Read The Curse of Babylon for Free Online Page A

filthiness of your corruptions. I know you think you’ve beaten me. But you’ll see that I win at last.’
    He closed his eyes for another rest. As ever, I thought he’d nodded off. But just as I was about to get up and leave, he came back to life. ‘Bring it here, Wulfric,’ he whispered in English. I perked up. This was interesting. I’d always assumed that what was lost in a seizure was destroyed. I now realised that the human mind was rather like a library. All that a seizure might do was to alter the catalogue – wiping, and sometimes restoring, entries and groups of entries.
    I was still thinking that one over, when I felt someone tap me on the shoulder. It was Wulfric with a bag of something heavy. I took it from him, and stared at the elaborate knots securing it.
    ‘No, Alaric,’ Theodore urged. ‘Don’t look now. It’s a present for you. Call it a reminder from the old days when we were together.’ He tried to laugh. ‘Thanks to you, I’ve had not a single day of happiness since I was thirteen. Now it’s your turn to suffer. You know that you can’t give it back to me. The rules don’t allow that.’ He looked away from me and focused on the stained ceiling. ‘Leave me, Alaric. I won’t let you come here again. But enjoy the rest of your life. You deserve it.’ He did now manage to laugh – a grating, wheezing sound that shook even those parts of his body that no longer moved at his command.
    One thing I’ve learned to recognise over the years is when I’m really not welcome. I was out of that room as quickly as I could put one foot in front of the other. I didn’t open the bag until Ambrose had locked me into my room.
     
    And that’s the end of the story. I’m now in the Saint Anastasius Monastery. I can go where I will, when I will. Brother Ambrose died the night after I’d finally moved out of his care. Even at a distance of two hundred yards, and through several walls, he kept me awake with his dying shrieks. I didn’t attend the funeral. I’m told his replacement as clerical jailor is a man from Ireland who believes in reforming his charges though prayer and exercise.
    But, as I write, I have the Horn of Babylon beside me on the table. It reminds me of an obligation freely assumed and still not discharged. I may have reached the end of the story I promised to tell you. I haven’t touched the beginning. If I’m to do that, it means going back further than I have – very much further. You can forget last Monday, when I started these jottings. You can forget the Monday before that, and many thousands of other Mondays before that one. You can also forget the decrepit old thing scribbling away on his many sheets of papyrus, a jug of red before him and a quarter opium pill dissolving in his belly. If I really want to explain what’s been happening these past few days, I’ll have to go back seventy-three years, to Monday the 28th April 615. Put Aelfwine beside me then, and no one would have had eyes for him.
    Yes, the proper start is that petitioning Monday in Constantinople, so very long ago . . .

Chapter 5
     
    The last owner of my palace had been unashamed in his taste for the violently obscene, and the mosaics of Tiberius on Capri could normally be trusted to keep me awake through the longest and dullest ceremony. But this wasn’t a normal day. With no one to keep them under control, the eunuchs were running wild. Without missing a step, the Master of the Timings came back to the same square on the patterned marble and bowed low before my chair. He let out a sigh that verged on a squeal of joy, and spun round to face the assembled mass of clients and petitioning agents. Then he brought his staff down three times. As the echo faded of the last crash, he drew breath, once more defying the fog of incense smoke.
    ‘ Let all be silent and hold his tongue ,’ he cried in mellifluous, if oddly accented, Latin, ‘ for His Magnificence the Lord Senator Alaric, beloved friend of