That was news to me. But there was no doubt the Avars were savages. By comparison, the Lombards were almost genteel. I gave a curt bow and went over to where Martin was looking glum.
‘Get up,’ I whispered, offering a hand. He looked up from where he was sitting on the ground. I did think of assuring him that we were all perfectly safe behind the city wall. But he knew me too well to believe anything I might say about that. ‘I want you to hurry back to the residency,’ I said. ‘Take two of the armed slaves who came out with us. Do tell Sveta to stop her packing.’ I looked carefully at him.
He swallowed and gave a slight bow.
‘Also,’ I went on, ‘I want to make sure that the supplies we bought yesterday are properly stored.’
I watched his dithery progress down the hill. Show Martin a sword, and he might faint away with terror. Give him the job of producing order out of chaos, and he’d generally shine. I thought briefly about the thickness of our own main gate. I wondered yet again if the residency had any deep cellars, and if access to them might somehow be concealed from an armed breakin. But this was something best looked at in person, and while the light held up. As Martin went out of sight behind one of the monasteries, I turned back to the others.
More of the militia leaders had appeared, and Priscus was explaining something about the western gate. Their heads were coming closer and closer together over the map.
Chapter 42
‘I rather think the hour is up,’ the Dispensator said, now beside me. ‘Shall we not resume proceedings?’
I stared past him. ‘I think His Grace the Bishop of Nicaea will now put in an appearance,’ I said.
And Simeon it was. Dressed in his full clerical finery, he staggered in the heat and from the effort of running uphill. He stopped for a moment and waved his stick at a couple of small, very dark boys who’d got in his way. As they danced out of reach, he hurried forward again, and picked his way over the stones that littered the clearing at the top of the hill.
‘The end is upon us!’ he cried in shrill terror. ‘The hour of repentance is come!’ He tripped over a stone, but clambered straight up. He gave one look at the sight beyond the walls and raised his arms. ‘“For the great day of His wrath is come; and who shall be able to stand?”’ he now squealed. He sat down heavily on the ground and poured a handful of dust over his head. It spoiled what was left of his hair styling, and settled on his face where the tears had been running.
I stood over him and glowered. ‘And where, My Lord Bishop,’ I asked with quiet menace, ‘have you been all day?’
His answer was another desperate look at the gathering mass beyond the walls, and several more verses from Revelation.
I finally gathered that he’d been watching a continual stream of refugees, from round about and from Decelea, entering through both gates. It seemed, as he’d listened to the tale of horror that Decelea had become, that he’d lost all sense of time or of his duties. He’d now come up here, I gathered, because, unless he took the more punishing route up to the Acropolis, or grew a pair of wings, the Areopagus was the highest point in Athens.
The Dispensator gave him a very cold stare before looking away. ‘There is, I believe,’ he said to me, ‘a most ingenious metaphor yet to be heard in Gundovald’s speech. I am told he began work on the text in March. I can understand your concern at its lack of superficial relevance. But his kinsmen in the Frankish royal house would not be pleased to learn that it was never delivered in full.’
As good a reason as any, I thought, to get back under cover. There was sod all I could do out here. This was definitely a job for Priscus — and one he’d surely do to the best of his considerable ability.
But Simeon had now started a bubbling laugh. ‘We’re under siege,’ he sobbed. ‘You can’t go on with the council.’
‘I must remind you, My Lord Senator, that the hour is up,’ the Dispensator said with flat finality. He gave Simeon a contemptuous sniff.
Simeon responded by bursting properly into tears. For once, they were making full sense to each other without any need for interpreters.
Behind me, I heard Priscus laugh. ‘If you don’t want a good, hard kicking, dear cousin,’ he called over, ‘you’ll do as you’re bleeding told. If Christ has a Single Will, the rest of us can at least agree on our duties.’ He stood up and pointed at the old court building.
‘My Lord Fortunatus,’ I whispered, ‘please take His Grace of Nicaea inside. Please also apologise for me over the continued delay. I will rejoin you as soon as I can.’
The Dispensator nodded.
I watched as he got Simeon over the stones and hurried him past the Monastery of Saint Dionysius the Areopagite. Outside the meeting hall, the street was crowded with a mob of bishops. I saw one of them climb into a carrying chair. Another was trying to pull his robes off. The Dispensator got to them before they could all run away. But I could doubt if even he would be able to get everyone back inside and seated in readiness for the session to resume.
I walked over to where Priscus had gone back to jabbing a finger at his map. His militia people bowed to me and stood respectfully back. ‘So we definitely are working together again,’ I said in Latin. I looked down at a chorus of screams beyond the walls. But the dust was now too general for me to see its cause. ‘Can I take it that you switched last night, when you saw the flickering from Decelea?’
Priscus grinned back at me.
There was nothing new to be learned from putting this into words. But it was worth spelling out for the avoidance of any doubt. ‘The deal now is,’ I added, ‘that I give you a free hand in the defence of Athens. You keep your nose out of Church business. If the walls don’t give way, we can both go back to Constantinople covered in glory. The Great Augustus can forget all about whatever may have happened in Alexandria. That bag of eunuch shit can look on in helpless rage as a few palace trinkets get melted down to commemorate what we’ve achieved in Athens.’
Priscus smiled and gave me a gentle nod. ‘We stand or fall together, dear boy,’ he said.
If I hadn’t known him better, I’d almost have believed him.
I looked down the hill again. The Dispensator still hadn’t got everyone back inside. Instead, he was deep in conversation with Simeon through the Bishop of Athens. As I was about to go down towards them, the Dispensator took Simeon roughly by the arm and pointed up in my direction. I looked past them to the foot of the hill. My heart skipped a beat as I saw the dark and silent crowd pressing forward. At the least, it looked as if there would be yet another delay before Gundovald could get back into his interminable speech.
As convenor of a Church council, it just wouldn’t have done to come out with a sword. Priscus was armed. So, after a fashion, were his militiamen. I had my own three guards who hadn’t gone off with Martin. That didn’t add up to much of a defence against a mob of several hundred of the Athenian lower classes.
But I made an effort to look confident. ‘Be about your business,’ I called out. ‘The city defences are in good hands.’
There was a low muttering of anger. The crowd parted and someone stepped forward. ‘You’ve brought them here,’ he said in more or less comprehensible Greek. He pointed at me and then at Priscus. ‘What have you done with the Boss?’
‘If you are referring to His Excellency the Count of Athens,’ I said very slowly, ‘it is he who has withdrawn from his duties. If any of you have information as to his whereabouts, a reward will be paid. If you have nothing else to say, I do suggest you go back about whatever business occupies you by day.’