He sawed at the straps of my breastplate with a broken sword until the thing fell away from my body. It was splashed with blood and dented all over.
I helped him pull the helmet off my head. This also was dented nearly out of shape. I let him throw a piece of cloth over my hair.
‘Where are the others?’ I asked, confused at the sudden silence around me. I coughed as the wind blew smoke into my face.
‘Dead or gone home,’ he said.
He pulled me to my feet.
‘We must get out of here,’ he said. ‘There’s no quarter for you. Before the Prefecture building fell, its defenders hailed you as Emperor.’
‘Stupid fucking bastards,’ I croaked. All of a sudden, I was thirsty beyond imagining.
I had by now recovered my senses as much as I needed them. One after the other, I stretched my arms and legs, expecting to feel a stab of white pain at any moment. But I felt nothing. I’d been in the thick of the battle and I hadn’t picked up a scratch. Given time, I’d have started an argument with Martin about the power of his holy relics.
I looked around me. Except that there was no grass, the street looked like one of the tattier parts of Rome – all smashed wood and other things.
‘Which way to the Legation?’ I asked weakly.
60
I don’t know how we got back to the Legation. There were soldiers everywhere. Citizens scurried around, searching for loved ones or loot. A few times, I saw soldiers looking at me. One raised his sword in a strange salute. But no one tried to stop us.
There were a few bodies in the square outside, and one or two piles of discarded loot. Otherwise all looked much as usual. The Legation was just inside the ring of defences but I didn’t recall any fighting here. Smoke drifted into the square but from some distance away.
I approached the gate as if in a dream. It was shut. I prayed that it was locked and that all was well inside. As I drew closer, my head was pounding as if I were going into battle again.
‘God be praised!’ said Martin in a quivering voice when we reached the gate.
I touched it gently. No movement. It was surely locked. I pushed harder.
The gate moved and we both stood looking at the inch of darkness that had opened before us. Neither of us moved. It was like being in a dream. The faint sound of shouting from the streets behind us died away to an oppressive silence. The rest of the world might not have existed as we stood, stupidly, looking at that strip of darkness.
I pushed harder at the gate and we stepped into the gloom of the main hall. At first, everything seemed as it should be. There were the same patterns of light and shadow, the same dull quietness of the place. Then I saw the empty lodge just inside to my right. Where were the doorkeepers?
‘We must go upstairs,’ said Martin in an odd voice, but he seemed as rooted to the spot as I was.
I made a tremendous effort and stepped forward. ‘Come on,’ I said, taking Martin by the arm. I found my teeth chattering uncontrollably.
The door to my suite was off its hinges. The bars Authari had worked so hard to procure and fit were smashed with the force of whatever had been brought against the door.
Upstairs, everyone was dead.
We found Radogast first. He lay at the top of the stairs. He’d been almost cut to pieces in the desperate struggle. His severed right arm still clutched a military cloak.
Gutrune lay in the corridor outside my office. Her throat had been slit. She’d died with a bloody knife in her hand. The dent in the lead feeding bottle showed that she must have used it as a club.
The other dead bodies also showed signs of desperate resistance.
And Maximin?
We ran up and down the corridor, looking into each room.
Nothing.
There was no sign of looting. This had been a tight military operation. There had been a wild struggle but its outcome could never have been in doubt.
‘Aelric,’ Martin cried from my office. ‘Aelric, it’s Antony – he’s still alive.’
Alive he was, though only just. He was sitting on the floor and he groaned as Martin lifted the cup of water to his lips.
‘Men,’ he whispered, ‘armed men. They had the Emperor’s authority. All was in order when I had the gate opened. Priscus’ – he swallowed – ‘he came in with full authority. The doorkeepers let him in. I protested the violation of our immunity. I tried to stop them from taking the dear child.’
He coughed and blood ran down his chin. I looked at the great spreading stain on his robe.
‘The law says the authorities can enter in an emergency to secure the Legation. They have no right to—’
He coughed again. More blood. His face turned an ashen colour as his lips described the word ‘right’. I took hold of him and held him during his last violent spasm.
Martin pulled the robe over his face as I drained the water jug.
‘I should have been here,’ I said flatly. ‘I could have kept Priscus out.’ I imagined Priscus holding up Maximin to see the work of butchery against the only family he’d known. I could see the look on the man’s face and hear the triumph in his voice as he took possession of his alienated property.
He hadn’t killed Maximin. That much was certain. If the child’s body wasn’t here, it was repossession that Priscus had in mind. He’d thrown Maximin out before changing sides. Once he had changed sides, he’d needed another son and heir.
I shook my head to try and get it to focus on the immediate present.
‘I could have instructed the officials not to open up,’ I said in elaboration.
‘No,’ said Martin. ‘You’d have ended like Radogast. If Priscus hadn’t been let in, he’d only have broken in. Whatever else you may have done or not done today, you couldn’t have prevented this.’
He stood up. He put his hands on my shoulders and steadied me as I began to shake again. Another moment, and I’d have lost control.
‘Aelric, we’ve got to see if anyone is alive in the main Legation, and get the place secured. Come on. We need to find the others.’
We went back into the main hall just as a couple of soldiers Priscus had left behind as guards were returning from the Permanent Legate’s side of the building. One was straining under the weight of the silver crucifix they’d taken from the chapel. Another carried a pile of jewelled icons.
‘Fucking good stuff here, mate,’ one of them began with a drunken wave of his booty. Then he remembered who and where he was, and felt for his sword.
I made short and brutal work of him. Once you’re into a rhythm of killing, it doesn’t greatly matter how tired you are. With the sword-thrust I made into his unprotected throat, he must have been dead before he hit the pavement.
I turned to deal with his colleague, but Martin had got there already. The soldier lay gurgling at his feet, a bronze pen straight through his windpipe. With the look of an avenging angel on his face, Martin stared grimly down at his work. How he had managed to get the better of an armed soldier was as far beyond me as how he’d managed to stand by me throughout the battle without being recognised or killed.
We found the Legation officials and slaves locked in one of the storage houses near the pigsties. We had no keys, but the lock was easy enough to smash from the outside. As they emerged blinking into the light, they confirmed what we had already guessed. Priscus had arrived on regular form but once in the Legation he had gone wild. The fact that he’d locked them up rather than killed them showed that he hadn’t forgotten everything about Papal immunity, even under the influence of those shitty drugs.
Another reason to suppose Maximin was safe.
Martin took control of the Legation staff. He ordered the gates to be secured and had the bodies taken away to be prepared for a decent burial. He even set some of the slaves about cleaning the blood off the floors of our suite and righting the furniture. I could hear him scolding them as I sat in the lead bath and had warm water splashed over me.
‘We’ll get out
of here once it’s dark and you’ve had something like a rest,’ he’d snapped before pushing me into the bath. ‘For the moment, I’m assuming Heraclius has more to do than come looking for you here. We both need to get clean and change into different clothes. Stay here until I come for you. I’ll get as much money as I can lay hands on. I don’t suppose your parchment money will be worth anything after today. I can’t say any good has ever come of it,’ he’d added with a glance that managed to express his contempt of the financial world.
By the time we were dressed in clean but inconspicuous clothes, it was turning dark. Against my will, I’d dozed a long while in the bath which the Legation slaves had kept topped up with warm water. I emerged from the bath less exhausted than when I’d gone in, but was now beginning to ache all over from the strain of of the day’s fighting.
After we’d eaten with the Legation staff – not a cheerful meal, but a good solid dish of pork sausage and stale bread, all washed down with beer – I was beginning to feel more like my usual self.
‘I have to kill Priscus,’ I said to Martin as we went back upstairs to my office. ‘I can’t save Maximin from him in any other way. I need to get close enough to him to get a knife into his throat.’
I looked round the office. Order had been restored. It was as if nothing had happened. I could almost imagine that I heard Gutrune’s heavy tread on the boards outside as she went to attend to Maximin.
The Legation officials and slaves continued to act as if there had been no change in my status because they had no leadership to tell them otherwise. They were even sending up trays of wine and warm fruit juice for us.
But everything had changed irrevocably. Whatever I might be doing tomorrow evening, I would not be sitting here. I could no longer regard any of these things as mine.
‘You’ll do no such thing,’ Martin told me. ‘You’ll remember that you have a natural child and a woman waiting for you in Rome. If you’ve lost Maximin, you must take it as the Will of God – “The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away”,’ he quoted piously.
‘I’ve been thinking hard about what must be done. I think I can get Maximin back in my own way. Don’t ask me how. I will get the child back or die in the attempt. But, remember – God is with us.’
I looked at him, but said nothing.
‘I’m going out shortly,’ he continued. ‘I want you to sleep for a while. I’ll have you woken later this evening. Then I want you to make your way to that monastery Theophanes told you about. If we don’t meet there, I’m sure you know how to get yourself out of the City. Prayers aren’t your thing, I know. But do speak well of me in the Lateran when you see the Dispensator. Do tell him I did my duty in the end. And do please talk to my wife. Sveta really does like you.’
He stood and walked quickly from the room. Before I could call after him, he was already pulling to the shattered door at the bottom of the stairs.
If Martin thought I could just lie placidly back and sleep, he was a proper fool. At the very least, I was staying here on borrowed time. How long before there was a price on my head and people came looking in the most obvious place? Perhaps because it was the most obvious I’d so far been left alone. But every additional moment here brought the danger closer of an official knock on the main gate.
I was no longer Acting Permanent Legate. Whatever residual immunity I might have had as a servant of the Church had gone when Phocas put me in charge of the City’s defence. Having been hailed as Emperor by some of the Blues had surely put the lid on things.
It was time to make a getaway. I’d go and see if there was any safety to be had in the monastery by the Pantocrator Church. If there was, I’d consider what might be the best way to get even with Priscus.
Before leaving, I changed my clothing again and took a couple of the stimulants that Theophanes had left with me the day before yesterday for just such a moment. After the bath, I wasn’t feeling as tired as I knew I ought to be, but that might change. Theophanes had told me the pills would have a gradual effect – nothing like the drugs Priscus used.
Then I took one last tour of my suite. Every inhabited room had its memories. Here was where I’d first set eyes on Maximin. Here was where Authari and I had got Martin so drunk that he’d consented to show us a Celtic dance and tripped over a chair. Here was where I’d entertained my whores. Here was where I’d sat long into the evening talking in English to Maximin about the life he’d have as my son.
No one was watching me so it hardly mattered if I blubbed uncontrollably as I took my leave of a home that had been so sweet to me. I gently forced the door back into its closed position at the bottom of the stairs. I kissed it reverently, then I turned and stepped alone into the main hall.
‘I’ve just heard you were back here,’ a voice called in good Latin from the far end of the hall. ‘I must say you have a nerve polluting my Legation with your blasphemous and now treasonable pres ence.’
I strained in the gloom of the lamps to see who it was. He was standing by the main gate and had evidently been talking to the doorkeepers.
Was I surprised? Was I shocked? Not really.
‘Welcome back, Demetrius,’ I replied – ‘or rather, welcome back, Your Excellency Silas. As I’m now of senatorial rank, and still haven’t been formally relieved of my command, you’ll surely not complain if I neglect to bow to you.’
61
Silas the Permanent Legate didn’t look at all pleased as he inspected the wreckage of his private office.
‘Four days out of the building’, he sniffed, ‘and I come back to find it looking worse than the chaos in the streets outside.’
He picked up an overturned chair and sat down. Somehow, he’d dug out one of his official robes from the chaos of his wardrobe. This was the less grand of the two he’d had for public occasions. The grander one I’d sent off as a model to the tailors.
Now that he’d cast off the stooping, arrogant servility that had been Demetrius, he looked every inch a senior dignitary of the Roman Church. And note my adjective – Roman. Compared with the officials of the Greek Church, he was like a senator among clerks. Silas wasn’t some trash who’d done well through penances or fake miracles, or even hard learning. He was old Roman nobility. He knew it, and he expected everyone else to know it without being told.
I perched on the edge of his desk and looked at my fingernails. I’d managed to get most of the blood out from under them, but they’d need a good polishing before I could be seen again in polite company.
‘I never did manage to explain’, I said, speaking slowly, ‘why there was no one but Demetrius here who’d seen the Permanent Legate – why the whole staff of the Legation was replaced before I arrived. It never crossed my mind that you and Demetrius were one and the same person.
‘Of course,’ I went on, ‘now I know that you and Demetrius are one, I think I can explain everything – or nearly everything.’
‘Go on then.’ Silas gave me a haughty look. ‘Let us see if you are really as bright as they say – and not only renowned for violence and low debauchery.’
I ignored the jibe and continued: ‘I discovered a long time ago that you and Phocas were in this together. You were working together through Theophanes. You didn’t arrange with Rome to get me here as an excuse for withdrawing from contact with the Imperial Court. It was arranged between the three of you as an excuse for getting you out of public sight.
‘You weren’t avoiding Phocas. You were scared of Heraclius – that he’d have you murdered before you could broker a deal between Phocas and the Pope. It was just made to look as if you were out of sorts with Rome.
‘Things changed when Theophanes arrived back in the city. He knew Priscus had been ordered to have you killed one way or the other. He couldn’t stop an attempt on your life but he did arrange things to make the attempt look successful.
‘He intercepted the killer that Priscus sent after you and directed him to my rooms. He did so knowing I’d finish the killer off and probab
ly keep quiet about it. At the same time, you and Theophanes arranged your own fake murder. I was racking my brains about the double coincidence of murder attempts in the Legation. But all Heraclius and Priscus knew was that someone had been sent to kill the Permanent Legate, and the Permanent Legate was now dead.
‘By the way,’ I asked suddenly, ‘whose body was that in your bedroom? It wasn’t yours.’
Silas wrinkled his nose. ‘How should I know?’ he said. ‘Why should I care? It was provided by Theophanes – and a creature in his position can always lay hands on a body when it’s needed. This whole plot was his idea. I thought it was all far too elaborate. But I suppose that’s what you get from Oriental eunuchs.’
He shrugged. ‘Theophanes came up with the idea of the locked-room mystery,’ he went on. ‘He expected Priscus would be appointed chief investigator of the “death”. That would keep him busy, but utterly in the dark. It was also useful to cast a certain ambiguity over the time of the murder. The body wasn’t that fresh, you see. We covered it in pig’s blood to disguise this but a medical inspection would have raised awkward questions.
‘The Emperor put you in charge of the investigation because he didn’t think we could get rid of the body before Priscus arrived. Priscus, you see, knew me well enough to see at once that the body wasn’t mine. That would have split everything wide open. The old eunuch said you were dangerously competent and suggested removing the head, but Phocas and I agreed otherwise.
‘Having you appointed to my own position and wearing my robe was the Emperor’s idea as well. He said you would provide a convenient target for Priscus and Heraclius. If they were hard at work on trying to get you, they might not bother looking for holes in the account of my own alleged murder.’
‘And that’s why you killed Authari, isn’t it?’ I asked quietly. ‘Priscus arrived before you expected he’d be out of bed. You had to move quickly. Authari was guarding the body. So you killed him. Did you do it with your own hands?’
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