One for Sorrow

Chapter Seventeen

John’s heart was pounding as he strode hastily down the wide steps outside the Octagon. How could he have been so careless? The emperor could have had him executed on the spot. Then again, he reminded himself, the emperor could have him executed on the spot for no reason at all. The thought gave him little comfort.

Agitated as he was, he had walked halfway home before he realized he was being followed.

Yet another lapse.

At first it was merely the sensation of another presence intruding into his consciousness. Then, alerted, he began to distinguish quiet movements mirroring his own.

Ahead, the path lay dark and deserted. Although the palace grounds were heavily patrolled, he saw no guards, and only a fool would discount the possibility of some cutthroat having managed to slip into its maze of buildings, pathways, and gardens.

He forced himself to continue at an even pace. Listening hard, he thought he could discern only one set of steps behind him. Against one man he would have a chance. Once he had been a trained fighter. However, his follower might be a military man also, one much younger than he and with more recent training.

Why would anyone want to follow him from his meeting with the emperor?

Had Justinian decided to have him killed after all, but on the grounds instead of in his private quarters? John doubted that he would leave such a task to a single guard. The emperor was nothing if not cautious.

He considered his options. If he cried out for help guards would appear almost immediately. They were never far away on the palace grounds. On the other hand, John’s pursuer was nearer to him than any guard. Would the man flee when John called for help or try to carry out his mission before help arrived?

If his mission was in fact to kill John.

A low archway punctuated the stucco wall John’s path paralleled. He ducked through it into a garden. He considered lying in wait to one side of the archway, but decided any trained man would be alert to such an obvious ploy. He heard the gurgling splash of a fountain. Faint moonlight, falling toward the rooftops of the tenements visible beyond the wall encircling the palace grounds silvered dwellings, water, and the fountain alike. Beyond the garden he had entered, he could distinguish a line of trees, a black mass of branches.

He moved toward them. The footsteps turned after him into the garden as he had expected. The trees appeared to be figs. John waited until he had almost reached them, then broke into a run. He stopped suddenly, turning back toward his pursuer. He could now see a bulky outline, moving forward rapidly. John took a step to the right, then, pretending to be confused, to his left.

With a burst of speed he knew his legs would regret later, he raced around to the other side of the line of trees, then doubled back. But they were too widely spaced to conceal him. He would be visible to the man chasing him, and, what was more, by detouring around the trees he had lost valuable time, time he might have used to escape.

John’s pursuer, seeing his chance, took the direct route, straight through the row of trees.

There was a resounding splash and the clatter of a metal blade on marble.

“God’s blood!”

John recognized the voice of Thomas.

The burly redhead had emerged from the sunken pool when John reached it. Thomas was still spluttering, cursing, and shaking water out of his ginger mustache.

“Thomas, I see you have discovered one of the emperor’s little jests. It was especially designed to catch trespassers. Though usually they creep in here to steal, not to pursue Lord Chamberlains.”

“I wasn’t pursuing you. I was out walking and saw you. I didn’t want to be shouting about in the middle of the night, and you walk faster than a Pict in full retreat.”

Several guards, attracted by the noise, arrived at a run. John dismissed them without explanation. No doubt they would soon be weaving lurid tales in their barracks about his strange assignations with foreigners in garden pools in the middle of the night.

“Why were you walking about the palace grounds at this time?” John asked, wondering exactly how Thomas had managed to get inside the walls at such an hour. “I thought you were staying at the inn.”

“Who can sleep in this city, with all those barking dogs and people shouting and such?”

“You have refined sensibilities for a soldier. And why was your sword drawn? In greeting?”

Thomas looked at the sword in his hand, as if just realizing it was there. He snorted and resheathed it. “It came out when I fell into the water. But you are right, it wasn’t the noise of this damnable city that kept me awake. In truth, John, it was that girl. Berta. The one I, uh, saw at the house you took me to. My mind’s been troubled since then.”

“The soldier’s simple life has been changed then?”

Thomas said nothing, but looked abashed. He ran his fingers through his dripping hair, squeezing out rivulets of water.

“Come back to my house and get dry,” John offered. “You can return to your inn in the morning. You’re likely to get arrested, wandering about at this hour of the night.”