The marriage goes ahead and is as lavish as the bride and groom deserve. And two weeks later I head east, spying out the best ground where an invading army might forage, camp and fight.
‘My wedding …’ A tremor disturbs the remaining powder on Constantiana’s face. ‘I’d almost managed to forget it.’
‘A happy day.’
‘It bought my brother time to prepare for his next war. We both know that – now.’ She gives me a pitying look. ‘Did you know, the Augustus once considered marrying me to you?’
I start to make a pro-forma protest, but she talks me down. ‘Some people said he’d raise you to Caesar, before Fausta started popping out sons like a breeding sow. You were handsome, then – and dangerous. More than one woman in the palace cried herself to sleep at night wondering why you didn’t look at her.’
‘I had no idea,’ I say, truthfully.
The mask reassembles itself. The door to the past closes.
‘You know the Augustus leaves on campaign next week. When he’s gone, you’ll report to me. Whatever you find out.’
I walk home, unescorted. Perhaps I should be more careful. As I approach my house, something moves by the door. Too much time in the palace has made me anxious – I pull away, pause, scan the shadows.
There’s someone there.
‘Are you going to rob an old man?’ I call. I wish I hadn’t been too proud to walk without a stick.
A figure steps into the light cast by the lamp over my door. Relief floods my body. It’s Simeon.
‘You could have waited inside.’
He looks surprised at the thought. Is my reputation so terrifying?
‘A man walked into my church today – I didn’t see him – and left a wrapped bundle on the step. There was a message inside.’
He hands over a flat wax tablet. I hold it up to the light.
No name or signature. The wax is brittle and dry.
‘When did this come?’
‘This afternoon.’
‘Did anyone see the man who left it?’
‘Nothing they remembered.’
Of course they didn’t. I send Simeon away and tell him to come back tomorrow. The day’s gone on too long. My last thought before I go to sleep is of Constantiana, a slumped woman old before her time, with not even memories to comfort her.
How will I ever solve a murder in Constantinople? The city is filled with broken statues and broken people; lives smashed by everyday violence like stones under a chisel. Yet ask, and no one remembers a thing.
XXI
ABBY STOOD IN the alley across the street from her apartment building and watched. She’d been there for the last half-hour, looking for danger and screwing up her courage. All the parked cars were empty; none of the overlooking curtains twitched. Twenty minutes ago she’d seen Annukka walk out the door with her gym bag over her shoulder. That should give her an hour.
Heart in mouth, she walked briskly across the road and let herself in to the building. No sirens wailed; no cars screeched to a halt; no one shouted her name. She ran up the stairs to her flat. Just as her hand touched the handle, she noticed the corner of a sheet of paper slid under the door.
For a moment, she thought she might run down the stairs, all the way to the airport and straight back to London.
The flat was empty. She picked up the note and unfolded it.
She remembered Michael’s diary, just before he died:
Abby folded up the note and stuck it in her pocket. It begged fifty questions, but she wasn’t going to think about them now. She went to the bedroom and found her car keys in the drawer where she’d left them a month earlier. The car was where she’d left it, too, parked around the corner outside a minimart. She went inside the shop and pretended to leaf through a rack of magazines, watching the street for the eyes that were surely looking for
