Two for Joy (5 page)

***

Darius, doorkeeper for Madam Isis, hurried along a marble-floored corridor in his employer’s establishment. It led from an entrance hall where the gold leaf decorating the capitals of Corinthian columns gleamed almost as brightly as the many coins that changed hands during commerce within the house.

He could not help feeling anxious now that darkness was drawing in. True, nightfall meant an increase in business but it also heralded more dangerous possibilities. Thus the bullish man bit back alarm when he knocked on the rosewood door of Isis’ private sitting room and it swung open unaided to reveal a plump woman seated on a softly cushioned couch as she worked intently on her account book.

Tugging his black, curly beard in agitation, Darius stepped into an atmosphere so thick with incense it blanketed the smell of the perfume drenching his beard and long wavy hair. It was only when the door thudded shut that the woman noticed him and set down codex and kalamos next to the silver fruit bowl on the table beside her.

“You must keep your door locked, madam,” he scolded. “I might have been an assassin.”

“According to my accounts we don’t seem to have that many disgruntled customers, Darius,” she replied. “Besides, you’re always nearby.”

“I can’t be everywhere at once! And there is much unrest in the streets on account of the strange deaths of those pillar sitters. Unrest outside inevitably finds its way inside, just like bad smells.” He drew breath. “But you summoned me?”

The woman seemed lost in thought, caressing the thin gold marriage band she wore in Egyptian fashion on the middle finger of her left hand, although whether as a remembrance of her past or merely as a disguise she had never revealed. “Do you think this stylite business will dampen our customer’s appetites?” she finally asked.

The big doorkeeper looked surprised.

“You have been with me for a long time,” Isis said with a smile. “I would value your opinion. But before you give it, please sit down.” She patted the couch beside her.

Looking even more surprised, Darius seated himself beside his employer. “Well, madam, since you ask I think some of our clients may hesitate to venture out at night if the streets become too unsafe.”

“I wasn’t thinking of that exactly,” Isis admitted. “After all, men regularly throw away their lives for what we offer here. No, what concerns me more is the possibility of too many of our Christian friends developing a sudden fear of their god, who I hear frowns on every form of pleasure.”

Darius remarked that unfortunately in that case he could not address the question since he was not a theologian.

Isis laughed. “Well, you are the only person in Constantinople who will admit that! Now, I realize the very idea sounds ludicrous but this very afternoon one of the girls informed me that her client leapt off her bed at a most inopportune moment crying out that he felt hot, that he was about to be consumed by the flames of sin inside him, or some nonsense of that sort. In my time, I’ve heard many things but I don’t recall ever hearing anything like that, not even in my wilder days.”

Darius shuffled his feet uncomfortably. Although he had been in Isis’ employ for many years, it had been even longer since she had actually practiced the profession that had brought her not a little wealth and some measure of fame in the capital. It was difficult for him to believe this imposing matron must have once been nothing more than a pretty little thing, like the foolish girls in his care. To him she seemed more like a mother.

Changing the subject, he reminded her that she had wished to consult him on a matter of urgency.

Isis had picked up her codex and was looking at its notations. “Oh, yes. Yes, I will need you to accompany me and a few of the girls to a banquet,” she informed him absently. “It’s to be held at the home of Senator Aurelius. That young rogue Anatolius has engaged me to present a classical entertainment.”

“I hesitate to say it, but if I may, I would strongly advise against attending,” Darius replied worriedly. “It really is not safe on the streets after dark.”

“If custom does in fact begin to drop significantly we may have to consider redecorating,” Isis muttered, apparently oblivious to Darius’ counsel. “We could adopt a new motif, get new costumes for the girls, offer something extra and different to lure more customers in. Now, what could that be?” She thoughtfully tapped at her small white teeth with her kalamos.

Darius began to repeat his warning, then stopped. He knew from experience that once Isis began reading her accounts nothing else could compete for her attention, not even classical entertainments or musical instruments. Not entirely a bad thing, he reminded himself, noting the largely unused hydra standing against one wall. He certainly did not care to hear again the cacophony of agony the merest touch of her fingers made groan from that instrument.

“What is so fascinating about those numbers, madam?” he asked, his chagrin at his employer’s ignoring his advice momentarily overcoming his tact.

Isis ran her finger down a column in her account book, mumbled a few numbers to herself, and bit the full lower lip reddened with wine-dregs whose lush pout had helped accumulate the wealth whose extent she was now calculating. Finally she smiled and looked up.

“Well, my friend, numbers have their own beauty. Then too, my account book always makes me think of my father.”

Darius could not conceal his look of surprise.

“He was a tax assessor in Alexandria,” Isis explained. “He taught me about numbers. They balance, like lines in well-constructed verse. As I say, they have their own beauty.”

“You would have made a fine tax assessor.” Darius was thinking about Isis’ shrewd evaluation of the girls so often brought to her doorway for sale by their destitute families.

“But that is not a woman’s job, is it?” Isis put her account book down and took a handful of dried figs from the silver bowl beside her. “My father was often away from home, valuing estates and villages and such like. I had an uncle who sometimes visited while he was gone. He’d bring me trinkets and tell me stories about his travels for as long as I cared to allow him to sit beside me with his hand on my knee.”

She paused to chew thoughtfully for a moment or two on a fig. “This uncle of mine,” she resumed, “had traveled all over the country and had even seen the high falls of the Nile. But the story that impressed me the most was about the Saraceni. Apparently they were nomads who didn’t enter into matrimony as we understand it, but rather hired women to act as their wives for whatever length of time it was agreed the marriage would last. Well, you may say, that’s not so very different from my business here. But it wasn’t quite the same, really, for the so-called wife brought a dowry with her. More importantly, she had the right to leave her husband after a certain time, if that was what she wished.”

“What sort of savages must these Saraceni be?” interrupted Darius.

Isis laughed. “Oh, that struck me as a much more civilized arrangement than the one my parents had. But I had an even better plan, Darius. By reducing the time agreed to and placing the burden of providing the dowry upon the man, I have done quite well. Of course, this uncle of mine, as I later learned, had only heard the tale at second hand and wouldn’t have known the Saraceni from his sandals.”

Isis finished her figs and licked her sticky fingers daintily. “And what of your family, Darius? Do you have one?”

“Indeed I do, madam, and by making my fortune in this rich city I have been able to be of some assistance to them by sending them what I can.”

“But just lately I heard it rumored that you are the son of a village lord.”

Darius’ face reddened. So that explained his employer’s unexpected reminiscences. She had hoped to draw him out.

He asked her where she had heard such a tale.

“From a lady friend of yours,” Isis replied lightly. Then, her voice hardening, she added, “who is another employee of mine.”

“Madam, I am sorry. I should…”

Isis raised an imperious hand. “Do not explain, Darius. We both know the only circumstances that could produce such ridiculous boasts. Adula will believe anything she is told, which is an attractive trait in our line of work. In my day, I had a great deal of difficulty appearing so credulous. But you are aware of my rule.”

Darius hung his head, feeling as if he were being scolded by his mother. “I know, madam. And I assure you, I have not breached your rules before now.”

“I know you haven’t, Darius, or at least not too often. The wares we offer here would hardly be worth the price they are sold for if they were so poor that a man such as yourself could live among them without ever falling prey to temptation.”

“Thank you, madam.”

“But remember, although such indulgence might seem to cost my business nothing, unlike a baker’s assistant stealing a loaf say, yet each transaction increases the likelihood of those complications which contribute to our expenses. And Gaius for one has been talking about raising his fees for necessary remedies.”

Darius assured her that he would be careful not to break her rules again.

“You will have to be, Darius, for I fear Adula is quite smitten with you,” Isis replied. “Now, as I said, I have been asked to provide refined entertainment at the senator’s banquet. I’ve already chosen several of my most talented girls. They will represent the Muses and each will declaim poetry. I wish you to arrange for extra guards to look after the doors since you will accompany us because, as you just pointed out, the streets are unsafe right now. And of course even senators and their esteemed colleagues can become bestial after imbibing too freely. Besides,” she added with an impish smile, “with a loincloth and a pair of gilded wings you’ll make a most striking Eros. Rather a subtle advertisement for our business here, wouldn’t you say?”

Chapter Four

As he entered the imperial reception hall with
Senator Aurelius the next morning, John’s quick
eye noted that Justinian was wearing the scarlet boots that were his imperial prerogative. The boots formed an incongruous splash of color in the hall’s cavernous marble space, one that always made John think of an enormous sarcophagus.

Whether Justinian’s gaudy footwear had been chosen to reflect the importance of their audience or was simply an unfortunate result of inattention to dress, John could not say. Aside from the boots, Justinian was dressed in his usual careless manner which on this occasion meant a purple, gem-studded cloak thrown over a creased tunic that even from a distance looked as if it had been slept in.

“Leave us,” Justinian ordered the two excubitors who escorted his visitors into the enormous hall. “These men are known to me. They present no danger.”

He waved the guards away with the rolled parchment in his soft, heavily beringed hand. The excubitors withdrew but only as far the reception hall’s great bronze doors. No man, however trustworthy he might have seemed a day or even an hour before, was to be left alone with the man who was supreme head of the Roman Empire and God’s representative on earth.

The hall was chilly. Its green marble walls, graced by ivory panels webbed with delicate gold leaf traceries, soared up into the shadowed vault of the roof. The only other decorations were one or two statues of celebrated military figures. John had thought more than once that those fortunate enough to be permitted to approach the emperor’s throne were in no need of such reminders of Justinian’s absolute power over every living thing in the empire. Having observed countless such visitors approach and depart, John felt that most of them counted themselves fortunate to leave with their heads still on their shoulders. He, however, like all those serving at court, was continually camped very close to danger whether he was actually in Justinian’s presence or not.

“Caesar,” began John, but before he could approach the throne, a simple affair of inlaid wood looking as out of place as a shopkeeper’s stool amidst the soaring magnificence of its setting, the emperor leapt up from it. The jeweled fibula fastening his purple cloak slipped, allowing the precious fabric to drag on the floor as he advanced to greet them.

“Lord Chamberlain, I regret I must ask you to put aside preparations for the formal opening of the Great Church for yet another day since I have another task for you. However, no doubt you will be relieved to hear that it will not require you to climb pillars.”

Justinian’s round, florid face bore its customary bland smile. Some of his enemies characterized that smile as the expression of an idiot, others considered it the blank mask of a demon yet to completely master aping the human form. And some called it both, but not too loudly.

Justinian turned toward Aurelius. “Word has reached my ear that you are not well, senator.”

“A matter of minor import, Caesar, about which I did not wish to trouble you.”

“I see,” Justinian said. “But I do wish to say this. Doubtless you’re aware that when physicians failed the ancients, oft times their patients visited the sanctuary of Asclepius. Our medical knowledge is much advanced since those days, but still it does not do to ignore the possibility of divine intervention, while bearing in mind that the faithful now petition Saint Michael rather than a pagan god.” His tone clearly conveyed the promise that anyone addressing their petition to the latter could be guaranteed ill health as soon as the fact was discovered. “Perhaps,” he continued, “you should consider making a visit to such a shrine.”

Aurelius murmured his humble appreciation for the suggestion, which was the same advice he had already received from more than one of his acquaintances.

Justinian fell silent, staring into the vault of the ceiling and then pacing away, forcing his two visitors to follow. He never seemed to stand still. John, who dealt with the emperor nearly every day, could almost believe the popular rumor that Justinian never slept.

“But I shall smooth your way for you, my dear senator,” the emperor went on. “I am sending you with the Lord Chamberlain here to visit the shrine of Saint Michael, the angelic physician himself. It is beside the Bosporos. You will have horses at your disposal within the hour.”