Tom Harper - The mosaic of shadows

A flood of elation burst through me, but I tried to remain methodical. ‘What did this Paul say in return?’

‘That the man was his brother, brought to our city on a pilgrimage ordained by God. Who was he to deny him hospitality?’

‘And when was the last time this monk visited?’

The sergeant smiled in triumph. ‘Two days ago.’

I turned back to look at our prisoner. ‘Your brother is the monk I seek, the man who would kill the Emperor.’ I did not know whether to feel joy or anger that I had come so close. ‘Sergeant, take him to the palace for the torturers to start their work. Leave six of your men here in case the monk returns.’

As I had hoped, I saw the prisoner Paul go pale when I mentioned the torturers. ‘You will not snare my brother here,’ he protested. ‘He is gone.’

I watched him coolly. ‘Of course you say that. We will see what you say after a month in the dungeons.’

The prisoner went silent and bit his lip; his fingers were now wrapped tight about each other, and his nails gouged white weals in his skin. ‘He is escaped,’ he insisted. ‘I swear it. I saw him yesterday evening, in the forum of Arcadius, and he told me he would be gone by dawn. Whatever you want with him, you will not get it now.’

‘Then we will get it in the dungeon.’

‘But what more could I tell you there?’ The prisoner threw his gaze desperately around the room, beseeching pity, though the watching Patzinaks evinced nothing but menace. ‘He is gone, curse him, and he will not come back. You say he wanted to kill the Emperor, whom I pray to live a thousand years. Maybe he did. He was much changed, my brother, when he came here, and I think evil had blossomed in his heart, but what could I do? I could not bar my brother from my door: he would not let me — and he was my kin. “Do not be slow to entertain wayfarers,” he told me, “for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.”’

I snorted. ‘He was far from an angel.’

‘He did not think so.’ The prisoner Paul shuffled his shoulders a little, trying to smooth out his tunic. ‘How many nights did I listen to him, his sermons of how the empire needed a purifying fire to descend and burn away its withered branches.’ Paul looked at me imploringly. ‘He was not like this when we were young.’

After his earlier silence, the torrent of Paul’s story left so many fragments I could scarce begin to think what to examine first. I settled on the beginning.

‘When you were young,’ I repeated. ‘When was that?’

‘Thirty years ago?’ Paul shrugged. ‘I have not counted. We grew up in the mountains of Macedonia, the sons of a farmer. Michael and I. .’

‘Michael? Your brother’s name is Michael?’

Paul shook his head. ‘It was then. But when I greeted him by it after he returned, he chastised me for it. “I am reborn in Christ,” he said. “And I have taken the name Odo.” After that he insisted I call him by this new, barbarian name.’

Once again the story was flowing away from me. ‘After he returned. . from where? When did he go?’

‘He went not long after he was grown to manhood. He and our father. . disagreed.’

‘Disagreed about what?’

Paul lifted his bound hands and wiped his wrists across his forehead. ‘Our father had arranged a bride for him, but Michael did not want to marry the girl. When my father insisted, Michael refused. Afterwards he left our village and came here, to the queen of cities. He said he would make a pilgrimage to the relics of Saint John the Baptist, and find absolution.’

‘Did he find it?’

‘Not here. He came, but he did not stay. He did not have the means to enjoy all the fruits of the city, and — though he did not say as much — I think he fell in with immoral companions. After he escaped them, his wanderings took him to the ends of the earth, to the lands of the Kelts and the Franks and the other barbarian tribes who cling to the fringes of the world. There he found his salvation.’

‘In the western church?’ No wonder he had taken a barbarian name, after the fashion of his new religion. ‘When was that?’

‘Some time in the past.’ Paul looked at me hopelessly. ‘I heard nothing from him in all those years after he left the village. Everything I know I have from what he told me when he returned. Some three months ago,’ he added, anticipating my inevitable question. ‘He sent no word that he was coming — I did not even know that he knew I was here. I had come much later, after our father died. One day I returned from my work to find Michael — Odo — sitting on a stone by the grocer’s door. I scarcely recognised him, but he knew me immediately and told me he had come to stay with me. How could I refuse?’

‘Did he say what he purposed here?’

‘Never. And after one attempt, I did not ask again. He was always a private man, my brother, and he grew more so in his wanderings. He told me nothing, not even when he would be here. Sometimes he disappeared for days or even weeks, leaving no word, and I thought that perhaps he had gone back to his friends in the west, but then he would return unannounced and demand my hospitality again. Only yesterday did he say that he was going forever. As I told you.’

‘Where was he going?’

‘He did not say.’

I should not have been surprised. ‘Did your brother ever mention any notable men of the city?’ I asked, wondering if I could at least draw some hint as to his masters.

As so often, Paul shook his head, then looked up doubtfully. ‘One evening I rebuked him for eating all my dinner. I had prepared none for him, thinking he would not return that evening. As was his habit, he responded with a bitter harangue on the pre-eminence of his work: he told me that he was employed by a great lord, and lesser men should presume nothing but to make straight his way.’

I kept my tone restrained. ‘Did he say which lord?’

‘Of course not. I assumed he meant the lord God. He often spoke of his calling as the Lord’s avenger, the cleansing flame of the Holy Spirit.’

‘Did he speak of what he would avenge?’

For the first time, I drew from Paul a feeble smile. ‘Constantly. He wanted to cleanse the city of her filth, her heresies, and restore purity to her streets. To him she is Babylon, the great mother of whores and abominations, drunk on the blood of the saints. Michael swore that in the hour of her doom she will be made desolate and naked, her flesh will be devoured and burned with fire, and he will be the agent of this destruction.’ His smile widened a little. ‘If you read the apocalypse of the divine Saint John, you will understand.’

‘I know the apocalypse.’

‘During his years in Rheims, he had somehow been persuaded that this was his proper task.’

‘His years where ?’

‘Rheims, I think he called it. A barbarian town. He spent some time at a school there, and later took orders in its abbey. It is where he was re-baptised as Odo. I do not know where it is.’

I did not know where it was either, but I knew I had heard of it. I thought back to a dusty library and a severe archivist lecturing me on Frankish saints.

‘Did your brother ever speak of a Saint Remigius?’ I asked. ‘Or show you a ring inscribed with that name, mounted with a cracked garnet.’ I reached into my pocket, fumbling for the ring which I had carried with me ever since that day in the forest, as if by holding his totem I might gain some grasp over the monk himself. ‘This ring?’

Impervious to the excitement in my voice, Paul shrugged. ‘He did have a ring, but I did not see it closely. It was red; it may be the one you hold. I glimpsed it only when he washed. He said it was a token of the barbarian town.’