So much for her night defence! I thought.
Priscus let go of the wall and leaned closer. He contorted his features into a leer. ‘By the way,’ he said, now back in Greek, ‘you’ll never guess whose rooms I saw her leaving just before I came out for the dawn attack?’
I’d been wondering why Euphemia had been so eager to crawl out of my bed the night before.
But there was a scream from the other side of the wall. I turned and looked down. One of the barbarians had crept forward and tried to recover weapons from the dead. He was now flopping about not far from the dead trumpeter with an arrow in his belly. Priscus was immediately back with his young men. A few of them stared over at me with happy, triumphant faces. It was only for a moment; then they were dancing eagerly about Priscus as he barked more of his soldierly praise. Where I was concerned, he might be a slimy, shifty Greekling — the Imperial Councillor fighting for his position in the sun even as the sky clouded over. To his men, he showed only his other face. For them, he was the greatest military commander in the Empire — the Heavensent one whose leadership would save Athens from falling as Decelea had.
Now at a safe distance, the herald had started calling out at us again. In response, two of the youngest defenders heaved a grotesque thing of pumpkins and cucumbers on to the top of the wall, and began shouting back in Greek that they’d taken the Great Chief prisoner. Shouting the name Kutbayan, they made the thing bob up and down, and, with shouts of laughter, sliced off half the cucumber that was doing service as a phallus. The herald fell silent, and there was a ripple of outrage that spread back through the crowd of barbarians who stood behind him.
‘Pretty sick-making, wouldn’t you agree?’ Priscus jeered as he came back to me.
I didn’t understand at first.
But he poked his tongue out and made a rapid licking motion. He’d have laughed, but for a sudden spasm that had him clutching with white knuckles at the stones of the wall.
‘What women do with each other is nothing to us,’ I said stiffly. And, if that was true, it still didn’t settle the twitching in my lower chest. ‘However,’ I said, coming to the reason that had brought me to the walls, ‘I have a favour I must ask of you.’
Chapter 46
‘Unless Simeon was deceived or lying,’ I said, ‘the man can’t have been sighted inside the walls.’ I finished my cup of the Dispensator’s beer and looked morosely at the whitewashed wall of his office. He’d been right about its dirt and lack of amenity. By comparison, the residency when I’d first arrived there was almost salubrious.
‘I’d put nothing past a man with so little presence of mind,’ the Dispensator said with a sniff of contempt. ‘But I do assure you that I saw the Count — rather, I saw the former Count — very clearly indeed. He was standing in the shade of an old building. There were two men with him dressed like the ones who attacked us the day before last.’
I’d believe the Dispensator in place of Simeon, or any other of the terrified Greeks who’d sat trembling through the morning session of the council. At the same time, it wasn’t just Simeon who’d seen Nicephorus walk out of Athens. Had he come back in before the gates were closed and barred? Or was there some hidden breach in the walls? I’d raise this with Priscus when we reported back to each other at dinner.
I went back to the previous subject. ‘The difficulty with any murder,’ I explained, ‘is finding connections. Find those, and it’s only a matter of time before you find your man. I’m flattered that everyone is still talking about it. But the killing of the Duke’s secretary in Rome was actually very easy to solve. The angle of the blow indicated the height of the killer. That being so, all I had to do was sort out chronologies and motives among a limited number of suspects. The confession helped, but I’d already got all the evidence we needed for the hanging.’
‘Ah, but it was a stroke of genius to guess that all those nails found about the body had been set into a bar of river ice,’ the Dispensator cried, now as happy as he’d ever let show. ‘But for that, we’d still be looking for the weapon.’
I smiled complacently and waited for the Dispensator to refill my cup. I thought back to what now seemed golden days in Rome, when I was just an elegant ruffian with few other duties beyond self-enrichment in the markets. In that glow of nostalgia, even the Dispensator could have passed for an old friend.
‘You will need to force the Greeks to attend the next session,’ he said, coming back to a still earlier subject. ‘We are most provoked by their lack of moral fibre.’
I nodded. I’d already torn strips off the Bishop of Ephesus. He’d pass my threats to the other Greeks, and they would surely all put on some show of interest in the afternoon session. This would be mostly taken up with the Dispensator’s own explanation of the Papal will. Deciding I’d now got him in the right mood, and keeping a very straight face, I explained again the difficulties involved in his demand for two interpreters to call out his words in unison to the Greeks. Bearing in mind the quality of our interpreters, I repeated, we’d have no choice but to reduce the whole speech to a theatrical performance — one clause of his own elaborate Latin read out from a prepared text, followed by another joint reading in Greek.
‘Spontaneity is possible,’ I insisted, ‘but only with a single interpreter. .’
‘Such was done for the Great Constantine when he opened the Council of Nicaea,’ he said firmly. ‘No less can be demanded when I speak in the name of the Universal Bishop. There must be two interpreters.’
I was saved the trouble of a reply by a loud scraping of many feet in the monastery courtyard.
The Dispensator suddenly smiled and lifted his cup. ‘I have already spoken with the Lord Priscus,’ he went on in a different tone. ‘Further to his fittingly humble request, I have given orders for every monk in the city to work under his directions for the building of a second wall behind the weak point in the fortifications.’
I decided not to try looking surprised. He smiled again. With luck, I really might have got him. Or was there something just a little too warm and knowing about that smile?
‘The Commander of the East does not fall below his reputation,’ he continued. ‘His idea of creating a killing field within the walls is most ingenious. Like the drawing of blood from a diseased body, it will be used repeatedly to relax the pressure elsewhere.’
There was a knock on the door. Without bothering to wait, Irene walked in. ‘You’ve got to come back with me to the residency, love,’ she said in Greek. She looked at the Dispensator and bowed about half an inch.
‘Go away!’ I snapped. She was the last person I wanted to see. The Dispensator was already on his feet and looking outraged. ‘You should know women can’t just walk into a monastery.’
‘Well, suit yourself, dearie,’ she said with a shrug. She reached into her satchel. ‘The slave who was clearing out the Count’s office found these underneath the charcoals in one of the braziers.’ She took out and untied two waxed tablets. Safe between them were a few scraps of charred papyrus. ‘They might be important.’
I sighed. Whatever importance they had, I’d never get from here to the residency and then back to the Areopagus in time for the afternoon session. I’d see what she had. Unless they told me something of the utmost urgency, they’d have to wait till evening. I took the scraps and spread them carefully on the table.
‘The very walls resound with evil,’ I read with much squinting. ‘I sit alone. . The rats depart. . The Dark One lays siege.. ’ I looked up. ‘These other words appear to be in Syriac writing,’ I said. ‘Are you able to tell me what they mean?’
‘The Lady Euphemia don’t read no Syriac,’ she said with a loving smile. ‘But that dear little boy of hers tells me it’s some devotional hymn. It’s about the ending of all space and time, though not the return of Jesus Christ.’ She crossed herself and squinted at the Dispensator, who glowered back at her.