I had advantages of weight and strength, but he was a slippery sod. As we struggled on the floor, he got his right arm free and stabbed at my back. I felt nothing at the time except for blood trickling from the wound he opened.
I head-butted him repeatedly in the face. At last, I regained control of his knife arm, clamping his wrist to the floor. With my free right hand, I closed on his windpipe and squeezed hard. I squeezed until his breath came in ragged gasps and the strength ebbed from his right arm.
Or so it appeared. As I moved again to take control of his arm, I felt him slithering out from under me. This time, I felt the knife-point jar against my collar bone. The pain came with a sudden burst that I thought would paralyse my upper body.
My object had been to disable him and then question him at leisure. You can do a lot with a hot knife and a variable gag. But it now looked as if I’d run out of energy before he had. If he could get control of the knife at such close quarters and in darkness, it might easily be all over for me. It was time to finish matters while I still had some degree of advantage.
The intruder was bald, so there was nothing to take hold of to smash his head on to the boards. Instead I managed to get his head in my hands and twist it hard upwards to my left.
I felt the sharp click as his neck went limp. There was an arching spasm that threw me sideways off the body, then a momentary twitching.
And it was over. I was alone with a corpse.
I sat a while to gather my thoughts. I could feel a continual trickle of blood down my back and the pain was getting worse.
Still no Authari. Had he been killed in a concerted attack?
I got up and took the lamp from the bedside table. At first I thought I’d drop it but I took a deep breath and brought my fit of shaking under enough control to open the stove and pour a few drops of oil on to the glowing charcoal. In the gentle flame that leapt up, I lit the lamp, then went over to the still body.
Now I nearly did drop the lamp in alarm. The face was understandably battered and contorted. But I could see at once who it was.
It was Agathius – that agent of Heraclius I’d met in the latrine.
37
Outside in the corridor, Authari was snoring like an old pig. He sagged in his chair in a cloud of farty and wine-sodden belchy smells. Sword still clutched in his hand, he would have been just as much use tucked up in bed as in his self-appointed mission as guard.
Otherwise, all within the Legation was still. All was dark. All was quiet.
No point waking him yet.
I checked the nursery. Maximin was sleeping peacefully, Gutrune was also emitting drunken snores.
In Martin’s room, I knelt beside the low bed and put my hand over his mouth. ‘Martin,’ I called gently, ‘wake up – it’s me.’
‘Oh my God!’ he whispered when I felt sure enough of his reaction to take my hand away. ‘Are you all right, Aelric?’
He sat up. I noticed he was fully clothed.
‘Just about,’ I said. ‘But I’ve just killed a man in my room. He was sent by Heraclius to kill me.’
Martin stood beside me looking down at the body. It lay as I’d left it, the dead eyes staring up at the ceiling, the knife close to the right hand.
‘Let me see your back,’ he said.
‘What?’ I said, looking at him.
‘Your back,’ he said. ‘It’s covered in blood.’
I winced as I pulled away the sheet I’d draped over myself. The blood had dried in the cold night air and the thin silk had stuck to me.
‘Not a pretty sight,’ said Martin, holding the lamp so close I could feel its heat, ‘but a little water will rid you of that.’
The hangover was doing him good. Except that he staggered when he moved, and kept putting a hand up to his obviously throbbing head, he was on better form than I’d expected – not a panic attack in sight. When I filled him in properly on that latrine encounter, he simply furrowed his brows and looked away. It was as if he had given up being alarmed at anything more I could do or say.
‘What do you suppose we should do?’ he asked.
I sat on my bed and looked across at the body.
‘Search me,’ I said at length. ‘I suppose we could raise the alarm. Or perhaps not,’ I added, dropping into Celtic.
Martin got up and shut the door, then came and sat beside me. Together we studied the body.
‘God knows what the Emperor will do,’ he said, ‘if you say anything about what happened in those latrines. You know that not reporting treason at once is treason in itself. And how much do you think he needs you now? You were useful in the Circus. That may have been it.’
He went over to the body again and began searching through the clothes. It was something I had been intending to do myself. He pulled out a small leather satchel that had been fastened to an inner garment and handed it to me.
I took it and opened it. Inside was a sheet of papyrus folded in four. I smoothed it open on my bed, taking care not to crack the fragile document. With Martin holding the lamp very close, we pored over the small characters. As we read, his composure slipped to the point where he had to sit down on the floor and rock back and forth to fight off an attack of sobs. My own hand trembled as I took the lamp from him.
It was a letter to me from the Dispensator. It instructed me to give all possible assistance to the Permanent Legate in anathematising both Phocas and Heraclius and in declaring for an alleged son of Maurice, who was said by the Persian King to be the legitimate Emperor.
‘It’s a forgery,’ I said weakly. ‘The shitbag is up to many things, but he’d never put that in writing. Look’ – I turned the sheet over. There was no scorching on the back – none of the usual signs of checking for secret writing. ‘It was brought here to plant near my body.’
‘It can’t be a forgery,’ Martin said with quiet despair. He insisted that the letter was in the correct Lateran style and bore the correct seal. He should have known. Drafting stuff like that had been his job for five years. The rhythmical clauses and contracted script screamed Papal Chancery. There wasn’t a giveaway Greek letter in sight. It even had a signed subscript thanking me for confirming the Emperor’s unorthodoxy regarding the Creed.
There was a sudden pain low in my belly. I groaned and pointed at the piss pot. Martin got it under my chin just in time. I thought my head would burst as the black and red waves swept over me, and I puked again and again.
‘Drink this,’ said Martin, pushing more water between my lips. He dabbed his sleeve in the cup and wiped at the sweat on my face.
‘What the fuck have I been eating?’ I gasped as I flopped on to the bed.
‘Cabbage by the look of things,’ Martin said, glancing up from an inspection of the pot. ‘I don’t know about the other stuff.’
I leaned forward. I’d managed to fill the thing almost to the brim. Still, aside from the raw pain in my throat and all points downward, I was beginning to feel better. I wasn’t at all sleepy.
I looked again at the body. Martin had pulled the bedcover over it but the head was still visible. With mouth and eyes wide open, it was twisted at an angle that I was beginning to find distasteful.
What was it the dead man had told me in the latrine?
‘You will see me again, Alaric, and when you do, it will, I assure you, be to your advantage.’
I laughed. Before I could draw breath again, I felt a wet sleeve slapping my face. ‘I’m not hysterical,’ I wanted to say primly. But Martin had the letter in his hand.
‘We say nothing,’ he said flatly. ‘Even a suspicion that this letter existed, and that we’d seen it, would have us under the Ministry. I say we burn it and get the body out of here. Then we come back and don’t go out again until we leave for home.’
A thought crossed his mind. ‘You say Heraclius was behind this?’ he asked. ‘Why are you so certain? I thought you said they were protecting you.’
Not a good time for answering that one. But Martin’s thought
s had moved on.
‘You do suppose Heraclius will let us go once he’s inside the gates?’ he asked with rising concern. Would he recognise our immunity? His people didn’t.
‘That could be days and days away,’ I said. ‘I’ll think of something by then. For the moment, we’ll stay indoors. If anyone in the Legation asks why we’re not going out to Sunday service, we’ll plead indisposition from too much drink. The day after tomorrow can take care for itself.’
I needed to sit down and think all this through. But that would have to wait. Now was the time for action.
I took the letter from Martin and staggered over to the stove. I held it over the charcoals for a moment. Though I could smell the scorching of reasonably new papyrus, no secret writing emerged on either side. I let go of the sheet. As it fell into the fire it buckled upwards in the heat, the tightly pressed strips of papyrus reed coming apart as the glue melted. Then, with a sudden flare of light, it turned to ashes.
Now there was no letter. There had been no letter.
‘Where do you suppose we can dump a body in this city?’ I asked. This wasn’t Rome. People had a habit of asking about stray bodies in the street. There’d be more to this, if noticed, than paperwork and a few clerking fees.
38
After an age of shaking and slapping at his face, I eventually managed to wake Authari. To be on the safe side, Martin had moved his sword out of reach.
No, I wasn’t angry that he’d nodded off for a moment. No, I didn’t think he’d been bribed into looking the other way. Yes, I would want the duplicate key to the wine store, though not until morning. No, I didn’t think he’d been drugged – though I was beginning to wonder about that wine Alypius had brought down to me in the Circus.
I simply wanted his help in disposing of the body.
‘Cut the thing up,’ he said, looking ferocious. ‘Cut it up in the lead bathtub. Wrap the body parts in old cloth and dump them one at a time into the rubbish bins placed at the main street junctions.’ Authari spat on the body and gave it a hard kick.
Inventive advice, but easier given than followed. Hacking off limbs in a fight was nothing to either of us. But we weren’t butchers, and dissecting a body neatly into its component parts takes a skill we hadn’t acquired. Besides, there was the blood to consider. Even if the three of us could lift that lead bath, the chances were that we’d give ourselves away carrying it down to the bathhouse.
Then there was the matter of disposing of the body parts. The streets might not be so crowded with armed pickets as earlier, but it was still too risky to go about dumping suspiciously shaped packages into the public bins.
No. We’d have to get the whole body out of the Legation, and then out of the city centre. Just inside the walls, it would be more like Rome. There’d be plenty of room for dumped bodies.
But how to get from here to there?
‘What about a public chair?’ Martin suggested. ‘Get it here in the morning, while most people are at Sunday service. Take the body in that.’
That wouldn’t work either. Public carriers will do most things for cash, and usually keep their mouths shut afterwards. But smuggling corpses out of the Papal Legation might not be among these things.
Besides, I wanted that body out of the way now. The longer it remained here, the more chance that it would need explaining.
We discussed dumping it in the sea. But how to get it past the guards on the shore? Even if we found a boat, it would only take us into the Golden Horn, which no tides ever washed clean. Even if we weighted the body, it would break loose and float to the surface.
The course of action we finally decided on was still risky, but it was the best we could manage at short notice.
Getting out of the Legation was easier than we’d expected. No longer just drunk, the doorkeepers were all asleep. From their stillness and shallow breathing, they had clearly been drugged. That removed all need for lies or concealment.
On the other hand, it raised the problem of how to get back in. Before leaving my suite, we’d decided to close and bolt all the window shutters. If one killer had got in, who was to say another wouldn’t? The door to my suite would have to be left unbarred as everyone else was asleep, but we took the precaution of locking the door to the nursery.
Leaving the main gate of the Legation unbarred wasn’t an option, now that all the doorkeepers were out cold. I needed someone to stay behind and look after things, so we spent more time slapping some life into Radogast, who was now the most senior of my Lombard slaves. He had all the strength and loyalty of Authari but none of his resourcefulness. Still, he would easily be able to lift the heavy bar into place behind us, and then to let us in again.
‘Sit over there,’ I said, motioning him to a bench against the wall. It was midway between the gate and the doorway to my suite. ‘If you see anyone strange, kill him.’
He nodded. There was no point giving him more detailed instructions.
At last, we set out. It was still blackest night and while the streets were brightly lit, there were fewer people about than when I’d been carried back from the Imperial Palace. Mostly drunk, the Circus Faction bands took no interest in us. No one asked us for identification.
We’d dressed the body in a long hooded cloak. Similarly clad, Authari and I walked on either side of it. The leather thongs about its wrists that we clutched tight to our chests made it look as if the dead man had his arms around our necks for support. The hood was of a stiff enough fabric to hide how the head flopped low on the chest, and the length of the cloak to some extent concealed the fact that the feet weren’t stumbling beside us, but trailing along the ground.
Authari and I swayed gently from side to side as we dragged the body along, giving our best appearance of a trio of drunks – one being helped along by the others.
Also hooded, Martin walked a few yards ahead, keeping an eye out for Black Agents or anyone else who might be inclined to give us more than a passing glance.
We dumped the body in the cellar beneath a derelict wine shop where the stench of decayed human shit and other filth was already overpowering. Martin struck steel on flint to get our lamp going and, as in Rome with any dead burglar, we stripped the body. He slid a ring off the signet finger for later dropping through a drain cover.
As a final precaution, Authari took out the short sword he’d brought along and cut the head off the corpse. Then we heaped rubble over the body, and hoped the rats would find it before anyone else did.
‘Murderous fucking Greek!’ he snarled, spitting on to the mashed-up brains.
‘I’ll see you in Hell!’ Martin added with uncharacteristic passion.
‘Mustn’t the Last Trump sound first?’ I asked with a deliberate lack of relevance. My own head was coming on to ache again.
After disposing of what remained of the head in a neighbouring cellar we crept back to the Legation by a different and very circuitous route, arriving there just as dawn was preparing to fringe the eastern sky with rosy fingers.
I couldn’t speak for Authari. He was now in impassive freedman mode, carrying out his duties without question. But I know Martin and I were feeling rather better for having got rid of the body. So I was surprised by the argument that broke out between him and Authari as we approached the Legation.
‘I told you,’ Martin whispered, ‘not to leave him alone.’
‘Don’t moan at me,’ came the reply. ‘I left the dinner earlier than you. I only nodded off for a moment.’
I turned and shut them up. This was not the time or the place for discussing anything – not even what Alypius might have been doing in my bedroom earlier.
‘We’ll sleep,’ I said firmly as I knocked at the Legation gate and Radogast raised the bar. ‘We’ll sleep until the sun is well up. Then we’ll decide with clear heads what to do next.’
Inside the main hall I helped to lower the bar on the gate, then I led the way towards my suite.
Just at that moment Demetrius burst throu
gh the door to our right.
‘There you are, sir!’ he cried, his eyes wide with terror. Other officials milled around him, silent in their panic. ‘Oh, sir – we’ve been looking for you everywhere. Do come at once and help. I fear His Excellency the Permanent Legate has come to grief.’
39
The Permanent Legate had his private rooms arranged almost as a mirror image of my own suite. Where mine were to the left of the main hall, his were to the right. For the first time since my arrival, the door leading in was unlocked and open.
With an involuntary but brief pause at the doorway, I stepped through into the corridor and made for the staircase, which was in the same relative position as my own. I hadn’t before realised how my suite had come to differ from other parts of the Legation because we’d improved it by a series of incremental touches over the past few months – a rug here, an ornament there, and so on. We’d made it into a home.
Over on this side, there had been no improvements. The change of season had combined with the dilapidated externals to produce a damp smell on this side of the dome. Paint was flaking off the plastered walls to reveal brown stains beneath.
At the top of the stairs I encountered the legal official, Antony. He was dancing from side to side with agitation. Behind him, a slave was pushing in vain at what I took to be the door of the Permanent Legate’s bedroom.
‘Oh, sir,’ Antony cried, ‘the door is locked and bolted from the inside. We fear the worst.’
‘What are you talking about?’ I shouted above the wailing of the slaves.
‘Shut those fucking slaves up,’ I added with a snarl, ‘or I’ll have them flogged.’
The Terror of Constantinople a-2 Page 25