Ten for Dying (John the Lord Chamberlain Mysteries) (8 page)

Chapter Fifteen

Dedi, desecrater of Theodora’s tomb, lurked in night shadows, watching the mansion across the street with growing impatience.

During his pursuit he would have been happy to stand still, as he had now been doing hour after hour. With his short legs it had taken all his strength to keep the fleet-footed, demonic creatures in sight.

His first thought when he saw them burst from the Church of the Holy Apostles was that the spells intended to bring Theodora back to life had gone awry and called forth two monsters from the depths instead. But if so, what were they carrying away from the church?

On impulse, he decided to pursue them. At the back of the church grounds they cut behind a looming cliff of inky buildings and raced downhill to where the Valens Aqueduct emerged from the hillside to span the valley there. They kept to the base of the aqueduct, gliding in and out of the thick shadows cast by archways in the moonlight. For an instant Dedi would see two ghostly, silvered shapes, then they would vanish into utter blackness, only to reappear as if by magick. So he ran after two flickering phantoms, until they veered off into labyrinthine alleyways.

Dedi’s snaggle-toothed mouth worked like a bellows as he sucked in the thick unwholesome atmosphere of the city night. There was a devilish air about him. He had always been able to make Theodora laugh. Perhaps his call had not gone unheeded. The empress may have heard it while chatting with the two loping creatures in front of him. “Go and see what Dedi wants,” she might have ordered.

Luckily their route continued to descend, which made running easier, or Dedi would have lost them. They avoided the main streets and open spaces. Dedi had no idea where he was. He began to fear that in their strange zigzagging flight they had traced an arcane symbol which had dropped them all into a maze leading to the anteroom of the underworld. Then they crossed the Mese in a band of moonlight and Dedi would have breathed a sigh of relief if his burning lungs had allowed it.

They plunged down toward the Harbor of Julian. Were they bearing whatever they had stolen to a waiting ship? Why would evil spirits do that when they could simply take to the skies, or sink down into the earth? But instead of continuing to the docks they ran along the periphery of the harbor in the direction of the Hippodrome and the Great Palace. The moon threw a shaft of icy light across the basalt sea. Dedi raced on until his legs began to cramp, but the moon remained always at his one shoulder and the reflection at the other so he seemed to be churning along in place, as in a nightmare.

As they came into sight of the curved end of the Hippodrome one of the creatures suddenly vanished. They had run into a pool of shadow but only a single one emerged, the other having apparently dissolved into the darkness from where it had come. Or, perhaps, cut abruptly into an alley.

Dedi forced his legs to move faster, determined not to lose the remaining demon, the one that was carrying whatever had been pilfered from the church.

He was not surprised when, at last, the creature ended its flight by slipping through a side door into a mansion Dedi recognized as belonging to General Belisarius and his wife Antonina. The magician had entertained there so often he knew many of the staff by name. He knew that the fortress-like granite exterior, adorned only by a wide marble staircase, concealed an interior as luxurious as that of the Great Palace.

He remembered too how uneasy Antonina made him. Her stare seemed to penetrate his heart, making him shiver with fear. It was not merely that she was ruthless, she was also widely rumored to practice magick, and not the harmless kind Dedi performed. Antonina’s magick was malignant and self-serving. Thus had Belisarius been assisted in his rise to generalship, or so it was claimed by chattering courtiers.

Could Antonina be involved in the theft from the church?

He would rather wrestle with a denizen of hell than be caught looking at her askance. Suddenly he felt a presence at his back. Something infinitely cold with menace. He staggered around, heart leaping, but there was nothing to see except the icy moon hanging high up in the sky, beyond the grasp of the countless crosses reaching up from the rooftops of the Christian capital.

Nevertheless, he fled, peering this way and that, fearful of being observed.

Dawn and a nap had cleared away the black cobwebs of Dedi’s fears. Having been frustrated in his attempts to revive his employer, he began to consider other schemes. It hadn’t taken long to discover that the object clutched by the demon had been the shroud of the Virgin. News spread fast. Half the city had probably learned about the theft while Dedi pursued the perpetrators. Both Justinian and the church would be grateful if he were able to restore the relic to its rightful place. Could he steal it back?

He wasn’t certain what he might learn, but he would soon be out on the streets and idle anyway.

So now a shriveled face peered out from behind a statue of Virgil. Although looted from Rome, the statue was not, in truth, a very good example of classical art, barely good enough to fill one of the many niches needing residents in the nether walls of the Hippodrome. Dedi had no interest in either sculpture or poetry, but only in the concealment offered by Virgil’s voluminous marble toga.

Invisible though he was from the street and the mansion, his terror returned. However, his fear of demonic forces and Antonina were outweighed by his fear for his future. He might have taken consolation in being free of Theodora’s whims, for nobody could have shielded him from her wrath if he had offended her, even if the offense arose, as a storm on the Sea of Marmara, for no other reason than that she was bored. But the fact was, with Theodora gone, he no longer had a place at court.

The empress had delighted in his magick. Dedi’s talking, human-headed snake might be an obvious fraud, but its often obscene repartee always made the empress laugh. Not that her laughter was a pleasant sound. Thus did the jackal cough over the dead and crows croak over their carrion. Still, coaxing that hellish noise out of her earned him a comfortable place to live, and the jingle of coins in his purse pleased him.

“Send for Dedi of Egypt,” Theodora would order, and he had never failed to make her scimitar smile appear.

It didn’t hurt that his shrunken stature almost qualified him as one of the dwarfs on which she doted. He puffed out his sunken chest with pride at the recollection. His elation did not last long. For she and her scarlet smile were gone forever and he had made enemies who sneered at him and whispered of unholy practices as he passed by in the frescoed halls of the Great Palace. And it was true, not all of his tricks were as patently fraudulent as the talking snake. Ironically, the courtiers were afraid of him. Afraid his magick would do them harm. But now, without Theodora’s protection, his reputation was going to harm him.

During his solitary hours behind Virgil’s toga, Dedi had reached a frightening conclusion. The desecration of the mausoleum was sure to be identified as his handiwork and by extension he would be accused of stealing the sacred icon on the same night.

Dedi wished he hadn’t forgotten the Egyptian talisman in his panic. Still, he could never have caught all the frogs, and they were equally damning. It was unfair. He had only wanted to bring Theodora back from the halls of the dead, or at least within earshot of the emperor. Who could fault him for that? He had nothing to do with the theft of the holy relic. The Christians did not understand that the magick he practiced was not the same as their magick. What use would their holy charm have been to an Egyptian magician?

Except now he desperately needed it to save his own ugly little head.

And how did he plan to regain the shroud of the Virgin? It was one thing to trick the empress into laughing and quite another to do battle with forces of evil. Would the malign spirits he needed to overcome be as powerful as Shezmu, slaughterer of wicked souls in the underworld? He recalled tales he and his childhood friends had used to scare each other. Shezmu employed a press and the heads of such souls to make wine for the virtuous dead.

Movement at the side of the mansion caught his attention. A figure emerged from the side door, just visible in the light from an open window, and slunk away.

Things were becoming clearer. But what, exactly, was he going to do now he knew the demon had disguised itself as Antonina’s servant Tychon?

Chapter Sixteen

Felix picked himself up off the street, cursing rut-splintered axles, overturned carts, dead bodies, Fate, and skittish donkeys. He took a few tentative steps, making certain he hadn’t broken anything. Fat droplets of rain began beating down on his head, so he cursed the heavens too.

His cargo lay sprawled at the edge of the colonnade, clearly illuminated by the torch left burning in front of a shuttered butcher’s shop. The blanket had become slightly undone. One hand stuck out, signaling for help.

Felix looked up and down the street. At present it was deserted. The rain increased, stirring up a smell of dust where it hit. A gust of wind groaned through the colonnade. Lightning flashed repeatedly. The flickering light made the dead hand look as if it were waving frantically. The noise of the accident may have alerted someone. For all he knew the urban watch could be on the way.

Even if he could push the cart upright it wasn’t going anywhere with a broken axle.

Did he hear voices? The sound of rain drowned everything out.

He grasped the blanket-wrapped corpse and lifted it with a grunt, feeling a sharp twinge in his side. Perhaps he’d broken something after all. As he staggered over to the donkey the whole length of an arm freed itself and slapped against his leg.

He flung the horrid load over the donkey’s back, undid the traces leaving the bit and a length of rein in place, and urged the animal onward. Forget the cemeteries. He couldn’t be too far from the sea. Judging from the driving rain, blowing straight into his face, the sea was coming to him. He was moving downhill. Water rushed along the street, splashing around his ankles. All he needed to do was follow the gurgling rivulets.

Soon man, beast, and dead man were soaked. The corpse kept slipping and sliding further out of the blanket until both arms and an elegantly booted foot dangled in plain view. Luckily no sensible person would be abroad in such a torrent, and beggars sheltering in doorways or vacant shops had problems enough of their own without worrying about what others might be doing.

Thunder reverberated, the ground vibrated. Lightning flashes revealed a city devoid of color, a bas relief in pure white marble. The roar of the rain numbed the senses. Felix was hardly aware of his beard dripping or his saturated clothes. He might have been accompanying his lifeless companion into the land of the dead. The warm bedroom he had so recently shared with Anastasia existed in another world.

Then he saw an orange light in the thickening mist. A lantern, surely, to be shining in the midst of the downpour.

The urban watch sometimes carried lanterns.

Felix froze and pulled awkwardly at his reins, forcing the donkey to stop.

The light bobbed in the middle of the street. The rain and mist obscured whoever was holding it. A whole contingent of armed men might be staring at him, wondering what sort of madman would be leading a donkey along in weather like this. A madman whose actions required investigating.

The light moved, crossed the street, and vanished under the colonnade.

Felix began to breath again.

The donkey snorted uneasily.

A lightning bolt struck close enough to make Felix’s ears ring and shook his bones. The donkey let out a bray of terror and ran. Felix clamped his hand shut but there was nothing there but a raw welt where the reins had been. The donkey might have been ridden by Satan himself so quickly did it vanish into the storm.

There would have been plenty of room on its back for a rider because the courier’s body had returned to the street, one hand resting against the toe of Felix’s boot.

Felix kicked it off in revulsion.

“Mithra!”

Just his luck, the street here was brightly illuminated, this time by a torch in front of a perfumer’s shop. The light reflected from the opaque eyes of the ashen face which had been uncovered in its most recent fall.

Would he never be rid of the cursed corpse? It pursued him like one of the Furies.

As the thought crossed his mind, the corpse laughed rudely.

No, Felix told himself, just noxious gases escaping as the thing started to decay.

He felt a sudden impulse to simply run, leave the corpse where it was. But that would be like fleeing the battlefield. Felix refused to flee. He must finish what he had begun, somehow.

He wiped rain out of his own eyes with a shaking hand and looked around. His attention was drawn by the perfumer’s statue of Aphrodite, an exceptionally inept copy of a classical Greek work. The legs were too short. The breasts were almost those of a child’s, but even though the amateur sculptor had apparently whittled first one then the other, he had never got them anywhere near the same size.

Nevertheless, at that moment, she was the most beautiful woman Felix had ever seen thanks to the recess behind her, large enough to conceal a body.

Why hadn’t he thought of it before? He dragged the courier under the colonnade. The roaring rush of rain turned into a hollow thudding on the sheltering roof.

“Let’s get you ready for the goddess!” Felix began stripping off the dead man’s soaked garments. Beggars who died on the streets were invariably found naked, picked clean. And with no garments, the body would probably not be identified quickly, if at all. There was nothing remarkable about it that he could see. A well fed young man whose muscles had not been taxed with labor. The packages he had delivered had never been very heavy.

Just another man murdered in the street. How could anyone link the captain of the excubitors with a naked corpse discovered far away from the palace?

He carried the man’s garments back to the public lavatory he remembered passing. The foul weather had kept people off the streets and the long marble bench was deserted. A beggar jumped up from a corner and fled, perhaps mistaking Felix for the urban watch.

Felix stuffed the garments down a hole then relieved himself after them, thoughtfully.

John might have come up with a better plan. But he wasn’t here—for the time being.

Given Justinian’s whims, his friend would doubtless be returned to favor soon. It wasn’t as if John were dead.