Six for Gold (18 page)

Chapter Thirty-seven

From the flat roof of the guest house the oasis appeared as a choppy sea of palm fronds, interrupted by fields outlined by irrigation ditches and the few dusty streets of Mehenopolis. Beyond, dun-colored desert sands shimmered in the heat.

“I was happy we slept up here last night,” Cornelia said to John. “The stars were magnificent. We’ll have to continue sleeping on the roof. It’ll be like old times, lying together beneath the heavens.”

“Not exactly like old times.” John had turned on his stool to face the upthrust cliff of the Rock of the Snake.

“We can only be what we are. If we spent our time regretting the endless things we’re not, we’d never do anything else. I found this philosophy most helpful when Europa was difficult to manage.”

John stared fixedly toward the ruined temple. “Our daughter is the best reason we have to return to Constantinople as soon as possible.”

“Thomas can take care of her.”

John turned his gaze away from the rock outcropping. He had erred in not explaining the situation to Cornelia immediately, when he spoke to her on the ship. His first thought had been to protect her peace of mind. It had been a misjudgment he had not been able to bring himself to correct. Now it was time.

She listened in silence while he told her how he had followed Thomas, discovered him in the Hippodrome next to the senator’s body, instructed him to flee, and then drawn the excubitors away.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you everything,” John concluded. “I thought it would be simpler, for all of us, if I kept it to myself.”

Knowing Cornelia, John feared she might be angry.

“Why would Thomas kill a senator?” was all she said.

“He didn’t. The matter was deliberately arranged to make him appear guilty.”

John explained how he had seized the opportunity to create a pretext for the emperor to exile him without raising undue suspicion.

She leaned over and kissed him.

He looked at her in surprise.

Cornelia laughed. “Now, John, admit it. Your first thought in the Hippodrome was to save Europa’s husband, wasn’t it?”

“Thomas is a reckless fool!” John paused and then smiled faintly. “Then again I was a reckless fool once myself. If I’d not insisted on seeking out silks for you and thereby strayed into Persian territory, if I hadn’t been captured and taken away…”

“We would have long since quarreled bitterly and gone our separate ways, young hotheads that we were,” Cornelia said firmly.

John was silent. Again his gaze went toward the ruins atop the outcropping thrusting up into the brilliant blue sky. “Melios is frantic over this latest death. He’s now talking about using the banquet he planned to officially announce that he’s entering a monastery.”

Before Cornelia could reply, Peter climbed up through the trapdoor to the roof, bearing a platter of fruit.

“I apologize for the meager fare, master. I fear tonight I’ll only be able to serve the remains of yesterday’s evening meal, as it’s difficult for me to cook right now.”

As Peter put his burden down on the rooftop beside them, they saw his hands were covered with huge blisters.

“Did you burn yourself?” Cornelia asked with quick concern.

Peter reddened. “I was careless while preparing a meal, mistress. I’ve obtained a healing salve from Hapymen. He also kindly provided this fruit for you. Hypatia often claimed melons are plumper and grapes more succulent here than anywhere else, and going by these examples, I believe she’s correct.”

Cornelia sampled a few grapes and said she agreed.

“Though I must say, mistress, I have not been impressed with some of the vegetables. The lettuce, for example…and the onions too,” the elderly servant rushed on. “The larger ones have a tendency to develop too strong a flavor. Hapymen cautioned me before I cooked them and just as well. Otherwise the entire dish would have been ruined. As you see, their juice irritated my skin very badly.”

“You’ll be back to your pots and spoons before your fire gets cool,” Cornelia said.

Peter hesitated. “Master, could it be—”

“No, it’s nothing to do with magick,” John reassured him quickly.

A subdued rumbling caught their attention. From their elevated position they could see a cart bearing the body of a sheep trundling toward the gate of the estate.

“Is it the poor beast that died last night?” Cornelia wondered.

“It must be,” John confirmed. “Melios said he intended to send it to the pilgrim camp.”

“Nothing is allowed to go to waste in an oasis,” Cornelia observed. “Not even a sheep done to death by magick. All those amulets and the protective garland you described didn’t do it much good, did it?”

Without replying, John leapt to his feet and vanished through the trapdoor.

He sprinted outside, ran past two naked children playing in the dirt, and hailed the driver of the cart.

The driver halted at John’s command, and watched him as, without a word, he began to examine the garland of wilted flower and greenery still encircling the dead sheep’s neck.

As he suspected, several squill bulbs had been halved and were tightly attached to the underside of the collar, arranged so that their cut sides pressed against the sheep’s throat.

Chapter Thirty-eight

On his way to the Hormisdas Palace to seek out Bishop Crispin, Anatolius was forced to dodge out of the way of a cart full of plague victims.

He was startled by the laboring donkey as he approached a bend in the wide path, where overgrown shrubbery blocked his view. He stepped back into a bed of herbs. The fragrance rose around him but failed to mask the odor of death as the cart creaked past, drawing with it the usual cloud of glistening flies.

The dead were not stacked in a jumble of limbs but neatly laid out, each granted the relative dignity of its own space.

Perhaps it was because they had all died on the palace grounds.

Deaths had become fewer, but whether that was because the plague was ebbing or due to the much reduced population, no one could say. Many who had survived this long had become used to its presence and thought of the plague as they did of death itself, a visitor who would call on them eventually—but probably not today.

The driver offered no greeting. A sunken-eyed, expressionless man with waxen skin, he was distinguishable from the corpses in his cart mostly because he was upright.

As the cart jolted away, a scrap of jewelry fell off the back, glittering momentarily in the sunlight. It landed not far from where Anatolius stood. He stepped back onto the path and picked it up.

It was a silver earring, rimmed with chips of red glass and inset with a delicate, enameled rose.

Anatolius contemplated it as he walked on. What would be the use in returning the earring to its dead owner? Whatever beauty it might have graced had been withered by death. Why had she worn it the day she died? Was it a favorite piece? A gift from someone she had loved? Was he dead too? What about the silversmith who had created the jewelry? Or had it been an heirloom?

Was there anyone left alive to whom the scrap of silver, glass, and enamel meant something, Anatolius wondered, or had its story been swept away by the plague, like so many others?

“Salutations, sir.”

The greeting startled him.

“Hypatia!”

John’s former gardener stood beside an unruly cluster of shrubbery, a pair of shears in her hand, staring at him with bemusement.

“My lack of hair and peacock-infested garment is a long story, Hypatia,” Anatolius said with a smile. “They’ve served me well today, however, because I thought it prudent to take a back way through the grounds and thereby have found you.”

The Egyptian servant’s tawny skin looked browner than he remembered. She must have been spending her days in the sun.

“I see you were able to get your old job back,” he went on.

“It wasn’t difficult, sir. Look at the overgrown state the gardens are in! Today I’m supposed to cut back the Golden Gate here, before it closes completely.”

Only now that she mentioned it did Anatolius realize the shrubbery had been pruned to resemble the great gate of Constantinople. The shortage of gardeners, not a besieging army, had reduced it to ruin.

Anatolius took a last look at the earring in his hand and gently tossed it into the shrubbery forming the gate.

Hypatia gave him a quizzical look.

“Something I noticed in the path. I didn’t want anyone stepping on it.”

“How is mistress Europa, sir?”

“She’s managing well enough,” Anatolius replied after a slight hesitation. “Thomas is away. Europa and I are living elsewhere right now. I ought to warn you, Hypatia, Hektor’s succeeded in taking John’s house.”

Hypatia’s hand tightened around the handle of her shears. “I’m extremely sorry to hear that.”

“Believe me, Hypatia, it will be only a temporary situation. I hope you’ll come back when everything’s been straightened out. We all hope you’ll return.”

Hypatia began to clip the shrubbery energetically, even violently, or so it seemed to Anatolius. “I have heard the Lord Chamberlain is dead, sir. Is it true?”

“Just loose tongues idly wagging. How can anyone know what is happening so far away?”

Leaves and twigs flew, but the servant made no reply.

***

Bishop Crispin met Anatolius in a corridor near the front of the Hormisdas.

“Back again, my garishly garbed friend? Apparently you are in a great hurry to join whatever god it is you worship.”

The corridor was made nearly impassable by boards leaning against its walls and further obstructed by bundles of belongings where Theodora’s assorted heretics had constructed shelters or simply laid claim to space, like street beggars. The stench was nearly as bad as that rising from the cart Anatolius had seen not long before.

“It would be as well I don’t take that journey until you’ve heard what I have to say, or I can guarantee you’ll be following me shortly.” Anatolius had to raise his voice to be heard over the unintelligible chanting of a hirsute fellow in a bright yellow loincloth sitting nearby.

“You are clearly deranged, young man. Your threats are but empty words. Still, I am bound to listen to those who seek an audience.”

He grabbed Anatolius’ elbow and directed him through an archway to an atrium whose walls were lined with classical statues, and beyond that into what had once been a series of private baths. The walls which had separated baths from changing rooms and exercise areas had been torn down, leaving an empty marble box illuminated by light from the apertures in several domes. Former rooms were marked by the marble benches, tables and statuary which had been left sprouting incongruously from the floor. Many of these traces of former glory formed the basis for the same sort of crude dwellings to be seen in the corridor. Some enterprising lodgers had made homes out of the dry bath basins by laying boards over them.

“Renovation work here is unfortunately not one of Justinian’s priorities,” Crispin remarked. “He’d much rather build something new and magnificent. Now, why have you returned? More pilgrim flasks, is it? You strike me as an aristocrat, but no one here recalls a bald-headed fop dressed in peacocks. At least you’re a more convincing fraud than that big red-headed oaf with whom you say you’re working.”

“Then you’ve met my friend?”

“Not necessarily. Might it not be that he’s been described to me? Your blundering acquaintance pretended to knowledge he did not have, as I told you at our last interview. I repeat I have no business which involves you, nor am I in need of whatever services either of you propose to offer.”

“Did it not occur to you that I might not be a friend of orthodoxy? You suppose my associate and I are selling you our sealed lips. You think we know nothing, but there are certain matters of which we are aware, which we may be persuaded to reveal at the appropriate time. The question is to whom?”

This appeared to give Crispin pause. “So now you pretend to offer…what?”

Anatolius decided to test the conclusions he’d made.

Mithra, let the words be right, he prayed, and then began.

“I understand your suspicions. After all, Senator Symacchus’ servant Achilles died because his careless mouth alerted my friend to a certain matter. Then the senator was murdered because he was thought to have become untrustworthy in that his servant should never have known anything about the affair in the first place.”

“You and your associate have some strange notions.” Crispin delivered his retort in even tones, but Anatolius thought he detected a slight movement in the narrow face, as if the bishop’s jaw tightened. “I am a guest of our beloved empress, who shares my religious views, as everyone knows. I would not seek to offend her in any way, let alone engage in any sort of matter. What is it you’re talking about? You have been vague about the details, I notice.”

“Let me be plain. You were able to convert Symacchus to your religious views. Justinian sent him to you to argue theology, but the senator was a well-read man, open to new ideas. I believe his late wife, being Egyptian, was herself a monophysite, so naturally he would already have some sympathy for that point of view.” Anatolius could see from the expression in Crispin’s eyes that his deductions were correct. He pressed on. “More importantly, like you, I move among those who share the same beliefs.”

“Then I congratulate you on your courage in remaining in the city, young man. However, you have yet to state this business of yours.”

“Symacchus was seeking a relic in which you had an interest,” Anatolius went on. “The man I know was to assist in this quest, but before he received his instructions, the senator was murdered. When we met recently, I showed you an artifact similar to that which my colleague was to use to establish his identity to the senator’s intermediary.”

He paused. “Although you tried to conceal the fact, it was obvious the token was familiar to you. I realized you would wish to appear ignorant to see if despite your assumed indifference and advice to depart the city I returned to offer our assistance. And here I am.”

Chapter Thirty-nine

“Have more wine, Melios! You’re not going to let a dead sheep cast a pall over the festivities, are you?” Zebulon gestured to Hapymen, who promptly filled the headman’s cup from a blue glass jug.

Melios’ gathering in honor of his esteemed visitor, John, Lord Chamberlain to Emperor Justinian, had been under way for some time. However, to judge by Melios’ demeanor the departed animal might have been bleeding to death in the middle of the table. The headman, though dressed for the occasion in a voluminous toga and Egyptian wig, looked glum.

John wished he could reveal what he’d deduced, but it would have to wait a little longer.

Melios was flanked by John, Zebulon, the traveler Thorikos, and several middle-aged men in expensive garments, who had been introduced to John as wealthy local landowners. They sat at one of three tables of unmatched heights arranged to form three sides of a square.

Eye-watering smoke drifted from ill-trimmed wicks in silver lamps set around the room. Beneath the odor of cooked meats, spices, and fruit lay the less appetizing smell of too many guests dining in too small a space.

John glanced around the noisy gathering. Dedi was missing. Naturally, he would not be welcome, and neither would Scrofa the tax assessor. Apollo was not present either. Perhaps one did not invite itinerant beekeepers to formal banquets any more than one invited women.

John mentioned his surprise that Porphyrios was nowhere to be seen.

“Such stories he tells about the races in the Hippodrome,” put in Thorikos. “He could entertain us half the night.”

“He was invited but declined, excellency.” Zebulon answered for Melios, then changed the subject. “Barley beer is excellent for every day, but for celebrations we have something much better. This pomegranate wine is made on the estate. Isn’t that right, Melios?”

Melios drained his cup and set it down awkwardly. It tipped over, spilling a few drops of wine and several soggy petals, an ingredient not present in John’s cup.

“Aren’t those lotus blossoms?” asked Thorikos. “Do they perhaps guard against headaches caused by too much wine? I’ve been having the most dreadful headaches.”

Zebulon placed a finger to his lips. “Be discreet, my friend. I minister to the soul, but there are times when the body must be cared for just as much. Let us not be overly critical of our host for seeking to enhance the soporific effect of what he’s imbibing.”

“You may recall I had a wine-importing business,” Thorikos remarked to John. “There was never any call for Egyptian wine. Wretched stuff, generally speaking. Now I see how it can be made palatable.”

The mixture of wine and petals seemed to gradually lighten Melios’ mood even if it did not make his eyelids heavier. He began to speak in slurred tones about his visit to the empire’s capital and his opinions of various classical authors.

John, whose preference for less elaborate dishes gave him a distaste for the rich and over-spiced offerings at imperial banquets, enjoyed the comparatively plain fare.

Melios’ guests, having already been served platters of smoked fish and lentils, followed by roasted quails garnished with fat cucumbers and chopped lettuce, had just completed consuming a concoction described to John as moon fish sauced by mulberries.

“The next dish is of particular interest to learned men such as you and I, excellency,” Melios remarked. “We are about to dine on the empire’s most esteemed leeks, for as Pliny observed, the best of those are grown in Egypt.”

“You have certainly plundered heaven, earth, and the waters for your guests, Melios,” John replied.

“While it is surely but a small thing compared to the wonderful performances at even the humblest gathering at the palace, excellency, when we have finished this dish and while we enjoy more wine and some tempting dates and figs, I hope you’ll find our special presentations entertaining.”

In due course, Melios gathered the attention of his guests by clapping his hands several times. “Now, my friends,” he said, when quiet had fallen, “to complete the evening I have arranged entertainment—”

He was interrupted by enthusiastic shouts of approval. When the noise had died away into the shadows in corners not fully reached by flickering lamplight, he continued with a slight smile. “As I was saying, I have arranged entertainment of a classical nature.”

An equally loud burst of groans met this announcement.

Melios ignored the interruption and pressed on. “First, let me present Thorikos, a traveler who has journeyed through great and terrible dangers, the like of which—”

“You mean he passed through Alexandria?” a man at the far end of the table shouted.

Their host flushed, straightened his wig angrily, and glared at his unruly guest. “Thorikos has graciously agreed to sing for our delectation. In honor of our guest from court, he has selected a composition by Emperor Justinian himself.”

Thorikos stood and commenced to sing “Only-Begotten Son” in a well-modulated voice. John recognized the words Peter sang while scrubbing the floor or chopping vegetables. He was surprised at the choice, since it was clearly a celebration of orthodoxy and unlikely to be well received in a land notorious for its heretical religious thinking.

No sooner had Thorikos finished and sat down again when, at a signal from Melios, one of the company left the room briefly to return with a double flute of yellow wood.

He stationed himself in the oblong space fenced in by the three tables and began to play a melancholy tune, while the rest of Melios’ guests clapped slowly in time.

As the final sad notes rippled away, Melios leaned over to John and spoke in an undertone. “That was one of our traditional airs, excellency. It’s the melody for an ancient hymn once sung in the temple on the Rock of the Snake, but the words have long since been forgotten. Tonight it serves as a fitting lament for my poor sheep and for my time here as headman, for as I told you I intend to make a certain announcement at the conclusion of this gathering.”

“Indeed.” John glanced at Zebulon, wondering what the cleric thought of a pagan dirge being performed immediately after an orthodox hymn.

Zebulon, however, was busy consulting his wine cup.

The flute-player was now joined by two other musicians with sistrums. They began to play a livelier melody, whose soaring notes were soon taken up and lustily sung in the language of the country. John realized it was an example of the type of song men sang while working in the fields, raising water in shadufs, or in this particular instance while harvesting crops. In this almost forgotten part of Egypt, grateful thanks were being rendered to the Nile for its annual life-giving inundations, but the song was closely akin to the songs reapers had sung in the Greek fields of John’s youth.

For a short time he allowed the locked door to his past to be opened, admitting memories he had seldom examined in the years since his life had been brutally changed.

Once, in this very country, he had dreamed of returning to Greece with Cornelia, to live out his days as a farmer.

Would that ever be possible?

Perhaps not, he told himself. Fortuna decreed their destinies, and it was possible neither he nor Cornelia had been marked to till the soil.

He pulled his thoughts away from the dead past and unborn future, and back to the present.

Why, he wondered, did Melios’ guests sing the praises of the Nile in a settlement nourished by the wells of an oasis?

One possible answer appeared on the heels of his thought.

A girl, clothed solely in a fishermen’s net and doubtless intended to remind spectators of that very river, had appeared.

Accompanied by flute and sistrums, she performed a dance consisting mostly of languorous gestures and back bends as her audience loudly voiced its appreciation of her interpretation of the rise and fall of the Nile’s life-giving waters.

“Most interesting, most interesting, Melios, although not what I would call entertainment of a classical nature,” murmured Thorikos.

At that point Hapymen made his contribution to the festivities by grasping the net and hauling the brown, writhing girl out of the room to loud, good-natured complaints from the dancer’s audience and calls for her return.

The musicians resumed their seats as Melios rose unsteadily to his feet, bowed slightly in John’s direction, and then addressed the gathering.

“My friends, this evening I had hoped to recite my panegyric to Emperor Justinian, of whom I was most honored to make some humble personal acquaintance during my visit to our empire’s great capital, as you all know. Alas, recent events have doomed my efforts to complete it. However, I shall soon have ample time to accomplish the task. I have made an important decision which I wish to share with you—”

Realizing the headman was about to announce his flight to a monastery, John got to his feet. “My apologies, Melios, but before you make your news known, there is something I would like to say.”

Melios blinked in confusion. The firm pressure of John’s hand on his shoulder convinced him to sit down.

A buzz of excited conversation broke out and John waited until the company had quieted before he began.

“I promised Melios, our most gracious host this evening, an explanation of certain rather strange events that recently took place on this estate. I’m referring to the fate of two sheep.”

With a glance down at Melios, who now looked extremely uneasy, John continued. “The first death occurred before my arrival. The second, as you are all doubtless aware, occurred last night. The unfortunate animal was confined to a closely guarded and locked barn and was, furthermore, protected with various charms and a blessing as well as a collar of certain flowers and herbs said to provide protection. Nevertheless, like the first, it was an apparent suicide, having cut its own throat. Dedi, who claims to practice magick, has taken credit for both mysterious deaths.”

An uneasy murmur rose around the tables.

John held up his hand for silence. “Melios, am I correct in saying Hapymen provided the collar?”

Melios nodded silently.

Zebulon observed pointedly it was wiser to put one’s trust in heaven than in amulets or charms and here was a perfect example of misplaced faith.

“I have personally examined the dead animal,” John continued. “Dedi does not possess the powers he claims to hold. You have my word he cannot harm any of you, unless of course he attempts to sink a blade between your ribs.”

Melios gasped. “But excellency…”

“The protective garlands that Hapymen—who also assists Dedi on occasion—so handily provided for the animals had several cut bulbs of squill laced into them. You may recall telling me a preparation from the same plant, administered for your rheumatism, had blistered your skin, Melios. It did the same to my servant’s hands when he mistook squill bulbs for onions and chopped some in order to cook them.”

John glanced around the room. “The sheep was encumbered with a heavy garland fastened tightly around its neck, and naturally soon experienced such intense irritation of the skin of its throat it attempted to alleviate the itching by rubbing itself on the only sharp thing available to it.”

“The sword!” Melios breathed. “Summon Hapymen here!” he shouted. “And as for—”

He was interrupted by a thunderous knocking on the house door.

Guests began to rise to their feet, hands on blades, as a terrified servant rushed into the room.

“Master, we’ve just received word! The tax assessor’s been found drowned!”

***

“At first I mistook it for a log,” Porphyrios told John. “But there was something familiar about the shape…He was floating face down. Must have fallen in and drowned. I was about to go for help when one of the villagers came by, so I sent him to raise the alarm.”

They stood beside the ditch, staring down at the drowned man whose sightless eyes regarded the starry sky with a steady gaze. Behind them lights moved in the darkness and the low muttering of an unhappy crowd came to them on gusts of a rising wind. Melios had instructed his guards to block the road, to prevent anyone interfering with the body. The headman had chosen to keep his distance as well.

John bent down for a closer look. Scrofa had obviously been dead for more than a day.

“Scrofa wasn’t a popular man, excellency,” the charioteer continued. “I fear the authorities will be bound to suspect murder, and whatever the truth of it there will be reprisals on Mehenopolis. Fortunately I’ll be on my way soon.”

“You’ve been able to obtain what you sought?”

“A charm against curse tablets? Sadly, no. Dedi refused my request. It’s probably just as well. I’m inclined to think he’s not as powerful as he claims to be.”

John moved his lantern above Scrofa, illuminating first the waxen face, wet hair clinging close to the skull, then the torso, and on down across legs whose red-splotched ankles testified to the powerful grip of the charioteer who had dragged the unfortunate tax assessor ashore.

Finally John stood and looked toward the settlement. “I see Melios has obligingly sent someone to take Scrofa back.”

“He’ll be more welcome there in his present state than he was when he strolled this way,” Porphyrios remarked.

The charioteer turned and saw the approaching donkey, ridden by a young servant. “Well…um…Lord Chamberlain,” Porphyrios stammered, “I’d better be off.”

“Not yet!” John grasped the man’s bulging forearm. He could easily have wrenched away, but his attention was engaged by the small beast which had reached them.

“Do…do you…er…want me to assist the young man in getting the body on the…?”

“That will not be necessary, Porphyrios,” John replied quietly. “However, you will explain immediately why a charioteer is terrified of donkeys. I noticed your reluctance to approach one during the fire, and now I recall you sat at the back of the cart that brought us here from the river. It was less fear of the inhabitants of the beehives piled up behind the driver than of the donkey trotting in front. Am I not correct?”

“Please…please…Lord Chamberlain…if you will allow me to step away…I’ll explain…just…just…”