‘What the fuck have I been eating?’ I gasped as I flopped on to the bed.
‘Cabbage by the look of things,’ Martin said, glancing up from an inspection of the pot. ‘I don’t know about the other stuff.’
I leaned forward. I’d managed to fill the thing almost to the brim. Still, aside from the raw pain in my throat and all points downward, I was beginning to feel better. I wasn’t at all sleepy.
I looked again at the body. Martin had pulled the bedcover over it but the head was still visible. With mouth and eyes wide open, it was twisted at an angle that I was beginning to find distasteful.
What was it the dead man had told me in the latrine?
‘You will see me again, Alaric, and when you do, it will, I assure you, be to your advantage.’
I laughed. Before I could draw breath again, I felt a wet sleeve slapping my face. ‘I’m not hysterical,’ I wanted to say primly. But Martin had the letter in his hand.
‘We say nothing,’ he said flatly. ‘Even a suspicion that this letter existed, and that we’d seen it, would have us under the Ministry. I say we burn it and get the body out of here. Then we come back and don’t go out again until we leave for home.’
A thought crossed his mind. ‘You say Heraclius was behind this?’ he asked. ‘Why are you so certain? I thought you said they were protecting you.’
Not a good time for answering that one. But Martin’s thoughts had moved on.
‘You do suppose Heraclius will let us go once he’s inside the gates?’ he asked with rising concern. Would he recognise our immunity? His people didn’t.
‘That could be days and days away,’ I said. ‘I’ll think of something by then. For the moment, we’ll stay indoors. If anyone in the Legation asks why we’re not going out to Sunday service, we’ll plead indisposition from too much drink. The day after tomorrow can take care for itself.’
I needed to sit down and think all this through. But that would have to wait. Now was the time for action.
I took the letter from Martin and staggered over to the stove. I held it over the charcoals for a moment. Though I could smell the scorching of reasonably new papyrus, no secret writing emerged on either side. I let go of the sheet. As it fell into the fire it buckled upwards in the heat, the tightly pressed strips of papyrus reed coming apart as the glue melted. Then, with a sudden flare of light, it turned to ashes.
Now there was no letter. There had been no letter.
‘Where do you suppose we can dump a body in this city?’ I asked. This wasn’t Rome. People had a habit of asking about stray bodies in the street. There’d be more to this, if noticed, than paperwork and a few clerking fees.
38
After an age of shaking and slapping at his face, I eventually managed to wake Authari. To be on the safe side, Martin had moved his sword out of reach.
No, I wasn’t angry that he’d nodded off for a moment. No, I didn’t think he’d been bribed into looking the other way. Yes, I would want the duplicate key to the wine store, though not until morning. No, I didn’t think he’d been drugged – though I was beginning to wonder about that wine Alypius had brought down to me in the Circus.
I simply wanted his help in disposing of the body.
‘Cut the thing up,’ he said, looking ferocious. ‘Cut it up in the lead bathtub. Wrap the body parts in old cloth and dump them one at a time into the rubbish bins placed at the main street junctions.’ Authari spat on the body and gave it a hard kick.
Inventive advice, but easier given than followed. Hacking off limbs in a fight was nothing to either of us. But we weren’t butchers, and dissecting a body neatly into its component parts takes a skill we hadn’t acquired. Besides, there was the blood to consider. Even if the three of us could lift that lead bath, the chances were that we’d give ourselves away carrying it down to the bathhouse.
Then there was the matter of disposing of the body parts. The streets might not be so crowded with armed pickets as earlier, but it was still too risky to go about dumping suspiciously shaped packages into the public bins.
No. We’d have to get the whole body out of the Legation, and then out of the city centre. Just inside the walls, it would be more like Rome. There’d be plenty of room for dumped bodies.
But how to get from here to there?
‘What about a public chair?’ Martin suggested. ‘Get it here in the morning, while most people are at Sunday service. Take the body in that.’
That wouldn’t work either. Public carriers will do most things for cash, and usually keep their mouths shut afterwards. But smuggling corpses out of the Papal Legation might not be among these things.
Besides, I wanted that body out of the way now. The longer it remained here, the more chance that it would need explaining.
We discussed dumping it in the sea. But how to get it past the guards on the shore? Even if we found a boat, it would only take us into the Golden Horn, which no tides ever washed clean. Even if we weighted the body, it would break loose and float to the surface.
The course of action we finally decided on was still risky, but it was the best we could manage at short notice.
Getting out of the Legation was easier than we’d expected. No longer just drunk, the doorkeepers were all asleep. From their stillness and shallow breathing, they had clearly been drugged. That removed all need for lies or concealment.
On the other hand, it raised the problem of how to get back in. Before leaving my suite, we’d decided to close and bolt all the window shutters. If one killer had got in, who was to say another wouldn’t? The door to my suite would have to be left unbarred as everyone else was asleep, but we took the precaution of locking the door to the nursery.
Leaving the main gate of the Legation unbarred wasn’t an option, now that all the doorkeepers were out cold. I needed someone to stay behind and look after things, so we spent more time slapping some life into Radogast, who was now the most senior of my Lombard slaves. He had all the strength and loyalty of Authari but none of his resourcefulness. Still, he would easily be able to lift the heavy bar into place behind us, and then to let us in again.
‘Sit over there,’ I said, motioning him to a bench against the wall. It was midway between the gate and the doorway to my suite. ‘If you see anyone strange, kill him.’
He nodded. There was no point giving him more detailed instructions.
At last, we set out. It was still blackest night and while the streets were brightly lit, there were fewer people about than when I’d been carried back from the Imperial Palace. Mostly drunk, the Circus Faction bands took no interest in us. No one asked us for identification.
We’d dressed the body in a long hooded cloak. Similarly clad, Authari and I walked on either side of it. The leather thongs about its wrists that we clutched tight to our chests made it look as if the dead man had his arms around our necks for support. The hood was of a stiff enough fabric to hide how the head flopped low on the chest, and the length of the cloak to some extent concealed the fact that the feet weren’t stumbling beside us, but trailing along the ground.
Authari and I swayed gently from side to side as we dragged the body along, giving our best appearance of a trio of drunks – one being helped along by the others.
Also hooded, Martin walked a few yards ahead, keeping an eye out for Black Agents or anyone else who might be inclined to give us more than a passing glance.
We dumped the body in the cellar beneath a derelict wine shop where the stench of decayed human shit and other filth was already overpowering. Martin struck steel on flint to get our lamp going and, as in Rome with any dead burglar, we stripped the body. He slid a ring off the signet finger for later dropping through a drain cover.
As a final precaution, Authari took out the short sword he’d brought along and cut the head off the corpse. Then we heaped rubble over the body, and hoped the rats would find it before anyone else did.