‘Good for defence,’ Authari whispered, for the moment forgetting he was no longer at the head of a Lombard raiding party. ‘I’ll guess the main building could hold off an army for days.’
I silenced him with a frown, and followed Demetrius up the stairs.
On the upper floor, there were about fifteen living and business rooms, some interconnected. All were approached by a corridor lit during the day by glass bricks set into the roof above. There could be no windows in the corridor, as they’d have looked out into the main square, and compromised the security of the Legation.
The doors that led off the other side into the rooms of my suite were all of solid wood with locks that turned from both sides. The rooms looked inward over the central gardens. The ground floor covered the same area, but the connecting corridor had no natural light except when the doors were open to the rooms leading off it. These were to be the quarters for my own slaves, and had a little kitchen that made me independent of the main household.
Right at the end of the corridor was a bathhouse and furnace that would be for my use.
Outside the main reception room and my own bedroom next door was a balcony. A bronze staircase led down from this to one of the central gardens, where trees and a fountain promised relief from the blazing summer heat. Looking out from the window of my office, I saw five monks shuffling about in a garden beyond this with watering cans and various garden implements.
Thinking back to Authari’s comment, I wondered if this might be a weak point for defence. I put the thought from my mind. This was Constantinople, not Rome. On the whole journey up from the dockside, I hadn’t seen a single fight, let alone a killing.
The upper rooms were placed to catch the morning sun, but had ceilings high enough to make the afternoons bearable. They were furnished with a taste and luxury that any self-respecting priest would have denounced as a mortal sin. But although it was Church property, the Legation was the place from where the Pope spoke through his representatives to the Emperor himself, and where, from time to time, the Emperor and the greater dignitaries would have to be entertained. For reasons of obvious prestige, its splendour could not fall below a certain level.
As we entered the suite, a few slaves and even officials were running frantically about with dusters and aired linen. Demetrius fawned around me, trying to divert my attention from the obvious change of accommodation.
‘We trust the young citizen will not be overcome by the splendour of these rooms,’ he said in his poor Latin. ‘We is told that Old Rome has not a single working bath in these last days of the world. Here, the young citizen has his own all for himself.’
I sniffed, and asked to see the toilet. Very important things are toilets. Forget beds and chairs, which can always be found at short notice. The toilets tell you exactly how civilised a house is, and your own position within it. I had to admit these ones did me proud. The fittings were of marble with four seats of polished ebony. A channel ran under the seats, for water to carry away the waste. Another channel ran in front to give continual water for the wiping sponges that were set on sticks of elegant design.
The glazed tiles that covered the floor and the lower walls were of a variegated blue. The plaster that ran above these was a dark and luxurious red. There had once been a fresco on the wall opposite the window, but this was now painted over in the same red, and I was unable to see what images or designs it had once had. The only evidence for it was a few patches of colour that had leached through the red.
Demetrius had to grope about to find the handle that turned on the water. With a gurgle that sounded like a belch from the depths of the Legation building, and then a hiss that died to a gentle splashing, the water burst up in a slightly higher point of the latrine. At once, as the water flowed through its appointed channels, the room came to life. The little tiles of the channels turned from dull to various shades of sparkling blue. The glazed tiles of the lower walls bounced back the shimmering light thrown up from them.
Come the winter months, ducts set beneath the floor would carry heated air from a central boiler to keep the latrine warm. For the moment, the gentle but continuous trickling of the water would keep it cool on the hottest days. This was a room appointed both for practical use and for mental reflection. I felt I’d be spending a fair bit of time in here.
I smiled inwardly as I realised Demetrius had pulled a muscle by reaching about for the lever, and his hands were covered with dust. He stood facing me, a suppressed wince on his face and evidently resisting the urge to hop from one foot to the other in agitation. So I sent him off with orders that Martin’s bed should also have clean linen and that the slave quarters should be provided with all that fitted my status as a halfway guest of the Emperor.
Walking backwards, he bowed out of my presence. I had a most gratifying sight of the confusion on his face as he bumped into Authari. Our kitchen cupboards might be bare. It was plain, though, Authari had found the wine store.
Back upstairs, while Martin supervised the unpacking and disposal of our baggage, I went into the main office and sat at a great ebony desk inlaid with gold and ivory. On this, a leather bag marked for my attention contained letters from Rome. Some were impressively recent. The roads hadn’t been so impassable after all. At least the post was now getting through again.
There was something about the Cornish tin business. As it was in code, it would be interesting. But it could wait. I rummaged in the bag and pulled out a thick letter from the Dispensator. I went over by the window for a better look at the microscopic writing.
Apparently, the Bishop of Ravenna had found a whole nest of heresy under his own nose. His most senior deacons were dissenting from the true position on the Trinity anciently settled at the Council of Chalcedon. They accepted that there was but one Person in Christ, but further inferred that there was but one Will and one Operation – thereby denying the true position, that there were two Natures, Divine and Human, which were hypostatically united in Christ, not mingled
…
My eyes glazed over as I read sentence after sentence of denunciation of this most horrid innovation. My job, I gathered, was to procure a formal refutation of all this in Greek – the longer the better. It would be the penance of the offending deacons, who knew only Latin, somehow to understand this and then to memorise it by heart, so they could preach against their heresy in every church in Ravenna.
As I looked down from the window, one of the monkish gardeners stared up at me from the main central courtyard, an oddly intelligent look on his face.
Back at my desk, I called for a jug of iced wine, and reached for another letter. This was from Gretel. The secretary who’d taken her dictation had faithfully copied her style of speech. She prattled on about her morning sickness and her longing to see me again, and her profound gratitude for all I was doing on her behalf. She was no longer confined to the house, though had no cause to go out. She emphasised that Marcella was now treating her as one of the guests.
In Rome, I’d always found Gretel’s conversation something to be endured. Now, I felt tears coming to my eyes as I read about Marcella’s vexation at the theft of linen by one of her less salubrious lodgers.
There were other letters – from an agent who was handling the sale of some land on the Aventine Hill, and reporting movements in prices that I could relay to traders here in Constantinople. There was another, dated last Easter from Canterbury, thanking me for a complete Virgil I’d sent over from Rome and asking for another City of God, the one I’d sent previously having been spoiled by the sea voyage.
I’d deal with all these in due course. The light was beginning to fade, and I didn’t feel up to writing or dictating late into the evening. For the moment, I kept going back to the letter from Gretel. I kissed the mark she’d written at the foot of the papyrus sheet, telling myself I’d done right to announce marriage to her rather than concubinage.