‘Why so much fuss, dear boy?’ Priscus called without bothering to empty his mouth. ‘Weren’t you brought up in a pigsty? This must be luxury itself by comparison. But let’s agree it could do with some attention, and turn to the much more interesting matter of what this place used to be. Did Plato or someone else famous live here in the old days?’ He swallowed. Straight away, he slurped in another of the frogs and smacked his lips.
Plainly, his fellowship in despair act was wearing thin. I had no right to complain: mine had vanished in a puff of smoke a mile outside Piraeus. I grinned and looked down at my crust. Truth was — not that I’d ever admit this to Priscus — that a pigsty would have been one or two steps up from the hovel in Richborough where Ethelbert had dumped my mother. I stroked my throbbing nose. ‘The residency is only about four hundred years old,’ I said. ‘According to the inscription above the main entrance, it was built as a palace by Herodes Atticus.’ I could see from his blank look that I’d outpaced the man’s knowledge of history. ‘He was a close friend of the Emperor Hadrian,’ I explained, ‘and shared his taste for the very ancient. Apparently, he’d been left poor by his father’s extravagance. His fortunes were only restored by the discovery of a treasure hoard under his remaining property. He built this palace on the site of the discovery, which is a shame, bearing in mind its bad position.’ I glanced again at a damaged fresco of the Emperor on the far wall. Surrounded by statues of the famous dead, he was giving a speech to the people of Athens. The young man beside him was probably Antinous. But the head was missing — someone had dug into the plaster long before, possibly to get at one of the hot air ducts underneath.
Not being able to go out, and having nothing better to do with my time, I’d spent the early afternoon looking about the front block of what was now the Count’s residency. You couldn’t fault its original plan. The rooms that hadn’t been subdivided into offices had a size and arrangement that would have pleased the modern rich in Constantinople. But I’ve said the offices were empty. Many were locked shut. Everything was long out of repair. It all desperately needed cleaning. And it was bloody cold. There’s a limit to what you can appreciate of anything when your feet are like ice and there’s a dribble of cold snot on your upper lip. Yes, I’d been glad of that slave’s clothing. Even if they did smell of unwashed barbarian, I was warmer than Priscus or Martin.
Priscus broke my long silence with one of his wet coughs. ‘It could be worse, my dear,’ he said with a good cheer that I guessed was intended to annoy. ‘Did I ever tell you about the winter I spent in Trampolinea? You soon learned to lie still at night. Then the lice would cover you thickly enough to keep you almost warm. Mind you, the days were better. You spent them darting about the city walls, throwing rocks on the barbarians who were trying to climb over to cut your throat.’ He smiled at Martin, who’d now sat down and was staring unhappily into the iron pot.
Priscus yawned and poured himself another cup of wine. ‘So, young Alaric,’ he asked, ‘do I gather right that you’ve been sent to Athens to conquer for Heraclius at the head of a synod?’
There are few things worse than finding a worm in the piece of bread you’ve been eating. Finding half a worm is one of them. I put the two halves of the bread down and brushed grey crumbs from the stained quilting of my shirt. ‘I’ve no doubt it’s waiting for me somewhere,’ I said cautiously, ‘but I still haven’t seen his letter of further instructions. It’s reasonable to suppose, however, that the Emperor has called a closed council to discuss the progress of heresy.’ I tried to make it all sound very dull. Priscus suppressed another yawn and looked over at the window. The light had almost faded. Another few cups, and there would be an excuse for seeing what vermin might be waiting in our beds.
But Priscus smiled and reached for his drug box. He dropped into his wine a generous pinch of a blue powder that I knew was a stimulant. ‘You may have thought your dinner of welcome here would be an elegant affair. You may even have looked forward to meeting a few men of your own age and vicious inclinations — dicing and whoring and all that, eh? Instead, we are where we are. Now, you could let me pass an evening with recollections of how I survived the final night battle in the streets of Trampolinea,’ he said. ‘But it would only give little Martin a nightmare.’ He sipped at his wine and pulled a face. He sipped again. ‘I know what, though,’ he said, now brightly. ‘Why don’t we discuss theology? That can’t upset any of us. And, just to make it even more fun, let’s do it in Latin. I’m sure no one is listening outside the door. But let’s do it anyway for the added challenge of discussing profundities in an unphilosophic language.’
I blinked and settled my features into complete impassivity. Martin gave me a nervous look.
Priscus laughed and this time sipped delicately from his cup. ‘We’re all friends around this table,’ he said easily in Latin. ‘Do I ever look down on the pair of you if you don’t know the difference between a javelin and an artillery bolt? Of course I don’t! But it does so pain me when you think me nothing but a rough soldier. I know that, when I burn or rape or hang or despoil heretics, you really do assume I have no understanding of the issues involved. Go on, my dear boys, own up — you think I regard the issues as of no more substance than the arguments between the Green and Blue factions in the Circus.’
I forced a weak smile and shook my head. The rain was beating against both upper and side window panes as if someone were knocking for entry. ‘Don’t you think it rather late for theology?’ I asked, trying to sound bored. ‘It’s been a long day, and the light has gone.’
‘Oh, but the night is young!’ Priscus crooned. He finished his cup and giggled. I watched as his face changed from dead white to what the lamps showed as a sort of orange. As it began to change back, and his drug took proper hold of his mind, he let out a long sigh. ‘Besides,’ he went on in a voice that carried no trace of tiredness, ‘we all know that you never go to sleep before midnight. Study, study, study, so deep into the night, isn’t it? How else does a barbarian from the edge of nowhere get such fancy Greek and that formidable learning in the classics? No, my fine, young scholar, you can sit up a while longer, to hear that Uncle Priscus didn’t entirely miss out on education. You just allow me to start this discussion with my own little summary of the issues. I’m sure you’ll have cause to correct one or two misunderstandings of detail. But do hear me out first.’
Except when all else has failed, and it’s looked as if I were moments from a grisly end, I’ve never been in the habit of praying for help. But, even as Priscus had his mouth open to start his ‘little summary’, there was a sudden rattling on the door handle.
‘You finished with that yet, My Lords?’ the old cooking woman rasped as she walked in. She pointed at the iron pot. ‘The Master hasn’t bought no other food in, and, since you ain’t all dead after all, that was to be our dinner. Now, if you’ve had your fill, we wants the leftovers.’
I’d have said seventy. Just as easily, though, she might have been fifty or ninety — you really can’t tell age with slaves or the lower classes. She stood before us, a tub of shrivelled lard in a dark dress shiny from years of cooking spills.
‘Get out of here, or I’ll have you flogged,’ Priscus hissed at her.
She looked back at him and pulled a face. ‘Please yourself, love,’ she said. ‘But the condemned boy was outside the walls all day yesterday picking up them frogs.’
Since she at least knew Greek, I wanted to sit her down and ask a few obvious questions about the management of the residency household. I also had a question about these persistent rumours of my death. But Priscus was on his feet and swaying about with a stick in his hand. He lashed out at the old woman, who, with surprising agility, dodged past him. He lunged again, this time tripping over the bottom part of an old dining couch. It splintered on impact, and Priscus vanished for a moment into a cloud of woodwormy dust.