Seven for a Secret (22 page)

Chapter Forty-One

A sound caused John to look up from the automaton lying at his feet.

He was not alone atop the stylite column.

A man emerged from the trapdoor leading to the stairs.

John recognized the acolyte who had advised him that Lazarus would not speak of anything but heaven.

“You are the man who claimed to be from the emperor,” the acolyte said in the same raspy tone John recalled from their brief conversation in the square.

“You deceived me,” John stated, indicating the metal figure. “Explain.”

“I told you Lazarus would tell you nothing. That was the truth. Yet you still sought to violate a holy man’s solitude.”

“You indicated Lazarus was not concerned with what the emperor might order done to him,” John replied. “I can see you were perfectly truthful about that as well. But can you say the same of yourself?”

The acolyte blanched. “I am not Lazarus. Flesh is weak.”

John glanced down at the metal figure. The joints which would enable arms, legs, and mouth to move were cunningly wrought.

He had recently seen a similar mechanism among Troilus’ antiquities and curiosities.

Like Troilus’ automaton, this one wore armor. It was odd attire for a holy man, but it would not be noticeable from the square.

“Lazarus here was not one given to human weaknesses,” John remarked. “What is your name?”

“I gave up my name when I came to serve Lazarus.”

The garment the acolyte wore was too large for him. The skin of his hands appeared weathered when they emerged from his overly long sleeves.

“Your name?” John ordered.

“In my former life it was Stephen,” the other admitted.

A swirling breeze carried the smell of fresh bread from a bakery hidden in the welter of buildings laid out below them. The shadow of the column sliced across the square. John could see the tops of pedestrians’ heads as they hurried by without looking up.

Few paid attention to stylites apart from their followers and the occasional pilgrim. Those men perched atop pillars were always there, part of the city landscape, like the statuary lining the streets.

John half expected the other to rush at him suddenly. There was little space between them on the small platform. The iron railing was low and insecure and the ground was a long way down.

It would be an easy matter to arrange an accident.

“Where was this automaton obtained?” John asked.

“I can’t say,” came the reply. “I found it up here.”

John gave him a stony stare.

“No, it’s the truth,” the acolyte protested. “It’s been many years since then. I’m not sure how many. My days are all the same. One morning when I came up here, Lazarus was gone. This metal creature had taken his place. Perhaps it was a miracle?”

“You don’t really think so.” It was not a question.

Stephen bent his head. “No.”

“Now explain to me how you came to be spending your time shifting an automaton around on top of a pillar. I observed Lazarus outside his shelter, or so I thought. I assume that was your intent?”

“Yes. I moved him in and out of the shelter and stood him in different places. People don’t look very hard at stylites.”

“But someone might eventually notice if the pillar remained unoccupied?”

“Yes,” the other acknowledged. “And also the pilgrims would have been disappointed.”

“Not to mention you would have been without employment,” John pointed out.

“I can’t deny it. Yet it seemed to me the Lord must have left the automaton here for a reason. In that way, it was a miracle. If God had simply wanted to call Lazarus to his reward, I would have found the top of the column empty. As his acolyte I felt it was my duty to continue his good works.”

The fact that a holy man might appear to remain motionless for much of the day would not be at all unusual, John realized. The mortification of the body that many of them practiced included standing in one position for hours. He suspected they endured their harsh existence by remaining in a self-induced stupor much of the time. “How did you come to hold your position, Stephen?”

“Through the grace of God. When I was a boy I found myself living in the streets. I don’t know why. I don’t even remember my parents. One day I stole a leg of lamb. As I raced off, delighted by my cleverness, a huge black dog came loping after me.”

The acolyte looked down into the square. “It was Satan in the shape of a dog. I should have given the beast what it wanted, but the lamb tempted me. I was hungry, I’d been eating what I could find in the gutters, dead fish that had washed ashore, that sort of thing. So I ran, foolish child that I was. You can’t run from Satan. That monstrous dog savaged me. I should have died, but that was not the Lord’s plan. The man who served Lazarus at the time found me bleeding in an alley. He’d grown feeble with age and needed a helper. After I healed I assisted him.”

“And you eventually took his place?”

Stephen nodded. “He died a year or so after he rescued me. I had learned my duties by then. They’re simple enough. I arrange the offering baskets in front of the column in the morning and keep beggars away from them. Lazarus shared edibles with me and I bought more with the coins left by pious pilgrims.”

“And now you do not need to share the offerings,” John observed.

“There are far fewer than there used to be. Scarcely enough for me to keep body and soul together. Fewer pilgrims visit these days and they are usually older. Whatever fame Lazarus had in his native land, a fame which at one time drew people to this city, has faded away. Those who witnessed his works and were inspired by his teachings, before he journeyed here and mounted this column so as to give his earthly husk over to God, are gone. Even their children are gray and bent, as are most of those who heard him preach from where we stand.”

John suggested that Lazarus had simply decided to leave.

“No,” said the acolyte. “His legs were all but paralyzed from living in such a confined space, and besides, they were so deformed from disease and hardship he would have had to be carried down the stairs. He couldn’t have walked away unaided.”

John looked down once more at the soldier with the gleaming metal face, hands frozen in eternal prayer.

Stephen stepped over to the railing, put a hand on it, and gazed out across the city. “Lazarus was not like other men. Perhaps…” His voice was unsteady. It had been a shock discovering John up here, finding his secret had been uncovered after so many years. What would he do now if John chose to make his deception known?

John had climbed to the top of column in search of a missing boy and learned instead of a stylite who had vanished just as mysteriously. “How long ago did Lazarus disappear?”

“As I said, all my days are the same. The seasons blend into one another. It might have been ten years ago.”

“Did you have any forewarning? Did anything unusual happen before the automaton appeared up here?”

“Only that Lazarus stayed in his shelter for a long time. That’s why I finally decided to investigate. I thought he might be dying. Or dead.”

“You didn’t communicate with him regularly?”

The other shook his head. “Lazarus said little. The man I replaced described the sermons Lazarus had once given. He knew them word for word, hearing them every day. He could recite them like a pagan can recite Homer. Lazarus painted the most glorious vision of heaven, but as the years went by he fell silent. Sometimes he talked to the Lord, but his words made no sense to me.”

John thought anyone’s humors would become unbalanced after perching atop a column for years. He could understand why the acolyte had not wanted to simply take the holy man’s place. “How long did he remain in this shelter before you decided to investigate?”

“A week or two. Lazarus sometimes retreated into his shelter to meditate for long periods. In the evenings, as usual, I sent baskets of food up by means of the rope and pulley you see attached to the railing and in the mornings the baskets were returned empty. So far as I knew he was avoiding the sun while he pondered. They say there are those who worship the sun rather than the Lord. He used to denounce them most vehemently. But then several days passed and the basket I had sent up remained up here, untouched.”

The sun whose worship the stylite had abhorred, and John had embraced, had begun its daily descent. Two moving shadows—low flying gulls—swept across the platform.

“And what did you do when you found the automaton in your master’s place?”

“I thought it must be a miracle. Yet the world seemed the same. The city still stretched around me. I could hear gratings being pulled up in front of shops, dogs barking, see the ships on the water moving, just as always. If I had witnessed a miracle wouldn’t the world feel different?”

The acolyte sighed before going on. “Then I feared some villains had abducted Lazarus. For all I knew they might have been trying to extort money from the Patriarch or even the emperor.”

John thought that if that was the case they would have soon and in a very painful manner learnt their error. He said he would have been surprised to learn that this had been the case.

“But he was a holy man and the Patriarch and Justinian would be concerned about his welfare,” Stephen said. “The kidnappers would have left the automaton there so as not to draw attention to the fact that Lazarus was missing, and yet, if they sought to benefit from his kidnapping, they had to announce he was gone. I soon realized such actions were contradictory and dismissed the notion. Then it occurred to me he might simply have been murdered. The Blues and Greens are often involved in mayhem. One of them might have killed Lazarus for the sheer enjoyment of it. Or perhaps they were blasphemers who wished to see if he would return to life as did his namesake.”

His own words seemed to upset the acolyte. His rasping voice quavered. “Or it may be a thief suspected Lazarus had been offered valuables which could be stored up here. Whoever killed him left the automaton so that no one would notice for a time.”

John nodded. “The longer the time that passed, the smaller likelihood of the culprit being caught.”

“That was my thought. Then when some weeks had gone by and nothing happened I decided to continue Lazarus’ ministry. There’s nothing more I can tell you.”

John looked down at the automaton again. It resembled the one he had seen in Troilus’ shop. On the other hand, he had purchased much of his stock from Menander. Might both have been in Menander’s collection about the time the boy purporting to be Theodora’s son had escaped?

If only everyone kept as precise a track of time as Helias the sundial maker.

John moved toward the trapdoor. “If it is necessary for me to question you again, where can I find you?”

“Here at this column. I have no home. I usually sleep in a doorway.” The acolyte clasped his hands together in distress. “What is to become of me? What will you do?”

“You have no need to fear, Stephen. There are no laws against moving automatons around,” John replied as he swung himself down through the trapdoor.

Chapter Forty-Two

Had the automaton on the pillar come from Menander’s collection?

Menander could no longer answer the question.

However, Alba, the pious woman John had interviewed at the hospice, had mentioned she’d first known Menander when they were both newly exiled from the palace.

The flooded alley leading to the wooden tenement behind the Church of the Mother of God had dried out. Tracks of foraging dogs and feral cats criss-crossed the hardened mud. The rent collector sat in the same place at the bottom of the rickety stairs. After John spoke to her and went up she made the usual charcoal mark on the wall.

This afternoon Alba was not at the hospice. She met John at the door of her cell-like room on the top floor of the tenement.

“You tell me Menander’s room has been emptied of his possessions, Lord Chamberlain?”

“Whoever was responsible left the door open. They didn’t leave behind so much as a cobweb. You didn’t notice anything?”

“No. It would have been better for Menander if he had put aside his earthly goods long ago. Now I fear the weight of them has dragged his eternal soul down into the fires of hell. Let us pray that the Lord will show him mercy.”

Alba wore the same black attire as at the hospice, the veil fastened under her chin so that only her bone white face showed. She let John into the room and sat on the edge of a low cot. “Please make yourself comfortable, Lord Chamberlain. I can offer you nothing better than a stool. I do not entertain visitors.” She spoke with the well bred tones of a woman raised at court. It was the sort of voice that usually invited one into lavish reception halls or beautiful private apartments.

John sat down near the brazier. His knees almost touched the cot. Through the room’s single window he could see the brick wall of the church, an arm’s breadth away. A window there gave a glimpse of a wall where vestments hung from pegs.

“Alba, you told me that you tried to persuade Menander of the error of his ways. Did you ever see his collection?”

“Only once. He insisted. I have no interest in such vanities but I did not want to be impolite.”

“Do you recall any automatons? Men made of metal?”

“Indeed I did. How could I forget such monstrous works of blasphemy? An artist may depict a man in stone or bronze or bits of colored glass. Such things are clearly meant to be nothing more than representations. To seek to mimic the living flesh with metal that moves…that is to pretend to a creation that is God’s alone.” Her tone remained even but her pale, unlined face tightened as she spoke.

John asked her how many automatons she had seen.

“Two, Lord Chamberlain. They were a pair. They represented the martyred saints Sergius and Bacchus. Whatever beast created such a mockery of those devout soldiers will burn beside Menander.”

Then the automaton on the pillar had almost certainly come from Menander’s collection by way of Troilus’ shop.

John’s gaze went to Alba’s window and to the diamond paned window of the church beyond. A ray of light falling through the narrow gap between church and tenement gleamed on the silver embroidery on the vestments hanging there.

“I understand you have devoted yourself to religious works, Alba. I have seen you laboring at the hospice. There is a stylite in a square not far from here. His name is Lazarus. Do you know anything about that holy man?”

John saw Alba’s sharp intake of breath. “How remarkable that you should ask! But then we are often guided by an invisible hand. It was what I saw in that very square that saved me. I had hoped it might save Menander as well, but it did not, for my words fell on stony ground.”

She sighed. “Lord Chamberlain, I sense you do not worship the one true God, or perhaps you simply do not call Him by His rightful name. Yet you are a spiritual man. You will appreciate that wisdom can come to us in dreams and visions such as I have had. Things that seem unreal to those who are not spiritual by nature, who are bound to the earth, have their own reality to we who are willing to acknowledge and commune with them.”

John recalled her earlier mention of visions and asked her to explain her comments.

“It was a miracle. A message from God. They are not uncommon, you know, but we usually do not recognize them for what they are. That was true of what I witnessed that morning. Only afterward did I understand.”

“When did this event take place?”

“It must have been ten years ago. I regret to say I had not yet reconciled myself to my new life. I still lamented my fallen state, not realizing what a blessing it was. I was on my way to market. The sun had risen and was bathing God’s great works in glorious light, yet all I could see was the dining room I’d left behind, the silver plates, the painted vineyards on its walls. All I could think of was how I had been transformed into one of my own servants, treading the morning streets with a basket.”

She sighed. “But I felt worse off than my servants. I had sent them out in search of the finest ducks and freshest greens, newly caught fish, the best fruits, fresh baked bread. But I would be fortunate to be able to purchase a hard bit of cheese or a dried out parsnip or two to choke down in the solitude of this poor room.”

Alba smiled and shook her head. “How foolish I was then, Lord Chamberlain. How many there are in this city who would thank the Lord to have such a fine room as this and coins enough for both parsnips and cheese.”

“That is true enough,” John agreed. “What was this miracle that opened your eyes?”

“I saw a boy drawn straight up to heaven.”

“From the square where Lazarus lives?”

Alba nodded. “I had just entered it when I heard a commotion. Shouts, the sound of running footsteps. I drew back against the closed grating of a shop that had yet to open. I was trembling in terror for I was not inured to the sudden storms that sweep the streets outside the palace walls.”

“Into the square raced a boy. He staggered as if exhausted. He reached the column upon which Lazarus stands and collapsed. I didn’t know what to do. He might have been a criminal or an innocent pursued by ruffians. He looked back the way he’d come. The shouts from that direction grew louder. Then he vanished behind the column.”

“There is a door in its base,” John said.

“Yes. I saw that, later. But just then a number of palace guards burst into the square, swords drawn. Understand, Lord Chamberlain, that what I have described took no more than an instant. They raced across the square and disappeared from view. I remained where I was, afraid to move. Fearful that they‘d spot me and think I could tell them about the boy. After a short time some of the guards reappeared and went off down other streets that ran into the square. A little later, when everything was quiet, I continued on my way. I noticed that there were still guards prowling about and one was posted in the square when I returned from market with my cheese. There hadn’t been a bunch of parsnips I could afford.”

John shifted uncomfortably on the low stool. His long legs had begun to cramp. “Surely that wasn’t a miracle, Alba? The boy obviously hid himself inside the pillar. I admit it may have been a miracle the guards didn’t think to investigate that possibility.”

“The Lord clouded their eyes and their thoughts,” Alba replied.

“On the other hand,” John replied, “the guards might have believed the boy had outdistanced them. A stylite’s pillar is not something one thinks of as affording shelter. Holy men occupy them and they aren’t of any use to anyone else. We tend not to notice things that are of no use to us. But why did you consider the foiling of the boy’s pursuit a miracle?”

“Because he vanished, Lord Chamberlain. He was drawn up to heaven, as I said. The next day, Lazarus sat in his shelter as usual, and ever since Lazarus has emerged from time to time just as he always did. But the boy has never been seen again.”

“The boy merely waited for the guards to leave, then emerged. There are numerous places to hide in the city, after all.”

Alba shook her head. “That would not have been possible. There were guards posted in the square for several days. And after they had gone, others returned more than once to ask questions. I made inquiries of the shopkeepers all around. No one had glimpsed this boy except me, nor did anyone ever see him again.”

“You were interested enough to inquire?”

“Because I sensed that what I had seen held a message for me, Lord Chamberlain. Miracles are happening all the time, but only those to whom they are addressed notice them.”

The ray of light which had illuminated the vestments visible in the church had shifted so that it slanted in through the narrow window of Alba’s room. It cut across the end of the cot on which she sat and over the brazier before tracing a line of orange fire up the wall where there hung a elaborate, jeweled cross fit for a palace.

“Isn’t the message clear? A boy is pursued by guards from the palace. He ascends a pillar and afterward there is no boy there but only the holy stylite. Does it not demonstrate how those pursued by wealth and power may yet escape if they forsake the earth and choose instead to rise up to heaven? It was a sign telling me I had not been condemned to a hard life outside the palace walls, but rather had been granted freedom from the wealth and privilege which bars our entry to the Kingdom of Heaven. My soul had escaped. I tried to explain this to Menander. He laughed and said he would have had to see it with his own eyes. Sadly, I do not think his eyes would have been capable of seeing.”

John rose stiffly from his stool. “Do you have any idea who this boy was?”

Alba shook her head. “No. I was afraid to inquire too closely of friends from the palace after what had happened to my father.”

John did not ask what that had been, or who her father had been or what office he had held. He offered her a few coins for her information. She refused, until he persuaded her that charitable works could be accomplished and accepted them with a blessing on him.

The shaft of light which had illuminated the room began to fade. John could not help asking a final question. He indicated the jeweled cross. “That is the sort of artifact that would have been in Menander’s collection. Did he give it to you perhaps?”

“No, Lord Chamberlain,” came the reply with a smile. “It has been in my room for as long as I can remember, since when I was a little girl. I cannot bear to part with it.”