‘An emperor does not grovel, old man,’ drawled Arbasdos impatiently.

‘I will think on this,’ said Leo.

‘Fear God, o Solomon!’ The old priest had riled himself into a fine lather.

‘I said, I will think on it.’ The weight of Leo’s gaze seemed to bring Germanus to his senses. The old man sank back onto his couch. ‘Come,’ continued the emperor. ‘Enough of this talk. It was not my intention to spoil our evening.’

Arbasdos took this as his cue. ‘Friends. Take more wine and we can enjoy a little entertainment. Silanos!’

As if conjured from the shadows, Silanos reappeared and clapped his hands. A curtain drew aside and in ran two musicians, each clutching a pair of small drums. Taking their places either side of the veils billowing off the balcony, they began to play.

They were easterners, darker of skin than Greeks or Armenians, probably from the spice lands in the far south. Slight men with sinuous fingers that moved so fast over the surface of the drums they were nothing but a blur. One of them began to sing. A single high note at first, hovering in the air, waiting for the guests’ ears to bite, and only then plunging into a juddering, stuttering song, without words, without meaning – as far as Katāros knew – yet weaving a strange spell all the same.

The dancer appeared like a shadow, an outline against the flimsy screen of veils, so subtle that for a second Katāros thought she was a trick of the imagination, a pulsing incarnation of the rhythm of the drums. Her silhouette swayed and shifted, her curves lithe as a serpent. Katāros chuckled to himself. Silanos had had this marvellous creature concealed out there on the balcony all evening, awaiting her entry. She wasn’t about to waste it now.

All at once she padded in through the curtain, as light on her feet as if she’d been blown in by a zephyr. There were flashes of skin gleaming with scented oil. The impression of nakedness, although Katāros saw her bosom was discreetly obscured with small silk coverings, and a pair of black silk breeches hung low off her hips and clung to her thighs. Her feet were bare and her hair coiled behind her head, black as the night; and wrapped around her midriff was a string of little bells that jangled with every movement.

But the centrepiece of her dance was the object in her hand. The long, curved sword was oiled and glinted orange and white in the flame-flicker. She moved with the song, slowly at first, hips rising and falling, her naked stomach undulating like a beckoning hand, calling to a man’s eyes as the little man’s song called to his ears.

But I am no man, thought Katāros. It was a bitter truth still, after all these years.