Mike Ashley - The Mammoth Book of Historical Crime Fiction

I ran my hands over her naked body and held her close. “Blessed Artemis!” I whispered.

“Artemis has nothing to do with this,” said Amestris, with a soft laugh and a touch that sent a quiver of ecstasy through me. “Tonight, we worship Venus.”

And so, in the city most famously devoted to the virgin goddess of the hunt, I killed my first man, and I knew my first woman.

After our visit to the temple the next morning, Antipater and I set sail. Amestris stood with the others on the wharf. We waved farewell. Gazing at her beauty, remembering her touch, I felt a stab of longing and wondered if I would ever see her again.

As I watched the city recede, I made a silent vow. Never in my travels would I pass a temple of Artemis without going inside to light a bit of incense and utter a prayer, asking the goddess to bestow her blessings upon Amestris.

“Gordianus — what is that strange tune you’re humming?” said Antipater.

“Don’t you recognize it? It’s the melody Amestris played on the Pan pipes.”

It haunts me still.

Since 1999, Mary Reed and Eric Mayer have been charting the investigations of John the Eunuch, starting with One for Sorrow . These novels, and related short stories, are set in sixth-century Constantinople. The following story shares the Constantinople background, but takes place nearly two centuries later, during the turbulent reign of Emperor Leo III. There had been much debate across the eastern Mediterranean about the depiction of Christ on coins and icons, and, in or about the year 726, Leo banned the use and worship of such images. His most significant act was to remove the image of Christ that stood at the giant bronze Chalke Gate at the entrance to the Palace of Constantinople. The upheaval that this caused is the starting point for the following story.

My first mistake was eating the Lord’s eyes.

I didn’t mean to. I woke up hungry, freezing, and cursing Emperor Leo.

“Damn you, excellency, for banning religious imagery and destroying my livelihood. Damn you for pulling down the Christ over the Bronze Gates. Why didn’t you just throw Victor the icon-painter into the bonfire as well?”

As if the emperor even knew I existed. But me carrying on like this made me forget my troubles, until the pensioned soldier in the apartment below started banging his broom handle against my floorboards. If only he and his colleagues had wielded their spears as enthusiastically against the Persians. Maybe the empire wouldn’t be in such a sorry state.

When I opened the shutters to dump my pot of night soil I had a look around the alley below. A brawny fellow dressed in a labourer’s leather trousers slouched by. For some reason I had the impression he might have just started in motion at the creak of the shutters. I tossed the slop as far as I could but the man was already out of range.

I started cursing again.

They were watching, I was sure.

I could feel their gaze all the time.

Whoever they were.

Or was it just the painted saviour propped up against the wall on his pine board, staring at me?

I went to the table where my dry pigments were laid out in ceramic containers. I was determined to get to work, even though I wasn’t sure where I could sell an icon these days. There was a rime of ice around the bowl into which I’d cracked open my last remaining egg the night before.

I picked the bowl up, intending to separate the yolk from the white. The faint odour of food woke a demon who twisted my guts and forced my hand upwards. Before I could help myself I was lowering the bowl from my lips.

Over the rim I saw the Lord glaring at me. His eyes were formless gouges. I hadn’t finished them. I hadn’t yet refined the lines around the irises, or painted in the pupils.

As the egg went down in one painful gulp, I remembered a colleague who had slipped off the scaffold high up under the vault of the atrium at a mansion we were decorating. When I got to him he was face down on the floor, surrounded by green tile fish. The blue tile ocean had not lessened the impact of his fall. I pulled his shoulder. He flopped over like a half empty sack of wheat and stared at me.

Both his eyeballs had burst. Blood-flecked matter oozed out from the eye sockets and ran sluggishly down the crushed cheeks.

The cold, congealed egg stuck in my throat; it felt as if it had the consistency of that ooze. I should have used the egg to moisten black pigment for the icon’s eyes. Now I couldn’t give the icon eyes. I had swallowed his eyes.

I gagged. Nothing came up.

I was still hungry, and thirsty too.

And the Lord wasn’t likely to give much assistance to someone who’d just eaten his eyes.

“The fact of the matter, Flaccus, is that I don’t have so much as a copper follis to my name.”

Flaccus sat placidly sipping his wine on the other side of the tavern table. He didn’t offer to buy me a cup. “I’m lugging bricks myself, Victor. Plenty of work in that line.”

Easy for him to say. He was a big, broad bull of a man, unlike myself.

“Yes, I’m sure,” I replied. “The earthquake left plenty of rubble. Cheap construction material.”

“Leo’s a frugal sort.”

“Imagine, a frugal emperor. What’s the empire come to? What would Justinian the Great say if he could see us here, two hundred years in his future, his glorious Constantinople half deserted and in ruins? No work for artists like ourselves. Unless you happen to know someone who — ”

Flaccus shook his head. “I haven’t found a buyer for months. I had a few patrons commission work under the table, until Leo ordered the Chalke Gate Christ replaced by that hideous cross. Now everyone’s frightened.”

“No doubt the idea of Patriarch Anastasius. Does anyone take this nonsense seriously? This idea that veneration of images amounts to idolatry?”

Flaccus shrugged. “Whatever God in heaven might think about seeing his son depicted in egg tempera, here on earth it’s the emperor’s opinion that counts.”

He started in on his bread and cheese. I looked away, over his wide shoulder, but the mosaic on the wall tormented me with a plate piled high with fruit.

If Flaccus with his enormous ego and artistic pretences was resigned to hauling bricks, perhaps it was time for me to finally put my plan into action. Except I didn’t exactly have a plan. And, even if I did, I needed an accomplice. Or, rather, a partner. Not Flaccus, certainly. He’d just turn me in for the reward. So would everyone else I knew. What could you expect from men who made a living painting martyrs for wealthy aristocrats? Men like me?

His stool squeaked as Flaccus stood. “Good seeing you, Victor. Remember what I said — bricks. I’d be happy to put in a word for you.” He belched and left.

A couple of young men in good but threadbare cloaks entered the tavern. They might have been clerks from the palace. Shouldn’t they have been at work by now? Did they have a shifty look about them or was that just my imagination? I got up hastily and went back out into the cold.

What did I need a partner for anyway? If I could sell the thing, the buyer could do the donkey-work.

But the idea of working alone scared me. That was it, if I was honest about it.

Or possibly it was just an excuse to do nothing.

I kept looking behind me for the fellows who were posing as clerks but didn’t see them. Which didn’t mean they weren’t trailing me.

I couldn’t put a plan in motion while I was under surveillance, could I?

A winter wind off the Sea of Marmara groaned under colon-nades. No one who had anywhere better to go was out on the streets.