Four for a Boy

Chapter Nine

“Surely the attack on Senator Opimius was nothing more than an attempt at robbery?” Felix squinted across the cobbled square and up toward the sun just now rising over the roof tops. A few of the big German’s fellow excubitors, on their way out of the barracks where he and John had agreed to meet, barked brief greetings at their colleague and cast curious backward glances at the tall man by his side.

“Going by Opimius’ description, his attacker wasn’t a member of a faction. There’s nothing unusual about street violence these days, sad to say, and if one chooses to go out in public without an adequate guard…He regrets his mistake now. Not to mention the grief it has caused his daughter.” As he spoke John seemed to feel again the pressure of Anna’s hand on his own. He shivered, as at the touch of a phantom.

“You wouldn’t think a senator would be so foolish as to be going about the city with only an elderly servant as a guard. But, I understand, this particular senator has a history of making foolish decisions. I’ve made some inquiries, and-”

“You’ve been investigating Senator Opimius?”

“Don’t look so shocked. I’ve been ordered to work with his daughter’s tutor. It pays to know as much as possible about the man you’re working with, including anyone connected with him. Actually, I happened on certain information while trying to ascertain why, in particular, Opimius had engaged you for the job. Apparently the senator made enemies at the palace when he backed Vitalian so strongly five years ago.”

Seabirds swooped in to fight raucously over a chunk of stale bread lying not far away. John hoped it had been dropped by someone who could afford the loss and not by a beggar who would go hungry for the day. Then again, he reasoned, how many beggars could be wandering the grounds of the Great Palace?

“Vitalian? Didn’t the emperor invite him to Constantinople to appoint him consul? A reward for his defense of orthodoxy, wasn’t it? So why would

Opimius’ support of Vitalian make him enemies in the palace? Not that a man doesn’t make some enemies no matter what he chooses to do or say or think.”

“Let’s walk while we discuss this matter. We shouldn’t be seen standing around looking idle. It wouldn’t be good for our careers!”

Felix set off across the square, scattering the seabirds, which retreated noisily to the roof of the house across from the barracks.

“The senator’s real problem,” he continued, “or so rumor has it, is that he truly did support Vitalian. You’ll recall that imperial hospitality extended to a banquet at which Vitalian was stabbed to death. Seventeen wounds the man had. Now where were the guards while seventeen blows were being struck? A dining hall may be large, but try putting a blade into someone that many times without being noticed!”

They turned down a path which funneled a stiff breeze, redolent of the unglimpsed sea, into their faces.

“I’ve heard about that. Justinian’s opponents claim to this day that he arranged Vitalian’s murder, and, over time, the murders of half the aristocracy to boot. But where is the proof?”

“Where’s the proof of anything in this city? Right here!” Felix slapped the hilt of the sword at his belt. “Even so, that was years ago. Justinian could have relieved Opimius of his head long since if he wanted it. Why now? I’ve never heard a word breathed against Opimius’ loyalties. And he’s a good friend of Senator Aurelius, one of Justinian’s strongest supporters.”

They climbed a wide set of stairs and entered a cavernous hall. Light filtering from a row of windows set high up in the gaudily frescoed walls fell on a whirlpool of humanity where those hastening away from the palace on imperial business converged and swirled with those leaving to go to their day’s labors inside the vast complex.

“It’s my opinion that all this street violence is an excellent cover for people with scores to settle,” Felix remarked, “but what makes me wonder about the attack on the senator is that it happened not long after Justinian recruited us both.”

John stopped walking, forcing Felix to do the same. “What do you mean?”

The crowd surged around them, jostling and casting ill-tempered looks at the two unexpected rocks dividing their current. The clatter of boots, the sound of voices reverberating in the vaulted ceiling overhead, rang in their ears.

Felix shook his head with disgust. “I’m not stupid. You know as well as I do that it is very peculiar Justinian insisted that you continue your tutoring. What is it to him if Lady Anna can speak Persian when there are far weightier matters demanding immediate attention? Do you suppose he has his eye on that dowdy woman when he’s already got a famous actress in his bed? And if he’s looking for an emissary to send to Persia he wouldn’t choose a woman. Clearly, he wants someone in there, keeping an eye on Opimius’ household. Why do you think Justinian chose you, in particular, to investigate the murder? Simply because you are clever? How many clever slaves are there at the palace? Now, ask yourself, how many clever slaves from the palace work in Opimius’ household?”

He was right, John admitted to himself. Felix might be just an ordinary military man, but he was far shrewder than most. It wasn’t so easy, as he’d already discovered, for a slave in the lower echelons of the palace bureaucracy to discover anything and it must be almost as difficult for an excubitor, even if he did belong to the emperor’s bodyguard.

They continued on, past a small army of guards and through the Chalke, the palace’s massive bronze gate. The sun seemed much brighter now by contrast to the dim interior from which they had just emerged. From nearby perfume shops the sweet scent of flowers mingled with the pungent odor of animal dung in the street, a remnant of early morning deliveries.

“And what about this attack on Opimius?” John mused. “If someone wanted Opimius dead because he was suspected of opposing Justinian years ago, that would surely be meant to benefit Justinian.”

“Whatever the reason, if someone is in fact out to kill Senator Opimius then everyone near him is in danger as well. Including you. And perhaps myself, since we are working together.”

And, thought John, Anna also. “So far we’ve been asking whether anyone saw anything. Perhaps we should instead direct our investigations toward those who might be responsible.”

“But you saw those responsible. Blues. That’s who we’re looking for.”

“They, or one of them at least, are certainly the killers. Did someone hire them? If Justinian’s enemies wanted to implicate him, would they wait for a convenient murder?”

“They might not have had it in mind, just seized the opportunity.”

“On the other hand, as Theodora said, it’s almost as if Hypatius’ murder was designed to outrage the public.”

“That’s obvious enough, but our job is only to find the man who actually wielded the blade. We’re in no position to do more. At least the sun’s out for once. Why the look of gloom?” John said nothing. He wished the demons that tortured him could be driven off by a few rays of sunlight.

“It always feels as if someone’s staring at my back in this city.” Felix glanced back at the palace entrance. “Perhaps it’s that.” He gestured toward the Chalke. The huge icon of Christ set on it appeared to be gazing up the Mese. “He must’ve seen something,” Felix went on. “If only we could ask. If He’s looking for sinners to grieve over, He should be gazing into the Great Palace instead of away from it.”

“What now? We’ve already questioned every shopkeeper in the street.”

“There are apartments above some of the shops,” Felix suggested.

“Yes, but not much can be seen from them except the roof of the colonnade. Unless our quarry ran down the middle of the street?”

Felix grunted. “I suppose that’s true. He probably cut away from the Mese as soon as he could. We’ll try some more of the nearby streets.”

Only a few paces down the first thoroughfare, their progress became blocked by a knot of people. Drawing nearer they saw the crowd had gathered at the entrance of a small semi-circular plaza giving access to a few shops, all of which were currently unoccupied.

John tensed. Lately crowds meant trouble. He was surprised to hear laughter from this group. “What’s going on?” Felix demanded of a tall man who stood near the back of the throng, craning his neck to see.

“It’s a troupe of actors drumming up business. Not that they can perform this piece in the theater. It’s the life of Theodora. Exceedingly scurrilous and indecent!”

“Indecent?” Felix began to shove his way unceremoniously through the crowd. “If they were on the street at the time of Hypatius’ murder, it’s possible they noticed something useful.”

To John, the actors were nearly indistinguishable from beggars. The rags they sported may have been slightly more colorful than those mendicants generally wore. He supposed it was a bad time for actors. Street violence didn’t put the public in a mood for light entertainment.

A man wearing a voluminous old-fashioned toga and an equally oversized and obviously false beard declaimed stridently at the spectators.

“Though she had already learned to sate their bestial lusts in a fashion so unnatural we would not dare to speak of it in public, young Theodora’s career had only begun,” he declared. “No longer was she content to carry the stool of her older sister from engagement to engagement. Soon she developed certain specialties of her own. Specialties as fiendishly clever as they were vile. Parts which the Lord gave us were put to uses even He could not have imagined, for if He had, He would surely have created Adam and Eve quite differently.”

A figure wrapped in garish red robes and sporting a preposterous wig with coils of hair as big as beehives swayed out from the doorway of one of the vacant shops. The gaudy, ersatz crown balanced on the wobbly hairpiece proclaimed the figure to be Theodora. The stubble beneath the rouge revealed the future empress to be male.

Felix chuckled. “An empress like that would put the whole Persian army to flight.”

The white-bearded narrator leaned toward the crowd and spoke in a stage whisper. “Friends, our troupe is privileged to have among us one who lately occupied the same stage as Theodora and was thus intimately acquainted with her act, if not with the woman herself.”

He paused to leer and to allow a few onlookers to add their own coarse wit to the script. “Thus, for your enlightenment, we are able to present, not a poor simulation, but an exact recreation of the famous performance many talk about, but few actually witnessed. Some may call what you are about to see vulgar, salacious, unfit for the eyes of decent Christians, or even an abomination. But, as Thucydides so aptly put it, history is comprised of examples taught by philosophy.”

John caught Felix’s eye and nodded in the direction of several actors who stood unobtrusively to one side. They had already played their parts or were waiting to do so. “I thought you intended to question these people?”

“And miss seeing the example he mentioned? Have some respect for philosophy!”

The painted, hirsute empress strutted back and forth in front of the crowd, puckering her red-smeared lips. Without warning, she flopped onto the ground like a bird that had taken an arrow, and slowly began to disrobe.

Or, John thought, it would be more proper to say dis-rag, to judge by the scraps of cloth that fell to the ground.

“Stop! Stop!” The narrator rushed over to the fallen empress and waved his arms frantically.

“Oh good sir, I cannot stop,” the empress wailed in a hideous falsetto. “I am but a poor actress and must earn my crust, or preferably a few coins, any way I can.”

From the crowd came a cry of “It’s a disgrace!”

Ignoring the comment, a lanky fellow carrying a bag of grain over his shoulder approached the prone figure. The straw in his hair revealed that he was acting the part of a farmer.

The narrator again addressed the audience. “What’s this chickpea up to? Can it be? Was Theodora’s performance really just as common gossip has it?”

Several in the crowd honked like geese.

The narrator screwed his face up in mock offense. “Some may find it humorous that a future empress was forced to support herself by stripping and allowing geese to gobble grain from her naked body.” He paused and raised his eyebrows. “Although I’ll wager the Patriarch isn’t one of them!”

The farmer opened his bag and sprinkled a few grains onto the prone empress. The crowd hooted. He daintily sprinkled a few more. The crowd grew noisier. Finally, he raised the bag, and dumped its entire contents on his fellow thespian.

The exaggerated choking noises made by the half-buried Theodora were drowned out by raucous honking of a much more professional and convincing nature than the audience’s hootings. Three goose impersonators burst out from behind the troupe of actors. Each manipulated the long, flaccid neck of a plucked and rather desiccated fowl.

“Ah, but philosophy is a merciless teacher,” cried the narrator. “I would rather pluck my eyes out like Oedipus than witness this sorry example, this spectacle of degradation. Is there not a Roman citizen among you who would spare our future empress this indignity? A coin or two. I beg of you. Feed the starving actress before she is further befowled.”

A few bits of copper flew out from the onlookers. The narrator called for more contributions, but the scanty rain soon abated. He paused and then whirled around, directing attention to one of the darker shop doorways.

A misty shape materialized in the dimness and then a stocky, dwarfish figure rushed out. It was totally white and wore a crown. The figure ran toward the recumbent empress, leaving a faint trail of the flour that covered it.

“May heaven preserve us,” thundered the narrator. “It is the shade of the Empress Euphemia!”

The diminutive phantom leapt acrobatically into the air and came crashing down on Theodora in an explosion of grain and flour. The two men dressed as women began a hissing, mewling battle, much to the crowd’s delight.

Felix laughed until he had to wipe his eyes. Despite John’s urgings he refused to budge until the epic had been finished, with the doughty Euphemia ousting the terrified Theodora, and then delivering a bombastic homily on morality.

“A good morning’s work,” John muttered as the crowd finally began to disperse. He and Felix approached the narrator as he counted a handful of coins, and made the usual inquiries.

The actor tugged at his beard, pulling it down around his neck, and scratched his chin. “A Blue, you say, but an enormous fellow? A regular Hercules?”

Felix confirmed that they were searching for such a man.

“Did he have an oddly crushed sort of nose?”

“Yes, that’s him!”

The actor shook his head. “Sorry, sirs, I haven’t seen him.”

Felix’s eyes blazed, but as he opened his mouth to retort, the actor held up a hand and smiled. “Forgive my jest. I have seen him, but not lately and not around here. He was in our audience once. We were working up near the northern harbor at the time. Or was it the southern? I can’t recall. I just remember seeing this huge man looming in the crowd. Such a man could have an excellent career in the theater, you know. He’d be perfect for a giant or Zeus. Any hero for that matter, even the emperor.”