Five for Silver

Chapter Twenty-Three

“Father’s out, I’m afraid.”

Anatolius peered through the narrow gap between the barely opened door and its frame. A brown, well-muscled arm led back to a slim figure clad in a plain white tunic. The silver chain holding Europa’s hair back glinted in the dim atrium.

“How is Peter?”

“Hypatia says he’s fading fast. She spends half her time lecturing him through his locked door and the other half at the hospice fussing over her poor young man. She’s upstairs trying to persuade Peter to come out of his room right now.”

“I’ll wager Peter pulls through. He’s tough as an old boot.”

Europa stepped outside. “It feels strange to be in this city again.” She glanced around the deserted square. “I remember last time you bought a lot of birds from an old woman and set them all free. I admired you for that.”

Anatolius smiled at the compliment.

Europa closed the door firmly behind her. “I need a breath of air. Want to go for a stroll?”

She didn’t look any different than she had seven years before, Anatolius thought. It was almost enough to put Lucretia out of his mind for a brief time. He needed to put her out of his mind.

“As it happens I have to collect a few documents from my office, but if you don’t object to a detour I’d be happy to show you some of the palace grounds afterward.”

They crossed the square and traversed a colonnaded walkway, passing by several excubitors who greeted Anatolius by name. The administrative building where Anatolius worked was half-deserted, a maze of featureless corridors which might have led to the Minotaur rather than a cramped office, filled with incongruously ornate furniture.

“I’ve been doing some copying at home.” Anatolius rummaged through documents on a writing desk which might have been a reliquary, inlaid with ivory and trimmed with gems and gold. He noticed Europa’s stare. “Elaborate, isn’t it? Justinian decided his personal secretary should labor at a desk that honored the transcribing of imperial edicts.”

“I find it hard to believe you’re just a scribbler, Anatolius.”

“Actually, Justinian tells me more or less what he wants to say and then I put his thoughts into the form he would have chosen, if he had time for such trivial chores. Mind you, he wouldn’t appreciate your telling him I said that.”

“I’m not likely to meet him, am I?”

Anatolius pulled a few sheets of parchment from the pile. “You might be interested in this proclamation. There’s shortly to be another statue of Emperor Justin erected. It’s almost completed and eventually will stand near the booksellers’ quarter. No one knows of the decision yet, except Justinian and his personal secretary, one Anatolius-” he bowed- “and now yourself.”

“The sculptor must know.”

“Well…”

“And someone in the imperial treasury, or whichever office paid the sculptor. And what about the sculptor’s wife? Not to mention whoever sold the sculptor the marble, and-”

“You have the same manner of thinking as your father, Europa, and I mean that as a compliment! Ah, here are those documents I wanted.”

He led her out of the rambling office complex, through more colonnades, some so overhung with vines they might have been tunnels of vegetation, and down a steep stone staircase that ended at one of the lower terraces.

From a miniature flower-filled meadow at the base of the staircase, the palace was invisible, hidden behind a line of pines rooted in the next higher terrace and seeming to float in midair. The Marmara sparkled before them.

“I’d almost expect to hear Pan’s pipes in such a pastoral setting,” Anatolius observed. “But it will change soon enough. Justinian has ordered this particular garden replanted with purple-blossomed trees and flowers. Imperial purple.” He paused and then added with a scowl, “Personally, I’d have said that plantings of aconite and hemlock and such would be far more appropriate in a garden designed especially for Theodora.”

“Poisonous plants?”

“Exactly. Not to mention the added attraction of the shining waters of a nice, deep pool. More than one person has been drowned in the imperial baths, and not by accident either.”

Europa looked shocked. “You said that the empress knows just about everything going on in the palace. Do you think she knows Thomas and I are at my father’s house?”

“I would be astonished if she didn’t.”

They gazed silently out over the water for a while and then Anatolius showed Europa a cleverly hidden, twisting path through a thick wall of shrubbery. It led to a clearing holding several rustic benches and a circular, shallow pond graced by a statue standing on a pedestal rising from its center.

“This would be an excellent place to contemplate the inevitable passage of time,” Europa guessed.

“Exactly! The edge of the pool is marked with the hours and the shadow of the reed the marble nymph in the middle is holding serves as a pointer. An interesting conceit, isn’t it?”

“What a strange place this city is!”

“Strange? To a woman who makes a living leaping from the backs of bulls?”

“We no longer own a bull, alas,” Europa replied. “Even if we did, I doubt we’d find much of an audience right now.”

“The situation will be back to normal eventually.”

Anatolius walked over to the pool and hunkered down. He traced a finger over a name scratched into the low stone wall containing the water.

“‘Tarquin,’” he read. “I see Severus, Hektor, and Alexis have also recorded their visits. It seems to have become customary for court pages to scratch their names here.”

“Those boys serve as ornaments to the court, don’t they? What happens to them when they grow up? Do they then perform administrative duties?”

Anatolius thoughtfully ran his fingertips over the faint scratches. “No, they don’t. Their role is being pretty young boys. Occasionally one finds a patron who’ll take him into his home, but most of the others, well, they take what remains of their talents out to the streets, I suppose. Like spring flowers, one day they’re here, the next they’re gone.”

He stood. “Which reminds me. Isn’t it time your mother arrived?”

“She’ll be here by the end of the week at the latest,” Europa replied confidently as they began to thread their way back along the path through the shrubbery.