He stepped into a patch of shade and rubbed his eyes. ‘If you have any sense, Alaric, you’ll have your clerics out of Athens at the same time. Can’t you go with them?’ he asked with a change of tone. ‘If you took them all off to Aegina, you could still have your council there. At least, the city would have lost a few of its useless mouths.’
The soldierly reasonableness of his tone was almost convincing — or might have been if I hadn’t known perfectly well that he knew what I knew. Several dozen bishops and other dignitaries, plus any number of secretaries and servants and other hangers-on, made about a hundred and fifty. Getting them out of Athens, and then settled anywhere else and ready to do what I wanted, wasn’t a matter of shouting some religious equivalent of ‘About turn: quick march!’ One breath about approaching barbarians, and half of them would bolt for Corinth in search of a safe trip home. Getting the rest moved would be like herding cats. No, I had them all in Athens. Here they’d stay until I’d got from them what I wanted. If the walls did fail us before then, and we all got butchered, that was a risk worth taking. It was certainly better than going back home, tail well and truly between my legs.
Priscus didn’t even wait for me to put my refusal into words. ‘Oh, do let’s go down,’ he wheezed. ‘It’s time we rejoined everyone else. I suggest we let them think we were nattering over the good old days in Alexandria — the good old days of last month, when at least I had a few hundred armed men to lead against the mob. Yes, let them enjoy their sightseeing. It’ll be the last fun they have before General Pestilence turns back the barbarian horde.’
We’d got to the roof by climbing a ladder that had been left against the temple wall. As I helped him down its final rungs, and we stood, looking at one of the blank outer walls of the Propylaea, there was a sudden noise of shouts and howling. It was as if a stag had rounded on a hunting pack and was goring everything within reach. The noise echoed about the enclosed space, and it was hard at first to guess from where it was coming. But there was a flight of steps up to a rampart on one of the new defensive walls. We’d avoided this earlier, instead choosing the highest point we could find. I now bounded up the steps and leaned over the wall.
The noise was coming from the Theatre of Herodes Atticus. When I’d first come up here, it was empty. Now, it was crowded. The upper semicircle of benches was mostly ruined, and covered with what remained of its collapsed roof. But the lowest benches were filled with more of the rabble. They squeezed together on the marble seats and spilled on to the stairways between. Some even stood together in the large orchestra before where the stage had once been. As I shaded my eyes from the glare of the white marble, I gradually saw that the audience had rounded up what may have been every stray dog and cat in Athens. These were now being killed with sharpened sticks and some of the smaller building blocks that had come loose over time. Dogs ran madly about the rubble of the stage. But all escape was closed off, and the whiteness was already covered with little splashes of blood. Men and boys danced and cheered as they set about the work. Though taking no part in it, more of those dark figures hung about on the margins of the slaughter.
‘Oh, but isn’t that senseless, fucking cruelty?’ Priscus called softly. ‘Such wasted effort when there are people here just calling out to be massacred.’ He sighed and looked into my face. ‘Disgusted, are we, dear boy?’ he asked. He began another sentence, but broke off with a long cough. He turned pale and clutched at his side.
I was wondering if I’d have to carry him off for help. But he steadied himself and looked down again at a new sound of decidedly human screaming. From where we stood, the remaining wall that enclosed the theatre hid part of the action. By craning my neck and squinting, though, I could now see that there was someone tied to the other side of the furthest column on the stage. I could see only both naked arms where they were stretched halfway round the column. But I was sure it was a woman. There were a couple of old men just in view. It looked as if they were jabbing sharpened poles into her body. It was because the slaughter of animals was coming to an end that I heard her own despairing cries.
As I shifted position to try to see more of this, I looked right. Somehow, Nicephorus had got himself up on to the rampart without making any noise. He now stood beside me, smiling indulgently at the proceedings a few hundred feet away. ‘Athens, I am told, was anciently a democracy,’ he said with gloating politeness. ‘If this be the will of the people, who are we to interfere?’
Priscus cleared his throat and spat over the wall. ‘Why don’t you just fuck off, Nicephorus?’ he said without turning.
Nicephorus stared back for a moment, then put his face into an oily smile and touched his forehead. I looked over the wall again. Someone had pulled all his clothes off and was dancing about like a madman before the bound woman.
‘I suppose you find these people loathsome in every respect,’ Priscus went on, now turning his head very slightly in my direction. ‘Not at all like your wonderful ancients, are they?’ He laughed. ‘I, on the other hand, must confess myself rather impressed.’ He shaded his eyes and leaned further over the wall. ‘I’d never realised these people had such white skins.’ He pointed at the naked man and at the arms of the bound woman, and laughed with soft menace.
I looked down into the theatre. He was right about the colour of the local skin — hardly surprising for people who never took their clothes off, possibly not even to wash. Whatever the colour, though, it was less than a pretty sight. I was glad of the several hundred yards of separation. They blurred the worst details, and allowed me to forget about the smell.
I stepped back from the wall and looked down to where Martin was now standing with Theodore. They must have heard the noise, but were deep in conversation about something that took their whole interest. Priscus, though, wasn’t finished.
‘Can you tell our young friend,’ he asked, ‘why these two-legged animals are so ugly?’ He now looked at Nicephorus and waited expectantly.
The Count bit his lip and tried to lick moisture on to his dry lips.
‘Come on, Nicephorus,’ he added with cold and silken charm. ‘You may be Count of Athens. But we both stand far above you in the Imperial pecking order. You’ll do well to answer when you’re spoken to.’
Nicephorus now managed a sickly smile. ‘There is a story,’ he said, ‘that, in ancient times, the common people of Athens and all their posterity were blighted with a curse of ugliness. They are said to have offended a being of great power.’ There was a loud scream from within the theatre. He stopped and looked over the wall. ‘Is My Lord not satisfied with his tour of Athens?’ he asked with desperate politeness. He waved vaguely over the jumble of ruined or converted buildings that spread below us all the way to the new wall and beyond.
‘Your stewardship of Athens is most impressive,’ I said blandly. Indeed, so far as Athens had been left with any machinery of justice, this was probably it. If Nicephorus chose not to pay attention, it wasn’t my business to act in his place. I put those increasingly horrible screams out of mind and smiled easily back at him. Our eyes met. Still smiling, I looked long into his strained, sweaty face. I thought for a moment that he’d stand up to my stare.
Then, just as I was about to be really impressed, his eyes took on a renewed shifty look, and he looked away. But he recovered fast. He laughed and stamped his foot. He looked at Priscus, who was momentarily out of action with more of his Eastern bug juice.