One for Sorrow (3 page)
Returning home in the middle of the night, John heard what sounded like cracked sobbing from behind the iron-studded door. His servant Peter had waited up for him. The mournful noise was Peter’s rendition of a Christian hymn written by Justinian. Peter often sang to himself when he thought no one was within earshot.
The dirge stopped at John’s first knock. The door creaked open, and Peter’s leathery face peered out from dim orange lamplight.
“Trouble, master? I can see from your face it is trouble.”
“Yes. Leukos has been killed.”
Peter made the Christian sign. “The Keeper of the Plate. You spoke well of him. I’m sorry.” His expression darkened. “On every side the wicked prowl, as vileness is exalted. So the psalm says. I wouldn’t walk the streets at night. The devil’s abroad. It’s not like ages past.”
John did not believe that past ages had been less evil than the current one, but said nothing. Peter served him well. And he was a free man. John would not have employed a slave. He related what little he knew about Leukos’ death.
“That explains the vision I had,” Peter said. “When you were so late I suddenly saw you dead in an alley. But it must have been Leukos. My eyes are not what they used to be.”
“I would have been back earlier but the urban watch got involved. The prefect’s a prickly character. He’s kept the dagger that was thrust into Leukos’ ribs. I had to mention my official position several times before he agreed to have Leukos’ pouch sent to me after the authorities have examined it.”
“His family would want that.”
“Yes,” agreed John. No doubt Leukos had family somewhere, though he never mentioned them. Like so many in the capital, the man who had risen high may have arrived alone from a distant corner of the empire to seek his fortune, or flee his fate, or do both.
They went upstairs. John did not feel ready for sleep. He went into his study and Peter brought him a jug of the harsh Egyptian wine his master favored.
“I will pray for your friend’s soul,” the servant said as he turned to go.
John sat at his plain wooden desk and poured wine into a clay cup decorated only by a stained crack in its lip. He was troubled by Leukos’ murder and haunted by the bull-leaper. The image of the woman’s dark eyes shouldn’t keep pushing aside the fixed stare of his dead friend.
Mithra, he wondered, is it enough for a man to control his actions, or are you pleased only with those who can control their thoughts as well?
John forced his attention toward Leukos. That was where his duty lay. Soldiers of Mithra were bound to follow duty. They did not allow themselves to give in to personal weakness.
Long ago John had served as an apprentice in the Keeper of the Plate’s storerooms. Although John had advanced to high office, the two men continued to work together frequently. On a few occasions Leukos had visited to share a meal. Yet John knew very little about the man he called a friend. Like John, he rarely spoke about his past and then only in generalities. Perhaps that was one reason John had been at ease with him.
One thing he knew was that no man deserved to be murdered in an alley. It was true that death at the hands of a cutthroat was so common as to be almost in the nature of an accident. Every day some of those who lived in city fell prey to its predators. Anonymous murderers were about as likely to be brought to justice as a deadly plague or fire.
But was Leukos’ death a random street crime?
Why would a common robber use an ornamental dagger with entwined serpents on the hilt?
He had not mentioned that detail to Peter. The superstitious old man would have doubtless seen in it some dreadful omen.
John refilled his cup more than once and as always, his gaze was drawn finally to the wall mosaic, a bucolic landscape of fields and forests. In daylight elaborate clouds filled the big sky. Now, however, the trembling light of a clay lamp danced across a debauched heaven alive with lusty Roman gods and goddesses. The artist had carefully shaped and colored the glass tesserae and pressed them into the drying plaster in such a way that lamplight revealed scurrilous secrets invisible by the light of the sun.
The tax collector who commissioned the mosaic when he owned the house had possessed different tastes than John.
It was not the rioting gods and goddesses that John’s gaze sought. Instead, his attention was drawn to one of the mortals gathered below. A young girl aged perhaps nine or ten stood apart from two boys playing knucklebones. Her eyes were large, almond-shaped, reminding John of the ancient funerary portraits he had seen during his time in Egypt.
There was a touch of naturalism about the girl the other figures lacked. She alone seemed to have been drawn from life. She might have been the artist’s daughter, John thought. Though the girl gave no overt sign of noticing the heavens, her mouth was drawn up in a grimace of pain, suggesting knowledge and suffering beyond her years.
For no reason he could name, John thought of her as Zoe. She was, he knew, a stoic. Much like himself. At times, he could feel her presence in the room.
John lifted the cup again. The rough wine burned the back of his throat. He had been known to ask Zoe questions which he always answered himself, but on this night he did not ask what she would make of a friend stabbed in an alley, or a vision of a lost love.
Zoe stared out at him. The flickering light catching the tesserae forming the corners of her lips hinted at movement, but she did not speak.
Elsewhere in the city, another girl, lips trembling, warily pushed open the heavy, rotting shutter of a second floor tenement room. The air outside was fetid, smoky, sour with the stench from the alley beneath the window, but still more breathable than the air inside, thick with the smell of humanity and cooking. The girl’s husband rolled over in his sleep, muttering, disturbed by the creak of the shutter. He flung one heavy arm out, barely missing the pot of night soil the girl had set next to the window. He was big and could almost reach across their space, one of several created by subdividing an already small room with thin, rough boards.
During the day he worked as a laborer at the new church Justinian was building. Or had until his fall.
“The dome will rival the heavens,” he had told her.
“Why do the heavens need a rival? Aren’t the heavens we already have good enough?”
“They may be but they are hard to appreciate from a miserable city room.” He must have regretted his words, seeing her frown, because he continued, “You don’t regret leaving the country with me, do you?”
“You’re my husband.” It was a simple statement, carrying everything within it. “We’re not country folk now. This is Constantinople, the greatest city in the world. Our home.”
She had made herself smile.
Then one afternoon he had fallen from high up in that great dome. His fall had been partially broken by scaffolding. There was something wrong with his skull, one leg was broken, and a physician could probably have found other injuries, if there was any money for a physician. That he had survived had been a miracle, but perhaps a short-lived one. His fever had returned.
Now she bent to pick up the heavy pot, averting her face. She was exhausted. But then, what a night it had been. The second time she had opened the shutters after her first fright, it had been even worse. What had she seen but a corpse apparently looking straight up at her. And to think she’d had the pot in her hand. It seemed indecent. She had almost dishonored the dead.
She forced herself to peer down into the alley. This third time, at last, it seemed deserted. She emptied the pot, leaning over the sill. Its contents splashed on the cobbles below.
She sank wearily down next to her husband and hoped for dreams of the country.
***
Though the night was far advanced, the liquid sounds of syrinx and flute filled the perfumed air of a private dining room deep inside the palace. A scantily clad girl danced down the middle of a long table that was covered in purple and gold. Not that she knew how to dance. She simply kept her narrow hips moving suggestively while stepping nimbly over and around plates of pomegranates, figs, and boiled duck. The young men on the couches flanking the table laughed as she went by, trying to look up her short green tunic. They seemed pleased.
She was only a girl, young enough so she could remember when men had not noticed her. This new power she had been given was fascinating. She could sense the men’s probing thoughts. Their attention exhilarated and repulsed her at the same time.
One of the diners had grabbed her around the waist and thrust her onto the table. She could smell sour wine on his breath. As he embraced her, his stubble brushed the side of the breast that her tunic, tied only at one shoulder, had left exposed in what Madam Isis had explained was the ancient manner.
“What’s your name, little one?” the man had demanded.
“They call me Nymph,” she had replied, mindful of Madam’s admonition to give only that name and not to reveal her real name, which was Berta. She was puzzled when the man burst into laughter.
“Dance for me,” he’d commanded, and so Berta danced.
Perhaps she would please this man or another so that he would bring her to live at the palace. It could happen. Look at the empress herself. She had once been an actress.
She had been hand-fed a few morsels from the table, a slice of an unfamiliar fruit more succulent than anything she had tasted before. All was luxury here. Even her indecently brief tunic was of silk, smooth against her skin. Her underclothing, too, the same.
As she danced amid the plates, bare feet still retaining their instinctive childish agility, she felt the smooth material caressing her thighs.
The flutes played faster, cymbals underscoring their sinuous rhythm. The girl danced in time, skipping between chalices, ducking under a huge golden bowl of fruit suspended by chains from the ceiling. A flush rose on her cheeks. Surely this was heaven. But then, wasn’t the emperor a god?
She caught a glimpse of an unwelcome figure. A garishly dressed page who leered at her from a corner. Odious little boy. He’d pawed her on her way to the table.
Distracted, she failed to clear the roast boar.
Berta toppled off the edge of the table into an obviously male lap. Recovering her senses, she rolled over to look up into the face of whoever had broken her fall. Perhaps he would take her to his house tonight.
She assumed her most dazzling, ingratiating smile. And gasped. Later she insisted to her friends that the face looming above her was the oldest thing she had ever seen. Older than the headless eroded statue in the ruins near the city wall, more ancient and weathered than the mummy exhibited in the forums by the traveler from Egypt. The face was brown and wrinkled as the head of John the Baptist—if that relic truly existed. But when the man’s leathery lips parted they revealed surprisingly white teeth.
“I am a soothsayer,” said the ancient. “I need no chicken entrails to tell me what a lovely creature you are. Do you want to earn a trinket?”
A visitor was the last thing John wanted the next morning. Unfortunately, just as the watery sunlight of a new day banished the pagan gods from John’s wall mosaic, Peter announced a caller.
The stranger was a powerfully built man with red hair and a wild beard. He sat down stiffly on the stool John indicated and introduced himself as Thomas, a knight of the High King of Bretania.
He spoke the Greek used in the capital passably well but with a heavy accent. John noticed, however, that for knight he employed the Latin
eques
, a class which dated back to the early days of Rome.
“You say you are a knight?”
“The High King has trained a cavalry after the Roman fashion and given us that title. I understand it is a long time since Roman knights rode in battle.”
“I have heard of King Arthur. What is your business here?”
“I thought you would be expecting me.”
John offered only a questioning look.
“The Keeper of the Plate sent me,” Thomas explained. “Two days ago I visited him and he said I should see you, that he would arrange for a meeting this morning.”
“I was never told. The Keeper of the Plate is dead. Murdered.”
Thomas stiffened and his eyes widened.
Peter padded back into the room to pour ruby Egyptian wine into the silver goblets that displaced John’s clay cup when the Lord Chamberlain entertained visitors. John noticed the servant scowling curiously at the so-called knight. The visitor looked the complete barbarian with scuffed leather boots and leggings and a wool tunic stained by travel and weather.
“You are surprised to learn that Leukos was killed last night?”
The question seemed to fluster Thomas. “Why wouldn’t I be? I only met him briefly. How—?”
John cut him short. “What is it you have come to see me about?”
“If you would prefer I returned—”
“Leukos wished for me to speak to you, so I will. Briefly.”
Thomas took a long drink and stared down at the silver goblet clutched in his large, scarred hand. “I’m seeking a sacred relic.”
“I see. Relics aren’t hard to find in Constantinople. We have hundreds. The staff of Moses, a fragment or two of the True Cross, bones of almost any saint one could name.”
“I’m searching for the Grail.”
“The cup from the last meal before the crucifixion.”
Thomas turned his goblet around nervously. “Some say it is a platter, such as those from which we eat, or a precious gem.”
“An interesting legend, but the Grail is one of the few relics I have never heard rumored to be in the city. If it were it would be in the patriarch’s charge.”
“I couldn’t get an audience with Patriarch Epiphanios. I visited the Keeper of the Plate because I was advised that he is—was—in charge of the emperor’s valuables. I thought he might know about something as valuable as the Grail. He said you would give me an introduction to the patriarch.”
John got up from his chair and went over to the window. A breeze carried the pungent smell of the Sea of Marmara into the study. A detachment of excubitors emerged from the barracks opposite. John was tempted to dismiss his annoying visitor immediately. But was it a coincidence Leukos had died the day after he had been called upon by Thomas? Or the day after Thomas claimed he called upon him? Had that meeting really taken place?
Leukos hadn’t mentioned it to John. Then again, he had seemed oddly distracted for some reason, perhaps something to do with his visits to the soothsayer. Perhaps it had simply slipped his mind.
It was best to humor the man until he could learn more about him.
“Why does your king want the Grail?”
“It’s the holiest of all holy objects,” Thomas said quickly, then added, “and, like mistletoe in the old religion, it will heal all.”
“Is that what they say?”
Thomas rose. “I fear I am intruding, Lord Chamberlain. If you see fit to supply me with an introduction, I am staying at the Inn of the Centaurs.”
John remembered Anatolius mentioning the inn during the afternoon at the Hippodrome. It was where he and Leukos were supposed to meet the soothsayer.
As John turned away from the window to reply, Thomas said suddenly, “One for sorrow. Unfortunately, the prediction has already come true.”
John looked back outside in the direction of his visitor’s gaze. A large dark bird had landed on the roof of the barracks and sat there alone.
“You’re referring to the raven. I haven’t thought of that old rhyme since I left Bretania.”
“You’re familiar with my land?”
“I was there as a young man.” John didn’t add that he been a mercenary. For all he knew he might have been fighting for Thomas’ enemies.
“Then you know that to see a raven, a single raven, is to foretell sorrow. But for the fortunate one who sees two, this means joy. Three is for a girl, four for a boy, and so on.”
“In the part of the country where I lived the old wise women used to say three was for a letter.”
The raven rose silently and soared away. John watched it diminish to a speck and vanish into the cloudless sky above the countless crosses that the pious had raised on the rooftops of tenements and mansions alike.
A fortune-telling bird, and the symbol of a Mithran rank at that, yet perfectly at home in the capital of a Christian Empire. It made John think of how eager Leukos had been, devout though he was, to visit a soothsayer. What had the soothsayer foretold?
He pushed the thoughts aside. They were the result of a sleepless night. He needed to force himself to think clearly.
He wrote an introduction to the patriarch and gave it to Thomas. If the man was telling the truth it was what Leukos had wished. If he was lying….well, John did not believe in Christian relics. Let Epiphanios deal with his fellow believer.
After Thomas left, John sat brooding, staring at the fantastically detailed mosaic and the little girl Zoe. She had listened to their conversation so solemnly and silently.
“What do you think then?” John asked her. “Is this Thomas trustworthy? Is there a connection between Thomas’ visit and Leukos’ death? Yes, yes, you are right, Zoe. It is my task to find that out.”