Three for a Letter

Chapter Thirty-one

John left Anatolius to stand watch with the guards at the villa and set off down the shore road toward the village.

The road was as crowded as the Mese at midday, with villagers either making their way to the headland where the celebration would culminate or claiming good places from which to observe the procession as it passed by. John saw no one he recognized except Paul, who was standing at the end of the path to his house. A quick exchange between them confirmed that the man had seen no sign of Minthe or the missing girl.

“I expected you to be attending Godomar’s service,” John observed.

Paul took a long time to respond. When he finally spoke, his words were hesitant. “If it were being held at any other time I’d certainly be there, faithful follower that I am. Godomar himself invited me as he went by a little while ago. Quite a flock he’d gathered already. But the straw man goes to the sea and the sea is ancient and all powerful. And though you may say I’m just a foolish old man, still….” His voice trailed away.

John did not press him further. It had struck him on more than one occasion that the Christians’ rigid insistence on their god’s exclusive sway, so at odds with human nature, would finally prove to be their undoing.

He continued on his way. The dark sky was strewn with a dusting of stars against which loomed the black masses of trees and bushes. An owl called from the towering shadows of a stand of pines as he passed.

Just before the road passed through the center of the village, John arrived at an open space illuminated by a huge bonfire. In its shifting light he saw Zeno supervising the drawing up of the procession. Flapping back and forth, long hair flying, the elderly man was directing groups of his servants, villagers, and Felix’s excubitors into their places with equal and enthusiastic impartiality.

Two of Zeno’s younger servants stood at the head of the line. They wore golden-colored tunics and were harnessed to a cart decorated with fragrant greenery and bundles of straw on which the well-stuffed sacrificial figure was laid out, surrounded by piles of vegetables and fruit. The cart was brightly illuminated by torches held by two men, dressed entirely in red, who flanked it. The sight of the duo immediately reminded John of Mithra’s torchbearers. The notion was strangely comforting.

Behind the straw man’s cart three or four young village women, dressed in long white garments with chaplets of olive leaves on their hair, were chattering. Their role, Zeno explained to John when he dashed up for a quick word, was to dance in celebration of the straw man’s fate.

“It’s customary for the rest of the villagers to carry torches and follow behind the young ladies and sing as they walk to the headland for the final ground event. This year, of course, it will be even grander. But I see I am needed. A small problem, perhaps. If you would excuse me…”

Zeno hurried away. John strolled along the line. Two husky men were standing at its mid point, each grasping one end of a stout pole passing through the center of a wooden wheel to which bundles of brushwood were tied. The bundles would, John guessed, shortly be set afire so that when the wheel was trundled along it would present the appearance of a whirling mass of flames.

“It’s a sun-wheel,” Zeno confirmed, having reappeared at his side. “I wonder what Lord Mithra’s foolish followers would make of such a thing? I can certainly imagine what Godomar would say about it.”

“Fortunately for all concerned he won’t see it, Zeno.”

“And Sunilda hasn’t been found yet?” the other said in a worried tone. “You know, John, if everyone gathered here were to forsake the procession and join in the search…but there are Theodora’s orders to be considered. If the empress wants the festivities to go forward, what choice do any of us have?”

Their walk had brought them to an ox cart on which sat a trio of Hero’s automatons, two holding lyres and the third grasping a flute. Hero was crouched in the middle of the cart, making small adjustments to the flute player. A gust of wind coaxed a faint, discordant noise from the lyres. It sounded like a far-off groaning.

Felix, standing nearby, grimaced and tugged at his beard. “I hope these musicians produce a more pleasing sound once you start them up,” he complained to Hero. The inventor, intent on his task, did not answer. Felix lowered his voice for John and Zeno’s benefit. “I must say that that strange sound matches the look of them. They’re extremely odd creatures.”

The automatons had metamorphosed from the skeletal beings John had last seen in the workshop. Now they were dressed in deep blue dalmatics, their metal skulls sporting wigs of horsehair. Only the metallic surface of their faces and sightless glass eyes betrayed their lack of breath. Hero, of course, would bring them to life at the appropriate point.

The breeze elicited more moans from the mechanical musicians’ instruments as four burly villagers arrived on the scene, carrying a small litter. Its tasseled curtains were tied back to display another automaton sitting in solitary splendor. Dressed in green and sporting long, fair hair, the creature’s metallic hand grasped a bright emerald-colored bow in which was notched a long gold-painted arrow.

“Is this all not absolutely magnificent? Everything was completed in time!” Zeno exclaimed. “It is such a good omen that I can hardly believe Sunilda will not reappear soon, safe and sound. I think that all our preparations are completed now. Hero, if you would be so kind as to give the signal?”

For the space of a few heartbeats nothing happened. Then there was a creaking noise and the head of the flute-player turned slowly as its stiff hands raised the instrument to frozen lips. Silvery notes filled the night air.

“Mithra!” breathed Felix.

As the procession slowly began to move forward, John glanced at him. The excubitor was closely scanning the area. “I’ll follow along for a while and keep an eye on things, John, in case the girl attempts to slip into the procession,” Felix said. “She might try, so she could get up on the headland among the crowd.”

John left him at his post and swiftly strode along the length of the slow-moving line as it snaked towards the road.

Now the fire wheel was set alight, flinging sparks into the starry sky. As the sound of lyres joined the cascading music of the flute, Theodora arrived. Far larger and more ornate than that of the mechanical archer, the empress’ litter announced its presence by the chiming of small bells hanging along its sides. Naturally, her place was at the head of the procession.

Among the attendants, servants, and soldiers accompanying Theodora John noticed Bertrada and Calyce. Livia was some steps behind them, firmly holding Poppaea’s hand.

John stepped forward and asked the child how she was faring.

“She insisted on observing this abominable ceremony,” snapped Livia, keeping her voice low. “Theodora thought it was a splendid idea as well, but then our dear empress has never had to worry about a sick child going out in cold night air, has she?”

“Oh, mother!” Poppaea said in an exasperated tone. “I am quite well now.”

“Look, Poppaea.” Livia yanked her daughter’s hand impatiently. “You see that wheel of fire? There are those who worship fire, you know, but such people will see enough of it in the hereafter, as Godomar will tell you. I wish you to be attentive. Tomorrow you will relate to him the lessons you have learned from this disgusting pagan exhibition.”

Poppaea stared obstinately in the opposite direction.

John stepped back into the shadows and watched the procession depart. Theodora, he noted, was leaning out of her litter, staring intently back toward the blazing fire wheel. He smiled thinly at the sight. The noisy ceremony was akin to many that the ancient shore must have seen since the world was young, and yet here was the wife of the ruler of an avowedly Christian empire completely enthralled by it, to judge from the curve of her scarlet lips.

Now that the procession was finally under way it formed a striking sight indeed, with its doomed straw man in his ox cart, women dancing lightly back and forth behind it, their flowing robes whipping in the rising breeze that presaged dawn. And following them were all the rest…dozens of villagers ambling along holding torches and laughing and talking, another cart carrying the stiffly moving automatons playing their shrill melody, the blazing wheel shooting sparks everywhere.

But neither Sunilda nor Minthe was anywhere to be seen.

Now the villagers began to sing, enthusiastically waving their torches. They sounded much more fervent than might be expected of rustic laborers attending an ancient festival officially regarded merely as entertainment as their voices rose with the smoke into the star-sprinkled sky.

The straw man liveth once again

He journeys to the sea

And thus we offer him with praise,

O, Harvest Lord, to Thee

By his sacrifice we beg

From Thy heavenly hand

A goodly harvest from the sea

And Thy blessing on the land

Summer ends and die he must

Die he must, as all who live

Accept him now, O Harvest Lord,

And all Thy bounty give

Staying well back, John loped rapidly along the roadside, scanning the procession and various groups of villagers waiting to see it pass. Armed soldiers were everywhere. There did not seem any way in which Minthe and the girl could reach the headland undetected, nor any place they could hide.

Then he was racing back past the empress’ litter, not caring whether she saw him or not, barely feeling the burning pain shooting across his knee.

Several of Felix’s men had swords already in hand as he reached the cart carrying the reclining straw man and leapt aboard. Zeno, striding along beside it carrying a torch and singing enthusiastically, waved them away. He shouted a question which John ignored. Hero stared speechlessly from his seat by the driver.

The procession kept moving. Perhaps the villagers mistook John’s precipitous arrival for a new part of the spectacle.

As he clambered onto the cart, John saw the straw man’s painted features leering up at him from the battered leather ball of its head. He grabbed the front of the effigy’s bright orange dalmatic, ripped the fabric open and thrust his hand into its plump chest.

He found only straw.

He quickly punched here and there at the well-stuffed effigy. There was nothing but straw. Sunilda had not hidden herself inside it. For once his sudden surmise had been wrong. He had leapt in the wrong direction.

A wave of shouting came down the road. Torches were being waved about even more enthusiastically. Hero, seemingly oblivious to John’s strange actions, pointed toward the dark mirror of the sea.

Out there a gray phantom moved and a translucent pillar rose into the night.

It was the whale Porphyrio, blowing water into the air. Beyond this ghostly vision an inky blotch was outlined against the sky: the goats’ island, crowned with jagged peaks etched in faint moonlight.

John’s thoughts took another leap forward. He dropped from the swaying cart and began running back down the road, setting his teeth against the pain it caused him. The death of the boy Gadaric had been preceded by the spouting of a mechanical whale. The superstitious might predict that the real whale had just heralded another death.

But though the superstitious might make such a claim, John had realized that if Sunilda indeed came to harm he would have only himself to blame.

Hadn’t her letter been perfectly clear? Hadn’t she said she would throw herself into the sea from a point where nothing lay between herself and the rising sun? Why had he so foolishly gone with the procession accompanying the sacrificial straw man?

There was something else that lay between the headland and the sun. The island inhabited by the goats. And now that it was almost certainly too late, he had to find some way to reach it before sunrise.