Martin got up and shut the door, then came and sat beside me. Together we studied the body.
‘God knows what the Emperor will do,’ he said, ‘if you say anything about what happened in those latrines. You know that not reporting treason at once is treason in itself. And how much do you think he needs you now? You were useful in the Circus. That may have been it.’
He went over to the body again and began searching through the clothes. It was something I had been intending to do myself. He pulled out a small leather satchel that had been fastened to an inner garment and handed it to me.
I took it and opened it. Inside was a sheet of papyrus folded in four. I smoothed it open on my bed, taking care not to crack the fragile document. With Martin holding the lamp very close, we pored over the small characters. As we read, his composure slipped to the point where he had to sit down on the floor and rock back and forth to fight off an attack of sobs. My own hand trembled as I took the lamp from him.
It was a letter to me from the Dispensator. It instructed me to give all possible assistance to the Permanent Legate in anathematising both Phocas and Heraclius and in declaring for an alleged son of Maurice, who was said by the Persian King to be the legitimate Emperor.
‘It’s a forgery,’ I said weakly. ‘The shitbag is up to many things, but he’d never put that in writing. Look’ – I turned the sheet over. There was no scorching on the back – none of the usual signs of checking for secret writing. ‘It was brought here to plant near my body.’
‘It can’t be a forgery,’ Martin said with quiet despair. He insisted that the letter was in the correct Lateran style and bore the correct seal. He should have known. Drafting stuff like that had been his job for five years. The rhythmical clauses and contracted script screamed Papal Chancery. There wasn’t a giveaway Greek letter in sight. It even had a signed subscript thanking me for confirming the Emperor’s unorthodoxy regarding the Creed.
There was a sudden pain low in my belly. I groaned and pointed at the piss pot. Martin got it under my chin just in time. I thought my head would burst as the black and red waves swept over me, and I puked again and again.
‘Drink this,’ said Martin, pushing more water between my lips. He dabbed his sleeve in the cup and wiped at the sweat on my face.
‘What the fuck have I been eating?’ I gasped as I flopped on to the bed.
‘Cabbage by the look of things,’ Martin said, glancing up from an inspection of the pot. ‘I don’t know about the other stuff.’
I leaned forward. I’d managed to fill the thing almost to the brim. Still, aside from the raw pain in my throat and all points downward, I was beginning to feel better. I wasn’t at all sleepy.
I looked again at the body. Martin had pulled the bedcover over it but the head was still visible. With mouth and eyes wide open, it was twisted at an angle that I was beginning to find distasteful.
What was it the dead man had told me in the latrine?
‘You will see me again, Alaric, and when you do, it will, I assure you, be to your advantage.’
I laughed. Before I could draw breath again, I felt a wet sleeve slapping my face. ‘I’m not hysterical,’ I wanted to say primly. But Martin had the letter in his hand.
‘We say nothing,’ he said flatly. ‘Even a suspicion that this letter existed, and that we’d seen it, would have us under the Ministry. I say we burn it and get the body out of here. Then we come back and don’t go out again until we leave for home.’
A thought crossed his mind. ‘You say Heraclius was behind this?’ he asked. ‘Why are you so certain? I thought you said they were protecting you.’
Not a good time for answering that one. But Martin’s thoughts had moved on.
‘You do suppose Heraclius will let us go once he’s inside the gates?’ he asked with rising concern. Would he recognise our immunity? His people didn’t.
‘That could be days and days away,’ I said. ‘I’ll think of something by then. For the moment, we’ll stay indoors. If anyone in the Legation asks why we’re not going out to Sunday service, we’ll plead indisposition from too much drink. The day after tomorrow can take care for itself.’
I needed to sit down and think all this through. But that would have to wait. Now was the time for action.
I took the letter from Martin and staggered over to the stove. I held it over the charcoals for a moment. Though I could smell the scorching of reasonably new papyrus, no secret writing emerged on either side. I let go of the sheet. As it fell into the fire it buckled upwards in the heat, the tightly pressed strips of papyrus reed coming apart as the glue melted. Then, with a sudden flare of light, it turned to ashes.
Now there was no letter. There had been no letter.
‘Where do you suppose we can dump a body in this city?’ I asked. This wasn’t Rome. People had a habit of asking about stray bodies in the street. There’d be more to this, if noticed, than paperwork and a few clerking fees.
38
After an age of shaking and slapping at his face, I eventually managed to wake Authari. To be on the safe side, Martin had moved his sword out of reach.
No, I wasn’t angry that he’d nodded off for a moment. No, I didn’t think he’d been bribed into looking the other way. Yes, I would want the duplicate key to the wine store, though not until morning. No, I didn’t think he’d been drugged – though I was beginning to wonder about that wine Alypius had brought down to me in the Circus.
I simply wanted his help in disposing of the body.
‘Cut the thing up,’ he said, looking ferocious. ‘Cut it up in the lead bathtub. Wrap the body parts in old cloth and dump them one at a time into the rubbish bins placed at the main street junctions.’ Authari spat on the body and gave it a hard kick.
Inventive advice, but easier given than followed. Hacking off limbs in a fight was nothing to either of us. But we weren’t butchers, and dissecting a body neatly into its component parts takes a skill we hadn’t acquired. Besides, there was the blood to consider. Even if the three of us could lift that lead bath, the chances were that we’d give ourselves away carrying it down to the bathhouse.
Then there was the matter of disposing of the body parts. The streets might not be so crowded with armed pickets as earlier, but it was still too risky to go about dumping suspiciously shaped packages into the public bins.
No. We’d have to get the whole body out of the Legation, and then out of the city centre. Just inside the walls, it would be more like Rome. There’d be plenty of room for dumped bodies.
But how to get from here to there?
‘What about a public chair?’ Martin suggested. ‘Get it here in the morning, while most people are at Sunday service. Take the body in that.’
That wouldn’t work either. Public carriers will do most things for cash, and usually keep their mouths shut afterwards. But smuggling corpses out of the Papal Legation might not be among these things.
Besides, I wanted that body out of the way now. The longer it remained here, the more chance that it would need explaining.
We discussed dumping it in the sea. But how to get it past the guards on the shore? Even if we found a boat, it would only take us into the Golden Horn, which no tides ever washed clean. Even if we weighted the body, it would break loose and float to the surface.
The course of action we finally decided on was still risky, but it was the best we could manage at short notice.
Getting out of the Legation was easier than we’d expected. No longer just drunk, the doorkeepers were all asleep. From their stillness and shallow breathing, they had clearly been drugged. That removed all need for lies or concealment.
On the other hand, it raised the problem of how to get back in. Before leaving my suite, we’d decided to close and bolt all the window shutters. If one killer had got in, who was to say another wouldn’t? The door to my suite
