Free The Curse of Babylon by Richard Blake Page A

green slime don’t count for nothing with my boy. He’ll jump right off this wall beside you, and get it out for you.’
    I was about to tell him to bugger off and die, when I looked at the naked boy who’d come out from behind a column. I felt a sudden stirring of lust. Like all the City’s lower class, he was a touch undersized and there was a slight lack of harmony in the proportion of his legs to his body. For all this, his tanned skin was rather fetching. Give him a bath and . . .
    Oh dear! He’d no sooner got me thinking of how much to offer, when he swept the hair from his eyes and parted very full lips to show two rows of rotten teeth. The front ones were entirely gone. The others were blackened stumps. Such a shame! Such a waste! So little beauty there was already in this world – and why did so much of that have to be spoiled? I could have thrashed the boy’s owner for not making him clean every day with a chewing stick. I stood up.
    His owner hadn’t noticed. ‘Oh, Sir, Sir!’ he cried, getting directly in my way and waving his arms to stop me. ‘Sir, the deal is this. You throw in a coin. If the boy gets it out, you pay me five times your coin. If he can’t find it, I pay you five times. If he breaks his neck or drowns, I pay you ten times.’ He laughed and pointed at the boy again. I didn’t look, but wondered if I might make an exception. Bad teeth are bad teeth – but the rest of him was pushing towards excellent.
    But I shook my head. I could fuck anything I wanted later in the day. Until then, duty was calling me again. Trying not to show I was running away, I hurried down the steps.
     
    ‘You’ve a nerve, showing your face in public!’ the old man croaked accusingly. I’d been aware of him – of him and all the others – as I hurried across the square. My main attention, though, had been given to an epigram about me scrawled on a statue plinth. It was in better Greek than your standard graffito and involved a play on words that joined the name Alaric with the use of powdered lark wing as an emetic. ‘Not content with stealing half my pension, you’re also putting both my boys out of work.’ He stopped in front of me and stamped his foot angrily.
    ‘I didn’t expect to see you here, Simeon,’ I said, taking my hat off in deference to his years.
    ‘And if you had seen me,’ he snapped, ‘you’d have been back up those steps before I could say “knife”.’ There was a murmur of agreement from all the other old wrecks in the square. I sighed. Would I ever get outside the city walls?
    But let me explain. Imperial Square takes its name from the ministry buildings that surround it on three sides – either that, or from the group of statues at its western end. This is a complete set of emperors, beginning with Julius Caesar and culminating with Anastasius, whose reign, a century before, had seen the last big wave of city beautification. The statues were ordered in a tight spiral, with Anastasius at the outermost point. The series could easily have continued – Justin, Justinian, Justin, Tiberius, Maurice, Phocas – who, like the other tyrants, would simply have had an unmarked plinth – and then Heraclius. But the money or will had run out and the series stopped with Anastasius.
    From the depression it had worn in the paving stones, the ritual of the aged could easily date from the time of Anastasius. The idea was to begin with Anastasius and, touching every plinth in turn, get round the outside of the spiral to Julius Caesar in the smallest number of breaths. The lap was then to be repeated on the inside on the spiral back to Anastasius. When there was no chariot racing or executions to watch, you could lay bets on who would get round the fastest. Sometimes, the square would be filled to bursting with the idlest sort of rich. Mostly, though, it was just a few dozen old men, some walking briskly, others staggering. No doubt those staggering had once been brisk and, assuming