The Ghosts of Athens

‘The barbarians!’ Martin cried. ‘The barbarians!’

‘Shut up!’ I snapped. ‘Barbarians don’t hide their kills.’ I put a hand on his shoulder and shook him until he stopped babbling. ‘Let’s have a look round the back of this thing.’ I stepped off the road and forced my way into a mass of brambles. I barely noticed what these did to my red leggings. I did notice, though, how the bushes still hadn’t fully recovered from a recent flattening. The tomb had been built of marble only on the three sides visible from the road. Its back was of unrendered brick. At some time in the distant past, a hole about thirty inches across had been smashed into the brickwork. Its worn edges showed signs of recent disturbance. I couldn’t see anything in the blackness. But I reached in and felt about. The naked body was female. It had been doubled over as it was pushed through the small hole. I felt no congealed blood beneath the chill breasts. I ran my fingers up the body. Instead of a neck and then a face, I found myself touching a nasty and roughly crusted stump. I pulled my hand straight out and stood hurriedly back. Swallowing continually, I fought against the urge to double over and vomit.

‘Oh, there you are,’ Priscus rasped in his most cheerful voice since, off Cyprus, we’d turned west. His chair was about a dozen yards back along the road. Emerging from the mist, the whole front half of the party had caught up and now had come to a halt. ‘I was telling Nicephorus you’d not be able to resist grubbing round all these broken stones.’ He got down from his chair and walked with an uncertain jauntiness to the edge of the road. He looked into my twitching and doubtless very pale face, and grinned. ‘So, dear boy, will you enlighten us with your discovery? Is this the tomb of Socrates himself?’ He let out a sneering laugh. Suddenly, as if reading my thoughts, he looked down at the hand that was still poking through the gap at the bottom of the tomb. He arched his eyebrows and smiled. He was getting ready for one of his more flippant comments, when Nicephorus came up beside him.

One glance down, and the colour drained from his face. ‘My Lords,’ he stammered when he’d found his voice, ‘I do urge the unwisdom of delay on this road.’ Rich that was, from a man who’d had us take half the morning to cover three miles.

Keeping my face expressionless, I stared back at him. ‘What, My Lord Count, is the meaning of this?’ I asked firmly. I wanted to know. I also wanted to keep Martin from looking stupid in front of everyone else with a return to wailing about the barbarians. Correction: I just wanted to know. ‘Why do you suppose there is a fresh and headless body hidden just off the road?’

‘Athens is safe, My Lord, only within its walls,’ was the best answer I got.

Everyone else at the front of our long procession had now edged forward. I could see the cart where Sveta was looking after the children. As yet, she hadn’t poked her head through the leather flaps. If no one knew what, everyone else had guessed something was wrong, and there were nervous looks on all the faces of the carrying slaves. I heard Simeon’s voice raised in harsh complaint about the delay — he wanted his lunch. His earlier bounce quite gone, Nicephorus darted his tongue over dry lips and began a more insistent urging that we should get ourselves to Athens with all possible speed. The assemblymen had now crowded forward for a look at the body. They said nothing at all, but didn’t look happy.

‘So you are telling us this is indeed murder,’ Priscus snapped. ‘Don’t you suppose your duty involves at least checking whose body it might have been?’

Odd that he should be telling anyone to investigate a probable killing. Then again, it gave him an excuse to be horrid to Nicephorus. Whatever the case, I nodded. With hands clenched, Nicephorus looked up at the grey sky and then down again at the hand. He was looking for something to say, but not, it was plain, with any success.

‘Well, don’t just stand there, man,’ Priscus added. He swore and wheeled round to look at the main party. He pointed at his own chair’s carrying slaves. ‘Go and do as His Magnificence directs,’ he ordered.

Mouths open, they looked back uncomprehendingly. Priscus swore again. He stepped towards them, hand tightening on his stick. But Nicephorus now gave in to the inevitable and jabbered something at the slaves that bore a passing resemblance to Greek. They let go of their carrying handles and picked their way with slow reluctance through the brambles. I got them to pull at the loose brickwork until they’d made a hole big enough for pulling the body out. It had set in its doubled-up position, and getting it out was a right bitch. But a few kicks from me, and more jabbering from Nicephorus, and out it finally came. It lay huddled on the rocky ground beyond the brambles.

‘Ooh, but isn’t she lovely?’ Priscus crooned, now beside me. He bent down and ran appreciative hands over the pale corpse. Propping his stick upright within some of the bricks the slaves had raked out, he got on to his knees and reached into the tomb. He pulled his arms out and moved closer on his knees. This time, he poked his entire upper body inside. Deeper and deeper he reached. Then, with a cry of ecstasy, he was out again, holding the severed head between his hands.

One look at the fear-twisted face, and I had to look up at the sky. I could now smell death all about me.

Priscus, though, was going into some ghastly imitation of Salome with the head of John the Baptist. Holding the girl’s head between outstretched hands, he stared lovingly at the face. He brought it suddenly forward to bury his face in the dark, unbound hair. ‘Perfectly lovely, don’t you think?’ he mumbled between long inward breaths. ‘Can my darling Alaric tell me more than this?’ he finally asked with a sly upward look.

I swallowed and made my own inspection. ‘She was from the better classes,’ I said. I’d established from one touch of the hand that she hadn’t been of the free poor, or from the lower class of slave. ‘Free, or’ — I looked at the whole body: it had been finely proportioned — ‘some rich man’s concubine.’ I’d have put money on the first of these possibilities; most of the slaves I’d seen had the fairish hair of Slav prisoners, and this girl’s hair had been a dark and perhaps a glossy brown. I swallowed again and thought of the flask of perfume I had in my satchel. Without any breeze to carry it away, the smell of corruption was turning unbearable. How Priscus could have been rubbing his face in that hair without puking up would have been a mystery if I hadn’t known him better.

I forced myself to look harder at the body. Bad weather might have kept off the flies. Nor had the rats been round to have a go at it. Even so, it might have been there four or five days. I looked at the head that Priscus was now twisting about to view from every angle. You needed some imagination to see how pretty the face had once been. It really was a ghastly thing to behold: dark where all else about the body was unnaturally pale, and damaged as if it had been dragged over the rocky ground. I looked away from the grey, sunken eyes.

‘Tell me more — tell me more, my darling,’ Priscus groaned as if in the approach to some powerful orgasm. He gave a quick look past me to where Nicephorus was watching in silence.

I gritted my teeth and told myself firmly who and where I was. ‘No point asking if it was murder,’ I said with an attempted smile. It was a failure and I gave up on the effort. ‘With live beheading, you expect a cataract of blood. Even after death, you’d expect to see more than we can. The hair shows no evidence of wetting. But the body itself may have been washed after live or dead beheading. I’d say, however, she was hung upside down and bled to death, and only then beheaded.’ I made myself step closer to the severed head and willed my finger not to shake, as I pointed at the two punctures, about an inch and a half apart, on the right side of the throat.

‘Oh, Alaric,’ Priscus called out, still in ecstasy, ‘you really are a bright young lad! I quite agree the little dear was hung upside down and bled to death. That would explain the blackening of the face. It also explains the paleness and lack of corruption.’ He shuffled forward on his knees and put the head back on to its neck. It rolled a foot away. But he took it up again and pushed it until the damp earth held it roughly in place. He bent down and put a kiss on the rigid lips. The head rolled away again. Now, he took it back into his hands and kissed it with long and passionate intensity.

Leave aside sick-making — this was embarrassing. If Priscus couldn’t control himself soon, even the slaves might dare to comment. As it was, the assemblymen had all set their faces like stone. But he did control himself. He ran trembling fingers once more though the hair, then put the head down and reached for his stick. ‘Sex killing or magic, dear boy?’ he asked in Latin. He laughed and smacked his lips. ‘What opinion might the evidence suggest to you?’ he added as he staggered back to his feet.

I had to admit he’d summarised the range of possibilities. I’d let him force the legs apart to see if there was evidence of rape. Of course, that might leave us no wiser — it could be a sex killing and magic. But, as I cleared my throat for a reply, Priscus moved out of the way, and the slaves could now see the whole body.

‘Lemmy! Lemmy!’ one of them moaned, pointing at the puncture wounds. ‘Lemmy! Lemmy!’ he repeated, now louder, as he dashed through the brambles to get back to the road.

‘Not so fast, my lad!’ Priscus snarled with the full return of his old manner. Ignoring the thorns that tore at his leggings, he bounded on to the road and caught up with the slave. He felled him with a single blow of his walking