‘Fuck you to hell, Greekling shit!’ I screamed at him with a recovery of nerve. I hurled the Gospels at his head. They missed, but caught him on the shoulder. He wheeled back. For a moment, I thought he’d fall backwards down the steps. But he caught himself on the rail with his free arm.
The Gospels crashed heavily on to the stone floor, where the binding burst into a cascade of parchment sections.
‘Die, Blasphemer!’ the deacon cried with a stab in my direction.
He missed me, thank God. But he did open a great rent in my lovely new robe. As he came at me again, all wild eyes and slashing knife, I found time to observe that I wasn’t having the best of luck in this City where clothing was concerned. I’d had to hand over a pile of gold for that purple border, and I wasn’t sure it would be chargeable to expenses.
There was nothing else for it. Through the gash in my robe, I pulled out my sword. In normal circumstances, I wouldn’t have thought to bring it into church. But you tell me, dear reader, when I’d last seen any of those.
I pulled it out and thrust it at the deacon’s body. It glanced off, the hole I ripped in his robe showing the chainmail underneath. For a moment, he gripped again at the rail to get his balance. Then he was back at me.
I finally got him down the steps with a knock of the sword handle to his face. Anyone else would have paused to wipe away the blood that gushed from the wound I opened on his forehead. Not this lunatic deacon. His mouth foamed. His eyes glared at me with pupils contracted almost to the size of pinheads.
He didn’t even cease his cries of ‘Blasphemy! Blasphemy!’ They echoed horribly round the now silent church.
As he started up the steps again, I took the sword in both hands and swung hard. With a dull thud and a recoil that almost pitched me off the lectern on to the floor far below, I had it half through his neck and deep into his collarbone.
And it would have gone further but for the mail collar.
The deacon crashed sideways against the rail. His eyes bulged, the pupils now expanding as they looked fixedly into mine. He opened his mouth for one last cry but in place of any human sound, there was only a gurgling from his severed windpipe.
Blood gushed from his neck in dying spurts. But, still in command, he stepped backwards in good order on to the lower steps. I thought he might be so far gone in piety and whatever he was on, he’d try another slash with his knife.
I was taking no further chances. I kicked him hard in the stomach and sent him spinning to the foot of the steps, where he fell in a now silent heap. The knife, though still in his hand, was underneath the body.
‘And may God have mercy on your soul,’ I rasped, suddenly recalling where and who I was.
As I reached up to mop the blood from my face, a most annoying shower of gold leaf dropped down on to my robe.
‘That was a most lucky blow, my darling Alaric,’ said Priscus. ‘Was it not a Sign from Heaven that you never got to say “ nihil sum ”?’
He stood at the foot of the lectern steps with a couple of armed guards for company and aimed a kick at the motionless body. ‘A shame you had to finish him off, even so,’ he said. ‘It would have been interesting to watch an interrogation according to your own custom. As it is, we’ll never know who put him up to this.’
‘I quite agree, my dear Priscus,’ I said, breathing hard. ‘But’ – I quoted – ‘“Not all that men desire do they obtain.”’
He smiled, nodding acknowledgement of the line from Euripides. It eclipsed his finishing the verse from St Paul.
I sheathed my sword and walked down to Priscus. Blood had turned the bronze steps as slippery as ice. I had to grip hard on the rail to avoid falling.
I looked around. The church was absolutely silent. The congregation stood exactly as I’d last seen it. Several hands were still raised in prayer. Some of the people in the front row of worshippers were splashed with blood.
So was I. More importantly, the slash in my robe was marked all the way down by a dark smear of poison. I’d have to be careful as I took it off.
Behind me, the Patriarch lay nestled in the arms of one of the younger clerics. He had passed out from the shock. An elderly bishop fanned him gently with one of the leaves from the Gospels.
There was a sound of quiet weeping.
Now the Emperor was on his feet. ‘This has been a day of considerable sadness, my Dear Brothers in Christ,’ he said, enunciating slowly.
All heads turned in his direction.
‘However, unless anyone has anything to say to the contrary, I suggest that the service should continue. We can at least commit the body of our Dear Brother the Permanent Legate to God with some attempt at decency.’
Phocas pointed at one of the clerics who was still on his feet.
‘Might I ask if My Lord Bishop of Nicaea has any objection to officiating in place of His Excellency the Patriarch?’
44
‘It was fucking brill – the way you all but took his head off! I haven’t seen better since my fighting days.’
His regalia stripped off and piled on the floor, Phocas spoke in Latin. He refilled my cup and took another draught from his own.
‘Fucking brill!’ he repeated. ‘Just like the good old days, I’d say.’
It was later in the evening. We sat in the palace together with Theophanes. Martin had been carried home under armed guard. I’d insisted the slaves should double-bar the door to my suite and sit with him while he tried to sleep.
None of the guards nor any other outsiders were to be admitted.
I’d again resisted the offer of drugs from Priscus, but Theophanes had fixed me up with something nice from his own box of potions and berries. I don’t think anything could have wholly refreshed me this far into what seemed the longest two days of my life, but I was able for the moment to sit drinking and taking a coherent part in the discussion.
Now in jolly mood again, the Emperor had told Theophanes to investigate what had happened in the Great Church. That was a hard one. The Greek Patriarch had suffered a stroke during the disturbance.
It was hoped he would recover his speech by the morning. In the meantime, the other clerics were running about like a flock of terrified sheep.
‘The deacon’, said Theophanes, ‘was one Dioscorides, an Alexandrian of rising fame as a preacher. His life till tonight had, so far as I can tell, been blameless. His only eccentricity seems to have been a prejudice against the male use of cosmetics.’
‘A little too much premeditation there’, Phocas broke in, ‘for the gold leaf to have sent the fucker mad – we’d all have overlooked the Latin.’
‘I agree,’ Theophanes replied. ‘The knife was steeped in something highly toxic. One of the slaves who helped young Alaric out of his robe managed to smear some of it on his forearm. He’s already in a sweating fever. The doctors say he is unlikely to survive the night.
‘As for Dioscorides, I believe he was high on a drug called ganjika. This is used in Egypt as a harmless sleeping preparation. In high doses, though, it can cause delusions and wild excitement. I would say that he was a lone assassin, prompted by a dislike of the Western Church. But there are certain attendant circumstances that do not incline me to that view.’
There was a slight pause after the words ‘attendant circumstances’ and Theophanes shot me the briefest glance, before continuing:
‘Your Majesty has already remarked on the degree of prepar ation. There is also the question of how Dioscorides knew he would be able to get close to Alaric. Had we not changed the order of service at the last
