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every year, which was rather more than the Fathers had ever been prepared to allow. Finally, if at any time during the next fifty years the Studium found itself in a position to be able to pay off the original loan plus the interest accumulated to the date of foreclosure, the Bank would transfer the Temple back to their ownership, having first restored it to its original state and condition. They couldn’t, they felt, say fairer than that.
    The Studium didn’t agree; the public did. The transfer was ratified by plebiscite 4/23, a majority of seventeen wards to five. Since the Patriarch refused to sign the transfer documents, the Bank obtained a court order and instructed the Land Registrar to amend the register. On the day the Bank took formal possession, three monks tried to chain themselves to the Antelope Gate and set themselves on fire. Two of them had either faulty tinderboxes or insufficient strength of purpose; the third was severely burned, but was put out in time by Bank guards, carrying water from the Fountain of Symmachus in their helmets.
    The architect’s plans designated the East Cloister as the site of the new boardroom, but it wouldn’t be ready for at least eighteen months. The Board therefore met in the chapter house, with its magnificent mosaic ceilings by Theophano the Elder and its notoriously poor acoustics. On the day in question it happened to be raining heavily. Forty-six buckets were brought in to the chamber to catch the drips and prevent further damage to the tesselated floor (attributed to Chrysophanes, third century AUC ); together they sounded like a huge musical instrument played by a hesitant beginner.
    The first hour was taken up with routine business; formal repossession of the estates of the Leucas and the Blemmyas, and the sealing of several hundred conveyances and mortgages in favour of the existing tenants. Then Mihel Tzimisces, chairman and chief executive officer, announced that the Carnufex family had paid off the last instalment of capital and interest on its loans, and its debt was therefore extinguished. He personally fixed the Bank’s seal to the deed of redemption, which was dispatched to General Carnufex by special messenger.
    The courier entrusted with this mission rode directly to the Irrigator’s country house at Bluewater, pausing only to change horses at the Bank’s way station at Ridgeway Cross. He handed the deed, with Chairman Tzimisces’ covering letter, to the house steward, who signed the receipt. The courier returned to the city by way of Monsacer, where he stopped for a drink at the Blessed Annunciation in the abbey foregate. There he happened to meet the abbot’s cupbearer, who’d been in the same regiment as him during the War. The cupbearer reported back to the abbot, who immediately wrote to the Patriarch’s chaplain, who reported to evening Chapter.
    “The only thing that surprises me,” one of the canons commented, “is that he left it so long to pay the damn thing off. Everybody knows the Irrigator did pretty well out of the War. He can’t have been short of money.”
    “Tax reasons,” suggested one of his colleagues. “You get basic-rate relief on interest payments on war loans with private providers. I’d have thought you’d have known that.”
    The canon shrugged. “Not that it matters. I’d have liked to have seen them try putting the old man out on the street. They’d have been lynched before they got five yards.”
    The abbot, a third cousin of the General, frowned. “The Carnufex,” he said, “and the Phocas, and the elder branch of the Bardanes; they’re pretty much all that’s left now. And the Phocas aren’t what they were. I gather they had to sell a lot of land towards the end.”
    “And guess who bought it,” said the prior.
    “I hadn’t heard that,” the abbot said.
    “Quite true. It was all perfectly proper and above board, but they might as well not have bothered. Who else was going to buy it anyway?