‘When do you think we can dock?’ I asked.
He shoved a wedge of cheese into his mouth and chewed without visible enjoyment. ‘The Captain is still on shore,’ he said indistinctly. He took a mouthful of brackish water and cleared his throat. ‘I spoke with one of the sailors he sent back for something.’ He swallowed and continued with a faint tremor in his voice. ‘Apparently, the military situation is looking desperate.’
I shrugged again. The provincial authorities, I’d already learned from Priscus, had five hundred troops to cover the entire area south of Thermopylae. If the Spartans had once held up the entire Persian Army there with three hundred hoplites, our own people had long since given up on trying to keep out a rabble of Avars and Slavs. Thirty years of their depredations, and there really was no military situation left to call desperate or otherwise.
‘The harvests have failed in Thrace and beyond,’ Martin explained. I reached cautiously forward and pulled a corner off the dry loaf. I wondered if it was worth trying to eat anything at all. Once arrested, it might be some while before anyone got round to feeding me.
‘Starvation is setting in everywhere south of the Danube, and possibly north of it,’ he added. ‘The word is that twenty million barbarians are on the move, and will sweep through the passes before the month is out.’ He would have said more. But a sudden spasm of fear took hold of him, and his voice fell away.
‘Make that twenty thousand,’ I sneered, ‘and then halve it.’ I put the bread into my mouth and chewed with as much enthusiasm as if a priest had put it there. ‘You know perfectly well that the Empire lost Britain to about that many of my own people — and not all at once. Whatever the minstrels told you in Ireland about the unstoppable flood of yellow-headed giants who dispossessed your ancestors, we weren’t enough to have taken London — not, that is, if you’d done other than scuttle out of the place like frightened chickens.’ I sniffed and ignored the face he pulled.
I was right in my history. The Western Provinces really had been lost to not enough armed men to fill the Circus in Constantinople. They’d crossed the Rhine into a desert produced by centuries of misgovernment, and had been quietly welcomed by the survivors. But there was no point taking issue here and now with the accounts agreed by Martin’s people with the Imperial historians about those unstoppable floods of yellow-headed giants. None of it mattered any more. In the resulting silence, I reached down into my leather satchel and pulled out a small cloth bag. Its many coins made a dull chinking sound on the table. I reached down again for a sheet of parchment I’d folded over three times and sealed with my ring. I pushed both towards Martin.
‘The cash is all I bothered bringing with me from Alexandria,’ I said. ‘I thought it would be more than enough for the journey, and it’s still a decent sum.’ Wearily, I lifted a hand to stop the protest. ‘The draft is on the Papal Bank. It will be honoured regardless of any confiscation decree. Your job, once we are separated, is to get yourself and Sveta and your child and my child to Rome, and then wherever may seem appropriate. Go to the Lateran and speak to the Dispensator. He may not give active assistance. But you can rely on him to tell you straight if you will all be safe in Rome — or if you should make a run for where the Lombards rule, or for the lands of the French King. He may even advise you to go back all the way to Ireland. Wouldn’t you like that — to go home at last to Ireland? You could be a man of some consequence there. Whatever the case, you’ll be far outside the Emperor’s reach.’
Martin’s response was to look down at the closed bag and to start crying again. ‘But it’s so unjust, Aelric,’ he sobbed. ‘None of this was your fault. You did everything possible. .’
I smiled and patted him gently on the hand. ‘You know the rule, Martin,’ I said. ‘When things go this wrong, someone has to be blamed. It can’t be the Emperor. It can’t be the Viceroy of Egypt — he is the Emperor’s cousin, after all. That leaves me or Priscus. It’s pretty clear that we’ll both share the blame.’
I smiled again and resisted the urge to reach up and touch my spot. ‘Now, once you’ve gone through the motions of announcing me as I step ashore, and of reading out my commission, I want you to vanish into the crowd. No one will pay attention to a freedman. Get away from me. Don’t look back. Take the first seaworthy vessel out of Piraeus. Go to Corinth. Take whatever ship is going west. Do you understand?’
There was more sobbing and mopping of wet eyes. In the next cabin but one, I heard Maximin start wailing for his father. I told myself not to get up and go to him. It was best not to remind him that I was about. I needed Martin to make a clean getaway on the dockside. I couldn’t have a child in his wife’s arms, screaming and reaching out for me.
There was another knock at the door. This time, it was the wine. I drank two cups straight off, and on an empty stomach. The writing on my commission wavered slightly as I looked at it. But I could feel myself coming into a better mood since the previous night’s opium pill had relinquished its hold on me, and I’d become gradually aware of the clammy bedclothes and of the damp chill beyond them. I was about to give Martin further instructions on the draft; it was too late to explain again how gold could be moved from one place to another without shipping a single piece, but I could remind him of the formalities in the Papal Bank. Just then, though, there was yet another knock on the door. Before I could call out to enter, it opened and the galley’s head slave walked in. He gave what I thought the most perfunctory bow that was decent for a man of my status.
‘The Lord Priscus would have the pleasure of My Lord’s company,’ he said as he finally looked up. Was that the remains of a smirk on his face? I pretended not to notice. I got up and walked over to the little window. This should have looked out towards Piraeus. All I could see was a mass of grey and endlessly shifting fog. There was an unusually loud scraping of timbers as the galley was jolted by a current or some shift in the breeze. Over on the table, my cup moved about an inch, but didn’t tip over. Martin grabbed for safety at the back of an unoccupied chair. I thought for a moment he would start vomiting again. But it was only a single movement of the galley. I couldn’t see it, but I felt a spatter of the rain that was now joining the mist that had slowed our progress through the Saronic Gulf. I pushed the lead shutter into place. Now with just the light of a few lamps, I crossed the room and pulled the door open. Maximin was still crying. It was the settled, disconsolate wail of a child too young to ask questions, but old enough to know that something was terribly wrong.
I looked back at Martin, who was staring at the bag of gold. ‘Go and see if Sveta’s finished packing,’ I said in Latin. ‘Bear in mind that most of the luggage will be impounded on the docks. Make sure that everything important is in the bags that you’ll be carrying.’
Chapter 8
I’ve said I was in an Imperial galley. This gives little notion of the size or magnificence of what the Viceroy had forced on me for my departure from Alexandria. It was perhaps the biggest vessel in the whole Imperial service. Over a hundred yards long, and fitted out with a lavish indifference to cost that went some way to offsetting the utter want of taste, it was as fine a prison as anyone could have desired. When told I’d be taking ship for Constantinople, I had insisted on something small and fast. Nicetas had smiled and nodded and given me his own official galley. I’d seen this many times in the private harbour. For a good thousand years, it, or something like it, had been kept permanently ready for those times when the King, or Governor, or Duke, or Viceroy needed to get away from the Alexandrian mob. Now, thanks to Priscus, there was no mob left, we’d all been politely bundled into it and waved off with fair cries and crocodile tears. I had to admit, though, that, once those storms had blown up near Seriphos, anything lighter would have been torn apart. If drowning would have been a mercy compared with what might be waiting for me in Piraeus, there were others to think about. As it was, we’d lost half our oars, and had been creeping forward ever since, propelled by various arrangements of sails that might, in other circumstances, have claimed my entire interest.