The Dispensator stood back from his own pleased inspection of the brickwork. ‘I don’t know how long Martin waited beside that doorway in the rock,’ he went on, finally turning to the first questions I’d asked him. ‘But you really are a fool if you think he’d have followed your stupid orders. He dithered. He prayed. He dithered again. Long before the dawn, he and his wife were shouting for admission outside my monastery. They’d left every armed slave to watch for your return, and had taken their chance alone in the streets of Athens. It was Sveta who eventually took over the job of explaining to me what had happened.’
I looked away from the withering stare and walked beside him back along the tunnel. A bath and some wondrously clean clothes had restored me to an outward semblance of order. Martin had nursed me through another sobbing attack, and the Dispensator had shown enough tact to take Priscus out of my office to explain the defence orders he’d given in our absence. Why I’d been brought down here I couldn’t say. But it saved me the embarrassment of joining Priscus on the walls, where he must, even at this moment, be feeding his vanity on the shouted welcome back of the whole militia.
There was a loud scraping behind us as someone finished pushing his way down here from the residency. The Dispensator took the half sheet of papyrus from the silent monk and moved closer to one of the lamps. Now there was no draught of air through the tomb of Hierocles, it was increasingly stuffy down here. I could see the point of sealing the only other exit. But this did make the place distinctly less welcoming as a place of refuge for the entire household. It wasn’t my eyes — the lamps had burned distinctly lower ever since they’d been placed in the wall niches.
The Dispensator grunted and held the message out for me to read. I took it into hands that, try as I might, still wouldn’t stop shaking, and translated: ‘The mob is trying to break into the main granary. The monks of Saint John beg to be dispensed from their obligation not to draw blood.’ Either they hadn’t noticed that Priscus was back, or they’d chosen to stay under Church control.
I handed the sheet back and straightened up. ‘Give me one of your pens,’ I demanded of the secretary. After a nod from the Dispensator, I scribbled the required permission on the back of the sheet and watched as the secretary squeezed himself back into the fissure that led to the residency.
‘So you think Nicephorus and Balthazar weren’t just using the place as a convenient means of access?’ I asked with a return of my own to some earlier stage in our long and disordered conversation. ‘You think they were running things from down here?’
The Dispensator looked back along the tunnel. ‘While searching for you and Priscus,’ he said, ‘I made a full inspection of this place. I cannot say that I was pleased by what I found.’ He put up a hand to silence any questions. ‘I have been in Athens just fifteen days, and have been mostly unable to follow anything said in my presence. But I have now had the chance to speak properly with His Grace the Bishop of Athens, and with Martin. I do not like anything that I have heard. And I think little of you for your stupidity. I might have hoped that even you would not be so blinded by lust.’
‘Where is Euphemia?’ I broke in. I was silenced by a cold look. I stepped back from him and waited obediently for him to continue.
‘The creature of whom you speak has withdrawn herself from the residency,’ the Dispensator said with quiet emphasis. ‘You may be assured that I have neither seen not set hands on her. Where she has gone is her business, and I do not suggest that you should make enquiries of her whereabouts. To be sure, no one whom you may command to begin a search will obey you. I have now moved into the residency, and I propose to ensure that you concentrate on your proper duties, which are to complete your chairing of the council and to assist in the defence of Athens.’
I let him go first through the narrow opening towards the residency. The tunnel itself had been transformed by a few dozen lamps. This long fissure was as horrid now as when I’d first pushed through it with Priscus behind me. But I kept my nerve by explaining in full the equal but different horror of our position: how we’d all been marked down by Heraclius himself for destruction, and how there was no certainty that any degree of success in Athens would change his mind.
The Dispensator was still questioning me about probable events in Constantinople when I stepped, right behind him, into the residency cellar and came face to face with Martin.
There was still a tremor in his voice. But he did manage to control himself. He looked at the Dispensator. ‘The Lord Priscus sends greetings, and begs that you may join him on the walls to discuss a matter of some delicacy.’ He gave me a despairing look, before handing me a stack of documents for my immediate attention. The top one was an order for looters to be summarily hanged. I’d seal this in my office. Together, we’d all of us hold the walls somehow. What happened after that could be faced as and when.
I lay back and waited for the long and luxuriant glow of another orgasm to reach its end. At last, I sat up and pulled Euphemia towards me. I tried to look into the faint outline of her face. ‘I can hide you for the time being,’ I said with slow emphasis. ‘Tomorrow, or the next day, however, I must insist on your reappearance in this building. Then, we will go together out into the sunlight, and you’ll stop behaving like some Syrian monk who’s been too long on the top of his pillar.’ I shut off her objections with a gentle slap to the face. As agreed, she had slipped away the moment I was through that doorway. Where she’d hidden herself I didn’t think to ask. But I had to stop a lunacy that was sending even the Dispensator into holy terrors. It would get her killed. It would bring me into scandal.
‘Your name is Euphemia of Tarsus,’ I went on. ‘You arrived here at the invitation of Nicephorus. You have a child to look after. If you want to see Constantinople, you’ll be well advised to put all these childish fancies aside. Do you understand me?’
‘And is My Lord proposing to make me his wife?’ she asked with an apparent burst of sanity.
I looked harder at her in the gloom. I’d not answer that I had higher ambitions, when I eventually did marry, than a provincial widow — even if the sex was heavenly. But it was a reassuringly female question. I was thinking of what answer to give when I heard another long and muffled roar of collective anger from somewhere outside the building.
‘I think it is the common people again,’ Euphemia said. ‘They spent all night trying to burn down the houses of everyone who is defending the walls. It may be that they have again found someone to kill.’
I reached out for where I’d left my wine cup and took a long sip. I got on to my knees and pulled her towards me again. There was time yet before she had to go back into hiding, and I was uneasy from thoughts of what might so easily have already been my fate before the walls of Athens.
Chapter 57
As the sun rose on my eighth day since stepping ashore at Piraeus, I made my way to a resumed council through streets that were littered with uncollected bodies. If it hadn’t been for the grim-faced monks and the few armed civilians who’d been taken away from holding the walls, I might have thought Athens had already fallen to the barbarians. But I’d just walked the whole circuit of the walls with Martin, and watched the masses of armed men who were now coming together in loose formations outside the range of our arrows.