Instead, the whole restaurant fell suddenly quiet. It was as if a singer were about to begin a performance. There was that same feeling of hushed expectancy. The chattering and laughter of the diners had ceased. The serving slaves left off their darting around and clattering of dishes. All was suddenly fallen silent. All was still.
I looked round to my left. Over by the door, their set faces pale in the glimmer of the lamps, three men dressed in the black I’d earlier seen at the Ministry stood looking at the diners. They were as still and silent as everyone else in the room.
Then one of them stepped forward. Taller than the others, his wiry build partly compensated by the bulk of the armour under his cloak, he added to the impression of a performer about to begin. He looked from table to hushed, expectant table, dwelling on none. A smile on his thin lips, he seemed to bask in the terror his appearance had created. A slave was pushed forward to stand trembling beside him.
‘Well?’ the Tall Man asked in a voice of quiet but silky menace. ‘Where is he this time?’
The slave pointed silently towards a table on the far side of the room from ours. A single diner sat there. I’d noticed him playing with some bread.
His assistants two paces behind him, the Tall Man approached the indicated table. As they passed each table, I could sense a slight sagging of the tension. But it was only a very slight sagging. Everyone remained still and silent.
The slave lightly touched the diner on his shoulder, and fell back. He squatted down on the floor, covering his face. His body shook with suppressed sobs. I could see dark bruises on his arms and his bare legs.
‘Justinus of Tyre,’ the Tall Man opened now, still quiet but in a peremptory tone, ‘do you know the reason why we stand before you?’
The face of the diner turned grey in the lamplight. He was short and balding, in early middle age, the fingers of his upraised hands heavy with gold rings. His appearance cried merchant of the richer sort. He muttered a few words I couldn’t catch. Those at the next table looked down steadily at their wine.
I noticed that all the other diners in the restaurant were also looking away. One man at a table near mine was breathing heavily despite himself. With shaking hands he fingered what looked like a pagan charm. The other diners hardly seemed to be breathing. Mine was the only head turned in that direction.
Martin had drained his cup with a single gulp. He was looking carefully down at the table, his hands spread out before him. He kicked under the table at my foot, desperate to have me do likewise. I ignored him and continued watching the scene played out before me.
‘There are questions to be put to you – in the usual place,’ the Tall Man added with an ominous stress. ‘You will come quietly.’
With a clatter of overturned cups, Justinus rose unsteadily to his feet. The vase of yellow flowers placed on his table went over, and, from a good fifteen feet away, I clearly heard the spattering of water on to the floor.
‘Please-’ he gasped in a deathly voice. His words were cut short with a heavy blow to the face from the Tall Man. Justinus fell back against a chair that broke under the shock. The two assistants reached down and pulled him to his feet. The neighbouring diners rose quickly and went over to stand with outspread arms and their faces pressed to the far wall. I could see one of them shaking as if in a mild epileptic fit.
‘You will remain silent,’ the Tall Man said in a soft voice. ‘You will speak only in the place where you are questioned, and when you are questioned.’
As they moved away from the table, one of the serving slaves restrained himself from hurrying forward to pick up the broken vase from the floor. Instead, he remained squatting on his haunches with the others.
With a sudden convulsion, Justinus broke free from the grasp of the men in black and looked desperately round for escape. The door was blocked by another of those men in black who stood just outside the room. He looked menacing, though seemed not to be armed. The only window was shuttered against the evening draught.
A look of wild despair on his face, Justinus crashed heavily through the tables in my own direction. Crockery and knives clattered to the floor behind him.
Knowing he was trapped, the arresting officials stood watching to see what he might do.
I suppose, with my size and colouring, I stood out the most from the other diners. It didn’t help that I was the only one not looking carefully away or down at the table.
Justinus made straight for me. ‘You’ve got to help me,’ he cried in a deathly voice, clutching at my robe. ‘Tell them I can explain everything. Nothing is what it seems…’
Before I could so much as open my mouth, the two assistants in black were with us. They pulled Justinus back from me. He fell to the floor, his hands clamped round my left calf. They pulled harder, but nothing could break his grip on me. I tried to shake him loose but with no success. Big as I was, I was nearly pulled to the floor with him. But for the attendant circumstances, there was something faintly comic about the scene.
From his robe, the Tall Man pulled a heavy cosh. With two short and exact blows, face still without marked expression, he smashed hard on Justinus’s wrists. I heard the dull crunching of lead on bone and felt the grip relax.
The Tall Man stood back to admire his work. He wiped a splash of blood off the cosh and balanced it in his right hand.
As the assistants pulled Justinus away from me, he curled into a ball, now screaming with pain and fear. They still couldn’t get him to his feet. Each time they seemed about to get him up, he’d go limp on them, and his dead weight fell through their grip.
The two assistants now set about him with their coshes. They hardly seemed to move as, with careful and practised blows, they smashed his body to pulp. Blood oozed though his clothing as flesh burst and bones cracked. The screams gave way to an animalistic whimpering, and then to rattling gasps as blow after blow continued to fall on the more delicate and exposed areas of his body.
Trembling with excitement, the Tall Man directed his assistants to areas of the body that hadn’t yet come under the cosh. In that silent restaurant, I could hear every blow and every rasping breath. Blood splashed my sleeve. There was a rich, high smell of shit as the man’s bowels relaxed.
The other diners continued looking away.
Moving round to get a new position, one of the assistants knocked into me. My cup went over, spilling red wine into my lap.
‘For God’s sake,’ I cried, disgust taking the place of alarm – ‘for God’s sake, is this really necessary?’
I stood up and faced the Tall Man. My cup hit the floor, shattering on its hard surface. Lacking my bulk, his height was deceptive. I stared him straight in the face. His assistants fell back before me, obviously unsure how to respond to this kind of challenge.
The Tall Man held his ground. His pale features again took on a thin smile. He stepped over the motionless body of Justinus. He put his face close to mine and I could smell some kind of spiced drug on his breath.
‘Do you presume to interfere in the arrest of a convicted traitor?’ His soft voice reverted to its silky, menacing tone.
‘My Lord,’ one of the assistants said. ‘My Lord’ – he bent to take up a letter that must have rolled out from that bloody robe.
The Tall Man ripped at the seal and scanned the contents. His face contracted into what looked like the beginnings of a seizure, but he gripped the back of a chair and fought to recover himself.
‘You are aware of the treasons in this document?’ It was both a question and a statement. His voice still smooth by effort, his hand was shaking.
‘Of course not,’ I snapped, suddenly aware that I was splashed all over with blood. I was wearing the clothes I had brought from Rome. It would be days yet before the new ones were ready.
‘Please, Illustrious Sir,’ Martin broke in, scrabbling in his satchel for our documents, ‘please, but my colleague is a stranger to the City. He doesn’t understand City ways. We are under the protection of-’
The Tall Man held up his arm for silence. ‘Not another word,’ he said with a grim pleasure. ‘You are the known associates of a convicted traitor. I have no doubt you will come quietly.’
‘Traitors?’ I blurted out, incredulous. ‘How about some charges?’ I asked, remembering my law.
The smile expanded to reveal a row of stained teeth. The Tall Man waved at the other crouched, silent diners.
‘These are the accused. They wait the call of the Emperor’s Divine Justice. That offal on the floor’ – he glanced down at Justinus – ‘is the convicted one. And you are now his convicted associates.’
