Eight for Eternity

Chapter Thirty

January 16, 532

John ran through the palace gardens. The covered walkway he followed veered wildly, first one direction then another. When he looked back he couldn’t see his pursuers. He could hear the thud of boots. Or was it hooves? Rhythmic, relentless.

He needed to reach the safety of the ship but he had somehow lost his way. He didn’t recognize this part of the palace grounds. He could see nothing but thick, dark vegetation, like a forest. How had he got here?

Who or what was chasing him?

The walkway emerged from the forest onto a vast plain. John peered around, hoping to spot a familiar landmark. Red twilight spilled across a rock strewn landscape. Where was the sea? Where was the Great Palace?

John saw only a charred ruin. Did nothing else remain? Had the fires spread so far?

The clamor of pursuit grew louder.

John ducked under a crumbling archway.

And found himself in a windowless room. The wooden door was shut, although he didn’t recall closing it. A familiar figure confronted him.

“You shouldn’t be here,” Haik said.

“Haik! Thanks to Mithra! I thought you were dead.”

“Hardly. I must have stayed too long at the baths. We were detained by the Persians, you see.”

“The Persians? You mean the Persian emissary?”

There was an explosive pounding at the door.

“They’re here!” Haik cried. “They’re here!” His voice rose to an inhuman howl.

His eyes turned red and his flesh began to melt.

The knocking at the door continued, accompanied now by shouts. “Chamberlain! Chamberlain!”

John was suddenly aware that he was lying in his own bed. For an instant he was paralyzed, suspended between nightmare and reality. Then he forced himself awake.

What hour was it? The oil lamp beside the bed guttered as he threw off his blanket.

The pounding continued. “Chamberlain! Can you hear me?”

He recognized the voice of Pompeius. His suspicion was conferred by the gust of stale wine breath that hit him in the face when he yanked open the door. The fat man was frantic as well as drunk. “Dead! I was afraid of it! Hurry! It’s Julianna!”

“Julianna? Dead?”

“No. You. I thought you were dead. I kept knocking. You wouldn’t answer. Julianna’s ill. Poisoned, like that house guest of yours. Must be poison. She’s in her room. Come quickly.” Pompeius lumbered off, unsteadily.

John glanced around for his clothes, half expecting to see Haik, but the phantom had gone back to wherever dreams go. It was said the gods spoke to men in dreams. Had some kindly deity sent him the solution to the murders of Haik and the faction members? If so, he couldn’t remember. As he pulled his dalmatic on over a light tunic he tried to hold onto the vision. It was like trying to grasp sea mists at sunrise.

He rushed after Pompeius and caught him at the entrance to the suite of rooms the guests were occupied. “Have you summoned a physician?”

“Yes. Of course. Rusticus is staying at the palace. One of the excubitors agreed to go for him. I think, at first, he thought it was some sort of ruse. But I…I…well….it’s your house…I thought you should- ”

“Where is she?”

“In her room.”

“But I’m not a physician or a clergyman. It wouldn’t be appropriate.” John well knew that in aristocratic circles the women’s quarters were strictly off-limits to men. In this case, those quarters were the single room Julianna was staying in. Even if Pompeius were too intoxicated to take offense, others might.

Pompeius stared at John glassy eyed. “What? Not appropriate? Oh…Oh…I see. No. It’s fine. As Hypatius agreed. Because of your….um….your status.”

John felt a sudden rush of heat to his face. He managed to control his voice. “I see. Very well. I have no antidotes for poison though.”

By the time he reached Julianna’s bedside his anger was under control.

Hypatius, hovering nearby, snapped at his brother. “It’s about time. I was afraid Bacchus had detained you or you’d fallen asleep under a table.”

John leaned over the girl. Her face was shockingly pale and her breathing shallow but her eyes were open and alert. “I’m fine.” Her voice was barely a whisper. “I just felt dizzy. It’s nothing to worry about. Please reassure my father and my uncle.”

“She collapsed,” Hypatius said. “The crash woke me up. When I got her she was crumpled up on the floor. You can imagine what I was thinking, after what…just happened.”

John wondered if she had been injured during her confrontation with the street thugs, or had inhaled smoke while out in the city. Probably the exertion and worry of recent days had finally caught up. He knew he should alert Hypatius to his daughter’s secretive comings and goings. Julianna knew it too. The gaze she fixed on him clearly demanded that he say nothing.

He was reminded again of Cornelia. She had been strong-willed too.

“I’m not a physician,” he said. “but it doesn’t look to me as if she’s been poisoned. The past few days have been too exciting for her. That’s all it is.”

“Exciting? It’s not very exciting here, is it?” Pompeius shook his head. “More likely she’s taken a chill from spending all her time out in your garden.”

“Quite possibly.” As John straightened up the white haired physician Rusticus entered in his usual flurry of words.

“Apologies, sirs. Your guard had to drag me out the barracks. Been there half the night. Belisarius got into a tussle in the streets. I’ve been treating wounds that would made Galen weep to see them.” He pulled a stool up to Julianna’s bedside. “Fainted, you say?”

“That’s right,” Hypatius confirmed. “Fell down as if she were poisoned.”

Rusticus took hold of the girl’s chin and turned her face to him. “Look this way, child. Show me your tongue. The lips aren’t blue.”

“I’m fine,” Julianna protested weakly. “I just feel a bit sick.”

“You think you’re sick, do you?” Rusticus rambled on. “Be glad both your leg bones aren’t protruding from your skin. You’d be sick then. And that wasn’t the worst.” He placed a hand on her abdomen. “Breath now. There, you can breath. If you’d been hit with a brick, it might be a different story. Home-made weapons are the worst. Some untrained ruffian with a splintered board in his hands or a jagged shard of pottery isn’t as likely to inflict a wound as a trained soldier with a proper sword or spear. Oh, but when he does he makes a nasty wound indeed. At least a well honed blade, precisely placed, will kill you on the spot. A plank full of rusty nails just rips your guts open. Tortures you for days before putting you out of your misery.”

“Are you sure she’s all right, Rusticus?” demanded Hypatius.

“Fine. Fine. A touch of woman’s complaint most likely.” The physician struggled up off the stool. “I can give her something for it.”

“I don’t need anything.” Julianna’s voice sounded slightly stronger.

“You’ll take what Rusticus thinks best,” said Hypatius. “I don’t want you visiting Antonina for any of her evil concoctions.”

Rusticus shuffled to the door, followed by Hypatius and Pompeius. John took a last glance around the room. The family had not had time to bring much from their homes. He noticed a wooden chest, probably filled with clothes. On a marble topped table a tiny, painted horse sat surrounded by perfume bottles and fancy enamelled containers of the sort that might hold unguents and make-up.

He was alone in the room with Julianna, who was looking at him.

“Thank you for being discreet,” she said in a whisper.

“Please try to be more discreet yourself. No more excitement.”

He went out into the corridor where Hypatius was gesticulating at Rusticus. “You’re sure it isn’t poison? Haik could have been poisoned outside the palace. Everyone agreed. It might have been slow acting.”

“There would be signs,” Rusticus said. “Why I recall, back when Senator-”

“But what if there’s a poisoner among us?” interrupted Hypatius. “Or a murderer with access to this house? I could be next. Or my brother.”

Pompeius put a hand on Hypatius’ shoulder. “Come away now. Have some wine with me. For all you know you might be poisoned already. The pain might start any moment.”

Hypatius looked stricken. Pompeius chuckled, then began to sway on his feet. His hand tightened on his brother’s shoulder. Hypatius grabbed Pompeius’ arm to steady him.

“You’ll be nearby if my brother should need you, Rusticus?” Hypatius asked. “Or if I should?”

Rusticus gave a curt nod. “Yes. The last thing either of you need is wine. I will send a concoction for Julianna, and a sleeping potion for the two of you.”

“I’ll accompany you out,” John told the physician after the brothers had departed. “Perhaps you should just stay at my house. You seem to visit the family constantly.”

“Mostly Pompeius. Julianna is healthy as a horse.”

“I suspect she would appreciate your saying so.”

“The last time I saw her was when I treated her uncle, right after the executions. It was Pompeius who was on his sick bed that afternoon. Julianna had come over to tend to him until I arrived. The two houses are practically next to each other. She’s a strong girl. Not squeamish. Demanded to hear every detail of what I’d witnessed. Did I describe the executions to you?”

“As a matter of fact, you did and it was most interesting,” John said quickly, as they walked into the atrium. “Please excuse me. I have something to attend to.”

He left the elderly physician beside the statue of Aphrodite.

An image of Haik floated through his mind. The dream was already dissipating from his memory. Haik had said something about Persians, hadn’t he? Felix said that the Persian emissary traveled with Belisarius. Haik had also accompanied the general’s troops to the city. Then too, Julianna had been with Pompeius when Rusticus had treated him. These were connections John had not known about. They formed new possibilities.

***

It took only a few inquiries before John was being ushered into the Persian emissary’s rooms at the Daphne Palace. No one sought to deny him entrance. It was perfectly natural that the chamberlain in charge of the imperial banquet might wish to confer with the honoree. The only puzzle was why preparations were still ongoing, given the state of the city, but then the emperor was known as a man of strange whims.

The quarters had been decorated in wall hangings with Persian motifs. The emissary was sitting at a table, poring over something there. When he rose, John saw he was a tall man, not much older than John, with a black spike of a beard and hair that hung to his broad shoulders in glossy ringlets.

John’s breath caught in his throat before he could speak. He recognized the man, from his time in captivity.

For an instant he was back in the Persian encampment. A military officer with a sharply pointed beard walked down the line of chained men. “This one, and this one,” he said, and the men were dragged away to the waiting executioner. Only a handful had been spared, John among them. Spared to be led into a tent, where they were tied to a table and a man with a razor-sharp knife relegated them to a worse future than the condemned whose heads already had been piled up in blood soaked baskets.

No, John realized. That commander would have been much older today. The emissary was the same age that other Persian had been when John’s life had been so drastically changed, more than ten years ago, an eternity.

The commander had worn the same style of beard, and was Persian. There was no other similarity.

Nevertheless it was only with difficulty that John managed keep his voice from shaking as he returned the emissary’s greeting.

“Please tell your emperor that I appreciate his hospitality all the more in light of the crisis with which he is dealing,” the emissary said. “You speak Persian well. You have spent time in Persia, perhaps? One hopes your stay was pleasurable.”

John made no reply. His heart was still racing from his initial, mistaken impression. What had the man said his name was? Bozorgmehr? How peculiar. That translated as Great Mithra. So the Christian emperor was negotiating an Eternal Peace with Mithra, John’s god. “I wanted to insure the banquet arrangements are suitable,” John said. He showed him a proposed menu he had written out on a sheet of parchment.

John had no clear idea of what he might learn from his visit. He hardly dared question the Persian official directly. Particularly if his reasons for being in the city were other than diplomacy. Bozorgmehr’s crimson tunic bore a decorative pearl-outlined roundel of a boar’s head. The boar stared at John while the emissary studied the parchment. Over the Persian’s shoulder John saw what the man had been looking at so intently on the table. It was a rectangular board of light, polished wood inlaid with long triangles of darker wood. Several rows of flat, enameled disks had been laid out in lines along some of the triangles.

Bozorgmehr must have noticed the direction of John’s gaze. “That is the ancient game known as Nard.” He handed the menu back. “Your choice of courses is excellent, Chamberlain.”

“Thank you. I imagine a game like that would be a good way to pass the time during a tedious journey.”

“True enough. That is why I brought it with me, in part. But in addition, I have been refining the rules. Rather as your emperor has been organizing the welter of your old Roman laws. I find games to be exquisite miniatures of life.”

“Assembling a guest list and arranging seating for a banquet is not unlike placing pieces on a board,” John remarked.

“Exactly. Men are fascinated by games, even if their outcomes change nothing. The wealthy and the poor are passionate over the races, though the wealthy have no need to win more than they already possess and the poor are not made wealthy by cheering for the winner.”

“Charioteers have a financial stake in racing, however. Their game is their life. Perhaps it would please you if I seated Porphyrius within speaking distance. Or have you had the chance to speak to him already since you arrived?”

Bozorgmehr displayed no reaction that John could see beyond genuine perplexity. “Why would I have spoken to Porphyrius? I know him only by reputation.”

“My apologies. He is one of the city’s most famous residents and I am certain would have been highly honored if you had granted him an audience. I fear that in my eagerness to provide suitable entertainment for you the thought was father to the assumption.”

“Certainly I have heard of this Porphyrius,” the other admitted.

“In Constantinople,” continued John, “who has not? And his name is known even further afield. If you happened to speak to Haik, a fellow traveler on your journey here, you would have heard a great deal about Porphyrius.”

Still, John could see nothing but puzzlement in the Persian’s long, angular face.

“I do not recall speaking with anyone named Haik.”

“He accompanied Belisarius, as you did. I know him from my time in that part of the world. A hearty, hawk nosed fellow. A pistachio grower.”

Bozorgmehr betrayed no awareness that Haik had ever lived, let alone that he was dead. “General Belisarius escorted a large number of people to Constantinople. I stayed with my own retinue.”

“Ah. Then I should strike Haik off the guest list. I wondered how he would know such a high official as yourself. No doubt he was playing his own game-to win an invitation to an imperial banquet. It is a good thing I came to speak to you.”

The emissary laughed. “I see. That would explain it. Why don’t you invite him anyway? Allow him to win.”

John wondered whether he could risk questioning Bozorgmehr further. He gave no evidence of knowing either Haik or Porphyrius, but then Chosroes would doubtless have sent as his representative a man highly skilled in diplomacy, which invariably required more than a little expertise in duplicity.

Their conversation was ended, however, before he could decide which way to turn it.

Narses walked into the room.

Was it possible the treasurer was having John followed and had decided to purposely break up his talk with the emissary?

“John,” said Narses. “I am surprised to find you here. I am sure you will excuse us.”

Narse’s expression made it clear that he was ordering John to leave.

“I hope you have come to take me up on my offer to teach you this game of mine,” said Bozorgmehr. He thanked John for his efforts.

John went out. It was hard for him to imagine Narses taking any interest in a game played on a wooden board with inanimate pieces, considering the games to be played at court with real people. There was one advantage such games had over the great game of life, however. You knew in a short while who had won or lost, and then could play again. You had only a single chance to win or lose at life, and you could not be certain what the outcome was until the very end, which could be a knife to your back.