One for Sorrow

Chapter Thirty-six

Alerted by a shrill squeal, John looked away from the Armenian ambassador, straight into the eyes of a wild boar.

The sharp tusks of the charging beast were not far from John’s face, the animal’s eyes glazed with death.

It was an expression John had seen before.

“There’s another who aspired to sit at the emperor’s table but now regrets it.” John remarked.

The ambassador, a plump partridge of a man on the verge of old age, laughed too heartily.

John forced himself to smile. He should have spent the day out in the city searching for Leukos’ murderer instead of confined to the Hall of the Nineteen Couches fretting over this infernal banquet, thanks to a direct order from Justinian.

Banquets in the hall were a nightmare of protocol. In addition to the main table in the center, windowed alcoves along both sides of the large space housed their own tables. How did the emperor expect him to find a murderer while checking seating arrangements?

He shifted uncomfortably on his couch, an anachronism now except at banquets. Anatolius, reclining to right, had his face in his wine goblet, while the ambassador, to his left, chattered on.

“Lord Chamberlain, please excuse the ignorance of a foreigner, but in Armenia we associate with your title one named Narses, a native son. Indeed, we have heard he assisted in putting down those unfortunate riots in Constantinople a few years back.”

“Yes, Narses is well known outside the city. But the organization of the palace is complex. Theodora has her own Lord Chamberlain, for example. Has his name reached Armenia?”

Before the ambassador could question John further, the pulley arrangement at the end of the long table squealed again and the immense silver platter on which the artfully posed boar lay inched forward toward the carver stationed at the end of the table beside the emperor and empress.

Now the ambassador was exclaiming over the glimpse he had had of the boar’s belly, which, cut open and facing upwards, presented a display of roast ducks swimming in a sharp-scented, spiced sauce. “And aren’t those fried eels floating just below the surface?”

Anatolius lifted his face from his goblet. “A remarkable landscape of dead flesh to set beneath the nose of an emperor who won’t eat meat. Perhaps Theodora ordered the display as a little jest at Justinian’s expense.”

The Armenian ambassador laughed loudly and John shot Anatolius a warning look.

John glanced around. Several couches away the patriarch was dining frugally on bread and red wine. The Mithran in the Lord Chamberlain would have admired a man whose religious sensibilities did not allow him to indulge in the pleasures of the world even an arm’s length from the emperor. Then again, the old cleric’s lack of appetite here might be common sense, for at court even members of the church were not immune from political machinations and assassination attempts.

The patriarch looked pale and gaunt. John wondered whether the old man’s professional interest in eternal salvation was becoming a matter of personal concern.

His gaze moved to Theodora, who was now busily spearing slices of roast duck with her knife while her husband occupied himself with a bowl of what might as well have been weeds so far as John could tell. Would the empress be an attractive woman without the rouge and powder and luxurious robes? Justinian, he noticed, regarded her with an expression of fond indulgence even as she bit daintily into her duck with her small carnivore’s teeth.

After the dining finally ended and Patriarch Epiphanios had muttered the closing grace and departed, the shrilling of flutes announced the start of the entertainment.

John hardly noticed the mimes or the dwarves. When a dancing girl clad in white from shoulder to thigh, her scanty clothing shimmering in the lamplight, leapt onto the table, she merely served to remind John of Berta, with whom Felix and Thomas had been so taken.

The dancing girl glanced down at Anatolius, lost her balance, and fell off the table just as two miniature chariots pulled by small, briskly trotting, long-haired dogs and driven by hirsute brown charioteers burst into the hall.

“Monkeys!” cried the ambassador.

Tiny bells on the dogs’ polished leather harnesses jingled merrily as the diminutive charioteers commenced to chase each other around the hall, chattering, displaying their teeth, and waving miniature spears at each other.

The diners roared with laughter.

“The poor dancer must not like monkeys,” said Anatolius, scrambling off his couch to help the girl up.

John swiveled around to watch the charioteers, who had made a circuit of the table and were returning.

One of the drivers clutched a bunch of grapes he had snatched from the table.

The other hurled his spear in John’s direction.

John heard the tiny projectile hiss past his ear, then the weapon embedded itself in the shoulder of the senator across the table.

As the wounded man looked in stupefaction at the blood blossoming on his garments diners fell utterly silent.

Except for Theodora’s cawing laugh.

***

When the banquet was over John made his way to the foyer where the emperor and empress were receiving selected guests. He was still pondering the charioteers. Surely the spear could not have been intended for him? A monkey couldn’t possibly be trained to select a target, could it? His close call had been nothing more than chance.

Justinian greeted him with his usual bland geniality. “All was perfect, as usual, Lord Chamberlain.”

“Thank you, Caesar.” John bowed.

Justinian waved a beringed hand. “And that reminds me. I have not thanked you for your efforts concerning the death of the Keeper of the Plate. Do not trouble yourself further with the matter.”

John’s stomach knotted. “Caesar, if I may ask-”

“You may not.”

Justinian turned away with an abruptness that would have been characterized as rude in anyone other than the emperor.

John had been dismissed and dared say nothing further. He was suddenly aware of the empress standing beside him.

“Lord Chamberlain, my husband is too kind. I am not always so pleased with your efforts. You might, in the future, keep that in mind.”

“I never forget it, Highness,” John replied truthfully.

Theodora’s heavily painted features betrayed no emotion. It was commonly said she had not been a very good actress in her youth; if that were true, John guessed her knowledge of the craft had deepened during her years as empress.

“I am in accord with the emperor on the guilty one,” she said. “I have met the soothsayer and though I did not speak with him for long, he struck me as a vicious, unprincipled man, one who would not blink at murder.”

John stared pointedly at a drop of grease shining at the corner of the empress’ mouth. She licked away the tiny gobbet.

“A word of caution, Lord Chamberlain. Being too observant can be dangerous.”