Sanchez’s head flicked up at her. ‘Guess you seen it, too. We wrapped that thing in a tarp and carried it out, right past the guard. Michael wanted to take the coffin lid, too, but there was no way we were carrying that thing. He took some pictures of the paintings on the walls, and the vase –’
‘The what?’
‘The vase.’ He pronounced it the American way, to rhyme with ‘haze’. ‘Like a clay bottle, about the size of a forty-ounce of malt liquor. It was inside the coffin with the dead guy, all sealed up with wax or something.’
‘Did Michael open it?’
‘Not that I saw. We got out of there pretty fast. The Norwegian was on his radio and Michael started to get antsy. We drove off with the dead guy in the trunk. Like
Sanchez took off his cap and twisted it between his fingers. For the first time, Abby could see his eyes, twin points of light in the darkness.
‘That’s how it was. I just did what he told me. I didn’t think nothing would come of it.’
‘Did Michael give any sense of why he was interested?’ Jessop asked.
‘He talked all the time, but he didn’t say much, if you know what I mean. I asked him what it was all about. He told me it was just routine procedure.’
‘You didn’t believe that.’
‘No, but what the hell? It’s not against the Geneva Convention to take a body to a morgue, especially with it being dead a few hundred years. Like I said, I just do what they tell me. Some dead Roman guy’s not my problem.’
Abby looked up sharply. ‘How did you know it was Roman? Did Michael say that?’
‘Maybe, I guess. I don’t recall. But I’m Catholic, I’ve been in plenty of churches. I knew the writing was Latin.’
‘What writing?’
‘The writing on the coffin.’
XXIV
SOMEWHERE IN THIS palace a man’s being tortured. It shouldn’t be happening. The law says you can’t torture someone, even a slave, except in cases of treason. Of course the law’s flexible: treason’s a subjective crime. You can redefine it, if you have the power, but it still takes time. Somebody had to find a lawyer in the middle of the night, draft an exemption, get the correct secretaries in the chancery to fix the correct seals – all before they can turn the first screw.
Somebody’s taking this seriously.
I ought to be there making notes. Instead, I’ve gathered up all the lamps I can find and shut myself in a storeroom with Alexander’s document case. I don’t understand what’s happened this evening, but I’ve seen rotten justice often enough to know the smell. I’ve also got a shrewd idea that a lot of the questions in the dungeon are going to be about the papers in my hand. Soon, someone’s going to remember that I brought the case to the palace.
And it’s slow work. The papers are pages of all different sizes, written in different inks and hands; mostly in Greek, though a few in Latin. I concentrate on those, though it’s hard to read when you don’t know what you’re looking for. Some are letters or memoranda from the imperial archives; others seem to be excerpts from books. I can’t find a theme.
One:
Another, a poem:
A third:
I sneeze, and curse as papers fly off my makeshift table. The room’s full of dust. A dozen carved stone panels, each the weight of a horse, lean against the walls, waiting to be mounted in one of Constantine’s new monuments. Marble soldiers frozen in battle knock against my legs.
I pick up another fragment. The lamps gutter and flicker; my eyes are tired, unused to so much reading. My own name leaps out of the page at me.
There’s a date, but I don’t need to check it. The world’s gone dim; I think one of the lamps must have blown out. I put down the paper and lean my weight on the marble plaque.
The door flies open. The rush of air blows up the papers; one lands next to a lamp and catches fire. I flap at it, but my movements are numb and clumsy. Simeon runs in from the door, throws it on the floor and stamps it out before the whole pile goes up.
‘They want to see you.’
