Seven for a Secret

Chapter Nineteen

Anatolius wiped away tears with the sleeve of his tunic, blinked, and squinted around Francio’s steamy kitchen. Almost immediately the garlic-saturated air started his eyes watering again.

“Mithra!” he muttered.

Francio was nowhere to be seen. A small army of servants rushed about carrying bowls and brandishing knives, somehow avoiding fatal collisions. The clank of pots violently stirred or pushed around the long brazier running along one side of the room reverberated from the sooty walls and low ceiling.

He would have left immediately, except that he had come here on serious business.

To investigate a murder.

Since parting with John outside Menander’s tenement, Anatolius had not been able to put the murder out of his thoughts.

This morning he had arrived at the steps of the law library with the gulls but couldn’t concentrate on research. Instead he kept wondering how a common prostitute could have known the name by which John addressed the mosaic girl on the wall of his private study.

Francio might be of assistance. He was familiar with every rumor, true or false, at the palace. He would know who, if anyone, might be aware of John’s solitary conversations.

He had shoved the Digest and its dusty old jurists aside and left for Francio’s house. However, the nearer he got, the more wary he became of revealing too much to his gregarious friend. Curiosity had carried him from the atrium to the back of the house and into the kitchen.

As he tried to decide whether to leave, a basket was suddenly thrust under his nose. It was filled with what looked like wilted weeds.

“Here’s them herbs you wanted, sir.” The basket holder’s garments were too ragged for a servant. “I even located some of that rue, and nasty stuff it is.”

If there was any odor of herbs, Anatolius couldn’t distinguish it beneath the reek of garlic. “You’re probably looking for the master of the house,” he said, just as the man they both sought strode out of the chaos toward them.

Francio’s elaborate clothing looked out of place in a kitchen, even if it was thematically appropriate. Rondels embroidered with parsnips, lettuce, and radishes sprouted from his earthy brown dalmatic. He exchanged a few words with his herb supplier, shooed the man off toward the far end of the room, and turned his attention to Anatolius.

“Merchants have been in and out all day. They’re wonderfully obliging. As well they should be. There’s not a better customer in the city, except perhaps the imperial couple. Justinian and Theodora’s banquets rival mine in size if not imagination. But why have you dared to venture onto my culinary battlefield, my friend?”

“Battlefield? I’d have described it as a riot. I’m surprised your place isn’t burnt to the ground every time you decide to entertain.”

Francio laughed. “It looks like a riot because you are not schooled in the strategy of the kitchen. This is merely a skirmish in a carefully planned campaign. My soldiers need the experience. When the day arrives for that rustic banquet I mentioned, they will not cower in the face of a cheese and garlic paste.”

Anatolius remarked he was surprised to find Francio in the kitchen.

“A leader rides out at the head of his army surely?”

“Justinian doesn’t!”

“He must stay here to lead on the theological front,” Francio chuckled. He made his way through the hubbub and bent over a bubbling copper pot until his flattened nose came perilously close to the turbulent liquid within. When he straightened up, his lumpy face was bright red from the heat of rising steam.

“Excellent!” he remarked. “Just the right amount of coriander. Another hard fought victory is at hand!”

“Your cooks have boiled, grilled, or roasted every creature that lives. I’d have thought it would be easy for them to prepare a simple peasant dish.”

“They aren’t used to simple dishes. And when there are so few ingredients, mistakes cannot be disguised, not even with a sauce.”

“You’ve enough garlic in here to disguise a shipload of spoiled fish.” Anatolius ran a hand over his eyes but the stinging miasma seemed to have settled onto his fingers. His eyes burned still more fiercely.

“I apologize for your distress, but all this is not the finished art. No one enjoys the smoke from the glassmaker’s furnace or the sweat from the poet’s brow, do they? Do lovers of verse stroll into your study unannounced and complain about your efforts? I’m certain you haven’t barged in on me without good reason. There must be some urgent business?”

Anatolius decided he might be able to learn something without giving too much away. “I need to call on your expertise again. It’s about a private matter. Not exactly scandalous, but potentially embarrassing.”

Francio tapped the side of his nose. “Sounds fascinating! Am I about to learn something?”

“No. I was just wondering how such stories spread?”

“By mouth. How else?”

“But, let’s say, a person at the palace had an unusual habit…”

“Let’s say there was anyone at the palace who didn’t. Now that would be interesting. What sort of person is this? A servant? A senator? Man or woman?”

“Hypothetically, an official.”

“You lawyers are a circumspect bunch. This habit, does it involve, shall we say, an unnatural practice?”

Anatolius frowned. “I don’t think I’d go that far.”

“I can tell by your expression that whatever you are talking about is extremely unnatural. You will need to control your expressions better in front of the magistrates, my friend. I don’t grasp what you think I can tell you. Rumors and gossip have a thousand roads but only a single destination, which is to say the entire city.”

“I can’t believe everything becomes general knowledge,” Anatolius observed. “I’m not speaking about an indiscretion at the Hippodrome or in a brothel.”

“Where then? Come now! You want to know who might have whispered scandal into someone’s ear? How can I tell you if I don’t know what it is? Don’t worry about revealing the details. As you know, I am the soul of discretion.”

“You wouldn’t dare to say that on oath!”

Francio looked hurt. “I only parcel out what I know as seems absolutely necessary. How do you suppose I maintain my popularity?”

“By your golden tongue?”

Francio grinned. “Flattery is a good tool. It usually works, no matter how clumsily one employs it. Now, you say this mysterious behavior which is not scandalous, but which I deduce is quite unnatural, occurred not in public but in a private place. Such as…?”

“A place similar to, for instance, a study.”

“Oh yes. You’re referring to the Lord Chamberlain’s habit of talking to the mosaic on his wall, are you not?”

Anatolius might as well have been hit in the stomach. He couldn’t seem to draw breath to reply.

“Yes, this is fairly well known,” Francio went on. “It isn’t a very popular story. The Lord Chamberlain is considered so eccentric, all in all, his speaking to bits of colored glass hardly raises an eyebrow. And before you ask how the story could have got out…well, he has a few friends who have visited the house, not to mention servants, and has even had some unwanted visitors over the years, I’d wager.”

“I’m positive I didn’t mention it to anyone.”

“Not even to some lady? I daresay we will all reveal anything under the appropriate circumstances.”

“That’s what Justinian’s torturers claim too. You’re right. Yet I truly don’t believe I’ve ever breathed a word about it. As for his servants, Peter wouldn’t disclose his master’s secrets, even to the imperial torturers.”

“Ah yes, Peter. John doesn’t have many servants, does he? The paucity of servants strikes people as far more peculiar than him talking to mosaics when he’d had too much wine. You might not know any of this. Since you are one of the Lord Chamberlain’s closest friends and he is a powerful man, many are doubtless reticent about sharing such opinions with you.”

“Indeed. This is the first time you have shared this information with me, Francio.”

“You never asked, my friend. Unfortunately, I can’t tell you how John’s little secret got out. It’s spread too far from its source.”

Francio peered again into one of the pots on the brazier, grasped the protruding handle of the ladle, and gave a lusty stir. A few drops of liquid splashed out and evaporated on the coals in a hiss of steam.

Anatolius decided he should get back to the library. “I was interested in who might know about Zoe,” he said. “But it sounds as if there’s nothing to be learned.”

Francio dropped the ladle back against the side of the pot. “Zoe. That’s what John calls the mosaic girl, isn’t it? Now that I only learned a few weeks ago.”

“Then the name isn’t common knowledge?”

“I just told you I didn’t know about it until recently.”

“I see your point, Francio. Who was it who told you?”

“Crinagoras. I can’t remember precisely when it was. I spend so much time here on the battlefield and the scene is always just like this. You’ll recall I invited him to compose some verse for my banquet? His original idea was to recite odes to the various rooms of the wealthy and powerful to form a poignant contrast to the humble fare on the table, as he put it. Well, he came here and started declaiming samples of what he intended to write. The poem about the decorations in a certain senator’s residence was scurrilous enough to give me second thoughts. When he started describing John’s mournful conversations with Zoe I made him put the whole lot in the brazier. I thought he’d plucked the name Zoe out of his imagination. I should have known better. He hasn’t got much imagination.”

Anatolius couldn’t hide his disappointment. “Mithra! Then I’ve wasted my time. I thought you might be able to narrow it down for me, but if Crinagoras wrote a poem about Zoe, you can be sure her name was all over the city before the ink was dry.”