The Mammoth Book of Historical Crime Fiction (10 page)

Eutropius nodded. “I, too, had hoped for a longer visit. But you’re right, Teacher – neither of you may be safe here. Tomorrow, let us all go together to the Temple of Artemis to make a special sacrifice of thanksgiving, and another sacrifice to ask the goddess to bless your travels, and then I shall see about booking passage for you and Gordianus to sail to your next destination.”

We all retired to our separate rooms for the night.

I was unable to sleep. The room was too bright. I drew the heavy drapes to shut out the moonlight and went back to bed. I tossed and turned. I stared at the ceiling. I buried my face in my pillow and tried to think of anything except Amestris.

I heard the door open quietly, then click shut. Soft footsteps crossed the room.

I looked up from the pillow. All was dark until she drew back the drapes and I saw her naked silhouette framed by moonlight. Before I could say her name, she was beside me in the bed.

I ran my hands over her naked body and held her close. “Blessed Artemis!” I whispered.

“Artemis has nothing to do with this,” said Amestris, with a soft laugh and a touch that sent a quiver of ecstasy through me. “Tonight, we worship Venus.”

And so, in the city most famously devoted to the virgin goddess of the hunt, I killed my first man, and I knew my first woman.

After our visit to the temple the next morning, Antipater and I set sail. Amestris stood with the others on the wharf. We waved farewell. Gazing at her beauty, remembering her touch, I felt a stab of longing and wondered if I would ever see her again.

As I watched the city recede, I made a silent vow. Never in my travels would I pass a temple of Artemis without going inside to light a bit of incense and utter a prayer, asking the goddess to bestow her blessings upon Amestris.

“Gordianus – what is that strange tune you’re humming?” said Antipater.

“Don’t you recognize it? It’s the melody Amestris played on the Pan pipes.”

It haunts me still.

Eyes of the Icon

Mary Reed and Eric Mayer

Since 1999, Mary Reed and Eric Mayer have been charting the investigations of John the Eunuch, starting with
One for Sorrow
. These novels, and related short stories, are set in sixth-century Constantinople. The following story shares the Constantinople background, but takes place nearly two centuries later, during the turbulent reign of Emperor Leo III. There had been much debate across the eastern Mediterranean about the depiction of Christ on coins and icons, and, in or about the year 726, Leo banned the use and worship of such images. His most significant act was to remove the image of Christ that stood at the giant bronze Chalke Gate at the entrance to the Palace of Constantinople. The upheaval that this caused is the starting point for the following story.

1

My first mistake was eating the Lord’s eyes.

I didn’t mean to. I woke up hungry, freezing, and cursing Emperor Leo.

“Damn you, excellency, for banning religious imagery and destroying my livelihood. Damn you for pulling down the Christ over the Bronze Gates. Why didn’t you just throw Victor the icon-painter into the bonfire as well?”

As if the emperor even knew I existed. But me carrying on like this made me forget my troubles, until the pensioned soldier in the apartment below started banging his broom handle against my floorboards. If only he and his colleagues had wielded their spears as enthusiastically against the Persians. Maybe the empire wouldn’t be in such a sorry state.

When I opened the shutters to dump my pot of night soil I had a look around the alley below. A brawny fellow dressed in a labourer’s leather trousers slouched by. For some reason I had the impression he might have just started in motion at the creak of the shutters. I tossed the slop as far as I could but the man was already out of range.

I started cursing again.

They were watching, I was sure.

I could feel their gaze all the time.

Whoever they were.

Or was it just the painted saviour propped up against the wall on his pine board, staring at me?

 I went to the table where my dry pigments were laid out in ceramic containers. I was determined to get to work, even though I wasn’t sure where I could sell an icon these days. There was a rime of ice around the bowl into which I’d cracked open my last remaining egg the night before.

I picked the bowl up, intending to separate the yolk from the white. The faint odour of food woke a demon who twisted my guts and forced my hand upwards. Before I could help myself I was lowering the bowl from my lips.

Over the rim I saw the Lord glaring at me. His eyes were formless gouges. I hadn’t finished them. I hadn’t yet refined the lines around the irises, or painted in the pupils.

As the egg went down in one painful gulp, I remembered a colleague who had slipped off the scaffold high up under the vault of the atrium at a mansion we were decorating. When I got to him he was face down on the floor, surrounded by green tile fish. The blue tile ocean had not lessened the impact of his fall. I pulled his shoulder. He flopped over like a half empty sack of wheat and stared at me.

Both his eyeballs had burst. Blood-flecked matter oozed out from the eye sockets and ran sluggishly down the crushed cheeks.

The cold, congealed egg stuck in my throat; it felt as if it had the consistency of that ooze. I should have used the egg to moisten black pigment for the icon’s eyes. Now I couldn’t give the icon eyes. I had swallowed his eyes.

I gagged. Nothing came up.

I was still hungry, and thirsty too.

And the Lord wasn’t likely to give much assistance to someone who’d just eaten his eyes.

2

“The fact of the matter, Flaccus, is that I don’t have so much as a copper follis to my name.”

Flaccus sat placidly sipping his wine on the other side of the tavern table. He didn’t offer to buy me a cup. “I’m lugging bricks myself, Victor. Plenty of work in that line.”

Easy for him to say. He was a big, broad bull of a man, unlike myself.

“Yes, I’m sure,” I replied. “The earthquake left plenty of rubble. Cheap construction material.”

“Leo’s a frugal sort.”

“Imagine, a frugal emperor. What’s the empire come to? What would Justinian the Great say if he could see us here, two hundred years in his future, his glorious Constantinople half deserted and in ruins? No work for artists like ourselves. Unless you happen to know someone who—”

Flaccus shook his head. “I haven’t found a buyer for months. I had a few patrons commission work under the table, until Leo ordered the Chalke Gate Christ replaced by that hideous cross. Now everyone’s frightened.”

“No doubt the idea of Patriarch Anastasius. Does anyone take this nonsense seriously? This idea that veneration of images amounts to idolatry?”

Flaccus shrugged. “Whatever God in heaven might think about seeing his son depicted in egg tempera, here on earth it’s the emperor’s opinion that counts.”

He started in on his bread and cheese. I looked away, over his wide shoulder, but the mosaic on the wall tormented me with a plate piled high with fruit.

If Flaccus with his enormous ego and artistic pretences was resigned to hauling bricks, perhaps it was time for me to finally put my plan into action. Except I didn’t exactly have a plan. And, even if I did, I needed an accomplice. Or, rather, a partner. Not Flaccus, certainly. He’d just turn me in for the reward. So would everyone else I knew. What could you expect from men who made a living painting martyrs for wealthy aristocrats? Men like me?

His stool squeaked as Flaccus stood. “Good seeing you, Victor. Remember what I said – bricks. I’d be happy to put in a word for you.” He belched and left.

A couple of young men in good but threadbare cloaks entered the tavern. They might have been clerks from the palace. Shouldn’t they have been at work by now? Did they have a shifty look about them or was that just my imagination? I got up hastily and went back out into the cold.

What did I need a partner for anyway? If I could sell the thing, the buyer could do the donkey-work.

But the idea of working alone scared me. That was it, if I was honest about it.

Or possibly it was just an excuse to do nothing.

I kept looking behind me for the fellows who were posing as clerks but didn’t see them. Which didn’t mean they weren’t trailing me.

I couldn’t put a plan in motion while I was under surveillance, could I?

3

A winter wind off the Sea of Marmara groaned under colon-nades. No one who had anywhere better to go was out on the streets.

When I got back to my room, as hungry and thirsty as when I’d left, but colder, I found I’d been locked out.

My landlady answered her door at the first knock. “Don’t try to apologize,” she croaked before I could speak. “This time you have to leave. I’m a charitable woman, young man, but I need to eat too.” Her face was as brown and wrinkled as her robes.

“But I’m sure to have the rent soon, Macedonia. I’ve almost finished a new icon. All I need is a buyer.” I had begun to shiver. I didn’t want to go back out into the wind.

Macedonia only frowned, deepening the creases in her face.

“I’ll give you the icon,” I told her. “It’s worth far more than a month’s rent. Or will be, once this all passes.”

“Another icon? My back room already looks like the Great Church did before that devil Leo got started. This folly won’t pass until the emperor does.”

“In dark times those of the true faith find comfort in the glow of sacred images,” I argued.

“Especially an admirable pious woman such as myself. Isn’t that what you always tell me? I’m surprised you don’t gild your paintings with your tongue!”

“This new image is a fine portrait of the saviour. But if you’d prefer, say, John the Baptist, I can easily change—”

“I already have a room full of saints. Every morning and every evening I pray to Saint Paul and Saint Stephen and all the rest: ‘Please let my lodger the painter of icons pay his rent, Amen.’ And look what it’s got me.”

“Maybe the Lord means for you to have this new image, rather than a few paltry coins?”

Macedonia laughed. She sounded like a starving gull. “And you think I shouldn’t question the will of the Lord? Do you know what I heard about that earthquake a few weeks ago? The ground started shaking at the exact moment the workmen put their hands on that statue up by the amphitheatre – the one everyone says is Empress Theodora.” She lowered her voice, as if we might be overheard. “Really, it’s some pagan goddess. Athena, probably. Been there forever. She likes looking out over the sea. Didn’t like the City Prefect trying to move her; the fellow who repaired the crack she put in my kitchen wall told me. That’s what a thousand-year-old goddess can do. Your painted saints can’t even find my rent.”

4

As I left the apartment building a figure leapt up from the doorway and lurched off out of sight.

Only a beggar, I told myself, to judge from the man’s rags. I could feel my heart leaping against my ribs. Why should I be startled at a beggar who’d taken shelter? If I was going to start being alarmed by beggars, I’d be jumping out of my skin every time I turned a corner.

I was gutless was what it amounted to. If I had any courage I would have acted by now. Then again, if I had any courage, would I be making my living by lurking in my room painting saints on boards?

I had always thought of myself as a Christian. I even went to church sometimes. And where had it got me – or any of the thousands of other good Christians trapped in the rotted carcass of the empire?

It started to rain. Black clouds rubbed their bellies against the countless crosses bristling from Constantinople’s rooftops – a view of Calvary multiplied a thousand times.

And here I am imagining I’m being crucified, I chided myself. Macedonia was right. Icons wouldn’t put a roof over my head or food on my plate, or even supply me with a plate.

Not the icons I painted, at any rate.

Now that I didn’t even have a room to shelter in, maybe the time had come to take the chance I’d been holding in reserve for weeks. What choice did I have?

I cut through a square I crossed almost every day – a deserted place surrounded by boarded-up shops – and went towards a sculpture that stood under one corner of the square’s colonnade.

For once, the stylite who lived atop the granite column rising above the two-storey brick buildings was silent. Probably he was too cold to cry out to humanity or heaven, or both. If it got much colder, with the rain coming down, he’d be covered in a glimmering sheen of ice, like the gold leaf I put on my images.

Living in the city, you learn to ignore holy men the same way you ignore stray dogs, gulls, and beggars. Not to mention I was busy looking over my shoulder in case those clerks – or whoever they were – had followed me from the tavern.

Which is why as I ducked under the colonnade I ran smack into the girl. She would’ve ended up on her backside but she grabbed two handfuls of my cloak and clung to me, radiating warmth and exotic perfume.

“Sorry,” I said, disconcerted. “I was thinking.” As if I couldn’t watch where I was going and think at the same time.

The girl smiled faintly. There was just a touch of red on her slightly parted lips. Beneath a sodden blue wool cloak she wore a stola of faded green silk. Not a whore. A servant wearing household hand-me-downs who’d stolen a couple of dabs of her mistress’s make-up and perfume.

Her triangular little face was nothing special except for the enormous brown eyes. They were outsized, their gaze piercing.

An icon’s eyes.

I’d seen her before. How could I forget a face like that? But where? It came back to me. At Florentius’s house. Yes, the last time I’d futilely tried to sell him one of my icons.

I kept the knowledge to myself.

The wind picked up, blowing rain under the colonnade.

The girl glanced around. Her gaze slid over the metal sculpture in front of the spot where we had collided.