Seven for a Secret

Chapter Five

Grass and weeds obscured many of the graves in the tree-shaded cemetery which lay outside the inner wall of the city. The somnolent sound of insects overlaid by the cooing of doves resting in plump rows along the twisted boughs of ancient yews did nothing to disturb the slumbers of those buried beneath unmarked mounds or elaborate memorials.

John and Cornelia paced slowly along a narrow path to the outer side of the sacred space and came to a halt in a sun-dappled corner half hidden by a tangle of bushes. Several monuments were chiseled with pious sentiments and hopes for the departed.

“All is vanity,” Cornelia read. “John Chrysostom wrote a homily on that. Peter once ventured to quote him at me.”

“He’s a favorite of Peter’s. It’s obvious from his writings he wasn’t too fond of Lord Chamberlains.”

“Ah yes. Eutropius. There was a Lord Chamberlain who would never have eaten his breakfast at the kitchen table. Unlike some.”

They stood at the foot of a bare earthen mound. The anonymous woman buried there would not have been accorded even so modest a grave in a decent cemetery except that John had ordered it.

“It was kind of you to have her buried here when you don’t even know who she was,” Cornelia said after a time.

“I intend to find out both her identity and who murdered her,” John replied.

An image of the red dyed corpse face down in the cistern floated to the surface of his thoughts, momentarily displacing the peaceful, sunlit surroundings.

Cornelia looked up at him, concern in her face. “Was she really the girl in the mosaic, the one you call Zoe?”

“She was the model for her. I’m convinced of it.” He paused. “I know it worries Peter when he hears me talking to the mosaic, but Zoe and I have had many conversations. She knows more about my thoughts than anyone else.”

“More than I do after our being apart so many years! Naturally you want to find out the truth of the matter.”

“Beyond that, I suspect she was murdered because she spoke to me. And that means someone is concealing something which makes it even more important I discover the reason behind her death.”

“Are you certain that’s what’s making it so important to you, John? How likely is it you’ll be able to find out who she really was? Half the city is dead of the plague, and those left won’t want to talk to a man from the palace. The only answer you get is liable to be a blade between the ribs one moonless night!”

“Ambushes take place everywhere in the city. Probably least of all on moonless nights when you’re expecting them. In fact, I notice there’s a pair of boots sticking out from behind those bushes.”

Cornelia’s eyes widened as she looked in the direction John indicated. “I see them and they’re moving.”

“Indeed they are,” came a voice from the bushes. “And who dares to disturb the dead?”

At first glance, it might have appeared the man who stepped out from the vegetation was referring to himself. He was little more than a skeleton wrapped in rags. His eyes were milky and his skin pallid. He was however alive enough to wave a sword before thrusting its point into the middle of a patch of ivy wreathing the foot of a monument. “I don’t get many people visiting this corner of the little kingdom I watch over. Who might you be? Family members?” His wheezing voice sounded suspicious.

“No-” John began.

The pale apparition hefted his weapon again. “Is that so? Couples think nobody sees what they’re up to in the long grass.” The man leered. John doubted the pale eyes could distinguish errant couples or anything beyond shadowy shapes.

“We were wondering about the person buried here,” Cornelia said.

“Her?” The man spat on the bare mound. “Well, them that put her there said t’was by order of the Lord Chamberlain to the emperor.”

He laughed, precipitating a fit of coughing that shook his gaunt frame. “Given what he is, it’s much more likely she’s some courtier’s fancy woman. I’m already getting complaints from families whose relatives are buried here.”

Cornelia gave the man an angry scowl and began to reply. John laid his hand on her arm and shook his head.

Oblivious, the cemetery caretaker continued. “They don’t want their respectable dead anywhere near who knows what. Lord Chamberlain indeed! If the Lord Chamberlain arranged for the likes of her to be buried then Timothy the baker over here ruled Persia when he wasn’t at his ovens.”

He gave a hoarse laugh and patted the grave marker he stood beside. “I have my own troubles. Can’t see too well, but mind now, I know every dip and bend of this cemetery. Them that try to dig up the dead find that out soon enough. I can make my way better in the dark than they can when the sun is high. Or rather I could before all them new graves appeared. Still, I’ll soon learn my way around again.”

John observed the recent visitation of the plague must have meant many more interments than in past years.

The other agreed. “I’ve had a busy time, keeping an eye on new burials. Fresh earth makes for easier digging, and there’s less chance they’ve been robbed already.”

“I’m sure you’ve kept a close watch on this grave,” John said. “Has anyone visited?”

The caretaker emitted a wheezing snort. “Who’d visit such a one except you two? If that’s really what you’re up to. Or maybe her good friend the Lord Chamberlain? Do you know, in the course of my duties I once met a man who claimed he was the Lord Chamberlain. It’s my belief he was a rogue intent on stealing bones to pass off as saints’ relics.”

He paused. “There’s quite a brisk trade in relics. Every church in the city is filled with them and more than a few might have come from this cemetery if the truth be told, but not while I have kept watch. Anyhow, I was about to haul the fellow I was telling you about off to the authorities when a cat rescued him. Yes, it leapt right at me and that supposed Lord Chamberlain got away. Perhaps the cat was a demon. Perhaps they were both demons. Perhaps the real Lord Chamberlain is a demon. They do say the emperor is a demon and walks about the palace at nights with no face. Take care, my friends. Don’t linger until night falls.”

Chuckling to himself with a sound akin to a hoarse crow, the pale guardian of the dead turned and shuffled off without a word of farewell, dusty tunic flapping around spindly legs.

Cornelia stared at John.

John gave a thin smile. “Yes, I was the man he remembers. It was during the time I was investigating my friend Leukos’ murder. I came to visit the grave.”

They walked to Leukos’ simple tomb, a vault which was in reality nothing more than a thin layer of plaster over a mound of dirt.

John felt the faint breath of a breeze against his face. He was aware of the almost imperceptible trembling of grass at his feet, forming a contrast to the stillness of the denizens of the cemetery he could see in his imagination, the stillness of his friend who had been gone for seven years already.

“So many things in the present point back to the past,” John observed. “When we’re young, everything leads to the future.”

“It depends on what direction you turn your gaze, doesn’t it?”

John laughed softly. “You prove my point. You’ve just reminded me of those nights in Egypt. Remember while the rest of the troupe slept, we’d lie in our tent and ponder Marcus Aurelius?”

“And wonder whether we were the only couple within a week’s ride who were lying in their tent discussing Marcus Aurelius!”

“I’d wager we were the only couple consisting of a Greek mercenary and a bull leaper who discussed him.”

“You never knew any other bull leapers?”

“No one else has recreated that ancient sport as far as I know. The skill was lost. To the past.”

“How long had you been in Alexandria before we met?” Cornelia asked with an innocent look.

“Only a day or two,” he replied, suppressing a smile. He added, in response to the unspoken question, “Not enough time to drink the dust out if my throat, much less warm a woman’s bed.”