Eight for Eternity

Chapter Two

“How could they have been murdered? It’s not possible, excellency. I stationed men at every exit from the vault in case the factions decided to attack and managed to get by the sentries outside the church.” Sebastian’s voice shook.

The white-haired commander led the soaked John down a stone stairway from the vestibule and through a pillared vault to a heavy, nail studded door.

“I had two guards right here,” Sebastian said.

The room beyond served for storage. Stacks of oil-filled amphorae sat in the corners. A row of silver lamps occupied a shelf below which an icon, paint peeling, stared out from between piled crates.

“You say that this young man with the sealed orders came down here and then it was discovered the two prisoners had gone?”

Sebastian’s long face seemed to grow even longer and more mournful. “Yes. I sent him down the stairs after I saw his official seal. Before long someone shouted that the prisoners were gone and then all was chaos. Murderers were on the loose! Women started screaming they would be ravished and ran out. I asked the priest to help restore calm.”

“The guards who were stationed at the door were sent out in pursuit?”

“I sent all my men out to apprehend the criminals. I thought they had escaped you see. I didn’t realize they had been killed.” The man’s voice shook. John could see the growing panic in his face. Sebastian had barely been coming to terms with the disastrous possibility that he had allowed the escape of two men the emperor valued. Now he had to face the even more horrific fact that he had let them be murdered. “You can’t think my guards were involved? Maxentius is blind,” he said, voice shaking. “There are many military men in the city aside from those under my command. There are practically as many soldiers on the streets as beggars! Clearly the killers who dragged the bodies away weren’t from the urban watch.”

“Were the prisoners already gone when the young man who had come for them went down into the vault?”

“Yes, excellency.”

“The guards down here confirmed that?”

“Someone yelled that the prisoners had escaped. Other guards came in a rush. I was calling out orders, of course.”

“Was it discovered that the prisoners were gone when the door to this room was opened, or was it open when the young man arrived at it?”

“But…why would it be open, when my guards were posted right-”

“What did the guards say?”

“I didn’t have time to question the guards, excellency. When they return-”

“And what about this man with the imperial seal? What did he tell you?”

“I…I…well…I never saw him again. He must have gone after the two prisoners, or gone back to report to the emperor.” The thought of the emperor, whom he had failed so miserably, drained the blood from the old man’s face. “All was confusion,” he muttered. “All confusion.”

John could believe it. The confusion in the commander’s head alone was apparently enough to confound a philospher.

John looked around the small storeroom. Nothing seemed to be disturbed. It was ironic that two men should be saved from execution only to be murdered. And murdered and taken away just before the stranger with the seal arrived for them. If Sebastian were to be believed.

“I would not have permitted anyone to enter the church but the priest insisted the faithful should never be barred from prayer, especially in these unsettled times,” Sebastian went on. “That’s why the entrance at the top of the stairs and storeroom door were guarded rather than the main doors to the church.”

The vaults at the bottom of the stairs, from which the storeroom opened, surely stretched underneath the whole of the church. There were almost certainly exits other than the stairs they had just taken. Tradesmen and laborers would hardly be encouraged to be coming and going through the vestibule. It would have been easy to get two bodies out of the church without anyone noticing.

A competent commander might have managed to see that every possible exit was guarded but he suspected Sebastian was not such a commander.

John turned to leave but paused. He had the uneasy sensation he was being watched.

He swung around. The damaged icon stared at him. The bearded face was lean and ascetic, his mouth set in a line. His great, black eyes reminded John of the eyes of a snake. Clearly the grim holy man did not approve of what he saw. Or was the icon’s anger directed at whatever had transpired in front of the painted eyes earlier that night?

If only John could see what the icon had seen.

***

“Please, excellency, warm yourself while we talk.”

Leonardis, the priest in charge of the Church of Saint Laurentius, was a short, stout man with a voice so deep and resonant it might have been issuing from the vault beneath the church. He prodded coals in the brazier with an iron poker until flames leapt up.

The tiny room at the back of the church contained a plain wooden desk and stool. Scrolls and codices were heaped in niches in the white-washed plaster walls. The brazier, which appeared big enough to heat the stables underneath the Hippodrome, occupied the space in front of the wall on which hung an equally oversized silver cross. John wondered if the finely wrought metal were too hot to touch. He felt sorry for the gentle Christian god doomed to suffer the searing heat as well as a tortured death.

Even so he was glad of the heat beginning to dry his wet garments. Steam rose from his cloak and the odor of wet wool filled the air.

“We often read of monks who prefer unheated cells for their devotions,” said Leonardis. “But Laurentius was broiled to death on an iron frame, as you doubtless know from your reading of the Holy Book. So it is only appropriate for his priest to mediate with the very means of the saint’s torment always before his eyes.” He wiped his perspiring forehead.

“What do you know about the Green and the Blue who were brought here?”

“Their rescue was a miracle. Or perhaps I should not call it a miracle, given they were common criminals. A sign from the Almighty. Twice they were hung and twice the ropes broke.” Leonardis rubbed his hands together briskly, though they could hardly have been cold. “And then notice too one from each faction was spared. What if they had been chosen for beheading like their companions in evil doing? A razor-sharp blade is not so likely to break, is it? Yet they did not escape judgment. The Lord has meted out justice before the emperor had the opportunity.”

“Who were they?”

“No names were mentioned. The Urban Prefect must know. He condemned them.” Leonardis paused and stared at the coals pulsing with heat. “It is not for us to question God’s will,” he continued, “but doubtless much could have been learnt from them. The emperor’s servants are said to be most persuasive. Yet could any dreadful suffering his torturers inflict be compared to the agony undergone by the blessed martyr Laurentius, broiled to death-broiled! Imagine! Broiled like a swordfish! The faithful call those fires that streak every year through the midsummer skies the tears of Laurentius, but can all the tears of the blessed cool those condemned to the fires of Hell, the endless pain? The unendurable, never ending pain….” The priest’s eyes glistened as he spoke.

“Indeed,” John said, noting the relish with which Leonardis had posed his questions. Here was a man who enjoyed agony, provided it was kept at a safe distance. John had met a number of men with the same trait since his arrival in Constantinople, and it was notable none of them had seen military combat. Yet to hear a priest speak in the same way, with brightened eyes and quickened speech, was repugnant. To kill was sometimes necessary. As a youthful mercenary John had killed, but he never inflicted extended agony. Was Leonardis a man who was capable of violence?

“It was early when they were brought here. The fog was still fairly heavy when the monks of Saint Conon appeared and demanded entry,” Leonardis went on. “As I understand it, they observed what happened, decided to rescue the pair, and then rowed them across the Golden Horn to this church. Christian charity is all very well but I have wondered…were they bribed to save these men or threatened that if they did not their monastery would be set ablaze?”

Yes, thought John, either or both were possible.

Leonardis laughed. “You from the palace are so familiar with such intrigues. How could the monks have known the ropes would break? And not once but twice. No, perhaps it is more simply explained, that those in the monastery saw the hand of the Lord in the incident and felt called upon to intervene. Remember, the monks had already seen others hung, dangling there, not to mention still others losing their heads. They must have felt the disgust we all feel when confronted with such dreadful reminders of mortality and human suffering.”

John wondered if the priest would take so long to say so little under the ministrations of the emperor’s torturers. “This church has no affiliation with the monastery?”

“No, but it possesses the privilege of sanctuary.” Leonardis stirred the coals violently again. “I wish they had not been brought here. Those who attend my church have had countless miseries heaped upon them by the factions to which these men belong. I cannot tell you how many of my flock, men and women both, have come to me wounded and sobbing about robberies, violence, vile acts perpetrated on the defenseless, yes, even murder. And guards were posted to keep those criminals safe! Where are they when these men and their like roam the streets?”

John realized the priest would have been more than happy to light fires under iron frames for any Blue or Green captured. “At the time of the escape you were here in the church?”

“Yes, yes, I was, but I only heard about it when somebody shouted they had gone and guards rushed in. Armed men in a holy space! It was an outrage! And they entered while I was leading a service. A very large service it was too. In times such as these many seek the comfort that only the teachings of the church can give.”

John thanked the priest and departed. The nave felt bitterly cold compared to the stifling room he had just left. The church was dimly lit and shadows were thick in the corners. The windows piercing the pale walls formed grey silhouettes giving no hint of what lay outside, but given the narrowness of the surrounding streets even on the brightest days the church must be dark without the aid of its hanging lamps.

The place seemed almost alive, menacing. The quiet space around him appeared ominous, the eyes of an icon hanging a few paces away seeming to examine John, in the fashion of the one he had seen earlier in the storeroom. This icon dismissed him with a sneer as one not of the faith.

John paused in the vestibule. He had recruited three lamp lighters he had found at work to bring the body of the Blue from the cistern but they had not returned yet. He supposed he would need to escort Sebastian back to the palace with him.

A cold wind was rising. Gusts swirled dust and straws through the half open door. He shivered. There was nothing else to be learnt here. He could see that many would believe that a supernatural hand had reached down into these surroundings to allow the missing men to escape without being seen.

If he worshipped the Christian god he might, perhaps, pray for guidance.

But he served another. And the emperor was not going to be pleased.