The Curse of Babylon by Richard Blake Page A

garden basking in the Roman peace, but now tested in wave after wave of those barbarians who had overtopped every other city wall in Europe. Its southern side looks over the wide Propontis. Only the land walls can be truly called impregnable. The sea walls, though respectable by the standards of most other cities, are the last line in a set of defences that begin with control of the sea.
    This brings me to the long straits that separate Europe from Asia. These begin with the narrow strait, twenty miles long, that runs more or less south from the Black Sea, past Constantinople and into the Propontis, which is an inland sea about a hundred and fifty miles from east to west and about fifty from north to south. From here to the Aegean is another narrowish strait about forty miles long.
    Does it now make sense when I say that, having finally made my way into Middle Street, and from there through the most southerly gate in the land wall, I was now hurrying west along the coastal road that joins Constantinople to Adrianople and to Thessalonica and eventually to the port of Dyrrachium, from where the Adriatic may be crossed to the heel of Italy? Tough luck if it doesn’t – because that’s where I was.
     
    Once again, I told myself I was a fool. I should have picked up this bloody girl with both hands and dumped her into the guardhouse. Thanks to Nicetas, my plan of having her escorted back to her lodgings had gone tits up before everyone could finish saluting me. ‘Emergency orders, Sir,’ the officer in charge had answered me. ‘None of us to leave our posts. Can’t go out from the walls. Can’t go back from the walls.’
    ‘Then stay here till I get back,’ I’d said to the girl with a smile that tried to look both firm and reassuring. ‘You’ll be safe enough here.’ Being the obvious point for any combined land and sea attack, the Golden Gate is almost a fortress in its own right. What I’ve called the guardhouse is a looming mass of stonework perched above a triple arch. It must contain three dozen rooms, some of them rather comfy. But there’d been no getting Antonia into any of them. Without actually refusing, she’d given me a look of combined disappointment and fear that had me speaking again before I could realise I’d caved in.
    ‘You can wait here till I’m done with my business,’ I’d suggested with a quick glance at the face of the officer in charge. ‘You can tell me what those petitioners want while we go back to the centre. If their petition is reasonable,’ I’d gone on without proper thought, ‘you can break the good news to them in time for dinner.’
    ‘No time like the present,’ had been the firm and immediate response. One exchange had led to another, and I’d been faced with a choice between compulsion and surrender. It didn’t help that compulsion would have made me later still for Lucas – and he and his men were just one final dash along the road on which I was standing. I’d pretended to ignore the mocking stares of the guards as, with an indifferent shrug, I set off along the road. Then, instead of putting my best foot forward and hurrying through the streams of traffic, I’d slowed to let her keep level with me and not run entirely out of breath, as she explained her clients’ petition.
    So far as I could gather, they were victims of a standard injustice. If only my sodding eunuchs had let them put their own case, I could have added those petitioners to my list of things to do the following day, and saved myself the trouble of listening to a panting explanation that broke down as often as Antonia had to save herself from tripping over in a pair of boots that didn’t fit her.
    Annoyed, I kicked a stone and watched it skip forward over the worn flagstones. It got the thigh of a carrying slave. It made a slapping noise that I could hear at ten paces. I waited for him to look round, so I could at least bow an apology. But he didn’t seem to notice.
    I stopped and put up