The Curse of Babylon by Richard Blake Page B

a hand for silence. This time, I got it. ‘Look, Antonia,’ I said, ‘the mode of address you picked up from the men in your family is purely ceremonial. All I need from you is the tax district where your clients are registered and the name of the local grandee who’s ejected them. Everything else I can get my clerks to assemble for me into a brief report. Now, do please stop this babble of rhetorical devices that haven’t moved anyone to genuine tears in seven hundred years and of legal tags that you plainly don’t understand. All I want are the facts .’
    And that’s what she now gave me – and what facts they were! At once, I’d forgotten the injured slave. I think I’d forgotten Lucas himself. I took Antonia by the arm and led her to the side of the road. Not far off two miles we’d been walking. Only now had she got to the point that mattered. Had she only started with it, I’d now be shepherding her back through the City in search of her clients. ‘Please, repeat that name for me,’ I asked, keeping my voice neutral.
    ‘Which name?’ she asked.
    I took my hat off and ran fingers though my hair. ‘The name of the man who ejected your clients from the land they’ve been assigned,’ I said, speaking slowly. ‘He is the man who ensured they got no hearing in the local courts and against whom they’ve come to seek my help.’
    I thought she’d said Eunapius of Pylae but needed it confirmed. Eunapius it was. I put my hat on again and fussed to get it back in the right position. It was one way to keep myself from jumping up and down and laughing. I made sure to darken my voice. ‘I wish you’d begun with Eunapius. He complicates everything.’
    I’d made my voice too dark and Antonia misread me. ‘So, you won’t help those men?’ she asked, a tone of outrage coming into her own voice. ‘They walked here all the way from Zigana, hundreds of miles away. They believed you were the only honest man in the government and that you’d help them for sure.’ She tried to see under the brim of my hat. ‘You do know that all the country people in Pontus pray every Sunday for your health?’
    I began walking again. It was pleasing to know there were some people in this Empire who didn’t hate me. I smiled and turned to Antonia. ‘I will get justice for your clients,’ I said. ‘But you need to understand that I’m in no position to give it by myself.’ I fell silent. That wasn’t the way to explain anything to a woman. That needs simple words and some attention to making their sense clear. I gathered my thoughts.
    ‘You are right about the land law,’ I said. ‘It has no exceptions in any of the Home Provinces. Every free householder in every country district has the right to enough land to feed himself and those who look to him. There are different provisions that cover the different grades of land and these have already caused much litigation. There are also varying degrees of inalienability and of the obligation to serve in the new militias. But no landowner is exempt. Any landowner who refuses to make such land available as my surveyors have determined he should, may be sued in the courts. If he avoids judgment through bribery or nepotism, he may be charged with perverting the course of justice and tried in Constantinople.’
    ‘Then what’s the problem?’ she asked.
    ‘The problem,’ I explained, ‘is that your clients have come up against Eunapius of Pylae. He’s in thick with Nicetas, who is the Emperor’s cousin. Anyone else and I could write one letter ‘asking’ for the law to be obeyed. Writing to Eunapius would be a waste of papyrus. He wouldn’t be scared by the implied threat of a tax audit. And you can forget about formal proceedings. He’d go straight to Nicetas, who’d run to the Emperor with a cloud of accusations against me and your clients. No, it’s worse than that. While the Emperor’s away, Nicetas might try his luck and directly order me to desist. He’d also