One for Sorrow

Chapter Forty-six

It was mid-afternoon by the time John reached Leukos’ grave, carrying a basket holding small cakes, the traditional meal for the dead. It was not, Peter had warned him, the proper day for kollyba, but then added that he imagined his God would nevertheless respect the gesture made on behalf of a man who had no family to perform the ritual.

Leukos had wished to be buried in a simple manner. His tomb was marked by what appeared to be the top of a vault but was only a thin layer of plaster over a mound of dirt. A lamp stood on a low pedestal beside the grave and, unlike most of the other lamps in the cemetery, it still burned.

John set the basket on the grass and removed a cake. He felt more awkward than he ever had in directing court ceremonies.

“Will it help or hurt you, my friend, to have a pagan eat kollyba before a god he doesn’t believe in?”

His voice sounded much louder in the open air than it did when he spoke to the mosaic girl in his study. Was Leukos now, like Zoe, no more than a vision in his imagination?

Christians believed in the immortality of the soul just as Mithrans did. But was it huddled amongst Leukos’ bones in the earth, waiting for his Lord’s return, or had it, as John believed, already escaped its crumbling body and begun its ascent of the heavenly ladder? And if it had, how would Leukos, good man, good Christian, pass by the fierce guardians along the way? Leukos had not had the benefit of learning the mysteries in which John was initiated.

“I am sorry I didn’t share meals with you more often in life.” John addressed the earthen mound. As he raised the cake to his lips there was a pitiful mewl, and glancing toward a nearby stele he saw the black cat he had glimpsed after Leukos’ funeral. He broke off a piece of the kollyba and threw it to the animal. The cat pounced instantly.

After the long night and the long walk up the Mese to the cemetery, John felt sleepy. Lulled by the peaceful surroundings, he didn’t notice he had company until he felt the tip of a sword prodding his side.

He turned slowly, knowing a sudden move would only mean death. He was surprised to find himself staring into a face as gaunt as many buried around him.

The skeletal man laughed with a wheezing sound, as if some of his breath were escaping through the rents in the loose tunic flapping on his thin frame. “You’ve picked the right grave, you have. The Keeper of the Plate himself. Some fine things he must have carried down with him. But you’ve not been careful enough. So I’ve got you at last.”

“You’re mistaken. I’m not a grave-robber. I’ve come to pay tribute to my friend.” John displayed the piece of kollyba he held. “I am from the palace.”

“Ah, so you’re a liar as well as a grave-robber.”

“Can’t you see?” John indicated his expensive robes.

Another death-bed laugh issued from the man’s thin, colorless lips. The sword point bit more deeply and John felt a warm trickle of blood. He saw that his captor’s eyes were milky.

The man was half blind.

“You’ve sported with me for months. Now it’s my turn.” The gaunt man took a long, jerky stride forward, forcing John back a step. “Plenty of room for the likes of you around here,” he added. And John, looking carefully in the direction the man indicated, saw that they were standing not far from one of many fresh graves.

John remembered the kollyba in his hand and the scavenging cat. Praying to Mithra that the animal was still lurking nearby, he dropped the cake.

As John had hoped, a black shape erupted from the long grass and pounced onto the cake like a demon springing at a damned soul.

John’s captor, confronted unexpectedly by what must have appeared to him only as a terrible black specter, gasped, tottering backwards on thin legs. Then he was lying on his back, John’s knee digging into his ribs, the sword hovering over his throat.

The cat stood nearby, eyes alert for danger or more largesse, refusing to retreat as it desperately attempted to swallow the remains of the kollyba in a single gulp.

“Fortunately for you,” John told the cemetery guardian, “I really am from the palace. I am Lord Chamberlain to the emperor. Were I a common grave-robber, you’d be dead.” He let the man up.

“Spare me, excellency.” The man cringed, hunching over in terror until his head was almost level with John’s knees. “We have had trouble here. Sacrilege.”

“They aren’t simply stealing grave goods?”

Realizing he was to be spared, the cemetery guardian straightened up. “Oh no. Not just jewelry. The skull of John the Baptist. Leg bones of martyrs, saints’ knuckles.”

“You make it make appear all the apostles and fathers of the church were buried here.”

“You’d think so, seeing what’s been dug up and put on display.” The man lowered his voice. “Years ago, I was digging a grave and, God forgive me, I came too close to someone who’d already been here a while. I accidentally sliced into his side. He was just rotten cloth and bone by then. No complaint there.

“But not long afterwards, I was in a church, I won’t say which one, but what do you think was there, displayed in a reliquary? It was our poor Lord’s rib, the very one they say was damaged when his side was pierced by the centurion’s spear. Well, excellency, I could see better in those days, and so I can assure you that the only problem with that relic was that the nick in the rib was identical to the outline of the edge of my spade.”

John could well believe it. “This place is large and you are but one man. How did you come to notice me?”

“I heard you talking. My ears are better than my eyes. And then I saw a shape coming out of the field right where the aqueduct cuts through.”

“But I came from the road.”

The guardian frowned. He turned his head to one side, then the other. “I thought there was something. Yes. Listen.”

John could discern only insects heralding the approaching night.

“A spade. I hear a spade!”

The guardian bolted away. John followed. Although nearly blind the man dodged around grave markers and mounds as if he had ingrained the topography of the place in his mind.

The intruder, no doubt alerted by the noise of their approach, had vanished by the time the two reached where he had been digging.

“Grave robbing in broad daylight!” cried the guardian, flailing his sword around. “How could anyone dare it!”

John thought it might not have required much daring, considering that the cemetery’s guardian was more or less blind and the grave in question was in a nondescript corner, partially concealed by shrubbery.

A pile of dirt lay on one edge of a hole that reached down to the tile-lined crypt where a partially exhumed body lay.

John knelt by the graveside. As his eyes grew accustomed to the darkness of the pit he made out green silk robes and blond hair.

It was Berta.