Nine for the Devil

Epilogue

Early morning sunlight poured into John’s study, warming him as he stood looking out the window, waiting for Cornelia to finish packing.

Today they were leaving for Greece, to be followed in due course by Thomas, Europa, and the infant John.

Turning, John smiled at the mosaic girl Zoe.

“Yes, Zoe, Peter and Hypatia will be with us too. They at least are constants in a time of great change,” he informed her.

He resumed pacing back and forth across the empty room, as he had been doing off and on since Cornelia had banished him while she was making the final preparations for departure.

“It will go faster if you aren’t looking over my shoulder,” she’d told him.

The house was even more bare than it had been. So John had gone to his study, where there was no longer a chair, and looked out the window and paced and talked to Zoe.

“A time of great change,” he repeated. “Not just Theodora’s death, though Mithra knows how that will affect the empire. Felix is still talking of converting to Christianity. And Anatolius is convinced he was saved from death because he took sanctuary in the Great Church and says he is thinking along the same lines.”

He gazed at the mosaic girl with whom he had spoken so often. “Gaius is gone and Isis is running a refuge. The world is certainly changing, Zoe.”

He resumed pacing.

“And speaking of Gaius, it’s strange Peter would believe he saw him climbing the heavenly ladder before anyone knew he was dead. Then there’s Peter’s holy oil. Did it really heal him as he believes? Gaius once claimed fate was just another competitor of his. I should have liked to have heard Gaius’ thoughts when he learned Alba, who swore by white food, choked to death on the black olives Gaius presented him.”

He took another turn around the sunlit room and continued. “I was not paying as close attention as I should have to what I heard during my investigation, Zoe. I overlooked more than one nudge in the right direction. Pulcheria pointing out the same jar can contain wine or poison, for example, and Gaius mentioning the same plants can be used for good or ill, to kill or cure. Then there was Antonina’s servant, who believed the goblet Theodora held in her mistress’ wall painting foretold the blessing of the ending of her agony.”

He paced back to the window and looked out across the palace grounds. Seagulls wheeled and squawked over treetops and the familiar tramp of military boots announced the departure of a company of excubitors.

“I shall miss you, Zoe. We have shared many confidences over the years.”

“And now it’s time to say goodbye, John,” Cornelia said from the doorway. “Everything is packed and loaded.” She came to him and put her arms around him. “It will be a new life and a better one, John. You no longer serve Justinian. You are free.”

They left the study. The thud of the house door closing quivered upstairs through the hot air. Cloud shadows briefly dimmed the sunlight pouring across the mosaic girl’s face, seeming to animate her features and creating a brief, sad smile on her glass lips.