The manacle was of a design I hadn’t seen before. What I’d always seen was essentially a broken ring that was screwed or locked together round a limb. This was something much more complex. It can be best described as a hinged bracelet welded to a chain. When fully outstretched, it resembled the antlers of a stag beetle. As you moved them closer, one part passed inside the other. Every inward movement was attended by the click of a ratchet. The two parts went together, but wouldn’t pull apart. The only way to get them back to their original position was to push them fully together, after which they continued freely back on themselves.
Appalled, I watched as Priscus pushed them together, and then spun them forward to push them together again. ‘Such elegance of design!’ he marvelled. ‘You can adjust them to fit the largest or the tiniest of offending wrists.’
‘How do you get them off again?’ I asked. It was a stupid question. I’d already seen the answer. But there might be some hope that Priscus knew something I didn’t.
No such luck. A gloating look spread over his face, and he turned away from me to show the slaves how the mechanism worked. Barbarians as they were, and ignorant of Latin, they knew the answer without having to ask.
‘They don’t come off, my darling,’ he said at length. ‘Not, that is, unless you cut them off. And, really, who would be wasteful enough to ruin workmanship of this quality? No, dear boy, once these things are on, it’s amputation or nothing.
‘The moment we’re back in Constantinople, I’ll be straight off to a workman I know. It may be a design that has somehow slipped the memory of man. You can be sure it’s a design too simple and too useful to stay forgotten.’ He giggled and shook the manacle again at the slaves. They shrank back. ‘Do you remember what I said the other evening when you were spying on me about how fear magnifies pain? The moment you feel this bronze contraption clicking shut about your wrist, you know that, even if there is no physical pain, you are lost one way or another.’ He giggled once more and kissed the tarnished bronze. He pulled on the chain. This also was of bronze, as were the clamps that held it to the wall. It was all as secure as on the day when some grinning devil had watched it being put together.
Priscus was right about the nature of invention. Century can follow century, and some truths can lie forgotten or undiscovered. Once revealed, they can be so simple that only luck can ensure they are forgotten again. Even if whatever was eating him from within took proper hold — even if his drugs failed him — the joy alone of presenting Heraclius with his own copy of this perverted ingenuity would keep him alive till we got home.
I leaned against the cold, crumbling bricks and took a deep breath. I’d not waste time on asking myself what these wretches might have done to bring this punishment on them. Nor would I think of their screams as the lights had been withdrawn and they’d heard the locking of the door above, or of how long they must have been alive down here before the end. I’d not even look again at the skeletons. As said, two of them were still in good order. Others within reach of these had been pulled about. I wouldn’t speculate on whether some of the bones had tooth marks on them. I tried to think of Theodore and Maximin playing outside in the sunshine.
‘Weren’t the ancients just a splendid people?’ Priscus cried in another ecstasy. ‘You can forget those dumpy temples I saw you blubbering over. Their true genius lies fresh and undisturbed in every underground hideaway. If only I’d had this before me when Homer and Demosthenes were flogged into me — why, it might have made me as finicky about language as the most learned young Alaric!’
‘If this place exists,’ I said with icy control, ‘we can be reasonably sure that there are other cellars.’ I looked down at the floor. It might be worth asking if other cellars were as damp as this one. But it was a question of underground springs. Other cellars — especially elsewhere in the palace — might be bone dry.
‘You must keep looking,’ I said to the slaves. They bowed low. I hurried past them to the crumbling stairs. I’d need new shoes before I went out. The pity was I hadn’t time for another bath.
Chapter 40
As I’d expected, word hadn’t got round that I was now the only authority in Athens. That meant no one tried to get past my armed slaves to badger me with petitions for favours or justice. For the moment, persons of quality just bowed and got out of my way. A gathering mob of the local trash had followed me right from the gates of the residency. They might know something about Nicephorus. If so, it would explain their tone and looks of displeasure. But I paid no attention to the low and sinister murmur from behind. The smell of their bodies, whenever the breeze shifted, was a different matter. Was it not partly for these occasions, though, that perfume was invented?
‘Irene tells me there will be carrying slaves tomorrow,’ Martin wheezed apologetically for the second time.
I nodded and continued looking down, so I could keep myself from stepping off the raised stones into the drying filth of the streets. I was down to my last pair of fine shoes.
‘The Areopagus is nearly half a mile to walk,’ he said, as if revealing we’d have to walk all the way to Corinth. ‘It’s then quite a bit up the hill.’
‘You say it’s been rebuilt and given a roof since ancient times?’ I asked. I stopped and waited for him to catch up with me. I still hadn’t got him fixed into any scheme of regular exercise. But, if walking the streets of Athens was better than nothing, it wouldn’t do to have him fall into the mud. More to the point, the unarmed slaves were already overburdened with book rolls, and he was struggling along with all my writing materials. I pointed at what might have been the Colonnade of Nicias. ‘Isn’t that where Diogenes the Cynic lived in his wine vat?’ I asked.
Martin shook his head. ‘According to one of Aristotle’s letters,’ came the learned response, ‘he lived just above the spring flood line of the river.’
I nodded and looked about. Apart from the smoke-blackened colonnade, we were now among the monumental buildings Justinian had paid for. They were smaller, of course, than in the centre of Constantinople. But this might have passed for one of the secondary districts of the Capital where it touched on the centre. There was no feeling, among these arched buildings and their many-coloured stones, of the real — or perhaps just the old — Athens. One more junction, though, and we’d be into the Areopagus district. Though not ancient, the buildings here were old enough to give an impression of authenticity.
From here, worse luck, it would be straight up to where every association — however old the stones might be — would be relentlessly modern.
I looked sideways at Martin. His face had taken on an abstracted look. ‘Would you mind telling me,’ I asked in Latin, ‘what Sveta meant earlier about a witch?’
The answer I got was a tightening of his face and a deep blush. But I repeated the question. We still had a hundred yards to go, and there could be no escaping my direct question.
He swallowed and looked down at the dried mud of the street. ‘Oh, you know what Sveta can be like,’ he said. ‘She’s taken it into her head that the Lady Euphemia is the demon who’s always lived in the residency. She’s frightened for Theodore — and for you.’ He trailed off with a mumbled apology.
I smiled. Yes, I knew Sveta very well. As for Euphemia, if those wild couplings did eventually kill me, I’d be in no mood to complain. ‘Dearest Martin,’ I said in a condescending voice, ‘we both know that Euphemia came here three years ago with Theodore. You really should keep your wife under better control.’
Some hope of that, however! We walked on in silence.
The Bishop of Athens had finished preaching a sermon of the most astonishing perversity. Two of the Asiatic Greek bishops had even dared to walk out. The other Greek delegates had looked at each other and murmured with rising disgust. I could be glad that Martin had made it into something merely banal in Latin. But that was long over, and I was now deep into my opening speech. This was, I could see, going even better than I’d hoped. There had been no time for prior composition. But, if the real ancients — those, that is, for whom Greek wasn’t essentially a foreign language to be got by rule, and never spoken without notes or fear of going wrong — could speak extempore, the learned young Alaric wouldn’t be seen glancing down at a text. Though I had answers to every question that might be raised, it would be for the best if no one thought of these questions until after he was back home. And so I’d begun with lush flattery of all present, and had then moved to a passage that I’d intended to be of terrifying complexity, and that was running fast out of control.