One for Sorrow

Chapter Twenty-eight

Two deaths in four days.

In overcrowded Constantinople, it was not unusual for death to brush past. But two murders, both involving Isis’ house-one in the alley outside, the other inside-could there be some connection?

The Lord Chamberlain’s study was lit by wavering lamplight but when a brighter light flickered across its walls, John turned toward the open window, half expecting to see the unsteady glow from one of the fires that so often raged in Constantinople. He was relieved to see a flash of distant lightning.

He drank more wine from his cracked cup. The girl in the mosaic seemed to be looking at him with reproach in her big eyes.

“No, my child, I haven’t forgotten you now that I have a real daughter,” he muttered. Zoe seemed unappeased. If he were unable to deal with a child of glass and imagination how could he deal with one of flesh and blood?

“Perhaps it isn’t that,” John continued to think aloud. “Do you imagine I have spent too much time thinking about Cornelia and Europa and too little unraveling Leukos’ death? I assure you, I have explored many possibilities.”

Why then was he no nearer to his destination, his solution?

“And now there has been another murder. But you wouldn’t understand,” John told the girl. “You are only a child.”

He recalled his dream of running tirelessly across fields, from which he had been awakened by the emperor’s messenger, young Hektor. Was the dream perhaps prophetic, or merely wishful thinking?

Surely not. It could be more readily explained as an imbalance in the humors or a reflection of his waking experiences. Seeing Cornelia and her-their-daughter in the Hippodrome had brought back to him the feelings of his youth.

The cup rose to his lips again and John was surprised to find it empty.

As empty as his thoughts.

A well-dressed palace official unadvisedly turns down a dark alley during a celebration and is stabbed to death. A young prostitute is strangled.

These were not unusual occurrences. Perhaps he was trying to find some meaning in them that simply was not there.

And what about Thomas? He claimed to have visited Leukos.

Could a man who claimed to be a knight from Bretania questing after a holy relic be trusted, thought John, a man who had, moreover, surreptitiously followed him through the palace grounds in the middle of the night?

John had begun to find Thomas’ behavior suspicious. What was he to think now that Thomas had revealed himself to be a fellow Mithran?

Thunder rumbled over the walls of the city as the storm moved inland. John rose abruptly from his seat.

“Peter,” he called. “I’m going out.”

***

After he had secured the house door behind his master, Peter returned to the study. Keeping his watery eyes averted from the blasphemous mosaic, he retrieved John’s cracked cup. Why did the Lord Chamberlain insist upon using a thing so time worn? Sometimes it seemed to Peter that John was like one of those holy hermits who denounce every worldly pleasure. Except, of course, that John was a pagan.

More puzzling yet to the old servant was why his master sometimes spoke to the wall of his study. Not that Peter eavesdropped, but in the course of his duties he often passed the room and had observed John gazing at the mosaic as he spoke. That had frightened Peter. Holy men often went mad, it was true. But surely the Lord Chamberlain was a man of this world?

On impulse, Peter sat down on John’s chair. His heart raced, although there was no reason he should not rest his old bones. Certainly his master would not object. He forced his gaze toward the mosaic, to see what John would see. He found himself looking into the dark eyes of a young girl. Eyes of glass that appeared to stare back at him. That would in an instant, blink. He was certain of it.

Peter jumped up and was out of the room droning a familiar hymn as he hurried down the hall.

He had not looked at the mosaic again because he knew the girl’s expression had changed, and that was a vision he did not dare to look upon.

***

John veered off the wide, torch-lit Mese into the darker streets and alleys that snaked up to the palace walls, twisting and turning as if looking for a way in, but being continually forced back on themselves. A fitful wind snapped his cloak and whipped drops of rain into his face.

From his swift, purposeful stride, his unhesitating turns into obscure byways, an observer would have supposed the Lord Chamberlain was hurrying to some important destination. In fact, John’s movements were unplanned, his speed merely a reflection of the frantic pace of his thoughts. Although his mercenary days were long past, when some knotty problem arose to snare him in its serpent’s coils there always came a time when John’s body insisted on action. Since he was no longer soldiering and since battling with a blade would not in any case pierce the demons of the mind, at such times he invariably walked, hoping his feet would carry him to a solution.

Noticing a tradesman, an idea occurred to him. The vendor was on his knees in front of a cramped niche, mending the rickety wooden table on which he displayed his wares during the day. The man, a ragged, furtive creature, looked up, startled, at the sound of John’s approach.

“Do you have any fruit? Vegetables?” John asked.

The shopkeeper eyed John’s expensive garments and boots warily and scrambled to his feet. The lamp by which he had been working projected John’s shadow, supernaturally large, against the blank wall of the tenement on the other side of the narrow street. “None that one of your position would find suitable, great one.”

“Anything you have would be acceptable. I shall also need a basket.”

The man’s gaze darted back and forth in the lamplight, his mind alert for a trap. “I could sell you a basket, but the fruit’s sat in the heat all day.”

“I assure you it will be satisfactory.” A coin flashed in the dim light.

“The fruit out here’s probably spoiled, like I said, but I might be able to find some that’d be edible.”

“I don’t need anything fit for the emperor’s table.” John turned his hand slightly so light caught the coin again. The shopkeeper’s eyes gleamed as brightly as the currency.

Rummaging noisily through the baskets and boxes in his niche, the fellow sounded relieved as he replied. “Well, then, I can certainly provide something that will suit you. Nothing here would be fit for the emperor.”

John traded the nominal weight of the coin for the considerably heavier basket of fruit and continued on toward the square at the end of the street. The wind howling through narrow spaces between the buildings on each side pushed at his back as if attempting to thrust him bodily out into the open. When it stopped abruptly, he heard raindrops splattering against the overhanging balconies which almost met above him. Suddenly their staccato beat was engulfed in a formless roar as the storm arrived in all its fury.

Under the balconies it had been relatively sheltered, but when John stepped out into the square he was soaked as immediately as if he had plunged fully dressed into a pool at the baths. He paused, wiping water out of his eyes.

At the other side of the square, a column rose into the night to a height just above the two-story buildings all around. John hurried forward.

Reaching the column, he leaned his head back, hand protecting his eyes, trying to look upward through the rain. A lightning flash illuminated a low railing there and a motionless figure.

“I am here to pay you a visit, my friend,” John called up. “I have brought some fruit. I mean you no harm.”

The figure, which might have been a statue since it did not move, refused to reply. Another flash of lightning illuminated a wooden ladder. John reached up to grasp a greasy rung. Thunder shook the column as John began to haul himself upwards.

It was a relatively short journey, but not an easy one. The ladder was slippery, the rising wind yanked at his water-sodden cloak, and the downpour beat on his shoulders.

Truth to Mithra, John thought, he was not afraid of Zeus’ thunderbolts. It was not that the Lord Chamberlain had more courage, or was more foolhardy, than most. He firmly believed that the Lord of Light he followed would not allow him to perish at the hands of a weaker god.

When he reached the top John remained leaning on the ladder, clinging with one hand to the iron railing that ringed the column’s tiny platform. He had no wish to step out onto it. There was, he judged, not enough room for him and the stylite unless the man were to move to one side, and John suspected that the stylite’s legs had, long since, become locked in their habitual position. It was well known that these Christian ascetics often lived atop their columns for years or decades, never descending to the earth or taking shelter, whatever the season or the weather.

In some strange way this self torture was supposed to glorify their mysterious god.

“There is fruit in this basket,” he informed the stylite, carefully setting it down near what intermittent lightning flashes revealed to be sticks of legs. Mithra, how the man stank.

“The Lord in His wisdom announces thunder with the lightning bolt,” intoned the holy man in a surprisingly firm voice, without looking at John. “Bless you, my son,” he added.

“I have a question.”

The stylite nodded, ropy-veined neck moving, while from his shoulders down his body remained motionless. The matted hair hanging past his shoulders and the beard dangling nearly to his waist were dripping in the deluge. “The fire,” he muttered. “God’s house is consumed. The evils of mankind will be turned to ashes.”

John looked past the stylite toward where Justinian’s new church was rising. It was certainly a different sort of tribute to God than the one offered up by this holy man. Was the stylite remembering the fire which had destroyed the old Church of the Holy Wisdom?

“There was a man, a friend of mine, murdered not far from here,” John said. From his precarious vantage point John looked out over the city. Here and there a few smoldering torches not yet doused by the torrent shone dimly, like spent charcoal in the bottom of a brazier. Crosses rose starkly from the roofs of many houses. Some crosses were wooden, others more elaborate, alerting both God and men to the faith of those who slept beneath them.

“There,” John pointed, trying to direct the stylite’s gaze. “In that alley. That is where it happened. Did you chance to see anything?”

The holy man chuckled softly. For a terrible instant, a lightning bolt linked the city to the heavens. It was followed by a wave of thunder. John could feel its vibration. Some building close by had surely been struck.

The stylite began to laugh. “Can that be the finger of God seeking out a sinner?”

John felt a sudden wave of anger. “You must have seen something from up here! You have nothing to do but look down into the streets. Consider my question. I’m seeking one who is guilty of murder.”

The stylite laughed again. “No man is guilty but one who sets down his cross.”

John began to ask the stylite about the guilt of a man who would plunge a dagger into another’s ribs but stopped himself. There was no point. The stylite was obviously mad.

He scanned the scene below. The alley he had tried to bring to the stylite’s attention ran between a tall tenement and Isis’ house, where Berta had died. Further on lay the inn in which he had interviewed Ahasuerus and where Thomas was staying. The narrow alley continued on toward the Mese and the Church of the Holy Wisdom with patriarchal and imperial palaces close by. The city pressed in all around, a jumble of houses and humanity.

He suddenly realized that his climb had not been wasted after all. Looking down from the stylite’s column, John was reminded of what he knew so well as to take for granted, that the city, for all its winding alleys and assorted squares and forums, its magnificent architecture and obscene hovels, was a small place. Though the world of the palace might seem far removed from Isis’ house and the alley where Leukos had died, it was not, and although the murderer might be lost among the crowd, if he was still in the city, he was not far away.

The stylite was still laughing. John, growing even angrier, demanded to know the reason.

The holy man stopped abruptly. “Is it not comical?” he asked. “Even the holders of the highest offices have sinned, and all of them are but wayward children before the Lord. Even you. Even the emperor himself.”

“Mithra!”

A sudden gust of wind caught John unprepared. For a shocking instant, he felt himself swaying backwards, his grip on the railing gone. There was a lightness in his chest, as if he were flying. Then his other hand tightened its hold on the side of the ladder.

The shifting wind slapped a sheet of rain across his face. He climbed back down to the street, ears ringing with the stylite’s laughter.