Ten for Dying

DAY SIX
Chapter Thirty-eight

Peter lay stretched out on his sleeping mat, eyes closed, hands clasped peacefully on his chest. As if he sensed John looking at him, he opened his eyes. “Master? What is it?”

“I didn’t mean to wake you, Peter. I wished to question you again, in case you recalled anything more.”

Peter propped himself up on his elbows. “I tried, master, but my memory isn’t what it used to be.”

On the mat next to his, Hypatia stirred and sat up. She looked at John crossly, but addressed Peter. “Your recollection has nothing to do with age, Peter. Why would you remember every single thing you saw and did right before? You weren’t expecting to be thrown into the sea!”

Peter looked in distress from John to Hypatia and back. “I’m sorry-”

“Never mind, Peter. Hypatia is right. Go back to sleep. It’s barely dawn and you need to rest.”

“Really, master. I’m all right. I can swim, you know. And thank the Lord, I also had the protection of Hypatia’s charm.” He lifted his arm to display the knotted bracelet around his wrist. “It was just the shock of it. When you’re standing there minding your own business and someone grabs the back of your-”

“Yes, I understand.” John did not want to contemplate what it would be like to be grabbed from behind, hoisted over the rail, and dropped into the bottomless waters. Which is what had happened to Peter, as he had already told John.

He had also told John several times that, no, he had not managed to see the culprit. All he had time to notice was the water rushing up at him.

No, he couldn’t say who had been on deck when he emerged from the captain’s cabin. A few crew members no doubt. He had no reason to take note. He’d just wanted to get a breath of air while the pot on the brazier came to a boil.

No, he hadn’t heard his attacker approach.

The captain’s cabin had been empty when he arrived so he fanned the brazier’s embers to life and began cooking stew. He had had to search for a knife suitable for slicing onions. Cooking utensils were jumbled on the shelves with hammers and files and the like. Jars of olives were mixed up with jars of ointment. Much of what Peter needed was hidden under a stack of packages, pouches, and navigational charts. The disarray was shocking.

John was amazed Peter seemed more upset by the disorder in his adopted kitchen than he was about his near encounter with Poseidon.

He went on deck to search for the captain and found the plump, red-faced man at the stern where the huge, iron crosses of the anchors had been winched on board.

“Are the repairs completed?”

“Patched up well enough to reach the shore. Needs a new rudder, among other things. Hope you’re not in a big hurry.” There was a sneer in his voice.

John wondered if he had been apprised of who the tall Greek and his party were and the reason for their journey.

“I’m not concerned about that. Did you find anything out about who tried to murder my servant?”

“Been a little busy as you might have noticed.”

“Too busy to question your crew about attempted murder?”

The captain screwed up his features and scratched a pink, bristly chin as if pondering the question. “Questioned my men. None of them seen anything. Merchant ship’s no place for an old relic like that one. Standing around, always in the way. Someone brushed past him, busy, concentrating on his job, and the old man loses his balance and over he goes. Or perhaps he had one of them falling spells as them that’s his advanced age often has and just imagines he was pushed. He wouldn’t be much of a loss, if you ask me.”

“You like his honey cakes well enough. You and your traveling companion.”

“I’d miss those cakes, certainly. As for the passenger you’re talking about, you won’t get nothing out of me. It’s no one’s business who takes ship on the Leviathan. All I want to know about my passengers is they put the proper number of coins into my hand. I don’t know who they are. And even if I do know, I don’t know. And now, if you don’t want us to drift back onto them rocks…” He turned and waddled off, barking instructions at the crew.

Before long the sails billowed and the Leviathan began to move with much groaning of timbers, like an old man trying to get out of a chair.

John had spent hours after Peter’s rescue interrogating the crew without the slightest result. Even when he expressed his gratitude and offered them coins as a reward, they remained suspicious and close-mouthed. Not surprisingly. On board the only person they needed to fear was the captain and it seemed clear to John he had ordered them to remain silent.

He talked to the other passengers.

The farmers, as John supposed they were, spent most of their time below deck, sitting in the shadows, sullenly throwing knucklebones. Both apparently lost with every throw, to judge from their sour expressions. It strengthened John’s impression they had traveled to Constantinople to petition the emperor on a matter involving land or taxes, and had not been satisfied with the answer.

“We might’ve heard a yell, then feet stamping around overhead,” one of the farmers admitted. “But after staying two weeks in that inn behind the Hippodrome we were so used to hearing fights in the alley under our window we thought nothing of the noise.”

Cornelia, Peter, and Hypatia had been intent on making charms. None of them could say whether the farmers had, truly, both been occupying their usual dark spot at the time. The pilgrim and her companion claimed they had been on deck and had heard and seen nothing.

“You were nearer than I was to where Peter went overboard,” John had noted.

“But we were on the opposite side of the cabin, contemplating the sunrise. As it says in the Scriptures, the sun emerges to run its course with joy.”

“That would be the eastern side of the ship, where Peter went overboard.”

“Don’t you remember, Egina?” the companion put in. “The sun was well up by then and we had moved around to the other side to see if it was clear enough for us to glimpse the shore.”

“Oh, that’s right. She is correct, sir. I had forgotten that. All this excitement has been too much for me.”

As for the nameless passenger, he haughtily informed John that although it was none of his business, he had been making a round of the ship but had seen nothing. “Consider with whom you are dealing. The boys who crew this ship are nothing but the lowest of ruffians. One saw that old scarecrow leaning out over the rail and thought it would be a good joke to introduce him to the fishes. Boys like that don’t think past their impulses.”

The speaker was nothing but a boy himself, John noted, though he certainly did not give evidence of being prone to impulses. At least not the impulse to talk out of turn.

“I don’t like that young man, whoever he is,” John told Cornelia when he found her standing in the prow, contemplating the sparkling wavelets rippling past the moving hull. “Not that he would have any reason to drown Peter. This journey must be very hard on Peter, although he will never complain. The sun beats down so strongly, exhausted, coming out of that dim cabin into the sun, he might have become dizzy-”

“You know that’s not the case.”

John shrugged. “No one on this ship has any reason to hurt Peter.”

Cornelia looked in the direction of the as yet invisible coast. “Did you consider whoever did it wanted to hurt you?”

“Hurt me? Are you imagining an assassin again? Surely he would target me, not Peter?”

“But only after you have watched your family pay, murdered one by one, for whatever your crimes are supposed to be.”

“But…who could be that full of hatred? Except one person we both know is lying dead in a mausoleum at the Church of the Holy Apostles.”