I could hear Gutrune down the corridor. She was singing something mournful to Maximin in her own language. I couldn’t tell through the two shut doors if it was cheering him, but he wasn’t crying.
‘We’re up Shit Creek, you know,’ said Priscus in conversational tone when his convulsions had moderated. ‘Do believe me that no gates were left open last night. But if the gates do open – correction: when they open – there’ll be two days of bloodshed on the streets.’
‘If it does come to that,’ I said, looking round the settled comfort of the room, ‘it might be hard for you.’
Priscus pulled himself up and went over to look out on to the balcony. He turned back to me.
‘It won’t be too good for anyone closely associated with His Majesty,’ he said with an odd laugh. ‘How do you suppose you’ll get out?’
‘I believe I have full immunity as the Pope’s representative,’ I said.
Priscus laughed again. ‘I’d look more to the strength of those gates – or, better still, a fast ship out,’ he said.
I got up and pulled on a bell cord I’d recently had fitted. This would bring up a slave from the kitchen with the bread and cheese I’d earlier specified for lunch.
‘You’ll join me for some food, Priscus?’ I asked. ‘I can’t promise anything special, but you’ll surely find it wholesome.’
‘Now when did you last see me do anything wholesome?’ Priscus responded with a nasty grin. ‘I’ve got a vial somewhere of my special black liquid. I think I can chance a few drops of that in some wine – though, mind you, only in white wine. Red with this stuff is bad for my stomach.’
He asked if I’d found any hidden ways into the Legation from the street. I gave a noncommittal grunt. I wasn’t telling Priscus that Martin was at this moment on an intensive search for some other way out in an emergency.
‘I used to come here quite a bit when the Permanent Legate was still receiving guests,’ he said, ‘but I never went beyond the state rooms. Still, it wouldn’t surprise me if there were some passageway. As it might save your life at the right moment, I suppose I’d better help you find it.’
A very good reason, I thought, for not accepting his offer. But I smiled. ‘You are always so good to me, Priscus,’ I said.
‘Once a friend, always a friend, is my guiding motto,’ he replied.
We made our way down to the main garden and headed left towards the back buildings of the Legation. I’d agreed with Martin that the most likely hidden exit would be close by the Permanent Legate’s own quarters. So I wanted Priscus as far away from that as possible. It would never do to let him hear Martin rummaging through the cellars.
As we crossed the gardens, we were joined by two of the Black Agents. One of them handed Priscus a sealed message. He frowned as he read it.
‘It seems that greasy old eunuch has sealed off the Ministry to my people,’ he said, passing the message back. ‘I regard this as an act of open war against me. I’ll tell as much to Phocas when I dine with him this evening. Even at this late stage, there’s always room for one more under the Ministry.’
I wondered how Martin might be doing.
We stopped at the pigsties. Priscus was beginning to sweat heavily. It was a warm afternoon, but that and the trembling probably had more to do with his idea of lunch.
The pigs were happy. A slave was ladling acorns out of a bucket, and they squealed and grunted with pleasure as they nosed through the carpet of liquefied shit to get at them. As we leaned on the gate to watch the pigs feeding I noticed that Priscus was breathing heavily, his face the colour of new papyrus. I began to hope he might have a seizure. That would remove one complication from my life. But he recovered himself with an effort of will and turned to me.
‘Wonderful things are pigs, you know,’ he said.
‘Yes,’ I added. ‘I’ve always found them more intelligent than dogs.’
‘I wouldn’t go that far,’ said Priscus. ‘But, certainly, they know what’s up when killing-time comes round. When I was a boy, and out for innocent fun, I used to hide the knife behind my back. Still, I’d see the fear in their eyes as they backed away. And they taste good. Every body part has its own flavour. Do you ever have cups of blood brought to you when one is freshly killed?’
‘Not a pleasure I’ve yet sampled,’ I said, ‘though my people do make the most gorgeous blood sausages – much better than I’ve had outside England.’
‘Oh yes, you’re from there,’ said Priscus, sounding bored. ‘Phocas once gave me a lecture on the place when he was more than usually pissed. He said it was full of blacks and headless dwarves. Did I hear aright in the Circus that you came here with letters of submission from one of the local kings?’
I gave a noncommittal sniff and turned back to the pigs, who’d started fighting over some rotten cabbages.
‘They’ll eat anything, of course,’ said Priscus, stepping back to avoid getting splashed. ‘When I was carving the Persians up back in the days of Maurice, I once fed some live prisoners to the pigs I had with me. They were Syrian double agents, you see, and I wanted to make an example of them. Like Jews and Egyptians, many of them have a horror of pork.
‘Well, they wouldn’t eat pigs. But the pigs ate them. They’ll eat their way through flesh, guts, bone – you name it. They have trouble with teeth and hair, but everything else-’
Priscus stopped suddenly. We looked at each other and then back at the feasting pigs.
‘Do you suppose-?’ I asked.
‘It’s a possibility – a distinct possibility,’ said Priscus.
‘You there,’ I called to the slave, ‘when was all this shit last raked out?’
Not for a while, came the answer. If it didn’t rain again, it was something for the day after next.
‘Get wide-meshed sieves from the kitchen,’ I ordered.
We watched as the slave, down on his knees, began work in one corner of the sty. Two big handfuls of shit scooped up and pressed through his sieve into a bucket. The remaining straw and other residue carefully picked through. The bucket taken out and emptied. Then back on his knees.
‘This will take for ever,’ Priscus said.
‘It might take all day,’ I agreed. ‘The problem is, I don’t want the household alerted yet to the possibility. But we do need more hands.’
The two Black Agents read the look in my eyes and stepped back, horror and disbelief stamped on their faces.
I pulled out a scented cloth from my robe and held it to my nose. ‘Priscus, I have a request to make of you,’ I said lightly.
54
As if I were playing dice, I rattled the box as I emptied it on to the Emperor’s desk. Five indisputably human teeth bounced on to the polished wood. Phocas took up the least decayed of them and held it against the light.
‘Without seeing them in the Permanent Legate’s head,’ he began, ‘I wouldn’t like to guess whose these might be. But it’s an interesting possibility.
‘So, my two brave champions, you’ve started bringing me answers. Indeed, I think it calls for drinks all round.’
We drank deeply.
Priscus had met unexpected resistance when ordering his men into the pigsty. Orders hadn’t worked. Threats hadn’t worked. He’d eventually had to borrow gold from me for a bribe, and then offer more as a bounty. At last, though, they’d joined in the fun.
‘Dear me, no,’ I’d said after enough teeth had been recovered, ‘I couldn’t possibly have your men in my bathhouse.’
So off they’d been sent to sit in the chill waters of a fishpond. Their uniforms would have to be burned. Unless they could find their way into a steam room, their bodies would stink for a month.
