Ten for Dying

Chapter Thirty-seven

A pale figure floated silently through the dark halls at the rear of Antonina’s mansion. Now it paused beside a closed door, listening, now it peered stealthily around a corner, now it eased a door open a crack to see the dim shape of the cook’s assistant sleeping on her cot within.

Antonina’s servant Tychon, going about his nightly rounds, was certain he had heard a noise, something more than a rat in the walls or a cat prowling the gardens.

He bent down where two corridors intersected. The dim light from the guttering oil lamp in a wall niche slanted across the floor, picking out what looked like scuff marks. Tychon ran a finger across them, detecting a hint of dust.

Hadn’t the hallways been cleaned during the afternoon?

He got to his feet and stood, a pallid apparition. In the nearby rooms the rest of the staff slept. He heard the cook’s muffled cough, the sonorous snoring of the pretty little cleaning girl.

Nothing unusual.

Perhaps he had been imagining things. Even after years of working for Antonina she still frightened him, witch that she was. He much preferred the house when she was away on expeditions with Belisarius. At least Karpos was gone. Wouldn’t Antonina have liked to know how her young man had been prowling the servants’ quarters looking for a girl more his age?

It had created some problems for Tychon, but now that was all resolved, and Tychon knew how to keep his mouth shut.

He went out into the garden. Is this where the mysterious sound had emanated? Had it been the rustle of bushes heard through open windows? There was no breeze to stir the vegetation. Shrubs, trees, and flower beds were clumps of deeper darkness in the night. Over the enclosure’s high walls the night sky shone with the faint, gray luminescence from the city. The smell of roses filled the humid air, stronger at night than in the daytime.

There was nothing to see or hear. A few steps away the miniature marble pillars of Antonina’s workshop glimmered. Enough laboring, Tychon told himself, as he strode into the workshop.

Sufficient light came through the doorway for him to pick his way through the familiar room. Although outwardly it had been designed to look like a Greek temple, inside it resembled a kitchen with a long brazier and heavy wooden tables. Bottles lining shelves gave off faint glitters, captive stars. The acrid stench of the last mixture Antonina had been brewing almost overpowered the dry scents of herbs tied in bundles hanging from the ceiling and a vague, incongruous odor of incense.

Tychon knew the workshop well. Without needing to search for them, he could put his hand immediately on belladonna, equally prized for enhancing women’s eyes and disposing of enemies, or the walnut infusion favored by ladies of the court for treating blemishes of the skin. There were small pots of soothing emollients tinted and perfumed with rose petals, jars of comfrey leaves, a number of the forked roots Antonina called Circe’s plant, a jug of the elder bark purgative much disliked by the household servants, and a hundred other ingredients for nostrums and potions. He also knew where his mistress kept the excellent aged Italian wine she drank when the brazier filled the workshop with infernal heat.

He retrieved a cup he kept hidden behind empty amphorae in the bottom of a cupboard and filled it from the enormous lidded earthen jug sitting beneath a tall, narrow window at the end of the room. He would never have dared drink from any unfamiliar container from the workshop, no matter how well cleaned. Seated on a stool he could just see through the window into a black tangle of rosebushes.

He took a sip of wine. It was the sort meant for the lips of emperors. Not servants. Which was what appealed to Tychon more than the taste. To his palate it hinted at mold. The effects the wine had, on him at least, were no different than those of the near vinegar one could buy for a couple of copper coins at the lowest tavern. Did the aristocrats who imbibed such rare ambrosia as Antonina kept in stock experience some heightened form of inebriation in keeping with the cost? Tychon doubted it.

He sat drinking contentedly. He deserved this bit of extra compensation, didn’t he? The difficult job he had been entrusted with had gone as planned. As far as he was concerned, it was over. He had been understandably on edge since that night, startled more than once by half-glimpsed shadows and stealthy noises such as he had been hearing earlier. Just deranged humors and imagination.

Again he dipped his cup into the jug, took a gulp, and contemplatively smacked his lips. This was different than usual. Did he detect a hint of bitterness? Perhaps it had been a bad year, a less than stellar vintage. Had Antonina brought a new batch back from Italy with her? It had been a bad year for generals, why not for grapes also?

Suddenly he was very tired. It was all catching up to him. More wine would help.

The tangled rose bushes beyond the wind moved, as if in a breeze.

Had the wind risen? There might be another storm on the way.

The bushes writhed like a nest of entwined snakes.

Was something hiding there?

Tychon put his cup back behind the amphorae, turned, and banged hard into the edge of the nearest table. Strange. He knew the workshop like the back of his hand. Actually the back of his hand was trembling. He ran toward the door, stumbling, feeling as if he were inexplicably going down hill.

He burst out into a nightmare landscape of looming grotesques. Shadows were swaying, crawling through the dark pool of night caught between the house and the garden walls. No, they were only trees and shrubs. For all their apparent movement they remained anchored to their spots. Except…

One shadow darted away from the side wall of the workshop.

Tychon gave chase.

A street urchin who had managed to creep in, judging by its size.

Yet the proportions seemed all wrong. And the loping gait was unlike that of a child.

An ape, Tychon thought. It’s an ape!

Sure enough, as the creature came to the garden’s perimeter it clambered up into a yew and then vanished over the top of the wall.

Some part of Tychon’s mind begged him to pause and consider the likelihood of Antonina’s garden being invaded by an ape. But it pleaded to no avail with the irrationality that had taken hold. He was to the gate and out into the street before the guard could react. He raced along parallel to the wall. His mouth was filled with the weirdly bitter taste of the wine.

There was the ape, blocking his path. staring straight at him.

No, a short creature with a hideous face, a mouth moving like that of a landed fish.

“Demon! By the Goddess of the Frogs, I command you!” The monstrosity waved its arms.

Demon. Yes, that’s what it was! “No,” Tychon cried. “I meant no harm!”

The horror came hopping at him, reaching out with clawed hands. Now Tychon saw that every shadow in the street had come to life, waving phantom arms, slithering through the gutters. Was this the way an angry god dealt with malefactors?

He screamed and ran.

Reason, locked deep inside his panicked mind, pounded helplessly, unheard, at the door of its dungeon as he fled through the streets, alleyways, and squares pursued by a shape that was part Fury and part avenging angel.

He burst into an open promenade overlooking the water. The last thing Tychon saw were city lights reflected in the water far below the sea wall.