Seven for a Secret

Chapter Forty-Two

Had the automaton on the pillar come from Menander’s collection?

Menander could no longer answer the question.

However, Alba, the pious woman John had interviewed at the hospice, had mentioned she’d first known Menander when they were both newly exiled from the palace.

The flooded alley leading to the wooden tenement behind the Church of the Mother of God had dried out. Tracks of foraging dogs and feral cats criss-crossed the hardened mud. The rent collector sat in the same place at the bottom of the rickety stairs. After John spoke to her and went up she made the usual charcoal mark on the wall.

This afternoon Alba was not at the hospice. She met John at the door of her cell-like room on the top floor of the tenement.

“You tell me Menander’s room has been emptied of his possessions, Lord Chamberlain?”

“Whoever was responsible left the door open. They didn’t leave behind so much as a cobweb. You didn’t notice anything?”

“No. It would have been better for Menander if he had put aside his earthly goods long ago. Now I fear the weight of them has dragged his eternal soul down into the fires of hell. Let us pray that the Lord will show him mercy.”

Alba wore the same black attire as at the hospice, the veil fastened under her chin so that only her bone white face showed. She let John into the room and sat on the edge of a low cot. “Please make yourself comfortable, Lord Chamberlain. I can offer you nothing better than a stool. I do not entertain visitors.” She spoke with the well bred tones of a woman raised at court. It was the sort of voice that usually invited one into lavish reception halls or beautiful private apartments.

John sat down near the brazier. His knees almost touched the cot. Through the room’s single window he could see the brick wall of the church, an arm’s breadth away. A window there gave a glimpse of a wall where vestments hung from pegs.

“Alba, you told me that you tried to persuade Menander of the error of his ways. Did you ever see his collection?”

“Only once. He insisted. I have no interest in such vanities but I did not want to be impolite.”

“Do you recall any automatons? Men made of metal?”

“Indeed I did. How could I forget such monstrous works of blasphemy? An artist may depict a man in stone or bronze or bits of colored glass. Such things are clearly meant to be nothing more than representations. To seek to mimic the living flesh with metal that moves…that is to pretend to a creation that is God’s alone.” Her tone remained even but her pale, unlined face tightened as she spoke.

John asked her how many automatons she had seen.

“Two, Lord Chamberlain. They were a pair. They represented the martyred saints Sergius and Bacchus. Whatever beast created such a mockery of those devout soldiers will burn beside Menander.”

Then the automaton on the pillar had almost certainly come from Menander’s collection by way of Troilus’ shop.

John’s gaze went to Alba’s window and to the diamond paned window of the church beyond. A ray of light falling through the narrow gap between church and tenement gleamed on the silver embroidery on the vestments hanging there.

“I understand you have devoted yourself to religious works, Alba. I have seen you laboring at the hospice. There is a stylite in a square not far from here. His name is Lazarus. Do you know anything about that holy man?”

John saw Alba’s sharp intake of breath. “How remarkable that you should ask! But then we are often guided by an invisible hand. It was what I saw in that very square that saved me. I had hoped it might save Menander as well, but it did not, for my words fell on stony ground.”

She sighed. “Lord Chamberlain, I sense you do not worship the one true God, or perhaps you simply do not call Him by His rightful name. Yet you are a spiritual man. You will appreciate that wisdom can come to us in dreams and visions such as I have had. Things that seem unreal to those who are not spiritual by nature, who are bound to the earth, have their own reality to we who are willing to acknowledge and commune with them.”

John recalled her earlier mention of visions and asked her to explain her comments.

“It was a miracle. A message from God. They are not uncommon, you know, but we usually do not recognize them for what they are. That was true of what I witnessed that morning. Only afterward did I understand.”

“When did this event take place?”

“It must have been ten years ago. I regret to say I had not yet reconciled myself to my new life. I still lamented my fallen state, not realizing what a blessing it was. I was on my way to market. The sun had risen and was bathing God’s great works in glorious light, yet all I could see was the dining room I’d left behind, the silver plates, the painted vineyards on its walls. All I could think of was how I had been transformed into one of my own servants, treading the morning streets with a basket.”

She sighed. “But I felt worse off than my servants. I had sent them out in search of the finest ducks and freshest greens, newly caught fish, the best fruits, fresh baked bread. But I would be fortunate to be able to purchase a hard bit of cheese or a dried out parsnip or two to choke down in the solitude of this poor room.”

Alba smiled and shook her head. “How foolish I was then, Lord Chamberlain. How many there are in this city who would thank the Lord to have such a fine room as this and coins enough for both parsnips and cheese.”

“That is true enough,” John agreed. “What was this miracle that opened your eyes?”

“I saw a boy drawn straight up to heaven.”

“From the square where Lazarus lives?”

Alba nodded. “I had just entered it when I heard a commotion. Shouts, the sound of running footsteps. I drew back against the closed grating of a shop that had yet to open. I was trembling in terror for I was not inured to the sudden storms that sweep the streets outside the palace walls.”

“Into the square raced a boy. He staggered as if exhausted. He reached the column upon which Lazarus stands and collapsed. I didn’t know what to do. He might have been a criminal or an innocent pursued by ruffians. He looked back the way he’d come. The shouts from that direction grew louder. Then he vanished behind the column.”

“There is a door in its base,” John said.

“Yes. I saw that, later. But just then a number of palace guards burst into the square, swords drawn. Understand, Lord Chamberlain, that what I have described took no more than an instant. They raced across the square and disappeared from view. I remained where I was, afraid to move. Fearful that they‘d spot me and think I could tell them about the boy. After a short time some of the guards reappeared and went off down other streets that ran into the square. A little later, when everything was quiet, I continued on my way. I noticed that there were still guards prowling about and one was posted in the square when I returned from market with my cheese. There hadn’t been a bunch of parsnips I could afford.”

John shifted uncomfortably on the low stool. His long legs had begun to cramp. “Surely that wasn’t a miracle, Alba? The boy obviously hid himself inside the pillar. I admit it may have been a miracle the guards didn’t think to investigate that possibility.”

“The Lord clouded their eyes and their thoughts,” Alba replied.

“On the other hand,” John replied, “the guards might have believed the boy had outdistanced them. A stylite’s pillar is not something one thinks of as affording shelter. Holy men occupy them and they aren’t of any use to anyone else. We tend not to notice things that are of no use to us. But why did you consider the foiling of the boy’s pursuit a miracle?”

“Because he vanished, Lord Chamberlain. He was drawn up to heaven, as I said. The next day, Lazarus sat in his shelter as usual, and ever since Lazarus has emerged from time to time just as he always did. But the boy has never been seen again.”

“The boy merely waited for the guards to leave, then emerged. There are numerous places to hide in the city, after all.”

Alba shook her head. “That would not have been possible. There were guards posted in the square for several days. And after they had gone, others returned more than once to ask questions. I made inquiries of the shopkeepers all around. No one had glimpsed this boy except me, nor did anyone ever see him again.”

“You were interested enough to inquire?”

“Because I sensed that what I had seen held a message for me, Lord Chamberlain. Miracles are happening all the time, but only those to whom they are addressed notice them.”

The ray of light which had illuminated the vestments visible in the church had shifted so that it slanted in through the narrow window of Alba’s room. It cut across the end of the cot on which she sat and over the brazier before tracing a line of orange fire up the wall where there hung a elaborate, jeweled cross fit for a palace.

“Isn’t the message clear? A boy is pursued by guards from the palace. He ascends a pillar and afterward there is no boy there but only the holy stylite. Does it not demonstrate how those pursued by wealth and power may yet escape if they forsake the earth and choose instead to rise up to heaven? It was a sign telling me I had not been condemned to a hard life outside the palace walls, but rather had been granted freedom from the wealth and privilege which bars our entry to the Kingdom of Heaven. My soul had escaped. I tried to explain this to Menander. He laughed and said he would have had to see it with his own eyes. Sadly, I do not think his eyes would have been capable of seeing.”

John rose stiffly from his stool. “Do you have any idea who this boy was?”

Alba shook her head. “No. I was afraid to inquire too closely of friends from the palace after what had happened to my father.”

John did not ask what that had been, or who her father had been or what office he had held. He offered her a few coins for her information. She refused, until he persuaded her that charitable works could be accomplished and accepted them with a blessing on him.

The shaft of light which had illuminated the room began to fade. John could not help asking a final question. He indicated the jeweled cross. “That is the sort of artifact that would have been in Menander’s collection. Did he give it to you perhaps?”

“No, Lord Chamberlain,” came the reply with a smile. “It has been in my room for as long as I can remember, since when I was a little girl. I cannot bear to part with it.”