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Heraclius, our great and ever-triumphant Augustus .’ I may have been the only man there who knew the old language of the Empire. Back in those days, however, there were still solemnities of utterance in Constantinople for which Greek just wouldn’t do. After a long and dramatic pause, he turned and bowed to me. From a high gallery behind me, one of his underlings rang a golden bell.
    I stood up. Anyone looking at me must have thought I’d got it made. Five years earlier, I’d rolled into the Imperial City on a very dodgy mission. But just look at me now. The gold brocade I had on was heavier than plate armour. Its colour exactly matched my hair, and the bluish-gold paint that covered my face was a tasteful contrast to both. My chair was of ebony, inlaid with ivory and more gold. Standing on a carpet of blue silk, on a platform six feet above the floor of the hall, I was the centre of attention – the earth around which all lesser objects were in orbit. Looking back across the seventy-three years that separate me from that last Monday in the April of 615, I really should have made some effort not to be pissed off.
    Instead, I came as close as my paint allowed to glowering. I suppressed the urge to go into a choking cough and looked stiffly ahead. ‘The request is excessive,’ I said in a Greek from which all foreign trace had been carefully removed. I paused and tried to see without moving if the agent was looking crestfallen. He was – served the bugger right for puffing a two-line petition into a speech. I held the pause until my words began to sound final. ‘However,’ I went on, ‘let his parish priest certify that he has indeed begotten twelve sons who are all alive, and I will grant Isidore of Zigana a two -year rebate of land tax, and a further ten-year exemption .’ I sat down. The Listings Clerk scribbled a comment that would later be worked into a formal reply for carrying back to the farmer.
    That should have been it. The Master of the Timings was already getting his staff ready. I couldn’t turn and look, but I could hear the water clock gurgling in a manner that suggested a break from petitions. So why was that bloody agent still on his knees? He’d had my answer. His duty now was to get up and bow, and scuttle back to his own appointed square on the marble. Everyone else could then hop discreetly from foot to foot in the place he’d been occupying since dawn and wait for the bell to ring. Yet there he still was – not moving, arms folded across his chest. ‘Will the rebate be in hard money?’ he asked in a voice that still hadn’t quite broken. There was a gasp of horror from the other agents. I thought the Master of the Timings would faint. I stared at the agent. Someone had just shovelled more incense into a brazier and it was impossible to see his expression. I’d already seen he was young for an agent. From my first glance about the hall, he’d stood out from the usual run of dyed beards and hard, glittering eyes. But, if his face was currently out of sight, his voice alone raised questions about what he was doing here.
    I leaned back in my chair. I looked at my polished fingernails. ‘From the second day of the second week of next month,’ I said in a tone of polite menace, ‘all silver payments to and from the Treasury are to be made in the new standard coins. Until then, the old coinage, of whatever quality, remains the legal standard. Had your client wanted to benefit from the decree, it was your duty to suggest delaying his petition.’
    And that was him told. A couple of eunuchs appeared from nowhere and shoved him back into the crowd. Without waiting for the bell to ring, the Master of the Timings came forward and bowed. He turned and lifted his staff again. One deafening crash of wood on stone and a hundred men stretched out their right arms in my direction.
    ‘ Long life to His Magnificence the Lord Senator Alaric !’ they chanted in their own attempt at Latin. ‘ Life,