The Curse of Babylon

by Richard Blake

Genres: Historical Fiction

Synopsis

The thrilling sixth book in the DEATH OF ROME SAGA. 'An extraordinary series' - The Morning Star 615 AD. A vengeful Persian tyrant prepares the final blow that will annihilate the Byzantine Empire. Aelric of England - now the Lord Senator Alaric - is almost as powerful as the Emperor. Seemingly without opposition, he dominates the vast and morally bankrupt city of Constantinople. He alone is able to conceive and to push forward reforms that are the Empire's only hope of survival, and perhaps of restoration to wealth and greatness. Aelric faces his greatest challenge yet with danger of all frontiers. His domestic enemies are waiting for their moment to strike back and the world's most terrifying military machine is assembling in secret beyond the mountains of the eastern frontiers.

Release date: August 1, 2013

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Print pages: 496

Sample

Prologue

Canterbury, Wednesday, 17 June 688

What do you say to a boy of fifteen when you’re sending him to his death? The easy answer is you say nothing. After so many repetitions of the dream, there was nothing more to be said. I was staring into the face of someone who’d been dead over seventy years. He’d volunteered to serve. He’d then volunteered for nearly certain death. If that weren’t enough, I had been only nominally in charge at the Battle of Larydia. I’d been a mile away when he went into battle. At the head of a frontal assault, I was hardly out of danger myself.

The easy answer never mattered. I looked into his eyes and saw him try for a nervous smile, then reach up to touch crisp and very dark hair. Another moment and I’d hear a voice behind me explain the plan of attack. It had all the boldness of desperation. We were three hundred men against forty or fifty thousand. Once the Persians were out of the mountain passes, nothing at all might stop them till they reached the walls of Constantinople. Hit them in the passes, though – and hit them in a manner suggesting we were the first wave of a bigger force – and they might crumple and make a run for it. But this part of the attack was the ultimate in desperation. Of the hundred men about to run down into the battle not one would return. A boy who was now shivering in the cold of a mountain dawn wouldn’t live to feel the noonday heat.

I’ve said I wasn’t there. I’d been watching events at the front of that gigantic invasion force. No place in this dream, though, for spying on Shahin as he put on his reluctant show. I knew that he was down in the pass, his back to me, ready to present a certain object to his master. I could almost see the cold glitter of the thing in its box, and the dark luxuriance of the box on a table spread with yellow silk. But almost seeing isn’t actual seeing. I was dreaming of events above the pass. I focused once more on the boy.

Fifteen is no age for dying. I’ve had six times that and more, and I could live a little yet. Familiarity aside, what makes the dream bearable on every repetition is that the boy never sees me. Behind me, the voice was now going over the plan. It made no mention of wider issues. It was the sort of talk you’d want if you were ever about to attack a force inconceivably larger than your own – cover those beside you; keep in their cover; don’t drop your weapon; don’t stop for booty; listen for the signal to pull back; and go to the toilet now! That always got a big laugh. The boy was looking through me, at the owner of the voice. Also behind me, the little priest was holding up an icon of Saint Michael. He would soon claim that no earthly hand had painted it, and that all who fell this day would be received straight into Heaven, washed clean of their sins. That would be followed by a loud cheer. Then as the sun rose higher in a sky turning a painful blue, they’d get into position for their downward rush into the butcher’s market.

And, all the while, I looked into the eyes of a boy whose mangled body I’d see later that day . . .

Chapter 1

It was dawn already. My jailor was in the room. ‘Get up, you lazy old bastard!’ he shouted in English, pulling the blanket off me. ‘Who should listen to you, blubbering away in your sleep, when every better man’s already finished saying his prayers? Get up, and give thanks to God that you aren’t yet in Hell!’

Unpredictable stuff, opium. You can hope it’ll blot out all the discomforts of age and give you a good night’s sleep. Mostly, it does. Then, every so often, it’ll give you the sort of spiritual burp that leaves you wondering if you’re not better off without it. I opened my eyes and waited for Brother Ambrose to come into what passes nowadays for focus. I found the gloom and the loud twittering of birds outside most provoking. But he’d not be nagging me this morning into my fine outgoing clothes, or stuffing me into that wheelbarrow again. That could warm my heart, if not my hands or feet.

‘Haven’t you been told, Ambrose,’ I croaked, ‘that the inquiry won’t be resuming today?’ He really should have guessed that much. He hadn’t, of course. Are jailors always stupid? Or have I been invariably lucky in the various places of confinement I’ve known? I called on every ounce of strength left to a man of ninety-eight. After one failed effort, and one slight worry that I’d pulled a muscle, I sat up in bed and shuffled myself round until my feet were resting on the floor. ‘You’ll soon have your formal orders,’ I said, now in better voice. ‘You’re to get all my stuff packed up and moved to the monastery round the corner.’ I managed a toothless smile. ‘Now, what have you brought me for breakfast?’

I watched his face turn from bafflement to a snarl of hate. ‘Is that all you can think about?’ he asked in a voice that was supposed to scare me. ‘Breakfast?’

‘A very important meal,’ I replied in a voice that I knew might send him over the edge. My head was clearing of the dream, and of the poppy fumes that had sent it. I looked about for my stick. Ambrose had knocked it out of reach, worthless pig that he was. My false teeth of ivory and gold were still where I’d left them on the bedside table. Those could stay put. But I did reach for my blond wig. I could do with that to keep the chill from soaking in through my scalp. And it was more provocation of my own to a man who, still spraying abuse at me with every breath, knew that such power of compulsion he’d had over me was now ended.

I looked at the covered tray the boy had brought up with him. The smell would have made a dog vomit. ‘Ooh, nice runny cheese, if my nose tells right,’ I said. ‘The monks of Saint Anastasius won’t spoil me like this!’

Ambrose pushed his bleary face close to mine. ‘Don’t think you’ve got away with it,’ he snarled. ‘You’re a murdering bastard – and I’ve now found the proof.’ He stopped, presumably giving me time to fall to pieces. Instead, I was coming properly back to life, and could feel my spirits rising like the sun itself at the thought that I’d soon be out of this ghastly place. I popped my teeth in and smiled. Ambrose stood up. ‘There’s a hole on the seventh stair down,’ he gloated. ‘It’s a fresh hole. I wonder what was pushed in there, and why?’

Dear me – the low beast had finally done his homework! I couldn’t have that. Nothing he said now could unstitch the deal I’d made. But he could still raise an unpleasant stink. He might even try his hand at blackmail. Yes, he was the type for that. I licked my upper teeth into place, and smiled again. ‘Oh, Ambrose, Ambrose,’ I said in my most emollient tone, ‘this isn’t a day for unpleasantness. We must soon take leave of each other. I like to think that, in spite of one or two disagreements, we have forged an unbreakable bond of friendship. Why not join me in a last shared drink?’

A last shared drink? There hadn’t been a first! The way he’d been at my breakfast ale without asking, it was a wonder I hadn’t seen to him months before. But it was nice ale, and he’d not pass up a last chance to thieve his half of it. Following his usual custom, he swaggered over to the window. He pulled its shutter fully open, and shouted something vulgar to anyone who might be passing by beneath it. This done, he hitched up his robe and began a piss that would leave a stinking puddle on the sill.

‘I should have known you’d get off,’ he said bitterly. ‘Your sort always do. Lord High Bishop Theodore himself ain’t nothing up against you people.’ He’d splashed someone again. He leaned forward to look out of the window. ‘What the fuck do you expect, walking so close to the wall?’ he shouted. He turned bitter again. ‘If there was any justice in this world, your penance would have been a flogging that broke every bone in your shrivelled old body. Theodore himself telled me no less.’

His lecture and his piss would last a while yet. The door was barely ajar, and his boy was waiting outside. I shut my eyes and told myself that ninety-eight was no great age. I opened them and stood up. Avoiding the board that always squeaked, I crept over to my writing table and took a lead box from under a heap of papyrus too mildewed to be used. Back to the bed I silently tottered. I poured myself a cup of ale and, unable to see them as more than a blur, dropped two crumbling tablets into the jug. It was new ale, and the slight foaming of the tablets wouldn’t show once they were dissolved. I took another look at Ambrose and added a third. I frowned at hands that wouldn’t stop trembling. Thanks to that, I’d nearly added a fourth and fifth.

He was finished. Wiping pissy hands on his robe, he turned to face me. ‘Right, Brother Aelric,’ he called out with fake jollity, ‘where’s me drinkie?’ I smiled again and pointed at the jug. I watched him drain it in a single gulp. He slapped it down on the bedside table and let out a long and appreciative burp. ‘Fucking good stuff!’ he said. ‘Too good for an old sinner like you.’ He thumped his chest and let out another burp. He put both hands on the table and screwed his face up. He now managed a long fart. ‘Lovely tickling of my piles,’ he explained. He noticed a stray sheet of papyrus on the table. ‘Don’t you write in nothing but Greek?’ he snarled with a sudden return to the nasty. ‘Ain’t Latin fancy enough for you?’

Not answering, I smiled into my own cup. It was very good stuff, and it wasn’t the ale I had in mind. Its first effects would be a slight fever before he turned in for the night. Considering his bulk, that might not show till morning. Not long after, the fever would take proper hold, and be joined by griping pains. Another day, and the pains would turn unbearable. Come nightfall at the latest, and there’d be a sudden and catastrophic voiding of blood and failure of every organ. Any Greek physician would know exactly what had been swallowed. In this dump on the edge of civilisation, death would be put down to a visitation of the summer pestilence. There would be much lamentation in public over the body, and much private rejoicing. Until he was replaced, there would be no more starving and beating of prisoners less fortunate than wicked old Aelric – no more compelled sucking off of his rancid member, no more stamping about the monastery by someone whose proper employment in life should have been pushing a dung cart.

I’ll grant he’d kept some curb on his inclinations where I was concerned. I might nowadays be called Brother Aelric: no one dared, even so, to take me as other than the Lord Alaric. But some of his abuse had been most impertinent. More to the point, he was on to me. I couldn’t have that.

Ambrose burped louder. ‘Righty ho!’ he laughed. ‘Time to be off. I’m told there’s a flogging to be done.’ He snorted. ‘That nutter downstairs has been playing with himself again. I ask you – wanking in a monastery!’ He walked heavily to the door. He turned back to me before leaving. ‘It don’t matter shit who your relatives are,’ he said, as if he’d been reading my thoughts. ‘I’ll make the whole world see you for what you are.’

I’d like to see him try, I told myself. But I made no outward answer. He gave me one last glare, before walking out and slamming the door. I waited for the sound of his key in the lock, then took out my teeth and got back into bed. ‘Ho hum! Ho hum!’ I heard him shouting on the stairs, no longer for my benefit. ‘It’s a bad world, I’ll have you know – oh, a bad, bad world!’

I thought of going back to sleep. It would be Ambrose who supervised my packing later in the day. I’d need to be rested for that. I didn’t want anything smashed or stolen. And I’d need to keep him from any search of my belongings. He might find my bronze cloak pin. That would be an embarrassment. But sleep was out of the question until I’d covered my tracks. I threw the blanket aside. Scowling, I looked at the wide-open shutters and climbed back to my feet. I filled the jug from my washing bowl. I swirled the water round and round, before tipping it from the window. I filled it again and let it stand. With the rest of the water I scrubbed my hands. General washing could wait till I was out of here. I might even demand a bath. I’d like a bath.

But, silly old me! I’d dropped my box of poison. Luckily, it didn’t burst open. Instead, it bounced under the writing table. The act of bending down sent all the bones in my upper back into a popping sound that disturbed me. Rather than going back to bed, I sat down at the writing table and looked out through the window. Being locked away on the top floor had its advantages. It freed me from the inevitable smells of a city built without sewers. It gave me a better view than any of my jailers had. I looked east over the low huddle of roofs, some tiled, most thatched, to where the wall marked the city’s boundary with the Kentish forest. The sun was fast rising above the topmost branches of the trees. I put up a hand to shade my eyes and continued looking south-east. Though far less dense and unbroken than it seemed, the forest stretched from here to Dover and the sea. Beyond that lay France and then Italy and Rome. Far beyond that lay the New Rome and its Empire which, for almost two lifetimes, I’d done more than anyone else to hold together.

I thought of my dream. You won’t read about the Battle of Larydia in any of the histories. It had, even so, been the turning of the tide in the first of our two great wars of survival. It didn’t let us clear the Persians out of Syria. It didn’t stop them from taking Egypt. But all the shattering defeats we later inflicted on them had been made possible by what happened at Larydia. Because of that, we finally recovered our losses. Because of that, we made their empire into a protectorate. Because of that, when the second great war came along out of the blue, we, alone of those they attacked, held back the illimitable Saracen flood. Yes, we lost Egypt and Syria again – this time apparently for good. We may soon lose the African provinces. But, again and again since their first attack, the Saracens have smashed against the southern border of the Home Provinces. Each time, they’ve been thrown back, and with horrifying losses. So long as the lesson we learned at Larydia stays in mind, we’ll keep the Saracens out.

I thought yet again of the boy. I had no reason to feel guilty. You can walk about Constantinople, staring at native and borrowed monuments to three thousand years of victories. Mostly, you can look away and ask what all those men fought each other for, and how their fighting and dying had added one grain to the sum of human happiness. The battle we fought at Larydia saved the Empire and its precious cargo of the only civilisation worth respecting. Or, if you want to be less pompous, that boy and all the others were fighting for their God and for their land. I did tell them that at the time. To be sure, they kept the land. No one there – on our side, at least – died in vain.

I thought forward to the end of our Persian War. I thought of how, with the Lord High General Radostes beside me, I was the one who identified the Great King’s dismembered body. At last, his own people had turned on Chosroes, and had starved him and tortured him, and dumped him, still alive, in a field latrine. Over hills and fields, and skirting the edge of a baking desert, the General and I had ridden for days in hope of taking him alive. We got there just too late. His killers bought their lives from me with his crown. That I’d presented to Heraclius, and got a pat on the head for the effort. I’d then been sent off with it, to crown a puppet in the Emperor’s name. I can’t say an age of peace and plenty had followed our triumphal ceremony in Jerusalem. But our victory at Larydia did allow us to make the best of things.

I sat up straight and, as if made stronger by the rising sun, turned to my desk. I pushed aside the pens and inkwell and papyrus. With fingers that moved slightly later than I’d willed them to, I managed to get the cloth bag undone and took hold of what it contained. The first time I held this, it had been in one outstretched hand. Now it needed both hands, and a tensing of aged back muscles, to lift it into the sunlight.

I beheld the fabled Horn of Babylon. Men had killed for this. Men had died for it. Men had sometimes worshipped it as a god in its own right, and sometimes as a vessel of godly power. Who had originally made it, and when, and for what purpose, were questions I hadn’t been able to answer when I was in a position to ask them of others. It was a waste of time to ask them now. All that could be said for sure was that, in its form, it had been made as some kind of vessel. You could argue whether its bowl had been made to hold wine or to collect blood from a sacrifice. I had no doubt it had been used for both.

I say I beheld it. Even if it didn’t now have the colour and sheen of rotten teeth wet with spittle, I’d not have been able to see the marks that covered it inside and out – not with my old eyes. But, if I ran a thumbnail over it, I could still feel the mass of characters, each one resembling nothing so much as the footprint of a tiny bird on wax. I couldn’t read them. Though men had done well out of claiming otherwise, I doubted anyone had been able to read them in the past thousand years. I doubted anyone knew the name of the winged god they surrounded. So much fuss over an object steeped in mystery!

I sniffed and looked up. I’d left a cup of barley juice on the table. Without my falsies to keep my lips firm, I slobbered much of this on to the blanket I still had round me. I must have made a disgusting sight, but the taste was strangely cheering. I could easily guess what fancies had drifted the day before through the mind of poor old Theodore. But the past only hurts you if you let it. The opium had betrayed me. Awake and in my proper mind, I’d make sure the past stayed exactly where it belonged.

I stared again out of the window. The steam that rose above the forest would soon clear. Whether or not it rained again, I’d make sure it was a lovely day.

Chapter 2

I once knew a poet called Leander. He was an Egyptian and, like me, had learned Greek as a foreign language. Unlike me, he never learned it well enough to adorn even the lower reaches of its literature. He was a dreadful poet, and I can almost rejoice that, away from his native Egypt, books written on papyrus die within fifty years unless recopied. What brings him now to mind is his habit, when he wanted attention, of stopping whatever he was doing to cry in a grand voice: ‘I can feel the Muse about to come upon me!’ I’ll not go quite so far as that. But I do feel that what began as one of my occasional diary entries ought to form part of a longer narrative. At the very least, since I’ve mentioned it, I should explain how I came to take possession once more of the Horn of Babylon.

This means the story doesn’t begin on Wednesday the 17th, but on Monday the 15th. It had been another promising dawn, though Ambrose made sure to spoil it, by shouting and threatening me out of my bed. Still, teeth cleaned and polished and pushed well back, wig on the right way round, I think I looked rather good in my wheelbarrow. Even Ambrose didn’t roar with laughter at my appearance.

We came to the point where the street leading from my place of confinement joined with the main square. ‘Put me down here a moment,’ I said to the boy who was pushing me. ‘I feel the need of a rest before showing myself to the people.’

‘You’re late as it is,’ Ambrose grunted with a nervous look at the sky.

I cupped a hand to my bad ear. ‘I hear no complaints from those who are waiting,’ I said brightly. To the boy: ‘Put the handles down and fan me with your hat.’ To Ambrose: ‘You’d surely not want me to die before I can assist in Gebmund’s inquiry.’

Ambrose took on the appearance of a caged animal when it looks through its bars. ‘Inquiry, my cock!’ he snarled. ‘You’re on trial for your fucking life!’

I gave him a flash of my nice teeth and added a look of faint senility. ‘Oh, is that why I’m a prisoner?’ I asked. I looked at the boy. If I wasn’t mistaken, his spots were all inflamed. Either he was feeling the morning chill, or he was still hurting from the buggery Ambrose had inflicted on him while I was deciding which hat to put on over my wig. It was probably the latter. I leaned back on the filthy padding. ‘Oh, let’s just get it over with,’ I sighed. I reached inside my woollen robe. I hadn’t left my double strength oil of frankincense behind. I unstoppered the pot and shook some of it down the front of my robe.

 

I was halfway across the square, when the crowd outside the church struck up a respectable cheer. Rattled by the sudden noise, the boy twisted my wheelbarrow to give me sight of the crowd. I took off my hat and waved it. That got me a louder cheer.

‘Not a word, you old fool,’ Ambrose said into my good ear. ‘If you cause another riot, it’ll be the worse for you.’

‘If you don’t keep a civil tongue in your head,’ I replied through a fixed smile, ‘I may see to it that you don’t have a head.’ I leaned forward and jabbed my stick into the boy’s stomach. ‘Come on,’ I urged. ‘You mustn’t keep the people waiting.’ He gave me the stupid look of one who hasn’t heard, but doesn’t want to admit he wasn’t listening. I repeated myself, now louder. He swallowed and dropped both handles of his wheelbarrow. Its impact had the blond wig straight off my head and into the dust. By the time it was recovered, I’d decided against putting it back on. Instead, I sat up and tried to look as dignified as a bald, shrivelled old thing ever can. ‘Well, come on, boy,’ I prompted. ‘It isn’t us they want to string up – no, not even Brother Ambrose today.’

Even as the boy got ready for one of his pubescent squawks, there was a loud groan, and the crowd took a collective step backwards and to the left. ‘There he is!’ someone shouted. ‘Oh, but hasn’t he got a nerve!’ someone else said.

It wasn’t that much of a nerve, to be fair. As the crowd broke into a low and disapproving chatter, I twisted round on my cushions and saw that Brother Aelfwine had followed us across the square. Flanked by his two elder brothers and any number of cousins and family hangers on, he had a strained look on his face even I could see. I thought he’d hurry past, so he could be in place before everyone else squeezed into the church. But he saw I was looking in his direction and hurried over.

‘Greetings, Brother Aelric,’ he said stiffly in Latin. Impassive, I looked back at him. I couldn’t doubt he was a pretty lad – far too pretty for a monk. What else, though, could he be but pretty? Not only Kentish, he was of royal blood. Being both myself, however much decayed, I may be biased. But, now we’ve given up on putting butter in our hair and rings through our noses, you’ll search hard to find a handsomer race than the better class of Kentishmen. No tonsure was enough to conceal his advantages of birth.

He leaned forward. ‘Why don’t you just confess?’ he whispered. ‘I’ll see to it that Gebmund gives you his mildest penance ever. Family is family, after all.’ He tilted his head at the crowd. ‘Must we inflame the common people any further?’

‘I have perfect faith that, when My Lord Bishop of Rochester has heard me, there will be no more talk of penances.’ I said loudly in English. For just a moment, he looked me in the eye. Then he looked away and breathed something that I couldn’t catch but got his flunkies into a dark mood. I was still trying to tell if the biggest of these wasn’t one of the King’s bastard sons, when I heard the doors of the great church open far across the square and, in a crowd of monks and deacons, Aelfwine’s cousin and mine began a slow and almost visibly unwilling progress towards the place appointed for his court of inquiry.

 

Leaning forward on his big chair, Bishop Gebmund looked nervously round the church. ‘For the benefit of our brethren from overseas,’ he stammered, ‘we shall conduct these proceedings entirely in Latin.’ I blew my nose loudly enough to be heard at the back of the crowded nave. In all decency, he hadn’t been able to keep the common people out. Looking surly, they sat cross-legged on the floor. One way or another, I’d find a way to keep them generally informed.

Gebmund got down from his chair and, trying not to breathe through his nose, approached the stone slab on which the body was laid. It wasn’t so many days since I’d assisted the Deacon Sophronius across the threshold of death. But it was as if the gross corruptions to which he’d given himself up in life were now seeping out through every pore of his body. Or, if you want a less poetic explanation, a combination of nice weather and excessive corpulency had brought on a speedy dissolution of the flesh. A cloth over his middle to preserve the decencies, Sophronius filled the entire slab. His mottled left arm hung down its side. Just below his hand, a pool of slime was already gathering on the floor. I plucked at the front of my robe. I snuggled deeper into the invisible palisade of my oil of frankincense. Not so lucky, a young deacon opposite me turned green and began to swallow repeatedly.

‘Dear Brothers in Christ,’ Gebmund began after much clearing of his throat, ‘I have called you here today to witness the full and fair inquiry that the Lord High Bishop Theodore and our Lord King Swaefheard have jointly commanded into the death of the Deacon Sophronius.’ He paused and looked about. No one dared stand up and say that the Dear Departed was, in fact, another of our cousins, and that the illiterate drunkard who was currently head of the family had been bullied into allowing this public washing of our linen. Gebmund hurried back to his chair and went into a rambling account of how Sophronius had been found at the bottom of the stairs that led from my place of confinement, his neck broken in two places. He stopped again and waited for the usual pious words to go the rounds.

He started again. This time, his face began to twitch with the strain of what he’d been given no choice but to do. ‘I don’t think anyone would object if I were to announce a verdict of accidental death,’ he said, plainly wishing that was just what he could do. ‘Sophronius was a large man, and a fall down so many stairs could only have one outcome.’ He shut his eyes. ‘However, I have been informed that the discoverer of the body wishes to address the court.’

He opened his eyes and looked about again. ‘Is Brother Ambrose with us?’ he asked hopefully. Hope faded as a creature hardly less bloated than our dear departed Brother in Christ heaved himself to his feet. He’d been sitting close by the body and leaning out of sight to watch the dripping of slime. He stood forward and bowed. Gebmund turned his mouth down. ‘Then I call on Brother Ambrose to explain his belief about the death.’

Ambrose struck a dramatic pose at the feet of the Episcopal chair. He looked about. ‘I am Brother Ambrose,’ he began loudly. ‘I look after the deluded sons of the Church who have fallen away from their vows and must be corrected.’ He stopped and looked up at the roof timbers for inspiration. ‘Me Latin’s gone off and hid somewhere it can’t be found,’ he said in English. ‘Can’t I do me bit in English?’

Put me in that chair and this would have been my excuse to call things off. At the least, I’d have adjourned them. After the briefest dither, though, Cousin Gebmund called for an interpreter and let the charade roll on. Ambrose had been put in charge of me last spring, he explained. Deacon Sophronius had ordered me to produce a long and elaborate report in Greek for the Lord High Bishop Theodore. I’d been confined to make sure I pulled none of my tricks. On the day the Deacon said he was to collect this report, however, he’d fallen down a staircase he’d used every day for months. Ambrose had found him at the foot of the stairs.

‘The fucker had it coming to him!’ someone shouted in English. There was a loud cheer from where most of the English observers were sitting, cross-legged on the floor. ‘Where’s all them kids gone?’ someone else shouted. That got a loud groan.

Gebmund jumped up and banged his staff for silence. ‘Do not interpret these impertinences for our overseas brethren,’ he cried. That got the French and Italian clerics murmuring among themselves. Gebmund coughed for attention. ‘I am able to confirm,’ he said, stammering again, ‘that Brother Aelric’s “long and elaborate” report in Greek turned out to be an essay in Latin on the rules of prosody.’ All eyes turned in my direction. I plucked at my robe, releasing another cloud of perfume. I pushed my teeth back and smiled.

‘I heard the Deacon shouting in anger,’ Ambrose continued. ‘I heard the Prisoner laugh and say something in Latin. Then I heard the door shut and the Deacon begin to come down the stairs. After six steps, he cried out as if in fear and fell all the way down. While I was trying to roll him over and perform the last offices, I heard a scraping at the top of the stairs and another laugh. Then I heard a soft closing of the Prisoner’s door. When I reached h