The Ghosts of Athens (34 page)

Farting and sobbing, Martin sat like a man who’d been stunned. His own worst injury was where he’d ripped his hands on the brambles. As I watched, he clutched at his stomach and began rocking back and forth. As the excitement faded like the echo of a voice in church, I could feel a shaking fit coming on. I willed myself not to give way to it.

‘Alaric,’ the Dispensator cried sharply, ‘this one is still alive.’

I made myself look round. Still dazed, the man the Dispensator had got with his staff was sitting with his back against the tomb. I tightened my hold on a sword now slippery with blood and sweat and stood over the man. His masked face turned up in my direction, he pulled a small knife from his belt.

‘That won’t do you any good,’ I said through chattering teeth. I could hear the rapid approach of the other travellers. I stepped back and transferred my sword to my left hand. I wiped my right on my tunic and took the sword back into it. I pulled myself together. The man had now scrambled forward on to his knees and was looking at me through his mask. I lowered my sword. ‘Punishment in Athens,’ I said with desperate control. ‘But questions first.’

He turned his face up to the sky and laughed. It was the mad, exultant laugh of a gambler who, given up by all as broken, has managed a sudden lucky throw. Cautious of a sudden rush at me, I stepped back further. The man said something I couldn’t catch and, taking it in both hands, raised his knife above his head. With a shrill cry I’d normally have taken for sexual pleasure, he brought it suddenly down into his belly. Still holding it hard, he ripped the knife upward all the way to his breast bone. With a babble of ecstasy, he tore the knife out and threw it aside. Somehow, he got to his feet. I heard the ripping of cloth as he pulled the gash wide open and pulled at his entrails. There was a scream of horror from behind me. I may have cried out myself as, holding out those bloody things in both hands, he stepped heavily towards me. I stepped back again – but not fast enough. With a final, extreme effort, the man threw himself at me. I overbalanced as he hit me and fell back on to the road. For a long instant before they dulled, two eyes blazed triumph and hate from behind the mask.

But now many hands were pulling the body off me, and were lifting me back to my feet. Someone put a wet cloth to my face. I watched it come away red. I looked down at my sopping, red tunic. I wanted to sit down again. But I was hurried instead over to a wooden box that had been unloaded from one of the carrying slaves. Someone shoved the bone spout of a wineskin into my mouth. I sucked on it till I thought I’d be sick. Looking through the jostling, admiring crowd, I saw the Dispensator. He had his back to me, and was reaching down to help Martin to his feet.

Priscus lifted the sheet again off one of the bodies and smacked his lips. ‘If you can stomach a little more praise, dear boy,’ he said without turning, ‘consider me impressed.’ He bent for a closer inspection. ‘You killed three of these, and disabled another, with just Martin and an old priest for help? Well, I suppose you’ll make a soldier yet.’ He pulled the sheet right off the body and nearly overbalanced. He gave up trying to laugh and sat down with a groan, and went back to nursing his left arm. He’d got back here slightly before me. About the time I was fighting for my life outside the walls, he’d been jumped on his way back from an apothecary. There could be no doubt of the main facts: they’d been seen, if at a distance, by the Bishop of Athens.

‘Of course, my little darling,’ he went on with forced brightness, ‘yours was more a glorified street brawl than a battle. If you look at the harvest from the attack made on
me
, you’ll see that each was felled with a single stroke from the front. So much delicacy of language – and you still fight like a barbarian drunk on cider.’

I ignored the obvious reply, that I’d come through my own ambush without so much as a scratch, and took another sip of beer fortified with a half opium pill. We were sitting in one of the larger abandoned offices in the residency. The tables had been cleared of writing materials and other old clutter, and now supported six variously carved-up bodies. Though the windows were all closed, the still air was filled with the smell of ingrained human dirt and with the buzz of those ever-present flies.

Priscus got up again and chased the flies away from one of the cleaner kills. He sniggered and pointed at the crotch. ‘No wonder that one of yours was so pleased to do himself in. Just imagine how you’d feel if you’d cut off the organ of pleasure, but left the organs of desire untouched.’

I forced myself to look once more at the tangle of black hairs. Where the shaft had once emerged, a gold ring was half-buried in the hair. The hairy ballbag hung between parted legs. The mutilation – rather, the
self
-mutilation – was repeated on all the other bodies. I swallowed and sat back in my chair.

Priscus laughed. ‘It’s all a bit like that wog Brotherhood we smashed up in Egypt – don’t you think?’ He cupped the ballbag in the hand of his good arm and went into a coughing fit.

There was no denying that these weren’t your ordinary bandits. If I hadn’t known better, I might have put them down as Christian; there’s no limit, after all, to what some of the wilder heretics can read into Scripture. I thought of the text about those ‘which have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven’s sake’. But I’d seen them, or colleagues of theirs, with Balthazar in that invocation of ‘the Goddess’. These were all debased remnants of the Old Faith. I’ve said Athens had come late to the Established Faith. It had also come rather imperfectly.

‘Now, it might be relevant to ask,’ Priscus added in the tone of one who’s desperately at war with the need to go and lie down, ‘not just who these buggers were, but who sent them, and for what purpose.’ He tried for a sweet smile, but failed. ‘Any thoughts of your own, My Lord Senator?’

‘How about your good friends Nicephorus and Balthazar?’ I asked. As his face turned blank, it was my turn to laugh. ‘I should hope by now you’ve finished writing my funeral oration. Any chance of reciting its exordium? You can dispense with the onion.’

He played with his wine cup and gave me a long and thoughtful look. Then he smiled. He put his cup down and stretched. He leaned forward for another look at the nearest body, and clucked happily as he pulled at the gold ring. He pulled harder and fought to suppress another cough as a peak of dead flesh poked through the hair. He let go of the ring and turned back to me. ‘I really must be getting old,’ he said with a sorry shake of his head. ‘I knew that old fraud Balthazar was spying on me the other night. But I didn’t even consider you might have been there too. Oh dear!’

He paused and thought. He brightened and lifted his cup. ‘But you surely know all about my often odd sense of humour. Come, dearest Alaric, we’re two very old and very dear friends!’ he cried with a wave of his cup so expansive that wine splashed over the floor tiles. He leaned forward and smiled. ‘You surely know that I’d never lift a finger against you – not after all we’ve been through. Haven’t I often said that we stand or fall together?’

Not blinking, I stared back at him. Should I give him a list of the times he
had
tried to kill me? Best not – it might show there were times I hadn’t noticed, and encourage him to try harder. At last, I could feel the warmth of the opium spreading out from my stomach. Another few moments, and my remaining jitters would be smothered beneath great waves of serenity.

Priscus sat back and gave me a sly look. ‘Besides, dear boy,’ he went on with smooth charm, ‘there’s fuck all you can do about whatever you may have seen the other night. Let’s admit that Nicephorus hasn’t just made himself scarce – he’s scarpered. Without him to bully into a confession, it’s your word against mine in any trial before Caesar. Even with Martin to back you up, Heraclius will have to pretend not to believe you. Bear in mind, he does need
someone
to face down the Persians when they start their march into Syria. Believing any charges you care to make just wouldn’t be convenient.’

‘Oh, Priscus, my dearest friend,’ I cried satirically, ‘how could I doubt your word?’ And the pity was it didn’t suit me to doubt his word. I’d not tell him about Ludinus and my now desperate need to get the right answer out of that council. Without having to make any actual promises, I’d managed to swear the Dispensator to inaction. There’d be no wave of arrests – no superstition-crazed monks combing Athens for Nicephorus and Balthazar. I’d take whatever risk that entailed and keep an unwavering gaze on the main action of this particular story.

There was a soft scraping on the door. Priscus looked up, a bright smile on his face. He pulled down the one blind that had been left to let in the sunlight and wiped off a rivulet of hair dye that had run down his face. ‘Come in, my dearest,’ he called.

The door opened and Euphemia walked in. Wearing a hooded cloak that must have been sweltering, she bowed modestly in my direction and began fussing with a bowl of hot water. She didn’t acknowledge that I’d stood up for her, and I sat down again.

‘A most splendid woman is the Count’s sister-in-law, don’t you agree?’ he said, holding up his bandaged arm for her attention. ‘We can rely on her not to miss Nicephorus.’

She looked sharply over at me.

Priscus laughed happily. ‘Yes, my dear, he’s buggered off at last,’ he said to her. ‘That means you can go now where you will – so long as Alaric makes it possible.’ He gasped as she undid the bandage and began sponging at the long wound on his arm. There was a long pause as she finished her work and tied on a clean bandage. Priscus twisted his face into another smile and opened his mouth to speak. Instead, he went into another coughing fit. By the time this was over, Euphemia was halfway to the door. ‘But, my dear young woman,’ he finally managed to cry in his jolliest tone, ‘have you got him yet between your legs?’ He suddenly turned and looked into my face. He laughed again. ‘So, it’s all as good as agreed,’ he said to Euphemia, now softly. ‘If it ever comes to pass, I’m sure you’ll find much to amuse you in the Capital. You might even be useful to young Alaric.’

As the door closed, and we were alone, Priscus got up and went back to the bodies. He tugged again on one of the gold rings. This time, he took out a knife and cut it free. He went over to a window and pulled up the blind to inspect the ring in a shaft of sunlight. He bit the gold to test its fineness and held it up again to look at the tooth marks. ‘You can believe what you please about my instructions to Nicephorus,’ he said. ‘You can be sure, however, I didn’t commission my own death. And, now our bird has flown, don’t expect me to call him and Balthazar off.’

No answer to that. I’d get the Dispensator to order a discreet search of Athens, though didn’t expect his monks to find anything. ‘Do tell me, Priscus,’ I said, ‘what Balthazar could have meant when I heard him refer to your previous “outrages” in Athens.’

He slid the ring on to the little finger of his left hand and sat down. He raised his hand and looked at it from several directions. ‘Since I wasn’t a party to that conversation,’ he said, ‘don’t expect me to interpret anything said by Balthazar. But it may have referred to a certain attempt I made – an attempt soon called off, let me add – to obtain a blessing that you now seem to have taken for yourself.’ He giggled and went back to admiring his ring.

There were other questions I wanted answered. But these could wait until I could get them fully clear in my own mind. Priscus got up again in the silence that followed and stroked one of the dead chests. I haven’t said that the nipples also had been cut away, leaving jagged pits in the dark, hairy flesh. He poked at the square of stained cloth stuck just over the heart.

‘Do you know what this is?’ he asked with another snigger.

‘I’d say it was part of the cloth a woman has used to contain her menstrual discharge,’ I answered. I got up and yawned in the heat. I stretched. I picked up the knife Priscus had used and pried the cloth loose. Using it to hold the cloth, I lifted it into the sunlight. ‘Since it’s old blood, we can assume it had some magical purpose – a talisman against danger perhaps.’ I ignored the reply about its effectiveness. ‘It’s the same with all the bodies.’ I took a long sip of drugged beer and thought. In all investigations, the enemy is less often lack of evidence than settled but false assumptions about the evidence you have. But there was no doubt of a connection between theatrical sorcery and a gang of desperate assassins. For the moment, I wouldn’t ask myself what Nicephorus had done with all the money he’d embezzled. Nor would I assume anything of the town assemblymen beyond complicity in tax fraud. Something I did need to know, however, was how anyone had known I’d be going off in search of that girl’s body. It might well have been moved because of me. It can’t have been by chance that those men had jumped me right beside the tomb. It was important to know exactly when Nicephorus had last been seen in the residency. The slaves I’d questioned had been utterly useless. He might have disappeared when I set out for the house of Felix. Or it might have been while I was outside Athens.