Now and again, Priscus pulled the curtains aside and looked out of his chair. He’d managed to lick all the blood off his right hand, and was back to looking pleased with himself. As often as he saw I was watching him, he beamed over at me and sniffed at the deathly smell that must still have clung to his damp clothing. If ever there was a lamia, it was surely him. He hadn’t seen the girl die. But he had seen the next best thing, and its thrill had brought him back to more life than I’d have thought possible when we’d stood moping together over the galley side.
The mist only let us see the walls of Athens from about a hundred yards. We’d already entered the demolished and mostly cleared area of what had been its outer suburb. The walls themselves were some twenty feet high, and looked as if they’d been hastily thrown up with whatever building materials could be recovered from the demolished area. From the look Priscus gave them, they’d never have served in any region where a civilised enemy might be able to penetrate. Doubtless, they were enough to keep Athens safe should the barbarians ever show up in search of food and plunder.
‘Hadrian endowed a big library when he was here,’ I said quietly to Martin. ‘It may still contain a few interesting books.’
No answer. I pushed my head inside the curtains. Nearly filling the stuffy, fart-laden interior, Martin was praying silently to the shrivelled tongue of Saint George that had been the Patriarch’s leaving present to me in Alexandria.
No point talking about books. No point telling him how every stone we might be about to touch was holy. Still, we were at last about to enter Athens.
Chapter 13
Not bothering to call for assistance, I got up to pull the side window shut. I looked out for a moment, over the desolation of what had once been a nice courtyard garden, to the far side of the residency. The stained, crumbling stucco displeased me. The central fountain displeased me. The rain certainly displeased me. I tugged at the handle and swore as it came away. Eventually, though, I did get the window shut. Its little green panes let through the fading light of a late afternoon, and it meant that the smoke from the charcoal brazier had nowhere to go but a small opening in the ceiling window that was better suited for letting in the rain. It was cold. By comparison with Constantinople at this time of year, Athens was almost balmy. On the other hand, I had just spent months in Egypt, and, this time of year in Constantinople, I’d have had the heating on at full burn. I sat down again to what passed for dinner with Priscus.
‘Stewed river frog can be delicious at this time of year,’ he said with an appreciative leer. He shifted position on his chair and farted gently into the cushions. I stared at the iron pot filled with a sort of grey slime and took up another piece of bread. ‘Well,’ he added, ‘it’s the best I’ve had in ages. Come on, Martin,’ he called, ‘you tuck in if it’s not good enough for His Magnificence. This at least won’t make you any fatter.’ He laughed happily and held out a long spoon.
Martin dipped it into the slime and stirred up an overpowering smell of garlic. At the second or third attempt, he scooped out the kind of thing you see floating belly up in stagnant ponds. As he lifted it carefully to his mouth, one of the legs came away and fell back with a soft splash into the pot. He closed his eyes and pushed what remained on the spoon into his mouth. I looked down into my wooden cup. It was filled with wine that would have started a riot on a slave galley. The pepper I’d added might now have taken away the worst of its taste. It hadn’t. But I drained the cup and tried to look more cheerful than I felt.
We’d reached the end of our first day in Athens. It had been my intention, once we were settled into our accommodation, to go for a look about the city. What I’d seen of it on our way in had been more hopeful than the journey up from Piraeus might have suggested. The streets were amazingly dirty. The small crowds huddling under the colonnades had been, if possible, uglier and more degraded than those who’d met us on the docks. What I’d heard of their chattering still bore little relation to any Greek that I’d ever heard. But the new buildings in the centre had been respectably magnificent. If Justinian had shut down all the universities there eighty years before, he’d been characteristically generous with building grants. As for the ancient buildings, neither Martin nor I was up to identifying anything. But we had no doubt there was much still to be seen. By unspoken agreement, we’d avoided looking up at the great plateau that overshadowed the city. We’d save that experience for better weather.
And better weather hadn’t come. Our planned sightseeing of the early afternoon had been rained off. No one had complained when I cancelled our reception ceremony in front of the Count’s residency. Instead, in the absence of any slaves, I’d helped Martin unpack my clothes. These were all soaked and would need a day in the sun to dry, followed by another day of stretching and pressing. The clothes I was wearing had been damp through. Eventually, a residency slave had come in sight. As luck would have it, he was about my size. So he’d been sent about his duties in a stained silk tunic, and I was now at least warm in the padded shirt and loose trousers of a Slavic prisoner of war. I’d finally got used to the smell and had been looking forward to a dinner where I could put a few pointed questions to Nicephorus.
‘You say the Count’s been taken poorly?’ I asked. I waited for Priscus to suck the flesh off the whole dead thing he’d shovelled into his mouth. It was a noise that almost turned my stomach.
He leaned forward and spat the complete skeleton into a battered silver dish. ‘Oh,’ he said vaguely, ‘the long wait in Piraeus brought back a fever he had in the summer. When I left him, he was sweating all over. He did say he’d attend on you tomorrow morning.’
I rubbed the spot on my nose. It was a fair alternative to grinding my teeth. There was no chance at all of arrest — there’s a limit even to the sort of trick Ludinus might play on his enemies. This being so, I was coming over all official again. I had questions for Nicephorus accumulating like autumn leaves in a gutter, and he’d now taken to his bed.
I turned to Martin, who was coming out of a quiet choking fit from some bones he’d failed to spit out. ‘Where do you suppose the rest of the slaves are hiding?’ I asked.
‘I’ve counted only six slaves in the whole building,’ he said indistinctly. ‘They could be the sweepings of the market on a poor day,’ he added tartly.
I might have observed that, as a freed slave, Martin could have shown a little consideration for those less fortunate than himself. But I couldn’t fault his estimate of their worth. And six of them! There must have been fifty rooms in this place — no, many more than that, once you took the three other blocks into account.
‘No wonder it’s all so dirty!’ I sighed instead. ‘And where are the clerks? You don’t expect much administration in a place like Athens. Even so, a few occupied offices might be reasonable.’
Above us, the wind shifted direction. It sent a spattering of rain on to the tiled floor. I stared at the dark puddle that was beginning to make its way in my direction. A sudden draught reached one of the lamps. It went out with a sputter and a smell of rancid oil. I noticed how dark it was getting. As Martin got up to fiddle with the thing, I chewed on the hard crust.