After this lively fiasco had continued for some minutes, for once my luck turned: my violent contortions shook free the knife I had hidden down the wide backpiece of my left boot. I felt it skitter down the side of my leg and heard it drop to the floor.

I cursed again, with greater feeling, as I straightened with an excruciating wrench.

I started to skate about on the floor, searching for my knife. When at last I located the thing my real troubles began. I wriggled sideways, then half onto my back, until after several desperate attempts I managed to nab the knife between the fingers of one hand.

I could probably have managed to cut through the rope round my ankles without losing much of my leg, but unless I had been an acrobat that took me no further to freedom since my hands would remain inaccessible behind my back. Luckily the men who dragged out the ingots had been so exhausted by the time they had finished that they had left the door fractionally ajar. Slithering and bumping I managed to find it from memory, aided by its draught. I wedged the handle of my dagger between the door and its frame. Holding one shoulder against the door, I began the task of cutting through the binding on my hands.

This clever game resulted in much Falco agitation and two cut wrists.

It took a long time and several bouts of apoplexy, but eventually I managed to break free.

LXII

The noise of the Triumph was more subdued, but still distracting, when I emerged.

The yard was of course empty, but I decided to look around. I crossed stiffly to the great door, listened, heard nothing, so squeezed discreetly in. I stopped by the door while my eyes grew accustomed to the shimmering cinnamon haze.

They were still here! Helena Justina, the dimmed light of my battered life, looking almost as jaded as I felt, was sitting on a bale; she seemed unharmed, though she had been tied up. The reason her slippery uncle had not yet absconded was immediately apparent; he was helping himself to sackloads of her top-class peppercorns. Pertinax had been his partner, so I suppose Meto reckoned half fell due to him. He glanced up and spotted me.

“But, sir! I can’t let you rob my client!” I cried.

For one brave instant as Helena looked round what passed between us was no more than lovers’ shared reproach, as if her sense of betrayal gnawed as painfully as mine.

“Oh gods, Falco,” she uttered miserably. “Don’t you ever give up?”

My legs were shaking and my fingers sticky with blood. I had one eye fixed on her uncle and he had his fixed on the sword; it lay across a barrel equidistant from us both. You could tell he was middle class; he was so careless with his tools.