’s not very bright, you should be aware. Once I’m Emperor, I’ll reopen the University and make you its chancellor.’
Seeing the scorn I couldn’t keep off my face, Priscus continued: ‘And, of course, there are other openings for you at my court. You know that we make a great team. Relieved of the duty to have you killed, I’d find you even more madly attractive than I have so far. I’m not as young as I used to be, but I can still teach a thing or two about mattress acrobatics.’
This really was too much!
‘My dear Priscus,’ I said when I’d recovered use of my voice, ‘you should be aware that the only bodily fluid I might want to discharge near you is vomit.’
As if I’d spat at him, he shrank back in his chair. A look of rage passed over his face. Then he was all smooth serpent again.
‘Be that as it may,’ he said, ‘you’ve lavished enough tenderness these past few months on some of my spawn.’
I felt as if I’d had a stiletto of ice pushed into my stomach.
‘And what in the name of shit,’ I snarled, ‘do you mean by that?’
‘Isn’t it obvious?’ Priscus said slowly and emphatically. ‘Your darling Maximin is one of my bastards. You say he was picked up near dawn outside the Mary Magdalene Church? It’s surely no coincidence that I had a boy child left in the same place at probably the same time – I’m sure we’d agree on the date if we bothered comparing notes. I let the bitch slave-girl carry her belly-load about until she shat it out. When I saw the scrawny thing, I had her throat cut and the baby dumped.
‘Yes, my darling boy – I’m the father of the thing you love most in this City. And when I’m Emperor, I may have to take it back from you. It might not do to have a grandson of Phocas as my heir.’
‘You’re a fucking liar, you shitbag Greekling!’ I shouted in Latin. Because he spoke it, I suddenly found Greek too dirty a language for my lips.
‘But you know I’m telling the truth – don’t you?’ he said, still in Greek. ‘Now you go back to your Legation and look on your beautiful adopted son. If you want to spare yourself a whole mountain of grief – and him too once I’m Emperor – you’ll throw him to those pigs.’
Priscus got up. ‘I’m sure we still have much to discuss. Perhaps we’ll continue this conversation when we next meet. Perhaps it will be in circumstances similar to those I intended on our first meeting. But for the moment, I have other, more pressing business to attend to.’
By the time I’d gathered myself sufficiently to follow him from the wine shop, he’d vanished.
As I staggered through the gate to the Legation, I heard the first word on the streets that the Caesar Priscus had somehow found a way out of the City, and that he’d gone over to Heraclius.
55
Martin looked at the child again. ‘There is a certain resemblance,’ he said in a doubtful tone.
‘Of course there’s a resemblance, you dickhead,’ I hissed. With his eyes shut, Maximin was a smaller version of Priscus. It was astonishing how I hadn’t noticed this before.
‘Where’s your God now? The moment you found that child by the church, you sealed our death warrant.’
‘Shut up, or you’ll wake him,’ came the reply. Martin carefully pulled the covers back. He turned to face me. For all the concern he showed, I might have been telling him about a crate of spoiled papers.
‘Besides,’ he added, ‘I only picked him up. I recall it was you who insisted on adopting him. And you did adopt him,’ he continued with a sudden intensity. He’d switched into Celtic. ‘Under the laws of every nation, including even yours, the father of a child is the man who takes it as his own. Fatherhood comes from acknowledgement, not from fucking. That child is yours and yours alone.’
‘That isn’t the point,’ I said. I’d not let Martin see the tears I was forcing back as I repeated his point again and again to myself. ‘The point is that we’re in the deepest shit you can imagine. This is the natural child of the second biggest traitor in the Empire. In a few days, he may again be the child of the second biggest man in the Empire. Where does that leave him or us? Now, do please shut up about your God. If He had any hand in this, it shows at least an unorthodox sense of humour.’