Tom Harper - The mosaic of shadows

The boy shook his head. I could have guessed, of course: a monk who tried to leave no living witnesses to his plot was unlikely to have left anything to identify him in this ruin.

‘Demetrios!’

I looked up. Sigurd had appeared in the gallery above me, flanked by two of his men.

‘There’s nobody here. A few beds, a table, some stools — all of them rotting, by the smell of them. Nothing else.’

‘Nor here.’ One of Sigurd’s lieutenants had appeared on the balcony opposite. ‘House is as quiet as the tomb. Nice view though.’

Indeed there was. The third corridor led from the peristyle onto a wide terrace at the back of the house, projecting out over the steep hillside. We stood there in silence and gazed onto the furrowed landscape of hills and wooded valleys before us. On the western horizon was an orange smear where the sun was setting, while to the south-east I fancied we could just see the glittering domes of Constantinople. It was a magnificent vantage point, ingeniously constructed so that the trees would block any sight of it from below, while leaving the view from above unconstrained.

A cold breeze played over our faces, and we were turning to go indoors when Thomas surprised us all by speaking unprompted, and at such length that Father Gregorias was pressed to remember it all.

‘He says the monk often came here,’ he said. ‘He would stare out at the queen of cities, and beseech God to annihilate her, as He did Sodom and Jericho.’

‘He said all this in Frankish?’ It seemed strange that a monk would address his God in a foreign tongue.

Gregorias conferred with Thomas. ‘In the language of Old Rome, Latin. Thomas knew the words because the Franks and Normans use it in their worship.’

This was more curious still, and I shook my head in defeat. At every turn I found a dozen new questions, but never a single answer.

Sigurd looked up at the sky. ‘We’ll spend the night in the stables,’ he announced. ‘With the beasts. I don’t want to find myself stranded here by some poacher turning his hand to horseflesh. And there’s only one door to guard.’

A peal of thunder rippled through the valley.

‘And,’ he added moodily, ‘the roof’s intact.’

I spent another half hour exploring that mournful house, but found no answers among the crumbling fabric and mouldering furniture. The thunder was moving slowly nearer, and every time it sounded I would snap my head around, unsettled by the surroundings. I was glad at last to escape the building, to return to the company of the Varangians, who had tethered our horses in the stable and made a small fire in a ring of stones outside. On it they roasted salt fish and vegetables which we gulped down in haste: there was little of the usual banter of soldiers on a march that night.

We settled down on the hard floor, cursing whoever had swept out all the straw before abandoning it. As I closed my eyes, I heard the first drops of rain beginning to strike on the lead tiles above us.

It was still raining when I awoke, and still dark. A horse was snuffling somewhere on my right, but otherwise nothing moved. I lay there a second reminding myself where I was, allaying the natural fears of night with the knowledge that I was surrounded by a dozen of the stoutest warriors in the empire. That was comforting. I put my hand under the balled-up cloak I used as a pillow and felt the haft of my knife still there; then, almost from superstition, I reached out to touch Thomas on the shoulder.

My hand felt cold air, then cold stone. I stretched further, my heart whipping itself into a panic, but again felt only the slap of my hand on the hard floor. Where was he? I threw off my blanket and stood, picking my way between the sleeping Varangians to the doorway. Warriors they might have been, but none of them, I noticed, stirred as I stole like a thief between them.

None, at least, save Aelric: but he could not help it. He was sitting in the doorway, his back against the frame, and as I reached it to look outside I fell sprawling over him. He cursed, and staggered to his feet, his hand fastening around the axe at his side.

‘It’s me, Demetrios,’ I hissed. Old though he was for his calling, I suspected I would not survive more than a single blow of his axe. ‘The boy’s missing.’

‘Christ.’ Aelric rubbed his eyes. ‘Oh Christ.’

A clap of thunder exploded over our heads, and almost simultaneously a shaft of lightning cracked through the clouds.

‘There!’ I had been peering out into the rain, searching in vain desperation for any sign of the boy; by the white glare of the lightning, I thought I had seen something. ‘Someone moving, over by the house.’

‘And what’s to say it’s the boy?’ demanded Aelric. ‘Are you armed?’

‘I have my knife.’ His words struck a fresh wave of dread into me, as all my fears of brigands and bandits and the monk’s adepts in this desolate place came flooding back, but there was no time. I launched myself out into the rain, flinching under the barrage of the water, and began running across the open ground to the house, with Aelric’s footsteps close behind me. My feet dragged in the mud and puddles, and my clinging tunic hobbled me. Rain ran off my sodden hair into my eyes, which I had to keep squeezed close together, but another flash of lightning guided me on towards the house. The door, I saw, was open.

‘Follow me in,’ I shouted, looking back over my shoulder. Aelric was invisible, and any sound he made was now drowned out by the torrent of winds around us.

The gale stopped as I pushed through the door, and for a second my squelching tread seemed terribly loud in the small hallway. Then there was rain pelting my face again, and I realised I had come into the peristyle. The water rattled on the stone tiles, but I thought that somewhere in the surrounding darkness I could hear a more animate sound, as of someone scraping at something.

I stepped forward, trying to gain a sense of where the noise was strongest. My effort was thwarted, though, as thunder boomed out over me, resounding off the walls and galleries in a dizzying, deafening roll. I tried to steady myself against a pillar but found none; then, for an instant, lightning burst across the square of sky overhead. The entire courtyard was held in its cold brilliance, and by the light I saw the boy, Thomas, crouched in the far corner by the bush which grew through the mosaics.

The light vanished; I stepped towards him, but in that moment something blunt and heavy cannoned into my back between the shoulder blades. Instinct took over; the months of training I had endured in the legions flooded into my blood, and as my shoulder hit the ground I rolled away across the floor. If my assailant aimed a second blow at where I had fallen, he would meet only stone.

‘Aelric?’ I yelled, wondering if he had blundered into me in the dark.

There was no answer, and I sprang away again just as I heard something crash into the space where I had been. Someone else is here, I thought in disbelief. Some murderer intent on killing me. Did Thomas purpose to lead me here as a trap?

My knife was still in my hand, for instinct and discipline had tightened my grip when another man might have dropped it. I raised it before my face, straining every sense for a sign of my enemy. Someone was moving in the blackness before me, but where I could not tell. He did not seem to be so very near, but with the uproar of the weather that could yet be near enough.

And what of Thomas? He had been in front of me when I was struck from behind: where was he now? Perhaps my invisible assailant was not hunting me at all. Perhaps he had come to slaughter the child.

Another sheet of light from the sky broke off my frenzied speculation. Thunder and lightning seemed now to have joined themselves immediately overhead, and by the spark of their union the courtyard was again illuminated. And there, standing in the shadowy doorway directly opposite me, a huge figure with a weapon raised in his arms.