my chair, trying to pretend I looked other than an old beggar. The smells were comforting, though – the familiar mix of early flowering shrubs and of broken sewers.
‘Who are you, that you presume to dirty our waters with your presence?’ the Prefect asked in laboured Greek. ‘This is a peaceful place. We’ll have no trouble here.’
From his accent and his faintly Germanic appearance, I guessed he was a local man. He was also very young. If he was twenty, I’d have been surprised. This had its advantages. A sharp little Greek seconded from somewhere that mattered might have been more sceptical. The hall of audience had been piled high with smashed furniture, so I was being received in the man’s office. I pointed at the water jug and sat myself unbidden on the other side of his desk. A dark slave looked at the Prefect. There was a moment of uncertainty. Then he nodded. I drained the cup and put my hands together on the stained wood.
‘I am on a mission from the Emperor himself,’ I opened. ‘It brooks no delay.’ I stared into the man’s confused face. Keeping a strongly Greek accent, I switched into Latin and repeated myself. ‘I think you have the Captain of my ship. If so, I need him back at once.’ While the Prefect took this in, I glanced about the room. Plaster had come off the upper reaches of the wall behind him, showing the remains of a mosaic. Over on my left was a filing rack that contained perhaps a dozen dust-covered circular letters. With a little shock, I found myself looking at the icon of the Emperor. This wasn’t in its proper place on an easel beside him. It was instead propped against the far wall.
So, Constantine is out! I thought. Imperial images are never true to life, and the face that looked stiffly back at me might have been of almost anyone. But it wasn’t of Constantine: I’d commissioned that portrait myself. Most likely, this one was of his boy, Justinian. He must now be only seventeen, I calculated. Still, he was no fool. More to the point, unless all his tutors had been changed after my fall, he’d not be so hostile as his father had been to finishing off the old nobility and handing out their land to the people who actually defended the Empire.
‘The Augustus Justinian is not a man who tolerates interference in his business,’ I said with more confidence. ‘You have held me up outside your harbour for an entire day. Do therefore release my men and ensure that we have the supplies needed for an immediate departure.’
The Prefect glanced uncertainly at his secretary, who pulled a face and shrugged. I didn’t like the look of him. He was probably a Greek. Though not bloated, he might have been a eunuch. His face streamed suspicion. There was a long silence as they looked at each other. While I drank again, the secretary scribbled a note and brushed it in front of the Prefect. He read it and sat in silence a while longer.
‘Your orders,’ he said eventually. ‘I shall need to see your orders.’ I could feel the tremor going out of my hands. Whatever else he’d been made to say, at least Edward hadn’t shared anything material in Cartenna.
‘My orders are here,’ I said haughtily, tapping my head. ‘Your orders are to follow my instructions without further question.’
There was another long silence. I sat placidly while the Prefect stared at nothing in particular and his secretary scratched away at another note.
‘Your name at any rate,’ he stammered.
‘There is no need for you to know that,’ I said. I had turned over various possibilities. Leontius of Smyrna had seemed a good idea before I’d seen the Imperial icon. But when a new emperor comes in, you never know what names might have found their way on to the list of the purged. I’d been out of things too long. Who could tell if some Leontius wasn’t on the list that would have been transmitted to every provincial authority? I glanced again at the filing rack. If any of those circular letters had been consulted in a year, I’d have been surprised. I looked up at the tatty, smoke-darkened ceiling. I gave a bored yawn and looked at my fingernails. I’d forgotten how shameful they were and put my hands hurriedly down.
‘Look, my dear young fellow,’ I drawled, ‘there really are just two possibilities. One is that I’m a pirate chief masquerading as a rather aged Greek of the higher classes. The other is that I’m telling the truth. I’ll leave it to you to decide which is the case. But please don’t spend too long about it. The Saracens are planning a raid on your city. Only I can stop this.’
Anyone with an ounce of imagination could have raised several other possibilities. But this was a prefect with no imagination at all.
‘You will excuse me a moment, My Lord,’ he said. He got up and bowed and led his secretary over beside the icon. I couldn’t hear any of their whispered conversation. But it was easy to guess its frantic course. Every so often, they’d turn and give me a suspicious or merely frightened look. The wine I’d finished on board to steady my nerves now decided to announce its presence in my bladder. I left the remains of my water cup untouched. I wiggled my toes and wondered how long all this would take.
It wasn’t that much longer. I could see the secretary was still for demanding further and better particulars. The Prefect, though, had decided his best course of action was to get rid of me at the earliest moment. He sat down opposite me again and smiled nervously.
‘You must appreciate that I don’t have responsibility for every detail of the administration,’ he said, speaking fast. ‘I will, of course, order a full enquiry. Even if it will report after your departure, I promise it will spare no one if guilt is to be laid on any individual. If there are lessons to be learned…’ He spluttered on more about the independent enquiry he’d order and how no one would be spared.
What was the wanker about to tell me? I went cold all over. I set my face into a mask of bureaucratic immobility and stared straight at him.
‘You see,’ he continued, ‘your men came ashore yesterday morning. They didn’t come here to give their purpose, but went straight to the market. There was some – there was some altercation. The reports didn’t tell me exactly what happened. But it seems that one of your men was hanged yesterday afternoon. The others are in prison awaiting my justice.’
‘You hanged one of my crew?’ I asked once I was able to trust my voice. Never mind the piss I was increasingly desperate to have – I nearly shat myself. ‘This may be a serious matter. Are you able to tell me which of the four you hanged?’
‘You will appreciate, My Lord,’ he said, now blustering again, ‘that one shouting barbarian is very like another. It required five men to get his neck into the rope. As it was, he nearly tore down the gallows.
‘Would you like to see the body?’ he asked suddenly. ‘It’s still hanging. I think the birds…’ He trailed off.
Sixty-odd years of dealing with higher level administrative trash than this had left me in no doubt of how to put the frighteners on. I kept up the look of chilly distaste and thought frantically. If they hadn’t hanged Edward – and, even if he were the most expendable of the four, I was relieved about that – there was a two in three chance that Wilfred would be in the clear back on board the ship. If it were Hrothgar, though… I trailed off myself. Wilfred would assure me it was all in the hands of God. As for me, I’d find out soon enough.
‘I will sign an immediate order for your men to be released,’ the Prefect said after another whispered row that I hadn’t been able to follow. ‘Sadly, it may not be until mid-afternoon that they are released. You see, the gaoler is a most devout man. Every morning, he goes off to pray before the shrine of the Blessed Rugosius, and takes the keys with him. Until he returns, you must regard yourself as our guest.’
‘Very well,’ I said briskly. ‘I want them out of prison at the earliest.’ I looked closely at the secretary. There was something unpleasantly thoughtful about his face. ‘In the meantime, I shall be grateful for a bath and a change of clothes. Get me something plain but respectable. Your secretary can take down a list of other items that I want and you may have available here. Oh, and for the avoidance of any doubt, I will be staying for dinner.’
Chapter 10
Even in early February, the sun hadn’t been kind to Hrothgar. His gibbet swung gently in the breeze, flies crawling in and out of the open mouth. I shrugged and looked down again at Edward, who’d taken the hint and was now kissing my slippered feet. There were some nasty bruises on his arms. His tunic was ripped, showing on his back the cuts and bruises that come from being dragged across a rough surface. What wasn’t ripped was still soaked in the foul-smelling mud that I’ve only ever come across in prisons. What I’d caught of his face as he emerged from the gloom was puffy with repeated crying. If you can imagine anything beyond their normal appearance, the two oarsmen looked probably worse. Covered in bruises where they’d been clubbed into
