Tom Harper - The mosaic of shadows

For a moment I stared like some virgin on his wedding night; then, overcome with guilt, I belatedly pressed my blushing face into the pillow.

Anna laughed; a soft, forgiving laugh.

‘Come, Demetrios,’ she mocked me. ‘You were married, and raised two daughters to womanhood. Surely you must have uncovered these mysteries before. Am I so shameful?’

‘Shameless, I think.’ My humour returned a little, and I risked looking back. I was just in time to see her arms wriggling through the sleeves of a woollen camisia, which tumbled down over her body to mask its temptations. I felt an ache of regret that I had not looked longer, but dismissed the thought at once.

‘Do you always undress before strange men in the middle of the day?’ I watched her pull on her green dress and fasten the silken cord around it.

‘Only when they appear at my door half-frozen and close to death. I had to force some heat into you, so I lay beside you in the bed until you stopped shivering. You served in the legions — surely when you campaigned in the mountains you huddled together with your comrades at night?’

‘If we did, we kept our clothes on.’ I had endured much that day; it seemed almost too much to believe that I had risked mortal sin lying with Anna and not felt a moment of it.

Again I drove back my thoughts from the places they strayed. ‘And how did I come to be here?’

‘Sigurd brought you. He said he found you almost drowned in a cistern.’

‘Is he here now?’ Had he watched while Anna undressed and shared my bed?

‘He had important things to do. He said he would return, and try to bring some fresh clothes.’

Only now did I realise that under the blankets, I too was wholly naked. I pulled the covers closer.

Anna tied the scarf over her head and crossed to the door. ‘I must go. I have other patients to see. I will send an apprentice with some soup, and try to visit soon.’

‘Will you share beds with all your wards?’ I raised myself on one elbow.

The door closed without answer.

Not long afterwards, Sigurd came. His face was flushed despite the cold, but he waited while I dressed with the tunic, leggings, boots and cloak he had brought. He must have gone to my house, or sent someone there, for they were my own. Which was as well, for his tunic would have reached almost to my feet.

‘That’s the second time I’ve saved you from a battle you were foolish to enter,’ he said pointedly. ‘There may not be a third.’

‘I know.’ I was honest in my gratitude. ‘But how did you find me? And what of the monk?’

‘Your elder daughter found me with Aelric. I met him in the street; he had left his station to go and buy food.’ I did not envy Aelric explaining that to his captain. ‘We followed your tracks through the snow as far as the Adrianople road, where there were plenty of witnesses who could remember a bare-headed monk and a half-dressed madman chasing him. From there we searched the side-streets until we found you.’

‘And the monk?’

‘We saw him trying to drown you at the bottom of that hole, but as I came down the ladder he fled. I let him go; only a fool would follow a man into that abyss. My men are guarding the entrance. If he comes out, we’ll catch him.’ He looked theatrically at the sky, though the sun was veiled in cloud. ‘If he’s still down there, he’ll already be dead.’

‘We should go and see.’ I stood, feeling the trembling in my legs as they took my weight. I was weak, but the food which Anna had sent gave me strength, and the hunger to see the monk who had almost killed me was all consuming.

‘Will the doctor let you go?’ Sigurd asked with a smile. ‘She protects her patients like a tiger, you know.’

That was only half true. Some she protected like a tiger; me she waved away with a dismissive snort.

‘If you choose to risk your health and your strength running around the city, trying to do the monk’s work for him, then do so,’ she said briskly. ‘I need your bed for the more deserving anyway.’

Sigurd and I walked out of the monastery. It was late afternoon, and the road was almost solid with the humanity herded onto it. The snow, so pristine that morning, was now ground to a grey slush and mixed with grit and mud. It was well that the ground stayed frozen, or many might have sunk into an inescapable mire.

‘I must go to the walls first,’ said Sigurd. He had seemed cheerful at my bedside, but now his mood was grim. ‘I need to check on the garrison. The monk will wait an extra half hour — whether he’s under, on or in the ground.’

I did not argue, but pushed my way after him through the tide of men and beasts which flowed against us. It was straining work, and if I had not had Sigurd’s commanding bulk to follow I doubt I would have progressed a step. There was an intensity in the crowd now which I had not noticed previously: a hunch to their shoulders and a desperation in their gaunt faces. Perhaps it was the burden of snow and cold added to their already straitened condition, or perhaps they knew that the city was ill able to provide for them after the many others who had preceded them.

Sigurd had anticipated an extra half an hour, but it was almost an hour later, near dusk, when we at last reached the walls. Along them the Watch had kept a corridor free for messengers and heralds to gallop through, and I was glad of the space to breathe as we came into it.

‘My men are up that tower,’ Sigurd told me. ‘Will you wait?’

A squadron of cavalry thundered past, drowning my reply and spraying me with mud. Above me, a ballista was being winched up a tower on a scaffold, straining at the thick ropes which held it.

‘I’ll come up.’ I did not want to end that day crushed under a horse or a falling siege weapon.

As ever, Sigurd was recognised, and we were waved up by the guard at the foot of the stairs. It was not an arduous climb, but my head ached again and my legs begged for rest. About me, I could see sentries scurrying about, shouting and calling, though I could not hear what they said.

We came onto the broad rampart and my interest rose. A hush had fallen, and the guards were still, their faces pressed against the embrasures as if watching for a miracle. Sigurd ignored them and continued up the steps to the turret, but — drawn to the spectacle — I crossed to the battlements and stared.

Out across the snow-swept fields the sun had sunk beneath the rim of the clouds, facing us like a glowing eye. The sky and land alike were caught in its crimson glare, shimmering red, but that was not what had silenced the watchmen. On the ridge across the plain, some two miles distant, an army had appeared. They rode towards us with the sun behind them, their spears like pricks of flame and their banners dark above them. They were moving forward, but as one row passed into the shadows below the ridge another came up on their heels and took its place. It was a host of thousands — tens of thousands — and the snow turned black underfoot as they marched towards our gate.

The barbarians had come.

‘This changes everything.’ I had waited three days for an audience with Krysaphios, and now that I had it I was giving full vent to my feelings. ‘Can you believe it is merely chance that not three weeks after the Emperor was almost murdered, an army of barbarians arrives at our walls?’

Krysaphios stroked his beardless chin. ‘This changes nothing,’ he said calmly. ‘Except to raise the penalties should you fail.’

‘The man who directed the assassin was a monk who prayed according to the western rites, and used a barbarian weapon unknown to our people. Now ten thousand of his kinsmen, armed for war, are camped just across the Golden Horn. Can it be happenstance?’