Three for a Letter (12 page)

Chapter Fourteen

Anatolius felt his throat tighten as Senator Balbinus’ wife stepped into the reception room with a whisper of fine silk. The embroidered hem of her white dalmatic, its broad blue edging matching a narrower strip of decorative border at the neckline, floated behind her like memories and old regrets.

“Lucretia! I didn’t expect to see you!” Anatolius blurted out. She regarded him silently.

“Well, that’s not exactly true,” he admitted, forcing a smile. “I was hoping for at least a glimpse of you. It has been some time since we last met.” He ended in a forlorn tone, “Actually I’m here to see your husband.”

Did his former lover’s pale patrician face betray some fleeting emotion or was it only his imagination? Anatolius had put this visit off and gone to his office instead. No matter what assignment John might give him, his duties to the emperor came first, he had told himself, but the fact was that as he neared the city his eagerness for this reunion had begun to turn to fear.

“Yes, it’s been a very long time,” Lucretia said. The neutrality in her tone pierced him as sharply as a blade. It was more terrible than the coldness he had dreaded he might hear. “Please sit, Anatolius.” Lucretia sank down into the cushions of a couch. “I have ordered wine be brought for you.” Her voice still held the same husky quality he recalled too well.

The young man sat awkwardly next to her, his stiff posture betraying his unease. “Thank you. The senator will be here soon?”

She shook her head. She still wore her dark hair in ringlets, Anatolius noted. “He is attending a business meeting.”

“Then I had best not linger, Lucretia.”

“Stay a little while longer, Anatolius. Tell me all about your latest escapades. I hear that you have visited Severa Flavia quite often lately?”

Anatolius reddened. “She is a very gracious lady.”

Lucretia smiled. “It seems you have learned discretion. She often dines here as my guest and has mentioned your affectionate nature increasingly of late. Alas, she is not as careful with her confidences as you seem to have become with yours.” Her voice was warmer, with that hint of breathiness that he so fondly recalled. She patted his knee playfully.

Anatolius was thankful for the distraction of the arrival of the servant bringing wine. He got up from the couch, cup in hand, to inspect the reception room’s frescoes.

They had obviously been inspired by tales taken from mythology. Here, a handsome Narcissus leaned down to admire his reflection in a tranquil pond. There, Paris presented the golden Apple of Discord to voluptuous Aphrodite while Athena and Hera looked on vengefully. In the background the misty towers of Troy slumbered peacefully, unaware of their terrible fate.

Relieved to move away from Lucretia and be less tormented by the musky sweetness of her familiar perfume, he took a hasty sip of wine and stared at a scene showing the abduction of Proserpina. “What wonderful artistry,” he said with the poet’s appreciation for beauty. “I have rarely seen finer.”

“Neither have I, Anatolius. My wife chose the scenes to be depicted and I am well pleased with the artisan’s work.”

Senator Balbinus strode into the room. His regal features were familiar to everyone at court but Anatolius noticed only how much older the senator was than Lucretia.

“I am happy to see you extending hospitality to a guest, Lucretia, although I would have preferred that you asked him to return when I was at home. Servants will gossip.”

“Anatolius has come to see you on a matter of business,” she replied serenely.

Anatolius set down his cup on the table by the door. “Senator, I regret the intrusion but I am here on an errand of some urgency.”

“I shall leave you gentlemen to your discussion,” said Lucretia. Eyes averted, she brushed past Anatolius and disappeared down the hallway, leaving only a faint memory of her perfume.

Balbinus had helped himself to wine and was pacing back and forth. His deliberate tread and stiffly set shoulders expressed his disapproval of Anatolius’ irregular visit to his wife, but he said nothing more, contenting himself with inviting the young man to state his business. “However, I would appreciate it if you could declare it quickly for I have another meeting soon and must not be late.”

Anatolius hastily gathered his wits. “I have the honor to convey a personal request from the Lord Chamberlain.” His formality covered his severe discomfort at being discovered chatting with Lucretia even though, as he reminded himself, their affair had ended before she married Balbinus.

Ah, but was it truly over came a whisper from the depths of the past. Pushing such treacherous notions aside, he quickly outlined John’s request for information that would be of assistance in locating Balbinus’ nephew.

The senator was not helpful. “Castor often travels, Anatolius, and when he does he does not provide me with his itinerary. Indeed sometimes he does not visit my wife and me for a month or more. He is not a gregarious person. We are more liable to receive a note from him than a personal visit.”

“He does seem the sort of scholar who is most comfortable with word delivered by the pen,” Anatolius acknowledged. “You haven’t seen him during these past few days?”

“If I had I would have said so, would I not? And before you ask, no, Castor and I have not fallen out. Our relationship is amicable enough, even though I feel I must lecture him now and then on his—well, on his lack of worldliness, his intellectual extravagance. There is nothing my nephew doesn’t know about, or at least have an opinion on, except getting along in the world in which he finds himself. So I have tried to be something of a father to him.”

Balbinus fell silent. Anatolius was taken aback by the senator’s sudden vehemence, but before he could give it much thought, the man began speaking again with his usual bluster. “I’m sure you have heard of my brother Bassus, Castor’s father, or at least know his reputation,” he said. “Everyone at the court considers him a dreadful embarrassment to my family. My brother died much too young, of course, and I barely knew him. He barely knew himself. Had he lived longer he might have become wiser. Needless to say, over the years I have done my best to see that Castor avoided his father’s fate. But then, we all have our weaknesses, don’t we?”

Was Balbinus making a remark directed at him, Anatolius wondered uncomfortably. But perhaps the senator’s comment came because his gaze had settled for an instant on the frescoes. It was obvious Balbinus had no inclination to talk about his nephew further, presumably because doing so would remind him of his wayward and dissolute brother, surely a painful topic. However, Anatolius was thankful to make his escape although he felt vaguely guilty without, he told himself, any reason he should.

Leaving Balbinus’ house, he looked over his shoulder into the cool atrium. Did he catch a glimpse of pale silk there as the heavy street door swung shut behind him?

As he strode away down the street the thought came to him that the frescoes in Senator Balbinus’ exquisitely decorated reception room had a common theme, and it was that of love and loss.

***

The door of John’s house opened a crack to reveal Hypatia’s tawny face peeking out.

“Master Anatolius!” Surprise and, oddly, what sounded like relief were obvious in her tone. She opened the door wider and stood back to allow Anatolius to step into the tiled entrance hall. He was one of a very few people admitted without question to John’s home at any hour of day or night.

“I decided I’d make a brief visit since I happened to be passing this way,” Anatolius lied valiantly. In fact, his steps had brought him to John’s house without conscious direction, just as he had first wandered back to his office on the palace grounds. Two blotched parchments later, he had abandoned his task of copying Justinian’s letter to the Patriarch of Antioch and gone out to walk around for a while. Unlike John, who often walked to think, Anatolius usually walked to forget.

The air in the atrium of John’s house was sweet, pleasantly imbued not with perfume but rather honey and a hint of spices.

Following the lithe Egyptian woman upstairs to the kitchen, Anatolius noticed anew that her hair was the same raven’s wing color as Lucretia’s. She offered him a cup of wine, seeming ill at ease.

“Just continue with whatever you were doing, Hypatia,” Anatolius said. Various chopped herbs were set out on the kitchen table. “What are you making? A new kind of sweetmeat, perhaps?”

“Not exactly, sir. I’m experimenting with one of Peter’s recipes while the master is away.”

“And also while Peter is absent.” Anatolius grinned, well aware of the elderly servant’s aversion to sharing his kitchen.

“As you say. However, I think Peter will enjoy this new dish. He has something of a fondness for sweet things, unlike the master, although he does occasionally indulge in honeyed dates.”

“They’re probably the Lord Chamberlain’s only indulgence,” Anatolius remarked.

Hypatia raised her eyebrows but, as befitted a servant, made no comment on his observation, merely continuing to stir the mixture bubbling gently in a pot set on the kitchen brazier.

Glancing idly around the room, Anatolius noticed a small clay figure sitting on a shelf.

“What’s this, Hypatia?” Picking up the statuette he saw, with some alarm, that it was a crudely fashioned scorpion. The creature was significant to Mithrans and was to be seen in bas reliefs and mosaics of Mithra’s battle with the sacred bull. He could not imagine John being so careless as to leave such an emblem of his pagan beliefs lying about in plain sight. Obviously it was not his.

“Peter won’t like you cluttering up his kitchen with this, Hypatia,” Anatolius said in a jocular tone.

The woman gasped and dropped her ladle. It landed between them, spattering hot liquid on both Anatolius’ boot and her bare foot. She did not seem to notice. “Sir…” she said faintly, “I…”

Anatolius, seeing her so distressed, carefully replaced the scorpion on the shelf. He seemed to be blundering into all sorts of difficulties with women today, he thought ruefully. “What is it for, Hypatia?”

The woman suddenly burst into tears. “It’s a charm against demons, such as we swear by in my country. It has to be displayed in order to drive them away.”

Anatolius stared at her. “Demons?” he repeated.

“Demons,” Hypatia nodded, sniffing and swiping tears from her cheeks with her knuckles.

Anatolius considered putting a comforting arm around her but decided the action might be misconstrued. He had displayed some fondness for her before she had entered John’s employ. No wonder he was always having difficulties with women, he thought. Sometimes he thought he had never encountered one who hadn’t turned his head for a day. He stood looking awkwardly at the girl, not knowing quite what to do or say.

“I myself don’t believe in demons,” he finally said. “It must just have been your imagination. You’re all alone in this big house—”

Her tears began to flow again. “No, pardon me but it’s not that, sir. Something very upsetting happened early this morning. I was woken up by a strange noise. It sounded like the scratching of a beast’s long claws. I’m not certainly exactly how to describe it. I was half asleep, you see. It was just a dream, I told myself. The house creaks terribly in the wind at night. You’d think that vile tax collector who first owned it had decided to return and was walking about, looking for the head Justinian relieved him of. Then that horrible, strange noise started again.”

Anatolius, intrigued, asked her to continue.

“Well, sir, I got my lamp lit and crept down to the entrance hall but by then the noise had stopped. It must surely have been a rat, I thought, a rat that sounded much louder than usual because I heard it when I was half asleep.”

“That would certainly be what it was, I’m certain of it,” Anatolius said.

“But it wasn’t a rat!” the woman blurted out in a panic-stricken voice. “Because as I turned to go back upstairs, that terrible sound started again and I could tell that the creature was right on the other side of the front door!”

Anatolius tried to reassure her. “Surely if it were really a demon it would have burst straight in, not politely scratched on the door waiting to be admitted, Hypatia. Don’t you think if it wasn’t a rat it must have been one of these feral cats that prowl the palace grounds?”

Hypatia shook her head. “I wish it had been. But it wasn’t. You see, whatever it was, I felt I had to see it, so I went into the master’s study.” She suddenly blushed. Her next words explained why. “Lamplight brings out, well, to be blunt, obscene details in the wall mosaic in there that I would not even dare to speak about. I’d never seen something like that before.”

Anatolius immediately pointed out that it had been the tax collector who formerly owned the house who had commissioned the mosaic in question and not John.

“Oh, yes, I know that, sir,” Hypatia nodded. “I blew out the lamp but that scary little girl still seemed to be staring at me out of those big eyes of hers…But anyhow I crept to the window and peeked out. And then I saw the thing…the demon…scuttling off across the square. It wasn’t human. So I made a charm to protect the master and his house and everyone who lives in it,” she ended simply.

Anatolius put his arm around her shoulders. She pressed her face into his chest and sobbed. Meant to comfort her, his gesture made him distinctly uncomfortable. He reminded himself that there was absolutely no possibility that John would suddenly burst into the kitchen and find him standing there with his arms around his servant.

The Lord Chamberlain was on Zeno’s estate. Anatolius wondered whether John’s investigations had been more fruitful than his own. At least John was not having to deal with hysterical women who believed in demons and magick, he thought with a sigh.

Chapter Fifteen

“She’s wedded to evil! I won’t allow the woman in here. Potions and magick indeed! There’s too much magick in this cursed place already!” Livia burst out of her daughter’s room, sweeping imperiously by John without so much as a second glance. The round moon of her face was shadowed by clouds as sullen as those gathering over the sea.

John stepped through the doorway into the glare of Theodora’s other lady-in-waiting. “Let Poppaea die then,” Calyce was shouting after Livia. “Your stupidity—” She broke off in embarrassment at the sight of the Lord Chamberlain.

“They’re arguing about Minthe,” Sunilda put in helpfully from her seat beside Poppaea’s bed. “They always do, you know. Minthe will make Poppaea better. She isn’t married to anybody, either,” she added as an afterthought.

John bent over the sick girl. He could detect no improvement in her state. She lay as still as Gadaric had been when pulled from the mouth of the whale. Her eyes were closed, the lids bluish, almost translucent. There was a terrible pallor to her cheeks, cheeks that were no longer rounded but sunken. Her breathing was barely discernible.

“Has she been awake yet?” John asked Calyce.

The woman shook her head. “Not fully but she stirs occasionally. I’ve managed to get some of Minthe’s potion past her lips, and her sleep seems much more natural now, whatever her mother says!”

John realized that Livia had somehow learned of Minthe’s stealthy nocturnal visit, which Felix had reported to him. He didn’t propose to discuss the matter further right then, however, since he had as little desire as Felix to place himself between Theodora’s warring ladies-in-waiting.

“We should let Poppaea rest,” he told Sunilda. “Calyce will stay with her. Would you like to take a walk along the beach before the rain arrives?”

The girl hopped out of the chair and accompanied him outside, talking all the way. She was wearing a plain linen tunic that contrasted strangely with the golden comb in her dark hair.

“Bertrada says it’s my crown,” she explained, when John complimented her on her hair ornament. “That’s because I will be queen of Italy someday. But Livia contradicted her. She’s just jealous because Poppaea will never be queen even though they’re from a very old Roman family. Poppaea can be my lady-in-waiting, though. Her mother I think I will throw in the dungeons unless that would make Poppaea too sad.”

They followed the path leading through the olive grove while the girl chattered. Brilliant sunlight accentuated the dark clouds massing along the horizon as they emerged and began walking towards the shore.

“My father and my great-grandfather were kings, of course,” the girl said airily, as if everyone had royal blood. “My grandmother ruled too. Then again, I might decide to marry a general. Bertrada says she wants to marry a general. She likes that big bear Felix, you know.”

“Felix is neither a bear nor a general but an excubitor captain,” John pointed out.

“Ah, but a man can better his position in the world if he sets his mind to it, isn’t that true, Lord Chamberlain?”

John admitted that it was so, thinking that he doubted the phrase was one that the child would normally have used.

They had arrived at the beach and were strolling along it, the murmur of waves sounding hypnotically in their ears. “It will be a long time before you must concern yourself with matters of queenship, Sunilda,” he concluded.

“My father became king when he was only a boy,” she said pertly. “Bertrada has told me many stories about him.”

“I see,” John replied, positive that the nursemaid had not told Sunilda that her father had almost certainly been murdered because he was unprepared to rule at a tender age. “And your great-grandfather Theodoric grew up in Constantinople. Just think, he might have gathered shells on this very beach.”

“Yes, he might have. I’ve heard many stories about my grandmother too.”

“From Bertrada?”

“Some of them.”

A patrolling excubitor stopped to greet them. John exchanged a few words with him before he continued on his way.

“Is he searching for Barnabas as well?” Sunilda asked. “Bertrada says everyone is looking for him.”

Without waiting for a reply she ran down to the string of debris at the high water line that delineated the disputed border between the kingdoms of land and sea.

It occurred to John as he followed a few paces behind that he could barely remember being eight. Of his own daughter at the same age—the child conceived before his terrible fate—he knew nothing. His only meeting with her had lasted just long enough to open an aching wound of a sort he would never have thought he could suffer, one that still caused him pain.

Would Europa have been so wise beyond her years at that age? Or at least grown so skilled at repeating the words and sentiments of her elders as to give an appearance of wisdom?

“Oh! It’s horrible! Quickly, Lord Chamberlain! I’ve found a monster!”

The girl’s shrill cry brought John to investigate the thing she was prodding with a piece of driftwood. The dark lump was partly concealed by seaweed; from it the ends of several appendages protruded like fingertips. Another prod revealed them to be not fingers but rather half-decayed tentacles.

“It’s just a sea creature, Sunilda, something your friend Porphyrio would have for his evening meal.”

“Porphyrio isn’t here today or he would have come to shore to meet me,” the girl said confidently, throwing the piece of driftwood into the sea.

John looked out over the choppy water. There was nothing to see but rapidly advancing thunderclouds and the jagged peaks of the island.

“We’ll have to cut our walk short,” John told her. “The storm will be here soon.”

“But I wanted to visit the goats’ shrine,” the girl complained petulantly.

“There isn’t going to be time.” John gently took the child’s hand. She pulled it away.

“I must visit the goats’ shrine,” she said in a louder voice.

Powerful as he was, the Lord Chamberlain was not accustomed to giving orders to children, an action even the poorest peasants took for granted. Apart from his absent daughter, the only child he knew was Zoe and she was always perfectly quiet and attentive on his study wall. Well, there were also the court pages, he reminded himself, but those painted and powdered creatures could hardly be classified as children, young though they were.

“We’ll walk down to the shrine for a very quick visit, Sunilda, but you must answer a question on the way.”

“Is it about my brother?”

John indicated gently that it was.

“Let’s not talk about that,” she replied firmly.

“I am sorry but we must,” John replied softly. “I want you to tell me what you remember about the night your brother had his accident.”

“Bertrada put us to bed early. I went to sleep. I don’t know when Gadaric went out. I’ve told you all this already.” With that she was off, running, the sticks of her bare legs flashing beneath her tunic.

John strode rapidly after her. A cold, isolated drop of rain landed on his face. The downpour would soon arrive. They would have to hurry.

When he reached the shrine Sunilda was standing on tiptoe, peering into the bowl set into the pedestal. John ducked in to see what she was staring at with such interest.

“Someone left a question for the goats.” A few burnt scraps of parchment lay at the bottom of the deep bowl. The girl poked at them. “I wonder what it said?”

“Only the person who left it and the goats who answered know exactly what it was,” John told her.

“I’ll ask Minthe about it next time I see her,” the girl said thoughtfully.

John refrained from commenting on the perils of superstitious belief. Godomar was surely better qualified than he to offer that sort of guidance. He felt relieved that the girl’s gloomy tutor had not observed her interest in the shrine.

Sunilda grabbed John’s hand. “Let’s go and visit Minthe right now!”

The light was fading quickly, as if torches were being extinguished one after the other along a long hallway. The wind was rising ahead of the fast approaching storm, blowing sea spray into the shrine.

“We don’t have time now, Sunilda.” John led the girl back up the gentle slope to the road. As they went toward the villa, there was a clap of thunder.

They increased their pace, passing Minthe’s strange house, and proceeded quickly on up the road as repeated drum-rolls of thunder grew closer. Then a dazzling bolt of lightning struck the greenish-gray sea. John’s ears rang. Another deafening peal drowned out Sunilda’s shout.

“…over there.” She gestured excitedly. They had reached a spot where the high ground extended a blunt finger out toward the beach, ending in a steep hill rather than the cliffs that lay further up the road. A stone hut was barely visible at the seaward end of a path leading across the promontory. Lightning forked over the sea again, followed almost immediately by the concussion of thunder.

“Very well,” John agreed.

Sunilda jerked her hand free of his grasp and ran ahead. John followed her down the path, through the weedy garden behind the hut and past an overturned rowboat sitting beside it. They arrived at the hut’s rough plank door just as the heavens opened and sea and sky were lost in a waterfall of water.

John stepped warily forward, hand on the blade at his belt.

“Don’t worry, Lord Chamberlain. I know Paul very well,” the girl assured him. “He’ll be glad to see us.”

The room they entered was empty, pungent with the mingled odors of garlic, onions and cheese.

Rain thrummed loudly on the roof. The shutter covering the small building’s single window banged back and forth as the wind dashed its fury against it. John looked out into shifting, translucent sheets of water. It was the view one might have from the mouth of a whale, he thought uneasily.

Orange light flared into the corners as the door to the other room creaked open and an old man, short and squat, emerged from it, carrying a clay lamp.

“The storm has brought me some callers, I see,” he said jovially. “The queen of Italy, for one. And who is the other? Her faithful servant?”

“Paul!” the girl giggled. “He’s the Lord Chamberlain.”

Paul shifted his lamp to illuminate the taller of his two visitors more directly. “Yes, I see,” he agreed amiably. “You must excuse me, for I don’t entertain Lord Chamberlains very often. Who will you bring next time you call? The emperor?”

“I don’t know Justinian very well,” Sunilda replied severely, “but Theodora will be visiting soon to attend the village festival. I’ll ask her to come and pay her respects to you then, if you’d like.”

Paul looked alarmed. “A very kind offer, my dear, but I’m certain that the empress and I will have many opportunities to chat during the celebrations.” John noted the humor in his words but Sunilda did not.

“Oh, good! Then you’ll be coming to see it after all!” she said with a grin.

“I regret the intrusion, Paul. The storm arrived very suddenly,” John explained to their host.

“You certainly wouldn’t want to be walking about in that tempest.” Paul’s observation was emphasized by a gust of wind groaning through the half open door, bringing a spray of rain with it. “We don’t want it in here with us either. If you’d just close the—I beg your pardon, excellency—”

John pulled the door shut, muffling the sound of the storm. Briarus had mentioned a Paul who gardened, John recalled. “You are Paul, the gardener?”

“These days I grub in the dirt a bit, yes, excellency. I don’t care for it personally. I’ll always want to return to being a fisherman, although I can hardly remember when I last ventured out onto the sea. It just got harder and harder, what with the pain in my joints making it so difficult to even get my little boat down to the beach. In the end I just had to give it up.”

John did not ask Paul about his argument with the prickly estate manager. It was possible too, he thought, that it was Paul who had assisted Hero with the framework of the whale, but he thought it better not to mention the matter in front of the girl. He could question Paul on another occasion if need be.

The former fisherman’s skin was weathered as dark as a worn leather boot. His thinning hair and the disorderly collection of bristles springing from his cheeks and chin were like the yellowish white of spume on the beach, his eyes, appropriately, a watery blue.

Paul grimaced as he set the lamp on his table. “Old age is like a storm, one that’s tossed me up on this miserable patch of dirt when I would much rather be at sea.”

He sighed heavily before continuing. “Please sit down. I am happy to offer what I have to such distinguished visitors.”

Sunilda promptly plunked herself on the bench beside the table. John sat down beside her as their host bustled about, producing rough pottery plates and cups along with a small loaf of bread and jugs of wine and water. He apologized for the wine as he cut a chunk from the cheese hanging by a rope over the brazier. “It’s poor stuff, I fear, excellency.”

“Yet very much to my taste,” John replied truthfully, setting his cup back down, “although it may not suit everyone.”

Paul expressed amazement at this unexpected pronouncement. “Then would you perhaps care for some of my garlic paste?” he ventured.

“Yes, he would, Paul. And perhaps we could have some of those fine olives you usually have?” put in Sunilda.

“Yes. I’d forgotten about those.” Looking flustered, he produced a pottery bowl of plump olives. John wondered if they had come from Zeno’s grove. They were certainly excellent.

“This is a fine banquet indeed,” pronounced Sunilda through a mouthful of bread.

“You two are friends, I take it?” John directed the question to the old fisherman, who had lowered himself painfully onto a stool at the other side of the table.

“Minthe has brought the young lady to visit more than once.” Paul poured himself a cup of wine.

“You know Minthe well?”

Paul did not answer immediately. In the ensuing silence John became aware that the sound of the rain was diminishing. Thunder rumbled still, but its muted grumbling came from further away.

“Everybody in the village knows Minthe,” Paul finally replied. “She offers all sorts of services of a herbal nature and has for many years. Ever since she arrived, in fact. The village girls consult her a lot. I think you know what I mean.”