Free The Ghosts of Athens by Richard Blake Page A

surveyors, and smiled at every land allocation I’d suggested. He’d fobbed me off with a mass of routine administration. The Lesser Seal he gave me had made me the second man in Alexandria and in Egypt. If he noticed at all, he’d looked the other way when my speculations on the future price of corn had brought me riches beyond counting. And, all this time, the landowning interest had been spinning further and further out of my control. If, by charm and gross bribery, I’d kept the magnates steady, the smaller landowners had formed a solid bloc of opposition. Every difference of race and religion between Greeks and Egyptians had been set aside as news of my intentions spread through the higher society of Alexandria. In the end, if it had appalled me – if I’d even tried to have him arrested for it – was there any real alternative to the massacre Priscus had unleashed on the streets, and the ten thousand or whatever impalings with which he’d finished his work of pacification?
    ‘It might be,’ I said at last. ‘But let’s allow fifteen days for a courier going by relays from Alexandria, and then another day of indecision before sending out that ship. That also fits.’ I stroked my nose and rubbed thin pus between forefinger and thumb. ‘Do you remember how insistent Nicetas was about your accompanying me on the galley? Letting you go back to the capital through Syria would have carried the risk that you’d get wind of the Imperial disfavour, and turn east for the army. There, you could have raised a rebellion like your late and unlamented father-in-law did against Maurice. Who knows? Like him, you could have got yourself made Emperor. Instead, you were shipped out with me.’
    ‘Great minds think alike,’ Priscus said with a bitter laugh. ‘I’m the last survivor from before the revolution. Everyone’s been wondering how long the son-in-law of Phocas the Unmentionable could last in the new order of things. You might say that I’m the Empire’s only half-decent general. But it’s obvious I’ve been living on borrowed time ever since Heraclius rolled up in Constantinople and got himself crowned Emperor.’ He laughed again. ‘You were set up because the old nobility finally got through to Heraclius that your scheme of land reallocation would be the greatest revolution in the Empire since Constantine turned Christian. Once it was known I’d joined you in Alexandria, it was just a matter of two birds with one stone.
    ‘Do you suppose he’ll have us blinded before we’re stuffed into a monastery?’ he asked. ‘Do you suppose we’ll share a monastery? I hope you’ll not take it ill. But I’d rather not have to share a prison with you. Besides, I can tell you from my own experience that there’s no shortage of ghastly places of confinement in this part of the Empire. There’s a particularly nasty monastery halfway up Mount—’
    Martin had made one of his polite coughs behind us. ‘The Captain apologises for his oversight when you spoke with him,’ he said. ‘But he came back from shore with a letter for you.’
    Priscus and I looked at each other. I swallowed and took the unrolled sheet of papyrus in a hand that I willed not to shake.
    ‘Apparently, the Governor is detained in Corinth by ill health,’ I said without glancing up from the letter. ‘We’ll be met by a certain Nicephorus. He describes himself as Count of Athens.’ I looked at Priscus.
    His answer was a long and disgusted clear of his throat. He turned and spat again into the sea. ‘Let’s face it, dear boy,’ he said. ‘You are, when all is said and done, just a barbarian and hardly older than a schoolboy. But I am a descendant of the Great Constantine himself, and not far off three times your age. I’d have thought I was worth being arrested by the Governor.’ He took the letter from me and stared at the scruffy writing. ‘I had dealings with Nicephorus when I was last here,’ he said. ‘There’s nothing he’ll