Or perhaps I’d do nothing at all, I told myself with yet another change of thought. I might not even make a trip to Corinth. I could send Martin over with letters. He and the others could stay there. The money I wanted could come back by courier. The most important single job in hand was getting that bloody council under way. Could I afford any time at all outside Athens? And what might be the effect of a full-blown sorcery investigation on those already skittish priests? Murder is murder. You don’t walk by on the other side when you see it. But I’d been sent here under a cloud. My one chance of redeeming myself was to get agreement on the importance of that Single Will argument I’d fabricated out of nothing. Murder is murder. But there was a religious dispute to be settled here in Athens. Back in Constantinople, there was an interlocking set of crises brought on by disaster in the war with Persia — and who else was there but me who could even understand them, let alone resolve them? My own interest aside, perhaps I should just keep all focus on the job in hand. Would justice in the main really be served by making a fuss here? Fiat iustitia ruat caelum is a fine motto for lawyers with no wider duties to consider. But would the skies not fall everywhere in the Empire if I insisted on strict justice here in Athens? Might they not fall on me?
Martin suddenly leaned forward and pushed the mirror aside. ‘Listen, Aelric,’ he urged, ‘why don’t we just get out of here? If we’re all going to Corinth, why stop there? We can all get away together. You say the Governor is useless. He won’t even notice if we take ship back to the West. We can-’
‘We can do no such thing!’ I snapped. ‘Since I don’t seem to have been dismissed from his service, that oath I swore to Heraclius still holds. My duty is to do what I can for the Empire.’ I looked into Martin’s drawn face. Surely he could understand the concept of duty. After all, wasn’t he also a barbarian? Honour, duty, courage — even a cowardly barbarian couldn’t set those aside. Or could he?
I sighed and went back to the previous matter. ‘Until further notice,’ I said firmly, ‘last night didn’t happen. Trust me, and keep a stiff upper lip.’ That was an order, and I expected no more about any supposed magic in Athens, or any more about running away from our undoubted duties. I stood up in the bath and looked across what had been a cavernous steam room. No general heating, of course, meant no steam. But having the lead tub moved in had at least reminded me of the comforts I was missing. I climbed carefully out and stood shivering on the unheated tiles. I took the towel Martin passed me and rubbed myself dry. The rain that had gone away when the big storm ended didn’t look as if it would return for a while. If so early in the morning was any indication, we had a fine day ahead. Already, there was a bright patch of sunlight inching its way down the plain bricks of the domed wall.
‘You,’ I said to the slave in very slow and simple Greek, ‘take up this mirror and hold it while I shave myself.’ Whether or not he’d sorted out my spots, he could help get that shameful blond bristle off my body. I stared back at a thoroughly idiotic smile on his face. I tried him in one of the Slavic dialects that I knew was spoken south of the Danube. It didn’t help. ‘Oh, go away!’ I groaned. ‘Go and report for cleaning duty.’ I stepped out of the pool of sunlight that had now just reached where I was standing and grabbed both oil and razor. I pointed at the door. ‘Get out!’ I roared.
The slave finally understood me and scurried out, leaving the door wide open.
‘Martin,’ I said, once he had returned from closing the door, ‘I don’t like to remind you of less pleasant days. But I do believe you once did bathroom duties when you were a slave. If I can do the rest myself, do be so kind as to shave my back.’
I was inspecting the underside of my crotch in the mirror when the door opened again. It was the idiot slave come back. He capered about, shaking his head and pointing at my crotch. He laughed and clapped his hands and let out another burst of nonsense. This time, I made an effort to listen. He was speaking a kind of Greek. The main problem was that he was defective in the head.
‘I gather the Western delegates have now arrived,’ I said to Martin. ‘Am I right in believing, however, that the Pope himself is outside?’
‘Not His Holiness in person,’ came the reply in a voice I’d never thought — or hoped — I’d hear again. ‘And, I assure you, there is nothing immediate about our arrival. We have been kept waiting here longer than we might have wished.’ I’d put my question in Latin, and I’d been answered in Latin.
I looked over at the door. A monk beside him, who was trying his best to pull the front of his hood over his eyes, there stood my old friend the Dispensator.
‘The head of the Roman delegation offers his deepest respects,’ he said, ‘and would have an audience with the Lord Senator.’ He ignored the fact that I was standing naked with my legs apart and showing every appearance of trying to sodomise myself with the handle of a bronze mirror. In both general and specific circumstances, a prostration would have been out of the question — at any rate, from him. But he did manage a very stiff bow.
Chapter 22
‘My Lord Fortunatus!’ I cried. I hurried across the room, hardly noticing that the towel Martin had tried to wrap about me fell off after two paces. ‘This is a most unexpected honour.’
He raised his arms for an official embrace. Our lips met without touching in a way that might have impressed a geometry teacher. As soon as decency allowed, I took my hands from his stiff, bony shoulders and helped him into the only chair in the room.
He’d aged a little in the two years since our last meeting. The parchment of his face was paler and more withered. He might have been a touch smaller. But it was the Dispensator, sure enough — chief servant of the Servant of the Servants of Christ. He was the man, that is, who, formally charged with handling the Papal charity, was in fact governor of the Roman Church. So long as he took the trouble to get addled old Boniface to stamp his seal on whatever writing surface embodied it, his word was law in spiritual matters over the whole of those vast regions, mostly now unknown to Constantinople, that looked to Rome.
‘My Lord will forgive me,’ I said with all the smoothness I could find, ‘if I am overcome for the moment by the joy of an acquaintance that I never thought would be renewed.’
He stared back at me while Martin made a better job of getting the towel tied about my waist. It had its convenient side that he’d chosen to come out as head of the Western delegates. No one would ever dare question what agreement we might eventually reach about the questions for a future council. At the same time, someone more junior — and more pliable — would have been more immediately convenient.
The Dispensator settled into his chair beside the leaden bath. ‘The Lord Count did assure me,’ he said, with a hint of what might have been quiet pleasure or disapproval, ‘that you had been drowned on your journey from Constantinople. I rejoice in the knowledge that rumours of your death were an exaggeration.’ He fell silent and looked down to where I’d sat before him on the floor. He managed a chilly smile. ‘But please do accept my congratulations on your rise to such eminence as you have achieved. I did not imagine, when I asked you to represent us in Constantinople, that your career would so blossom — and at so young an age.’