Doctor Who_ Byzantium! - Keith Topping [95]
With the speed and grace of a panther, the trainer was behind Benjamin and a thick length of cord was wrapped around the boy’s neck.
Expertly, Erastus held the two ends of the cord in one giant hand and tightened them, as the boy’s eyes bulged large and white in their sockets and his tongue drooped from his mouth, gagging and flapping like a stranded bird.
With his other hand Erastus grasped the back of Benjamin’s head and, with a minimum of fuss, snapped his neck at the top of the vertebrae, killing him instantly before the garrotte could tighten and strangle the boy to a slow and painful death.
‘I made it quick,’ Erastus told the corpse as it dropped to the ground. ‘Just as you made it quick for your victim. Be thankful that he did not linger or you assuredly, would still be suffering.’
Marinus Topignius approached the dead boy ‘He is a Zealot,’ he told Erastus. ‘He is known to us, as are his affiliations with the criminal Basellas.’
Erastus nodded, still staring at the body.
‘Give him a decent burial,’ he noted. ‘And tell his mother that he died quickly and well.’
In the market-place rumour quickly reached Nikos that the killer had been dealt with before the body of the tax collector had even been removed and the blood cleaned up.
It was a relief to the little stall owner, for he did not appreciate the thought of the murderer returning in the night to silence the loudest witness to his crimes.
He looked again at young Daniel, still staring with a terrified fascination at the corpse of Luke Panathaikos which was even at this moment being picked up by a number of Roman auxiliaries and carried from the square. Nikos followed their progress, reflecting that Luke was now free of all earthly worries. Was he happier now, or in Hades suffering the opening stages of an eternity of torments? Or, as some believe, was Luke now merely dead and gone, his body to be food for worms, with no better (or worse) place awaiting his spirit?
Nikos would like to have debated the philosophical questions concerned with such matters, particularly as, to everyone still around, buying bread seemed to be the furthest thing from their minds. But, when he looked back to the place where Daniel had stood seconds before, the young Christian was gone, having slipped into the forum crowd like a thief into the night.
And thus life and death in Byzantium, to the neutral observer, continued much as it had always done.
People lived, slaves were treated as slaves and accepted their lot accordingly, the Romans ruled to the disgust of some and the acceptance of others. Some people got rich, some people remained poor. And life went on.
Until death ended it.
In the Greek quarter, as the savage heat of the day finally began to exhaust itself, Crispianus Dolavia arrived at the home of the potter, Damien, and his wife, Dorothea, with a view to paying them further for information rendered.
He had been pleased with the last morsel that they had given him – the revelation about the young Briton girl whose presence in the Greek quarter had been a mystery. Last evening, the home of the family with whom she was living had been raided and the girl was now under the protectorate of the forces of Rome.
Soon they would know who she was and from whence she came. And, more importantly, what she was doing in Byzantium.
So Damien and his wife had proved useful, as they had on many occasions past. And Crispianus was grateful to them.
He arrived at the door, his pockets full of coins for them if they could provide him with more of the same.
But something was wrong, the centurion knew that the moment that he rapped on their door and found that it creaked open by itself.
In the bedroom of the Greek house, he found the blood-splattered bodies of the potter and his wife, murdered in their beds.
As he put a hand to his mouth to stop himself from vomiting, Crispianus reflected that such a reaction was most surprising. He had seen death in all of its shades and forms across the empire.