‘Another reason I’m going to leave you here,’ he went on, ‘is because you are a bit of a liability. I will defend Athens as no one ever has in its long history.’ He stopped for a gentle laugh, and counted on his fingers. ‘The place fell to the Persians, and the Spartans, and to King Philip of Macedon, and to Sulla, and any number of times to the barbarians. I’m really not sure it has ever fought off a determined siege. Well, it will stand up to this siege with Uncle Priscus in charge of things. My reports are that your speeches to that council have been quite spell-binding. That, plus the horror of watching your slow death in front of the walls, will have all those priests marching back into their hall and voting without a single dissenting voice for the novel and probably heretical view that the Will of Christ is a single aspect of His undivided Nature. So, between now and Christmas, I’ll roll up on Constantinople and present the Great Augustus with a double triumph. You can be sure I’ll fuck that bastard eunuch over before I’m finished. If he drags out the time left to him washing plates in a military brothel, I’ll not have been the man I think I still am.’
He stopped again and put his knife away. He looked closely into my face. ‘But, Alaric, I haven’t come here just to make you feel bad. You must accept that I always have rather liked you. The other night, you heard me tell Nicephorus about the nature of pain. Believe me, it really does exist in two dimensions. There is the pain direct. Then, there’s the real terror of pain which is the knowledge of what it does to the body. That’s why execution by torture is always preceded by a tour of the instruments of pain and an explanation of their use. It’s to break the will of a victim — so he’s ready to start screaming and puking even as you lay hands on him.
‘You have to believe me when I say that the first kind of pain you can deal with. It’s simply a matter of giving up on the idea of any continuing existence for the body. Sooner or later, one of your vital organs will fail you — or whoever Ludinus is screeching at will take mercy on you and go just a little too far. Until then, what you have to do is go as deeply inside yourself as you can. When your seared and mangled privy parts are held up before your eyes, you try not to think of them as your own dearest possession. When you feel the hooked glove, glowing white from the brazier, drawn again and again over your body, and your fingers are nipped off at every joint, and your tongue is drawn out to unthinkable length before you feel the serrated shears pushed between your toothless jaws — don’t think of that leaking, convulsing parody of the human form you have become as bearing any relation to the gloriously pretty thing I’ve been lusting over since we first met.
‘Above all, dear boy,’ he ended, ‘do remember that we’ll all be watching you from the safety of the walls and praying for your soul. You really won’t be alone out there!’ He stopped and got wearily to his feet, and went over to the dying fire behind him. He came back with a strip of parchment he’d set alight. He let it burn about a quarter of the way down, then blew it out. He giggled gently as he pushed its smoking end under my nose, and I shrank back from him with a gagged wail of despair.
For the first time ever, he’d managed to break me. Without that gag, I’d have been screeching prayers for mercy. As it was, I lost control of all bodily functions. It was only the sudden roaring in my ears that blotted out most of the soft laughter.
But Priscus had no time for the full enjoyment of his triumph. He got up again and reached for a little bag he’d left at his feet. ‘If you were anyone else,’ he said, ‘I’d kill you here — not, mind you, because it would be a mercy, but because you do know all about that secret way into Athens.’ He smiled and leaned down again and looked at me. ‘But I do know exactly who you are. You’re Alaric the Decent.’ He stood back and his voice took on a bitter edge. ‘You’d never betray those you loved — no, not even for the certainty of a clean death.’ He settled his voice and smiled again. ‘I suppose that will console you through the long ordeal that Ludinus is still elaborating in his filthy mind. I know you don’t believe in God or any kind of Final Judgement. Even so, you can keep your mind from giving way entirely with the knowledge that you’ll die as decently as you’ve lived.’ He stopped. This time, he really had finished. Without looking back, he walked slowly out of sight, and left me alone in the growing silence of the night.
I do believe the convention, at this point in my story, is for me to explain how I gave way to despair — how I finally called on God for help, and how, when nothing happened, I wept the tears of the young and bright and beautiful who knows exactly what will be done to him. Perhaps I should also describe how I tried and failed to bite off part of my gag and choke myself on it. But, since you know that I’m sitting here in Canterbury, seventy-odd years after the event, in a good light and with a cup of strong French red beside me, would you really have me slow down what is already a somewhat protracted narrative? I think not. So, let’s hurry over those sleepless and embarrassing hours that I passed between about midnight and shortly before the first light of another dawn, and move straight to the matter of my escape.
I thought at first the gentle sawing on the ropes that held my hands behind me was part of the torment. Ludinus was no match for Priscus when it came to breaking a man. But he’d certainly enjoy strutting about in front of me, promising to reconsider my end if I only sucked off my guards or whatever. But it was a child’s hand that pushed my wrist out of the way as the knife cut deeper into the restraining knots.
The girl I’d fed beside the tomb of Hierocles now knelt before me to cut at the leather band that held in the gag. She put a finger to her lips as it came free. She pressed the knife into my hands and watched as I cut my legs free. She pointed over past the big tents. ‘There are horses over there,’ she whispered. ‘There’s only one man to look after them.’ As silently as she’d come over to me, she stole back into the darkness, leaving me wholly alone in a camp where everyone who mattered was fumbling about pissy drunk where not already asleep.
The horses neighed with soft alarm as I turned over the dead body of the man who’d been supposed to guard them. Priscus must have got him from behind and snapped his neck before he was even aware of those strong and bony hands. He wasn’t a big man, and his clothes were a tight fit on me. But I was already as filthy as any other barbarian, and I’d easily pass as one of the Germanics who’d taken service with the Avar horde. I looked for a while at the largest of the horses. If I set out now, I’d not be missed until I was nearly back under the walls of Athens. We must have come well past the ruins of Decelea. So far as I could tell, we were some way into the first of the mountain passes. But Athens could be no more than a few dozen miles back along the road.
I patted the horse and whispered something soothing. I looked up at the sky. It would be dawn soon enough. Then, the less utterly hung-over barbarians would be up and shambling about. Every time I let myself think where I was and what I still hadn’t fully escaped, I’d give way to another attack of nerves. Even the very young don’t bounce back at once from that. Then, as I was about to swing myself on to the horse and make my best getaway, I heard the unmistakable voice of Nicephorus.
It came clearly through the silence of the fading night. ‘You must take me to the Great Chief,’ he pleaded in Greek. ‘I have information of the utmost importance.’
‘Oh, shut the fuck up, you bastard Greekling!’ came the answer in Slavic.
There was another babble in Greek, followed by the sound of a blow and then a squeal of pain.
If only I’d got straight on that bloody horse, I’d now be fifty yards beyond the camp, and I’d never have heard Nicephorus. You’ll understand that I’d still have been shitting myself from terror, if only I’d had anything left inside me to void. If I shut my eyes, I could still see Ludinus gloating into my face, and Priscus finishing what he’d begun. But I stepped away from the horse and looked up again at the sky. If Aelric of Richborough would already have been out of the camp, the Lord Senator Alaric had been told of work that needed to be done. Even so, I stood a while longer beside the horse. Grinding my teeth with annoyance took my mind off the less creditable fact that I’d broken out all over in a sweat, and I was trembling almost beyond control. But I did eventually step away from the horse. What other answer can you give when duty calls this plainly?