Seven for a Secret

Chapter Thirty

Peter glanced into John’s bedroom.

Through the crack left by the slightly open door he could see a form on the bed in the shadows.

John had remained in his room all day. It was deeply worrying.

Every time Peter checked, John had been asleep despite the noise caused by the workmen downstairs carting barrels and sacks of tesserae, plaster, and straw through the atrium.

It must have been the blow to the head.

The matter worried him. Long ago during his military days, a soldier Peter knew had been struck on the head by a Persian sword. It seemed the blow had left the man unharmed. For two days he showed his helmet around camp. The force of the blow had split it open.

It had been a miracle.

But on the morning of the third day, while the soldier filled his bowl with gruel and described yet again how he prayed each day to the military saints Sergius and Bacchus, he dropped dead.

This is how close to death we all are, Peter thought. We never can be certain we will finish our breakfast.

Death was close to old men such as himself. Some nights, alone in his room with the lamp extinguished and the only light that which came through his tiny window, the faint effulgence of the city, light from thousands of torches under colonnades and the glowing dome of the Great Church, Peter could sense the Angel of Death standing on the other side of his door. He would hold his breath, praying silently, waiting for the knock none could refuse to answer.

He heard nothing, could see nothing. Yet he could feel a presence. So far the angel had always chosen to go away.

Peter peeked around the edge of John’s door, reassured when he saw John’s chest rising and falling as he breathed.

He intended to prepare the sweetened cakes John liked but had found the jug of honey on the kitchen shelf was almost empty. Fortunately there was more in the storeroom at the back of the house.

Peter went downstairs. He wondered how the work was progressing. He’d be happy when he no longer had to repeatedly sweep away the straw and plaster dust the workmen dropped.

He sighed. Once again muddy footsteps pointed the way to the bath. Worse, the mud had been smeared all over the floor by whatever the inconsiderate fellow had dragged behind him.

Peter clucked in annoyance, then stopped himself. Cornelia might be in earshot.

Her residence in the house made him self conscious. He no longer felt free to sing his favorite hymns while he worked. The house had changed since she had arrived. He never knew when he was going to run into her rounding a corner or coming out a room. She was a kind woman, if ill tempered, he thought with a smile, and devoted to John.

For that latter he was grateful.

However, he knew both he and his master had become used to their solitude.

It was true that John had hired the Egyptian girl, Hypatia, who had once worked in the same household as Peter in the days when they were both slaves. But now she worked in the palace gardens.

He wondered if she might be persuaded to return.

Peter’s trips in search of fresh produce took longer now. He had found a new market, farther away than the one he usually frequented, which, he had convinced himself, sold superior leeks. He also spent more time in the garden, trying without success to keep alive the herbs Hypatia had planted.

Perhaps John would ask her to return. Anyone who had lived in a house such as this would be dissatisfied with a cramped room elsewhere.

Perhaps…

The artisans were finished for the day, but had left tools and material littered along the hallway.

Good workmen would not be so careless with their tools, Peter thought as he picked his way between barrels.

Peter paused and glanced around.

Not that the mistress could have any objection to his checking to see how far the delicate task had progressed.

He opened the door and entered.

The activities portrayed in the mosaics, he noted, were shocking. Not anything a good Christian would take pleasure from. He hadn’t seen their like outside a brothel.

His lips tightened as he suppressed a smile. The room always reminded him of an incident from his youth involving a pretty servant and his owner’s bath. At the time he had cursed his stupidity for inviting punishment for the sake of a brief tryst with a girl he had never seen again.

Now, decades later, he could recall the young lady down to the smallest detail-and often did-while he could not even bring to mind the vaguest image of his owner’s face.

The Lord would forgive him. After all, it was the Lord who chose to make young people the way He had.

Red light from the dying sun spilled down from the circular opening in the roof and caught the voluptuous torso of a marble Aphrodite, sparkled across a heedless couple depicted on the wall behind her, and limned the figure seated in the basin at her feet.

Peter stepped forward and took a closer look.

An old man sat at the bottom, a big fellow with a craggy face and bushy, white hair. A purplish bruise circled his neck.

His eyes were wide open but he was not looking at anything so earthly as the mosaics. He was clearly dead.