Read Terror of Constantinople for Free Online

with confidence in the future – now seemed a kind of mockery. Of course, I’d bought the place with only myself in mind. But I’d soon got used to the idea of a growing household with me at the head of it. I’d shown Gretel where her quarters would be. I’d ordered furniture for the child and looked into the procedure of buying the right sort of wet nurse.
        Back in the library, I shouted for Authari. ‘Get me an opium pill,’ I told him. ‘I rather hope you’ve not been dipping down those as well. I have a meeting at the Lateran just as soon as the dawn comes up. With time to get down there, I want you to wake me with enough hot water for a bath and my pink robe – the one with brown roses embroidered on the front. For what I’m about to do, I want to look my best.’

4
    I was so angry as I stepped out into the square that I almost missed the flash of steel. But there’s a difference between almost and not at all. Probably before even managing to nick my arm, he had my sword sticking six inches out of his back.
        For a thief, he had the etiquette all wrong. It’s at night, you see, that you kill and then grab. By daylight, you grab and run, and only pull out the knife if you can’t get away. But that was his problem. He was the one on the pavement, gurgling out bloody froth as he sped into the final darkness. Though breathing hard and not altogether with it, I was still on my feet.
        ‘Hey, you can’t do that here!’ It was one of the armed churchwardens, come up beside me. He pointed down at the now dead man, outrage in his voice. ‘This is Church property.’
        He was wrong. I was just outside the Lateran precinct. Here, it was a matter for the Prefect – if for anyone at all.
        But I wasn’t up for debate. And Authari had now lumbered up beside me.
        ‘Fuck off, you!’ he snarled. ‘You leave my master alone – or else.’
        ‘That will do, Authari,’ I said weakly, putting a hand on his sword arm. I wanted no more trouble that morning. Inside the palace, it had been ‘Aelric this’ and ‘Aelric that’ from the Dispensator, who’d almost wet himself at his triumph. He’d been waiting with his – unsigned – letter of clarification for Marcella regarding my ‘marriage’ in Kent, and with his undertaking to act in my place regarding Gretel if I should be delayed past her time of delivery.
        I didn’t fancy another trip into that office. Not over a matter like this.
        ‘But you’re bleeding, Master,’ said Authari.
        I looked down at my forearm. So I was. That had been a savage little knife. It was the sort of weapon that had Murder written all over it. Luckily, the man had got me below the hem of my sleeve. You couldn’t get new silk that year in Rome for love or money.
        Authari pulled me across the square to the side not yet reached by the sun, and sat me on a stone bench. He called for wine and biscuits from one of the hawkers.
        ‘I would have come sooner, Master,’ he explained in a panicky tone. ‘But those friends of his were all about me, jabbering something about His Holiness.’
        He sat down heavily beside me and drank half the wine straight off. While that settled another of the fits of shakes that had made me leave him outside the Lateran, I followed his vague pointing. A hundred yards off, the churchwarden was still fussing over the bloody heap. He’d been joined by a couple of monks. Every so often, he was pointing across at me.
        Over to their left, there was another crowd of those petitioners. Even as I looked, they melted into the smaller alleyways that led from the square.
        Deep beneath the shock and the after-effects of what might have been a shade too much opium, I felt a faint stirring of alarm, and of what now was a creative anger. This wasn’t a matter of thiefly etiquette. The man hadn’t looked at all like a thief. And he’d been far too swarthy for a native: an African,