The Ghosts of Athens (15 page)

‘So he told the Emperor,’ the voice answered. ‘But what else could he say that wouldn’t provoke an immediate sequestration? Two of these boxes were as much as he dared carry away. They made him the richest subject in the Empire. The secret of the rest died with him, and the last of his posterity left this palace to the Emperor Decius in recognition of his persecution of the Church. Will you go forward and touch the gold? It is all that men desire. Have you any questions to ask? Whatever you ask will be answered.’

It was my turn to laugh. The voice left no echo, however loud it sounded. My own laugh came back at me from three walls. ‘I hardly see the point in stepping forward,’ I said. ‘Dreams of gold are still only dreams.’ I laughed again, and wondered if it might be worth turning round before the latest flash could entirely fade away. The voice might be attached to a visible body.

‘And what, my little philosopher, makes you suppose this is a dream?’ The question came now from total darkness.

I touched the tip of my nose. As I’d expected, there was no spot. If I reached down to my left ankle, I’d probably find there were none of the scratches I’d got from the brambles that surrounded the tomb of Hierocles. ‘I know that I’m dreaming when events take place outside the normal stream of time,’ I explained. ‘Add to this when the events border on the miraculous. This is a dream, and you, and this room, are nothing more than emanations of my own sleeping mind. Will you try arguing otherwise?’

There was a long pause. Then, plainly displeased, the voice answered: ‘I could strike you dead for your lack of faith.’

‘And I’d only wake in my bed no wiser,’ I sneered straight back.

‘Have you not heard, that those who die in dreams die really?’ Displeasure gone, the voice was taking on a note almost of pleading.

‘So I’m told,’ I sneered again, now louder. ‘But you’ll surely agree that the evidence for your claim is, by its nature, somewhat thin.’

There was another pause. Then: ‘Does every truth require evidence?’

‘The truths of mathematics, and a few truisms aside,’ I answered, ‘and even those I’m not sure about, and the answer is yes. All other knowledge begins with evidence of the waking senses, and is tested by further evidence of the same kind. What evidence can you supply that I am not at this moment tucked up warm in bed?’

‘Those who will not be shown the truth must find it for themselves,’ was the only answer I had. It came in a tone of quiet resignation. There was another flash of light. This time, the boxes had vanished. The vault above my head had become the roof of a low cave. At the far end of the cave, a row of faintly gleaming strands hung from the wall.

I now heard a whimpering to my right. Still expecting I’d see nothing, I looked sharply round. In the long fade out of the light, though, I could see someone. Unable to move from where I was standing, I stared until the light faded wholly away. Almost at once, there was another flash. Without any positive identification, I knew it was the dead girl I’d found outside Athens. Whole and alive, but still naked, she smiled at me with a cold and somehow glittering allure. She stepped forward. Still unable to step back, I held up both hands to ward her off. Her face twisted into a sneer of lust. She stopped. She pushed fingers between her legs and rubbed. She stepped forward again, her glistening hand held out to me.

I did now manage to step back, but only found myself against a wall that hadn’t previously been there. Lips parted in a terrifying smile, the girl took another step forward. Her hand was almost under my nose . . .

I sat up in my bed. I’d woken to a flash of what was obviously sheet lightning. There was a big storm in progress above Athens. If possible, this was worse than the one that had almost sunk us all off Seriphos. The rain smashed like sea spray against the walls of the palace, and had somehow poured into the room to soak my bed. As the windows rattled from the sound of astonishingly loud thunder, I struggled with the wet linen sheet that was twisted about me and got out of bed. Even without more lightning to show where the lead had crumbled, I could feel that the rain had knocked most of the glass pieces from the window. By the time I’d found that the shutter hinges were rusted open, I was thoroughly soaked. Shivering in the darkness, I felt my way back over to my bed and pulled on the silken cord. It came away in my hand. I let it drop to the floor. There was no slave outside the room. I doubted there would have been anyone up had the cord been still attached to any distant bell. Martin had a nerve to talk about ‘sweepings of the market’ – trust a freed slave to look down on those less fortunate – but he’d not been unjust.

Another flash, and I could see the puddle covering most of the tiled floor. Where Martin had hung them up to air, my own clothes had caught the spray. The slave clothes I’d commandeered had fallen down and were lying in the puddle. I muttered an obscenity and wrapped the wet sheet round the lower half of my body. I then turned up the lamp that had been left beside me.

The outer room was dryish and slightly warmer. I thought of putting myself to bed on one of the larger couches. But the only covering in the room was a tapestry that smelled of damp. I could go through another door into my office. The brazier there might still be smouldering. It was hardly dignified for the Emperor’s man in Athens to sleep on his office floor. But I’d known worse.

I was reaching for the door handle, when I heard a noise. I thought at first it was a failed thunderbolt. Storms throw up some funny noises. But this wasn’t an all-round crash, however muted. It was a long, low grating sound that might have come from deep within the building. What had Priscus said about ghosts? I dithered a moment by the office door. Another man might have gone back to huddle in his soaked bed. But I was His Magnificence the Senator Alaric. Old-womanish tales had no effect on me! I turned and went for the door into the corridor.

Of course, once I was out there, all I could hear was the sound of my own breathing, and the steady drumming of rain, and the dripping of yet another leak from overhead. There was then more thunder, and whatever my ears might have picked up was blotted out.

But no, there was another noise. This time, it wasn’t long or low. It was instead a short and very loud click – as of some cog in a water mill that picks up a stone. Sounds in a storm, sounds at night, sounds in a palace cut up into a labyrinth – you tell me from which direction it had come. I listened hard. There was nothing. Any thoughts, though, of finding somewhere to bed down for what remained of the night were wholly gone. I hitched up my sheet and set off towards the larger rooms in the palace. The sheet was like mummy wrappings. It may have clung to me and shown the contours of my body like in the statues that lined the entrance hall of the residency. But it reduced me to a kind of aged shuffle. I put my lamp down on the floor and took off the sheet. The upper part of my body had now dried out. The rest of me was still wet, and I was aware again of the chill all about me. I folded the sheet and put it over my left arm.

As I was bending to pick up the lamp, I noticed the trail on the floor. I hadn’t seen it when I was upright. It now showed plain from a different angle. It was as if someone had made one sweep of a broom though one of the puddles. It went on about ten feet until it passed beyond the outermost pool of light. I followed it along the corridor. It stopped as neatly as it had begun. I took a few more steps forward. Further ahead, the trail took up again. It glistened suddenly as bright as a stream in another flash of lightning that bounced along from behind me.

‘How very queer!’ I muttered. My voice was unpleasantly loud in the corridor. I fell silent and held my breath. All about was silent. I suppressed a shiver and laughed defiantly. Forget any guff about being the Emperor’s man. I was Aelric, the big barbarian from Kent. I had a pair of very hard fists attached to very muscular arms. Even if I weren’t completely alone so late into the night, I was a match – and more than a match – for anyone else I might find creeping about the residency. You can be sure I wasn’t scared of ghosts or witches. I quickened my stride and turned a corner. A few yards beyond, I turned again.

So far, I’d been passing along one of the corridors original to the building. Ten feet wide, you could have driven a carriage there. Though discoloured by age and dirt, the walls were lined halfway up with marble, and there was a procession of naked boys painted on those stretches of plaster not completely ruined by the damp. Every couple of yards, there were niches for lamps and for polished mirrors behind. Now, I’d moved into one of the partitioned areas, and the corridor narrowed to barely a yard. Sometimes, the wall was roughly plastered. More often, the plaster had come off to show irregular lines of cheaply fired brick. The few lamp brackets I had to avoid were of rusted iron. The floor was covered in perhaps a century of unswept dust and in clumps of plaster and pieces of brick. Aelric of Richborough had mostly been a stranger to shoes. The soles of his feet had been like leather. His Magnificence Alaric was a far more civilised creature. I had to step carefully to avoid treading on anything larger than the coarse dust.

The trail came to a final halt beside one of the doors that lined this stretch of the partition wall. I went forward and looked down another corridor. Yes, it had ended. I went back and looked at the door. Now all over, I was shivering again in the cold. My throat was dry. I could hear the rapid beating of my heart. I can’t say how long I stood there like a bloody scared fool. I might have been taking lessons in courage from poor Martin for all I was inclined to reach out for the handle. I laughed again and pulled myself together. I snatched at the handle and pulled it down. With a harsh click, the door swung open inwards. There was a chill and gentle breeze that took something away from what had become an overpowering smell of damp. I pushed it fully open and held up my lamp.

This had once been one of the chancery offices. The high desks were covered in dust. The ink pots were still uncovered, as if everyone had been called out suddenly and then prevented from going back. I could see a sheet of papyrus on one of the desks. Curled up and cracked from however many years of damp, it may have been half covered in writing. There was no ceiling window. Even so, a puddle had gathered somehow on the floor. It reflected the dull gleam of my lamp. There was a side window that I supposed looked out into the courtyard. Against this the rain drummed loud and rhythmically, and I could hear the distant moaning of wind.

I took a step into the room. ‘Fuck!’ I snarled as I nearly dropped the lamp. I’d stubbed a toe on some piece of clutter. ‘Fucking dump!’ I added as I sat down on the cold mosaic floor and nursed my toe. If it wasn’t broken, that was no thanks to that silly bastard Heraclius and his scheme of sending me to this awful place. ‘Fucking, fucking shitty dump!’ As the pain faded and I began to see the funny side of things, there was a flash of lightning through the side window. This was followed by an endless peal of thunder that I thought for a moment would bring the ceiling down on me. I sighed and got up. Where puddles hadn’t been able to gather, the floor was covered in dust and little bits of ceiling plaster. I brushed what I could from my bottom. From what I could see on my hand, I was probably as white behind as the lead that Priscus used to smooth out his pockmarks.

The lightning had shown me there was no dust sheet or any other covering in the room. Since I had no plans to sleep here, there was no point in staying. I went out and carried on walking along one of those endless corridors. In the last unlocked office before another turning, there was still no dust sheet. But I did find a rolled-up carpet. If I could shake the worst of the dust out of this, I might play at Cleopatra till I could get up with the dawn and kick some notion of service into the few slaves who served the civil and military ruler of Athens.

The rendered brick wall that had been made to partition a larger room cut the window in half. If you squeezed your face against it and looked right, you might be able to see into the next room. No need for that – but there was a handy ledge that was unlikely to tip over or give way. I was putting my lamp there, so I could try shaking dust out of the carpet, when I looked through one of the little panes and, far off, saw the glow of another lamp.

I did think at first it was just the reflection of my own lamp. The little panes were both opaque and uneven. No surprise, then, if they were, by night, to play funny tricks. But I picked at the crumbling lead framework with a fingernail, and managed to poke out one of the smaller panes. I felt the damp and chilly blast as I pushed my face close to the gap and looked out. Yes, there was definitely someone else sitting up late in the residency. This window looked out into the main courtyard. From the other side of this, there was a gentle gleam in one of the upper windows. Like Priscus and me, Martin and his family had their rooms on the ground floor of the main block. So, I believed, had Nicephorus. The slave quarters were also on the ground floor, and took up one of the side wings of the palace. I thought back to the hasty tour of the building that was all I’d been able to manage with Martin before hunger had sent us off in search of that awful dinner with Priscus. We’d found an unlocked door that revealed a staircase leading to the upper floor. By common agreement, we’d left all further exploration till the next day.