But I also had heard the noise. It was a low obscenity, followed by another man’s laugh, and had come from back where we’d come out on to the roof.
‘O Jesus!’ Martin groaned. ‘Sweet and merciful Jesus!’ He’d probably have dithered there till he was caught. But I was straight off the ladder and dragging him into the dead end that may once have led to the far block of the residency.
It was just in time. Even as I got him down to the ground, from where he’d have trouble bolting, the voices grew louder. ‘The Leader said it would stop raining,’ someone insisted in a poor but comprehensible Greek. ‘And it rains no more. The Force burns strong within him tonight!’
The response had a tone of piety about it, but was too peculiar in its intonation for me to make out the actual words. I hadn’t been in Athens a day, and I still couldn’t make much sense at all of the local dialect. But something told me these weren’t Athenians. There was a muffled but anticipatory laugh as the ladder creaked under someone’s weight. Though I’d have been in deep shadow, I didn’t dare look out from where we were hiding. My hair alone would have shone like a beacon in the darkness. I kept my breathing under control and counted perhaps a dozen men up the ladder and on to the roof. It was only when I heard no more sounds from the passage between the roofs that I allowed myself a single quick glance. We were now quite alone again.
‘Let’s get out of here,’ Martin whispered pleadingly.
I reached down to push him into silence, but got him on the stump of his missing ear. By the time I’d finished apologising and hugging him, there could have been no one at all dawdling near the top of the ladder. I took hold of it and prepared to step as noiselessly as I could back on to the lowest rung.
‘You aren’t serious . . . ?’ Martin gasped. I laughed softly and stepped on to the ladder. Trying not to make any noise, I climbed to the top and looked cautiously over.
The moon was behind me. Its pale light shone over a large expanse of lead that rose in its centre to a low dome that I guessed was the roof of the courtroom. I couldn’t see Nicephorus or the other men. But I could see Balthazar; rather, I saw his head just beyond the leaded dome. From its angle and the waving arms that shone silver in the moonlight, I could imagine that everyone else was down on his belly for a superstitious grovel.
‘Have you no faith in the Goddess?’ Balthazar cried. Though he must have been twenty yards away, his voice had the unnatural closeness of sounds at night. He bent forward out of sight, and I heard a general groan of terror. Balthazar came back in sight, his arms still raised. ‘O men of little faith,’ he said, ‘behold now the power she gives to her servant!’ He rubbed his hands together. As he pulled them apart, they both caught fire. He clapped them together again, and they went out.
My weight, pressing forward on the ladder, was already causing one of the roof tiles to crumble. Add to that an almost irresistible urge to burst out laughing, and I thought I’d crash sideways. But I shifted position and the ladder stabilised. I could see the shadow of my head on the damp and pitted sheeting. I was suddenly aware of how cold I was, now I was standing still in the breeze of an autumn night.
‘What can you see?’ Martin croaked from below.
I freed my left hand from the ladder and waved at him to shut up. His response was a spluttering fart and a smell that almost knocked me off the ladder. I looked again across the bright expanse of lead. I could see that Balthazar had put his arms down. I knew from my early days in the Church, where I’d assisted in the production of ‘miracles’ to bring over the Kentish heathen, that he’d need to piss on his hands soon if the skin wasn’t to peel off them. But Nicephorus was getting over his earlier fright. From behind the dome, I could hear the firm cries for enlightenment of a man who’s pretty sure of getting his way.
‘I tell you,’ Balthazar cried with another dramatic wave, ‘that the woman knows nothing. The child knows nothing. The intruders know nothing.’
Unless she was fast asleep, Euphemia must have been deaf not to hear all this wailing. We couldn’t have been that far from her rooms, and the sound really was carrying. But Balthazar and his whole congregation were now raving back and forth at each other in some stupid but long-practised litany about the Goddess and her Force, and the wondrous things she would soon assure to her followers pure in heart. I heard the voice of Nicephorus raised above all the others. Leave aside the sorcery charges I was now determined to throw at him for that girl’s murder, anyone who could have been taken in by this shite for at least two years deserved immediate removal from office and transfer to a monastery for the insane.
I could have remained there until they all set out on their return. I could then have cowered with Martin in the shadows, and followed them about whatever other business they might still have. But the breeze was now become an insistent, frigid wind. My teeth chattered. I could feel my nipples tighten to painful dots, and a shrinking in my crotch to the dimensions and probable appearance of a prepubescent boy. Over on the roof, everyone had joined hands and was dancing in and out like girls at a wedding feast. The only words I could catch in this had no meaning. More important was who these people were. There was Nicephorus, of course, and Balthazar. With them, though, I could see perhaps a dozen men in the same dark clothes as the men I’d seen at the back of the crowd in Piraeus. I really wanted to see more. However, I was now shaking uncontrollably. It was as much as I could do to get silently down the ladder and fight to stop myself from curling into a ball.
‘Hold on to me Aelric, hold on,’ Martin cried softly. He put his arms round me and shared some of his blubbery warmth. ‘There is evil all about us,’ he said, pulling away to make the sign of the cross. ‘It ripples from that damnable group in freezing waves. Come quickly, or be drained of the life they must extract for their Hell-bound blasphemies.’
I might have giggled through chattering teeth at his belief that the night breeze was other than a nuisance. But I was badly in need of the heat from his body. I’d noticed how the cold was reaching deep inside me as Balthazar had done his conjuring trick with the powder on his hands. From that, I’d gone in moments to the edge of collapse. Without Martin to keep his body against mine and drag me back along the path, I can’t say how I’d have got back to the comparative warmth of the residency.
We stopped for a moment in the library, where Martin shook out the crumpled-up sheet and got it over me like a cloak. ‘What did you see?’ he asked with a nervous look at the reclosed door. ‘I heard enough. But tell me what you saw.’
‘Not very much,’ I said, fighting off another attack of the shivers. I pulled myself together. ‘Martin,’ I said firmly, ‘I don’t want you to breathe a word of this, not even to Sveta. Do you understand?’
Shivering himself, he looked about. ‘I told you this place had an evil atmosphere,’ he said. ‘Can you really not feel it surrounding you like a fog?’
My answer was a non-committal shrug. Still cold all over, I was coming out of the fit that had almost downed me on the roof. So long as he kept his mouth shut – and I knew he would – he was welcome to his fancies. I looked again at the closed door. It might reopen at any moment, and I was unarmed. I waited for Martin to get both our lamps lit. This time, we were entirely alone. I let him go first down the stairs, noting with tired approval that he managed to step without making any noise. I looked briefly back into the library. Outside the pool of light from the lamps, the moon was back to playing funny tricks with the dust.
Chapter 21
‘For a man who says he’s too sick even to leave his bed,’ I said in Latin, ‘His Excellency in Corinth is a wondrously busy correspondent.’ I eased myself down a few inches into the lukewarm water, and looked again at my face in the mirror I was holding. The spot on my nose was now definitely ripe. The bitch was it had been joined by another. I turned my attention back to Martin. He was sitting in the glow of sunlight that was reflected down on us from the high, unglazed windows of the bathhouse. I’d been right about the Gove
rnor. His letters had come over unrolled, and formed a heap of papyrus several inches thick. It was a short dash across the water from Piraeus. But he must have worked like a demon to get all this over to us. Martin coughed politely and reached for what he considered the most important of the letters.
Beyond the first intake of breath, however, I heard nothing of whatever he read. With a force that reminded me of a heretical baptism I’d once attended, the slave pushed down hard on my shoulders and sent me so far under water that I felt the sudden chill as my legs rose into the air. I felt the mirror land on my belly and then slide off until I heard it scrape against the leaden bottom of the bathtub. As I came up again spluttering, he set about my hair as if it were potter’s clay. By the time I was able to go back to any kind of conversation, Martin had put the letter down and was back to chewing on his stale crust. He’d farted while I was under the water, and the smell was almost worth a brief comment.
But, ‘I’ll read his military update myself,’ is all I said. I really hadn’t the patience to sit through another attack of the vapours when he read about the barbarian flood gathering north of Thermopylae. ‘Then you can summarise anything else that isn’t a waste of time.’ I sat up and reached for the cup of ginger cordial that Martin had set for me on the little table that was attached to the bath. Heated and with a dash of some local stimulant, it was an improvement on all the wine I’d so far been served. ‘You know, I’m wondering about the value of a trip over to Corinth. If the Governor really is ill, it could be made to look as if I actually cared for the man. And, though you and I have business in Athens, Sveta and the children might be more comfy in the provincial capital.’
I was expecting some reaction from Martin to this very diplomatic admission that Athens might not be completely safe. But it was now that the slave spoke. Rather, he giggled and let out a sentence of what sounded like Egyptian while poking at my nose. I frowned and gripped the sides of the bath. He repeated himself and gave me another poke. Would it be unreasonable, I wondered, if I stood up and boxed his ears? Or might it show a certain want of dignity?
‘I think he’s asking if you’d like him to suck out the pus,’ Martin explained, seemingly unaware of my admission.
He was right. The slave had spoken in the local dialect. Now I bothered listening, it did have a Greek base, but was so corrupted, and so mixed in Slavic words and grammatical forms, that it might have been a different language. Sad, I thought, that Athens had come to this. I nodded and tried to ignore the blast of stinking breath and the scrape of teeth against my nose.
‘Have you seen our host yet?’ I asked as the slave pulled momentarily back and spat a mouthful of goo into the water. Even if he was rather an unlikely spy, I might as well avoid any mention of names or titles that had meaning in Greek as well as Latin.
Martin nodded. ‘He was up before me,’ he said. ‘He got the big slave to heat your bathwater. He said he’d not be able to join you for breakfast, but would arrange a tour for you of Athens. He had a black eye,’ he added.
I waited for the slave to suck again on my nose. ‘I choose to assume he’s off on some official business,’ I said. ‘For sure, with no one employed to copy letters, or even deliver them, he must be running about Athens like a blue-arsed fly.’ I closed my eyes as the slave attached himself still harder to my nose, and thought about possible departure times for Corinth. I had no great wish to see the Governor. But I did want Sveta and the children safe behind the walls of the provincial capital. Also, I was short of cash. What Martin had handed back to me might have got him and my other people to Rome. But, now I’d be in Athens for some while – and now I’d heard it plain the whole official budget was embezzled – I needed some Jewish or Syrian banker to cash a draft for me. If I wanted any degree of comfort, I’d need slaves of my own to clean up my part of the residency. I might even get some of the heating back into working order.
The slave finally pulled back from my face, and I watched his pink spittle dissolve in the bathwater. I resisted the urge to put a finger to my nose. I sat up again and reached forward for the mirror. I wiped it clear and looked at the bright swelling. Had this been, in any sense, a worthwhile treatment? I put the mirror on the table beside my cup and changed the subject.
‘There is,’ I said to Martin, ‘a summary of the issue that I prepared for the orthodox and heretical Patriarchs of Alexandria. I believe you packed it in the smaller document box. You’ll need to make certain obvious cuts. But I’ll be most grateful if you could translate it into Latin for me to read out to the Western delegates. If they’ve arrived yet, and if there are no contrary instructions from the Emperor, I think I’ll convene the council the day after tomorrow. We’ll have a nice Sunday service, where everyone can be sworn to secrecy. Then we’ll proceed to whatever place of meeting Nicephorus has been ordered to make ready for us. The clearer we can make the issues, the sooner we can get everyone to agree the manner of their future discussion.’
‘What are you going to do about what you learned last night?’ Martin asked suddenly in Celtic. ‘The tongue of Saint George will protect us from satanic spells, but—’
‘Oh, do shut up, Martin!’ I laughed, joining him in Celtic – you can never be too paranoid where even idiot slaves are concerned. ‘I’ve told you many times there is no such thing as magic. You control the forces of Nature by the uncovering of facts and careful reasoning from them. There’s no short cut to be had from incantations, or chance resemblances of tree roots to body parts, or whatever. Be aware that the Count is a murderer, aided and assisted by some local charlatan and his agents or servants. There really is nothing more to be said.’
I smiled and reached forward to pat Martin on the back. I noticed too late I was putting a wet stain on his tunic and apologised. ‘Look, Martin,’ I said earnestly, ‘there is no magic. All that chanting does no more harm than the twittering of some bug at night.’ I stopped and waited for the look of strain to go out of Martin’s face.
Of course, it stayed put. ‘And you’re not going to act on what we learned last night?’ he asked, his mouth dropping open. ‘Even if you’re planning to overlook the girl, Priscus did say he wanted you dead.’
I stretched and yawned. ‘Oh, Martin,’ I said, ‘what do you suppose I should do – arrest the Commander of the East?’ I laughed. ‘In the first place, there’s the question of where to hold him. Then, there would have to be a trial before the Emperor. Even if we managed to throw in a few accusations of sorcery, the Great Augustus would require some evidence – and we really have nothing to offer at present. I hope you’ll agree that our only option is to take reasonable care and to wait on further developments. Besides, you may remember that, if our friend did request a murder, his request doesn’t seem to have produced anything other than a few more of the magic spells that didn’t stop us from getting here in the first place.’
I smiled reassuringly and had another look at myself in the mirror. That gave me an excuse for saying nothing more. Martin did have a point, I had to allow. If sorcery itself is nothing, sorcerers can still be dangerous. The rotting corpse we’d found the day before was proof of that. I changed my train of thought. Murder is murder. Sooner or later, that has to be punished. But I thought again. There was, to my knowledge, neither civil nor military government in Athens. Nicephorus had seen to that. I’d need at least a few days of caution. Balthazar had dismissed me as of no account. Of no account I’d therefore be. I’d make a few ineffectual enquiries about the state of affairs – do less than that, and I’d raise suspicion. Today was Friday. On Monday, I’d be off to Corinth. There, all being well, I’d take charge of things and come back with fifty or sixty armed men. The only shame was that I’d not be able to include Priscus in the arrests. But I really would try every one of those bastards for murder, from Nicephorus down, and throw in a sorcery charge to justify the executions. Even without the brilliant success I had in mind for the council, Heraclius would wet himself with joy as he read my account of the pr
oceedings in Athens.
Or perhaps I’d do nothing at all, I told myself with yet another change of thought. I might not even make a trip to Corinth. I could send Martin over with letters. He and the others could stay there. The money I wanted could come back by courier. The most important single job in hand was getting that bloody council under way. Could I afford any time at all outside Athens? And what might be the effect of a full-blown sorcery investigation on those already skittish priests? Murder is murder. You don’t walk by on the other side when you see it. But I’d been sent here under a cloud. My one chance of redeeming myself was to get agreement on the importance of that Single Will argument I’d fabricated out of nothing. Murder is murder. But there was a religious dispute to be settled here in Athens. Back in Constantinople, there was an interlocking set of crises brought on by disaster in the war with Persia – and who else was there but me who could even understand them, let alone resolve them? My own interest aside, perhaps I should just keep all focus on the job in hand. Would justice in the main really be served by making a fuss here? Fiat iustitia ruat caelum is a fine motto for lawyers with no wider duties to consider. But would the skies not fall everywhere in the Empire if I insisted on strict justice here in Athens? Might they not fall on me?
Martin suddenly leaned forward and pushed the mirror aside. ‘Listen, Aelric,’ he urged, ‘why don’t we just get out of here? If we’re all going to Corinth, why stop there? We can all get away together. You say the Governor is useless. He won’t even notice if we take ship back to the West. We can—’
‘We can do no such thing!’ I snapped. ‘Since I don’t seem to have been dismissed from his service, that oath I swore to Heraclius still holds. My duty is to do what I can for the Empire.’ I looked into Martin’s drawn face. Surely he could understand the concept of duty. After all, wasn’t he also a barbarian? Honour, duty, courage – even a cowardly barbarian couldn’t set those aside. Or could he?
The Ghosts of Athens (Aelric) Page 15
