Two for Joy

Chapter Thirteen

John found the first person he sought standing under the portico of the senate house on the north side of the Forum Constantine.

Senator Balbinus looked as if he’d not slept since he’d appeared at Aurelius’ house hotly demanding to speak to his recently murdered colleague concerning certain mysterious matters whose details he had refused to divulge.

On this occasion, however, Balbinus’ anger was directed elsewhere.

“The senators were ordered to convene here in the very midst of the mob,” he complained, “and furthermore, we’ve been forbidden to leave the city.” His tired gaze moved past John out into the forum.

The crowd of raucous humanity eddying past the base of the Column of Constantine was the usual mixture of roughly clad laborers interspersed with an occasional better robed aristocrat. Customers jostled each other in front of the shops lining the upper and lower levels of the colonnades surrounding the forum. Nothing in the scene seemed out of the ordinary. Still, on his way over, John had sensed impending violence. Was the collective breath of the city sourer with wine, were its citizens talking louder than normal?

“No doubt the emperor fears the sight of the entire senate scattering to their estates would cause a panic,” John commented.

“It has nothing to do with Justinian. It’s Theodora who’s holding us hostage,” Balbinus replied. “There’s no doubt that this order is her doing. The emperor is a reasonable man, except when he chooses to wrestle with the angels. Not that we don’t all support his theological efforts, of course,” he added hastily. “Yet even the Patriarch has fled the city, or so I hear.”

The two men were conversing beside one of the portico’s four towering columns, taking advantage of the scant warmth offered by weak early afternoon sunlight. John inquired politely about security measures at Balbinus’ country estates and vineyards and the senator grumbled and muttered his replies in irritated tones.

“Do you think ne’er do wells in the country aren’t aware that we are being detained here?” he demanded. “Do you suppose they won’t be swift to take advantage of the situation if violence breaks out in the city? We are all men of property. Businessmen. It is intolerable that we should not be permitted to look after our assets at such a time as this.”

John found himself wondering if it had been an illegal business arrangement that had led one senator to murder another. Yet powerful men did not usually find it necessary to personally resort to murder to dispose of their rivals. They had more subtle means at their disposal. Nevertheless, Balbinus’ visit to Aurelius had been just ill-timed and inexplicable enough to pique John’s curiosity.

Then too, he could not help noticing that as Balbinus spoke he kept the side of his face presented toward his visitor. Certainly, John thought, it was a regal profile that would have looked more fitting on a follis than Justinian’s commoner cast of features. Was it the practiced vanity of a thoroughly professional politician or was the man trying to distract attention from the partially healed wound running along one cheekbone?

“Was it affairs of business that brought you to Aurelius’ door?” he asked.

Balbinus’ hesitation was slight enough that few but John would have noted it. “Of a sort,” he finally admitted.

“Is it then a new arrangement that men of property normally discuss such matters at the first light of dawn?”

“My visit concerned something I prefer not to discuss, Lord Chamberlain.”

“Perhaps you would rather discuss it with the Prefect?”

Balbinus looked puzzled. “What do you mean?”

Now it was John who paused. The senator’s surprise seemed genuine. Could the man truly be such an innocent? Didn’t he realize the implications to be drawn from the odd hour of his visit to Aurelius’ home?

“I mean no offense, senator, but your colleague Aurelius was murdered. The Prefect will naturally be interested in, let us not say an enemy, let us say a colleague with whom he had fallen out, who arrived uninvited at the victim’s doorstep shortly thereafter.”

Balbinus affected a half-hearted laugh. “If I’d had the old rascal murdered why would I come calling? To ascertain whether the poison had had the desired effect? The whole affair is the talk of the senate.”

Several senators emerged from the busy throng and nodded familiarly to Balbinus as they passed by on their way into the senate house. John did not recognize any of them, not surprisingly since most of the landholders who comprised the senatorial class visited the city only very occasionally. Aurelius was one of the few who lived there. Or had lived there, he corrected himself.

Balbinus scowled. “Now that my colleagues have seen us talking, they’ll be asking me what fresh gossip I have from the palace.”

“Senator, I must ask you again about your business with Aurelius. Let me also assure you that I am a much more discreet man than the Prefect.”

“But you can’t suspect me, surely? I am a senator!”

“I am not implying that, but surely you will understand that under the circumstances you are almost certainly already under suspicion so far as the Prefect is concerned?”

“So you consider that’s a possibility? Well, then, it seems I must speak after all. It strikes me that if I’m thrown into the dungeons you can take over my job here, Lord Chamberlain. You certainly have the persuasive tongue for it!”

Balbinus stared out into the forum for a few moments, deep in thought. One hand went absently to the reddened wound on his face, then drew away quickly.

“My business with Aurelius was personal and of a very delicate nature,” he finally said. “My wife Lucretia has been missing these past few days. I thought I might find her at his house.”

Balbinus’ reluctant words not only explained his interest in speaking to Aurelius but also strongly indicated the feminine hand that had inflicted the half healed scratch that marred the senatorial face, John thought. “You had reason to believe that you would find her at Senator Aurelius’ house?”

“I did. She was, however, not there and is still missing.”

“I see. You have, of course, alerted the Prefect to her disappearance?”

“No. I intend to take care of the matter myself. Do you think I have no resources at my disposal?”

“If she wandered off…”

“Lucretia did not wander off. She is a capable woman although young. And very beautiful. Any man half my age would be proud to claim her as his wife!”

One of the men who had recently arrived emerged from the senate house. “Balbinus, we need your assistance. Several of us are composing a petition to the emperor, pointing out that if our estates are sacked while we are detained here against our will, the imperial treasury will suffer mightily since compensation will be due and most certainly sought.”

John silently admired their courage in even contemplating presenting such a petition to Justinian.

“I have to attend to this, Lord Chamberlain,” Balbinus said. “So if you will permit me? There is nothing more I can tell you, at any rate. I do not need to say, I trust, that I rely upon your discretion regarding what I have just told you.”

John nodded, adding “And if anything else occurs to you, I am not difficult to find.”

John remained standing under the portico after Balbinus had gone inside. Again he noticed that the eddying crowds seemed louder than usual, and few beggars could be seen prodding charitable purses by displaying their malformed bodies or ghastly sores. That was strange, he thought, since more often than not society’s outcasts were at the forefront when unrest fermented in dark alleys and darker lives boiled over from a scalding cauldron of noise and hate, its flood sweeping all before it. He must mention this sudden curious lack of mendicants to Felix.

John made his way quickly across the forum. At the Column of Constantine he glanced up briefly at its mounted statue of the first Christian emperor. A smile flickered over John’s sunburnt face as he recalled one of Anatolius’ more unfortunate remarks, to the effect that the emperor’s statue should have been placed on a lower pedestal because there wasn’t a single inhabitant of Constantinople who, having seen its glory once, would bother to make the effort to crane their neck to observe it a second time.

He sighed as he resumed his swift lope, realizing he could not avoid further investigation of Balbinus’ suspicious appearance at Aurelius’ house. But there were other interviews to be conducted first.

Following John unobserved had been child’s play. Tall and lean and wrapped on this chilly afternoon in a heavy black cloak, he made a striking figure, his dress and bearing clearing him an easy path through swarming humanity. There had been no danger of losing sight of him in the common throng while still being able to maintain a safe distance. It would be simpler than expected to close the space between them when the time came, thought the pursuer, a smug smile crossing his face.

The narrow street they were now traversing was lined with brick buildings, not tenements but obviously divided into apartments. Their first floors were taken up by the customary merchants’ establishments. The smell of fruit too long unsold mingled with the odor of boiled fish and cabbage emitted from open windows. Several workshops rang with the sound of hammering, but the street’s occupants were apparently even less inclined to labor than usual, since several establishments were shuttered. Here and there, men clustered in stray patches of pale sunlight, conversing in strident tones but falling ominously silent as the two strangers, pursued and pursuer, approached.

John’s swift stride took him past the mouths of several alleys, narrower than the street into which they yawned and largely deserted at this time of day except for the occasional foraging rat, skittering about their gloomy length.

Philo had already decided that he would draw closer to his prey and risk the possibility of revealing his pursuit if John should turn aside into an alley since he had no wish to become lost anywhere in that warren of narrow, dark ways a second time. He had therefore been chagrined when John led him at last to the Forum Constantine. That enormous open space made it impossible for him to sidle close enough to the senate house’s portico to overhear John’s conversation with the important-looking man he was addressing. He was thus forced to lurk under one of the ornamental archways leading into the forum, peering out now and then while wondering where John might go next.

Yes, he thought, John would not be at all pleased if he discovered that Philo had ventured out of the house. But who was he to order Philo about as if he were an ignorant student? There again, hadn’t Philo already garnered more about the dead stylites than the Prefect’s men had managed to uncover? And, no doubt, an innocent-looking old gentleman could easily extract more information from one suspected of murder than could an intimidating Lord Chamberlain. He had only to find out who John suspected and then talk to them. And how else to do that but by following John, however distasteful such deceit might be?

Yet, he thought, John would thank him in the end, when he was presented with those vital scraps of fact necessary to solving the murders. Not to mention the matter of deciphering that most peculiar letter from the leader of the Michaelites. The guilt he might have felt at concealing his possession of the hastily scribbled copy Anatolius had left, in order to study it for carefully hidden meanings, had been assuaged by John’s totally unwarranted tone with him. What right did he have to speak to him in that manner? He might indeed be Lord Chamberlain to Emperor Justinian but Philo remembered a time when John was an unlettered student from the country, rough and awkward in his manner although certainly intelligent, if overly hasty in making decisions.

Peeking around the edge of the archway, Philo was suddenly assailed by the sweet scent of roses. It was unexpected here, amidst the odor of the crowd and the bitter smell of animal dung. Not to mention the acridly lingering memory of the beggars who had relieved themselves in the relative privacy of the archway under bas reliefs commemorating forgotten military victories.

Philo was reminded of Senator Aurelius’ banquet, at which the gentle fragrance of roses had hung sweetly in the air. He looked around.

A heavily perfumed child glared up at him with the black eyes of Cerberus, red-painted lips drawn back in an expression that was not exactly a smile.

“You, old man! Tell me quickly why I should not call the Prefect and have you thrown into an imperial dungeon immediately!”

Philo drew back in alarm and confusion, staring at the apparition. The boy, for it was a boy despite the heavy layer of chalk on its face, kohl rimmed eyes and the cloyingly heavy rose perfume, was dressed in a short plain brown tunic which blended in with the garb of the majority of the crowd around them. The bright yellow leggings he wore did not. Philo had occasionally glimpsed exotic beings such as this on the palace grounds. The lad was obviously one of dozens of decorative court pages.

“What do you mean?” stammered Philo, for once finding himself at a loss for words.

“Oh dear, what do I mean?” mimicked the boy, making his voice quaver. “Don’t think to play the innocent with me, I warn you, or you’ll be lying on top of dead men at the bottom of a pit within the hour. I don’t suppose you’d last long down there. Even an old gizzard like yours might be palatable to the crows.”

Philo retreated another step, not caring when he felt one of the befouled bas reliefs imprint its triumphant scene upon his himation. “Who are you, to accuse me like this?” he demanded, outraged.

The boy gave a harsh laugh. “My name is Hektor,” he said. “And I am well-known in high circles. The very highest.”

Philo protested weakly that he was guilty of no wrong doing, having merely been taking a stroll around the city.

“You have been following the Lord Chamberlain,” Hektor broke in impatiently.

“That’s ridiculous!”

“You’ve been creeping along behind him ever since he left his house.”

“How would you know that?” Philo demanded. Had he been so obvious in his shadowing that even a child had deduced his plan?

“When you both came out of the same house and took the same path, yet you did not hail the Lord Chamberlain, I said to myself, now, that is interesting. Why would that wretched old scoundrel be skulking along following the highly placed official whose hospitality he has been enjoying? It was quite obvious that was what you were doing, for when he paused, so did you. So I followed you both. After all, who knows what your design might be? Under that billowing, pretentious thing you’re wearing, are you an assassin in an old man’s clothing waiting for your opportunity to murder our dear Lord Chamberlain?”

Hektor stepped forward, extending one hand to grasp Philo’s shoulder as the old man cringed backwards, trapped by the befouled wall behind him. When the boy’s delicate hand mercifully stopped short and drew back, Philo noticed its fingernails were painted.

Philo paled, feeling his heart squirming fearfully in his chest. “I am an acquaintance of the Lord Chamberlain and indeed, as you say, I am enjoying his hospitality, as is well known.”

“Ah, but how do I know that you are not a spy who has ingratiated himself by some subterfuge into the Lord Chamberlain’s household?”

“I have known John for years. He was…”

“Never mind.” Hektor waved his dainty hand in a gesture of dismissal. “I shall allow you to live. Count yourself fortunate that I am in a merciful mood today.” A scowl marred the boy’s beautiful face. “You seem harmless enough. You may go now.”

Philo departed hastily. As he left the forum at as quick a pace as he could manage, he berated himself for the irrational fear he had felt of the absurdly painted creature, yet it was a fear he could not shake off. He glanced back once more before going around a corner and leaving the forum blessedly out of sight. From that distance, from the back, as Hektor craned his neck to see over the crowd, he looked like any other boy.

“Yes, Lucretia, I remember it was always your favorite game as a child. You loved to hide for me to find you,” Nonna recalled, a smile blossoming along the well-worn lines of her face.

The elderly woman was in full flood of happy reminiscences. Chattering like a magpie, she only paused now and then to spoon up boiled wheat from her dented silver bowl, a gift from her former owners upon her manumission and retirement.

Lucretia was perched nearby on a low chair finely inlaid with rosewood. It had been another parting gift from her parents to her former nursemaid. Nonna seemed unchanged, she thought, or was this strange effect of time leaving no traces of its inexorable passing merely an illusion? To a child, all adults look elderly. Yet now that Lucretia was a woman, Nonna, although more stooped and slower in her movements, looked scarcely a day older. The only real difference was that her hair had thinned to little more than a gray nimbus.

The young woman nervously patted at her own glossy black hair, such a contrast to her milk white skin as more than one poetic suitor had remarked.

“I always hid under the kitchen table, didn’t I?” she recalled.

Nonna nodded, smiling. “Yes, and I had such a bad memory even then that that was always the last place I looked. And of course with being rather hard of hearing, naturally I could never hear you giggling, not even when I came in to ask the cook if he had seen you.”

Lucretia smiled wordlessly, enjoying Nonna’s little fictions, happy to listen to the old woman’s soothing flow of words, as sweet as the honey with which Nonna had cured the tickle in her throat whenever she had a cough.

The narrow, sunwashed room in which they were conversing was on the top floor of a sturdy house on a side street leading from the Forum Constantine. The room served as Nonna’s bedroom, kitchen and general living space. Despite its cramped dimensions, it was pleasing to her, particularly as it was part of a building of solid masonry construction rather than one of the dilapidated wooden tenements in which the city’s truly impoverished congregated.

The large unshuttered window by which Lucretia sat admitted street sounds floating up from four stories below, a running stream of noise that diminished only slightly with each setting of the sun. There were always people out and about after darkness fell, although not necessarily to do good works.

A hoarse shout caught Lucretia’s attention and she shifted quickly in her chair to scan the scene below. No, that wasn’t Balbinus’ voice. It had probably emanated from the ne’er-do-wells conversing loudly as they lounged like dusty tomcats in a patch of sunlight at the house front.

“But hide and seek is a child’s game,” remarked Nonna. “It is not a game for a proper young woman. I’m glad you are here rather than walking on dusty roads or at that shrine you say you visited. Did they sing hymns?”

“Not while I was there,” Lucretia said. “But speaking of hymns, I recall that whenever we were going home after attending a church service, if I started to sing them in the street, you always admonished me very severely.”

Nonna sniffed. “Girls who sing in the streets grow up to be prostitutes, selling themselves in dark corners. Everyone knows that.”

“I would never prostitute myself,” Lucretia said firmly. “Besides, Michael will stop all singing in the streets.”

Nonna took another spoonful from her bowl. “You were always my favorite, Lucretia, of all the children I have looked after. I had high hopes for you, my dear. I still do. You are so beautiful, so intelligent, and yet I confess there have been times when I feared you were about to make a terrible mistake. Anatolius, for example. A handsome young man and pleasant enough, but really not at all a suitable match for you.”

“Anatolius is the son of a senator,” Lucretia pointed out.

“But Balbinus is himself a senator and a man of substance. Not a landless boy like Anatolius.”

“But a woman should marry for love, don’t you think?”

“Oh, my dear,” Nonna gave a nervous laugh and her weather-beaten face reddened. “Love? Well, there is poetry and then again there is life.”

“I will not be bought and sold,” Lucretia said quietly.

She was bitterly disappointed. She had expected Nonna to take her part, just as she always had, or at least in Lucretia’s memory. It had been some years now since her nursemaid had been granted freedom and a small pension and given this tiny apartment. Lucretia had visited her many times in the intervening interval. But not lately, not since Balbinus had turned out the attendant who accompanied her around the city. He had done it out of spite, she was certain.

Nonna sighed. “Lucretia,” she began gently, “you will understand that I am saying this only for your own good. And that is just how I would begin when you were a child and you were going to hear something you’d consider unpleasant, yes, yes, I can see you thinking it now.”

Lucretia smiled sadly. “You are going to tell me that I must go back to my husband, who is doubtless pacing the floor wondering where I am and worrying about my safety.”

Nonna nodded. “Yes. I could not refuse you shelter in my humble home but it has been long enough now. You must be aware that rumors will be circulating. This will not reflect well upon you or your husband, or for that matter on your own family.”

“I do not want to cause difficulties, Nonna. I will seek some other place to go.”

Nonna clucked scoldingly. “What do you know of fending for yourself, child? The city is a dangerous place and grows more so every day. You are fortunate indeed to have a man like Balbinus to take care of you.”

“And I thought you would understand!”

“You have not been married very long, Lucretia. You seemed happy enough. What demons have been whispering in your ear? Or does your husband mistreat you? I have a strong suspicion that my little lamb is not telling Nonna the entire story.”

Lucretia shook her head. She realized she could not bring herself to speak of it, tell Nonna that the senator’s ring burned her finger as if the circlet was fresh from the goldsmith. She could not accept her duty as other women did. Hadn’t she tried, for more than two years? Even after she had realized that it was an agony that would never end.

Then she had heard Michael’s preaching and something in the man’s words, something she could not identify, called insistently to her.

“Well, if you are indeed concealing something from me,” Nonna was saying, “still, you are from a noble family and therefore need no instruction on these matters. Would it not be possible to overcome the difficulty? Perhaps Balbinus could talk to your father about it?” She paused, considering how best to phrase what she had to say. “If you will permit an old woman who in her humble way loves you to speak plainly, whatever marital problems you are experiencing, Balbinus does love you and he must be very worried. It surprises me that he has not already been here looking for you.”

“The only way he could learn of your whereabouts is by questioning my father. To do that, he would have to admit that I had left him, and he would never do that. He is after all a man in the public eye and must be ever careful of his reputation.”

“And what about your own reputation, Lucretia? Do you not think that your servants are not wagging their tongues and nodding very wisely as they discuss the identity of your lover? Or lovers?”

The stern look on the old woman’s face relaxed. “Well, now,” she continued with a chuckle, “I see that setting of the jaw that I remember so well from your childhood. Nonna has said enough, yes, yes. But no doubt you accept the wisdom of my words, just as you always did when you were a little girl, so let’s enjoy a last few quiet hours together before you’re on your way home.”

She wiped a crust of bread around her silver bowl to sop up the last scraps of boiled wheat. “You were blessed not to be assaulted when you went to visit that shrine, Lucretia, for even in that wretched old tunic you are as beautiful as a dove and it is a miracle you did not attract unwanted attention. Perhaps it would be safest to convey a message to Senator Balbinus so that he can come to take you back, or at the very least send a couple of brawny servants to accompany you home.”

Lucretia stared down into the busy street, panic welling in her breast. A thin girl passed along below, carrying a basket of vegetables. Slaves had more freedom than well-born women. A beggar could roam the city without an escort.

The world was such a large place and so full of wonders and life, how could she spend all her days confined in the dark, windowless cell of a loveless marriage?