Whatever it was turned out to be Markham and Roberts, trotting down the street (never run – it draws attention) and casting anxious glances over their shoulders. (You should never look back, either, just concentrate on running away.) The sounds of enraged citizenry were faint, but still pursuing.
Guthrie cursed horribly, stepped out of the doorway, seized them both, and before they knew what was happening, yanked them both into our sheltering doorway.
Both of them looked hot, dusty, and worried. Markham appeared – lumpier – than usual.
Guthrie opened his mouth, but was forestalled by a small phalanx of temple guards trotting past, heads swinging right and left, hands suggestively on their sword hilts. They drew level and then passed on before any of us had time to move.
We gave them a few minutes, and then as the sounds of uproar moved away, emerged back into the street.
‘You,’ I said menacingly to Mr Roberts, ‘belong to me. And I can do with you as I please.’ I turned to Guthrie. ‘Shoot him.’
‘What?’ said Roberts, shocked. He hadn’t worked for me for very long.
‘I’m a woman on the edge. We’ve been here nearly a month. There’s no chocolate left and I’m down to one cup of tea a day. How far do you want to push me?’
Markham, experienced in this sort of situation, plucked at his sleeve, shook his head, and made shut up, shut up, gestures.
I continued. ‘But for the purposes of this exercise, I am abandoning you to Major Guthrie. You …’ turning back to Mr Markham, ‘already belong to him body and soul, so I shall leave you both to his tender mercies.’
Markham shifted his feet. ‘Can I transfer to the history department?’
Guthrie stared coldly. ‘Even the history department is never going to be that desperate. What’s under your tunic?’
With some difficulty, he hauled out a chicken. Who but Markham would have a dead chicken down his tunic? A fine specimen, too. Snowy-white feathers and, in this age of skinny, muscular, long-legged, aggressive chickens – nicely plump.
‘You stole a chicken?’
They said indignantly that they had found it.
‘So you came upon a lone chicken and it died, right in front of you, and you picked it up to give it a proper burial?’
‘Nearly right, sir. It was dead when we found it.’
A nasty feeling enveloped me. You didn’t just find dead chickens lying around. Particularly not chickens of this quality.
‘Where did you find it?’
‘Outside that big white building in the square where the leather worker on the corner sells those things with the …’
‘It’s a temple offering, you pillocks! Someone left it as an offering to the gods. Which you have stolen. Even if Apollo isn’t nocking an arrow even as we speak, there’s any number of hungry temple officials wondering where their supper’s gone. Those guards were looking for the offering. And you. And probably not in that order.’
They looked, if possible, even more dejected than the chicken.
‘Shall we put it back?’
‘You will not, under any circumstances, venture near that temple – any temple at all – clutching a dead chicken.’
Especially one that had been dangling down the front of Mr Markham’s tunic. The phrase ‘The last dead chicken in the shop’ refused to budge from my mind.
Major Guthrie was made of sterner stuff.
‘Your irresponsible behaviour has endangered this mission and everyone here. If either of you could be spared, you would now be on your way back to St Mary’s for Dr Bairstow to deal with.’
They quailed. Roberts, on his first major assignment, looked terrified.
‘Sorry, sir. We didn’t realise. We thought it was just a dead chicken.’
‘We did it for the team,’ added Markham, a past master at averting personal retribution and attempting to stuff the chicken back whence it came.
I averted my eyes. Some sights are not meant to be seen.
‘Latrine duties,’ said Guthrie, a past master at dealing with Mr Markham and unmoved by this personal appeal.
Latrine duties involved emptying the toilets daily, conveying the contents to the latrine pit, carrying out a close inspection in case anyone had dropped anything anachronistic down there (you’d be surprised), and then covering the day’s offerings with a layer of dirt to keep the smell down.
‘For a month,’ I added, getting into the spirit of the thing.
They sagged.
Something unmentionable dipped briefly below Markham’s hem and he hastily hauled things back into place.
I stared intently at a wall and counted the bricks.
With a restraint I could only admire, Guthrie commanded them to leave his sight with all speed.
‘And if either of you are caught, Dr Maxwell and I will disavow any knowledge of your actions.’
They fled. Something I could only hope was the chicken made another unscheduled appearance, swinging briefly between Markham’s legs and then, thank God, they turned a corner and we were finally able to let go.
I dried my eyes on my sleeve and we pulled ourselves together.
‘Did you see their faces?’ said Guthrie with satisfaction. It wasn’t often he got the better of Mr Markham.
‘You have an unsuspected streak of cruelty, Ian.’
‘Yes,’ he said complacently. ‘Yes, I do.’