One for Sorrow (21 page)

Chapter Forty-nine

Old habits die slowly, and John, a veteran of many military encampments, still retained his ability to sleep lightly no matter how strenuous his day. It was a practice that was useful in Constantinople, where a court official camped as near to his enemies as did any soldier on the Persian border.

In sleep, John remained almost consciously alert for sounds of danger. Thus, while the downpour which dowsed the roofs of the city and their many crosses was merely a soothing background noise, a faint rustle in the hall screamed out that someone was making a stealthy approach.

John woke and, moving more silently than the intruder, was positioned behind the door by the time it swung open. His visitor paused. The lamp in the hall had gone out or been extinguished, for the opened door admitted no light into John’s room.

Lightning flickered briefly as the intruder stepped forward, to be greeted with a choke hold.

A choke hold that was quickly released as John felt a woman’s soft hip pressed against his thigh.

“Do you usually welcome ladies in this fashion?” Cornelia gasped, rubbing her throat. She turned to face him, but did not step away.

“Ladies who arrive unannounced at this hour are usually not ladies, and more often than not visit with evil intent.”

“I couldn’t sleep after all the excitement. I thought you might be awake too. I was hoping we might talk.”

She was wearing only a thin sleeping tunic, and John was aware of her breasts brushing his chest. “Of course.”

Cornelia closed the door and sat down uninvited on John’s bed. The ropes holding its cotton-filled mattress creaked under her slight weight. He lit the lamp on the chest by the window and sat down next to her as she looked around.

“Well, John, it seems that despite all your fine gold-embroidered robes and silver goblets and late nights feasting at the palace table, your true tastes remain as simple as ever.”

She laid a delicate hand along his thin face, and looked into his eyes. Her touch made him catch his breath, as it had on the
Anubis
. “Time works swiftly,” she said softly, running her fingers down John’s sunburnt cheek and along the line of his jaw. “You still look much as you did when I first knew you. Remarkably so.”

“So your wish to talk has brought you here at this hour?” John asked, needlessly. He remembered Cornelia had difficulty sleeping and that when sleep refused to come, she liked to talk. He felt inexplicably awkward, a boy from the country again.

Cornelia lowered her voice. “There are too many people within earshot during the day.”

John was aware of the clean smell of her hair. It was achingly familiar.

Cornelia, seeming not to notice the longing look on his face, rushed on. “I see you have a few scars you did not have before.” She touched his chest. “Here, and here. And on your back. Was it as unspeakable as they suggest?” She hesitated. “I am aware of your grievous wound. It is common knowledge. That men should be treated so! May the goddess punish the bastards for what they did!” Her small fist smacked on the coverlet, her voice quavering with rage and distress.

The Lord Chamberlain face grew hot. He realized he was wearing only the loincloth he slept in. Was Cornelia wondering about the other scars that it hid? “There’s no point in looking back, Cornelia. We go on or we die.”

“And good Mithran that you are, you endured. Did you think of me at all, John, through those long years?”

“Often, Cornelia, especially on rainy nights like this.” It was the truth. But he did not reveal how he had tried not to remember, and how he had cursed his inability to forget.

“On rainy nights, I thought of you, too, and prayed to the goddess that you were safe and would come home to us soon. Mark you, sometimes I called down demons on your miserable head. But I did not know…I would never have wished this on you, John. On us…” Her voice was almost drowned by the rain splashing hard against the window panes.

“Europa was talking with Thomas,” John said abruptly, wishing to change the course of the conversation.

Cornelia laughed quietly. “He is harmless enough. Nothing will come of it. We move around, Europa and I. One day, there may be someone who will keep her from traveling. Not yet, I think.”

“I would not keep you here, Cornelia. I am not who I was.”

“Nor I.”

“To look at you, though…” The lamplight was kind to the few wrinkles at the corners of her eyes and the threads of gray in her hair. “Why are you really here, Cornelia?”

“Because it is a rainy night and I wanted to be with you.”

John’s hands moved to her hair. “Silk. It’s just like silk.” He was vaguely aware how foolish and trite he sounded.

“They say the empress sleeps between silk sheets.”

“Between silk vendors, or so it is has been whispered!”

They both laughed.

“And I see,” Cornelia observed, “you no longer sleep naked.”

“Not now.”

“My poor lover.” There was a catch in her voice.

John grasped her hands in his. He felt a sudden need to protect her, although he realized she was no longer the girl he had known but a woman who had made her way in life, with a daughter to shield from harm. “Don’t feel sorry for me, Cornelia. How many die before they ever reach manhood? How many more are ill treated or starved of affection by those they desire? You gave me all the pleasure the gods will allow a man.”

The ropes strung across the old wooden bed-frame had allowed the mattress to sag, bringing their hips together. The rising wind lashed rain against the dark diamond panes of the window and sent drafts through cracks around its frame. In the gathering chill, John could feel the warmth radiating from her body.

“I have some wine here,” he said, taking the clay cup from the chest and placing it in her hands.

She took a sip and coughed. “Your taste in wine is still terrible.”

“You sweetened it for me once, remember?”

“I still can.”

She moved closer and John again tasted the sweet heat of her mouth. He sank into it, thin hands tracing the still familiar contours of her warmth and softness.

He pulled away. “It is just the same as in my memory at least.” He was afraid she was about to cry. “Do you remember that cup?” She was still holding it. “I don’t suppose you would recognize it. A plain clay cup. Peter has wondered aloud on more than occasion why, with that crack in it, I insist on using it when I’m alone. I wonder what he would think if he knew that I had had it made specially?”

Cornelia looked puzzled.

“It is because it is identical to the one we had when we were with the troupe,” John explained. “Because your lips had touched its twin when I first knew you.”

Cornelia smiled. “I do remember, John. And now I think on it, I also remember how you almost broke it when you knocked it off the table that time when…”

“As I recall, it was you.”

Cornelia reached down abruptly and pulled her tunic over her head. She was naked.

“Cornelia, I can’t.”

“I know. I just wanted you to see me, John. Just look at me, lover. Or am I hurting you?”

John shook his head.

The rain beating on the window was washing away the sorrows of all the years, leaving only Cornelia. Cornelia of the silken hair, Cornelia of the small, firm breasts.

She looked at the cloth around his hips.

“No,” he said. “I cannot….”

She rose and put out the lamp. The acrid smell of smoke mixed with her scent. “There, John. I won’t look or touch. I just want us to be together.”

He reached down, hesitant even in the darkness, and undid the garment.

She pulled him down on to the mattress and they lay together, joined at thigh, hip, chest, and mouth, intersections of warmth in the chilly room.

He tasted her mouth again. She moved against his lean frame, her body forgetting what her mind knew.

Suddenly she rolled to one side, apologizing.

He leaned over her. “Why should you be sorry? It always gave me the most pleasure, knowing you wanted me. But I’m afraid nature makes young men much too impetuous. I loved you then as a boy might, for myself. Now, I can love you as a man.”

He kissed her deeply again. His slim fingers found that the language of his lover’s body had not changed. Rain sheeted rhythmically at the window. His mouth finally left hers and moved downward.

By the time Cornelia awoke, the sun had long since risen over the newly-washed city. John was gone, having left her a single lily, the royal flower of Crete. It was balanced precariously in the cracked cup on the chest by the window.

Chapter Fifty

John sensed that time was running out.

As he sat in his study in the harsh light of morning, pondering what to do next, he felt that he could actually see the water steadily descending in the bowl of the water clock.

The identity of Leukos’ murderer remained elusive.

John decided to start over at the beginning.

The alley where he had stumbled on Leukos’ body.

Sunlight glinted sullenly off puddles left by the storm. Remembering the rainy night, he thought of Cornelia, even in this sordid place while on such a grim task.

John followed his shadow down the alley. The buildings rising on either side seemed to sag inwards. Overhead only a crack of sky showed. He stopped and scanned his surroundings.

A puddle gleamed where Leukos had lain. It turned John’s thoughts to that night and he remembered the cobbles under Leukos’ body had been dry.

If Leukos had been stabbed there and left to die, there should have been more blood. But if Leukos had not died there, then where had he been murdered?

A sound from above caught his attention. John looked up. Two stories up was the shuttered tenement window which had opened briefly the night he had found Leukos dead.

***

Maera had pulled the shutters closed abruptly. Her heart leapt. It wasn’t possible to get a breath of morning air any longer. What kind of place had Sabas brought her to, this filthy city where you couldn’t even open your own window without some awful shock?

At least it wasn’t a corpse this time. But for what good reason would a gentleman—and surely he was a gentleman, judging by his expensive robes and boots, even a country girl could tell that—for what good reason would such a person linger in an alley examining the ground under Maera’s window? Right where she emptied the chamber pot.

Her husband Sabas, lying sprawled on a pallet by the wall, erupted in a series of gasping snores. There was barely room for him to stretch out. His eyelids fluttered but did not open.

Maera heard a footstep in the hallway and her heart thudded harder.

“No,” she pleaded, “No.” But even as she began to pray there came an imperative knock on the door. What to do? There was no escape. Again there was a knock. The door had no lock anyway.

Maera pulled it open a crack. She was trembling. It was the man from the alley. Closer, he looked even more elegant, tall and smooth-skinned. Not one who worked with his hands.

A hundred thoughts ran through Maera’s mind. She had never had so many thoughts before she came to this place. Perhaps he was coming to help Sabas, perhaps he was coming to take him away. Or perhaps they were to be thrown out for not paying their rent.

“May I come in?”

The request was surprising. The voice was less imposing, gentler, than its master.

She looked around, unsure of what to say. Sabas’ pallet occupied most of the floor space. The close room smelled of sickness. The gentleman stepped inside anyway.

She remembered she was clothed only in the thin, stained tunic in which she had slept.

“I’m sorry to disturb you. I am John, Lord Chamberlain to Justinian.”

Lord Chamberlain? To the emperor? In this place? Surely the city had driven her mad. Yet why should she doubt him? His robes were hemmed in gold. He could have been Justinian himself or the patriarch. Maera instinctively shrunk away.

“I want to ask you a few questions,” John continued quietly. “Your window overlooks the spot where a body was discovered.”

Had he come to accuse her? “I don’t know anything about it,” she stammered.

“This has nothing to do with you or your husband. What is your name?”

“Maera.” It stuck in her throat like a stringy scrap of meat.

“And your husband?”

“Sabas.”

“Maera, did you see anything strange on the night of the festivities?”

Maera’s expression must have given her away, because John’s eyes narrowed. “You did see something, didn’t you?”

Maera bit her lip.

“You looked out and saw something in the alley. What did you see?”

“Oh, sir, it was just as you said. I was going to empty the…But there was a dead man. Looking right up at me.”

Sabas groaned and one arm slapped bonelessly at John’s leg. Maera felt faint, but the gentleman seemed not to notice.

“Did you look out again?”

Maera shook her head.

“And before? Did you open the window at any time before you saw the dead man?”

Maera nodded. The Lord Chamberlain was looking at her, his face stern. She forced herself to speak. “It was dark in the alley. At first I thought it must be demons lurching along, stumbling and falling against the walls. Then I saw it was just two men, intoxicated, holding each other up. Quiet though, not like most who have drunk too much. And then I wondered again if they were really men or if I’d been right the first time and they were demons.”

“What made you think of demons, Maera?”

“They were masked. Terrible bird-headed things. They must have been masks, don’t you think? Or else they must have been demons.”

“There’s nothing uncommon about masked drunkards wandering the street during celebrations,” John reassured her. “I saw quite a few myself that night. Was your window open during the day?”

“I usually keep it open but I don’t look out much. There’s nothing I care to see, sir. Just men using the side door of that house. And sometimes beasts that can’t be bothered to get inside first.”

“Did you know a girl was killed there recently?”

Maera paled. “It does not surprise me that someone working at such a trade would come to grief, God rest her soul. I shall pray for her.”

“You have seen nothing unusual these past few days?”

“No.”

“And you are certain you didn’t see a well-dressed man pass by on the night of the celebrations? Completely bald, pale, older?” John made a final attempt to refresh the woman’s memory.

Maera tried to remember.

A voice startled her.”I saw such a man.”

Sabas.

He had not spoken since his fellow workmen carried him back to her.

She knelt down beside him, taking his hand in hers. “Sabas!” For the first time she felt hope. He would live.

“Where did you see him?” John bent down to inquire softly.

“The Church of the Holy Wisdom.” The words came in a hoarse whisper.

“My husband is a laborer,” explained the woman. “He fell from the scaffolding. They thought he was as good as dead. It was a miracle he survived.”

“Did this man come to see the church?” John bent closer to catch the mumbled answer.

“No. No. I would never have noticed, there’s so many people there. But sometimes I work late or very early. I usually work high up in the dome. You can look out the openings where the light comes in and see as far as the city walls, and down into the patriarch’s garden, into the guarded way that leads to the private entrance of his palace. It is always kept well lit. A bald man used to go in that way at strange hours.”

“To the patriarch’s private quarters? Was he alone?”

But Sabas’ eyes closed again and he lapsed back into unconsciousness.

Maera’s lips trembled. “Sabas! Sabas!” She turned tear-filled eyes to the Lord Chamberlain and saw compassion for her husband’s terrible injuries. “We’ll go back to the country when he’s healed.” she cried wildly. “I’d prefer he laid up stone walls than churches, if this is how God rewards poor workmen.”

“He is alive, Maera. That is the important thing. No matter his injuries, he is alive.”

Maera saw two gold coins in the Lord Chamberlain’s palm. She had never seen even one such coin before.

“Here. There is a physician across from the palace gate. His name is Gaius.”

“We are poor people,” she protested.

“You are less poor now. Gaius will take one of these and heal your husband. Don’t pay more. If he is intoxicated, go back when he’s himself again.”

Maera was transfixed by the coins. How could she take them? Weren’t they part of the city which had so hurt her husband? She shook her head.

“Take them, Maera,” John said gently. “I have many more. More than I can possibly spend in ten lifetimes.”

“I can’t. I can’t take them from you.”

“They are not from me. Consider that they came from heaven.”

Maera took the coins in trembling hands. When the Lord Chamberlain had departed, she saw that indeed, though they bore the likeness of Justinian on one side, on their reverse they bore a cross.