any rate, in my hearing — about the missing Nicephorus. The arrest warrant, plus the direct rule order, that I’d got Martin to throw together could both remain unsealed until further notice.
I’d agreed a set of readings between courses where Greek and Latin alternated. We were now coming to the end of the Augustine. There would, if I recalled correctly, be a course of dormice stuffed with beans soaked in fish sauce, followed by Basil of Caesarea in Greek on the need for religious correctness; then cabbage stewed in wine, followed by prayers in both languages. After that, I could kiss the whole company a very good night and take myself off to bed.
No one else, I’d already observed, seemed inclined to sit the night out, cup in hand. With a minimum of conversation, the food had been scoffed down as quickly as served. Now it was properly dark, I got the impression that everyone else would be much happier the sooner he could be out of the residency.
Martin was finished with Augustine. The Dispensator leaned towards me. ‘I’m still wondering,’ he whispered, ‘how those men could have crept up on us so effectually.’ He smirked and gave himself a little hug. We’d agreed not to discuss these things fully over dinner. But it’s not every day even a Roman cleric gets into a fight for his life — and gets out of it without having to commit the sin of drawing blood.
‘Oh, I think I can answer that,’ I said. And I could. I’d had a thought in my bath, and had gone straight off for another look at the bodies. The different patterns of dirt on the clothing of those Priscus had killed and my own kills had been decisive. I’d been labouring under one of those false assumptions. ‘Based on a very rapid look on my journey up from Piraeus,’ I explained, ‘I’d supposed the tomb of Hierocles was nothing more than an unburied stone coffin. But our attackers were covered in brick dust. That suggests a larger chamber underneath the tomb, where they’d lain in wait. It could even be that the dead girl was down there. Unless you positively insist, I’ll not trouble you with another trip outside the walls. But I do intend going out myself tomorrow, once the first session of the council is over.’
‘Then I will certainly come with you,’ he said firmly.
No arguing with that. I ignored the loud crash behind me. If that was the dormice, I’d be rid of this lot in no time at all. I also ignored the Dispensator’s praise of my ability to observe important facts. If I were right in this supposition, it only raised further questions. Those men hadn’t followed us out to the tomb, but had been waiting there all along. How could they possibly have guessed movements I hadn’t myself known until I was about to make them?
Far down one of the side tables, one of the tradesmen had switched out of proper Greek and was jabbering softly away in the local dialect. Someone opposite had raised a titter at whatever joke was being told. I looked up again at the candles. Far above them, there was a flickering redness that came in through the windows to play on the ceiling. It was as if the Northern Lights were suddenly visible from Athens.
Though I still avoided looking round, it hadn’t been the dormice that had crashed on to the floor. Three of the things had been dumped before me on a clean silver plate. Whoever had cooked them hadn’t known they should first be skinned and gutted. On my left, Priscus had left off theology, and was now explaining how he’d sat out the final massacre in Trampolinea by burying himself in a cesspit and breathing through a piece of lead water pipe. On my other side, the Dispensator was speaking to a French bishop whose plaited blond hair about his tonsure and giant moustache indicated a shift of power in the Church beyond the Alps. I settled my face into an expression of polite boredom. Nothing is forever: even this was coming to its end.
As Martin reached what I thought as fine a turn of phrase in Basil as any of the ancients might have envied, Simeon leaned over and burped into my face. ‘Even if this doesn’t go as badly as you deserve,’ he whispered with a drunken leer, ‘do you really think it will be any better for you in Constantinople? I thought even barbarians knew when they’d been set up to fail.’
Priscus looked down from his own inspection of those red and flickering lights. ‘You’ll do as you’re fucking told, my dear kinsman,’ he said without turning round or moving his lips. ‘There’s always room for a third set of squirting bowls before the Wrath of Caesar.’
Simeon looked as if he’d been slapped hard in the face. ‘But Priscus. .’ he whined. He tried to say more, but fell silent after a few words of protest.
Priscus stared up again at the ceiling. ‘I gather you’ve been putting yourself between those trembling white thighs,’ he said to me with a turn into Slavic. I ignored him. ‘Still, so long as she has strength to change my bandage, you go right ahead and fuck your brains out. Even you won’t tire her out that much.’
He laughed oddly and nodded upwards. ‘Do you see that flickering from the north?’ he asked with a change of tone. ‘Unless I’m seriously mistaken, that will be Decelea burning.’
I looked up again and thought. Decelea was about twenty miles due north. Given a clear night, its fires would be visible on the horizon.
‘Well before morning,’ he went on, ‘there’ll be streams of terrified survivors banging on the gates. You’ll also see a better class of Athenian than the city trash, as the farmers drive in their animals and carry anything else that can be moved.’
With a great clearing of his throat, Martin was about to begin his bilingual recitation of the Sermon on the Mount. In Greek or Latin, I might have added: ‘Blessed are those who wait on events — their enemies shall be turned.’
Chapter 38
‘I must thank Your Grace for having had the goodness to stay on for a while after our most enjoyable dinner,’ I opened with my smoothest charm. Simeon sat in the library, looking nervously between me and Priscus. ‘What we have to discuss is a somewhat delicate matter, and I hope you will agree that this generally unfrequented place is most appropriate for our discussion.’ I smiled and looked at Priscus.
‘You reorganised the Intelligence Bureau, dear boy,’ he said. ‘This is best coming from you.’ He switched for a moment into Slavic: ‘Besides, my darling, I’d only spoil things by enjoying myself too much.’ He walked over a few yards and leaned nonchalantly against one of the bookracks that was still in place.
I sat down at the desk and looked over at Simeon. His face had now turned pale in the lamplight. If he didn’t know any Slavic, he knew Priscus well enough to follow his tone of voice in any language.
‘Very well, My Lord,’ I went on. ‘I thought we had reached agreement when we sat here together yesterday evening. Perhaps, as a foreigner who only learned Greek when already mature, I was mistaken as to the extent of our agreement. I do hope you will forgive me if I must now speak with a bluntness that I never thought would be required.’
I paused and waited for Simeon’s face to change to a paler shade of white. ‘Allow me to enquire, My Lord Bishop, if that patch of rough skin on the inside of your throat is giving you pain tonight?’
As I’d expected, his face sagged as if I’d killed him with a single blow to the back of his head. He swallowed and gave a scared look over at the mural behind me. I was still smiling as feet sounded on the stairs and Martin came in with cups and a jug of wine. I nodded for him to leave at once, and poured three cups. I waited for the footsteps to die away and sipped at my own cup.
‘The Baths of Anthemius are very big,’ I said with a friendly smile. ‘You can get ten — sometimes fifteen — thousand people in them at the right time of day. That may be why so many people think they are anonymous. Whatever the case, that feeling of anonymity is something the Intelligence Bureau does everything to foster. The days are gone when your dear cousin Priscus could send his Black Agents into private homes to arrest people and drag them off for arbitrary torture and killing in one of his dungeons.’ I turned to Priscus.
He grinned at us and even gave a little bow.
You can be sure I’d kept him well away from my reorganisation of the security services. If Heraclius could turn as nasty, given the right provocation, as Phocas had ever been, I’d got my way about purging every last agent of the Terror, and a return to some kind of due process.
I turned back to Simeon and waited for his choking fit to pass. ‘But the Intelligence Bureau still keeps a careful watch on persons of quality as they disport themselves in ways that a reasonable third party might not think entirely dignified.’
Simeon turned his eyes upward. He glanced back at my polite but implacable face, and put up both hands to cover his own face.
