Five for Silver

Chapter Three

John sat as stiffly as a bronze statue, trying not to rock the tiny boat. The muscles of his long legs, necessarily drawn up almost to his chin, tingled in protest at his cramped position.

Over the broad shoulder of the laboring oarsman, he could see the customs house rising from the water, close to the mouth of the Bosporos.

The official building was a tall structure, comprised of several unmatched, wooden stories stacked atop a stolid brick base. The edifice totally obscured the rocky outcropping to which it was anchored. It appeared to be rising straight out of the murky water or else attempting to stay afloat. Neither thought reassured John. He kept his gaze fixed on his destination, finding it preferable to looking down into the gentle swells of dark oblivion so near at hand.

“Don’t worry, excellency,” the oarsman said, catching his stare toward their destination. “We’ll have you safe on dry land nigh as quick as a cleric out the back door of a whore house.” The man-Gurgos, he had announced himself-let loose a rumbling laugh.

“We might not be the sort of fancy transport you’re accustomed to, but we strive to do our best,” he went on with a grin. “It’s far better than swimming, like Leander. Did you ever hear the story of Hero, Emperor Constantine’s daughter? He had her locked up in a tower on the island where the customs house is now, to keep her pure, you see. Only that lusty lad had other ideas and swam over to visit her every night, until a tempest finished him off. A very sad tale, excellency.”

John shifted his legs slightly, observing it was indeed a tragic story, but omitting to mention that Gurgos had got the details wrong.

“Sorry about the inconvenience, excellency,” his irrepressible companion went on, looking not at all repentant. “The regular ferry men are all busy hauling the dead. Do you know how many corpses fit into even a small vessel like this? These days everyone with a boat is minting nomismata.”

He rowed silently for a time. John stared at the tower and frowned in thought.

“Yes,” Gurgos went on, “I sometimes ask myself what will be my final destination? The spacious pits across the Marmara, or perhaps one of the city wall’s towers? They’re filling up faster than the emperor’s dungeons these days, so I hear. Then again, there are always a few berths left on those ships Justinian ordered requisitioned. The evenings are cool out on the water, I admit, but we’ll be quite warm when the vessels are set afire and we’re all cremated.”

The boat dipped to one side.

Gurgos raised a dripping oar. “Sometimes folk just drop others off in the water.” He used the oar to push a half-submerged form away from their prow. The corpse bobbed past, staring up at John without curiosity.

“Isn’t this craft rather too small for you to be playing Charon?”

“I’m not complaining. Happy to take whatever comes my way. Fortuna smiled when I spotted this little boat lying against the sea wall. I thought to myself, well, the owner is nowhere in sight and is probably dead anyway, so I took it and set myself up in business.”

The large man seemed determined to tell John his entire history.

“Always been a laborer, excellency,” he continued jauntily. “It’s hard work that pays nothing and gets harder to do as you get older. I admit, until now the closest I’ve been to navigating treacherous waters was making my way through the public latrine at night, but if you see your chance, you have to take it, don’t you? I’m learning fast. It’s been nearly a week since I last capsized, and the patches I put on the boat seem to be holding well!”

Gurgos emitted another laugh worthy of Neptune at his jolliest.

They rocked sickeningly on toward the customs house with all the grace of the three-legged cat John had seen in a particular city square more than once. He was painfully aware of each awkward oar-stroke. Their destination seemed to continually sidle away, but then Gurgos would grunt volcanically and adjust their course.

By the time they drew alongside the custom house dock, John was sweating and the coins he pressed into the giant hand were as wet as if they’d been plucked from the bowels of a drowned ship. “Wait for me, Gurgos. I won’t be long.”

The customs house appeared deserted except for a few gulls perched on window sills and along the ridge of its tiled roof. Several small vessels were clustered around the island. Their sails were furled, whereas they should have been shuttling officials to and from cargo ships waiting to unload grain or amphorae of wine or oil, or to depart with crates filled with the work of the city’s finest artisans-delicately engraved silver goblets bringing a reminder of civilization to tables deep in the forests of Germania, or jewelry to decorate the neck of a wife or concubine in far off Egypt.

The heavy doors of the building opened into a perfunctory marble atrium. It was deserted.

John heard laughter.

Gurgos?

No. The sound was a giggle rather than a bellow.

John stepped between the columns framing an archway in one wall and entered a room as packed with crates and amphorae as the hold of a ship. Confiscated goods, no doubt.

He soon discovered that a portion of a wine shipment had been seized a second time, judging by the glassy-eyed looks of the young man and woman slouched at an ivory-inlaid desk in the center of the room, an open amphora at their feet.

The male sported a blotchy face and managed to project the look of a clerk, despite long hair hanging down over his back in the fashionable Hunnic style. He took another drink from a delicate, pale green exemplar of the glassmaker’s craft that probably would have cost him many weeks of his salary had he decided to purchase it.

“We’re not able to inspect your ship,” he mumbled at John. “Everyone is at home. All sick.”

The plump girl sitting beside him giggled again and tugged clumsily at her half-opened robe.

Her companion smirked. John took a step forward. The Lord Chamberlain realized he was not his normal picture of authority, being rather rumpled and not entirely steady on his feet thanks to the hellish boat ride he had just endured.

“Your name, young man?”

“Me? Why, I’m Emperor Justinian and my companion here’s Empress Theodora. Can’t you see who we are? Perhaps you ought to get out and about more often!”

“There is no-one else here?”

“I’ve already explained that everybody’s busy dying of the plague, so the shipowners have apparently had their wish. Which is to say, the hand of heaven has descended on the tariff collectors. I, Caesar, have thus proclaimed a holiday in celebration.” He lifted his wine over his head and gestured grandly, sloshing its contents on his companion.

“Do you know Gregory?”

The girl looked startled. “You mean the Patriarch? For such we call him. Rather too quick to quote the scriptures, if you ask me, considering he spends most of his time counting coins for the emperor.”

“When was he last at work here?”

“Couple of days ago,” the girl offered.

“Do you have any idea what business he had to attend to in the city that day?”

“The Patriarch tell us where he was going? Not likely!” The young man gave a snort. “Why are you questioning your emperor anyway? Be gone or I’ll call my guards!”

John ignored the young man and addressed the girl instead. “Gregory’s office is where?”

“Smaller of the two rooms on the top floor,” she told him. “He was second in command. Or rather third, counting my emperor here.”

John went quickly upstairs. Two flights of wide granite steps gave way to a much steeper wooden staircase that creaked and groaned under his boots. The wall lamps had been allowed to burn out and the only light available came in through window slits.

Gregory’s office was brighter. It looked toward the Asian shore. The geometric shapes of distant scattered buildings were softened and obscured by mist, giving the view the look of a church mosaic glimpsed through smoky incense. The room smelled, not of incense, but of the sea.

John’s gaze fell on the tortoiseshell-framed wax tablet sitting on Gregory’s desk. It might have been left especially for him to find, since the wax still bore a list of names and addresses in Constantinople. Gregory’s notes to himself? Why hadn’t he taken the tablet with him on his rounds? Possibly he had returned to the customs house having made these calls and gone out again without erasing the list.

In any event, if these were indeed places Gregory had visited during his last hours, they would certainly be helpful in retracing his steps, to discover where he had been, to whom he had spoken, and what those people might know.

It was almost too fortunate a find.

Then again, John had never been indirectly asked by an angel to solve a murder. Perhaps he could expect heavenly assistance.

Lifting the tablet revealed a crinkled piece of parchment on which was inscribed what purported to be a poem, written in Greek:

See yon rock the unlearned call Leander’s Tower?

They say fair Hero threw herself down

at the sight of Leander’s lifeless form.

But who can say,

if customs then were as cruel as customs are today,

did Hero leap because she was bereft

or was she pushed by the emperor’s tariff?

If the dreadful composition was Gregory’s work, whatever other secrets the man’s life might have held, he was not another Homer.

John made his way back downstairs, the prospect of the return boat journey slowing his step. As he crossed the atrium, the youthful clerk yelled at him from the store room.

“You’re still here? What are you up to, scoundrel? I’ll have you arrested!”

John strode in to confront the youngster. He had regained his authoritative bearing and after a swift glance, the girl tugged warningly at her friend’s arm. The young man shook her hand off. “Who do you think you are! No closer! Unless you mean to kiss the emperor’s feet, that is.”

John produced the official document he habitually carried. “Perhaps Caesar has had too many libations?” he suggested. “Especially since you never imbibe wine. Don’t you recognize your own Lord Chamberlain?”

The clerk fumbled through the document John handed him. No doubt he’d seen enough official papers during his employment to recognize the genuine article. “You stole this!” he sputtered.

“Ah,” John said, his mouth drawing into a thin line, “and do you suppose your future would be much brighter if I am not in fact the Lord Chamberlain, but rather a man who has just murdered the Lord Chamberlain and relieved him of this document and his clothing?”

As the truth began to penetrate the clerk’s alcoholic armor, his face became very pale.

The girl leapt up, threw herself to the floor, and grabbed the hem of John’s robe. “Please, please, excellency,” she wept. “We meant no harm. Don’t send us to the dungeons. Not the red hot tongs and all them sharp knives…I’ll do whatever you want…he’ll do whatever you want…”

John pulled away. “That won’t be necessary. Just curb your tongues in future, or you may find them removed.”

***

Peter did not admit John to the house, having apparently put aside his duties for the day after all, as John had advised.

The sun was setting, but the atrium lamps were unlit. The quiet water in the impluvium reflected the dull, rose-tinted sky visible through the rectangular opening above.

John went upstairs. No fragrance of recent cooking emanated from the kitchen, only the dusty odor of last year’s dried herbs. Hypatia was nowhere to be seen, although a scorpion-like clay creature, one of her numerous charms against the plague, squatted on the kitchen table.

Peter must have forgotten to instruct her to assume his culinary duties for the evening.

John took a jug of wine and his cracked cup into his study.

His servants were available only when ordered to be there. John preferred solitude. He did not like people hovering unbidden at his elbow and had never cultivated the aristocratic knack for regarding servants as little more than animated furniture. How could he, he who had once been a slave? Such unorthodox convictions caused him to traverse the streets and alleys of Constantinople alone and unguarded, a practice others considered unthinkably dangerous for a courtier of his high rank.

A Lord Chamberlain was powerful enough to do the unthinkable if he chose.

Besides which, he was no stranger to using a blade when necessary.

He sat at his desk and sipped raw Egyptian wine. Beyond the diamond-shaped panes of the window overlooking the palace grounds and the sea beyond, the sky was fast growing dark. Might one of the myriad distant lights beneath the emerging stars mark the customs house he had just visited?

He imagined Peter working in the study, cleaning the window perhaps, never knowing he was laboring within sight of the building where, at the same instant, the man he knew only as an impoverished former soldier was likely to be warning a wealthy shipowner that a cargo of silks could not be unloaded until the tariff was paid, even if the merchant considered the amount demanded to be larcenous.

Peter, John thought, would doubtless be singing, and tunelessly at that, one of the lugubrious hymns he favored, dismissing dust as Gregory dismissed the disgruntled merchant, who would stride angrily off, his retinue of bodyguards trailing behind.

He’d still have to pay the appropriate tariff.

Did Peter truly not realize the position his old friend had held, the power he wielded?

Should John reveal what he had learnt? Would Peter’s new knowledge allow him to shed further light on Gregory’s murder? Sometimes we know things that we recognize only when our perspective changes.

John turned his attention to the wall mosaic. In the shadowed room he could not distinguish details, but he knew by heart each of the pagan gods who populated the sky as well as the faces of the bucolic mortals working in the fields below. Most familiar was the one he had named Zoe, a young girl whose glass eyes seemed to hold an expression conveying she had glimpsed all the sorrows to which flesh is prey.

There was an unnerving naturalism about her, as if the image had been taken from life. John thought it possible she was the artist’s daughter. The mosaic had been in place when he purchased the house, having been installed by the previous owner. It was strange to think that if his surmise was correct, the model for Zoe could well still be alive. John might see her one day while inspecting some artisans’ enclave, or she might appear in one of the hallways of an imperial residence, perhaps even be glimpsed moving down an alleyway off the Mese.

He was as likely to run into her as he was to see his own daughter again.

Would he recognize either of them?

He thought he heard someone moving about in the hall. Rising from his plain wooden chair, he looked out. A single lamp flickered at the far end, where narrow stairs led up to the mostly unoccupied servants’ quarters. Nothing moved.

It hadn’t been exactly a footstep. It was a softer sound, similar to heavy garments brushing against a wall. Birds often got into the house from the garden or through the compluvium, yet he couldn’t help recalling Peter’s imagined heavenly visitor.

Zoe stared solemnly at him as he sat down again.

“Peter doesn’t like me talking to you, Zoe.” John could not have said whether he spoke aloud or not.

There was a hint of sympathy in the girl’s almond-shaped eyes.

“Strange to think, isn’t it, that my servant possesses what I do not? That is to say, a past.”

He brought the wine cup to his lips. It was a cup akin to the one he’d owned when he lived with Cornelia, the mother of his daughter. The vessel was a duplicate he had ordered made, down to the crack in the rim. It was all of the past he could bear to keep close to him. Of the man he had been before his capture and emasculation in Persia, there remained nothing.

As for the family and friends of the man he had been then, they had vanished as surely as if the emperor had ordered every one of them dragged off to the dungeons in the dead of night. Or as if his Lord Chamberlain had ordered it, for John could certainly wield such power if he ever chose to exercise it.

Still, he admitted, if only to Zoe, he missed hearing Cornelia’s light breathing as she slept in the bed beside him, when the night was as silent as this one.

He lit the lamp on the desk and stared out of the window for a while. In the darkness there was no sign of the horror that stalked the city’s streets. For that matter, it could be lurking within this very house. The plague could go wherever it chose.

John forced his mind back to his investigation. He had become a servant to his own servant, as Gaius had said. Yet Peter was part of John’s household, and if it were possible, John intended to find out who had killed Gregory. Elderly men like Peter did not have much time left to outlive their sorrows and disappointments.

“He’s already lost an old friend, but he at least has good memories of him. If I tell him the work Gregory did, will I murder those memories too? What do you think, Zoe?” John poured himself more wine.