Six for Gold

Chapter Twenty-seven

Cornelia persuaded John to take a walk after sunset brought a welcome coolness to the air.

Behind them the buildings on the estate subsided into dark shapes dotted with stray will-o’-the-wisps of lamplight. Starlight glimmered on irrigation ditches. A sickle moon rode hungrily low on the horizon.

After a lengthy silence, Cornelia laid her hand on John’s arm. “My thoughts often turn to those we left behind in Constantinople.”

John looked down at her. “I understand how you feel, Cornelia. I think of them often too.”

“And when my thoughts aren’t in Constantinople, they’re here, but in the past. Being together again, in this land, feels almost as it did then.”

John’s hand rested for an instant on hers. “Tell me, why did you never marry?”

The question took Cornelia by surprise. “I never thought of marrying. When you didn’t return, I kept hoping…”

“I was an impetuous young man. I could have decided I didn’t want to be tied down.”

“You might have decided to leave me, John, but you would have told me so. You would never have crept away in the night.”

John nodded. “Even so, many years passed before we met again.”

“It didn’t seem so long, especially with a daughter to raise. So I waited for your return, and meantime kept hoping I might see you in the audience in some dusty town square.” She laughed softly. “I never realized you had risen to such high office, that it would be necessary for the troupe to perform in the Hippodrome in order to find you again.”

“If I had thought our lives could be the way they were before, I’d have sought you out, no matter where you were. I would have been content to remain with you, no matter how small or dusty the village. But, of course, it cannot be that way.”

“Why did you suppose it cannot be, John?”

Before John could answer, light flared in the sky.

“Look!” Cornelia pointed to a fiery ball that soared above Mehenopolis’ thick canopy and mounted swiftly past the sickle moon into the heavens above the Rock of the Snake.

Suddenly the air was filled an unearthly screeching, as if someone had cracked open the door to the Christian hell to allow the sound of souls screaming in endless agony to emerge.

Shouts echoed from the direction of the estate.

John and Cornelia ran toward it.

Above, the fireball wheeled and looped, throwing off showers of sparks. Long shadows spun wildly over the path and gardens along their way.

Then the flying thing fell like a burning rock.

The terrible screeching ended abruptly.

Red light danced in the open space in front of Melios’ barn. The stack of straw was ablaze. Men ran up, shouting and gesticulating, shaking their fists at the now empty sky. A child toddled past unattended, sucking its thumb and whimpering.

“It’s Hecate come to kill everyone!” an indistinct figure cried. “Only Dedi can save us!”

“No, it’s an angel sent to punish us for listening to Dedi, that blaspheming bastard!” another shadow answered.

Words were exchanged that Cornelia couldn’t make out. Then, deciding to reinforce his theological position, one of the debaters shoved the other, whose quick refutation consisted of a fist to his opponent’s jaw. Several onlookers stepped forward to join the incipient fray.

Cornelia noticed the tall, stooped figure of the old cleric, Zebulon. He strode toward the melee and without hesitation grabbed one of the fighters by the shoulder.

“Stop it! Do you think heaven would reveal itself with a cheap display such as this? If the Lord wanted to deliver a message He’d do more than send an angel to set fire to a pile of straw.”

The fighters looked abashed. Grumbling darkly, they turned away from each other.

Zebulon glanced around, shook his head, saw the unattended toddler, and contented himself with taking the child’s hand. “Come along, little one. We’ll find your mother.”

Cornelia and John made their way through the crowd toward the fire.

Sheep bleated frantically and servants cursed as they ran back and forth between the pond and the blaze, throwing ineffectual buckets of water at the conflagration.

Melios stood a short distance off, clasping and unclasping his hands. His milky eye shone like that of a wild animal.

“You need a bucket line,” John told him.

The headman stared as if he’d been struck dumb.

“Organize a bucket line before you lose your barn!” John said.

“Have you seen Apollo?” The headman’s gaze darted to the air, then side to side, as if he expected another flaming apparition to come flying at him any instant. “His bees don’t like smoke. I don’t want swarms of angry insects everywhere.”

John proceeded to organize the frantic servants himself. Some he grabbed by their arms and he yelled and gestured at others, cursing profusely.

“I’m surprised to hear the Lord Chamberlain has the regrettable vocabulary of a dock worker,” said a voice at Cornelia’s shoulder.

Zebulon had returned.

“He’s in the habit of cursing in Coptic because so few in Constantinople understand it,” Cornelia explained. “I suppose he’s forgotten here he’s using the native tongue.”

“And using it extremely colorfully, if deplorably, though I will say most effectively.”

Already the men had formed a chain and begun to pass brimming buckets of water along it in rapid succession.

“The flying demon will make a good subject for a homily,” Zebulon remarked, “although I had been thinking I could base a meditation on a more prosaic horror recently visited upon us.”

He inclined his head in the direction of Melios’ house, toward which a burly figure strode.

“I mean of course the tax assessor,” he went on. “No doubt Scrofa is worried assessable property might go up in flames. However, I notice he doesn’t seem anxious to help prevent any losses.”

Recalling her brief conversation with the assessor, Cornelia suspected Scrofa was just as likely to be taking advantage of the commotion to search the house to establish if Melios was hiding undeclared property. “Now you mention it, where has Melios gone?”

“Perhaps he doesn’t have a quotation from the classics appropriate to this occasion? In any event, the Lord Chamberlain seems to have taken the situation in hand. Don’t forget, Cornelia, I am always ready for a game of Mehen.”

A big man appeared on the scene.

“You need some muscle here,” he shouted at John.

It was the charioteer, Porphyrios. He took his place at the end of the line, flexed his sinewy arms, grabbed hold of the next bucket as if it were a wine pitcher, and tossed the water in a long coruscating arc.

A few dark fragments of ash, ringed in bright orange, floated upwards, rotating slowly, and drifted away.

There was a sudden bray of anguish.

Startled, Porphyrios looked around.

The donkey tethered near the barn was trying to back away from a large patch of dried weeds the flying sparks had set afire.

Porphyrios dropped his bucket.

John picked it up. “Untie the donkey, Porphyrios. Quick!” he ordered.

“Me?”

“Yes, you!”

Porphyrios grimaced. “Ah…what about the next bucket…”

Seeing the charioteer’s confusion, Cornelia sprinted over to the distressed animal and set it loose. As it galloped off across the flower beds, Porphyrios doused the smaller fire.

For a little while Cornelia stood and watched John. He worked quickly and efficiently, issuing occasional orders, working alongside the servants, his manner decisive.

Since the fire was soon brought under control, she decided to return to their temporary lodgings. Turning to leave, she saw Thorikos running toward her. Even in the dying firelight she could see he was breathless with exertion and excitement.

“Isn’t this a wonder?” the rotund traveler gasped. “The entire settlement must have seen that flaming demon! What tales I’ll have to tell! Who would’ve thought a dull fellow like me would ever witness such sights?”

Not pausing for a reply he hurried on toward what remained of the night’s drama.

Cornelia decided to take a short cut back rather than following the path. As she moved away from the remains of the blaze, the night closed around her. The sliver of a moon faintly silvered the ground before her.

The hubbub of voices faded. Now she could hear the buzz and chirp of insects.

Walking slowly, she kept her gaze on the ground.

Before long she bent down and picked up what she’d expected to find.

A feather.

***

“Master, is that you?” Peter stuck his head out of his room and peered down the hallway.

There was no answer. The only illumination came from a terra-cotta lantern hanging at the end of the corridor.

He was certain he had heard a footstep.

“Mistress? Have you returned?”

Hadn’t he lit the lamp in the front room?

How long could it have been since he had dozed off?

He made the sign of his religion, picked up the lidded clay jar by his door, and crept out into the hallway.

Yes, there was the sound again, a barely distinguishable indication of movement.

The other door off the hallway opened into the room the master and mistress were using. He glanced in. Dim lantern light spilling in from the hallway slanted across the bottom of the pallet, leaving the rest of the room dark.

Peter edged slowly inside.

There was something on the bed. At first glance it might have been a small reclining figure.

Peter raised the jar, then stopped.

He had made out glassy eyes and a withered snarl.

It was only Cheops the cat mummy.

The light flickered, as if the flame in the lantern had been disturbed by a breeze.

Or by someone passing by behind him. Peter pivoted slowly. The hallway was empty.

He was certain there was someone else in the house. He could feel the other’s presence.

The master and mistress might return at any time. They wouldn’t be expecting someone to be waiting for them.

Waiting with evil intent.

Peter offered a silent prayer, clutched the pot tighter, and moved cautiously toward the darkened front room. As he stepped into it, he spotted a glint of light.

Was it a hungry blade?

He hurled the jar.

It exploded against the wall, sending fragments rattling around the room.

The intruder let out an oath. There was a crash and the house door flew open.

A gust of cool night air rushed in.

The nocturnal visitor had departed in haste.

Peter began to light the lamps. He hoped that before the master and mistress arrived back he would be able to find all the scorpions he had collected in the jar.

He sighed.

He was not certain now how many he had captured.