As I left the vestibule I glanced at the redbeard sent by Cicero. He sat in a chair against the wall, facing the closed door with his arms crossed. The naked dagger was still in his fist. Above his head was the message written in blood, and I could not help reading it again: 'Be silent or die.' I was sick of those words; in the morning I would tell Bethesda to scrub the wall clean. I glanced into Redbeard's unblinking eyes and gave him a smile. He did not smile back. -
Often in comedies there are characters who do foolish things that are painfully, obviously foolish to everyone in the audience, to everyone in the universe except themselves. The audience squirm in their seats, laugh, even shout aloud: 'No, no! Can't you see, you fool?' The doomed man on the stage cannot hear, and the gods with great merriment go about engineering the destruction of yet another blind mortal.
But sometimes the gods lead us to the brink of destruction only to snatch us back from the abyss at the last moment, as richly amused by our inexplicable salvation as by our unforeseen death.
I woke all at once with no interval between sleep and waking, into that strange realm of consciousness that reigns between midnight and dawn. I was alone in my own bedchamber. Bethesda had led me there after a long meal of fish and wine, stripping off my tunic arid covering me with a thin wool blanket despite the heat, kissing me on the forehead as if I were a child. I stood and let the blanket fall behind me; the night air was heavy with heat. The room was dark, lit only by a single beam of moonlight cast through a tiny window high in the wall. I walked by memory to the comer of the room, but in the darkness I couldn't find the chamber pot, or else Bethesda had emptied it and never put it back.
It did not matter. In the weirdness of that night a chamber pot might turn into a mushroom or disappear into thin air and it would have seemed a little thing. It was the same strangeness I had felt earlier, lying with Bethesda in the vestibule. I saw and sensed everything around me with absolute clarity, and yet it seemed mysterious and unfamiliar territory, as if the moon had changed her colour, as if the gods themselves drifted from the earth in heavy slumber and left existence to its own devices. Anything at all might happen.
I pushed aside the curtain and stepped into the atrium. Perhaps I wasn't awake after all and dreamed on my feet, for the house possessed that unreality of familiar places turned askew by the geography of the night. Blue moonlight flooded the garden and turned it into a jungle of bones casting shadows as sharp as knives. Here and there about the peristyle lamps burned low, like withered suns on the verge of extinction. The brightest of the lamps shone from behind the wall that hid the vestibule, casting a thin yellow light around the comer like the glow of campfires beyond a ridge.
I stepped to the edge of the garden and pulled up my tunic. I was as quiet as a schoolboy, aiming for the soft grass and making hardly a sound. I finished and let my tunic drop and stood gazing across the field of bones, transformed by the shadow of a passing cloud into the ashen ruins of Carthage on a moonless night.
Amid the smells of earth and urine and hyacinth, I caught the faint odour of garlic on the warm, dry air. The lamplight from the vestibule flickered and moved, and cast the wavering shadow of a man onto the wall that enclosed Bethesda's room.
Like a man in a dream I walked towards the vestibule; as in a dream, I seemed to be invisible. A bright lamp was set on the floor, casting weird shadows upward. Redbeard stood before the defaced wall with its threatening message, peering into it as if it were a pool and moving one hand over the surface. The hand that moved was wrapped in a red-stained cloth that dripped something dark and thick onto the floor. His other hand clutched his dagger. The glittering blade was smeared with blood.
The door to the house was wide open. Sprawled against it, as if to prop it open, was the massive body of Zoticus, his throat so severely slashed that his head was almost detached from his body. A great pool of blood had poured from his neck onto the stone floor. The rug was soaked with it. While I watched, Redbeard stepped back and stooped down to dip the cloth into the pool of blood, never taking his eyes from the wall, as if he were an artist and the wall a painting in progress. He stepped forwards and began to write again.
Then, very slowly, he turned his face and saw me.
He returned the smile I had given him earlier with a horrible, gaping grin.
He must have been upon me very quickly, but it seemed to me that he moved with a ponderous and impossible slowness. I had all the time in the world to watch him wield the dagger aloft, to note the sudden blast of garlic in my nostrils, to ponder the taut and quivering rictus of his face, and to wonder stupidly what possible reason he could have to dislike me so very much.
My body was wiser than my brain. Somehow I managed to grip his wrist and deflect the dagger. It barely grazed my cheek, slicing a thin red track that I felt only much later. Suddenly I was flat against the wall with the breath knocked out of me, so confused that I thought for an instant I was flat on the floor with the full weight of Redbeard’s body on my chest.
With a great wrenching twist, as if we were acrobats out of step, we reeled to the floor. We grappled like drowning men pounded by surf, so that I never knew up from down. The tip of the dagger kept nipping at my throat, but each time I managed to push his arm off-course. He was absurdly strong, more like a storm of an avalanche than a man. I felt like a boy struggling against him. I had no hope of defeating him. It was all I could do to stay alive from one moment to the next.
I suddenly thought of Bethesda, and knew she must already be dead, along with Zoticus. Why had he saved me for last?
That was when the truncheon came crashing down against Redbeard's skull.
While he swayed atop me, dazed, I caught a glimpse of Bethesda over his shoulder. In her hands she held the wooden slat for barring the door. It was so heavy she could barely wield it. She began to lift it again and then tripped beneath the weight and staggered backwards. Redbeard regained his senses. Blood ran downward from a cut in the back of his head, trickling into his beard and mouth, making him look like a crazed animal or a wolf-man gorged on blood. He rose to his knees and twisted around, raising his dagger. I struck at his chest, but I had no leverage.
Bethesda stood upright with the truncheon raised. Redbeard slashed with the dagger, but he only succeeded in slicing her gown. Quickly he spun around the other way and clutched a fistful of cloth with his free hand. He yanked hard and Bethesda fell backwards. The truncheon descended, powered by its own weight. By aim or accident it struck Redbeard square on the crown of his head, and as he toppled onto me I seized his stabbing arm and twisted it towards his chest.
The blade plunged hilt-deep into his heart. His face was above mine, his eyes rolled up, his mouth wide open. I reeled from the stench of garlic and rotten teeth as he sucked in a desperate, rattling breath. Then he jolted and pitched atop me as something exploded inside him. An instant later blood poured from his open mouth like the discharge from a sewer.
Somewhere far away Bethesda screamed. A great massive dead thing lay slick and heavy atop me, convulsing and belching venom, blinding me and flooding my nostrils and mouth, even clogging my ears with its blood. I struggled to escape and lay helpless until I felt Bethesda pushing alongside me. The great corpse rolled onto its back and stared slack-jawed at the ceiling.
I staggered to my knees. We clutched each other, both trembling so badly we could hardly connect. I spat blood and snorted and wiped my face on the bodice of her clean white gown. We stroked each other and babbled pointless words of comfort and assurance, like mutual survivors of a great devastation.