Though conducted in Greek, and with variations of music and incense you’ll see nowhere else, the Eastern ritual for the dead is pretty close in essentials to our own. It has all the same prayers and readings and hymns. There is the usual dwelling on the frailty of life and the vanity of worldly things – the usual directing of hearts and minds to the Incomparable Value and Infinite Blessings of the Life to Come.
Presiding in a vague sense over all this, Phocas sat on his throne a few dozen yards from the altar. He glowered at the congregation as he made sure that the representative of his good friend the Pope received the send-off he deserved.
As if to show who was really in charge, the Greek Patriarch’s plans were changed without warning. As he readied himself to turn back from the coffin for another sermon, a deacon plucked at his sleeve. There was a whispered exchange that ended in a look in my direction from the Patriarch that Medusa might have envied. Then I found myself propelled to the front of the church.
‘You’re to give the final reading,’ a voice murmured in my right ear. ‘Have you got your text ready?’
‘What the fuck?…’ I gasped, luckily unheard in the shuffling around me. No one had told me I was to do other than watch and look pretty in the robe I’d finally bullied those tailors into working like galley slaves to produce.
I stood looking down at the immense congregation lining both sides of the central area of the church. The assembled thousands stood looking expectantly back at me. I recognised Philip and some of the other students, all dressed in a most fetching black. There was Baruch, standing beside one of the supporting columns, a golden cross hung prominently round his neck. I noticed the Faction leaders close together. It seemed that Priscus had managed after all to settle their difference.
I saw the Patriarch, breathing hard and looking down at the floor. Beside him, with a seniority I’d never been able to work out, stood Sergius. He looked at me, his face diplomatically blank.
Over beside the Emperor, I saw Priscus. He took a surreptitious handful of something I rather fancied for myself at that moment, and washed it down with a swig from his flask. He smiled as he might at a public execution and blew me a kiss.
Theophanes, standing far behind him, seemed nervous. Next to him, I could see a look of horror on Martin’s face that outdid anything he’d yet managed. It was as if he expected the dome of the church to cave in on us.
Swathed in purple and gold, Phocas sat in his full hieratic mode. The house might belong to God. But he was its Master. For him, all was as it ought to be.
I felt the full blast of the expectant hush around me as I pulled open the heavy bound volume of the Gospels before me.
‘My reading today’ – my voice caught with sudden nerves. I hadn’t realised how the acoustics in that place would magnify and deepen it. I pulled myself together.
‘My reading today’, I began again with forced confidence, ‘is’ – I looked down at the page that had fallen open – ‘from the First Letter of St Paul to the Corinthians.’
I swallowed and began: ‘Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity…’
Oh Jesus! I thought with a stab of terror, I couldn’t read the words in Greek. The lamp in front of me wasn’t up to showing the tiny script. Besides, it was of the crabbed, ecclesiastical type I’d always left to Martin when I came across it in the Patriarchal Library.
I squinted as I recited the opening clause. It was useless. I couldn’t read a fucking word. It was as if a spider had crawled out of an inkpot.
I paused. I swallowed. I resisted the temptation to stage a fainting fit. Instead I improvised, continuing in Latin:
‘ Factus sum uelut aes sonans aut cymbalum tinniens.
‘ Et si habuero prophetiam et nouerim mysteria omnia et omnem scientiam et habuero omnem fidem ita ut montes transferam caritatem autem non habuero…’
I got no further.
‘Blasphemy! Blasphemy!’ a voice screamed behind me. ‘The Great Church is become as Babylon!’
Fucking cheek! I thought. I wasn’t doing that badly. As for the Latin, I was Acting Permanent Legate to His Holiness in Rome. If I chose to read the lesson in the Empire’s official language, that was my right.
I turned to see what the commotion was.
A young deacon had broken free from the throng around the altar and was rushing up the steps to my lectern. Knife in hand, his face carried a look of wild fanaticism. He reminded me of the monks I’d occasionally seen running about the city when they’d heard there was heretical talk in the Baths.
‘The Latin dog blasphemes!’
A few elderly clerics had made an effort to restrain the maniac. Of course, they’d failed. I heard the clatter of armed men over by the Emperor. But they’d have to push their way through a sea of bodies to get to me.
I was on my own.
I waited at the top of the bronze steps, ready to overpower the man. He had a knife, but I was much larger.
It was now that I got a closer look at the knife. It shone dull in the light of the overhead lamps. Some dark gel was dripping from its point. It had been steeped in poison. One nick of that thing, and I’d be a dead man.
‘Let the Temple be cleansed!’ the deacon bellowed as he reached the top of the steps.
‘God help me!’ I cried in terror. Would there be no limit to the horrors of the past few days? Unless I fancied jumping twenty feet, there was no way off this lectern but past some maniac who was flailing about like the scythe on a war chariot’s wheel.
‘Fuck you to hell, Greekling shit!’ I screamed at him with a recovery of nerve. I hurled the Gospels at his head. They missed, but caught him on the shoulder. He wheeled back. For a moment, I thought he’d fall backwards down the steps. But he caught himself on the rail with his free arm.
The Gospels crashed heavily on to the stone floor, where the binding burst into a cascade of parchment sections.
‘Die, Blasphemer!’ the deacon cried with a stab in my direction.
He missed me, thank God. But he did open a great rent in my lovely new robe. As he came at me again, all wild eyes and slashing knife, I found time to observe that I wasn’t having the best of luck in this City where clothing was concerned. I’d had to hand over a pile of gold for that purple border, and I wasn’t sure it would be chargeable to expenses.
There was nothing else for it. Through the gash in my robe, I pulled out my sword. In normal circumstances, I wouldn’t have thought to bring it into church. But you tell me, dear reader, when I’d last seen any of those.
I pulled it out and thrust it at the deacon’s body. It glanced off, the hole I ripped in his robe showing the chainmail underneath. For a moment, he gripped again at the rail to get his balance. Then he was back at me.
I finally got him down the steps with a knock of the sword handle to his face. Anyone else would have paused to wipe away the blood that gushed from the wound I opened on his forehead. Not this lunatic deacon. His mouth foamed. His eyes glared at me with pupils contracted almost to the size of pinheads.
He didn’t even cease his cries of ‘Blasphemy! Blasphemy!’ They echoed horribly round the now silent church.
As he started up the steps again, I took the sword in both hands and swung hard. With a dull thud and a recoil that almost pitched me off the lectern on to the floor far below, I had it half through his neck and deep into his collarbone.
And it would have gone further but for the mail collar.
The deacon crashed sideways against the rail. His eyes bulged, the pupils now expanding as they looked fixedly into mine. He opened his mouth for one last cry but in place of any human sound, there was only a gurgling from his severed windpipe.
Blood gushed from his neck in dying spurts. But, still in command, he stepped backwards in good order on to the lower steps. I thought he might be so far gone in piety and whatever he was on, he’d try another slash with his knife.
I was taking no further chances. I kicked him hard in the
stomach and sent him spinning to the foot of the steps, where he fell in a now silent heap. The knife, though still in his hand, was underneath the body.
‘And may God have mercy on your soul,’ I rasped, suddenly recalling where and who I was.
As I reached up to mop the blood from my face, a most annoying shower of gold leaf dropped down on to my robe.
‘That was a most lucky blow, my darling Alaric,’ said Priscus. ‘Was it not a Sign from Heaven that you never got to say “ nihil sum ”?’
He stood at the foot of the lectern steps with a couple of armed guards for company and aimed a kick at the motionless body. ‘A shame you had to finish him off, even so,’ he said. ‘It would have been interesting to watch an interrogation according to your own custom. As it is, we’ll never know who put him up to this.’
‘I quite agree, my dear Priscus,’ I said, breathing hard. ‘But’ – I quoted – ‘“Not all that men desire do they obtain.”’
He smiled, nodding acknowledgement of the line from Euripides. It eclipsed his finishing the verse from St Paul.
I sheathed my sword and walked down to Priscus. Blood had turned the bronze steps as slippery as ice. I had to grip hard on the rail to avoid falling.
I looked around. The church was absolutely silent. The congregation stood exactly as I’d last seen it. Several hands were still raised in prayer. Some of the people in the front row of worshippers were splashed with blood.
So was I. More importantly, the slash in my robe was marked all the way down by a dark smear of poison. I’d have to be careful as I took it off.
Behind me, the Patriarch lay nestled in the arms of one of the younger clerics. He had passed out from the shock. An elderly bishop fanned him gently with one of the leaves from the Gospels.
There was a sound of quiet weeping.
Now the Emperor was on his feet. ‘This has been a day of considerable sadness, my Dear Brothers in Christ,’ he said, enunciating slowly.
All heads turned in his direction.
‘However, unless anyone has anything to say to the contrary, I suggest that the service should continue. We can at least commit the body of our Dear Brother the Permanent Legate to God with some attempt at decency.’
Phocas pointed at one of the clerics who was still on his feet.
‘Might I ask if My Lord Bishop of Nicaea has any objection to officiating in place of His Excellency the Patriarch?’
44
‘It was fucking brill – the way you all but took his head off! I haven’t seen better since my fighting days.’
His regalia stripped off and piled on the floor, Phocas spoke in Latin. He refilled my cup and took another draught from his own.
‘Fucking brill!’ he repeated. ‘Just like the good old days, I’d say.’
It was later in the evening. We sat in the palace together with Theophanes. Martin had been carried home under armed guard. I’d insisted the slaves should double-bar the door to my suite and sit with him while he tried to sleep.
None of the guards nor any other outsiders were to be admitted.
I’d again resisted the offer of drugs from Priscus, but Theophanes had fixed me up with something nice from his own box of potions and berries. I don’t think anything could have wholly refreshed me this far into what seemed the longest two days of my life, but I was able for the moment to sit drinking and taking a coherent part in the discussion.
Now in jolly mood again, the Emperor had told Theophanes to investigate what had happened in the Great Church. That was a hard one. The Greek Patriarch had suffered a stroke during the disturbance.
It was hoped he would recover his speech by the morning. In the meantime, the other clerics were running about like a flock of terrified sheep.
‘The deacon’, said Theophanes, ‘was one Dioscorides, an Alexandrian of rising fame as a preacher. His life till tonight had, so far as I can tell, been blameless. His only eccentricity seems to have been a prejudice against the male use of cosmetics.’
‘A little too much premeditation there’, Phocas broke in, ‘for the gold leaf to have sent the fucker mad – we’d all have overlooked the Latin.’
‘I agree,’ Theophanes replied. ‘The knife was steeped in something highly toxic. One of the slaves who helped young Alaric out of his robe managed to smear some of it on his forearm. He’s already in a sweating fever. The doctors say he is unlikely to survive the night.
‘As for Dioscorides, I believe he was high on a drug called ganjika. This is used in Egypt as a harmless sleeping preparation. In high doses, though, it can cause delusions and wild excitement. I would say that he was a lone assassin, prompted by a dislike of the Western Church. But there are certain attendant circumstances that do not incline me to that view.’
There was a slight pause after the words ‘attendant circumstances’ and Theophanes shot me the briefest glance, before continuing:
‘Your Majesty has already remarked on the degree of prepar ation. There is also the question of how Dioscorides knew he would be able to get close to Alaric. Had we not changed the order of service at the last moment, he would have observed the proceedings as a member of the Imperial Party. How could Dioscorides have known that Alaric would be alone and exposed?’
‘I ordered the change,’ said Phocas. ‘You took the orders and passed them on in the church. Who else could have known?’
‘That, sir,’ said Theophanes, ‘is something I will investigate in the morning.’
Phocas nodded.
We moved on to the question of the Permanent Legate’s murder and what I’d been able to find out since our meeting earlier in the day. Phocas also showed much interest in the death of Authari. He’d already had a brief report from Priscus and wanted amplification of the main points.
There was little to report on either front. I’d now interviewed everyone in the Legation I could lay hands on. The mass of notes Martin had taken added to what I knew already, but nothing likely to transform the investigation. It would have been useful to know where Demetrius had got himself to. I’d had the Legation combed by the Black Agents once it was clear that he was missing. No one without a permit from me or Theophanes had entered or left the Legation and certainly no one matching any reasonable description of Demetrius.
As for the Permanent Legate, the bloody robe he was wearing had been discovered in an out-of-the-way latrine. But the body had vanished.
The Black Agents had taken my instructions literally. They’d spent the day ripping the Permanent Legate’s room apart. The whole corridor looked like a demolition site.
But no hiding place had been found. No weapon of murder. Even the poison cup was a mystery. It matched nothing in the kitchens or elsewhere in the Legation. It had probably been brought in from outside.
And what about those silent monks who tended the garden? Someone claimed to have seen one or two of them around even though they never worked on Sundays. I needed to see their abbot about this.
‘As for the Permanent Legate’s last known movements,’ I concluded, ‘I only know that he was visited on his last afternoon by His Excellency the Illustrious Theophanes.’
‘That was while everyone else was enjoying the races,’ Theophanes hurriedly explained. He flashed me a brief but intense glare to keep me in careful limits. ‘I was on business for the Master of the Offices, trying to tempt His Excellency the Permanent Legate to attend dinner at the palace.’
‘You did meet the Permanent Legate?’ I asked, playing along. ‘Or did you only deal with him through Demetrius?’
‘Of course I met him,’ Theophanes said with a careless wave. ‘A low creature like Demetrius might keep you away, and even senior messengers from the Ministry. No one – the Augustus excepted – is indisposed when I grace him with a visit!’
‘How did he seem when you spoke with him?’ I asked, deciding not to gratify him with an apology.
‘He was polite but distant,’ Theophanes said. ‘He spoke of you – I regret to say in rather slight
ing tones, for all I insisted on your many excellences. He called you, if you’ll pardon the words, a drunken, tow-headed barbarian promoted out of place.’
With a temporary loss of control, I flushed red with anger. The fucking cheek of it! Here was a dirty old priest, with a really low taste in porn – and he dared to sneer at a person of my quality? If any incentive remained to find the killer, it was only so that I might shake him by the hand.
Phocas saw my discomfiture and laughed. ‘I’m told’, he said with a stretch of his arms, ‘there is no wine in England. Can this be true?’
‘Vines do grow in Kent, sir,’ I answered with a forced recovery of composure. ‘I believe the Province of Britain did export wine in its final days. But my people prefer beer.’
‘Well,’ said Phocas with a flourish of his cup, ‘drink deep while you can.’
Irrespective of any letter to Ethelbert, I had no intention of ever going back to the place. For all I cared, Richborough itself could fall into the sea. But I drank up as I was told and accepted the offered refill.
I turned back to Theophanes. ‘Did the Permanent Legate show any fear for his safety?’ I asked.
‘None whatever,’ said Theophanes.
He turned the question: ‘Had you any reason to think the Legation unsafe?’
Was that a smile lurking behind the lead paste?
‘The doorkeepers were drugged,’ I answered. ‘There was a dinner last night at the Legation. My own people shared in the pork, but kept mostly to the beer. This being said, the wine served at the feast doesn’t seem to have been contaminated. I’ve had all the opened wine there sent off for testing by an apoth ecary of my own choice. He’ll report back sooner than your own people at the Ministry,’ I added hastily to Theophanes. The tiredness was coming back and I was beginning to wander in my speech.
Phocas saved me. ‘You’ve had a long day,’ he said. ‘Go home to bed. Continue with your investigation tomorrow. See me again the day after next.
The Terror of Constantinople a-2 Page 29
