I looked again at the scraps. There were other words and phrases in both Greek and Syriac. But they were too fragmentary to make sense without a long inspection. It was all in the hand of a man unused to writing for himself. Even making this allowance, there was something unhinged about the shape and direction of the Greek letters. If Nicephorus had been writing with his left hand, they might have been formed with less appearance of some overpowering emotion.
‘Is there more of this?’ I asked.
Euphemia nodded. She added that the other scraps made no sense at all, but she’d had them set on a limestone table and covered over with large pieces of window glass.
I nodded my approval. I nodded again as she explained that she’d put the office off limits to further cleaning and had locked the door. I’d overlook that she was ploughing as hard as any woman could in my own furrow — there was no doubt she was a woman of sense in more than just business.
‘My Lord will forgive me if I wear my plain robe for the speech,’ the Dispensator broke in. ‘His Holiness is Servant of the Servants of God. It would never do for his representative to address a council in a spirit of less than the meekest humility.’
Meek humility! I fixed my gaze on the icon of Saint Peter that was the one splash of colour on the otherwise bare walls, and tried desperately not to laugh. If he’d got himself up from head to toe in purple silk, but omitted that astonishing text I’d finally wheedled out of him, meekness and humility might have been a more appropriate description of what the Dispensator had in mind.
He looked carefully into my face. He smiled again — and, once again, it was suspiciously warm. ‘The Lord Priscus may have his reasons,’ he said lightly. ‘But I fail to see why the Lord Bishop of Athens cannot attend this afternoon’s session.’
‘I understand that Priscus has need of him for dealing with the monks,’ I said with what I hoped was a casual shrug. ‘Several of the abbots have objected to the wholesale commandeering of so many of their men. But, since the common people of Athens won’t lift a finger for the defence, the Lord Bishop is needed to explain the plenary nature of your instructions.’
‘It is a shame,’ he said with the mildest possible frown, ‘that, apart from you and Martin, the Lord Bishop is the only one of us fluent in both Imperial languages. Without his presence, it seems the Greeks will have to rely wholly on the interpreters.’
I gave a regretful smile. I’d not have described the Bishop of Athens as ‘fluent’ in Latin — the best I could say was that it was slightly less eccentric than his Greek.
‘Still,’ the Dispensator said, ‘the needs of defence must be respected.’
I stood up and watched as Irene finished putting the scraps away. Anything regarding Nicephorus was important. But this really would have to wait. ‘It will be only fitting, My Lord,’ I said, ‘if I lead you with my own hands to the speaking lectern.’
‘I tell you, he’s gone out again looking for trouble!’ Gundovald quavered from his bench in the street. He was still outside the meeting hall. So was everyone else. Leading them into battle outside the walls would have been easier than ushering them through that open door into the relative cool and darkness.
‘My Lord Bishop,’ I said impatiently, ‘your secretary has been borrowed for the day by His Magnificence the Commander of the East. I understand he is needed for his — for his ability to take notes in Latin.’ Why Priscus should want to make notes in Latin wasn’t a matter I cared to discuss.
‘Oh, but he’s been back since then,’ came the reply. ‘If he’s gone off again, it’s in search of loose women.’ He put his hands together and muttered something pious and disapproving. ‘He’s the son of the King’s Mayor. I can’t take him home covered in open sores.’
I called over one of my slaves. ‘You’ve seen the boy,’ I said. ‘There can’t be many like him in Athens. Take two of the younger men and make a search of the inns and brothels. If they’re still closed, just walk in. When you lay hands on him, bring him straight back. Don’t even bother getting him dressed.’ I laughed at the thought of that small and unclothed figure — and it would be a diversion from the council to see it — and turned back to Gundovald. ‘I’m having him brought here,’ I said. ‘Now, please — I do most earnestly beg of you — get inside that building. All else aside, you’ll get sunstroke out here.’
I looked over the closed faces of the Greeks. ‘The last one of you through that door,’ I hissed, ‘is no friend to me or the Lord Priscus.’
A few of them tried to stare back at me. But the last one to bolt for the door tripped over his robe and had to crawl the last few feet in the dust.
With a gentle splash, and then a gurgle before it settled down into a steady, regular dribble of water into the glass collecting bowl, the clock was put in motion. As Gundovald was finally prodded from behind into silence, I stood up from my chair and bowed. There was a rustling of cloth and some scraping of the chairs and benches, as everyone stood up and bowed at me. I’d sent Martin back with Irene on some made-up errand. I was, I could say with reasonable assurance, the only man present, aside from two heroically useless interpreters, fluent in both Greek and Latin. I smiled and stepped down off my platform. Ignoring the protocol, I walked into the semicircle of seats and opened in Latin.
‘Reverend Fathers,’ I called with a dramatic sweep of my arm, ‘you will be aware of a possible difference between the Latin and the Greek branches of the Universal Church. While no Greek theologian of general note has definitely pronounced yet on the issue, the most learned Hilary of Milan is said to have declared that the faculty of willing is, by necessity, an aspect of Our Lord’s Nature, and not of His Person. If this be the case, Jesus Christ may be said to possess a Human as well as a Divine Will — one for each part of His Nature.’ I stopped beside a deacon who represented the Bishop of Constance, and tried not to scowl at him. If he’d been a Greek, I’d already have marked him down for a transfer to somewhere perfectly horrid for the trouble he’d managed to cause me. I stared up at the eye of the dome far overhead and at the dark blue of the sky far above that, and looked down again, a friendly smile now on my face.
‘But I am familiar with the sermon preached by Hilary,’ I started again very smoothly. I stopped again for the interpreter to come out of his stammering attack. As I’d expected, he was again putting me so badly into Greek that his grasp of Latin could easily be doubted. ‘The sermon was not corrected by Hilary before he was called unto God by a visitation of the plague. It may, therefore, be doubted if so definite an opinion was ever truly in his mind.’
I was about to move to my last point, when there was a sudden noise outside. It began as a blare of distant horns that went on and on. As that came to a close, the thunderous cheering continued. It all underlined how close we were to every part of the walls, and of how utterly and deeply surrounded we were. The oldest and most doddery in my audience could have eased himself out of the hall and climbed on to one of the wooden platforms before the noise of the Great Chief’s arrival had begun to die away.
But this was, in the immediate sense, a matter for Priscus. I stared about the room and waited for everyone to come back to order. Simeon had covered his eyes and was bobbing up and down in his place. One of the Latin bishops yawned and pulled a face at the Bishop of Ephesus, who was dabbing sweat from his forehead.
I held up both arms for attention. ‘An opinion of far more decisive weight than some reported utterance,’ I said with loud cheer, ‘is that of the Universal Bishop, His Holiness of Rome.’ Worse luck, the interpreter had got the hated — if possibly defective — title spot on in Greek. But I stared down the sour looks it produced, and went on with my introduction of the Dispensator. All the Western delegates nodded their approval. I’ll swear the man himself purred, and I stepped over to him and, as promised, led him to the speaking place.