Three for a Letter

Chapter Thirty

The sea was the bright and unnatural green of a hand-blown glass vessel, its frozen waves, far below, flaws just underneath the bright surface. Sunlight glanced off the swells with the painful brilliance of the dog days of summer yet the rocks beneath John’s feet felt cold. He could not remember how he had come to the precipice or why, yet he had the distinct feeling that if he stepped over its edge he would soar out across the water like a raven. Some urgent matter pulled at the edge of his memory. He had to be in attendance at a particular place at a specific time. But where? And at what hour? He couldn’t recall. Looking down at the solid sea made him giddy.

Suddenly a sluggish line of light rippled across the green, glassy seawater.

He leapt from his bed, blade in hand before he was fully awake.

“Master!” Peter’s flickering oil lamp made his shadow huge as he advanced a few steps. The room thus illuminated was now better furnished than it had been when John had moved into it. Although the Lord Chamberlain did not care much about comfortable beds and good furniture, his servant knew what was fitting and proper for one of such standing and had requested them for his master.

John sat on the edge of his bed. The dream lingered, sea and precipice submerging the room for a few heartbeats until the vision flowed away into the darkness like a wave from a beach, leaving behind only the racing of his heart.

“You have overslept, master,” Peter said.

John thanked him, glancing toward the ceramic water clock set in the corner. Its water level showed it was still the middle of the night.

“Anatolius is waiting for you in the atrium,” Peter went on, bustling about the room, laying out clothing.

John dressed rapidly. An alarming twinge of pain in his knee reminded him of his recent fall on the road.

Peter followed him into the corridor, which, despite the hour, was thronged with Zeno’s servants mingled with the small army of attendants and guards accompanying Theodora. Darkness pressed silently against the windows.

“Even you need to sleep occasionally,” Anatolius remarked when John greeted him with apologies for his tardiness. “You aren’t Justinian, you know, who apparently manages to rule the empire without the need for any rest at all.”

“I shall not require anything to eat, Peter,” John said wearily in answer to his servant’s inquiry.

“I will find you a bit of bread at least,” Peter insisted, moving off toward the kitchen before John could order otherwise.

Anatolius informed John that Felix had the headland guarded as requested.

“And along the road from the village?”

Anatolius nodded silently.

They picked their way through the crowd into the garden. John did not speak again until the two men had emerged into a clearing where they could not be overheard if they kept their voices low. Even then, he bent to put his mouth to Anatolius’ ear as he quietly sketched Balbinus’ confession concerning Castor’s parentage.

Anatolius looked stricken. “The senator lied to me!” he managed a choked whisper. “Why didn’t you tell me yesterday? There I was telling you what I’d learned from my investigations, which was practically nothing, and-”

“How could you have possibly known? He was only forced to admit it when I presented him with proof that had not fallen into your hands.”

“Castor having royal blood!” the other marveled. “And to think I always considered him a younger version of Uncle Zeno, as alike as two peas in a pod-and eccentric peas at that.” A fresh thought struck him. “But who could have been Castor’s mother?”

“Minthe,” John replied and smiled at Anatolius’ astonished expression. He could guess the question he was about to be asked, yet he knew that if challenged he could not adequately explain the origin of his insight to himself, let alone to someone else. Still, his friend was obviously interested in how he had reached such a startling conclusion.

“My thoughts began to march in order when I learned about Bassus,” John began. “It’s not always the case that one fact points to another and that to the next and so on. Solving this particular puzzle involved the accumulation of several pieces of information until I had gathered enough to reveal a pattern, or a mosaic if you will.”

“But how…?”

“It’s a complicated business indeed, Anatolius. The Goth heir Gadaric is murdered. What’s the first thing you inevitably think of when something like that occurs?”

“Who else is in the line of succession to the throne, of course.”

“Exactly. Now, when confronted, Balbinus confirmed that the man he called his brother, that is to say Bassus, was actually the illegitimate son of King Theodoric and so had a closer claim on the Italian throne than the twins’ father Athalaric, who after all was only Theodoric’s grandson.”

Anatolius said he agreed with John’s reasoning thus far. “But Bassus is dead,” he pointed out.

“As you say. However, Balbinus also revealed that Bassus had fathered a son and that this son was Castor. So if Gadaric’s murder was connected to the matter of succession and there seems no doubt that it was, then obviously it involves Castor, a hitherto unknown heir.”

“Who ran off immediately after Gadaric’s murder!” Anatolius choked back his excitement. “It sounds so obvious when it’s explained, John, yet I still don’t understand how you could possibly have seen a familial connection between Castor and Minthe.”

John waited while several heavily armed imperial guards passed nearby, their boots clattering with the staccato sounds of one of Hero’s automatons.

“Normally I would regard my chain of reasoning to be as flimsy as cobwebs,” John went on, “but consider what I was just saying about patterns. We have established Castor as an heir to the throne. We know the identity of his late father. But what about his mother? Castor was obviously not ambitious or he would have declared his lineage long ago, but as history has repeatedly shown, mothers are often murderously ambitious for their children.”

“That’s certainly true.”

“So I cast about for a possible candidate to fit into the mosaic I was constructing, to see what sort of picture it made. I was looking for someone near Bassus, someone who would not be noticed carrying Bassus’ child. Remember, he had been killed in very odd circumstances. Given his lineage….”

Anatolius looked thoughtful. “Yes, I can see it would be highly dangerous for both mother and child.”

John quickly related what he had learned during his visit to Nonna. “She described a very vain slave with exceptionally long hair, who had, let us say, social ambitions but who was sold away to another master.”

“Slaves are always invisible, aren’t they? And so are their children….But what made you think of Minthe? Castor’s mother could have been anyone.”

“I considered the people living on this estate and in the village. Minthe had long hair, and she was not from the village. You’ll recall Paul mentioned that she moved into that odd little house near him some twenty years ago. Then I remembered you had said that Castor and Zeno had been friends as well as neighbors for a couple of decades. I suspect that Minthe had been keeping her eye on Castor from afar and moved to be near him when he came to live out here.”

“Well…” Anatolius said dubiously.

“Consider, too, how close she had managed to become to the twins. An ordinary village woman and two royal children form rather an unusual friendship, wouldn’t you say? But useful if harm is intended. It’s often those nearest the victims who strike the fatal blow. After all, they have easier access to them than everyone else.”

“Looking at it like that, I suppose it’s not surprising that Minthe appears to be the missing piece.” Despite his agreement, Anatolius still sounded dubious. “However, I can see a very large flaw in your mosaic, John. How could a slave such as Minthe move around so freely?”

“Slaves can be freed, Anatolius. Am I not myself one such? However, I will admit that what finally convinced me of Minthe’s involvement was when she disappeared at the same time as Sunilda.”

Anatolius leapt to the conclusion John had already reached. “Mithra! She’s kidnapped Sunilda! She intends to kill her as well!”

John nodded. “She’s already attempted to poison the girl.”

“The plates and cups in the mithraeum! Of course!” Anatolius frowned. “But how could Minthe possibly have known about the children’s secret hiding place?”

“She didn’t have to, Anatolius. You’ll recall that after the abandoned picnic Zeno found Sunilda safe with Minthe. Given everything else that’s transpired, it is not beyond the bounds of reason to assume that before he arrived, Minthe gave Sunilda a poisoned treat to bring back here. Now, the swine fed the remains of the picnic are all still alive, but there was a dead rat in the mithraeum. Dead rats are not unusual, of course, but what if in this instance the animal ate the remains of the treats for the grand party Poppaea talked about-a party we had dismissed as mere delirious ramblings-including whatever remained of what was meant for Sunilda?”

“But surely Sunilda would have eaten it too,” Anatolius argued, looking even more perplexed. “And she didn’t even get ill. It was Poppaea who almost died.”

“But what if it contained nuts, like the honeyed dates Peter sometimes prepares for me? Sunilda mentioned in one of her letters to her aunt that the twins were not permitted to eat nuts. Apparently it’s because they provoke some undesired effect in them, just as proximity to certain plants does to you.”

“You amaze me, John! I could never have thought of such a convoluted theory!”

“Nor would I,” John admitted, “if Minthe hadn’t directed the gravest suspicion at herself by vanishing at the same time as Sunilda. It was too much of a coincidence not to be connected with what has taken place here. In effect, she had accused herself and as soon as I realized that, all the fragmentary information fell into place and I saw the whole.”

“But we must be too late to save Sunilda now, she’s been gone so long!” Anatolius frantically burst out, all thought of discretion forgotten.

John shook his head. “You’ve forgotten that Sunilda wrote about her plan to join Gadaric. It will begin when the straw man is tossed off the headland and that won’t be for a while yet since it’s not yet dawn. Unfortunately, if Sunilda balks I’m absolutely certain Minthe will be only too happy to assist her to carry out her fantasy.”

Anatolius pointed out that Minthe must have known she could not fail to be hunted down and executed.

John shrugged. “I may be able to hazard a guess at what someone has done or may be planning to do, but as to how such a one would propose to escape from such a certain fate I confess myself puzzled. Perhaps this is one of those situations where once the desired object is accomplished, nothing else matters and so the perpetrator’s plans extend no further beyond that.”

“Eliminating the twins would certainly remove even the remotest possibility of any impediment to Castor assuming the throne.” Anatolius lowered his voice again, even though they were standing well away from the general flow of pedestrians. “Of course, given the enormous crushing power that Hero’s accursed artificial hand is capable of exerting, it would be easy for Minthe to employ it to kill Gadaric. To think of her using it on the boy’s throat….”

John remained silent.

“Why didn’t Poppaea die, John? Minthe is, after all, a very knowledgeable herbalist.”

“Since she was responsible for the poisoning attempt, she knew the antidote to administer when the wrong person ate it,” John replied, turning at the sound of Peter’s shuffling approach.

“You must be hungry, master. I’ve been hunting for you for some time.” The elderly servant ceremoniously offered John a hunk of bread and a piece of cheese from a small silver plate that reminded John of Nonna’s recent hospitality.

“I regret that this was all I could obtain for you,” Peter went on in an outraged tone. “Theodora’s entourage appear to have scoured the kitchen as cleanly as a plague of locusts.”

John quickly ate the frugal meal. When he had been requested to attend Zeno’s grand banquet in honor of the twins he had not expected the invitation to lead to the consumption of so much bread and cheese-for once, almost too much. As he finished and handed the plate back to Peter, Godomar loomed out of the darkness and, to John’s well-concealed annoyance, paused to converse with them.

“Lord Chamberlain,” he began with a slight bow. “I sincerely hope you do not intend to take part in this blasphemous festival. It would be unconscionable enough at any time, but when an innocent child is dead and another has vanished, to even contemplate holding it is unspeakable.”

“As a matter of fact, we are about to resume our search for Sunilda,” John replied.

“Then you won’t be in attendance at the service I have arranged for the villagers? Needless to say, I consider it my duty to offer an alternative to this hideous pagan rite, for it’s obviously no more than that.”

John noticed Peter directing a furtive, sorrowful glance him. “You are free to go if you wish, Peter,” he told his servant, knowing that it was his, John’s, pagan beliefs that worried Peter much more than his master’s absence at the service just announced.

“What of Calyce? Is she going?” Anatolius asked with over-elaborate casualness. “And Livia?” he added hastily.

“The empress has decreed that all of her attendants, including the ladies-in-waiting, will accompany her to the event. No doubt they’ll be much educated in the ways of wickedness after witnessing it!”

“That’s a lesson Theodora would be well qualified to teach, if it weren’t that her ladies have already been long enough at court to be well practiced,” muttered Anatolius as Godomar departed for the village with Peter trailing behind.

Watching his servant leave, it struck John, not for the first time, that the aging Christian-who was after all a freed man-might well decide to end his days contemplating the world from a monastery rather than cooking meals for a pagan master with the culinary tastes of an ascetic. Should that come about, what would his house be like when it no longer sounded with Peter’s tuneless singing of lugubrious hymns as he scrubbed the kitchen floor or his scolding when his master did not eat what he considered adequate nourishment?

He quickly drew his thoughts back to the immediate problem of Sunilda. There, at least, was a loss that it might be in his power to prevent. He had to find her before she had the chance to harm herself.

Unfortunately, children loved to play hide and seek. And they were experts at it. John had remained ignorant of her intentions for too long and now, if he were to save the girl, he had only until sunrise to discover her hiding place.