Privately I no longer believed either in Serbian uprising or Hungarian intervention; both had been promised so often before. Now I would have to travel somewhere to meet Lazar Pilic, the only Serbian rebel leader who spoke Greek. I did not trust Lazar and I knew that wherever this meeting took place it would mean an uncomfortable and probably dangerous journey. To be sure, the danger to Lazar was greater. Byzantine rule in the Balkans was not secure. They felt the ground shifting, they feared for their footing and so they became more watchful and more cruel.

Blinding – the usual punishment for traitors and spies – was the least Lazar could expect if he came under suspicion.

The real difficulty lay in the fact that our Diwan did not have full scope for action in the Balkans, being restricted to the payment of bribes. Elements in the Vice-Chancellor's Office had formed a separate chancery which they called the Diwan of Command, a title confusing in its similarity to our own. They had gained the ear of the King and been granted the mission of diplomatic persuasion in Hungary. We had to rely on their reports, which came to us in garbled form with much that was significant omitted. Sometimes they did not come to us at all. So there were now two branches of the administration separately involved in fomenting rebellion in Serbia, each jealous of the other and neither sharing their information.

"We have already disbursed a good deal of the King's coin on these Serbs," I said. "So far without result. We do not know how they spend the gold, we have no means of knowing."

"This time there will be no gold. So far they have taken with both hands and made promises that were not kept. Now we in our turn will make promises, but we will keep our hands hidden."

He smiled a little, saying this; he had the Arab love for word-play and reversed figures. I for my part felt some beginning of relief. He had spoken of a mission, but where was the mission in this?