Terror of Constantinople

by Richard Blake

And beyond the words, the stars on which she had looked remained. They were the same stars on which the first rational being of all had looked in some remote past. They were the stars on which the last rational being would, in some perhaps still more remote future, choke out his final breath.

  They had shone for Sappho. They shone for me.

  I thought of Gretel in far-off Rome. I suddenly missed the living warmth of her body and I wondered about the progress of my unborn child. It, too, would see those stars. It, too, would come to know the words of Sappho.

  Sleep came at last. But it still wasn’t the sleep of rest. Still, it was a night for dreaming.

  I dreamed that my Gretel was standing over me. She reached out to me with arms white as if bathed in moonshine. Her white-blonde hair gleamed in the bun she had taken to wearing in imitation of the better classes when it became clear that she was about to join them.

  I tried calling to her, but my voice had no sound. She smiled and looked away. Our hands touched for a moment and I fell back weak with delight and a feeling of exaltation I can’t describe.

  Gretel pointed her arm one last time at the open window. Her lips moved noiselessly. I thought she was trying to say the word ‘Beware!’ Then she left the room through a door that had appeared where none was before. She didn’t look back.

  As if a lamp were turned down, the room dissolved into blackness and I drifted deeper into sleep. Every so often, as I came towards waking, I noted how the sweat on my body had dried. But I was still sufficiently comfortable on the floor not to bother with movement.

  I thought I dreamed that a face was looking into the room. It made itself apparent as a greater blackness that obscured the sky beyond. Someone stood on the balcony outside the room, looking in through the upper part of the door. There was a click of the lower door, and I could sense the presence of someone actually inside the room.

  My nipples went stiff in the sudden chill of the draught from the open door and I was now fully awake. I hadn’t been dreaming. There was someone in the room. I could hear the gentle rise and fall of his breath.

  I lay still. As yet, the intruder could see nothing. Even I could see only his body framed by the window. Then, as he moved, I saw the dull glitter of steel in the starlight.

  ‘Die, fucker,’ he snarled softly, throwing himself on to the bed. I saw him stab again and again at the rolled-up bedclothes. As he stabbed and sliced like a man possessed by some drug, he switched into a language that I think was Syriac.

  Then, another snarl – this time of frustration, as he realised the bed was empty. There was a moment of silence before the intruder was back on his feet and casting around for his bearings.

  I thought I might try sliding under the bed but he’d surely see the movement now that his eyes were adjusting to the darkness. Another moment, and he’d see me on the floor.

  There are times – travelling, for instance – when you’d be mad to do other than keep weapons by you at night. At home, it’s never been my habit. It’s far more likely that you’ll do yourself or some unfortunate slave an injury than save yourself from nocturnal assault.

  Naked and unarmed, I leapt silently to my feet. I snatched at one of the sheets and draped it round myself, then danced back against the wall opposite the door. The window was on my right.

  ‘Authari,’ I cried, ‘come quickly. Murder, murder!’ I added, raising my voice to a shout.

  ‘What the fuck?’ I heard the intruder snarl. He sounded puzzled and alarmed. But, after just a momentary pause, he was at me, raking forward with his knife. He must have been able to see as little of me as I could of him. Except for the glitter of his knife in the starlight, I might have been fighting with a shadow.

  I dodged along the wall closer to the window. I grabbed at a vase of flowers and threw it at his head. It missed, making a dull thud on the floorboards, followed by a spattering of water. I picked up the little table on which the vase had stood and jumped forward, waving it like a club. He came at me again, parrying the table with his left hand.

  I thought with a momentary surge of joy that I’d managed to knock the knife from his hand but the intruder recovered his balance and clung on to it. He now snatched at the bedcover and wound it round his left arm as a buffer against the blows I was raining on him with the table.

  He came forward again. I fell back.

  No help from Authari. We must have been making enough noise to wake the Permanent Legate beyond the dome. But the door remained closed and I couldn’t risk the distraction or the effort of another cry for help. I’d have to handle this by myself.

  With a sudden lunge forward, I got the intruder on his left shoulder with a sharp corner of the table top. He swung back again to keep his balance. Now I closed with him. Before he could recover himself for another stab at me, I was upon him. I clamped my left hand tight on the wrist of his knife arm, thrust my arm upwards, drawing the intruder towards me, and I tripped him up with my right leg. He fell backwards, with me on top of him. I could smell his stinking breath as our faces came close.

  I had advantages of weight and strength, but he was a slippery sod. As we struggled on the floor, he got his right arm free and stabbed at my back. I felt nothing at the time except for blood trickling from the wound he opened.

  I head-butted him repeatedly in the face. At last, I regained control of his knife arm, clamping his wrist to the floor. With my free right hand, I closed on his windpipe and squeezed hard. I squeezed until his breath came in ragged gasps and the strength ebbed from his right arm.

  Or so it appeared. As I moved again to take control of his arm, I felt him slithering out from under me. This time, I felt the knife-point jar against my collar bone. The pain came with a sudden burst that I thought would paralyse my upper body.

  My object had been to disable him and then question him at leisure. You can do a lot with a hot knife and a variable gag. But it now looked as if I’d run out of energy before he had. If he could get control of the knife at such close quarters and in darkness, it might easily be all over for me. It was time to finish matters while I still had some degree of advantage.

  The intruder was bald, so there was nothing to take hold of to smash his head on to the boards. Instead I managed to get his head in my hands and twist it hard upwards to my left.

  I felt the sharp click as his neck went limp. There was an arching spasm that threw me sideways off the body, then a momentary twitching.

  And it was over. I was alone with a corpse.

  I sat a while to gather my thoughts. I could feel a continual trickle of blood down my back and the pain was getting worse.

  Still no Authari. Had he been killed in a concerted attack?

  I got up and took the lamp from the bedside table. At first I thought I’d drop it but I took a deep breath and brought my fit of shaking under enough control to open the stove and pour a few drops of oil on to the glowing charcoal. In the gentle flame that leapt up, I lit the lamp, then went over to the still body.

  Now I nearly did drop the lamp in alarm. The face was understandably battered and contorted. But I could see at once who it was.

  It was Agathius – that agent of Heraclius I’d met in the latrine.

  37

  Outside in the corridor, Authari was snoring like an old pig. He sagged in his chair in a cloud of farty and wine-sodden belchy smells. Sword still clutched in his hand, he would have been just as much use tucked up in bed as in his self-appointed mission as guard.

  Otherwise, all within the Legation was still. All was dark. All was quiet.

  No point waking him yet.

  I checked the nursery. Maximin was sleeping peacefully, Gutrune was also emitting drunken snores.

  In Martin’s room, I knelt beside the low bed and put my hand over his mouth. ‘Martin,’ I called gently, ‘wake up – it’s me.’

  ‘Oh my God!’ he whispered when I felt sure enough of his reaction to take my hand away. ‘Are you all right, Aelric?’

  He sat up. I
noticed he was fully clothed.

  ‘Just about,’ I said. ‘But I’ve just killed a man in my room. He was sent by Heraclius to kill me.’

  Martin stood beside me looking down at the body. It lay as I’d left it, the dead eyes staring up at the ceiling, the knife close to the right hand.

  ‘Let me see your back,’ he said.

  ‘What?’ I said, looking at him.

  ‘Your back,’ he said. ‘It’s covered in blood.’

  I winced as I pulled away the sheet I’d draped over myself. The blood had dried in the cold night air and the thin silk had stuck to me.

  ‘Not a pretty sight,’ said Martin, holding the lamp so close I could feel its heat, ‘but a little water will rid you of that.’

  The hangover was doing him good. Except that he staggered when he moved, and kept putting a hand up to his obviously throbbing head, he was on better form than I’d expected – not a panic attack in sight. When I filled him in properly on that latrine encounter, he simply furrowed his brows and looked away. It was as if he had given up being alarmed at anything more I could do or say.

  ‘What do you suppose we should do?’ he asked.

  I sat on my bed and looked across at the body.

  ‘Search me,’ I said at length. ‘I suppose we could raise the alarm. Or perhaps not,’ I added, dropping into Celtic.

  Martin got up and shut the door, then came and sat beside me. Together we studied the body.

  ‘God knows what the Emperor will do,’ he said, ‘if you say anything about what happened in those latrines. You know that not reporting treason at once is treason in itself. And how much do you think he needs you now? You were useful in the Circus. That may have been it.’

  He went over to the body again and began searching through the clothes. It was something I had been intending to do myself. He pulled out a small leather satchel that had been fastened to an inner garment and handed it to me.

  I took it and opened it. Inside was a sheet of papyrus folded in four. I smoothed it open on my bed, taking care not to crack the fragile document. With Martin holding the lamp very close, we pored over the small characters. As we read, his composure slipped to the point where he had to sit down on the floor and rock back and forth to fight off an attack of sobs. My own hand trembled as I took the lamp from him.

  It was a letter to me from the Dispensator. It instructed me to give all possible assistance to the Permanent Legate in anathematising both Phocas and Heraclius and in declaring for an alleged son of Maurice, who was said by the Persian King to be the legitimate Emperor.

  ‘It’s a forgery,’ I said weakly. ‘The shitbag is up to many things, but he’d never put that in writing. Look’ – I turned the sheet over. There was no scorching on the back – none of the usual signs of checking for secret writing. ‘It was brought here to plant near my body.’

  ‘It can’t be a forgery,’ Martin said with quiet despair. He insisted that the letter was in the correct Lateran style and bore the correct seal. He should have known. Drafting stuff like that had been his job for five years. The rhythmical clauses and contracted script screamed Papal Chancery. There wasn’t a giveaway Greek letter in sight. It even had a signed subscript thanking me for confirming the Emperor’s unorthodoxy regarding the Creed.

  There was a sudden pain low in my belly. I groaned and pointed at the piss pot. Martin got it under my chin just in time. I thought my head would burst as the black and red waves swept over me, and I puked again and again.

  ‘Drink this,’ said Martin, pushing more water between my lips. He dabbed his sleeve in the cup and wiped at the sweat on my face.

  ‘What the fuck have I been eating?’ I gasped as I flopped on to the bed.

  ‘Cabbage by the look of things,’ Martin said, glancing up from an inspection of the pot. ‘I don’t know about the other stuff.’

  I leaned forward. I’d managed to fill the thing almost to the brim. Still, aside from the raw pain in my throat and all points downward, I was beginning to feel better. I wasn’t at all sleepy.

  I looked again at the body. Martin had pulled the bedcover over it but the head was still visible. With mouth and eyes wide open, it was twisted at an angle that I was beginning to find distasteful.

  What was it the dead man had told me in the latrine?

  ‘You will see me again, Alaric, and when you do, it will, I assure you, be to your advantage.’

  I laughed. Before I could draw breath again, I felt a wet sleeve slapping my face. ‘I’m not hysterical,’ I wanted to say primly. But Martin had the letter in his hand.

  ‘We say nothing,’ he said flatly. ‘Even a suspicion that this letter existed, and that we’d seen it, would have us under the Ministry. I say we burn it and get the body out of here. Then we come back and don’t go out again until we leave for home.’

  A thought crossed his mind. ‘You say Heraclius was behind this?’ he asked. ‘Why are you so certain? I thought you said they were protecting you.’

  Not a good time for answering that one. But Martin’s thoughts had moved on.

  ‘You do suppose Heraclius will let us go once he’s inside the gates?’ he asked with rising concern. Would he recognise our immunity? His people didn’t.

  ‘That could be days and days away,’ I said. ‘I’ll think of something by then. For the moment, we’ll stay indoors. If anyone in the Legation asks why we’re not going out to Sunday service, we’ll plead indisposition from too much drink. The day after tomorrow can take care for itself.’

  I needed to sit down and think all this through. But that would have to wait. Now was the time for action.

  I took the letter from Martin and staggered over to the stove. I held it over the charcoals for a moment. Though I could smell the scorching of reasonably new papyrus, no secret writing emerged on either side. I let go of the sheet. As it fell into the fire it buckled upwards in the heat, the tightly pressed strips of papyrus reed coming apart as the glue melted. Then, with a sudden flare of light, it turned to ashes.

  Now there was no letter. There had been no letter.

  ‘Where do you suppose we can dump a body in this city?’ I asked. This wasn’t Rome. People had a habit of asking about stray bodies in the street. There’d be more to this, if noticed, than paperwork and a few clerking fees.

  38

  After an age of shaking and slapping at his face, I eventually managed to wake Authari. To be on the safe side, Martin had moved his sword out of reach.

  No, I wasn’t angry that he’d nodded off for a moment. No, I didn’t think he’d been bribed into looking the other way. Yes, I would want the duplicate key to the wine store, though not until morning. No, I didn’t think he’d been drugged – though I was beginning to wonder about that wine Alypius had brought down to me in the Circus.

  I simply wanted his help in disposing of the body.

  ‘Cut the thing up,’ he said, looking ferocious. ‘Cut it up in the lead bathtub. Wrap the body parts in old cloth and dump them one at a time into the rubbish bins placed at the main street junctions.’ Authari spat on the body and gave it a hard kick.

  Inventive advice, but easier given than followed. Hacking off limbs in a fight was nothing to either of us. But we weren’t butchers, and dissecting a body neatly into its component parts takes a skill we hadn’t acquired. Besides, there was the blood to consider. Even if the three of us could lift that lead bath, the chances were that we’d give ourselves away carrying it down to the bathhouse.

  Then there was the matter of disposing of the body parts. The streets might not be so crowded with armed pickets as earlier, but it was still too risky to go about dumping suspiciously shaped packages into the public bins.

  No. We’d have to get the whole body out of the Legation, and then out of the city centre. Just inside the walls, it would be more like Rome. There’d be plenty of room for dumped bodies.

  But how to get from here to there?

  ‘What about a public chair?’ Martin suggested. ‘Get it h
ere in the morning, while most people are at Sunday service. Take the body in that.’

  That wouldn’t work either. Public carriers will do most things for cash, and usually keep their mouths shut afterwards. But smuggling corpses out of the Papal Legation might not be among these things.

  Besides, I wanted that body out of the way now. The longer it remained here, the more chance that it would need explaining.

  We discussed dumping it in the sea. But how to get it past the guards on the shore? Even if we found a boat, it would only take us into the Golden Horn, which no tides ever washed clean. Even if we weighted the body, it would break loose and float to the surface.

  The course of action we finally decided on was still risky, but it was the best we could manage at short notice.

  Getting out of the Legation was easier than we’d expected. No longer just drunk, the doorkeepers were all asleep. From their stillness and shallow breathing, they had clearly been drugged. That removed all need for lies or concealment.

  On the other hand, it raised the problem of how to get back in. Before leaving my suite, we’d decided to close and bolt all the window shutters. If one killer had got in, who was to say another wouldn’t? The door to my suite would have to be left unbarred as everyone else was asleep, but we took the precaution of locking the door to the nursery.

  Leaving the main gate of the Legation unbarred wasn’t an option, now that all the doorkeepers were out cold. I needed someone to stay behind and look after things, so we spent more time slapping some life into Radogast, who was now the most senior of my Lombard slaves. He had all the strength and loyalty of Authari but none of his resourcefulness. Still, he would easily be able to lift the heavy bar into place behind us, and then to let us in again.

  ‘Sit over there,’ I said, motioning him to a bench against the wall. It was midway between the gate and the doorway to my suite. ‘If you see anyone strange, kill him.’

  He nodded. There was no point giving him more detailed instructions.