Another yank on her hair pulled her to her feet. The guard dragged her after Dragovic, across the room to a spotlit stone on the wall. There were no carvings or paintings, just two lines of text in sharp capital letters, and a monogram above. Abby stared.
Dragovic waved the gun at it. ‘You recognise this?’
There was no point lying. He’d read it in her face. ‘I’ve seen the symbol before. At the villa – there was a gold necklace.’
‘What happened to it?’
‘The police gave it to me. I took it back to London. My Government found out and confiscated it.’
Dragovic pointed back to the stone tablet. ‘And the text? You recognise that?’
‘I don’t know Latin.’
Her jaw went numb as the butt of his pistol smashed into it. She spun away, but the guard held her hair tight and dragged her back. She dropped to her knees. Dragovic stood over her, his breath fast and excited.
‘You went to the Forum Museum this afternoon. You looked where this tablet came from.
She spat out a gob of blood on the floor.
She stared at the tablet, the sign like the cross above the words she couldn’t read, and prayed to the God she didn’t really believe in to help her.
‘The symbol,’ she mumbled. She flapped an arm towards the plaque. ‘The tablet had the same symbol as the necklace. I wanted to see it.’
‘Is that why you have come to Rome?’
Now her surprise was genuine. ‘The message.’
‘What message? Who told you to come here?’
She looked at him blankly. Blood dribbled down her chin – she didn’t know if it came from inside her mouth or out. ‘Didn’t you?’
He almost hit her again. She saw his arm tense, felt the grip on her head tighten in anticipation. She saw the fury in his face, and knew that if he hit her again, he’d keep going until there was nothing of her left to hurt.
The blow didn’t come. ‘Tell me why you came to Rome,’ he repeated, his voice tight with the strain of self- control.
‘The text message. I don’t know who sent it. He quoted the inscription on Constantine’s arch. He said he could help.’
Dragovic said something over her head. The hand let go; she slumped on to the floor again. Footsteps went and came back. When she opened her eyes, Dragovic was rifling through her handbag. They must have got it from the car. He pulled out her phone and read off the screen. He looked surprised, Abby thought.
‘You see?’ she mumbled. ‘Wasn’t that you?’
The guard lifted her up and a cloth went over her head. The last thing she remembered was the choking smell of lilies closing in around her.
XVI
THE SOLDIERS AREN’T palace guards. The badges on their cloaks show twin men wrestling each other. The fourteenth, the Gemini. By rights, they should be a thousand miles away on the Rhine frontier, watching for barbarians trying to creep across the river.
The centurion salutes. ‘General Valerius. Please come with us.’
It’s a long time since anyone called me General. ‘Who wants to see me?’
‘An old friend.’
It must be a lie. All my friends are long gone, one way or another. But there’s no point resisting. I pull on a cloak and a wide-brimmed hat and let them take me. We avoid the obvious destinations – the palace, the Schola barracks, the Blacherna Prison – and instead plunge down the steep-stepped hill towards the Golden Horn. Early afternoon on a Sunday, the city dozes like a dog: the market halls are empty, the shops shuttered, the ovens cold. Even the picks and hammers have gone quiet. The whole world’s stopped, because Constantine commanded it. Who’d reject a god who gives you a day off once a week?
A skiff’s waiting for us, bobbing among the litter and debris that clog the harbour. Twelve strong slaves bend over their oars. I’m expecting them to take us across the Horn; instead, they turn out into the open water of the Bosphorus. I glance down into the bilge. A length of chain makes an iron nest near the bow, and the anchor fastened to it looks heavy enough to sink an old man. With the wind up, blowing spray off the whitecaps, you wouldn’t even see the splash.
I pull the cloak closer to keep off the wind, and fix my attention on the city on the Asian shore – Chrysopolis, the city of gold. It’s lost some lustre in recent years – the magnificence of Constantinople casts a long shadow across the strait – but a certain class of person still values its amenities. The houses are spacious, the air’s clear, and the jealous eyes that watch every inch of Constantinople can’t reach quite this far.
The boat steers clear of the town harbour, and pulls along the coast to a private stone landing. Long gardens stretch away from the water towards a handsome villa at the top of the slope. Almond trees are in bloom; bees buzz among the cyclamen and roses. Halfway to the house, two men wait on a terrace. One hurries down the steps to greet me.
‘General Valerius. After all these years.’
