Tom Harper - The mosaic of shadows

‘Fetch me the doctor,’ I insisted. ‘Every minute brings him closer to death.’

At last my words showed some effect: the woman stood and looked towards an open doorway. But instead of hurrying away she turned, and with astonishing termerity began to upbraid me.

‘Make haste,’ she commanded. ‘You’ve carried him this far, you can carry him these last few paces. The monks here are afraid to touch the dying — they think it pollutes them. Bring him inside where we can wash his wounds and get some warmth into him.’

I was almost dumb with surprise. ‘Surely only the doctor will know if it’s safe to move him.’

She put her hands on her waist and stared at me in exasperation. ‘She will, and it is,’ she said curtly. ‘I am the doctor, and I say bring the boy inside so I can clean and bind his wounds before he slips beyond us.’ Her dark eyes flashed with impatience. ‘Now will you do as I say?’

With the colour of shame rising under the bruises on my face, I humbly obeyed. Then, when that was done, I fled to the palace.

I had never seen the dungeons of the palace before, and I would not hurry to see them again. A guard led me down a twisting stair, deep underground, to a chamber lit only by torchlight. Massive brick piers rose out of the floor and arched overhead like the ribs of a great sea-beast, while on the walls between them hung scores of cruelly shaped instruments. In the middle of the room were a roughly hewn table and benches, where a group of Varangians sat and diced. Even seated, they had to take care to keep their heads from cracking on the black lamps above them.

Sigurd threw a handful of coins onto the table and looked up. ‘You’re here,’ he grunted. ‘Finished playing the Samaritan, have you?’

‘The boy’s with a doctor,’ I answered coolly. ‘Where’s the Bulgar?’

Sigurd tossed his head towards a low archway behind him. ‘In there. Strung up by his arms. We haven’t touched him yet.’

‘You shouldn’t have waited for me. His knowledge may be urgent.’

Sigurd’s face stiffened. ‘I thought the eunuch paid you by the day. Anyway, we didn’t wait for you — we waited for the interpreter. Unless, of course, you speak the Bulgars’ language?’

I shrugged my surrender, though Sigurd had already turned back to his game. He did not invite me to join it, and after a moment of awkward pause I retreated out of the lamplight into a dim corner. There I kept silent, and tried not to hear the dismal sounds drifting into the guardroom.

You could not measure time in that mournful place, but I must have spent almost an hour watching Sigurd’s humour rise and fall in balance with the number of coins in the pile before him. Then there came a sound from above, and I peered up the curling stair to see a constellation of tiny flames descending, dozens of lamps processing down like a swarm of fireflies. Slaves in silken robes held them aloft, unwavering despite the uneven ground beneath: they filed along the periphery of the vault until they were like an inner wall of shimmering silk and fire around us. At their tail came two who did not carry lamps, one in the crimson mantle of a priest; the other in a rich gown of blazing gold threads: Krysaphios.

All the Varangians were on their feet, the silver and dice swept invisibly into their pouches.

‘My Lord,’ said Sigurd with a bow. He wore humility clumsily, I thought.

‘Captain,’ answered Krysaphios. ‘Where is the prisoner?’

‘In the next room. Contemplating his wickedness alone. We need an interpreter.’

‘Brother Gregorias has devoted his life to the Bulgar tongue.’ Krysaphios indicated the priest beside him. ‘He has transcribed the lives of no fewer than three hundred saints for their edification.’ That, I thought, should give him the requisite vocabulary of torment. ‘If your prisoner has anything to say, he will decipher it.’

‘The prisoner will talk,’ said Sigurd grimly. ‘Once I’m done with him.’

We left the eunuch’s silent retinue in the main chamber, and stooping passed through a low tunnel into the adjoining cell. I followed Sigurd, Krysaphios and the priest Gregorias in. Here the air was closer and more unpleasant; but more uncomfortable still, I suspected, was the prisoner. His arms were hung on thick hooks above him in the ceiling, so that only his toes touched the floor: he swayed a little backwards and forwards, and moaned gently. His clothes had been torn away, leaving only a narrow strip of linen around his hips, and his wrists bled where the shackles bit into them so that he seemed to me uncannily like Christ in torment on his cross. I shivered, and banished that blasphemous thought immediately.

‘Demetrios.’ I saw Krysaphios staring at me. ‘You are the paid expert in these matters — find out what the man knows.’

I was an expert in quizzing petty thieves and informers in the marketplace, not tearing out confessions in the imperial dungeons. But before my patron I could not be seen to falter. I stepped forward and immediately found that I did not know where to look, whether to the priest or the prisoner. My eyes darted dumbly from one to the other, and I could mask my confusion only by crossing my arms over my chest and taking deep, contemplative breaths.

‘A monk hired you from a man named Vassos,’ I began at last, addressing the wretched Bulgar. No sooner had I spoken, though, than my thought was disrupted by the quiet monotone of the priest, intoning crude foreign syllables into the captive’s ear. I stammered a little, and began again.

‘Three weeks ago this monk contracted you to murder the Emperor. You were to use a strange device, a barbarian weapon they call a tzangra , to murder him in a public street, on the feast-day of the holy Saint Nikolas.’

There was a pause while I waited for the translation to catch up with the commanding gaze I had fixed on him. The priest went silent, and four pairs of ears were poised for an answer. Only the chime of Sigurd’s ringed armour broke the hush in the room.

The Bulgar lifted his face, and looked at us all contemptuously. He spoke one word, and none of us needed the priest to explain its meaning. ‘No.’

I sighed theatrically. ‘Ask him if he follows our faith,’ I told the priest.

The Bulgar ignored the question, but after some urging from the interpreter he acknowledged that he did.

‘Tell him, then, that he has sinned,’ I continued. ‘But tell him that Christ preaches forgiveness to those who confess their sins. Tell him that in Vassos and the monk he has served evil masters, masters who have betrayed him. We can help him.’

‘We can help him screaming to his grave,’ interrupted Siguard, but I waved him to be silent and hoped the priest would not translate his words. Nonetheless, I saw the Bulgar’s eyes dart towards the Varangian as he spoke.

‘As long as he stays silent, he will never escape this dungeon.’ Although the prisoner’s continued silence frustrated me, I was at least learning to speak over the constant murmur of the translation. ‘But the monk and Vassos are free to drink and whore and contrive their plots. Why should he suffer while men of far greater evil do not?’

There was a rustling of silk as Krysaphios stirred. ‘You do not seem to have his ear, Demetrios,’ he observed. ‘Or perhaps the finer points of your rhetoric are lost in the foreign tongue.’

I worried that none of my companions understood the time it takes to pry information from an unwilling informant, however helpless and confined he might be. Krysaphios must be accustomed to seeing his will executed immediately, not waiting for an immigrant criminal to choose to speak. I feared he would soon demand more corporal approaches.