Five for Silver

Chapter Nineteen

Loud voices from the atrium distracted Hypatia. The scorpion’s tail snapped off in her hand.

She set the lump of clay she’d been modeling on the kitchen table and quickly wiped her hands on a rag. The door slammed below and someone stamped angrily upstairs.

Europa burst into the kitchen, eyes bright with anger.

“I wish we’d never come here, Hypatia! I’m telling Thomas I want to leave!”

She found a cup, filled it from the wine jug, and drank thirstily.

“You didn’t enjoy your visit to the Great Church?”

“I’d hardly reached the Mese when a man accosted me.” She took another gulp of wine. “It was my father. I’ve just been escorted back home as if I were a child. Now he’s gone out again. The streets are dangerous, I was told. Ha!”

Europa’s tone of voice, her slim physique and deeply tanned skin, the mouth set in a thin line of anger reminded Hypatia of how much his daughter in some ways resembled the Lord Chamberlain. She murmured sympathetically.

Europa continued to fume. “I didn’t notice any danger in the streets. The last time I visited this city they were swarming with people. Now it might as well be some old ruin in the middle of the desert. The most threatening thing I saw this morning was some half-naked old man singing lewd songs.”

“That sounds like the holy fool everyone’s talking about, mistress.”

“I’ve heard better lyrics on the docks.”

“I saw him dancing with a dead woman,” Hypatia recalled with a shudder.

“Let him try dancing on a live bull! Come to think of it, I wouldn’t be surprised if father asked me to give up my profession because it’s dangerous. I hope mother arrives soon. She’ll set him straight.” She glared darkly into her cup and then pulled a stool over to the table. When she sat down her movements were as fluidly graceful as a dancer’s. She poured out more wine. “Have a libation, Hypatia. You look overheated.”

“That would hardly be proper, mistress,” Hypatia faltered.

“This is not what many would call a proper household, is it? So it will be all right. How is Peter?”

Hypatia shook her head. “Fading, judging from his voice. I talk to him through the door when I take him food and water. He doesn’t eat much, but the water’s always gone next time I look.”

“He didn’t like Thomas when we were here last, I recall, but it’s a shame to see him so ill.”

Feeling awkward, Hypatia sampled the wine. “You’ve been involved with Thomas a long time then?” she ventured.

“No. We’d gone separate ways after he escorted mother and me back to Crete. It’s just during these last few months, after he ran into us by accident, that I’ve got to know him well.”

“Thomas is a fine fellow, mistress.”

“He is, though some might call him a barbarian because he was born in Bretania, practically on the edge of the world. A country permanently shrouded in fog and mist, he tells me. A most romantic place. He’s traveled a lot and seen more of the world than I have, and that’s saying something.”

“I’ll wager he has many stories to tell!”

“Oh, he can be a regular Herodotus, if you can persuade him to talk about his past. He’s a very discreet fellow.”

“A quality to admire.” Hypatia shoved her empty cup aside. It had occurred to her that if the Lord Chamberlain were to return, he would not appreciate finding his servant sharing wine with his daughter. She picked up the half-made scorpion and began nervously forming the clay.

“He’s a sweet man, Hypatia. Oh my, yes…” Europa smiled to herself, but did not elaborate.

“I met someone sweet recently,” Hypatia heard herself confessing.

Europa leaned forward. “Someone special?”

“Well, he might be.” Hypatia’s voice caught. Surely she shouldn’t be confiding in Europa? Yet somehow she could not help herself.

She worked at the clay furiously. “His name is Pamphilos. He’s a patient at the hospice where I’ve been helping Gaius. He was badly burned with lye. Somehow he’d been thrown into one of the towers being used for disposal of the dead.”

“How horrible! Will he live?”

“Yes, but his face…”

“He’ll need your comfort then,” Europa said kindly.

“Once he was handsome, mistress. Even now you can tell that was the case. He is so kind and charming. He thought I was an aristocrat from a rich Egyptian family. I told him I was merely a servant. ‘Surely you jest?’ he said. ‘You don’t have the bearing of a servant.’”

“Evidently he is a golden-tongued young man!”

“I admitted my master was not just anyone, but rather the Lord Chamberlain. Pamphilos insisted it was a scandal that I should be anybody’s servant and that half the men at the palace would throw themselves at my feet if given the chance.”

Hypatia had formed the clay into a rudimentary face. It reminded her too much of her patient. She squeezed it into a lumpy mass. “He is so romantic, mistress! He even kissed my hand once and said all five fingers should have silver rings on them.”

Europa, overlooking the fact that Pamphilos had counted thumbs as fingers, asked why he would pick silver rings and not gold.

“He said gold rings were so commonplace that the true romantic would always choose silver. Especially as silver is sacred to the moon, the friend of lovers,” Hypatia explained with a blush.

“Indeed. Well, he sounds quite a fine young man. You should take no notice of looks, Hypatia,” Europa said. “In the dark, you won’t notice a few scars. Thomas has more than one.”

They were giggling together when Thomas appeared in the kitchen doorway. “What’s so funny? We could hear you laughing all the way downstairs!”

Hypatia blushed.

“How did a great big man like you creep up here so quietly?” Europa demanded in mock anger.

Thomas looked bemused. “You’ve been imbibing! Both of you!”

Europa pouted and shook her head. “No, no, dearest. Only me. Hypatia has been a good girl.”

Crinagoras peered over Thomas’ broad shoulder. “Thomas has been escorting me while I visited my favorite bookseller, and I must say Scipio was very impressed. He’d never seen me accompanied by a bodyguard. It makes one feel a new man, walking the streets with a guard at one’s side.”

Thomas smiled benignly.

“Would you escort me again now, Thomas? I’m meeting Anatolius.”

“I think not,” Europa said severely. “Thomas’ services are needed here.”

Crinagoras stepped into the kitchen. “We haven’t agreed on a fee for today’s work yet, but now that I see you two lovely ladies, let me offer some thoughts, fresh from the oven of my inspiration. I’ve been summoned to entertain Theodora at the Blachernae, I may add.” Crinagoras set his soft hand on Thomas’ shoulder. “How much is that worth, my friend? To be entertained like an empress?”

Thomas had no opportunity to answer since Crinagoras began to declaim, waving his hands around after the fashion of an intoxicated mime.

“For you, dear friends, I wish only happiness and the joy of never knowing the suffering experienced by me, sad Crinagoras, parted forever from the maiden Eudoxia by duplicitous death. May the ship of your happiness rise on the ocean of my tears, may you climb toward endless joy up the tower of earth excavated from the pit of my despair. May-”

“Cease at once!” Thomas commanded.

Crinagoras broke off, his face expressing confusion and incipient hurt.

“You must write it all down, lest it be lost forever,” Thomas continued.

Crinagoras beamed. “Of course, Thomas. How stupid of me not to think of it. I shall write it out for you to savor at your leisure as many times as you please. You will have it by sunset tomorrow. And now I must depart.”

As he scuttled off downstairs Thomas pulled at his ginger mustache and smiled with satisfaction.

Europa broke into a broad smile as Hypatia gave him a questioning look.

“I never learned to read,” he told Hypatia with a grin.