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Authors: Tom Harper
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see me; their mothers, hurrying to finish their errands before nightfall, ignore me. They don’t know who I was.
There’s one final place I need to go today. It isn’t far, but I almost miss the turn. I’m looking out for a statue on the corner, a nice bronze of a sea god riding in a chariot. It’s only when I’ve gone fifty paces past it that I realise I’ve gone too far. I retrace my steps – and almost overshoot again. The statue’s gone.
Constantinople’s like that: a city of moving statues. They watch you from their plinths and pedestals, tucked in niches or on the tops of buildings. They become your companions, friends and guides. Then you wake up one morning and discover they’ve disappeared. Only the plinths remain, the inscriptions chiselled blank, waiting for their next occupants to move in. Of course, nobody mentions it.
Ten years ago there were a lot of empty plinths. Most of them are reoccupied now, but I still miss the old, familiar faces.
Alexander lived in a humble block of apartments above a tavern. A staircase to the left of the front door leads to the upper floors. I climb it and come to a landing.
It isn’t hard to guess which is Alexander’s door: it’s the one with the painted chi-rho monogram and the heavy lock. The lock didn’t work. The door’s wide open, as if blown in by a breeze. But it’s a still day, and it would have to have been a storm worthy of Jupiter to have splintered the jamb and ripped off the lock like that. I can hear movements inside.
A voice inside me says I shouldn’t be here. I don’t have much life left, but I don’t want to lose it yet. Alexander’s nothing to me except a ticket out of the city. I can come back in the morning and no one will know.
But I’m stubborn – and I’ve never run away in my life. I stand with my back to the wall and peer around the open door. The room’s dim and utterly ruined. Hangings have been torn off the walls and ripped up; a shelf has been pulled over and its crockery smashed. In the midst of it all, a lone figure stands at a table strewn with papers, slowly leafing through them.
‘Simeon?’
His head jerks up in surprise as I step into view. I stand in the doorway – close enough to make sure there’s no one else, far enough to run if he pulls a knife.
He doesn’t look like he’s going to attack me. He looks more frightened than I do.
‘What have you done?’ I demand. ‘Why –?’
‘No.’ He looks horrified. ‘It was like this when I got here.’
‘When?’
‘Not long ago. I wanted to bring Alexander’s books home. From the library.’ His eyes are puckered trying to hold back tears. ‘He wouldn’t have wanted them left abandoned. Books were like children to him.’
I sweep my arm around the destruction in the room. ‘And this?’
‘When I got here,’ he repeats. And then – gratuitously, given the shattered lock hanging off the door: ‘Someone must have broken in.’
‘You had a key?’ But I can answer my own question: it’s hanging on a string around his neck. I take it and try it in the lock. It fits.
‘Was the lock new?’
‘He had it fitted a month ago.’
‘And is anything gone?’
A slack-jawed look. ‘I don’t know. Some papers, maybe. He had nothing worth taking.’
‘What about the document case missing from the library? What was in that?’
‘He never let me see.’
He gave you the key to his house, but he wouldn’t show you what was in the case? I lean over the writing desk and look at the scattered papers. Prominent among them is the codex that Simeon has brought from the library. Blood has oozed out from between the pages, as if some part of Alexander has been pressed inside it.
I remember what Porfyrius told me.
‘I heard Alexander was writing a history – that the Emperor commissioned it.’
Simeon’s face brightens. ‘The Chronicon . A history of everything that’s ever happened.’
He opens to a page at random. Again, it takes me by
There’s one final place I need to go today. It isn’t far, but I almost miss the turn. I’m looking out for a statue on the corner, a nice bronze of a sea god riding in a chariot. It’s only when I’ve gone fifty paces past it that I realise I’ve gone too far. I retrace my steps – and almost overshoot again. The statue’s gone.
Constantinople’s like that: a city of moving statues. They watch you from their plinths and pedestals, tucked in niches or on the tops of buildings. They become your companions, friends and guides. Then you wake up one morning and discover they’ve disappeared. Only the plinths remain, the inscriptions chiselled blank, waiting for their next occupants to move in. Of course, nobody mentions it.
Ten years ago there were a lot of empty plinths. Most of them are reoccupied now, but I still miss the old, familiar faces.
Alexander lived in a humble block of apartments above a tavern. A staircase to the left of the front door leads to the upper floors. I climb it and come to a landing.
It isn’t hard to guess which is Alexander’s door: it’s the one with the painted chi-rho monogram and the heavy lock. The lock didn’t work. The door’s wide open, as if blown in by a breeze. But it’s a still day, and it would have to have been a storm worthy of Jupiter to have splintered the jamb and ripped off the lock like that. I can hear movements inside.
A voice inside me says I shouldn’t be here. I don’t have much life left, but I don’t want to lose it yet. Alexander’s nothing to me except a ticket out of the city. I can come back in the morning and no one will know.
But I’m stubborn – and I’ve never run away in my life. I stand with my back to the wall and peer around the open door. The room’s dim and utterly ruined. Hangings have been torn off the walls and ripped up; a shelf has been pulled over and its crockery smashed. In the midst of it all, a lone figure stands at a table strewn with papers, slowly leafing through them.
‘Simeon?’
His head jerks up in surprise as I step into view. I stand in the doorway – close enough to make sure there’s no one else, far enough to run if he pulls a knife.
He doesn’t look like he’s going to attack me. He looks more frightened than I do.
‘What have you done?’ I demand. ‘Why –?’
‘No.’ He looks horrified. ‘It was like this when I got here.’
‘When?’
‘Not long ago. I wanted to bring Alexander’s books home. From the library.’ His eyes are puckered trying to hold back tears. ‘He wouldn’t have wanted them left abandoned. Books were like children to him.’
I sweep my arm around the destruction in the room. ‘And this?’
‘When I got here,’ he repeats. And then – gratuitously, given the shattered lock hanging off the door: ‘Someone must have broken in.’
‘You had a key?’ But I can answer my own question: it’s hanging on a string around his neck. I take it and try it in the lock. It fits.
‘Was the lock new?’
‘He had it fitted a month ago.’
‘And is anything gone?’
A slack-jawed look. ‘I don’t know. Some papers, maybe. He had nothing worth taking.’
‘What about the document case missing from the library? What was in that?’
‘He never let me see.’
He gave you the key to his house, but he wouldn’t show you what was in the case? I lean over the writing desk and look at the scattered papers. Prominent among them is the codex that Simeon has brought from the library. Blood has oozed out from between the pages, as if some part of Alexander has been pressed inside it.
I remember what Porfyrius told me.
‘I heard Alexander was writing a history – that the Emperor commissioned it.’
Simeon’s face brightens. ‘The Chronicon . A history of everything that’s ever happened.’
He opens to a page at random. Again, it takes me by
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