One for Sorrow (9 page)
John winced at the sunlight that shouted through the kitchen window. His head pounded and he could feel a vein in his temple squirming. Nevertheless he couldn’t stomach Peter’s proffered cure which sat untouched in a large goblet on the scarred wooden table in front of him.
Anatolius, newly arrived, gave John a concerned look and inquired about his health.
“Too much wine,” John groaned, and proceeded to describe his evening, including a description of Thomas and his supposed mission. “I’m afraid I had very loose lips last night. A dangerous practice for a Lord Chamberlain.”
“You had a shock yesterday, John. Meeting Cornelia again after so long. Not to mention Leukos’ death and this peculiar foreigner showing up.”
“I should know how to control myself.”
“You’re only human, even if you sometimes pretend otherwise.” Anatolius glanced at the goblet on the table. “What’s that odd concoction?”
“Owls’ eggs and wine, the traditional cure for over-indulgence of the grape, as Peter put it. I’m not sure which is more unpleasant, that mixture or the look of disapproval Peter had when he put it down in front of me.”
Anatolius smiled. “Perhaps he intends it as your punishment. You should carry an amethyst. It’s said they’re a marvelous antidote to intoxication.”
“Do you carry one?”
“I tried but it didn’t help. You know the way it is with these cures, they always work, but only for someone else.”
“True enough.”
“And what about this scoundrel Thomas?”
“Peter saw him out. Unceremoniously, I gather. Peter has taken a dislike to him.”
“I’m not surprised. Some barbarian trying to pass himself off as a knight from Bretania in search of a holy relic. You can’t believe a tale like that! I wonder what he’s really up to?”
“I don’t know what to believe when it comes to Thomas. He presents a problem.”
“And to think he’s staying where Leukos and I visited the soothsayer. I never knew the Inn of the Centaurs was such a popular place. You should have told me about him yesterday.”
“I would have, but when you told me about Cornelia….”
“Yes, I would have forgotten everything else myself.” He reached out and tapped the leather pouch lying on the table. “Is this Leukos’ pouch, the one you told me about?”
“Yes. A messenger from the prefect delivered it last night, but Peter only told me this morning. I was waiting for my head to stop throbbing before examining it. No point in putting it off longer, I suppose. But I must request that you tell no one I have it.” As he spoke, John picked up the pouch, loosened its drawstring, and poured the contents out into the painfully bright sunlight lying across the table.
Something rolled across the table top, fell over the edge, and ticked down on the tiled floor. Anatolius retrieved a tiny, polished green stone. John frowned, puzzled.
“I have one like that,” Anatolius offered. “The soothsayer gave it to me after he told my future. It was one of the pebbles he used to do it. He said I should keep it for good fortune.”
John could hardly believe his own good fortune. “So we’ve learned something already! Leukos must have kept his appointment with the soothsayer. The old man said he had, but objects are not so prone to lie as people.”
The other contents of the pouch were more commonplace. There were four coins, three of silver and one gold, the gold coin having been clipped, which John theorized might indicate that Leukos had made a purchase on the last afternoon or evening of his life. But on the other hand, it might also indicate that he, or the coin’s previous owner, had purchased something earlier.
“Nothing to be learned from the coins, then?” queried Anatolius.
“Actually they tell us quite a bit. For one thing, it confirms what we had already surmised from the fact that Leukos still had the pouch. It wasn’t robbery.”
“You mean because they weren’t taken? Perhaps the thieves stole something Leukos had just purchased. Perhaps they were scared away as they were in the process of robbing him. That could have happened if they were interrupted by a passerby. Someone might even have come out of Isis’ house and disturbed them.”
“Yes, something like that could easily have happened but I don’t think it’s what occurred. We must look for some other motive for Leukos’ murder.”
The other contents of Leukos’ pouch were less instructive. What could be made of a square of linen embroidered with the palace mark and a silver necklace?
“What do you suppose Leukos used this for?” Anatolius said, picking up the cloth. “Surely he wasn’t raiding the imperial storerooms?”
“Hardly.” John’s tone quelled the young man, who had the grace to look ashamed at making such a remark so soon after the man’s death.
“He was such a perfectionist perhaps he used it to wipe stray spots off the silver?” Anatolius mumbled lamely.
John said nothing, but picked up the necklace. It was heavy. At the end of its thick silver chain hung two intertwined fish. Both men knew that the fish was a Christian symbol, and that Leukos had been a Christian.
“A trinket for a lady friend?” suggested Anatolius. “Surely it is for a woman?”
“Not necessarily. And do you ever recall seeing him with a lady friend?”
Anatolius shook his head. “No, now that you mention it.”
“Don’t forget Leukos and I were always interested in finding accomplished craftsmen to carry out palace commissions,” said John. “We often collected samples of their creations. I’d have assumed it was something like that, but consider the workmanship. Crude, don’t you think? I would have said it isn’t anything that would normally have attracted Leukos’ attention.”
“You think too hard, John. Even with wine-hags in your head, you’re concocting explanations just so you can demolish them. And most of them are ideas that would never occur to anyone else.”
John agreed it was possible.
“I’m sure there is a simple solution,” Anatolius offered.
“Probably, probably.”
John carefully replaced the objects in the pouch. Had it really been a bungled attempt at robbery which had ended in murder? People died on the streets every day. People who had taken a wrong turn at the wrong hour. One moment on their way home to their families, looking forward to all the joys and trials of the years ahead. The next, dead. And for no reason. It was nothing to do with them or the lives they had led, except that a cutthroat thought they might be carrying something valuable. But strangers died for no reason. Not friends, and certainly not John’s friend Leukos.
“I don’t know,” John worried away at it. “Something’s wrong. It doesn’t make sense.”
“Does it have to?”
“Yes,” John snapped, regretting his tone even as he spoke. “Yes, it does.”
It was almost noon when Xiphias, his head throbbing from the previous night’s over-indulgence, arrived at the offices of the Keeper of the Plate.
The past two evenings he had left work and plunged immediately into the well of forgetfulness offered by wine. What he was trying to forget was the visit from the Lord Chamberlain, that wretched apprentice who had by some grotesque aberration of fate managed to ingratiate himself with the emperor.
He also wanted to forget the way he had taunted that apprentice. The times he had lied to Leukos, claiming John was lazy and incompetent. How he had surreptitiously scratched vessels John had been detailed to polish. The occasions he and his friends had ambushed the young newcomer in the dormitories and beaten him.
Xiphias had much to forget. But what he could not forget, what pursued him like an army of Furies, was his awareness of the retribution he would take were their places reversed, and he was now a high official who had been persecuted.
His revenge might be as nothing as compared to what a treacherous, inhuman eunuch could invent.
Still, it had been two days since the Lord Chamberlain’s visit and Xiphias had heard nothing more. His terror had almost burnt itself out. Perhaps he was to be spared. For now.
Or could it be that the Lord Chamberlain realized Xiphias was likely to be elevated to the position held by Leukos and thus no longer a person to be trifled with easily?
The day might come when Xiphias, Keeper of the Plate, would not suffer nightmares every time he chanced to glimpse his former victim in the hallways of the palace.
He forced himself to straighten his slumping shoulders and put on a sour smile before he entered the workroom. He listened for the sound of scurrying feet as the feckless apprentices hastened to appear busy when he stamped in the door.
There was a curious silence.
For a heartbeat his panic returned. Had they all been removed for questioning in the matter of Leukos’ death? He knew the persuasive methods of certain of Justinian’s servants.
And if they revealed what they knew—as undoubtedly they would sooner or later—might they also speak at length on certain matters of no great concern to them as slaves but of great import to him personally?
He entered the open space with its barred windows letting in bright sunlight that made him wince and rub his forehead. The apprentices were there, silent, but conspicuously not at work.
“What’s this?” he shouted. “Why are you not at work? You’ll suffer for this! You!” he addressed a short, thin slave. “Explain. Has the emperor declared a holiday? Have you all been freed?”
The boy shook his head. “No…master…” The way he pronounced the title was an insult, and Xiphias advanced upon him with his fist raised.
To his surprise, the boy stood his ground.
Xiphias halted, puzzled. An expectant hush had settled over the room.
“You tell him, Beppolenus,” someone called out.
The boy licked his lips. “We have decided that we should inform the Lord Chamberlain about your visitor. The one he was asking about.”
“Oh, indeed,” Xiphias roared, wincing as the thunderbolts of Zeus exploded in his head. “Eavesdropping, were you? I never saw the man! He was never here! One more word and I’ll have the lot of you flogged! In fact, I’ll set an example with you right away—”
“It is wise not to be subject to rumors,” the boy pointed out with a crooked smile. “A person being flogged may say the most unlikely things, but such statements go round the court like lightning. Who knows whose ears they will reach and how they will be used? And even if nothing is done, still, there is always a lingering suspicion, a closer watch on the people concerned. Who knows what watchers might see?”
“A regular little orator, aren’t you!” Xiphias blustered. He sat down, trembling, and gaped at the insolent child.
Defied by slaves! They chuckled and nodded to each other. It was intolerable.
But what could he do? What Beppolenus had said was true. Xiphias couldn’t afford to attract attention or have his affairs examined too closely, and especially by the keen-eyed Lord Chamberlain. A man who not only had a keen eye but also a sharp grudge.
“Very well.” Xiphias drew the words out, trying to sound menacing. “I shall remember what you said. And now, back to work.”
There was a long pause and then the apprentices followed his instructions.
Xiphias went into what had been Leukos’ but was now his private office, shut the door, and sat with his pounding head in his hands. How could it be that he had suddenly become a man at the mercy of his underlings? Now he dare not strike any of them for fear of consequences.
Was it the Lord Chamberlain’s doing? Had he spoken with the apprentices? Was he playing some cruel game?
Xiphias sprang from his seat, grabbed a pitcher, and threw it against the wall.
He wouldn’t allow himself to be destroyed by a former apprentice, a slave, a eunuch.
Leukos’ funeral was a simple affair. The Keeper of the Plate had no known family, a thing not unusual in Constantinople where the ambitious, not to mention the desperate, arrived alone from all corners of the empire, intent on making new lives for themselves. His servants had prepared his body for burial. Now Leukos lay on the couch in a room off his atrium for the short time it took for his few acquaintances to pay their last respects. Light from the lamps illuminating the shuttered room danced across the dead man’s rigid features.
John was grateful that none of the mourners engaged in commonplace histrionics. There was no hair-pulling or breast-beating. Christians, John understood, did not favor crass emotional displays. He credited them for that. Waiting in the hall, he found the incense infusing the air with the promise of Paradise made his eyes and the back of his throat burn.
The puzzle of his friend’s death would not leave John’s thoughts. The prefect seemingly had dismissed the murder as a common street killing, unlikely to be solved. Though he knew it was irrational, John could not bring himself to accept that. So, while feeling it might be seen as disrespectful under the circumstances, he nevertheless sought out the young woman who had been in charge of Leukos’ handful of servants.
Euphemia, barefoot and dressed in a short tunic, looked up at John with fear in her large brown eyes when he requested her to accompany him to another room.
“I washed him with water mixed with spices,” she told John anxiously. “And then we anointed him with perfumes. Poor master, he never wore perfume when he was alive.”
The Lord Chamberlain, realizing that even in one of his less opulent robes he would be an impressive and awe-inspiring sight to a servant, tried to reassure her. “I’m certain you’ve done everything correctly. I only want to ask you some questions.”
He motioned her to a stool. He noticed that the water clock sitting in the wall niche had run dry. Euphemia must have followed his glance.
“Sir, I’m sorry, I forgot to fill it.” Her voice trembled. “We didn’t need them in the country. We had the sun there. Not so many walls pressing in on us.”
“You are from Caria?” John had recognized her accent. The girl nodded. There was an unhealthy pallor to her face. “And what will you do now that your master is dead? Return?”
“Oh yes, sir, as soon as I can go without disrespect to the master. Constantinople isn’t for me. So big and dirty, if you’ll excuse my saying so, sir.”
“I am from the country myself.”
“But you have achieved great office, just like the master.”
From the atrium came the sound of hushed voices, and a faint odor of perfume. Euphemia looked down at her clasped hands.
“Tell me, now. Did you see anything unusual recently? Did your master say anything to you?”
She shook her head. “It isn’t for a master to confide in his servants, is it?”
“They occasionally do.”
“Oh, no, sir, not my master.”
“Do you think he had something to confide?”
She looked at him questioningly. Again, anxiety shadowed her eyes.
“I just wondered why you mentioned confiding,” John said.
“No, there was nothing. We were not…friends.”
“I didn’t mean that. Did he seem agitated at all recently? Was there anything odd about his actions?”
She shook her head.
“Did Leukos have visitors?”
“No, sir. Never. Sometimes he went out in the evening.” Agitated, the girl rose and went to the window, open to a garden where a few spring flowers were beginning to bloom. She turned her face toward their scent and breathed deeply.
“Do you know where he went?”
The girl shook her head again.
“Might he have been going to the baths?”
“Well, I could tell when he’d visited the baths.” John looked at the girl quizzically. “He always used the gymnasium too. He was so pale,” she explained, “and when he got back he was still flushed, right up to the top of his head.”
John considered this insight into his friend’s life. Leukos had never mentioned any evening activities to him. Of course, there was no reason why he should. But one would have expected, at least on occasion, to be regaled with a description of a visit to the theater or of a particularly lively dinner party. There again, Leukos had been unmarried and his destinations may have been the sort a scrupulous man does not reveal. There was nothing wrong with that.
“And you are sure he had no visitors?”
“Yes Except…” Euphemia turned from the window. “Well, it wasn’t like real visitors, but a few times a man would come to the door.”
“Did you see this man?”
“I don’t mean any particular man. Different men. They seemed soldierly somehow, but not dressed that way, exactly. It was something about the way they moved. You have something of that yourself, sir, if I may say so.”
“They did not stay?”
“No. They just brought him things. A bag, or a scroll, or whatever it might be.”
John thought of the charioteer Gregorius, who habitually wore the dress of his profession, either from habit or boastfulness. “You said these visitors reminded you of soldiers, but they weren’t dressed in a military fashion. Were they dressed like charioteers?”
Euphemia screwed up her face in concentration, or was it distress? A tear ran from one eye and she put a fist up to her mouth.
“Oh, I don’t know, sir. I can’t remember.”
“Did he go out on those nights?” John said gently.
“Sometimes.” The girl folded her face into a frown. Her hands, held at her sides, balled into fists. “It’s all so complicated in this dirty city,” she finally blurted out. “All comings and goings in the night and nobody saying what they mean and dark alleyways and who knows what hiding in them. It isn’t what I thought. I thought it would be so grand and all. And mice. There are so many nasty mice.” She shuddered.
“But surely there are mice in the country?” John’s voice was gentle.
“Oh, but sir, they’re country mice.”