by Tom Harper
‘Do you know what it says?’ Abby asked.
Jenny shook her head. ‘There’s a man at church who speaks German, but I didn’t like to take it to him. It’s too personal, isn’t it? Like a sort of message from beyond the grave.’
Abby looked at the front of the postcard, divided into three pictures. One showed a huge ancient gateway in the middle of a roundabout, blackened by fire; the second, a formal red-brick building on a tree-lined avenue; the third, a bearded man in a frock coat and a scowl. Karl Marx, said the legend at the bottom.
On the back, Michael had written two simple words.
My Love –
Nothing else. Was that meant for me? Abby wondered. She slid it back into the envelope with the paper and passed it to Jenny.
‘What are you going to do?’
‘What can I?’
‘There’s a phone number on the letterhead. You could call it.’
‘I couldn’t.’ Jenny seemed to shrink into her sofa. She pushed the envelope back in Abby’s hand. ‘You have it. If there’s any good can come of it, you’ll do better than me.’
Jenny’s strength seemed to be fading. Her face looked drawn. Abby sensed she didn’t have much time.
‘Where’s Michael now?’
It was unfortunate phrasing. Jenny’s anguished look made Abby wish she could melt onto the plastic-covered sofa. ‘I meant … I just … I’d like to visit his grave, while I’m here.’
Jenny took Abby’s teacup and stacked it on a brass tray. Her shaky hands threatened to smash the china.
‘He was cremated. We scattered his ashes on the sea at Robin Hood’s Bay. He didn’t want a memorial. He always said: when you’re gone, you’re gone.’
And that seemed to be the signal for Abby to go. Jenny murmured something about having to collect her niece from Brownies; Abby said she ought to catch her train. The intimacy that had briefly united them had passed, but on the threshold, Jenny surprised her by sticking out her arms and giving Abby a hug. It was an awkward gesture, as if she wasn’t used to such things. As if she’s as desperate for contact as I am, thought Abby. Clinging on.
‘Tell me if you find anything.’
Out on the street, the rain was unrelenting. Abby found a snicket between two houses, sheltered from the rain, and pulled out Michael’s letter. She checked her watch. It was just past five o’clock – six in Germany – they’d probably have gone home. But she couldn’t wait. She took out her phone and dialled the number, hoping she had enough credit.
A voice answered in German.
‘Doctor Gruber, please?’
‘A moment. I put you on hold.’
The voice gave way to a soft digital pulse that reminded her of the hospital in Montenegro. She shivered. At the far end of the street, a shadow detached itself from one of the houses and started to come towards her. A man in a long black raincoat and an old-fashioned trilby hat. The day was dark and the rain blurred her vision: the shapeless coat made him seem little more than a pocket of darkness.
‘Hello?’ A man’s voice down the phone, thin and accented.
‘Doctor Gruber?’
‘Ja.’
The shadow moved down the street. He could have been going anywhere, but there was something about his movement that seemed aimed straight at her. She looked around for reassurance, but the rest of the street was empty. Even the houses had turned their backs. White curtains blanked out the windows, like the sightless eyes of Jenny’s empty photo frames.
Did you come alone? Why did Jenny ask that?
‘Hello?’ The phone – impatient – perhaps a little irritated. Abby turned and began to walk briskly, stumbling out her words.
‘Doctor Gruber? Do you speak English? My name’s Abby Cormac – I’m a friend of Michael Lascaris. Did you know him?’
A cautious pause. ‘I know Mr Lascaris.’
‘He’s –’ She glanced over her shoulder. The man in the raincoat was still following. ‘He died. I was going through some papers he left and I found a letter you wrote to him. I wondered …’
If you know why he never mentioned you to me? If you know why he was in Trier? If you could tell me who killed him?
‘… if you remembered him,’ she finished lamely.
She came round a corner on to a street lined with shops. A car drove past, splashing through the puddles. She quickened her pace.
‘I remember him,’ said Doctor Gruber. ‘I am sorry he is dead. He came to visit me not so long ago.’
‘What did he want?’
The sound of the rain made it hard to hear, but she thought she caught a new edge in his voice. ‘I am the Director of the Institute for Papyrologie. You know this word, papyrologie? The study of papyrus. Ancient documents.’
‘OK.’ Another pause. ‘I didn’t know he was interested in ancient documents.’
‘No?’
Another glance. The shadow was still there. He must have closed the gap – she could see a dim slice of his face between the brim of the hat and the coat collar, though it was too rushed and wet to make out any detail.
‘Are you there? Is this a good time that you are able to talk?’
‘Yes. It’s fine. I –’
She swung around another corner and came face to face, unexpectedly, with the Minster. Rain had driven away the busker and the tourists; she thought she glimpsed the Roman legionary sheltering in a doorway, but he was so faint he might have been a ghost. Behind her, quick footsteps slapped on the cobbles.
‘Where are you, Frau Cormac?’
‘England.’
‘Is it possible you come to visit us?’
‘In Germany?’
‘The Landesmuseum in Trier. I think face to face it will be easier to explain some things.’
She was running now, praying the church was still open. Weren’t they supposed to be places of refuge? Under the bandages, her chest throbbed as if it would tear open. ‘Please can’t you tell me –?’
‘In person is better.’
‘Anything at all –’
‘Herr Lascaris left instructions. Total confidentiality. I cannot –’
The shadow had melted back into the rain, but she knew he had to be there. She ran up the steps and pushed through the heavy door into the Minster. ‘I’ll come. Thank you. Goodbye.’
And here at last there were people. Ushers in red cloaks and tourists in wet anoraks, heads tipped back to stare at the ceiling bosses. In the distance she could hear the pure high line of choristers singing a psalm. She shut off her phone and stood still, letting the immensity of the building embrace her.
One of the ushers approached. ‘Are you here for the service? Evensong’s just started.’
She looked at him dumbly and nodded. He led her into the quire, the wood-panelled area that was a virtual church within a church, and seated her on the end of a row of high-backed seats. More people, more warmth. Candles glowed on the pews, while hidden spotlights created soft pools of light and shadow in the high hollows of the church.
The congregation stood as the choir began to sing the Nunc Dimittis. Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace. Abby stood and closed her eyes. Tears and rain ran down her face; she wondered if the people around her could tell. She didn’t care. In her mind she was in a small whitewashed church in Ealing, and a serious man was standing in the pulpit in his long white robe and golden stole. Her father.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall have peace. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall have mercy.
‘What would you have made of me now?’ she whispered.
The song had finished. She heard a fluttering like birds around her as the congregation sat back down in the pews. She opened her eyes. She looked back to the door of the quire, a great wooden gateway underneath the stockade of organ pipes, to see if the shadow-man had followed her here.
The gates were shut and no one could come in. Beyond it, all was darkness.
VIII
Constantinople – Apr
il 337
I’M WEARY. I’VE been tramping around town for hours, breathing in the heat and the dust and finding that no one knows anything about the murder at the library. There was a time when I could walk forty miles in a day, but those days are a memory. I find a fountain and splash water over my face. I ease myself down on the wall and sit. The children playing in the street don’t 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 surprise. It doesn’t look like the histories of Pliny or Tacitus that we studied in school. It looks like a ledger. Parallel columns line the page, haphazardly filled with short paragraphs. Greek and Roman numerals weave through the margins and run into the text.
I lean over, struggling to decipher it. I’ve never been good with Greek – and this is filled with barbarous names and exotic places.
‘Alexander designed it to reconcile the histories of the Jews, the Greeks, the Romans and the Persians from the beginning of the world,’ Simeon explains. ‘The whole unfolding of God’s creation. A map of time, laid out to reveal its mysteries.
But I don’t hear him. It’s a book of time, and every page is a door. To read it is to step through.
In the sixteenth year of his reign, the Emperor Constantius died in Britain, at York.
York – July 306 – Thirty-one years ago …
There’s blood in the air when we ride into York. It’s accompanied us every step of our journey, a thousand miles across the empire. Blood in the stables the night we left, our long knives wet from the horses we’d lamed. Blood on our knees, our thighs and our hands where the saddles chafed us raw. Thirty-seven days’ hard riding, always peering over our shoulders. It wasn’t until we caught sight of Britain’s dirty-white cliffs that I believed we’d make it.
Constantine’s been living on borrowed time for a year now. The politics are complicated but reduce to this: he’s after another man’s job. Two emperors share the empire at the moment. Galerius rules the eastern half, while Constantius, Constantine’s father, rules the west. Constantine stays at Galerius’s court in Sirmium as a hostage to their bargain. Galerius knows there’s nothing more dangerous than an imperial heir at a loose end, but he can’t kill Constantine while Constantius reigns as his colleague. Instead, he encourages Constantine to occupy himself hunting dangerous animals in remote places, or picking fights with barbarian tribes noted for their savagery.
But now Constantius is dying. The news arrived at dinnertime thirty-eight days ago. If it had come in the morning we’d be dead by now. But Galerius is an insensible drunkard: anything that happens after noon might as well not happen until next morning. By then, we were already a hundred miles away, leaving behind only a stable full of hamstrung horses.
And now we’re here in York. The fortress stands on a hill between two rivers, with the square tower of the Principia, the headquarters, crowning its highest point. On the far bank, the civilian town sprawls up the slope from the jetties and warehouses where sea cargoes are unloaded.
The guards at the gate stiffen as they see us approach, then go ramrod straight when they hear Constantine’s name. That’s a good sign.
‘Is my father alive?’ he demands. ‘Are we in time?’
The guard nods. Constantine lifts his eyes to the sun and touches his forehead, giving thanks.
The moment we reach the Principia, ready hands pluck Constantine away from me to some inner chamber. I loiter in a corridor and watch. Guards are moving heavy strongboxes towards the portico at the front of the parade ground, while officials keep count on wax tablets. Everyone seems to know exactly what they’re doing.
The heavy tramp of footsteps rises above the noise as Constantine comes around the corner. A knot of generals and aides in full uniform surround him: somewhere in the last hour he’s found time to scrub his face and put on a gilded cuirass. It’s jarring to see him like this, reclaimed by his old life. We’ve lived in each other’s pockets for months now, first in the palace and then on the road. I wasn’t prepared for how suddenly it would change.
As he comes level with me, I call out, ‘Ho
w’s your father? Will he –?’
‘He died two days ago.’ Constantine doesn’t look at me, doesn’t break stride. His entourage brush past, walling him off. ‘The Praetorian Prefect kept it secret until I got here.’
The Praetorian Prefect is marching beside him, a horsehair crest as stiff as a corpse. Constantine’s face is blank: it’s impossible to tell if he resents what they did or if he approves. Does he have a choice?
I fall in behind them as they march through a pair of double doors on to the parade ground. The whole assembled army roars when they see Constantine. He holds up his hands for silence, but they’re in no mood to obey. They keep on shouting, chanting his name and stamping their boots, while Constantine stands there with arms stretched wide apart. It’s impossible to tell who’s controlling whom.
I don’t remember exactly what Constantine says when they eventually fall silent. He tells them his father passed away half an hour ago and they bellow out their grief. He tells them that he, Constantine, has no standing in the empire and that Galerius will appoint a successor to Constantius in due course.
They don’t like that. An angry murmur swells within the crowd – and suddenly it’s not the noise but the crowd itself surging forward. The bodyguards at the front make an effort to hold them back, but it’s curiously ineffective. A dozen legionaries clamber on to the dais and start shouting at Constantine: it’s an extraordinary violation, but he doesn’t move, not even when they grab his arms and drag him down into the crowd. The clamour is deafening. The Praetorian Prefect fingers the hilt of his sword, but doesn’t dare move.
And then a curious thing happens. No one can see Constantine, but somehow the mood changes. Faces brighten; the menace in the air evaporates. The shouts no longer sound angry, but triumphant.
Constantine’s head appears, rising out of the crowd as if he’s being drawn to heaven. The noise redoubles. Somewhere in the scrum, someone’s managed to tie a purple cloak on to him. They hoist him on to a shield and hold him aloft. The shield sways and tilts as they pass it from man to man, but Constantine keeps his balance: shaking the upraised hands, smiling, shouting unheard replies to the acclamations of his men.