I paused to draw breath and for a shift of tone. ‘But, men of Athens,’ I now cried, ‘the barbarians are at the very gates of your city. Both duty and interest surely require us to set all differences aside and work together for the common good. Let us-’
Any thoughts I might have had of repeating my oratorical triumph of the morning came to an end as a stone thudded hard into my chest and I found myself sitting in the dust. I sprawled left just in time to avoid another stone aimed at my head, and I heard it land somewhere behind me. Someone far back in the crowd laughed unpleasantly, and everyone took a step forward. I saw a man at the front bend to pick up another stone. I scrambled to my feet and hurried over to where the Dispensator was standing in the doorway of the court building.
‘Best get everyone inside,’ I said. ‘I’ll see what I can do out here.’
I might have sounded more in charge of things if I hadn’t now tripped over one of the uneven steps and fallen straight into his arms. He steadied me and pushed me under cover. He gave me a funny look and walked into the street. Paying no attention to the stone that brushed the sleeve of his best robe, he raised both arms to the cowering bishops who hadn’t already got themselves inside. I heard another stone slap against one of the walls. I heard another go high and rattle against the tiles of the roof. Sword out, Priscus had got himself and his men under cover of a bricked-up porch. What good they’d do against this lot I couldn’t say. But one of the older bishops had dropped his walking stick. I bent and picked it up. It might be good for something.
‘Get that door shut!’ I called in Latin as yet another stone landed at my feet and I went over beside the Dispensator, who was looking annoyed at the further disruption. I was about to suggest a quick dash inside. If we barred the doors, the mob might eventually decide not to try breaking in after us.
But Priscus had now finished his conference with the militia heads. He stepped out from the porch, sword in one hand, my convenor’s bell in the other. He stopped in the middle of the street and ignored the roof tile that landed at his feet. He turned and grinned at me. I wondered how he’d got the bell from where I’d left it. But he stepped a few paces towards the mob that was continuing to move steadily forward, clubs in hand, looks of twisted hate stamped on their faces. He laughed into the faces and began ringing the bell. It sounded loud in the still air of the afternoon, and the mob came to an uncertain halt. As I wondered if he’d gone raving mad, I heard a shuffling from up the hill. They came from the top of the hill, where I hadn’t seen them. They came from the side streets, which is where they must have been sitting about all day. It looked at the time as if they really had emerged like armed men from the dragon’s teeth in the legend of Jason. But, as the bell stopped ringing, and Priscus raised his sword, the several dozen armed men from the better classes of Athens formed a dense and organised mass in the street, and stood waiting for instructions.
‘You have a choice,’ Priscus cried at the mob. ‘You can get back to your filthy burrows, and leave your lives to the defence of your betters. Or you can suffer the penalty of those who really piss off the Commander of the East.’ He looked round at his men. Some of them had swords. Some had long, spiked clubs. Some had bows with arrows already in place. He looked back at the mob, which still hadn’t come forward, but didn’t look inclined to disperse. He laughed and put himself at the head of the militia. ‘If these vermin really mean business,’ he said, ‘so do we! Keep together — no falling out for any purpose — but we go forward and kill until the streets are clear.’
The Dispensator took hold of my arm. ‘I think we can leave things with the Lord Priscus,’ he said.
As he drew me back inside, I continued looking at the opening moves of a street battle that, with Priscus on one side, could have only one outcome. The men right at the front of the mob did make some effort to stare back. But those behind were already making a quiet bolt for the side streets that radiated from the bottom of the hill. And then the front men themselves turned and ran.
And that was it. Priscus sheathed his sword and bowed in our direction. ‘I can’t answer for the enemy outside the walls,’ he called out. ‘But the enemy within should take no further interest in your exploration of the Nature of Our Lord and Saviour.’
His men put away their weapons and let up a happy cheer.
The Dispensator was plucking harder at my sleeve. ‘My Lord Gundovald is ready to take up his speech again whenever you choose to reconvene the council,’ he said.
I nodded and forced myself not to hurry forward as we walked back inside.
I should have expected there would be a trap. But the immense length and irrelevance of his text, combined with an inclination to dwell on external events, had left me unprepared for when Gundovald finally looked up and began to speak extempore. Much of this was as irrelevant as his text. Three sentences, however — uncharacteristically clear sentences, I might add — had skewered me on one of my weak points. Back in Constantinople, I’d dithered for months between making up a doctrine of a Single Will and making up a similar but separate doctrine of a Single Energy. I’d finally decided on a Single Will because it had a more logical neatness, and because it was better calculated to turn Monophysite heads. Now the old fool had raised the possibility of a Single Energy, and gone straight on to cite the Acts of two ecumenical councils against it. Luckily, without Martin there to assist, the duty interpreter had so mangled his words that the Greeks were unaware of what he’d really said. But the Latin delegates were beginning to look as if they might start thinking for themselves.
I was coming to the second half hour of the water clock in my speech of clarification. The interpreter was totally lost, and reduced several times to consulting with his colleague for the right words in Greek — and a fat lot of good that did him or his listeners: his stammered paraphrase was as wildly off mark as an arrow shot by a dying cripple. But I had to stamp out the fires of doubt among the Latins.
‘You will find the same declared clearly in the eighth chapter of definitions to the Acts of the Council of Constantinople held in the reign of the Great Justinian of august memory.’ Here, I shut my eyes and made my best job of translating the relevant passage from memory into Latin. ‘Moreover, before coming to any conclusion about particular facts of orthodoxy, I would remind the most learned fathers here assembled of the rules by which orthodoxy is distinguished from heresy. A man may depart from orthodoxy in two ways. First, he may deny the Gospels outright. Second, he may deny those logical inferences from the Gospels to which he chooses not to submit. A heretic departs from orthodoxy in the second of these ways. As such, he remains within the True Faith, though in more or less grave error.
‘I do venture here to correct a verbal slip of the most learned Bishop in his definition of apostasy. An apostate does not deviate from orthodoxy. Rather, he moves from a position of belief in the Gospels to a position of disbelief. Apostasy is further to be distinguished from heathenism and blasphemy. A heathen is one who has never believed in the Gospels. A blasphemer may or may not believe in the Gospels, but always treats them and all based upon them in a manner that causes deliberate scandal among the Faithful.’
There was a loud breaking of glass overhead, and a large stone crashed on to the floor a few feet to my left. A few shards of broken glass settled on my robe. I raised my arms to quell the rising panic within the hall and looked at the Dispensator. He shrugged and got up. Just before the main door, he turned and made a long bow to me. Listening in the silence that followed, I heard a shouted order that wasn’t from Priscus, followed by a scream of pain. I swallowed and tried for a smile as I looked round the hall. The interpreter had vanished under his table, and the minute clerk had thrown down his stylus in despair. But the Dispensator was now back in the room. He shook his head and sat down again. Another moment, and he was scratching away with his stylus as if there had been no disturbance.