I brought both fists crashing down on the table. Martin jumped several inches, and his tightened grip on the pen sent several drops of ink on to the papyrus sheet. I glared at Priscus, whose face was shining with sweat in the light of the single overhead lamp. This was an unplanned interrogation, and he was making a right mess of it. Since there was no question of threatening Euphemia with anything at all, I wished he’d kept his mouth shut.
‘Let me say at once,’ I grated, ‘that, when they are in short supply, there is a natural tendency to join facts into chains that are unusual and generally useless. However’ — I looked at Euphemia, who was still dabbing at her eyes — ‘however,’ I continued when she was looking properly in my direction, ‘I must emphasise that Nicephorus and his present whereabouts are of double importance.’
I paused again and looked about the library. Irene had overseen heroic efforts of cleaning. It would still be days — possibly months — before the smell of damp and ancient dirt would disperse into the main courtyard from all the lower rooms. But everything smashed and otherwise ruined had been cleared out of the library. The remaining bookracks had been put back in place. There were even about a hundred book rolls shoved at random into the compartments. Replacement furniture had been rescued from other parts of the residency and arranged with some appearance of taste and comfort. Whole areas of mosaic had been swept away, or scraped away with shovels, and the floor was now firm, if mostly uneven concrete. It would never again look as I’d imagined it in my dream. But it was easily the best room we had.
I waited for Euphemia to stop snivelling, and gathered my thoughts to restate things in the clearest terms I could manage. I went over the importance of knowing anything at all about Nicephorus.
‘I will leave aside the question of murder,’ I continued after pausing for another burst of sobbing. ‘The girl we found along the Piraeus road may no longer be of any importance in herself.’ I stopped and looked carefully at Priscus. He stared back with an innocence so exaggerated, it set me wondering again. ‘What does matter is that, this morning, Nicephorus was seen by a trustworthy witness forcing his way through a stream of incomers to get out of the city. The hooded man may have been a man called Balthazar. It is possible that the bag they were carrying contained a large sum of gold. If these surmises are also of no present importance, we do have reason to fear that the Lord Count will — deliberately or by misfortune — find himself in barbarian hands. We must also fear that the barbarians will soon be aware of certain facts about the condition of the walls.’
I now looked at Euphemia, who was wiping her nose and giving hurt looks at no one in particular. ‘You must, then, appreciate the urgency of our questions about your late husband’s brother,’ I said, now gently. ‘It seems that, before he took off yesterday morning, he burned or scraped clean nearly all his correspondence. What remains is of no importance.’ I stopped again, and thought with a suppressed tremor of what those two letters might indicate.
‘Because we have no further leads,’ I ended, ‘we have no choice but to look to you.’ I smiled at Euphemia — not the smile of a lover, of course, but the smile of one who is trying to settle a crying child and find out something of desperate urgency. ‘Is there anything you can tell me — anything at all — about his dealings with a man called Balthazar? We know they were partners in a scheme of at least double illegality. But did you see or hear anything of these dealings? Did you see Nicephorus in the company of men dressed all over in black?’
Euphemia wiped her eyes again, but didn’t this time dissolve in tears. Nevertheless, I’d had no impact on her story: that she’d kept to her own part of the residency, seeing Nicephorus only for daily prayers and a trip every Sunday to the church inside the old Temple of Hephaestus. Her own life with Theodore had been entirely self-contained.
I stopped the nasty sentence Priscus was forming and leaned forward. I must say she was looking decidedly fetching. But this had to be set aside.
Euphemia sat up straight and stopped my own next question. ‘What you claim to know is all very well,’ she cried. ‘But I tell you that Nicephorus is a good man. I’ve known him for three years. In all this time, I never had reason to suspect treason or sorcery or any other impropriety. He was always very correct in his behaviour.’ She fell back in her chair. No longer verging on tears, she looked defiantly back at me.
I shrugged. She wasn’t telling the truth — I could be sure of that. But I’d get nothing out of her in company. She might be more forthcoming in bed. I turned to Martin. ‘Please speak to Irene,’ I said. ‘I want her to go through this whole building with a measuring rod. I want every room opened up. If it’s been opened already, I want it opened again. I want a full search for any cellar that might be large enough to hold everyone in an emergency, and deep enough not to become an oven if the residency is set alight. I also want its entrance hidden again from even a thorough search.’
I waited for Martin to finish his note, and took a deep breath. ‘I do apologise, Euphemia,’ I said, now in a tone of finality, ‘for any unpleasantness that you have suffered. But I do appreciate your frankness in answering our questions. Please do feel free to return to your quarters. I am sure you wish to speak with Theodore until he goes back into the library or off to sleep in the nursery.’
‘She’s lying through her teeth!’ Priscus snarled once she was out of the door. ‘If your brains weren’t so obviously in your ballbag, you’d see that.’
‘I know that,’ I said. ‘But since I can’t guess what the truth may be, I see no reason yet for more questioning.’ I took a sip of the good wine Martin had laid in and rubbed my nose. At last, the spots really were going, and there might not be a third. For that much I could be grateful. I waited for Priscus to finish snuffing up some aromatic powder from a small box, and for the resulting spasm of groans and beating of head on the table to moderate. Then: ‘Can we turn to the matter of defence?’ I asked.
Martin cleared his throat and shuffled with his heap of papyrus. ‘The Lord Priscus asked me to investigate the city granaries,’ he began. ‘Because these are supervised by the Bishop of Athens, they have not been looted by the Count. The grain stored in them is of the lowest quality, and all seems to be very old. But I counted sixty thousand bushels.’ He stopped and looked at me.
I ignored him and looked at Priscus, who’d come abruptly out of his fit and was now sitting with his mouth open. I put my stylus down and stared at the smooth yellow wax on the tablet before me. I’d been about to calculate, on the basis of a pound a day of grain per head, and an estimated population of twelve thousand, how long we might have. But sixty thousand bushels! Even if these might be bushels of some local standard, the grain ship Ludinus had sent had obviously been full. And the monasteries probably had their own stores — as might all but the lowest class of citizens.
‘Can you enlighten us, Master Secretary, how Athens came to be so well-endowed with food?’ Priscus asked heavily. He snatched at the notes. With shaking hand, he took up the nearest lamp on the table and squinted at the careful tabulations.
I listened as Martin explained how every monk in the city had been pressed into carrying the sacks up from Piraeus.
‘A wise man proportions his belief to the evidence,’ I said when I could trust my voice not to shake all over the place. ‘It’s enough to say that we’re in better shape here than we were in Alexandria during the summer.’
Martin gave me a puzzled look. I smiled nervously back. Priscus had now sat up and was tracing letters on the table with a finger dipped in wine.
‘Yes,’ Martin said at last. ‘But there isn’t enough firewood to bake bread. That means milled grain only for the poor to make into porridge.’