Nine for the Devil

Chapter Forty-two

John returned home to find Gaius in possession of both his study and a wine jug. The physician’s slurred speech made it plain he had stormed the territory and commandeered the wine some time before and was ready to continue campaigning, given the opportunity.

Already chagrined over the Cappadocian’s brazen claim on his services, John was not pleased to find his hospitality had been seized as well.

“What do you think you’re doing, Gaius? Did you come here to treat Peter or treat yourself to my wine?”

“John,” Gaius said with a hiccup, “I was hoping to find you in residence. Been waiting a while.” He laid a finger alongside his red nose and winked. “As you have no doubt deducted. Good at that, John, always have been. But you’ll need Mithra’s help this time.”

“So do you, my friend.”

Gaius ignored the remark. He peered around the room as if eavesdroppers were concealed behind its sparse furnishings, “At least I have good news about Peter. He’s out of danger. I wish I could say the same thing about myself.”

John sat down at his desk and raised interrogative eyebrows at the physician.

Gaius leaned forward and continued in a whisper. “I am not so intoxicated as I appear, John. I can see clearly how Justinian’s madness is growing. I hear the head gardener was arrested this morning. A man who has done nothing but served the empire all his life! The talk is he was heard railing about the empress in a fashion he should not have done, but if people will raise their voices in inns, what can they expect? And he knows his plants. Knows which are poisonous, you see?”

“If railing about Theodora were the real reason for his arrest half the city would have been arrested by now. Besides, how could he introduce poison into Theodora’s food? He never sets foot in the kitchen.”

“Could have had an accomplice,” Gaius pointed out.

“And paid him with what to risk his skin? A lifetime of free cabbages, all the roses he likes? However, I can put your mind at rest. I saw him not an hour ago on the palace grounds hoeing the vegetables and looking the same as ever.”

Gaius gave a grimace rather than a smile. “Rumor has many heads, cut one off, two grow in its place. You never know when the excubitors will knock at your door, or kick it down, more likely, and you’ll be dragged away. It isn’t so much death I fear…I’ve seen enough of death…but the dungeons. As a physician I am too aware of the body’s capacity to suffer. I have been summoned to keep alive the poor wretches the torturers weren’t yet done with.”

He gulped down more wine and burst into tears.

John cast about for a way to divert his friend’s attention from the imagined imminence of death. “It’s always been that way at the palace. This is nothing new. It doesn’t-”

“No, nothing new, nothing new,” blubbered Gaius. “How many great men have we seen paraded off to be executed? Senators, generals…”

“Who are you speaking about, Gaius? Exile is much more-”

“Not even religious vestments can save you from the emperor’s wrath. Remember the heretic Anthimus? I treated him for an abscess. He was patriarch, then suddenly he was gone. Like magic. Vanished, never to be heard of again.”

“None of us are ever entirely safe, Gaius. But consider. How long have you served the emperor? Why would he turn on you now?”

Gaius gave no indication of hearing. “You know Menas replaced Anthimus, so naturally Theodora hated Menas even if she never said so. And with this business of the Three Chapters, Menas had reasons to want Theodora out of the way, before she-”

“You’re not making sense,” John interrupted.

“You don’t think so? I worked at Samsun’s Hospice when it was headed by Menas. You don’t think they’ll be whispering he employed me to do away with Theodora?”

“They?”

“Yes, they. Who is more dangerous at court than they, John? The unidentifiable purveyors of gossip, those who put the wrong words in the wrong ears? They are the scourge of the empire.”

John decided his friend was intoxicated beyond reason. He changed the subject. “Tell me about Peter. He is over the worst, you say?”

Gaius wiped his nose with the heel of his hand. “Yes. That is to say barring a relapse. See,” he burst into shrill laughter, “I am covering all eventualities. But I think he will mend. Possibly with a more pronounced limp than before, but he’ll be able to race up and down stairs again soon enough. He attributes his recovery to holy oil. I suppose it was unbelievable to him my own ministrations might have had some benefit.”

“Peter is a Christian,” John reminded him.

Gaius snuffled. “If healing were that simple all I’d need to do would be to travel from shrine to shrine collecting souvenirs. Holy water and oil and those blessed coins made from the mud at the bottom of stylites’ columns. Just give those to my patients. The Christian ones, at least.”

“I am sure Peter appreciates your efforts.”

“Perhaps. Well, it might be that the oil had an effect, if he believed it did. What if our thoughts affected our humors?”

John had no opportunity to answer. The conversation was interrupted by rapping at the front door. The sound was not loud, but under the circumstances it might have been a peal of thunder.

“It’s them!” Gaius cried, his face, aside from the reddened nose, paler than John had ever seen it.

“I don’t think they would bother to knock so politely.” John went downstairs, not at all confident it wasn’t more trouble for him.

He hoped it would be news from Cornelia, but the heavy door swung open to reveal Joannina, panting and disheveled.

“Lord Chamberlain,” she cried, gulping back tears. “Vesta’s been taken away! Please help her!”

John drew her in and closed the door.

Gaius had staggered to the top of the stairs. “Don’t worry,” he called up to the physician. “It’s only Joannina.”

He lead the sobbing girl into the garden, trying to calm her by assuring her he would do what he could once he knew what her visit was about.

“Vesta, my lady-in-waiting, was just arrested by the excubitors!” Joannina managed to blurt out.

It was fortunate Gaius was safely upstairs, no doubt with his nose buried in a wine cup again, so he did not hear the statement. John encouraged the girl to continue.

“We had been out together looking at jewelry and when we returned, there were excubitors waiting for her. They said incriminating herbs had been found in her room, ingredients for poison.”

Though unable to speak, rooms were more forthcoming than many people, John thought. “How did they know they were poisonous rather than cosmetic?”

“I don’t know but that’s what they said. And they said Vesta had murdered Theodora.”

John wondered who had told the excubitors about the herbs.

“Why would Vesta want to murder the empress?” Joannina was saying. “Anastasius and I, our marriage, the empress wished it. Now she’s gone and my parents can interfere…it may never happen…my lady-in-waiting was devoted to me, why would she try to thwart it? And now she’s in the hands of the imperial torturers and…and…what will happen to her?”

It was a reasonable question, but not one John was prepared to answer, given Joannina was upset enough without knowing any details of what went on in underground cells.