Three for a Letter

Chapter Eighteen

Hero stood defiantly beside the forge, a hammer in his one soot-streaked hand. He looked away from John, Zeno and Anatolius, toward Felix and the two excubitors accompanying him.

The anger in the brawny inventor’s eyes was as hot as the forge. He looked swiftly around the workshop, as if weighing what chance he and his hammer might have against six opponents, but when he finally moved it was to raise the stump of his arm to wipe sweat from his glistening forehead.

“What did you mean when you said you weren’t going to hurt the girl?” John asked him again.

“It was a misunderstanding, Lord Chamberlain. I admit I was going to look around Poppaea’s room. I was searching for my mechanical hand. The children have hidden things before and so I thought perhaps they were playing another little joke on me. Then Godomar accused me of intending to harm the child. So naturally when you arrived with guards…”

“You gave me a terrible fright as well.” Zeno’s tone was as sharp as John had ever heard it. “How are we supposed to get anything done with excubitors constantly getting underfoot? And what’s this about your hand being missing, Hero?”

Hero glared at his employer. “I don’t know anything more about it than that, since I haven’t been able to work on it for days or even think about it, what with finishing constructing the whale and then all the commotion after the banquet. Not to mention that I’ve just started on this pressing new project.” He waved his hammer at the collection of lengths of fine chain, cogs, scraps of leather, and an assortment of body parts made of hammered metal laid out on the dirt floor.

“A representation of a cart accident on the Mese?” Anatolius mused callously.

“They will be shaped into an exceedingly fine contribution to the festival, as you well know!” Zeno told his nephew in a severe tone. “Although how it and the other automatons could possibly be assembled without Hero’s expertise and oversight I can’t say!” He directed a meaningful stare in John’s direction.

“I’m sorry, Zeno,” John replied, “but unless Hero intends to be more cooperative, I’m going to have to order him kept confined for now.”

“How can I tell you any more than I know?” Hero’s voice rose to a shout but he made no effort to resist as the excubitors stepped forward to escort him away.

“Confine him to one of the spare rooms in the back of the villa,” Felix instructed his men, “but see that it isn’t anywhere near the one Briarus is locked up in.”

“Do you think they were working together?” Anatolius wondered, looking after the trio as Hero was marched away.

John replied that he had no idea.

“The weapon was in Briarus’ possession but it belonged to Hero, so therefore both are suspect,” Felix told Anatolius. He barely looked at John, obviously still angry over their previous day’s conversation concerning Bertrada. Zeno however was oblivious, continuing to complain bitterly like a child whose outing has been ruined by a sudden rain storm.

John, who had laid the strange prosthesis out on a work table, ignored Zeno’s protests and examined the device closely.

“It’s a complicated affair, isn’t it?” Anatolius eyed the artificial hand. “Perhaps I shouldn’t say so but by the look of the intricate workings, Hero must have spent considerably more time working on this hand than on that simple mechanical man spread out all over the floor.”

Zeno looked offended. “This automaton is sufficiently complex to fire an arrow before it’s tipped over the precipice into the sea, Anatolius. You should never judge by appearances.”

John had picked up the mechanical hand and was tugging experimentally at one of its dangling leather straps. The action caused two of the fingers to curl realistically. Looking more closely he saw that the finger joints were hinged, held together by thin leather sinews.

“How could he possibly hope to operate the thing? Did he intend to hold the straps between his teeth?” Felix rubbed his great beard vigorously, as if the action might cause the answer to fall out of it. “Though it’s recorded that when the general Marcus Sergius lost his right arm to the enemy, he ordered an iron hand be manufactured. According to Pliny, it was designed solely to hold the general’s shield. So while it allowed him to resume battle it could do nothing more than that, and thus was quite unlike this strange monstrosity.”

“How fascinating!” This interesting morsel of knowledge distracted Zeno from his annoyance. “You wield the scroll as well as the sword, then?”

“I’ve read a bit of history,” Felix admitted. “One can always learn from the great generals.” His emphatic statement was accompanied by a sideways scowl at John.

“But what reason could Hero possibly have had to kill Gadaric?” Anatolius put in. He sniffed. “It’s the wretched smoke in here,” he added apologetically.

“None whatsoever so far as I can see. The twins loved Hero,” Zeno replied, “and he was very fond of them. He and Bertrada occasionally took them to the beach, for example, and sometimes he made toys for them. There was a jackal that ran about on little wheels. It was so funny to watch that I insisted he make one for my own collection. And he seemed to enjoy it when the children visited the workshop.”

“But even if he did kill Gadaric, why would he hide the hand in Briarus’ lodge?” Anatolius continued. “Then again, if Briarus was the culprit, how did he obtain the hand? Did he know Hero? And if it was Briarus, why would he hide the weapon in his own home? Also, if-”

John interrupted his friend. “All puzzling questions indeed, Anatolius, but I fear you’ve missed the most significant question. Where is Castor? After all, if Briarus is indeed guilty of murder then his master’s unexplained absence suddenly becomes considerably more sinister, wouldn’t you say?”

Zeno looked stricken. “Briarus’s dictatorial style of estate management might have been modeled after Sulla’s methods, but I am absolutely certain that he would never kill his master,” he declared emphatically.

John did not care to argue with Zeno, who after all had spent most of his life on his estate, away from the court in Constantinople, and so had not been in a position to observe how remarkably often “never” seemed to come around.

“It’s now even more urgent that we find Castor,” he said instead. “I’ve thought of an excellent place to begin. Castor’s account books will reveal the merchants with whom he habitually dealt. Anatolius, I fear you must be back in Constantinople, knocking on their doors and asking questions before night falls again.”

Anatolius looked horrified. “But John, I’ve just arrived! I can’t leave again so quickly. You’re aware of the circumstances. My future romantic happiness hangs in the balance,” he concluded pitifully.

“Duty must always come before affairs of the heart.”

Anatolius’ mission was soon arranged. A quick visit to Castor’s estate to scan the account books, then on to Constantinople to interview those with whom the vanished man had done business. He sputtered protests and then fell into grief-stricken silence.

Only when he and Zeno had left the workshop did Felix speak. “Do you really suppose Castor might be absent on business, or did you just want Anatolius away on horseback before that young woman gets her claws properly hooked into him?”

John thought it a strange question coming from Felix, who seemed to be the quarry of another young woman. He refrained from mentioning it. There had been enough friction between him and his friend.

“I admit, it’s a good opportunity to put him beyond Calyce’s reach,” he said, “but I still hope we’ll discover Castor has gone off on business. I’ve been told he’s often away for long periods. Quite possibly he may just have left without telling anyone.”

“Not even his estate manager?” Felix shook his head. “In the old days, I would be betting on a more sinister explanation.”

“It’s true Briarus hasn’t been very helpful. I shall have to insist he be more forthcoming.” John turned his attention back to the heavy prosthesis he held in his thin, sun-browned hand. He frowned and pulled another strap, causing the artificial thumb to move.

“I think you’ve missed something,” Felix commented. “If I could look at that?”

He took the device carefully but rather than testing the hand’s leather straps like John, the big German gripped the extension that served as its forearm.

“While you were operating the fingers just now, did you happen to notice the hand’s hinged at the wrist?” he asked as he squeezed the prosthesis as if operating pincers. It was a slight pressure but the fingers curled together with a loud snap.

The excubitor captain looked at the clenched metal fist with a military man’s admiration. “Yes, anyone could commit mayhem with this. Indeed, if that long-ago general had been fitted with an iron hand such as this, he wouldn’t have needed a sword.”

***

Poppaea woke late in the afternoon.

It was an abrupt and strange sort of awakening. The sick girl simply opened her eyes, sat up and began to babble gibberish like an oracle. At least that was how Bertrada, watching at the bedside, had frantically described it when she located John.

Familiar by now with Bertrada’s tendency to paint events in overly vivid colors, John was surprised, when he arrived at Poppaea’s room, to find the child’s condition very much as depicted.

“Ah, here is someone very high at the court,” Poppaea was saying as he entered the room. “How very good of you to visit.”

John wondered that the girl recognized him. Then he realized that although her eyes were open they were not focussed on him or anyone in the room.

She rambled on, talking about a picnic, banquets, the garden. Her gaze darted back and forth as she turned her head back and forth as if addressing first this person and then another, but her blank stare never rested on John or Bertrada beside him, or on the only other person present, her mother, who stood trembling at the bedside.

Livia’s round face was almost as colorless as her daughter’s. “Where is she speaking from? Who is she speaking to? I fear Poppaea has left us, Lord Chamberlain. That’s not my child speaking.”

“Calyce has gone to get another potion from Minthe but we’ve said nothing about it,” Bertrada whispered to John. “No doubt Godomar will be in here spouting prayers soon. He seems to think the girl is possessed.”

“Your daughter is just delirious,” John tried to reassure the distraught mother.

“Demons prey on those who are weak.”

“Don’t pay so much heed to what Godomar says,” Bertrada told her impatiently. “Poppaea’s been ill but now she’s awake, she’s going to get better. There’s nothing more to it than that.”

John addressed Poppaea by name. She made no acknowledgment of it but continued to talk to her invisible audience.

“…it was a fine picnic,” she murmured. “Won’t you try some of these? But they are so sweet… look…the queen is approaching…”

Sunilda had appeared in the doorway. “Poppaea,” she exclaimed. “I’m happy to see that Porphyrio has cured you.”

Poppaea looked away from an empty spot in the air and directly at her playmate. “Sunilda, welcome! Yes, the whale has indeed taken care of everything and now we are having a grand celebration, as you can see.” She lifted her hand and gestured weakly around the room.

Sunilda smiled. “It is a very grand celebration indeed, Poppaea,” she agreed.

***

Godomar made the sign of his religion as he entered Poppaea’s bedroom. It seemed to him that his moving hand was met with some slight, inexplicable resistance, as if the very air were ready to impede his mission, while the ecclesiastical stole draped ceremoniously over his shoulders and crossed over his chest felt as heavy as a wooden yoke.

“The Lord Chamberlain just departed with Bertrada,” Livia informed him. “He tried to question Poppaea but the demon within her insisted on answering him with the most terrible blasphemies.”

“Oh, Livia, she was just telling us about the party and Porphyrio,” Sunilda said sharply. The girl was standing by the head of her friend’s bed. “And now as you can see all that talking’s tired her out.”

She brushed a fine strand of hair away from Poppaea’s closed eyelids. Delicate veins, like fine blue stitchery, were visible in the girl’s linen-white skin.

Godomar stepped resolutely forward, convinced that he was in the presence of something evil. Yet was it any wonder, surrounded as they were by mechanical mockeries of the human form, not to mention constant talk of fortune-telling goats and pagan festivals?

“Please move aside, Sunilda,” he said sternly. “I have come to abjure the fiend that has taken up residence in Poppaea.”

Sunilda remained where she was and glowered at him.

“Please, Sunilda, Godomar must perform this ceremony.” Livia timidly laid her hand on Sunilda’s shoulder as she spoke.

The girl jerked away and glared. “I will not be touched in such a fashion by a mere servant! If I were queen such impudence would be worth your head!”

Livia burst into tears.

Godomar sidled up as close to Poppaea’s bed as he could manage. Sunilda made him uneasy. Who would put such awful words on the lips of a little girl? Or perhaps he should more accurately ask what would do so?

He bent over and laid his hand on Poppaea’s forehead. It felt as hot as if imbued with the fires of Hell. While Sunilda stood rigidly nearby, staring at him with what struck him as equally burning hatred, he murmured his adjuration, concluding more hastily than he had intended, “Leave this innocent one, in the name of He who suffered and died for all our sins.”

“Poppaea is only sick,” Sunilda remarked pointedly.

“I am doing what is necessary,” Godomar replied softly.

“You are doing it for yourself,” the girl replied.

Looking at her, Godomar had a sudden thought. “But as to you, Sunilda….”

Livia let out a ragged sob. “No! Not her as well!”

“It would be a wise precaution,” Godomar argued. “She is after all descended from a line of heretics and such flesh, although blameless itself, may yet be prone to demonic infection. One cannot be too careful.”

He took a swift step forward. As his fingertips reached the top her head, Sunilda gave a piercing shriek, grabbed his stole and yanked it with more strength than Godomar would have imagined it possible for an eight-year-old to possess.

He lurched forward and fell to the floor.

As she walked calmly from the room, Sunilda paused in the doorway to glance back at him.

“When I am queen, you will not be returning to Italy with me, Godomar. And while everyone seems to think I’m in danger, I can assure you, there are many here in much greater danger.”