He stood there unable to move as if the corpse had grasped his ankle. He tried to calm himself down. What did the captain of the excubitors have to fear from the discovery of yet another murder in the city? He might well fear for his life if it was the captain himself who found the body of a smuggler in his own courtyard, particularly if the captain was working with smugglers and one of the most valuable relics in the empire was involved.
He commanded the excubitors, but not Justinian’s spies.
Felix gave the body another kick, freeing his leg from an invisible grip. “Bastard! Why didn’t I find out who you were?”
He could hear horses moving around uneasily in the stable. Was that a voice from the house? He looked around in a sudden panic. The courtyard remained deserted. But for how long? Nikomachos or one of the other servants was liable to appear any moment. Then what?
He had to get the body off his property.
Oddly, the gate was still bolted but there was no time to ponder that. Felix glanced up and down the narrow passage. To his horror two armed men came round the corner where the alley met the street.
The urban watch!
A routine patrol?
He couldn’t take the chance. He slammed the gate shut and ran back to the corpse. He could drag it into the stable for concealment.
No, too accessible.
He grabbed at the corpse’s garments, stiff with embroidery and jewels, and tugged. The courier had not been a small man. The body barely moved.
Cursing silently Felix managed to get the carcass over his shoulder. It was a skill he’d learned as a young man on the days after battles. Then he had been too glad to be among the survivors to feel the revulsion he now experienced as he staggered toward the house, the dead man’s soft leather boots dangling against his thighs, limp hands flopping at his back.
He managed to reach the back hallway and leaned against the wall, catching his breath. His burden weighed as much as he did. It was as if he was carting a side of beef. He had no notion what to do next and he could clearly hear Nikomachos giving orders to the cook in the nearby kitchen.
The bath.
He forced himself a few painful steps further down the hallway and pushed the door open, keeping his load precariously in place. He felt the burden start to slither off his shoulder. Then the dead man’s hair became tangled in the door latch.
“Mithra!” Felix muttered yet again. He twisted awkwardly and forced himself to tear the longish brown strands loose, animating the lifeless head, making it bob up and down as he tugged at its hair.
Finally the hair came away and the head lolled backwards.
By now Felix was half carrying the corpse in his arms. The glazed eyes stared at him. Just when he began to lower the body, the purpling lips emitted a last hideous sigh.
He let go and the corpse fell and slid down the three steps leading into the water. Felix was certain the splash was audible in the inner sanctums of the Great Palace. Wiping water from his face, he exited the chamber and rushed back to the bedroom.
Chapter Twelve
Anastasia sat up in bed as Felix raced into the room.
“What is it?” Her words were almost drowned by a thunderous knocking on the house door.
“Urban watch! And there’s a dead man in the bath,” Felix gasped. “Stay here. I’ll get rid of them. We’ll worry about the body later.”
He raced out of the room and ran along the passage into the atrium where Nikomachos was arguing with a pair of the urban watch. Felix was certain they were not the same men he had glimpsed coming down the alley. Which meant there were guards at both the back and front.
He didn’t like the implication.
Nikomachos blocked their path, gesticulating violently with his one arm. The two visitors, who were youthful and pink-faced, looked taken aback by the spectacle.
“What is it?” Felix snarled. “Why did you wake me up at this hour?”
The one apparently in command turned a startled face toward Felix. The skin which appeared pink from a distance was, up close, a mass of red blotches. The result of youth, not leprosy. “We…we have orders to search this house…sir.”
“Search my house? Hasn’t anyone explained to you boys that I am captain of Justinian’s excubitors? What possible reason can there be to search?”
The blotchy guard licked his lips and stammered. “Trouble has been reported.”
“Trouble? Do I look as if I need a pair of fools wet behind the ears to deal with trouble in my own house?”
It was probably not the best choice of words since Felix himself was still literally wet behind the ears from the bath water into which he’d dropped the body.
The guard banged the butt of his spear on the tiles. “Stand aside, sir. We must follow orders.”
Nikomachos stepped over to Felix’s side. “If I may speak to my master in private-”
The point of the spear immediately prodded his chest.
“No, you may not! Get back to your quarters.” Blotches evidently found it easier to order a servant about than an excubitor captain. But just as obviously he intended to carry out his mission. He addressed Felix, his voice firmer than before. “The orders of the City Prefect take precedence in this situation, sir.”
Nikomachos made a slow exit while Felix desperately tried to think of a way out of his dilemma. What would happen when they discovered the corpse? Was that what they were looking for? Or was it the stolen relic? Or hadn’t they been given any hint of what they were supposed to find?
“You will allow me to accompany you,” Felix said. “I have too many valuables here to allow strangers to wander around unobserved.” It was easy enough to sound angry but putting a note of unconcern into his voice was more difficult.
Still, the house was large. The intruders might flag before covering every room or lose track of where they had looked if their host led them on a circuitous route, which he proceeded to do.
The guards showed little interest in his office, except to prod the wall hangings. They passed through the dining room with a quick glance under the table. In the garden they bent to peer beneath bushes or poked at them with their weapons. Apparently they were not looking for something small. They couldn’t be searching for the relic.
The sun had surmounted the wall of the house and now blazed down. Dew steamed away in wispy tendrils. Felix took the guards in one direction, then another. He escorted them down a side corridor to the servants’ quarters. Each room was the same, a chair, a chest, a bed, a cross on the wall, and little more. Only Nikomachos had anything approaching decoration in his space: some tattered wall hangings, a wood inlaid table with random bits of small crude statuary of the sort found at the edges of the empire, along with several rather ornate chests.
The servant stood in one corner and glared at the guards.
Blotches picked up what might have been a weathered clay frog covered with Egyptian hieroglyphs. No, Felix corrected himself. It didn’t look anything like a frog. A cat, certainly. It was only the frogs in the mausoleum that had brought the image of a frog to mind.
“All the objects you see are tokens of military campaigns I served in,” Nikomachos informed the guards stiffly. “In your line of work, you will never possess such things.” The way he sniffed as he pronounced “your line of work” made employment in the urban watch sound several steps below cleaning the public toilets.
Blotches made no reply. Felix noticed he didn’t bother to open any of the chests. Was he thinking that a body wouldn’t have fit in any of them? He must have been told there would be a body here, Felix decided.
He directed the guards back into the garden and along a roundabout path, intending to return to the atrium. As they followed Felix through the peristyle, Blotches stopped. “We’ve seen the dining room already. What about that hall?”