Four for a Boy

Chapter Twenty-Four

“I hear that Senator Opimius has relieved you of your duties, John.” Justinian was sitting up in his bed. Theodora perched on its edge.

The stuffy sick room was so hot a sheen of sweat had formed on the backs of John’s hands as soon as he entered.

“That is so, Excellency,” John replied.

“You weren’t neglecting your duties on my account?”

“I was accused of placing Lady Anna in danger, something I would never do.”

“Who leveled this charge?”

“It was a misunderstanding.”

Theodora pushed a strand of hair away from Justinian’s forehead. The man so often spoken of as the future emperor looked as if his future might be too short to include an ascent to the throne. There was no animation in his puffy face and his hands lay motionless on the sheet, suggesting they were too heavy to lift. “Do you believe this was the real reason you were asked to leave the household?”

“I was given no other reason.”

“I see. You noticed nothing unusual at the senator’s house these last few days?”

John shook his head.

“What visitors did Opimius have?” Theodora put in.

“I happened to see Trenico and Senator Aurelius. I only spent a few hours there each day. I didn’t see everyone who visited.”

“And what of Hypatius’ murder?” asked Justinian. “That is why I summoned you here. Is there any progress to report?”

John described the investigations he and Felix had made.

“You have certainly been working diligently,” Justinian observed.

“But have learnt nothing,” Theodora pointed out. “The culprit might well have been the large Blue Felix and I pursued. The man’s father, as I reported, has just been killed.”

Justinian closed his eyes and exhaled raggedly. Theodora glared at John. “Our enemies seek to tie Justinian to these murdering Blues. You have discovered nothing to contradict their claims. Clearly, if the son is the murderer, he was paid by someone. Once he is apprehended he will tell us his employer’s name. Then there will be no way to sully Justinian by linking him to Hypatius’ death.”

John wondered how Theodora could be so certain, but said nothing.

Nevertheless, Theodora answered the unspoken question. “Why was his father murdered? It is my opinion that, just as you were misled by their similar size, so the assassin mistook the older man for his son. Whoever hired the son would wish to be certain he is not captured and forced to talk. Obviously he confused one for the other.”

Theodora wiped Justinian’s damp forehead with a corner of his coverlet. The sick man’s eyes remained shut. John thought he had lapsed into sleep until his lips moved and he spoke again in a voice barely above a whisper. “With every passing day these conspirators gain new allies. You must learn the truth before they strike out at me publicly with their lies.”

“Yes, Excellency.”

Did Justinian’s hand stir? Was John being dismissed?

“One last matter I must report,” John went on quickly. “Felix and I were attacked by men who appeared to be Blues, but, I believe, were in reality professional assassins. If so, it is proof that someone is using the faction to carry out or cover up their own misdeeds.”

Justinian made no reply. It appeared he really had fallen into sleep or unconsciousness.

Theodora indicated that the audience had ended. John bowed and began to back away toward the door.

“Wait, slave! You have forgotten to pay your respects. Justinian may be careless about these matters of etiquette, but I am not.”

For an instant John was not certain what she meant. Then he recalled his initial audience with the pair. As his face grew hot, he prostrated himself in a perfunctory manner, hardly touching the floor before he began to rise.

He felt the toe of Theodora’s slipper on his shoulder.

“Don’t be in such a hurry,” she murmured. The smell of her heavy perfume did not quite mask the more common smell of sweat. “Slaves who are required to speak to their superiors sometimes forget their proper place. That can be dangerous.”

The slipper left John’s shoulder, moved roughly along his cheek, and came to rest on the carpet directly in front of his face. It was as small as a child’s slipper, purple and decorated by tiny flowers formed of gold stitchery with amethyst centers.

“Why are you hesitating?” Theodora asked. “I should think the lips of a eunuch would rejoice to touch any part of a woman.”

***

John welcomed the clean, cold air of the garden outside the Hormisdas Palace. He tried to calm his rage by concentrating on the task facing him. He wished now that he were working for Justin or for that matter anyone other than the insolent actress who appeared destined to be empress. For it seemed to him he was working for her as much as for Justinian.

He forced his mind away from his recent humiliation, toward the knotty puzzle with which he was wrestling. Was Victor indeed the murderer, and if he was, had he been hired to carry out the job? He had fled with his father and so, John thought, it was likely he had died with his father, but his body had yet to be recovered.

John was still pondering as he arrived at his quarters.

There he spotted something lying on his pallet. His fists clenched as he remembered the incident of the crown.

Then he saw it was a scrap of neatly folded parchment. The well-formed, bold writing declaring him to be the recipient was recognizable at five paces as that of Lady Anna.

She had written the note in Persian, perhaps to protect the contents from curious eyes. Trenico, she stated, had been insinuating that it would be best for both her and her father if she acceded to his marriage requests. Furthermore, she deduced from a comment that her father had let drop, that Trenico had been filling the senator’s ears with slanders about John.

“If you need to see me,” she concluded, “go to the servants’ entrance and ask for the cook, whom I have instructed to bring me word should you appear.”

John turned the parchment over. Not only had Anna written the note in a foreign language but she had also used a discarded exercise. A further precaution? To disguise its real function as a message of warning?

He glanced over it. It was a scribbled list of verbs and in one corner she had written out some brief verses.

Copied from a work John had not seen or were they of her own composition?

Beloved, the dark wells of your loving eyes

Haunt me in our bower by the fountain

Oh! That I might feel your breath upon my face

Sweet as honey, soft as moonlight, fragrant

as roses

Beloved, I sicken as the waning moon

As is the lot of women, I weep, I mourn

Oh! That I might feel your heart on mine

Strong…

For a lady to send such a thing to a slave…it was unthinkable. He was afraid for her. What if it had fallen into the wrong hands? Worse, since she had had a word with the cook, by now every servant in Opimius’ house knew about the arrangement. And Opimius? Perhaps not. The master was often the last to know what went on in the household.

John shredded the note.

He was angry with Anna for being so foolish. That was nothing compared to his blinding fury toward Trenico. It was Trenico, after all, who had forced her to write the ill-advised note by his threats and lies.

John stormed from the building. It wasn’t long before he arrived at the Baths of Zeuxippos. Trenico seemed to spend half his time there, Anna had said. He would confront him immediately.

Confront?

What could he say?

He could not think clearly.

Perhaps he would simply kill the man, hold that sneering face under the water in the caldarium until his lying breath had stopped forever and could no longer poison the air. Soldiers died to win a field at the empire’s edge, some muddy, rock-strewn stretch of land an emperor wouldn’t consider fit for gracing with a latrine for his servants. Would it be so senseless to sacrifice his own life to save a lady from being forced to submit to a man like Trenico?

As John strode through the entrance to the baths he was aware that people, looking alarmed, ducked out of his path. The attendant cringed as he took John’s admission fee. John realized his face had settled into the rictus of the battlefield, the terrible snarl that so much resembled the grimaces on the frozen faces of the dead.

He stopped in the courtyard and tried to compose himself. From a nearby lecture hall a monotonous voice recited what sounded like a homily from John Chrysostum, he of the golden tongue. Unfortunately, this particular speaker had a tongue of lead.

John resumed walking. He passed by shops selling oils for the limbs, and then the baths’ library. Its attendant, John knew, fought an endless battle to prevent his scrolls and codices being ruined by bathers’ damp hands. He did not see many people. There seemed to be as many statues in the building’s hallways as patrons.

He had managed to bring his temper under control by the time he turned down a wide corridor lined with arched doorways from which issued clouds of steam. These were the private baths. Anyone who saw him would have thought he was merely a servant, here to assist his master.

John was no longer certain why he had come here. He continued walking, glancing through the archways toward circular baths in which bathers sat or stood, in steamy waist-high water, sluicing themselves, laughing, talking.

He stopped abruptly and moved closer to the nearest opening.

A shaft of light dropped through the roiling steam from a window in the dome, providing illumination. On the steps up to the bath, a few busts and the sculptured figure of a nymph sat on pedestals, partly obscuring the bathers. John recognized one.

Trenico.

There were six men in all, three of whom John did not know. Two others, however, were familiar to him. One was Senator Opimius. Joking with him was the merchant he and Felix had interviewed- Tryphon, who had only recently told his interrogators that he was unacquainted with Opimius.