The Ghosts of Athens (Aelric)

by Richard Blake

  ‘Tell me more – tell me more, my darling,’ Priscus groaned as if in the approach to some powerful orgasm. He gave a quick look past me to where Nicephorus was watching in silence.

  I gritted my teeth and told myself firmly who and where I was. ‘No point asking if it was murder,’ I said with an attempted smile. It was a failure and I gave up on the effort. ‘With live beheading, you expect a cataract of blood. Even after death, you’d expect to see more than we can. The hair shows no evidence of wetting. But the body itself may have been washed after live or dead beheading. I’d say, however, she was hung upside down and bled to death, and only then beheaded.’ I made myself step closer to the severed head and willed my finger not to shake, as I pointed at the two punctures, about an inch and a half apart, on the right side of the throat.

  ‘Oh, Alaric,’ Priscus called out, still in ecstasy, ‘you really are a bright young lad! I quite agree the little dear was hung upside down and bled to death. That would explain the blackening of the face. It also explains the paleness and lack of corruption.’ He shuffled forward on his knees and put the head back on to its neck. It rolled a foot away. But he took it up again and pushed it until the damp earth held it roughly in place. He bent down and put a kiss on the rigid lips. The head rolled away again. Now, he took it back into his hands and kissed it with long and passionate intensity.

  Leave aside sick-making – this was embarrassing. If Priscus couldn’t control himself soon, even the slaves might dare to comment. As it was, the assemblymen had all set their faces like stone. But he did control himself. He ran trembling fingers once more though the hair, then put the head down and reached for his stick. ‘Sex killing or magic, dear boy?’ he asked in Latin. He laughed and smacked his lips. ‘What opinion might the evidence suggest to you?’ he added as he staggered back to his feet.

  I had to admit he’d summarised the range of possibilities. I’d let him force the legs apart to see if there was evidence of rape. Of course, that might leave us no wiser – it could be a sex killing and magic. But, as I cleared my throat for a reply, Priscus moved out of the way, and the slaves could now see the whole body.

  ‘Lemmy! Lemmy!’ one of them moaned, pointing at the puncture wounds. ‘Lemmy! Lemmy!’ he repeated, now louder, as he dashed through the brambles to get back to the road.

  ‘Not so fast, my lad!’ Priscus snarled with the full return of his old manner. Ignoring the thorns that tore at his leggings, he bounded on to the road and caught up with the slave. He felled him with a single blow of his walking stick, and started on a good, hard kicking. The man squealed and twisted on the ground, his own repetition of the word ‘lemmy!’ drowned out by Priscus, who was laughing as maniacally as if he were back in the days of his father-in-law, when he could torture and kill as he thought fit. But it was a momentary burst. As the slave fell silent, Priscus groaned and flopped on to the road beside him. He reached forward and rubbed his hand in the slave’s hair. He held up shaking fingers that dripped fresh blood. He carried them to his lips and groaned again.

  But he’d got his way. All about, order was restored. Now he’d had time for a good look of his own at the body, Nicephorus was looking merely annoyed. Obviously impatient to get back to Athens, the assemblymen were looking grimly away. Though scared, the slaves were all back in place, ready to take up their burdens. Simeon was looking out from his chair, deep in a sniggering but low conversation with the Bishop of Ephesus. The only real noise came from Martin. A few yards to my left, he was on his knees, praying desperately in a high, sibilant Celtic.

  ‘He says that it’s a lamia,’ he finally managed to say without choking, though still in Celtic. ‘This is the work of a demon that feasts on human blood.’

  ‘They can say what they like,’ I hissed at him. ‘But I hope you still have enough sense to recognise murder by some person or persons unknown.’ It was a waste of breath, though, to try reasoning with Martin once he’d screwed himself up to this pitch of superstitious terror. Even persuading him it was all the work of barbarians, and that they were hiding behind the other tombs, would have brought him closer to his senses.

  I left him sobbing and shaking and picked my way carefully through the brambles to where Nicephorus was lounging, now with restored ease, among the trash of Athens.

  ‘We’ll need to get the body back to Athens,’ I said. ‘Unless you can identify it, we’ll publish an announcement tomorrow morning.’ I looked up at the sky. It was hard to see anything through a mist that was undeniably increasing. But the chill and general darkening about us indicated more rain. My clothes were already in a state that would never have been tolerated in Constantinople. But, if we could avoid a regular soaking, I might enter Athens with some semblance of pomp.

  ‘And who will carry the body, My Lord?’ came the half-mocking reply. He looked at the grinning crowd about him. ‘Will any of you carry this thing within the walls?’ he asked of them in slow and simple Greek.

  His answer was a cheerful shaking of heads.

  He walked out of the crowd and looked at the body from the edge of the road. ‘No one will touch it,’ he said. ‘Surely you can accept that no one will allow it within the city walls.’

  I could have tried giving the man a direct order. Since I hadn’t been arrested, I was arguably still clothed in the full power of my Alexandrian commission. But I knew it would have been a waste of time. One of the assemblymen now looked at me and opened his mouth as if to say something. But he fell silent again. They’d do nothing. The slaves would do nothing. The trash were looking happy enough, but might turn nasty at the drop of a hat. Not Priscus himself, and backed by all the other agents of the Phocas terror, could have got the girl and her severed head carried along behind us.

  Nicephorus was right. Though he had none in mind, justice of any kind would have to wait. Besides, it was coming on to rain again. I might already have felt one of its first drops on my forehead. My brocade really wouldn’t stand a soaking.

  ‘Very well,’ I muttered. ‘Let’s get ourselves to Athens. We’ll discuss this again later.’

  ‘See, His Magnificence agrees!’ Nicephorus cried triumphantly at the assemblymen. ‘It’s a dead slave and nothing more.’ He repeated himself in the local version of Greek.

  There was just a laugh and a few giggles from within the crowd. Someone shouted back. But his words were too fast and too twisted for me to catch even their sense. Now, they all shuffled forward, some pressing into the brambles to see what the fuss had been about. Hands bleeding where he’d dropped down on to the jagged stones, Martin was already beside me. Clutching his side and wheezing after the sudden exertion, Priscus looked as if he were in need of help back into his carrying chair. But he’d need to force himself to another burst of strength, I thought grimly. If the body was to be shoved quickly out of sight, I’d need more out of him than a token helping hand.

  We hurried on, now in a terrible silence. A breeze had come up again from behind us, and I could smell the rancid, unwashed clothing of the Athenians. Martin still hadn’t recovered his composure, and I’d pushed his trembling bulk out of sight into my chair. I walked beside, every so often squeezing out a few words on what we were passing. But there were no more nuggets of fact recalled from Pausanias, and I could barely recall the cheer that had felt so unshakable just half a mile back. We did pass the cenotaph of Euripides. It was topped with a statue that seemed to have weathered the past thousand years in good shape. The inscription was both long and wholly legible. But there was no chance of stopping to read it.

  Now and again, Priscus pulled the curtains aside and looked out of his chair. He’d managed to lick all the blood off his right hand, and was back to looking pleased with himself. As often as he saw I was watching him, he beamed over at me and sniffed at the deathly smell that must still have clung to his damp clothing. If ever there was a lamia, it was surely him. He hadn’t seen the girl die. But he had seen the next best thing, and its thrill had brought him back to more life than I�
��d have thought possible when we’d stood moping together over the galley side.

  The mist only let us see the walls of Athens from about a hundred yards. We’d already entered the demolished and mostly cleared area of what had been its outer suburb. The walls themselves were some twenty feet high, and looked as if they’d been hastily thrown up with whatever building materials could be recovered from the demolished area. From the look Priscus gave them, they’d never have served in any region where a civilised enemy might be able to penetrate. Doubtless, they were enough to keep Athens safe should the barbarians ever show up in search of food and plunder.

  ‘Hadrian endowed a big library when he was here,’ I said quietly to Martin. ‘It may still contain a few interesting books.’

  No answer. I pushed my head inside the curtains. Nearly filling the stuffy, fart-laden interior, Martin was praying silently to the shrivelled tongue of Saint George that had been the Patriarch’s leaving present to me in Alexandria.

  No point talking about books. No point telling him how every stone we might be about to touch was holy. Still, we were at last about to enter Athens.

  Chapter 13

  Not bothering to call for assistance, I got up to pull the side window shut. I looked out for a moment, over the desolation of what had once been a nice courtyard garden, to the far side of the residency. The stained, crumbling stucco displeased me. The central fountain displeased me. The rain certainly displeased me. I tugged at the handle and swore as it came away. Eventually, though, I did get the window shut. Its little green panes let through the fading light of a late afternoon, and it meant that the smoke from the charcoal brazier had nowhere to go but a small opening in the ceiling window that was better suited for letting in the rain. It was cold. By comparison with Constantinople at this time of year, Athens was almost balmy. On the other hand, I had just spent months in Egypt, and, this time of year in Constantinople, I’d have had the heating on at full burn. I sat down again to what passed for dinner with Priscus.

  ‘Stewed river frog can be delicious at this time of year,’ he said with an appreciative leer. He shifted position on his chair and farted gently into the cushions. I stared at the iron pot filled with a sort of grey slime and took up another piece of bread. ‘Well,’ he added, ‘it’s the best I’ve had in ages. Come on, Martin,’ he called, ‘you tuck in if it’s not good enough for His Magnificence. This at least won’t make you any fatter.’ He laughed happily and held out a long spoon.

  Martin dipped it into the slime and stirred up an overpowering smell of garlic. At the second or third attempt, he scooped out the kind of thing you see floating belly up in stagnant ponds. As he lifted it carefully to his mouth, one of the legs came away and fell back with a soft splash into the pot. He closed his eyes and pushed what remained on the spoon into his mouth. I looked down into my wooden cup. It was filled with wine that would have started a riot on a slave galley. The pepper I’d added might now have taken away the worst of its taste. It hadn’t. But I drained the cup and tried to look more cheerful than I felt.

  We’d reached the end of our first day in Athens. It had been my intention, once we were settled into our accommodation, to go for a look about the city. What I’d seen of it on our way in had been more hopeful than the journey up from Piraeus might have suggested. The streets were amazingly dirty. The small crowds huddling under the colonnades had been, if possible, uglier and more degraded than those who’d met us on the docks. What I’d heard of their chattering still bore little relation to any Greek that I’d ever heard. But the new buildings in the centre had been respectably magnificent. If Justinian had shut down all the universities there eighty years before, he’d been characteristically generous with building grants. As for the ancient buildings, neither Martin nor I was up to identifying anything. But we had no doubt there was much still to be seen. By unspoken agreement, we’d avoided looking up at the great plateau that overshadowed the city. We’d save that experience for better weather.

  And better weather hadn’t come. Our planned sightseeing of the early afternoon had been rained off. No one had complained when I cancelled our reception ceremony in front of the Count’s residency. Instead, in the absence of any slaves, I’d helped Martin unpack my clothes. These were all soaked and would need a day in the sun to dry, followed by another day of stretching and pressing. The clothes I was wearing had been damp through. Eventually, a residency slave had come in sight. As luck would have it, he was about my size. So he’d been sent about his duties in a stained silk tunic, and I was now at least warm in the padded shirt and loose trousers of a Slavic prisoner of war. I’d finally got used to the smell and had been looking forward to a dinner where I could put a few pointed questions to Nicephorus.

  ‘You say the Count’s been taken poorly?’ I asked. I waited for Priscus to suck the flesh off the whole dead thing he’d shovelled into his mouth. It was a noise that almost turned my stomach.

  He leaned forward and spat the complete skeleton into a battered silver dish. ‘Oh,’ he said vaguely, ‘the long wait in Piraeus brought back a fever he had in the summer. When I left him, he was sweating all over. He did say he’d attend on you tomorrow morning.’

  I rubbed the spot on my nose. It was a fair alternative to grinding my teeth. There was no chance at all of arrest – there’s a limit even to the sort of trick Ludinus might play on his enemies. This being so, I was coming over all official again. I had questions for Nicephorus accumulating like autumn leaves in a gutter, and he’d now taken to his bed.

  I turned to Martin, who was coming out of a quiet choking fit from some bones he’d failed to spit out. ‘Where do you suppose the rest of the slaves are hiding?’ I asked.

  ‘I’ve counted only six slaves in the whole building,’ he said indistinctly. ‘They could be the sweepings of the market on a poor day,’ he added tartly.

  I might have observed that, as a freed slave, Martin could have shown a little consideration for those less fortunate than himself. But I couldn’t fault his estimate of their worth. And six of them! There must have been fifty rooms in this place – no, many more than that, once you took the three other blocks into account.

  ‘No wonder it’s all so dirty!’ I sighed instead. ‘And where are the clerks? You don’t expect much administration in a place like Athens. Even so, a few occupied offices might be reasonable.’

  Above us, the wind shifted direction. It sent a spattering of rain on to the tiled floor. I stared at the dark puddle that was beginning to make its way in my direction. A sudden draught reached one of the lamps. It went out with a sputter and a smell of rancid oil. I noticed how dark it was getting. As Martin got up to fiddle with the thing, I chewed on the hard crust.

  ‘Why so much fuss, dear boy?’ Priscus called without bothering to empty his mouth. ‘Weren’t you brought up in a pigsty? This must be luxury itself by comparison. But let’s agree it could do with some attention, and turn to the much more interesting matter of what this place used to be. Did Plato or someone else famous live here in the old days?’ He swallowed. Straight away, he slurped in another of the frogs and smacked his lips.

  Plainly, his fellowship in despair act was wearing thin. I had no right to complain: mine had vanished in a puff of smoke a mile outside Piraeus. I grinned and looked down at my crust. Truth was – not that I’d ever admit this to Priscus – that a pigsty would have been one or two steps up from the hovel in Richborough where Ethelbert had dumped my mother. I stroked my throbbing nose. ‘The residency is only about four hundred years old,’ I said. ‘According to the inscription above the main entrance, it was built as a palace by Herodes Atticus.’ I could see from his blank look that I’d outpaced the man’s knowledge of history. ‘He was a close friend of the Emperor Hadrian,’ I explained, ‘and shared his taste for the very ancient. Apparently, he’d been left poor by his father’s extravagance. His fortunes were only restored by the discovery of a treasure hoard under his remaining property. He built this palace on the site of th
e discovery, which is a shame, bearing in mind its bad position.’ I glanced again at a damaged fresco of the Emperor on the far wall. Surrounded by statues of the famous dead, he was giving a speech to the people of Athens. The young man beside him was probably Antinous. But the head was missing – someone had dug into the plaster long before, possibly to get at one of the hot air ducts underneath.

  Not being able to go out, and having nothing better to do with my time, I’d spent the early afternoon looking about the front block of what was now the Count’s residency. You couldn’t fault its original plan. The rooms that hadn’t been subdivided into offices had a size and arrangement that would have pleased the modern rich in Constantinople. But I’ve said the offices were empty. Many were locked shut. Everything was long out of repair. It all desperately needed cleaning. And it was bloody cold. There’s a limit to what you can appreciate of anything when your feet are like ice and there’s a dribble of cold snot on your upper lip. Yes, I’d been glad of that slave’s clothing. Even if they did smell of unwashed barbarian, I was warmer than Priscus or Martin.

  Priscus broke my long silence with one of his wet coughs. ‘It could be worse, my dear,’ he said with a good cheer that I guessed was intended to annoy. ‘Did I ever tell you about the winter I spent in Trampolinea? You soon learned to lie still at night. Then the lice would cover you thickly enough to keep you almost warm. Mind you, the days were better. You spent them darting about the city walls, throwing rocks on the barbarians who were trying to climb over to cut your throat.’ He smiled at Martin, who’d now sat down and was staring unhappily into the iron pot.