Three for a Letter

Chapter Twenty-seven

John had hoped to reach some useful conclusion before he arrived back at Zeno’s estate, out as he rode along by the gradually purpling sea, he found the meaning of the facts he had accumulated, even the strange matter of Castor’s royal lineage, to be as indecipherable as an oracle. The only thing that was certain was that with General Belisarius poised to create a vacancy on the throne in the west, the number of Ostrogoth candidates in the east had been reduced to two. Perhaps he was simply too fatigued to reason properly.

He contemplated Anatolius’ search for news of Castor, a search that John now knew would be futile, although perhaps not entirely wasted as the task had at least removed the young man from the vicinity of Calyce.

When he finally reached Zeno’s estate, he was waved in by an armed guard he had not seen before but who obviously recognized the Lord Chamberlain despite the fading twilight. Approaching the stables, John saw the explanation. Several imperial carriages were drawn up in the yard alongside heavily laden wagons while groups of soldiers mingled with the slaves unloading luggage or tending to horses and donkeys.

Theodora had returned to the estate while he had been gone.

The empress always traveled with enough of a military escort to take a small city by force if her safety, or, for that matter, her comfort, required it. By contrast, to the emperor’s oft-voiced chagrin, the Lord Chamberlain had long since dispensed with the sort of guards considered necessary by others holding lofty court positions. Having spent time in chains, John had no desire to be fettered to an entourage.

As he dismounted stiffly, a spectral figure emerged quickly from the shrubbery at the edge of the yard. It was Zeno. His garishly colored robe made a smudge of light in the increasing darkness.

“I see you’re under occupation by the legions of the empress, Zeno. I hope the pillaging is being kept to a minimum.”

“John,” the elderly man panted, “thank the gods you’re back. The most dreadful thing has-”

The crunch of boots on gravel announced the appearance of a detachment of guards. Armed guards, and all strangers to John.

In an instant John was surrounded. The smell of leather and of breath soured by a soldier’s vinegary wine ration assailed his nose. He took a step toward Zeno but an impertinent hand fastened upon his shoulder.

He turned and glared at the man who had dared to do such a thing. It was the guard commander.

“This way!” the man ordered, unabashed, “and quickly!”

John was marched off into the garden, leaving a helpless Zeno staring after him.

“I am Justinian’s Lord Chamberlain and under his orders,” John stated curtly. “Why have I been arrested?”

No reply was given as he was escorted deeper into the garden. Balbinus must have reported his visit to Justinian, John thought. Had the emperor decided to rid himself of his Lord Chamberlain for having disobeyed his explicit instructions to remain on the estate?

The company was moving deeper into the inky shadows. But, John thought, what if Justinian were not involved? What would he do when he discovered that his beloved wife had ordered John executed? Doubtless nothing at all. Or perhaps he would never find out and John would become another mysterious victim, dead or vanished, just like Briarus, Castor, and Barnabas.

John considered drawing the weapon in his belt but dismissed the thought. Against this group of trained men his small blade would bring nothing but instant death. He would wait and seize his chance to escape if one presented itself.

One of his captors yanked his arm, directing him down an overgrown side path. John felt the muscles in his back tighten as he braced himself for the sword thrust that would surely soon end his life. It seemed inevitable.

Take me to you, Lord Mithra, he prayed, and guard my family when I am gone.

Then he was abruptly shoved through a thick wall of rampant, thorn-filled bushes.

He stumbled forward, blood trickling down his scratched face, and realized with a combination of relief and fury that the whole thing had been just one of Theodora’s horrible jests.

Or was it a warning?

He had been marched in a circular path and was now facing the torchlit colonnade of the villa where Theodora stood waiting, surrounded by a knot of guards. Zeno was beside her, looking as pale as a demon.

“Lord Chamberlain,” Theodora said with a gloating half-smile, “I do hope that you enjoyed your little evening stroll even though I understand an old goat sought to bring you a prophesy of doom.” Her eyes glinted in the torchlight as she glanced toward Zeno.

John effected an all but imperceptible bow of the head. “My apologies, highness, for having kept you waiting. If I had known you would require my presence, I would have been at your disposal much sooner.”

“The emperor will doubtless be pleased to hear that you are so much more solicitous of my concerns than you are of his,” Theodora replied as she stepped forward. A torch guttered at her passage, sending a cloud of moths into the night. “You were explicitly ordered to guard Sunilda at all times. I could have you executed on the spot for your disobedience, Lord Chamberlain.”

The features of her guards betrayed no emotions. They were automatons, prepared equally to kill or not, at Theodora’s order. It was obvious to John that he was not yet completely out of danger.

“The emperor must be the proper judge of my actions, highness,” he replied softly.

His comment elicited no response from Theodora but Zeno emitted a muffled peep of horror.

The empress slid toward John with a faint rustling of silk. He could smell her exotic perfume. It did not quite mask the acrid sweat from her long, hot, carriage ride. He was reminded of an animal moving closer for the kill.

“It was insult enough that you should allow a murder to occur practically in my presence,” she said, “and now I return only to find you have lost another.” Her breath was sour with wine.

“Briarus’s death was-”

“Briarus?” she snapped.

“Castor’s estate manager, highness,” John explained. “The man who burned to death.”

Theodora laughed. “I must say, Zeno, that the excitement never ceases for those living, not to say dying, on your estate. The village festival will seem dull by comparison. However, I was referring to the girl, Lord Chamberlain.”

John felt a stone form in his chest. He glanced at Zeno. In the flickering torchlight the elderly man resembled a bloodless wraith.

“Poppaea?” John asked. He did not want to hear the news he feared from Theodora’s lips.

Zeno shook his head mutely.

“Oh, the useless little peasant is doing perfectly well,” Theodora said, “or so my lady-in-waiting Livia insists on constantly telling me. No, I was referring to Sunilda. Zeno informs me that a particularly thick sea fog rolled in late this afternoon and by the time it dissipated she had vanished.”

***

The stone in John’s chest had grown to the size of a boulder. As he and Felix quickly made their way to the Ostrogoths’ apartments, John kept hoping the girl would jump out from a shadowy doorway, laughing, to explain that her disappearance had all been a prank.

“We’ve looked everywhere,” Felix told him, “and after the search we made for Barnabas, we know everywhere there is to look.”

“If I had been here to help guard the girl-”

“Yes, but all the same it’s me and my men who carry the burden of securing the estate. It’s ironic, John. As a soldier, I would far rather die by losing my head on the battlefield than for failing as a nursemaid!”

A red-eyed and trembling Bertrada met them in Sunilda’s room. She looked desperately toward Felix for an instant but the excubitor captain avoided her glance.

Perhaps he did not dare offer her the comforting words she sought-at least not in front of John.

John asked her bluntly how she could have allowed Sunilda out of her sight. “We have had this conversation before, Bertrada,” he added. “I hope the answer you give is not going to be the same as the one you gave last time.”

He glanced at Felix, who had reddened above his bristling beard.

“You offend me mightily, John,” his friend snapped. “Do you think I can’t separate pleasure from duty?”

“Usually I trust your judgment implicitly, Felix, but there seems to be some sort of malign enchantment over this entire estate. I’m not certain I can be sure of anything right now.”

“You can be absolutely certain that neither Bertrada nor I have neglected our duties. Tell the Lord Chamberlain what you told me, Bertrada.”

Bertrada nervously ran her hand through her disheveled blonde hair.

“Go on,” Felix prompted her irritably.

“But it all sounds so unbelievable. You see, Lord Chamberlain, what happened was that an intruder broke in and carried her off.”

“And what did this intruder look like?” John asked patiently.

Bertrada shook her head. “I don’t know.”

“Surely you saw whoever took the girl? Are you saying you didn’t get even a glimpse?”

Bertrada blinked back tears. “Sunilda insisted we stay indoors because of the awful fog, Lord Chamberlain. She said she did not feel too well and indeed she looked rather pale. She stayed in her room and I lay down to rest for a while. I fell asleep and when I woke up, she was gone. There was evidence of a struggle.” She put her face in her hands and began to sob.

Felix stepped toward the girl and put an arm around her shaking shoulders. “That’s all she’s able to tell you, John. I’ve already questioned her at great length.”

“Zeno’s estate seems to have become more dangerous than Constantinople’s worst alleyways.” John glared. “We’ll have to discuss this further, Felix.”

He had a sudden vision of Sunilda, chatting away happily as they walked along the beach, and the boulder in his chest shifted painfully, almost cutting off his breath.

“We’ll find her,” Felix said grimly.

“Just as we’ve managed to find Barnabas?”

***

Like giant fireflies, bobbing torches spread out from the villa into the night. An owl flying overhead would have observed bright patterns form and reform as groups of excubitors combed the garden, crashing through shrubbery and spinneys, trampling on the flower beds and through the olive grove, meeting now and then in clusters of torchlight to consult each other on where next to proceed in their futile search.

Zeno flapped back and forth among them, an anxious orange-plumed bird bearing constant reports back to Theodora who, with her ladies-in-waiting, occupied the villa’s main reception room.

After another fruitless foray and a quick word with Felix, who was standing on the colonnade directing operations, Zeno returned to the large room to find Theodora sitting by a window looking out into the night. The pearls along the hem of her robe mirrored the color of the pale moon rising above the dark, twisted mass of the olive grove.

She turned to look at her host. With a sinking heart, Zeno noted that although the empress’ perfectly made-up face was in repose and her hands were folded quietly on her lap, one small purple-shod foot was tapping impatiently.

“Highness,” Zeno began, suddenly realizing there were three ladies-in-waiting in the room and valiantly trying to suppress hysterical laughter at the notion, “Captain Felix has directed his men to spread out along the coast road and search the shore and the village while my servants continue to criss-cross the estate. I’m certain that we’ll soon find the girl.” His voice trailed off.

Calyce directed a wan, encouraging smile at the elderly man but Livia, seated beside her on the red upholstered couch, merely glared venomously. Whether she was angry with him in particular or at the prospect of being kept up in attendance on the empress all night, Zeno could not surmise. Nor did he particularly care at that instant about the opinion of anyone in the room other than that of the empress.

“It would be best if the girl were found sooner rather than later,” Theodora said in a voice as cold and smooth as the snow that occasionally fell in the hills. “For everyone’s sake, but for yours and the Lord Chamberlain’s in particular.” She looked out into the darkness again. “I am not pleased with his dereliction of duty.”

Zeno’s heart sank into his boots. “Highness, the entire blame cannot be laid on the Lord Chamberlain’s shoulders-” He stopped at a quick gesture of warning from Calyce. “That is to say,” he continued hastily, “it may be that Sunilda is merely hiding somewhere, playing some silly childish game, rather than some harm has come to her.”

“Yes, that’s true, Zeno,” Theodora said. “But little girls do not inconvenience empresses and when she is finally found, we will make certain that she remembers that in future. However, beyond that I intend to personally request the emperor to ensure that the Lord Chamberlain will not have the opportunity to fail in his duties again.”

The other two women blanched. Zeno began to feel nauseated.

“And in order that the emperor will not be forced to suffer further embarrassment,” Theodora went on, “naturally I shall recommend that his solution be a permanent one, which is to say that the Lord Chamberlain and his head should part company as soon as possible.”

To Zeno the air in the room was suddenly, unbearably hot. He felt a wave of giddiness and looked at the floor. He knew the empress and Lord Chamberlain had been at cross purposes many times but he had always thought that John would remain immune from her enmity because he was so much in the emperor’s favor. But it had hardly been two decades since another eunuch Lord Chamberlain, Amantius, had been put to death by Justin, Justinian’s predecessor, for his alleged designs on the throne. And many of his associates had suffered as well. Zeno remembered those events well. He forced himself to look up and saw a smile curving Theodora’s thin scarlet mouth into a sickle that matched the rising moon, a sickle hanging uncomfortably close over his head as well as John’s.

***

John made his way quickly along the twisting garden path. He reasoned that Sunilda might well have taken a familiar route if she had decided to play a joke on everyone and so he was retracing the route he and his young charge often followed during their walks. It looked different at night, with thick vegetation reduced to solid walls of darkness receding from the flaring light of his torch. Of all the flowers that brightened and sweetened the daylight hours, only a few light-colored blooms could be picked out, glowing with a uniform whiteness from the scanty moonlight.

More than anything else John noticed the quiet. Instead of Sunilda’s constant chatter flowing like a river in his ears, there was only the sound of his footsteps, his breathing, the slight susurration of his robe as it brushed past twigs encroaching on the path.

“Sunilda!” He called again but there was no answer. Would he, or anyone else, ever hear her voice again?

He continued at a brisk pace, half-hoping to see her sitting on the marble bench where they often paused for a while or beside the fountain where she invariably insisted on throwing a pebble into the water. The visions of her in all these places leapt so vividly from his memory that when he turned this corner and that to find only shadows, her absence seemed all the more foreboding.

He returned to where Felix was stationed. The captain had a grim reply to John’s inquiry about the progress of the search. While his excubitors could be relied upon to conduct it diligently, he pointed out, it was now almost certainly too late.

“If someone wishes to harm the girl, they’re not going to lurk around in the vicinity waiting to be apprehended, are they? I’d guess she’s nowhere near here. It’s more likely she’s half way to Constantinople by now.”

“If she’s even still alive,” John responded somberly.

“It’s as if the intruder entered the villa by magick.” Felix sounded uneasy. “Even so, with Theodora breathing down our necks we’d better be seen to be searching.” He lowered his voice as a pair of Zeno’s servants passed by, torches in hand, calling Sunilda’s name. “So just in case I’ve dispatched several of my men back towards the city, John. With everyone milling around, even Theodora won’t notice a few guards are gone, assuming she even knows how many were here to begin with.”

“Theodora never misses anything but I agree you’re right to look beyond the estate. I’m off now to talk to Minthe. She was friendly with the girl and could well know something useful.”

Felix gestured toward a nearby group of excubitors waiting for orders but John shook his head. “No. I’ll go alone.”

In a short while John was on the shore road, looking down towards the village. He could see bobbing lights marking progress from hut to hut as the search for the girl continued. The murmur of breaking waves formed a peaceful lullaby as he loped swiftly down the hill toward Minthe’s house. An observer might have mistaken him for a young man running to meet his lover at this late hour, anticipation quickening his stride.

No lamplight shone through the window of the woman’s strange dwelling. John cut across the herb beds, whose crisp, clean smell of thyme mingled with the musky smell of decaying seaweed lying on the beach.

He stepped carefully around the fallen column Minthe used as a bench. It was not hard to imagine the resident of such a strange house practicing magick. Perhaps there lingered in the remaining pieces of the original building’s walls some trace of the power of whatever god had once been worshipped here.

His flickering torchlight glanced off the glossy, blackberries hanging heavily on a bush under the dark window. The house door stood open to the surrounding night and the mournful sound of the sea.

John drew his blade, tossed his torch through the door and then leapt inside after it.

His caution was unnecessary, however, for the small room was empty, its atmosphere even more pungent than that hanging above the herb beds outside.

John scooped the torch from the stone-flagged floor, sending shadows slithering around the walls and across the bundled herbs hanging from the ceiling beams. The flickering light passed over a low bench and an array of clay pots on a table.

An arm extended from the shadows under the table.

His torch revealed a rotund figure clothed in a worn but finely made orange dalmatic, sprawling limply, its limbs twisted at unnatural angles. Its head was a shapeless mass.

For a heartbeat John feared it was Zeno. Then realization flooded in and with it the grim prospect of returning to the villa to inform the empress that all he had been able to locate was the straw man.