‘Theophanes has already had the crowds cleared from the square outside the Legation. With guards posted inside and out, you’ll sleep more secure than I shall here in the palace.’
O sleep! What a glorious thing it can be. I’d been looking forward to the moment when I could slide safe and warm into my own bed. There was a brief interval of joy as I sank into the mattress and felt the smooth silk of the sheets. Then the soft blackness swept over me, and I was gone from the world.
45
I woke to a smell of frying sausages. It was late in the morning, though the shuttered window gave me no indication of the time. I had the most awful headache, and white flashes attended my every move as I staggered out of bed. The scabs over my wounds had come off in the night, and I’d bled into the bedclothes. Pulling myself free of the sticky silk added to the chorus of pains.
I shambled round in the light that poured through a single chink in the shutters, looking for some clothes. Then I gave up. I unbolted and dragged the door open.
‘Authari,’ I almost called, before remembering all that had happened.
‘Oh fuck!’ I groaned as the horrors of the past day or so came crowding into my mind. I didn’t even try to pretend that they might have been a dream.
I called for Martin. He was already waiting outside the door with Maximin in his arms. Gutrune, he said, was still overcome by the death of Authari. In the past few months, she had lost the father of her child and the child itself. Now she had lost the man who, Martin told me, was planning to ask me to sell her to him so they could be married.
Poor cow! I thought. I’d see her right if Maximin made it to his first birthday.
For the moment, though, there was work to be done. I took up the jug of wine Martin had placed on a table in the corridor and drained it without acknowledgement of the little cup set beside it. Too late, I found it was the sour, greenish stuff favoured by the Greek higher classes and I nearly choked on it. But it was enough to bring me back to a pale semblance of humanity.
‘Martin,’ I said, taking Maximin into my own arms and feeling almost ready to bask in the radiance of his smile – ‘Martin, we need to press on with the investigation. I think we should concentrate on finding out how that bastard Agathius got into my room.’
‘I quite agree, sir,’ said Martin. ‘I suggest first, however, that a bath might be in order. I’ve had one prepared. All else aside, I’m afraid to say that Maximin has had an accident.’
That he had. With Gutrune out of action, no one had changed him, and the tight hug I’d given the boy had squirted a stream of yellow shit all over my belly and legs.
‘Jesus and the Virgin!’ I groaned, now noticing the smell. I handed him straight back to Martin, who held him out at arm’s length.
‘You’ll remember that the main gate was unbarred when we got down there,’ I said in Celtic, ‘but the doorkeepers were drugged. That makes it fair to assume my attacker was let in as part of a conspiracy that involved people trusted by the doorkeepers.’
Martin stood back to let me go first on to the balcony from my bedroom.
‘You may be right,’ he said. ‘But might it not be that some outsider crept in and hid during the day, until he could drug their wine unobserved, and then open the gate?’
‘Possible,’ I replied, ‘but not likely. Remember – except it was drugged, their wine was the same as that served to everyone else in the Legation household that night. That makes it most likely that the wine was drugged by whoever served it, and that he was known to the doorkeepers. Of course, we can settle this when we speak to the men directly. Without Priscus around to interfere, we can ask whatever questions we like.’
With Martin keeping hold of my tunic – I was still a little unsteady – I climbed on to the railing and pulled myself up to look at the ledge that ran along to the dome. It was impossible to tell if anyone else had been up there since my escapade in the summer. But the spikes of the railings at the end were now covered in a film of rust. Any intruder would surely have rubbed off patches of this and left traces of their clothing on them.
I could have walked along to inspect these at close quarters but Martin was holding on to me as a sailor his ropes. I jumped back down beside him.
‘Agathius didn’t come from above,’ I said. ‘That means he must have come up the stairs from the gardens. Now, since we’ve never been able to get out of the garden these stairs lead to, it’s worth asking how he got into it from the main hall.’
That was a mystery easily solved. When we’d last sat there in the summer, the walls of the garden were lined with thick shrubbery. Now, enough of the leaves had blown off to reveal a small door that had been unbarred from the other side. This led into the much larger central garden, where I’d seen those monks go about their clipping and watering and which, in turn, led to various parts of the main building.
It was now that I saw the previously hidden warren of offices and corridors where the main work of the Legation went on and which had once been the state rooms of the palace. The builders had done a good job with the walls and doors, and had even lowered the ceilings to maintain a sense of proportion. It was the mosaic floors that told the story. Where these had been dug up to make way for new walls, the spaces had been crudely filled with concrete.
I was beginning to learn quite a lot about the work of the Legation. This included handling petitions and arranging loans to the Emperor, setting up appointments with him, and promoting the exchange of information that was too confidential to be conducted through the Exarch’s chancery in Ravenna. No wonder the virtual shutting down of the Legation since my arrival had raised so many concerns among those not in the know.
When I had asked for the Permanent Legate’s bedroom to be taken apart by the Black Agents I had rather hoped that the rest of the Legation would be subjected to a less thorough inspection. The broken doors and smashed furniture that the Black Agents had left in their wake proved otherwise. Some of the small band of officials and slaves who were busy cleaning up the mess gave me hard looks as we passed. They were doing their best, but restoring any kind of order would take days.
From here, it was a straight walk through the lower storey of the Permanent Legate’s suite to the now open door that led into the main hall.
‘It was Demetrius,’ the elder and apparently less stupid of the doorkeepers told me when I repeated my question. ‘Slaves got us the meat. He brung the wine.’
He was able to show me the jug and wooden cups in which the wine had been brought since these had still not been collected owing to the chaos of the previous day. The cups were of the sort I had already seen in the slave quarters of the Legation – the sort, that is, that didn’t match the one given to Authari. I handed them to Martin with the request that they be sent to my apothecary for testing.
No point in further questioning. The doorkeepers had settled the one matter on which they were competent to give information. In doing so, they had saved us from a mass of speculation. They claimed not to have seen Demetrius since he had brought the wine and to know nothing more about the Legation than the others since they had both been bought only about a month before my own arrival.
Now, the fact that so much effort had been put into getting at least one intruder through the main gate raised a problem. I’d taken it as fair to assume that there was some alternative way in to the Legation. This would explain how Demetrius and the body of the Permanent Legate had been able to disappear without leaving any trail. What I had now learnt indicated that there was no secret entrance.
‘No one has seen him since we were called to the Emperor,’ Martin reminded me. ‘It may be we were the last to see him.’
As we walked back to the end of the hall, and I prepared to knock on the barred door to my own suite – Radogast would never be able to understand how I was asking to be let back in without having first gone out past him! – the gate of the Legation swung open behind us and Theophanes was carried in. As ever, Alypius walked beside the
chair, a purple bag hanging from his shoulders.
‘Ah, there you both are!’ Theophanes cried, prodding at the slaves to carry him over to us. He flashed us an almost natural smile. ‘I have some progress to report.’
46
Theophanes sat in my office. The little sofa creaked beneath his bulk as he shifted around for comfort. He beamed with genuine pleasure as he looked at the ebony cot from where Maximin stared back with solemn interest.
‘No wine for me, as you know,’ he said, ‘but I have a supply of my kava berries. Let us have boiling water brought up, together with a silver jug, and join together in a cup of the brew that cheers but does not inebriate.’
When the slaves had withdrawn, I bolted the door. Then I went out on to the balcony and into my bedroom and bolted the door to that. Just to be thorough, I looked along the ledge.
‘I can promise you’, I said, coming back into the office, ‘we are alone. So long as we keep our voices down – and I speak from experience here – we can’t be heard from the corridor. If anyone tries to creep up from the garden, we’ll hear the steps creak.’
I sat behind my desk. Martin sat on a low stool to my left. Alypius stood close by the door to the balcony. If a bird so much as landed on the steps, it would be noticed at once.
‘A fine set of precautions,’ Theophanes observed. ‘Persons of our quality should always take advantage of such privacy as can be obtained. I do not think, however, we have much to say that requires total security.’
I smiled, but said nothing.
He called Alypius over to pour two cups of the steaming dark liquid – Martin having excused himself from the novelty with a cup of apple juice.
This done, Alypius went to his bag and drew out a sheaf of documents. One of these, I could see from across the room, carried the seal of the Greek Patriarch.
‘The office of His Holiness remains in some disorder,’ Theophanes explained, ‘but I have managed to procure the personal file of Dioscorides. Combined with his security file, held in the Ministry, a most interesting picture emerges.’
It was an interesting picture. As said, the man was an Egyptian. But, after completing his studies in Alexandria, he’d been attached to the small permanent mission which the Alexandrian Patriarch kept up in Carthage. There, he’d learned Punic – reasonably similar to Coptic – and made a nuisance of himself as a preacher to the common people of the country districts. By his endless and heated denunciations, he had revived past heresies and re awakened people’s fears of them. From there he’d been sent packing by the Exarch, and had turned up in Constantinople about eighteen months earlier. You can imagine for yourself his maniac solicitation of the rabble here.
What Theophanes had also discovered was that Dioscorides had an elder brother who had attached himself to the Heraclian side in Egypt. He was now a bishop in some out-of-the-way town in Upper Egypt that he would never have to visit, and was, so far as could be known, with Heraclius himself just down the Straits at Abydos.
‘Well,’ said I, leaning back in my chair for a stretch, ‘let us proceed to the matter of Demetrius. Since he’s nowhere to be found, I think it most likely he was involved in the Permanent Legate’s murder. If so, he also helped remove the body. If so, he also murdered Authari. We have learned already that he has a talent for serving doctored wine.’
I leaned forward again to ease the pressure on my sore back. Martin had assured me there was nothing unpleasant to worry about, and the kava berries were quickening my wits very nicely.
‘Is there anything on him in the Ministry files?’ I asked. ‘The drugs aside, what motivated Dioscorides is easily guessed. But Demetrius? He was the Permanent Legate’s personal secretary in all senses. It now seems he was also working for Heraclius. I imagine his file must be as fat as a Syrian whore.’
‘Not really,’ said Alypius, speaking in place of Theophanes and looking rather nervous. ‘He is an Armenian, taken directly into the service of His Excellency.’
‘An Armenian?’ I said, with a bright smile. ‘That would explain the weak Latin, yet also the poverty of his Greek. Can you say when he arrived in Constantinople?’
‘He appeared shortly after His Excellency had sent all the regular officials and slaves out of the city,’ Alypius replied.
‘I’ve had Priscus circulate his description to everyone it may concern,’ I said. ‘Let’s hope that he is found soon – and preferably brought to me in one piece. I think my instructions were reasonably clear, even to the Black Agents.
‘Every mystery involving the Permanent Legate seems to begin with Demetrius. With or without the help of Priscus, I’m sure I shall find much to discuss with him when he does reappear. Such a shame, though, don’t you think, that there is so much on file about a relative nobody like Dioscorides, and so little on a man who has for months now been Number Two to the Pope’s representative?’
‘Have you not considered’, Theophanes answered, with a look at Alypius, ‘that there might be a supernatural element to the killing?’
I smiled again and chose my words. ‘Theophanes,’ I said, ‘there are undoubtedly miracles on the record. Most undoubtedly, there are those recorded in the Holy Scriptures of Our Lord Jesus Christ and of His Apostles.’ I thought for a moment to stop and cross myself. But it might have spoiled the cool sarcasm of my tone. I continued: ‘But in our own corrupted age, we cannot accept that a miracle has occurred until we have exhausted all other natural possibilities.
‘Let me assure you,’ I finished, ‘that the Permanent Legate was killed by a natural person. I don’t yet know why he did it. But I think I know how it was done and who did it. And I’ll further assure you that – unless I’m stopped by naked force – I’ll know within the next few days why it was done.’
Theophanes looked again at Alypius. His face had taken on the stiff tension of a gambler at the races. Looking out of his depth, Martin sat very still.
I turned to the boxes of confidential files piled up on the far side of the room from Maximin.
‘Martin went properly through these this morning,’ I said. ‘We’ve both since had another look. As Martin thought yesterday, the Permanent Legate’s papers have been carefully sorted. Many things are missing that we reasonably believe ought to be there. We are missing all correspondence for this year with the Dispensator in Rome. Also all correspondence whatever between you and His Late Excellency since his arrival in the city the year before last. We are certain of this last correspondence because the empty filing racks still carry the inked labels of description. This gives us further reason to believe that the sifting of papers was both hurried and unpremeditated. Given luck and boldness, murder is easy. It’s the attendant circumstances that are harder to control.’
As I spoke, I could see that Theophanes was beginning to sweat under the paint. For the first time ever, I’d broken his composure.
‘What I have, though’ – I held up my hand for silence – ‘what I have is this.’
I took a small sheet of papyrus from the file that Martin held open for me. The pattern of folds and weakening in one of the corners told that it had once been pinned to other sheets. Now, sliced in half down the middle, it had been reused on the back.
‘This is interesting for what it says on both sides,’ I announced to Theophanes. ‘The reverse of the sheet carries a list written, I think, by His Excellency himself. If so, he was dealing with some very large sums of money – far more than the Legation accounts indicate were at his disposal.
‘You will see references to my own banking house. I may visit Baruch in the next few days, but will not trouble him with this. He’s a banker and – until recently, at least – a Jew. I am convinced that even three days with Priscus under the Ministry would not reveal what services he provides his other customers. And such is as it ought to be.
‘The sheet was used originally, however, for the draft minutes of a meeting in Ephesus. You will see that this took place in April. I wonder why His Excellency might hav
e made a spring visit to Ephesus? And who else might have attended?’
I asked the question with a lightness that no other face in the room reflected. Theophanes was on his feet. He snatched furiously at the sheet as I stood over him with it. He looked at the list. He turned to Alypius. Eyes blazing, he launched into a flood of blame in their own bleak language.
Alypius defended himself as best he could. But Theophanes was almost out of control with rage. He even forgot to keep his voice down and every so often his gaze wandered to the open door to the balcony. It was only with extreme effort that he pulled himself together and turned back to face me.
He looked at the upper side of the sheet and I could see traces of anger on his face under the paint give way to relief.
‘But my dear Alaric,’ he said with a return to Greek, ‘you have only the right-hand side of the sheet. There are no names here. As for the date, this could be any April – the regnal year is missing.’
He spoke now with forced lightness, but his hands shook as he dropped the sheet on to my desk.
‘Of course, you are right,’ I said, enjoying myself. ‘I really should have seen that for myself. As for what I can read of the minutes, they do seem to concern matters of doctrine that were quite within His Excellency’s competence. I cannot see why he had to travel to Ephesus to discuss whether the Lombard King might be won over to Orthodoxy. But what I can see of his probable comments is most uplifting. Perhaps the sheet is useless after all. Shall I throw it away?’
‘Do allow me to take that duty from you,’ said Theophanes with the glimmering return of his charm. ‘It would never do to disturb the serene tidiness of your office.’
He took the sheet back and buried it in his robe. Then he sat down and, with still shaking hands, sipped at his kava juice. Martin gave me an even more scared and uncomprehending look.
At that moment Maximin began to cry. I turned to Martin with a sigh. ‘Can you see if Gutrune is yet up to changing some shitty clothes?’
The Terror of Constantinople a-2 Page 30
