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 sergeant 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?’
