Nine for the Devil

Chapter Forty-nine

“You couldn’t seriously suspect me of murdering the empress.” Vigilius’ prim mouth tightened. John was not certain if the short, white-bearded man was frowning or trying to suppress amusement. “I occupy the throne of Saint Peter. I am God’s representative on earth. What did you imagine, that I’d presented Theodora a copy of the scriptures with poisoned pages?”

The two men were walking through the inner courtyard of the Hormisdas Palace, the refuge for Theodora’s collection of religious heretics.

When John arrived at the Hormisdas, a scarred flagellant had pointed his bloody lash in the direction of Vigilius’ rooms. On his way, John had encountered Vigilius in a corridor.

They went into the courtyard to talk. The air there was slightly less malodorous than that inside the building. The stench created by hundreds of holy men, many intent on humiliating the flesh, in many cases by not washing it, was almost enough to choke John. It reminded him of the smell of a battlefield two days after the fighting ended.

“I do not believe you gave the empress poison,” John told Vigilius, not adding that in his experience the rich and powerful did not dirty their own hands.

“As I have explained, I did not visit Theodora. Why would she want to see me? She is responsible for having me detained in the city. She is the one who ordered me to stay in the Hormisdas Palace, this wretched tenement. The empress thought I betrayed her. I had more to fear from Theodora than she had to fear from me.”

The Hormisdas Palace had been home to Justinian and Theodora before the former acceded to the throne. Now it was hardly a fit abode for anyone. Over the years Theodora had given sanctuary there to the persecuted of her religious persuasion. Monophysites, who would otherwise have been exiled to the far corners of the empire or executed outright, had been granted safety there, bishops and holy beggars alike, clerics who had lived in palatial mansions and zealots who had occupied columns in all weather. The place was filled to bursting and still they came to sanctuary, like cats who knew where to find discarded scraps, thought John, noticing a dark, feline shape slinking through the weeds.

“You have a much better chance of being allowed to return to Rome with Theodora gone,” he told Vigilius. “It is a motive, and when I learned you had been a visitor to her sickroom, I could not ignore the information.”

“So-called information surely, Lord Chamberlain?”

“It appears Vesta was deceived. Who might the empress request provide spiritual comfort?”

“Menas springs to mind,” Vigilius observed.

The courtyard was an overgrown wilderness. Bronze emperors and marble philosophers lay entangled in vines and rank brush, the pedestals upon which they had stood occupied now by ragged stylites whom, John supposed, remained continuously on their low perches just as they had remained for years atop their tall columns. An enormously fat man resembling a huge toad had taken up residence in the dry basin of a crumbling fountain.

“Menas visited her only a few times,” John said. “The empress and he reconciled over the years, to an extent, for political purposes. He displaced her hand-picked favorite Anthimus in the patriarch’s palace but not in her affections. Although that was years ago.”

“Twelve years ago, but the empress never forgets a grudge.”

It was true enough, but John said nothing.

Justinian almost never called upon John for advice regarding religious disputes. Perhaps, as more than one person had warned and John had long suspected, the emperor realized that his Lord Chamberlain was a pagan and his views on religion therefore untrustworthy. For his part John was happy to avoid delving into the endless squabbling to which Christians were prone. When he needed to deal with such squabbles as a member of the consistory his approach was to treat them as he would treat any other political disagreement. In the end it was always a question of personalities, power, position, and wealth. That holy men might sincerely be battling to gain theological ground, to enhance the value of their particular beliefs and further their power to impress those beliefs on others, struck John as largely irrelevant.

That was why, when Vigilius began to hold forth on the contentious points of the Three Chapters dispute, John began to excuse himself.

A monstrous ululation interrupted him. It might have been the cry of a holy hermit confronted by the devil himself, but the yowling and hissing that followed identified it as the sound of a furious cat.

There was a scrabbling in the undergrowth and then a small, tan-colored cat burst into view, raced straight over John’s boots, and vanished under an ornamental thorn bush. A much larger black feline limped in pursuit.

Vigilius chuckled. “Cyril and Nestorius are at it again. For the most part they are friends. After all, they are both cats. But Nestorius will insist on biting Cyril’s injured leg, and finally when Cyril has had all he can endure, well…”

“Strange names for cats,” John remarked.

“I’m not sure what wit named them. You will recall the Council of Ephesus supported the teachings of Cyril and anathematized Nestorianism, so since these two are forever fighting in the garden, naturally, we are reminded of-”

“Yes, naturally,” John cut in. “I am amazed at the humor of holy men. But I can’t detain you any further.”

He departed in haste.

It had been a short visit.

Then again how long would one expect it to take to clear a pope of murder?