Mike Ashley - The Mammoth Book of Historical Crime Fiction

You never know where one of those entrances might lead. Until you’ve been through it.

I’d been through this one.

Which is why I sprinted across the dusty sub-basement trying to catch the girl. I knew she would spot the place where the bricks had fallen out of a wall, leaving a cave-like entrance above a waist-high pile of debris. As I reached her side she was stepping up on to the pile of shattered bricks and craning her neck to see into the cave.

She shrieked.

We were looking into an alcove or possibly the gap between the inner and outer walls of an ancient, buried building. The monstrous thing that had made her scream loomed over us, twice my height. There was no doubt it saw us. It was staring straight at us.

A gigantic face of Christ.

“This is the image from over the Chalke Gate!” I said.

“But Leo had it taken down! They burned it in front of the Golden Milestone, by the Augustaion!”

The vast open square of the Augustaion — from the Milestone all the way back to the Great Church — had been packed with gawkers. I’d gone there after hearing rumours about Leo’s planned desecration, but hadn’t been able to get near enough to see anything of the icon’s destruction.

“This is only the icon’s face,” I pointed out. “Maybe what they burned for the crowd was the body.”

The girl shivered and pulled her wet cloak tighter. I couldn’t blame her. A black, pointed beard framed the icon’s gaunt visage. The lips were not merely closed, as tradition required, but drawn in a taut, angry line. The eyes were merciless. This was clearly the Christ who, like an emperor, had come with a sword.

Which was why Christ and the emperor had succeeded while most of us fail.

Could I be merciless?

I’d protected my treasure once.

That had been different. I’d simply reacted in anger and fear. I hadn’t had time to ponder what I was doing.

“You can’t be sure it’s the real icon,” the girl was saying.

“No, this is definitely the Chalke Christ. I’ve seen it hundreds of times, whenever I passed the palace gate. Look at the way the shadows round the eyes are formed, and the highlights in the irises. Very distinctive. See how the pupils aren’t quite as close to the upper eyelids as would usually be the case? That was to give the impression he was looking down from above the gate, meeting the gaze of anyone approaching.”

“How would you notice all that?” She asked, gazing at me with her huge brown eyes.

“I paint icons for a living. At least I used to. Now most of my patrons are afraid to do business with me. My name’s Victor, by the way.”

“Arabia,” she said absently, her mind obviously not on introductions. “It’s very strange. My employer, Florentius, collects icons.”

“Florentius! You mean the wine merchant with the house near the Great Church?”

“That’s right.”

“Why, I’ve done work for him! You must have seen my painting of Saint Laurentius?”

“Oh, hardly. I’ve only been there a short time. I mostly scrub floors. He keeps the icons locked out of sight. Thinks nobody knows about them, but servants gossip. That’s how I know about his collection. This one must be worth a fortune!”

“All it’s worth right now is the head of anyone unfortunate enough to be caught with it. Possessing any image is a crime, let alone the most famous one in the empire. In fact, we probably shouldn’t stay here.”

I turned as if I intended to go back the way we had come but Arabia remained planted in front of the icon. “We can’t leave it here, Victor. Can’t you see, it isn’t just chance that we found it. It’s a miracle. We can’t turn our backs on a miracle.”

It sounded funny for her to say that. But why not? I knew nothing about Arabia. Just because a woman steals a dab of her mistress’s lip colour doesn’t mean she has no religious beliefs.

“There’s nothing either of us can do with it. At least nothing I can think of,” I lied.

“Florentius is already hiding icons. Why not one more?”

“He would probably turn us over to the authorities as soon as we approached him. Even if he didn’t, we’d be putting ourselves in danger for the rest of our lives. The emperor would be bound to hear about the icon sooner or later and — ”

Arabia screwed her face up in thought. “Of course we couldn’t stay in the city. Florentius would give us enough to leave, to buy a farm, maybe. Just enough for us to get going again. It wouldn’t be much for a man of his wealth.”

It was the sort of plan I’d been thinking about, in a general way, for some time. Maybe Arabia could be of some assistance; the partner I needed. If I dared to trust a partner.

“Have you ever held a solidus?” she asked me. Her eyes glittered.

“Not often.” My transactions rarely involved silver, let alone gold.

“I did, once. Florentius dropped it. He let me hold it. It was heavy. There was a picture of Emperor Leo on the front. He has the same narrow face and the same pointed beard as that icon. There was a cross behind his shoulder. It was such a lovely coin. Do you know what I did? I couldn’t help myself. I kissed the emperor.”

The icon’s gaze bored into me. I felt a gnawing pain in my stomach. I’d almost forgotten I had eaten nothing that morning, except the egg. Land was cheap in the countryside. A few solidi would buy a farm. There would be plenty of eggs on a farm.

If I could force myself to go through with it.

“We’ll need to wait for a few days,” I said. “Florentius will have to make some preparations. He’ll have to be careful. He can’t just send a couple of servants to drag the icon along the street.”

I didn’t mention my fear that I was being followed. If I was, when I failed to return to my rooms tonight, they’d start looking for me.

I’d need to deal with Florentius at some point. A servant girl couldn’t approach her wealthy employer and ask him to buy an illicit icon, let alone vouch for its authenticity. I could do both. Florentius knew and trusted me, to the extent any aristocrat knows and trusts the artisans he hires. But I’d need to be patient, give my pursuers time to shift their search to another part of the city.

Who was I fooling? I needed time to get my courage up.

At any rate, I told myself, it would be safer for Arabia to be out and about than me. She might prove very useful in that way. And, if anything went wrong and I had to stay in hiding for an extended period, she’d be able to keep me supplied with food.

I explained some of what I had in mind and sent her off. She returned with a wine skin and a sack.

“Praise be to God for what he provides,” she said. I’m not sure whether she was being ironic, or where exactly the Lord had left the provisions. It appeared to be the army barracks in what used to be the Baths of Zeuxippos, judging from the hard biscuits underneath the clay lamp, the iron striker and flint, and the jar of lamp oil.

I had a biscuit halfway to my mouth when Arabia leaned forward and kissed me lightly on the lips. Then she was gone, leaving behind a wraith of her perfume.

And a thought that persisted in thrusting itself forward.

Something that really needed attention.

I lit the lamp. The rats scrabbling nearby quietened down and the painted icon opposite where I sat resumed staring at me. I returned its gaze. Had I been a more religious person I would have taken some comfort in the holy presence. The Lord was here with me. Even though he was everywhere at once, yet, like the saints, he was even more strongly where his icons or relics were — or so they said.

But on the other hand how forgiving was he?