Three for a Letter

Chapter Fifteen

“She’s wedded to evil! I won’t allow the woman in here. Potions and magick indeed! There’s too much magick in this cursed place already!” Livia burst out of her daughter’s room, sweeping imperiously by John without so much as a second glance. The round moon of her face was shadowed by clouds as sullen as those gathering over the sea.

John stepped through the doorway into the glare of Theodora’s other lady-in-waiting. “Let Poppaea die then,” Calyce was shouting after Livia. “Your stupidity-” She broke off in embarrassment at the sight of the Lord Chamberlain.

“They’re arguing about Minthe,” Sunilda put in helpfully from her seat beside Poppaea’s bed. “They always do, you know. Minthe will make Poppaea better. She isn’t married to anybody, either,” she added as an afterthought.

John bent over the sick girl. He could detect no improvement in her state. She lay as still as Gadaric had been when pulled from the mouth of the whale. Her eyes were closed, the lids bluish, almost translucent. There was a terrible pallor to her cheeks, cheeks that were no longer rounded but sunken. Her breathing was barely discernible.

“Has she been awake yet?” John asked Calyce.

The woman shook her head. “Not fully but she stirs occasionally. I’ve managed to get some of Minthe’s potion past her lips, and her sleep seems much more natural now, whatever her mother says!”

John realized that Livia had somehow learned of Minthe’s stealthy nocturnal visit, which Felix had reported to him. He didn’t propose to discuss the matter further right then, however, since he had as little desire as Felix to place himself between Theodora’s warring ladies-in-waiting.

“We should let Poppaea rest,” he told Sunilda. “Calyce will stay with her. Would you like to take a walk along the beach before the rain arrives?”

The girl hopped out of the chair and accompanied him outside, talking all the way. She was wearing a plain linen tunic that contrasted strangely with the golden comb in her dark hair.

“Bertrada says it’s my crown,” she explained, when John complimented her on her hair ornament. “That’s because I will be queen of Italy someday. But Livia contradicted her. She’s just jealous because Poppaea will never be queen even though they’re from a very old Roman family. Poppaea can be my lady-in-waiting, though. Her mother I think I will throw in the dungeons unless that would make Poppaea too sad.”

They followed the path leading through the olive grove while the girl chattered. Brilliant sunlight accentuated the dark clouds massing along the horizon as they emerged and began walking towards the shore.

“My father and my great-grandfather were kings, of course,” the girl said airily, as if everyone had royal blood. “My grandmother ruled too. Then again, I might decide to marry a general. Bertrada says she wants to marry a general. She likes that big bear Felix, you know.”

“Felix is neither a bear nor a general but an excubitor captain,” John pointed out.

“Ah, but a man can better his position in the world if he sets his mind to it, isn’t that true, Lord Chamberlain?”

John admitted that it was so, thinking that he doubted the phrase was one that the child would normally have used.

They had arrived at the beach and were strolling along it, the murmur of waves sounding hypnotically in their ears. “It will be a long time before you must concern yourself with matters of queenship, Sunilda,” he concluded.

“My father became king when he was only a boy,” she said pertly. “Bertrada has told me many stories about him.”

“I see,” John replied, positive that the nursemaid had not told Sunilda that her father had almost certainly been murdered because he was unprepared to rule at a tender age. “And your great-grandfather Theodoric grew up in Constantinople. Just think, he might have gathered shells on this very beach.”

“Yes, he might have. I’ve heard many stories about my grandmother too.”

“From Bertrada?”

“Some of them.”

A patrolling excubitor stopped to greet them. John exchanged a few words with him before he continued on his way.

“Is he searching for Barnabas as well?” Sunilda asked. “Bertrada says everyone is looking for him.”

Without waiting for a reply she ran down to the string of debris at the high water line that delineated the disputed border between the kingdoms of land and sea.

It occurred to John as he followed a few paces behind that he could barely remember being eight. Of his own daughter at the same age-the child conceived before his terrible fate-he knew nothing. His only meeting with her had lasted just long enough to open an aching wound of a sort he would never have thought he could suffer, one that still caused him pain.

Would Europa have been so wise beyond her years at that age? Or at least grown so skilled at repeating the words and sentiments of her elders as to give an appearance of wisdom?

“Oh! It’s horrible! Quickly, Lord Chamberlain! I’ve found a monster!”

The girl’s shrill cry brought John to investigate the thing she was prodding with a piece of driftwood. The dark lump was partly concealed by seaweed; from it the ends of several appendages protruded like fingertips. Another prod revealed them to be not fingers but rather half-decayed tentacles.

“It’s just a sea creature, Sunilda, something your friend Porphyrio would have for his evening meal.”

“Porphyrio isn’t here today or he would have come to shore to meet me,” the girl said confidently, throwing the piece of driftwood into the sea.

John looked out over the choppy water. There was nothing to see but rapidly advancing thunderclouds and the jagged peaks of the island.

“We’ll have to cut our walk short,” John told her. “The storm will be here soon.”

“But I wanted to visit the goats’ shrine,” the girl complained petulantly.

“There isn’t going to be time.” John gently took the child’s hand. She pulled it away.

“I must visit the goats’ shrine,” she said in a louder voice.

Powerful as he was, the Lord Chamberlain was not accustomed to giving orders to children, an action even the poorest peasants took for granted. Apart from his absent daughter, the only child he knew was Zoe and she was always perfectly quiet and attentive on his study wall. Well, there were also the court pages, he reminded himself, but those painted and powdered creatures could hardly be classified as children, young though they were.

“We’ll walk down to the shrine for a very quick visit, Sunilda, but you must answer a question on the way.”

“Is it about my brother?”

John indicated gently that it was.

“Let’s not talk about that,” she replied firmly.

“I am sorry but we must,” John replied softly. “I want you to tell me what you remember about the night your brother had his accident.”

“Bertrada put us to bed early. I went to sleep. I don’t know when Gadaric went out. I’ve told you all this already.” With that she was off, running, the sticks of her bare legs flashing beneath her tunic.

John strode rapidly after her. A cold, isolated drop of rain landed on his face. The downpour would soon arrive. They would have to hurry.

When he reached the shrine Sunilda was standing on tiptoe, peering into the bowl set into the pedestal. John ducked in to see what she was staring at with such interest.

“Someone left a question for the goats.” A few burnt scraps of parchment lay at the bottom of the deep bowl. The girl poked at them. “I wonder what it said?”

“Only the person who left it and the goats who answered know exactly what it was,” John told her.

“I’ll ask Minthe about it next time I see her,” the girl said thoughtfully.

John refrained from commenting on the perils of superstitious belief. Godomar was surely better qualified than he to offer that sort of guidance. He felt relieved that the girl’s gloomy tutor had not observed her interest in the shrine.

Sunilda grabbed John’s hand. “Let’s go and visit Minthe right now!”

The light was fading quickly, as if torches were being extinguished one after the other along a long hallway. The wind was rising ahead of the fast approaching storm, blowing sea spray into the shrine.

“We don’t have time now, Sunilda.” John led the girl back up the gentle slope to the road. As they went toward the villa, there was a clap of thunder.

They increased their pace, passing Minthe’s strange house, and proceeded quickly on up the road as repeated drum-rolls of thunder grew closer. Then a dazzling bolt of lightning struck the greenish-gray sea. John’s ears rang. Another deafening peal drowned out Sunilda’s shout.

“…over there.” She gestured excitedly. They had reached a spot where the high ground extended a blunt finger out toward the beach, ending in a steep hill rather than the cliffs that lay further up the road. A stone hut was barely visible at the seaward end of a path leading across the promontory. Lightning forked over the sea again, followed almost immediately by the concussion of thunder.

“Very well,” John agreed.

Sunilda jerked her hand free of his grasp and ran ahead. John followed her down the path, through the weedy garden behind the hut and past an overturned rowboat sitting beside it. They arrived at the hut’s rough plank door just as the heavens opened and sea and sky were lost in a waterfall of water.

John stepped warily forward, hand on the blade at his belt.

“Don’t worry, Lord Chamberlain. I know Paul very well,” the girl assured him. “He’ll be glad to see us.”

The room they entered was empty, pungent with the mingled odors of garlic, onions and cheese.

Rain thrummed loudly on the roof. The shutter covering the small building’s single window banged back and forth as the wind dashed its fury against it. John looked out into shifting, translucent sheets of water. It was the view one might have from the mouth of a whale, he thought uneasily.

Orange light flared into the corners as the door to the other room creaked open and an old man, short and squat, emerged from it, carrying a clay lamp.

“The storm has brought me some callers, I see,” he said jovially. “The queen of Italy, for one. And who is the other? Her faithful servant?”

“Paul!” the girl giggled. “He’s the Lord Chamberlain.”

Paul shifted his lamp to illuminate the taller of his two visitors more directly. “Yes, I see,” he agreed amiably. “You must excuse me, for I don’t entertain Lord Chamberlains very often. Who will you bring next time you call? The emperor?”

“I don’t know Justinian very well,” Sunilda replied severely, “but Theodora will be visiting soon to attend the village festival. I’ll ask her to come and pay her respects to you then, if you’d like.”

Paul looked alarmed. “A very kind offer, my dear, but I’m certain that the empress and I will have many opportunities to chat during the celebrations.” John noted the humor in his words but Sunilda did not.

“Oh, good! Then you’ll be coming to see it after all!” she said with a grin.

“I regret the intrusion, Paul. The storm arrived very suddenly,” John explained to their host.

“You certainly wouldn’t want to be walking about in that tempest.” Paul’s observation was emphasized by a gust of wind groaning through the half open door, bringing a spray of rain with it. “We don’t want it in here with us either. If you’d just close the-I beg your pardon, excellency-”

John pulled the door shut, muffling the sound of the storm. Briarus had mentioned a Paul who gardened, John recalled. “You are Paul, the gardener?”

“These days I grub in the dirt a bit, yes, excellency. I don’t care for it personally. I’ll always want to return to being a fisherman, although I can hardly remember when I last ventured out onto the sea. It just got harder and harder, what with the pain in my joints making it so difficult to even get my little boat down to the beach. In the end I just had to give it up.”

John did not ask Paul about his argument with the prickly estate manager. It was possible too, he thought, that it was Paul who had assisted Hero with the framework of the whale, but he thought it better not to mention the matter in front of the girl. He could question Paul on another occasion if need be.

The former fisherman’s skin was weathered as dark as a worn leather boot. His thinning hair and the disorderly collection of bristles springing from his cheeks and chin were like the yellowish white of spume on the beach, his eyes, appropriately, a watery blue.

Paul grimaced as he set the lamp on his table. “Old age is like a storm, one that’s tossed me up on this miserable patch of dirt when I would much rather be at sea.”

He sighed heavily before continuing. “Please sit down. I am happy to offer what I have to such distinguished visitors.”

Sunilda promptly plunked herself on the bench beside the table. John sat down beside her as their host bustled about, producing rough pottery plates and cups along with a small loaf of bread and jugs of wine and water. He apologized for the wine as he cut a chunk from the cheese hanging by a rope over the brazier. “It’s poor stuff, I fear, excellency.”

“Yet very much to my taste,” John replied truthfully, setting his cup back down, “although it may not suit everyone.”

Paul expressed amazement at this unexpected pronouncement. “Then would you perhaps care for some of my garlic paste?” he ventured.

“Yes, he would, Paul. And perhaps we could have some of those fine olives you usually have?” put in Sunilda.

“Yes. I’d forgotten about those.” Looking flustered, he produced a pottery bowl of plump olives. John wondered if they had come from Zeno’s grove. They were certainly excellent.

“This is a fine banquet indeed,” pronounced Sunilda through a mouthful of bread.

“You two are friends, I take it?” John directed the question to the old fisherman, who had lowered himself painfully onto a stool at the other side of the table.

“Minthe has brought the young lady to visit more than once.” Paul poured himself a cup of wine.

“You know Minthe well?”

Paul did not answer immediately. In the ensuing silence John became aware that the sound of the rain was diminishing. Thunder rumbled still, but its muted grumbling came from further away.

“Everybody in the village knows Minthe,” Paul finally replied. “She offers all sorts of services of a herbal nature and has for many years. Ever since she arrived, in fact. The village girls consult her a lot. I think you know what I mean.”

“Minthe is a very wise woman.” Sunilda popped a fat olive into her mouth and chewed enthusiastically.

“Some do say so,” Paul nodded, “but I’ve got to know her because she often buys produce from me.”

“You grow herbs?” John asked with interest.

Paul shook his head. “No, I don’t. Minthe grows whatever she needs for those potions of hers. It’s vegetables she buys from me. A few radishes, some beetroots, a cabbage now and then, that sort of thing. She doesn’t bother to plant such sensible things as vegetables.”

“Minthe prefers to devote all her garden to herbs and flowers.” An olive pit rattled onto the girl’s plate. “Someone left a question for the goats, Paul,” she went on. “Is it true that the omens have been very bad these past few days?”

John gave Paul a questioning look.

“I put no faith in those goats, excellency,” the man said, avoiding a direct answer, “although I’ve heard quite a few villagers say on more than one occasion that the animals are always right.”

“The rain has stopped,” Sunilda said, bounding off the bench and outside in a instant. “Look,” she said as they followed her, “you can see the goats from here.”

Ghostly pillars of mist were swirling slowly up from the dark water. John could barely see the rocky island and said so. “The young have much better eyesight,” he remarked to Paul. “But what are these terrible omens that the villagers have apparently been talking so much about lately?”

“Among the ignorant it’s said that the patterns the beasts are forming as they graze on the slopes have not been glimpsed within living memory,” Paul replied slowly. “Some terrible disaster is to be expected, or so it’s being said. However, it’s my opinion that we have already had a catastrophe, for what is worse than the death of a child?”

“Don’t be sad about Gadaric, Paul.” As Sunilda spoke, John felt her small hand grasp his arm. “Now the Lord Chamberlain and I must be off to another engagement. Thank you for your kind hospitality. I shall expect to see you at the celebrations.”

Paul, concealing a smile, gave a stiff little bow of farewell.

Watery sunlight broke through the clouds as John and the girl reached the road.

The Lord Chamberlain’s young charge whirled to face the sea again. Her golden hair comb came free and John plucked it from the grass. As he did so he heard laughter drifting on the wind.

He looked along the beach in the direction in which Sunilda was now staring intently.

Two figures moved near the water. They had obviously been unable to find shelter from the storm as their sodden robes hung about them. One was pacing stolidly along while the other darted ahead and back and then ahead again. The big bearded figure was unmistakably Felix and his companion, doubtless, was Bertrada.

It was a sight John wished he had not observed. A soldier could not allow himself such indulgences while on duty and under special orders from Justinian. Much as he disliked the notion, he knew he would have to speak to Felix about the matter.