I helped him down from the chair. He did now look at me. ‘Alaric, I give you the job of arranging for the burial of the dead. Please also speak in my name to those poor souls in the courtyard. As an act of clemency, I release all surviving prisoners. As Lord Treasurer, you will make what provision you think proper for their needs. Tell the monks this building will be repaired by Christmas. They can remain here to await such other prisoners as I may condemn in the New Year.’
I bowed and listened as he picked his way back out of the monastery. I only stood upright when I heard the ragged cheer from the sightseers who’d followed us out of the City. It wouldn’t be long before Martin came in to see if I had any instructions for him. Before I went off to break the happy news to the survivors, we had various matters to discuss in Celtic. If he chose to collapse before me in a sobbing heap, I could let it be known he’d been overcome by the horror of a looted House of God. Even among these generally timid Greeks, Martin was noted for the infirmity in his upper lip.
Chapter 23
I think that’s a natural end to my digression. Let’s return, then, to the main narrative. Thirteen months later, Priscus — no, the digression is ended: don’t ask me to explain how one night had stretched to nearly four hundred — stood up from a long inspection of the sleeping Antonia. ‘Not bad looking, if that’s the sort of thing you fancy,’ he conceded. ‘But, if you intend holding on to her, your brains really have migrated to your ball bag.’ He looked again at her closed eyes, and carried his lamp out into the antechamber. I followed him, closing the door as I went.
I suppressed another yawn and looked about for something to put on. Away from the endlessly shifting winds, though, it was a hot night. Besides, it was only Priscus with me. I sat down at the little table where he’d placed his lamp and waited for him to finish making sure that the main door to my sleeping quarters was locked. As silently as a cat, he came back to the table. Still silent, he stared at the wooden box I’d taken from the secret cupboard in my dressing room. At last, he sat down. He pushed the lamp to the edge of the table to get a proper look at me.
I smiled into his cold eyes. ‘Whatever you’re on tonight,’ I said with another and this time unsuppressed yawn, ‘I could fancy a bit for myself.’ He fished about in his tunic, before tutting softly and reaching behind him for a glass bottle. He put a drop of something sticky on my forefinger and watched as I licked it off and took a sip of wine. Unlike most of his potions, this one had no immediate effect. I didn’t question, though, it would perk me up.
‘Very well, dear boy,’ he said smoothly, ‘I will summarise today’s events. Do stop me if I get something wrong. But you’re the one who’s always insisted on getting the known facts straight before trying to move beyond them.’ He moved the lamp back to the middle of the table. ‘Your face has gone very pale. But I think you’ll be surprised at this latest blend. It shouldn’t even give you a headache tomorrow.’ He smiled brightly and continued in what I could see was a mocking parody of my own manner.
‘You were presented with a silver cup this morning by some person or persons unknown,’ he began. ‘Someone who announced himself as a messenger from the useless bastard Nicetas then appears to have slipped you a message, in correct form, to go off to a quiet spot outside the walls, there to be murdered. He was delayed in getting the message to you and you added to the delay by shambling about the City like a blind pilgrim. By the time you did get there, whatever ambush was arranged for you had been rumbled by Shahin, who is, by the way, one of my second cousins on the Persian side. Once you’d got yourself free, you overheard a conversation that revealed treason in high places. You also learned that Shahin is eager to lay hands on your silver cup. The girl you’d picked up along the way in your usual careless manner may indicate a connection of this plot with Nicetas.
He stopped and scratched his scalp. ‘Oh, but I’m losing track of things. Why don’t you carry on? You do these things so much better.’
I closed my eyes and stretched deliciously. He’d been right about his latest potion. Without ever announcing themselves, its effects had stolen over me as Priscus spoke. I fussed with the lamp until the flame came up brighter and took out the cup. ‘Though in good shape, this is very old,’ I said. I ran a thumbnail down the tiny lettering that covered it inside and out. ‘I saw characters a bit like these on some of the older monuments in Ctesiphon. They’d been pulled from the ruins of Persepolis and Ecbatana, and I was told they dated from the first Persian Empire — the one Alexander conquered, that is. No one can read them any more.’ I stopped and thought. ‘But I think they look more like the inscriptions I saw in the much older ruins of Babylon. No one can read those either.’ I looked harder at the cup. I was surely right. The picture, amid the writing, of a winged lion with a man’s head had a definite look of what I’d seen in the desolate silence that had been Babylon. I looked closer at the tiny face and a faint recollection of horror drifted through the back of my mind. This was my first real inspection of the cup. How could elements of it have featured in my dream? I pushed the question aside. I was drugged, and might be confusing present impressions with memory. Otherwise, hadn’t I just said I’d seen images like these before? I offered the cup to Priscus. ‘Any thoughts?’ I asked.
He sat back in his chair and put his hands out of sight. ‘Don’t pass it to me, dear boy,’ he said, raising his voice before dropping it again. ‘Shahin thinks it’s bewitched. It’s killed at least one eunuch who touched it. Sneer at me if you will, Alaric — I haven’t made it this far in life to be carried off by some wog curse. You touch it if you will. But keep it away from me.’ He laughed nervously and scraped his chair slightly backwards. ‘Have you considered, Alaric, why the box was closed on every side with such long nails? I don’t believe it was meant to be opened.’
Anyone who’d rubbed poison over the surface of the cup was probably an amateur beside Priscus. But I let a short and pitying smile stand in place of the obvious arguments. I put the cup down before me and ran my fingers over it. ‘I’d guess, from its probable age and good condition,’ I said with pointed nonchalance, ‘it was dug out of a tomb. It has the general appearance of a drinking horn used by the Persians and probably by those who ruled the East before them, at formal occasions.’ I stopped and picked it up again. Even empty, it seemed too heavy for actual use. Also, the lettering showed no sign of the differential wearing you get when an object is routinely handled. I twisted the cup to see more of the inscription. It wasn’t possible to tell where it began, or in what direction it was supposed to go.
I sat forward again. ‘I found a body on my way out,’ I said, returning to less impenetrable facts. ‘It was dumped beside the private entrance. I’ll take your word that you didn’t leave it there. It may have no connection, but I’m told the cup was found pushed under the main gate. The nice box in which it came was scratched on one side. Let us assume that this man had been running away with the cup. He needed to get rid of it before he was caught. Perhaps he needed to get it to me. This is only a surmise, but it would explain the sudden and elaborate plot to get rid of me. The cup had been left in a place from which it couldn’t be recovered at once. So a murder plot was ordered as well as a burglary.’
I stretched. More than my thinking faculties had been revived. If Priscus hadn’t been sitting opposite, I’d have been more than half-inclined to go off and slap some life into Antonia. No chance of that, however. Priscus took his eyes off the cup. ‘Treason on this scale, dearest Alaric,’ he said with a return of his mocking tone, ‘and you knew nothing till its projectors hit out and nearly killed you?’