I forced myself to look harder at the body. Bad weather might have kept off the flies. Nor had the rats been round to have a go at it. Even so, it might have been there four or five days. I looked at the head that Priscus was now twisting about to view from every angle. You needed some imagination to see how pretty the face had once been. It really was a ghastly thing to behold: dark where all else about the body was unnaturally pale, and damaged as if it had been dragged over the rocky ground. I looked away from the grey, sunken eyes.
‘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.