I thought with a momentary surge of joy that I’d managed to knock the knife from his hand but the intruder recovered his balance and clung on to it. He now snatched at the bedcover and wound it round his left arm as a buffer against the blows I was raining on him with the table.
He came forward again. I fell back.
No help from Authari. We must have been making enough noise to wake the Permanent Legate beyond the dome. But the door remained closed and I couldn’t risk the distraction or the effort of another cry for help. I’d have to handle this by myself.
With a sudden lunge forward, I got the intruder on his left shoulder with a sharp corner of the table top. He swung back again to keep his balance. Now I closed with him. Before he could recover himself for another stab at me, I was upon him. I clamped my left hand tight on the wrist of his knife arm, thrust my arm upwards, drawing the intruder towards me, and I tripped him up with my right leg. He fell backwards, with me on top of him. I could smell his stinking breath as our faces came close.
I had advantages of weight and strength, but he was a slippery sod. As we struggled on the floor, he got his right arm free and stabbed at my back. I felt nothing at the time except for blood trickling from the wound he opened.
I head-butted him repeatedly in the face. At last, I regained control of his knife arm, clamping his wrist to the floor. With my free right hand, I closed on his windpipe and squeezed hard. I squeezed until his breath came in ragged gasps and the strength ebbed from his right arm.
Or so it appeared. As I moved again to take control of his arm, I felt him slithering out from under me. This time, I felt the knife-point jar against my collar bone. The pain came with a sudden burst that I thought would paralyse my upper body.
My object had been to disable him and then question him at leisure. You can do a lot with a hot knife and a variable gag. But it now looked as if I’d run out of energy before he had. If he could get control of the knife at such close quarters and in darkness, it might easily be all over for me. It was time to finish matters while I still had some degree of advantage.
The intruder was bald, so there was nothing to take hold of to smash his head on to the boards. Instead I managed to get his head in my hands and twist it hard upwards to my left.
I felt the sharp click as his neck went limp. There was an arching spasm that threw me sideways off the body, then a momentary twitching.
And it was over. I was alone with a corpse.
I sat a while to gather my thoughts. I could feel a continual trickle of blood down my back and the pain was getting worse.
Still no Authari. Had he been killed in a concerted attack?
I got up and took the lamp from the bedside table. At first I thought I’d drop it but I took a deep breath and brought my fit of shaking under enough control to open the stove and pour a few drops of oil on to the glowing charcoal. In the gentle flame that leapt up, I lit the lamp, then went over to the still body.
Now I nearly did drop the lamp in alarm. The face was understandably battered and contorted. But I could see at once who it was.
It was Agathius – that agent of Heraclius I’d met in the latrine.
37
Outside in the corridor, Authari was snoring like an old pig. He sagged in his chair in a cloud of farty and wine-sodden belchy smells. Sword still clutched in his hand, he would have been just as much use tucked up in bed as in his self-appointed mission as guard.
Otherwise, all within the Legation was still. All was dark. All was quiet.
No point waking him yet.
I checked the nursery. Maximin was sleeping peacefully, Gutrune was also emitting drunken snores.
In Martin’s room, I knelt beside the low bed and put my hand over his mouth. ‘Martin,’ I called gently, ‘wake up – it’s me.’
‘Oh my God!’ he whispered when I felt sure enough of his reaction to take my hand away. ‘Are you all right, Aelric?’
He sat up. I noticed he was fully clothed.
‘Just about,’ I said. ‘But I’ve just killed a man in my room. He was sent by Heraclius to kill me.’
Martin stood beside me looking down at the body. It lay as I’d left it, the dead eyes staring up at the ceiling, the knife close to the right hand.
‘Let me see your back,’ he said.
‘What?’ I said, looking at him.
‘Your back,’ he said. ‘It’s covered in blood.’
I winced as I pulled away the sheet I’d draped over myself. The blood had dried in the cold night air and the thin silk had stuck to me.
‘Not a pretty sight,’ said Martin, holding the lamp so close I could feel its heat, ‘but a little water will rid you of that.’
The hangover was doing him good. Except that he staggered when he moved, and kept putting a hand up to his obviously throbbing head, he was on better form than I’d expected – not a panic attack in sight. When I filled him in properly on that latrine encounter, he simply furrowed his brows and looked away. It was as if he had given up being alarmed at anything more I could do or say.
‘What do you suppose we should do?’ he asked.
I sat on my bed and looked across at the body.
‘Search me,’ I said at length. ‘I suppose we could raise the alarm. Or perhaps not,’ I added, dropping into Celtic.
Martin got up and shut the door, then came and sat beside me. Together we studied the body.
‘God knows what the Emperor will do,’ he said, ‘if you say anything about what happened in those latrines. You know that not reporting treason at once is treason in itself. And how much do you think he needs you now? You were useful in the Circus. That may have been it.’
He went over to the body again and began searching through the clothes. It was something I had been intending to do myself. He pulled out a small leather satchel that had been fastened to an inner garment and handed it to me.
I took it and opened it. Inside was a sheet of papyrus folded in four. I smoothed it open on my bed, taking care not to crack the fragile document. With Martin holding the lamp very close, we pored over the small characters. As we read, his composure slipped to the point where he had to sit down on the floor and rock back and forth to fight off an attack of sobs. My own hand trembled as I took the lamp from him.
It was a letter to me from the Dispensator. It instructed me to give all possible assistance to the Permanent Legate in anathematising both Phocas and Heraclius and in declaring for an alleged son of Maurice, who was said by the Persian King to be the legitimate Emperor.
‘It’s a forgery,’ I said weakly. ‘The shitbag is up to many things, but he’d never put that in writing. Look’ – I turned the sheet over. There was no scorching on the back – none of the usual signs of checking for secret writing. ‘It was brought here to plant near my body.’
‘It can’t be a forgery,’ Martin said with quiet despair. He insisted that the letter was in the correct Lateran style and bore the correct seal. He should have known. Drafting stuff like that had been his job for five years. The rhythmical clauses and contracted script screamed Papal Chancery. There wasn’t a giveaway Greek letter in sight. It even had a signed subscript thanking me for confirming the Emperor’s unorthodoxy regarding the Creed.
There was a sudden pain low in my belly. I groaned and pointed at the piss pot. Martin got it under my chin just in time. I thought my head would burst as the black and red waves swept over me, and I puked again and again.
‘Drink this,’ said Martin, pushing more water between my lips. He dabbed his sleeve in the cup and wiped at the sweat on my face.