Nine for the Devil

Chapter Thirty-three

Anastasius left his carriage and guards waiting conspicuously outside Artabane’s house and stalked to its door, doing his best to project an air of menace.

A gray-haired servant looked him up and down, projecting an irritating lack of respect, let alone fear. “Your name?”

“Anastasius”

The servant looked unimpressed. “For whom are you calling?”

“Artabanes of course!”

“You are on the wrong side then, sir, please step this way.” The servant inexplicably gestured to the left of a line of black marble running down the middle of the atrium. Anastasius stamped through the door, stepping on the black marble.

“Please, sir.” The servant inclined his head and nodded at the offending foot. “That is enemy territory.”

The old man must be losing his wits, thought Anastasius. He moved his foot and followed the man along the left side of the black strip, into the garden, and down a path beside a knee-high hedge.

Artabanes was sharing a bench with a collection of wine jugs and cups. He pushed himself up from his seat, swaying and blinking.

“Anastasius wishes to speak with you,” announced the servant before bowing slightly and departing with a faint sniff of disdain.

During the short ride from the palace Anastasius had been stoking a blaze of anger. He had vowed to Joannina that he would take revenge on the man whose actions had thwarted their marriage, or else see to it that Artabanes atoned for it by aiding the young couple. However, as soon as he was out of sight of Joannina, the idea of confronting a powerful elder terrified him.

Truthfully, he feared confrontations. To face them he had to work himself into a blinding fury, but the sight of this skinny little man, badly shaven and utterly inebriated, quickly quenched the flames. Anastasius had envisioned himself shouting demands and threats. Now he could barely remember what he intended to say.

Artabanes peered foggily at him. “Anastasius? You are Theodora’s grandson, aren’t you? My commiserations. That is to say, on your grandmother. Your grandmother’s…uh…passing…”

“Yes…well…so…so, you deny everything then?” Anastasius recalled part of the speech he had planned, but it didn’t make as much sense as it had earlier when his imagined Artabanes played his role better.

Losing the fight to keep his balance, Artabanes took a staggering step backwards. His legs hit the bench and he sat down abruptly, knocking three empty cups into the bushes. “Please have a seat,” he said thickly.

Not only was the bench crowded with cups and jugs, but it also looked coated with what, at best, might be half-dried wine. “No, thank you! You deny everything, I take it?”

“Deny? What do I deny?”

Artabanes’ refusal to play his role began to get Anastasius angry again. “Murdering my grandmother!”

Artabanes stared at him with bloodshot eyes. He picked up a cup, noticed it was empty, tossed it away, picked up another, and slurped some wine. “What do you mean, I murdered your grandmother? Are you intoxicated, son?”

“You’re asking me whether I’m drunk?”

“Are you?”

The general was as mad as his servant, thought Anastasius.

“One as young as yourself should not become involved with Bacchus,” Artabanes went on. “However, since you have already been drinking, please have some wine.” He gestured toward a large blue glass jug.

“No, thank you.”

Artabanes narrowed his eyes. “Perhaps you are too young to-”

Anastasius grabbed the jug and picked up a wine glass that didn’t look too soiled. He poured himself a drink and gulped it down. He might as well have swallowed fire. No water had been added. Once he had managed to avoid choking, however, he had a second cup.

“Now,” said Artabanes. “What is this about my murdering your grandmother? If I was the sort to resort to murder I would have killed her before she forced me to occupy this wretched house with my so-called wife and married off my beloved to another man. It’s a little late now.”

“You wanted vengeance. People do want vengeance. As a matter of honor.”

“Let me guess, that is why you are here. To avenge your grandmother.”

Anastasius, who was finishing another cup of wine, made a conscious effort to stand up straight. “That is correct, sir.” The wine was helping him regain his resolve.

“A fine sentiment, son. It’s good to see a youngster with some spine. But alas, your anger at me is misplaced.”

“I don’t understand. Do you mean that after everything my grandmother did to you…well, not that I wished you’d killed her…”

“No, aside from how much I am sure you loved your grandmother, there is that matter of your marriage to…what is her name…Belisarius’ girl.”

“Joannina.”

“Yes. Joannina. That marriage is not likely to occur now, is it? Any more than my marriage to Praejecta did. Your grandmother was forever meddling, one way and another. Assisting you, thwarting me.” He paused and his gaunt features tightened as he looked down into his cup. “There is some deep ironic philosophical lesson in our situations, son, though I have no idea what it might be.”

Anastasius licked his lips. He felt warm inside from the wine and its fumes seemed to be rising into his head. He didn’t care for the way Artabanes kept calling him “son,” particularly since it had never been made clear to him by what lineage, exactly, Theodora considered him her grandson.

“Yes,” he finally said with some difficulty. “Our situations are exactly the same but just the opposite. But, you see, the irony is if they weren’t exactly the same they couldn’t be opposite, so they are more the same than they are different. If you see what I mean.”

Artabanes nodded gravely. “You are a born philosopher, son.”

“But look, sir. I’m glad you didn’t harm grandmother, but the emperor could have overruled her, couldn’t he?”

“In such an affair? Unlikely.”

“Yet he could have. But he is weak. He even allowed grandmother to tell him which general should have command in Italy. She never liked Germanus, the emperor’s own cousin, and he listened to her.”

“Everyone who has a grievance against the emperor imagines that Germanus would be an improvement.”

“Wouldn’t he be?”

“Why ask me?”

Anastasius was distracted by women’s voices. He looked over the low hedge toward the front of the garden and saw a well-dressed woman in her thirties accompanied by a companion who had the air of being an attendant. The woman had dark hair and tawny skin. Anastasius thought she must have been attractive in her youth. The two women came down the path on the other side of the hedge.

Artabanes went on speaking, giving no sign that he noticed them. “You aren’t going to ask me to ally myself with Germanus in a plot against the emperor, are you? Every young, ambitious hothead in the capital is talking like that. It’s all it is, talk. Do you hear what I’m saying, son? Don’t pay attention to them. That’s enemy territory. We take no notice of what goes on over there.”

“Your wife?”

Artabanes gave a grunt of disgust. “I have no wife.”

The women strolled past, hardly an arm’s breadth away, chattering on about certain flowers which were beginning to bloom. Anastasius and Artabanes might as well not have been there.

Anastasius drank more wine. He realized hitherto he had been adding too much water to his wine. It was much tastier undiluted. It wasn’t surprising Artabanes would possess a store of very good wine. He was, after all, a general.

“It would suit you if Germanus took over, wouldn’t it? He’d banish Belisarius and Antonina. Then you and…uh…whatever her name is…could get married as Theodora planned. Without you having to kill your intended’s mother. They don’t like their mothers being killed.”

Anastasius studied the receding backs of the women over the top of his cup. It was rather humorous. He had to keep blinking or else he saw four women. He wondered how Artabanes had seen his intentions so clearly. He had thought it rather subtle. A way to remove Antonina’s influence, but not in a manner that would turn Joannina against him.

Artabanes struggled to his feet and clapped a hand on Anastasius’ shoulder, in either a show of companionship or simply to support himself. Before Anastasius knew what was happening Artabanes was refilling his cup from the jug he held.

Anastasius had begun to feel dizzy. Joannina wouldn’t want him drinking so much. She’d be angry if he arrived home inebriated. Well, he told himself, how dare she? It wasn’t up to her to tell him how much to drink. He was a man, wasn’t he? What business was it of hers?

He poured more wine down his throat.

“It’s not that I couldn’t slay the tyrant,” Artabanes was saying. “I’ve slain tyrants in my time. Gontharis for one. Let me tell you about Gontharis. We were at a banquet. Gontharis was drinking. He was drunk. You, son, pretend you’re the tyrant.”

***

John was on the way to the administrative complex when he heard his name called.

He turned to see a young woman running in his direction. Her robes-much too heavy and lavish for exertion-were disordered and her hair flew in all directions. At first he mistook her for Vesta, then he realized it was the girl’s mistress, Joannina.

She stopped beside him, gasping, hand held up to her heaving chest. “Lord Chamberlain! Thank goodness I caught you!”

“Is there some trouble?”

“It’s Anastasius. He visited Artabanes and the general tried to poison him.”

Having seen the sorry shape Artabanes had been in the previous day John found it difficult to imagine him having the ability, let alone the presence of mind, to attempt poisoning a visitor. “What makes you think Anastasius was poisoned, Joannina?”

“He told me so, after his bodyguards carried him home.”

“Carried him home?”

“He couldn’t stand up. He was horribly ill.”

“Did he by any chance smell of wine?” John asked, recalling that wine was a poison very much present at Artabanes’ villa.

“That’s what the poison was concealed in, obviously,” said Joannina.

“Do you think Anastasius is in danger?”

“No, he’s recovering. He told me it was lucky he only had a sip of the poisoned wine. If he’d drunk a whole cup…” Her lips began to tremble and she broke off. “I don’t want to think about it. You must have Artabanes arrested immediately!”

“What were Anastasius’ bodyguards doing while Artabanes was poisoning his wine?”

“They were waiting outside with the carriage.”

“So he was able to walk out to the carriage?”

“No. They told me they heard shouting from inside the house. The sounds of fighting. So they raced in. What about Artabanes? Aren’t you going to have him arrested?”

Joannina’s voice had risen to a screech and passersby gave the pair curious looks.

“Did the bodyguards say anything more?”

“They told me they ran into the garden and saw Artabanes attacking Anastasius.”

“It seems odd. Why would he do that if he had poisoned him?”

“Because the man is demented. He was swinging a stick and shouting ‘You’re dead, Gontharis I stabbed you in the heart!’ Demented, obviously!”

John recalled Artabanes reenactment of his killing the Libyan tyrant Gontharis “I see,” he replied. “And Anastasius was unable to fight back?”

“Only because his own stick had broken. And then he fell down and his bodyguards had to carry him home. Artabanes will no doubt claim Anastasius attacked him. People were supposed to think he had killed Anastasius with a stick in self defense, to cover up the fact he’d poisoned him.”

John’s opinion was that such a plan was beyond Artabanes. He made polite noises about looking into the matter further. Joannina began to calm down. Did she truly believe Anastasius wasn’t simply inebriated? “Why did Anastasius go to see Artabanes in the first place?”

“He didn’t tell me, Lord Chamberlain. I didn’t know he had gone there until the bodyguards carried him in and put him on the couch.”

“You shouldn’t be away from Anastasius too long. Go home and take care of him. I don’t believe Artabanes is dangerous.”

He managed to send her away slightly mollified and continued on his way, quickening his pace to make up for lost time.