I stepped out the following morning into a fully militarised City. The Ministry guards around the Legation had been withdrawn. They no longer served any good purpose, and were needed elsewhere. But the street junctions were now barricaded and guarded by the Circus Factions. Shopkeepers and craftsmen strutted about in makeshift armour, carrying swords of varied provenance. Those without swords carried whatever could be adapted into weapons.
It wasn’t an army for trusting in the field – not against the forces massed outside the walls. But it might lend itself to days of vicious street-fighting.
Whatever his other failings, Priscus did seem to know his military stuff. He even won a couple of battles, Martin had told me. One of them, to be sure, he’d won by reporting the opposing general to the Persian King for treason. He’d delayed his attack until the man was being impaled with his sons.
Still, credit where it was due – Priscus was a better man on the battlefield. Perhaps Phocas should have trusted him with an army.
With Martin, I pushed my way through the crowds and stood on the sea wall looking across to the Galatan shore.
At last, a heavy chain had been stretched across the entrance to the Golden Horn. Nothing would be able to get close to the least impregnable stretch of defences. Even so, the size of the army Heraclius had positioned at all other points was a dispiriting sight. Tents covered the Asiatic shore. A steady stream of boats struggled back and forth across the choppy waters to the unwalled suburbs of Galata. There, among the trees and houses, the sun glinted on armour and bright swords. In the far distance – I had to strain to see against the sun – a whole body of mounted troops cantered off towards the Thracian suburbs.
Someone beside me turned and asked if I knew how much food had been stockpiled against a siege. I gave a noncommittal answer. I knew that Martin and Authari had made sure to fill our own lower rooms with enough dry goods and beer to last for months. The Legation itself could have supplied a small town from its storehouses.
Fuck the City. Whatever else happened, I and mine were unlikely to go hungry.
Someone else said he’d come from the land walls. The army there was even larger, he said. He added that the guards had been issued with orders to let no one out. The City gates were now barred against a siege. No exit permits were being honoured. Even a party of missionary monks had been prevented from leaving.
‘That can’t possibly be true!’ the man beside me said. ‘The work of evangelising the barbarian is a duty for the whole Empire. No civil war can interrupt the Godly Work.’
‘Are you calling me a liar?’ snarled the man who’d volunteered the news. ‘Because if you are, I’ve got a bigger sword than yours, and I know how to use it. I tell you – every fucking gate is shut. The whole world is sealed off from us.’
‘My dear Brothers in Christ,’ I intervened, eager to see if my status had more than token meaning, ‘my poor colleague the Patriarch Thomas is lying on his bed of sickness even as you speak. In this moment of sadness, we have more than a duty of love to each other.’
The man pursed his lips and carefully chose his words.
‘My Lord,’ he said with a little bow, ‘I regret to inform you the Patriarch is not long for this world. He took a turn for the worse last night. Not even wine steeped with a single hair from the head of Saint Andrew could revive him. The doctors have abandoned hope.’
‘I am fully aware of these tidings,’ I lied. I looked down my nose at the man, and continued:
‘In these last days of the world, the Dark One himself dares to walk the streets of the city. Yes!’ I cried as I pointed at a conveniently black slab of granite cemented into the battlement – ‘The Dark One himself is abroad!’
There was an impressed murmur at this, and several members of the crowd stepped back from the slab.
I would have said more. With my dramatic gesture, though, I’d caught sight of flabby old Nicias in one of the gibbets. Still dressed in the robe he’d worn in the Imperial Box, false teeth rammed upside down in his mouth, his horribly twisted body swayed in the breeze.
‘And so,’ I ended lamely, ‘it is the duty of all good citizens to utter no words that may contribute to demoralisation of the people. Come, Martin,’ I said, eager to get away. ‘We have work of the highest importance.’
The wine shops were still open for business. All other trading was at an end. The University was closed. Even the bookshops were shuttered and barred.
‘No exit from the City, after all,’ said Martin. He was quietly pleased with himself. I ignored him.
Going back past the Great Church, for the first time I was required to prove my identity.
The funeral was over. We’d managed a good showing in the church. There had been all my people – and these now included the Legation staff. Theophanes had turned up in time for the interment. Even Priscus had sent flowers.
Overawed by the crowd, Gutrune had confined herself to silent weeping beside Martin. A dab of opium juice on his lead comforter, Maximin had sat quietly in her arms.
Now – the gate securely fastened – we were back in the Legation. I sat at the Permanent Legate’s desk, going through his papers again. On the third day of the investigation, I was no longer put off by the volume of papyrus and parchment. It was no longer a question of examining each document, but of what nuggets of information could be extracted from the whole.
‘It’s the accounts from February onwards that are missing,’ Martin said, looking up from his own pile of boxes.
I pushed the documents into a pile and reached for my cup. ‘There’s no point in going through all this again at the moment,’ I said. ‘I need to sit down alone for a while and think it into a pattern.’
No such luck!
‘Pardon me for intruding, My Lord.’
It was Antony. Now that I’d given him the routine business of the Legation to direct, he was looking almost cheerful.
There was an Imperial messenger downstairs. Should he show the man in?