by Tom Harper
‘So far your informant does not lie,’ muttered the captain. ‘But I wonder what he keeps in his shop.’
‘You should array your men around it before we find out. It will do us no good if there are a hundred of us inside the house while the monk jumps from a window and makes his escape.’
The captain gestured to his sergeants to deploy the men as I had suggested, keeping a dozen close about us. The grocer’s shutters and door were fastened shut, as tight as their skewed hinges would admit, but I thought I saw a shadow within moving across one of the cracks. Was he watching us? Did he realise that he had failed, that soon the Emperor’s torturers would be heating their irons before his eyes? Or did he have a plan, another gambit to outwit us? Was he even there?
‘My men are ready,’ the captain told me. Though there was nothing the least secretive about our actions, his voice was hushed. ‘Shall I send for the stone-throwers and ballistas, or do you think we can break this siege ourselves?’
I ignored his sarcasm. ‘This monk commands weapons whose power you could not conceive. Tell your men to beware, for their armour may be no protection.’
The captain shrugged, and fell silent as his men moved towards the building. The sergeant at their head banged on the door but there was no answer.
‘Break it,’ said the captain.
Water was dribbling behind my ear and off my nose; my breaths emerged in ragged clouds, but despite all the misery of cold and damp I felt my heart beating faster, my mind awakening with the hope of success. At the door, the sergeant now had a mattock in his hands, and was swinging it hard against the fractured timbers. The wood did not groan or crack under the impact, for it was too sodden and rotten for that; instead the blow knocked one of the panels clean out of the frame. The sergeant bellowed an order and his men piled forward, driving their boots and shoulders against the flimsy barrier. It did not hold for more than a second. With swords outstretched and shields held before their faces the men charged in, disappearing into the dim room beyond. I heard shouts and the screams of women, the crash and clatter of upturned tables, then the curt staccato of commands.
I could not stay in the street. I ran across to the house, stepped heedlessly over the broken threshold and took in the carnage before me. Two soldiers were kneeling over an elderly man and his wife, pinning them to the ground amid a sea of broken pottery and scattered vegetables. Dried fish lay in pools of olive-oil, while pickled sauces were splashed across the earthen floor. In less than a minute, the soldiers had left barely a single thing in that room untouched.
‘Where is the rest of your company?’ I demanded.
One of the Patzinaks jerked a thumb towards the spindly ladder in the corner. I climbed it two rungs at a time, hoping it would not crack apart under me, and hauled myself through a narrow gap onto the floor above. Frayed curtains had once shielded the room from the stairs, but they were pulled down and bunched on the floor, revealing more carnage: rudimentary pieces of furniture overturned, clothes and keepsakes tipped out of trunks, and even an icon of the holy virgin ripped off the wall. But no Patzinaks.
A second ladder continued the ascent to the topmost level, from where I could hear shouts of triumph and anger. Without another thought I leapt up the ladder, vaulted into the room above, and set my eyes on our new prisoner.
Two Patzinaks were holding his arms, their fingers squeezed tight into his skin as he writhed and struggled between them. He was not dressed as a monk, but in a nondescript woollen tunic which reached almost to his ankles; there was fresh mud on his boots, and dampness on his clothes which suggested he was only recently returned here. His skin was dark and his features hard, set with black eyes which flickered desperately around the room. He was thinner than I had expected; his garments hung from his shoulders like shrouds, and there was a stoop which had not seemed so obvious when I chased him through the snowbound streets. He gave no sign of recognising me.
In a corner, the sergeant stood with his arms crossed over his chest, surveying his achievement. ‘Is this the one?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know.’ Suddenly, after the energy and momentum of the chase, I felt a stab of uncertainty. Surely this was the right man — how could it not be? Feeling my limbs shivering with sudden tension, I walked slowly around the captive until I could see the back of his head.
He did not have a tonsure.
I cringed; I felt as though someone had kicked me in the groin, or punched my throat. Black bile flooded my stomach, and I stepped away from the prisoner. Yet still I clung to my belief, like a drowning sailor to his flotsam. It was weeks since I had caught the monk outside my house, more than sufficient time for his hair to grow back. Indeed, a man so attuned to his safety would hardly have done otherwise, especially once he knew I had seen him.
The Patzinak captain had arrived now. I could see his head just emerging from the hole in the floor where the ladder protruded.
‘Send two of your soldiers to the monastery of Saint Andrew,’ I told him, ‘and have them bring back a boy named Thomas who is living there.’ I brushed aside his puzzled objection. ‘He is the only one who can tell if this is the man we seek.’
That next hour was an aching ordeal, my every hope hostage to Thomas’s arrival. We searched the house, the top room particularly, but found nothing of import: our prisoner had a low bed, a crude table and a pair of stools, and little else. He did not speak, and I could not summon the strength to interrogate him, so we left him sitting against the wall with his hands tied before him and four Patzinaks surrounding him. Most of the guards were dispatched back to the palace, while others rummaged through the shopkeeper’s rooms below. Every sound they made caused me to start, to peer down the ladder to see if Thomas had arrived, and every time I felt a fool for revealing my agitation.
Predictably, I hardly noticed when he did finally arrive; I was standing at the window looking out over a wasteland of broken tenements, and only when I heard the sentry’s challenge did I turn to see him.
He was looking well. Anna must have seen to it that the monks who cared for him did not take their ascetism too rigorously, and in the weeks since I had seen him his chest and shoulders had swelled out like a warrior’s. His pale hair was brushed and trimmed, and his young beard was beginning to close in over his chin. He looked uncertainly about the room, unsure perhaps as to why he had come.
Even before I could ask my question, his eyes told me the answer. I had seen him notice our prisoner, sitting bound and guarded, had seen the curiosity which the sight engendered. There had been confusion, certainly, and perhaps a little fear, for it was not so long since he had been in that position. But not, to my furious frustration, the least hint of recognition.
20
‘This is not him.’ A month in the monastery had worked miracles on Thomas’s Greek, though I was in no mood to appreciate it. Thomas looked closer, his hesitant lips moving silently as he rehearsed his next words. ‘But like.’
‘Like? Like what? This man is like the monk?’
A look of pain furrowed Thomas’s face, and I forced myself to repeat my questions more slowly.
He nodded. ‘Like. Like him.’
‘Like a brother, perhaps?’ I turned to our cowering captive, who had heard every word. ‘Is your brother a monk? Does he stay with you?’
I was tense enough to shake an answer out of him, but he merely snivelled a little and rested his head on his knees. One of the Patzinaks slapped the side of his face.
I looked to the sergeant. ‘Go downstairs and ask the grocer whether this man received visitors: a monk. Apologise for the damage you have done his house; tell him that the Eparch will see he is well paid for his trouble.’
The sergeant looked doubtful, but I was the only man in that room who could vouch for the Eparch. We waited in silence while the sergeant thudded down the ladders; then we heard raised voices, the sound of the grocer’s wife screaming accusations, and the crash of some clay vessel shattering.
The serge
ant returned, flushed.
‘There was another man who often stayed here. The grocer’s wife had many rows with the tenant, who she calls Paul, over whether he should pay more rent for this guest. She was outraged that a man of God was taking advantage of them. “Why can he not stay in the monastery, with his brethren?” she asked.’
A flood of elation burst through me, but I tried to remain methodical. ‘What did this Paul say in return?’
‘That the man was his brother, brought to our city on a pilgrimage ordained by God. Who was he to deny him hospitality?’
‘And when was the last time this monk visited?’
The sergeant smiled in triumph. ‘Two days ago.’
I turned back to look at our prisoner. ‘Your brother is the monk I seek, the man who would kill the Emperor.’ I did not know whether to feel joy or anger that I had come so close. ‘Sergeant, take him to the palace for the torturers to start their work. Leave six of your men here in case the monk returns.’
As I had hoped, I saw the prisoner Paul go pale when I mentioned the torturers. ‘You will not snare my brother here,’ he protested. ‘He is gone.’
I watched him coolly. ‘Of course you say that. We will see what you say after a month in the dungeons.’
The prisoner went silent and bit his lip; his fingers were now wrapped tight about each other, and his nails gouged white weals in his skin. ‘He is escaped,’ he insisted. ‘I swear it. I saw him yesterday evening, in the forum of Arcadius, and he told me he would be gone by dawn. Whatever you want with him, you will not get it now.’
‘Then we will get it in the dungeon.’
‘But what more could I tell you there?’ The prisoner threw his gaze desperately around the room, beseeching pity, though the watching Patzinaks evinced nothing but menace. ‘He is gone, curse him, and he will not come back. You say he wanted to kill the Emperor, whom I pray to live a thousand years. Maybe he did. He was much changed, my brother, when he came here, and I think evil had blossomed in his heart, but what could I do? I could not bar my brother from my door: he would not let me — and he was my kin. “Do not be slow to entertain wayfarers,” he told me, “for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.”’
I snorted. ‘He was far from an angel.’
‘He did not think so.’ The prisoner Paul shuffled his shoulders a little, trying to smooth out his tunic. ‘How many nights did I listen to him, his sermons of how the empire needed a purifying fire to descend and burn away its withered branches.’ Paul looked at me imploringly. ‘He was not like this when we were young.’
After his earlier silence, the torrent of Paul’s story left so many fragments I could scarce begin to think what to examine first. I settled on the beginning.
‘When you were young,’ I repeated. ‘When was that?’
‘Thirty years ago?’ Paul shrugged. ‘I have not counted. We grew up in the mountains of Macedonia, the sons of a farmer. Michael and I. .’
‘Michael? Your brother’s name is Michael?’
Paul shook his head. ‘It was then. But when I greeted him by it after he returned, he chastised me for it. “I am reborn in Christ,” he said. “And I have taken the name Odo.” After that he insisted I call him by this new, barbarian name.’
Once again the story was flowing away from me. ‘After he returned. . from where? When did he go?’
‘He went not long after he was grown to manhood. He and our father. . disagreed.’
‘Disagreed about what?’
Paul lifted his bound hands and wiped his wrists across his forehead. ‘Our father had arranged a bride for him, but Michael did not want to marry the girl. When my father insisted, Michael refused. Afterwards he left our village and came here, to the queen of cities. He said he would make a pilgrimage to the relics of Saint John the Baptist, and find absolution.’
‘Did he find it?’
‘Not here. He came, but he did not stay. He did not have the means to enjoy all the fruits of the city, and — though he did not say as much — I think he fell in with immoral companions. After he escaped them, his wanderings took him to the ends of the earth, to the lands of the Kelts and the Franks and the other barbarian tribes who cling to the fringes of the world. There he found his salvation.’
‘In the western church?’ No wonder he had taken a barbarian name, after the fashion of his new religion. ‘When was that?’
‘Some time in the past.’ Paul looked at me hopelessly. ‘I heard nothing from him in all those years after he left the village. Everything I know I have from what he told me when he returned. Some three months ago,’ he added, anticipating my inevitable question. ‘He sent no word that he was coming — I did not even know that he knew I was here. I had come much later, after our father died. One day I returned from my work to find Michael — Odo — sitting on a stone by the grocer’s door. I scarcely recognised him, but he knew me immediately and told me he had come to stay with me. How could I refuse?’
‘Did he say what he purposed here?’
‘Never. And after one attempt, I did not ask again. He was always a private man, my brother, and he grew more so in his wanderings. He told me nothing, not even when he would be here. Sometimes he disappeared for days or even weeks, leaving no word, and I thought that perhaps he had gone back to his friends in the west, but then he would return unannounced and demand my hospitality again. Only yesterday did he say that he was going forever. As I told you.’
‘Where was he going?’
‘He did not say.’
I should not have been surprised. ‘Did your brother ever mention any notable men of the city?’ I asked, wondering if I could at least draw some hint as to his masters.
As so often, Paul shook his head, then looked up doubtfully. ‘One evening I rebuked him for eating all my dinner. I had prepared none for him, thinking he would not return that evening. As was his habit, he responded with a bitter harangue on the pre-eminence of his work: he told me that he was employed by a great lord, and lesser men should presume nothing but to make straight his way.’
I kept my tone restrained. ‘Did he say which lord?’
‘Of course not. I assumed he meant the lord God. He often spoke of his calling as the Lord’s avenger, the cleansing flame of the Holy Spirit.’
‘Did he speak of what he would avenge?’
For the first time, I drew from Paul a feeble smile. ‘Constantly. He wanted to cleanse the city of her filth, her heresies, and restore purity to her streets. To him she is Babylon, the great mother of whores and abominations, drunk on the blood of the saints. Michael swore that in the hour of her doom she will be made desolate and naked, her flesh will be devoured and burned with fire, and he will be the agent of this destruction.’ His smile widened a little. ‘If you read the apocalypse of the divine Saint John, you will understand.’
‘I know the apocalypse.’
‘During his years in Rheims, he had somehow been persuaded that this was his proper task.’
‘His years where?’
‘Rheims, I think he called it. A barbarian town. He spent some time at a school there, and later took orders in its abbey. It is where he was re-baptised as Odo. I do not know where it is.’
I did not know where it was either, but I knew I had heard of it. I thought back to a dusty library and a severe archivist lecturing me on Frankish saints.
‘Did your brother ever speak of a Saint Remigius?’ I asked. ‘Or show you a ring inscribed with that name, mounted with a cracked garnet.’ I reached into my pocket, fumbling for the ring which I had carried with me ever since that day in the forest, as if by holding his totem I might gain some grasp over the monk himself. ‘This ring?’
Impervious to the excitement in my voice, Paul shrugged. ‘He did have a ring, but I did not see it closely. It was red; it may be the one you hold. I glimpsed it only when he washed. He said it was a token of the barbarian town.’
‘Did you ever see any others with such a ring?’
‘Non
e. As I have said, no-one visited my brother here.’
I spent another hour throwing questions at the prisoner, checking the details of his story and prodding for any clue he might reveal, wittingly or not. I asked about his own circumstances — he was unmarried, it transpired, and worked as a minor clerk for a notary, taking a fraction of his employer’s earnings for the documents he prepared. He worshipped in the approved manner, fervently but without the zealous self-righteousness which the fathers condemned. He told me the name of his village and I wrote it down, for someone would have to travel there and ask about his brother. It would not be me: a journey through the Macedonian mountains in winter would not, I decided, afford the best use of my time and talents.
Outside the windows, evening was coming early to the dark day, and I was keen to be away. I had only a single question remaining, and it was more curiosity than hope. ‘Tell me, Paul, was your brother a violent man?’
The words seemed to agitate the prisoner greatly. He did not answer, but jerked his head against his shoulder as if shaking water from his ear.
‘Unbind me, and I will show you.’
I ordered a Patzinak to cut his bonds. Paul gave a grimace of acknowledgement as his hands were freed, and pulled up his sleeve. I drew in a breath, for all down to his wrist the entire arm was black, as if it had been burned or rotted away. Only after a few moments could I see that they were in fact a mottled patchwork of overlapping bruises.