The Ghosts of Athens

‘Pretty sick-making, wouldn’t you agree?’ Priscus jeered as he came back to me.

I didn’t understand at first.

But he poked his tongue out and made a rapid licking motion. He’d have laughed, but for a sudden spasm that had him clutching with white knuckles at the stones of the wall.

‘What women do with each other is nothing to us,’ I said stiffly. And, if that was true, it still didn’t settle the twitching in my lower chest. ‘However,’ I said, coming to the reason that had brought me to the walls, ‘I have a favour I must ask of you.’

Chapter 46

‘Unless Simeon was deceived or lying,’ I said, ‘the man can’t have been sighted inside the walls.’ I finished my cup of the Dispensator’s beer and looked morosely at the whitewashed wall of his office. He’d been right about its dirt and lack of amenity. By comparison, the residency when I’d first arrived there was almost salubrious.

‘I’d put nothing past a man with so little presence of mind,’ the Dispensator said with a sniff of contempt. ‘But I do assure you that I saw the Count — rather, I saw the former Count — very clearly indeed. He was standing in the shade of an old building. There were two men with him dressed like the ones who attacked us the day before last.’

I’d believe the Dispensator in place of Simeon, or any other of the terrified Greeks who’d sat trembling through the morning session of the council. At the same time, it wasn’t just Simeon who’d seen Nicephorus walk out of Athens. Had he come back in before the gates were closed and barred? Or was there some hidden breach in the walls? I’d raise this with Priscus when we reported back to each other at dinner.

I went back to the previous subject. ‘The difficulty with any murder,’ I explained, ‘is finding connections. Find those, and it’s only a matter of time before you find your man. I’m flattered that everyone is still talking about it. But the killing of the Duke’s secretary in Rome was actually very easy to solve. The angle of the blow indicated the height of the killer. That being so, all I had to do was sort out chronologies and motives among a limited number of suspects. The confession helped, but I’d already got all the evidence we needed for the hanging.’

‘Ah, but it was a stroke of genius to guess that all those nails found about the body had been set into a bar of river ice,’ the Dispensator cried, now as happy as he’d ever let show. ‘But for that, we’d still be looking for the weapon.’

I smiled complacently and waited for the Dispensator to refill my cup. I thought back to what now seemed golden days in Rome, when I was just an elegant ruffian with few other duties beyond self-enrichment in the markets. In that glow of nostalgia, even the Dispensator could have passed for an old friend.

‘You will need to force the Greeks to attend the next session,’ he said, coming back to a still earlier subject. ‘We are most provoked by their lack of moral fibre.’

I nodded. I’d already torn strips off the Bishop of Ephesus. He’d pass my threats to the other Greeks, and they would surely all put on some show of interest in the afternoon session. This would be mostly taken up with the Dispensator’s own explanation of the Papal will. Deciding I’d now got him in the right mood, and keeping a very straight face, I explained again the difficulties involved in his demand for two interpreters to call out his words in unison to the Greeks. Bearing in mind the quality of our interpreters, I repeated, we’d have no choice but to reduce the whole speech to a theatrical performance — one clause of his own elaborate Latin read out from a prepared text, followed by another joint reading in Greek.

‘Spontaneity is possible,’ I insisted, ‘but only with a single interpreter. .’

‘Such was done for the Great Constantine when he opened the Council of Nicaea,’ he said firmly. ‘No less can be demanded when I speak in the name of the Universal Bishop. There must be two interpreters.’

I was saved the trouble of a reply by a loud scraping of many feet in the monastery courtyard.

The Dispensator suddenly smiled and lifted his cup. ‘I have already spoken with the Lord Priscus,’ he went on in a different tone. ‘Further to his fittingly humble request, I have given orders for every monk in the city to work under his directions for the building of a second wall behind the weak point in the fortifications.’

I decided not to try looking surprised. He smiled again. With luck, I really might have got him. Or was there something just a little too warm and knowing about that smile?

‘The Commander of the East does not fall below his reputation,’ he continued. ‘His idea of creating a killing field within the walls is most ingenious. Like the drawing of blood from a diseased body, it will be used repeatedly to relax the pressure elsewhere.’

There was a knock on the door. Without bothering to wait, Irene walked in. ‘You’ve got to come back with me to the residency, love,’ she said in Greek. She looked at the Dispensator and bowed about half an inch.

‘Go away!’ I snapped. She was the last person I wanted to see. The Dispensator was already on his feet and looking outraged. ‘You should know women can’t just walk into a monastery.’

‘Well, suit yourself, dearie,’ she said with a shrug. She reached into her satchel. ‘The slave who was clearing out the Count’s office found these underneath the charcoals in one of the braziers.’ She took out and untied two waxed tablets. Safe between them were a few scraps of charred papyrus. ‘They might be important.’

I sighed. Whatever importance they had, I’d never get from here to the residency and then back to the Areopagus in time for the afternoon session. I’d see what she had. Unless they told me something of the utmost urgency, they’d have to wait till evening. I took the scraps and spread them carefully on the table.

‘The very walls resound with evil,’ I read with much squinting. ‘I sit alone. . The rats depart. . The Dark One lays siege.. ’ I looked up. ‘These other words appear to be in Syriac writing,’ I said. ‘Are you able to tell me what they mean?’

‘The Lady Euphemia don’t read no Syriac,’ she said with a loving smile. ‘But that dear little boy of hers tells me it’s some devotional hymn. It’s about the ending of all space and time, though not the return of Jesus Christ.’ She crossed herself and squinted at the Dispensator, who glowered back at her.

I looked again at the scraps. There were other words and phrases in both Greek and Syriac. But they were too fragmentary to make sense without a long inspection. It was all in the hand of a man unused to writing for himself. Even making this allowance, there was something unhinged about the shape and direction of the Greek letters. If Nicephorus had been writing with his left hand, they might have been formed with less appearance of some overpowering emotion.

‘Is there more of this?’ I asked.

Euphemia nodded. She added that the other scraps made no sense at all, but she’d had them set on a limestone table and covered over with large pieces of window glass.

I nodded my approval. I nodded again as she explained that she’d put the office off limits to further cleaning and had locked the door. I’d overlook that she was ploughing as hard as any woman could in my own furrow — there was no doubt she was a woman of sense in more than just business.

‘My Lord will forgive me if I wear my plain robe for the speech,’ the Dispensator broke in. ‘His Holiness is Servant of the Servants of God. It would never do for his representative to address a council in a spirit of less than the meekest humility.’

Meek humility! I fixed my gaze on the icon of Saint Peter that was the one splash of colour on the otherwise bare walls, and tried desperately not to laugh. If he’d got himself up from head to toe in purple silk, but omitted that astonishing text I’d finally wheedled out of him, meekness and humility might have been a more appropriate description of what the Dispensator had in mind.

He looked carefully into my face. He smiled again — and, once again, it was suspiciously warm. ‘The Lord Priscus may have his reasons,’ he said lightly. ‘But I fail to see why the Lord Bishop of Athens cannot attend this afternoon’s session.’

‘I understand that Priscus has need of him for dealing with the monks,’ I said with what I hoped was a casual shrug. ‘Several of the abbots have objected to the wholesale commandeering of so many of their men. But, since the common people of Athens won’t lift a finger for the defence, the Lord Bishop is needed to explain the plenary nature of your instructions.’

‘It is a shame,’ he said with the mildest possible frown, ‘that, apart from you and Martin, the Lord Bishop is the only one of us fluent in both Imperial languages. Without his presence, it seems the Greeks will have to rely