Tom Harper - The mosaic of shadows

The light vanished and I launched myself forward, charging across those slippery tiles heedless of the rain and the chance of other, unseen enemies. As I came near I lowered my shoulder — as the dekarch had demonstrated on so many parade grounds — drew back my knife, and tensed my neck for the impact.

He had not moved in those few seconds; I struck him in the belly and drove my knife hard into him. He grunted and fell backwards, bringing me tumbling down over him, but it was I who shouted the louder, for his stomach seemed to be lined with steel, and my knife had bounced harmlessly off him. He was in armour, I realised with horror, while I lay there defenceless. I tried to pull away but he had wrapped an arm about me and was holding me down, scrabbling on the floor for the weapon he had dropped.

‘Shit,’ he swore.

My heart stopped. ‘Aelric?’ I gasped. ‘Aelric? It’s Demetrios.’

A sharp blade hovered against the hair on my neck.

‘Demetrios?’ he growled. ‘Then why in Satan’s hell did you try to rip my guts out?’

He loosened his grip, and I drew myself up. ‘There was a man in here, attacking me.’ I shook my sodden head. ‘Was that you too?’

‘What do you think?’ Aelric’s voice was surly — perhaps I had hurt him through the armour. ‘I followed you in. I was only just here when you rammed me.’

‘But I’ve been here. .’

A flickering light by the entrance silenced us both; we drew apart, tensing our weapons in our arms as it drew nearer.

‘Aelric? Demetrios?’

‘Sigurd?’

The Varangian captain stepped into the room, his axe in one hand and a torch in the other. God alone knew how he managed to get it lit in the midst of that pelting storm. He held it under the colonnade, but its burning glow pierced the night to reveal the entire courtyard, frozen into a tableau where even the rain seemed to stand still.

Aelric and I were standing in the door to Sigurd’s left, by the passage which led into the western arm of the house. Sigurd, flanked by two of his men, was at the main entrance, staring angrily at Thomas, who cowered in the corner where the lightning had last revealed him, his hands still loosely bound. Of whomever else I might have battled in the darkness, there was no sign.

‘I suppose,’ said Sigurd, ‘that there is a reason for this.’

Aelric answered first. ‘The boy managed to escape the stables. Demetrios and I chased after him, but in the storm I lost my bearings. By the lightning I saw him entering by the west door and I followed. As I came in here, he rammed me like a trireme and we both went down. Fortunately I recognised his voice before I took his head off.’

‘But I didn’t come in the west door,’ I objected. ‘I came by the main entrance, which was open. Where Sigurd is. And I was here several minutes before I attacked you. Mistakenly,’ I added. ‘But I grappled with someone well before that.’

‘Perhaps it was the boy.’ Sigurd had no patience for this; I guessed he would be furious that the boy had come so close to escaping. ‘We’ll get his explanation in the morning. Until then we double the guard and tether the boy in the stables.’

‘What about the other man? He may still be in the house — or at least in the grounds. Supposing he is an assassin sent by the monk — or indeed the monk himself?’

Sigurd snorted. ‘Even if this man exists, and if he is not some phantom of your dreams, I will not waste my night chasing over rubble and through mud to find him. If you want to stay in this house and seek him alone, then do it. I will not risk a sprained ankle or a knife in the dark.’

Nor, on reflection, would I.

Nothing more came to disturb my sleep, though it would have found little sleep to trouble. I lay awake, tensed by every creaking beam or rustle of blankets, until the air outside the door lightened, and the few birds which had not fled before the winter began their morning song. Glad of any excuse to be away from my restless bed I rose, passed the sentries on the door, and made once more for the house.

My head already ached from its broken sleep, and the stiff chill in the air did nothing to help it, but at least the rain had passed. I looked around, nervously scanning every yard of ground between me and the encircling woods. Nothing moved.

My pulse quickened as I reached the house, and even the sight of the empty courtyard did nothing to soothe it. I glanced up at the surrounding galleries, unable to shake the apprehension that someone might be watching me; I even walked all around the colonnade to be sure that no-one lurked behind a pillar. No-one did.

I turned my attention to the corner where we had found the boy in the night. His behaviour was a mystery, for if he had wanted to escape he would surely not have come in here. And he would be desperate indeed to try to run in a storm, in the midst of a forest with his legs bandaged and his arms tied before him. He would not have survived a day. So why had he risked so much coming here, when an overzealous Varangian might easily have cut him down in the dark?

I looked to the floor. The mosaic tiles were loose, cracked open by the bush which had pushed through them. I squeezed my thumb under one and tugged, watching as it came away in my hand. Mortar trickled off it in a fine powder, turning to a grey paste again on the wet floor.

I prised away half a dozen more tiles, looking particularly for those which were already loose. They would be the ones nearest the stem of the plant, I guessed, and I scratched my arms several times reaching under its branches to grasp them. Perhaps it was a futile exercise in eliminating an unlikely possibility, but this whole expedition had been just such a task: what were a few more wasted minutes?

And then I saw why the boy had risked so much to come here. A black tile — the stripe in the side of a tiger — came free, and as I poked my finger in the cavity beneath I felt the cold surface of polished metal. It was a ring, the gold barely tarnished by its underground sojourn, set with a red stone which was probably a garnet. A sinuous black crack was cleft through the gem, almost like a snake, and written around the shank in clumsy, Latin lettering was an inscription.

‘The captain says breakfast is cooked, if you want any.’

I looked around to see Aelric. ‘Tell Sigurd I’ve found something,’ I ordered. ‘Tell him to send the boy here with the interpreter.’

I rinsed the dirt from my hands in a puddle while I waited, and rubbed the ring on the hem of my tunic before folding it into my fist as Thomas stumbled in. His face was set firm in a hard scowl, and his bandages were caked with mud.

‘Ask him what he was doing here last night,’ I instructed Father Gregorias. ‘Did he really think he could escape us?’

‘He says he was called by nature.’

‘And his modesty was such that rather than relieve himself against a wall, he walked two hundred yards through a driving storm to piss in here?’ I rolled my eyes. ‘Ask him if he was looking for this?’

As I spoke, I opened my hand to reveal the ring, keeping my eyes always fixed on Thomas’s face. He may have learned his craft in the slums of the city, but he could not hide the surprise of recognition which flashed across his features.

‘Where did you find that?’ asked the priest, irrelevantly.

‘Under a stone. What does the inscription say?’

The little priest took it in his hands and squinted at it. ‘Saint Remigius, lead me in the way of truth,’ he read.

I had never in all the feasts and liturgies heard of this Saint Remigius, but I recognised the trinket clearly enough. It was a pilgrim’s ring, the sort sold by hawkers and peddlers near the shrines of the sanctified. Had the boy left it here? His parents had been pilgrims, I remembered: was it theirs?