Two for Joy

Chapter Fourteen

John was startled by a high-pitched scream sliding upwards until the voice cracked and gave out.

“The master is attending a patient,” explained the maidservant who had just admitted him to Gaius’ house. The bruise under her eye, newly blossoming when he had called on Gaius the night Peter had been taken ill, had faded to a yellowish discoloration.

“Don’t worry, the master isn’t inflicting unnecessary suffering,” the girl rattled on. “A good loud scream is always a hopeful sign. When there’s no sound from the surgery, that’s when the poor things are carted out on boards.”

John crossed the atrium to the room where Gaius conducted his professional consultations. The ruddy-faced physician was tending to a young man seated on the edge of a long wooden table. Gaius looked up from the man’s right arm, which was already firmly swathed in bandages from wrist to shoulder, to acknowledge John’s arrival with an amiable nod. The contents of a small clay pot set on the table beside his patient filled the sunny room with a rancid smell. The injured man’s face was the color of an unpainted marble statue and set just as rigidly.

“You are fortunate you broke the upper bone,” Gaius informed his patient. “It’s possible that you might be left with a slight deformity when it’s healed, but you have good muscles and a little extra flesh there, so if you are, your injury won’t show at all. The ladies will love you as much as ever!”

He secured the last length of linen strip and the man climbed gingerly off the table.

“Now whatever you do, don’t try to bend that arm too soon,” Gaius instructed. “I once treated someone who took no notice of this advice and the jagged end of the bone not only broke through the skin but the bandaging as well.”

The patient fumbled at the pouch on his belt with his useful hand. “I am sorry but I have few nummi,” he said hoarsely. “I hope these will be sufficient?”

Gaius waved away his offer of payment. “Never mind. Put them towards buying yourself a jug of wine. In a couple of hours you’ll need it. You’ll think Cerberus’ teeth are chewing on that bone,” he replied cheerfully. “Pain isn’t so bad. Just think of it as a sign you’re alive.”

Gaius shook his head when the man had departed. “That poor young man is a plasterer, John. He was working on the new banqueting hall’s ceiling when the scaffolding gave way. Fortunately an excubitor was passing by and brought him here immediately.”

“He will recover full use of his arm?”

“Oh, I have set the bone well, John. It will certainly heal well if he follows my instructions. But until it does, how he will feed himself and his family, if he has one, with just one good arm, I cannot say.”

Gaius wiped unguent from the leaf-shaped blade of the spathomele lying next to the clay pot and bustled off with both through an archway into the small storeroom opening off his surgery. Glancing into the other room, John noted two walls of shelves crowded with pots, jars and wooden boxes. A large, low table holding trays of probes, forceps and scalpels and a selection of basins of various sizes stood against the third wall.

“That was a foul smelling concoction you were using, Gaius,” John remarked, following him into the storeroom.

“Cerate, that’s what it was. It’s compounded mostly of lard and wax. Marvelously effective for dressings.”

John picked up a mortar partly filled with pulped leaves.

“Comfrey,” Gaius told him. “Another excellent medication for knitting together broken bones, but in fact when that young man arrived I was preparing it for burns.”

“You are expecting to be treating them, then?”

“The entire city is expecting fires, I would imagine. If not of the supernatural sort, then the kind set by the sort of fools driven to violence by superstitious fear.”

John set down the mortar and fingered a stoppered jar containing a dried herb he could not identify. “I suspect many of your ingredients are poisonous?”

“Practically everything in this room is poisonous, if you do not administer it correctly,” Gaius confirmed, “or if you mix it with another ingredient or two. Take hellebore for example, which is what you’re fiddling with, by the way. Hypatia brought me that from the palace gardens only last week. She says the empress always stops to admire its flowers, which is rather amusing since we both know the plant is poisonous and doubtless so does Theodora. I’ve asked Hypatia if she can supply me with rue. I’m beginning to run out.”

John, grasping his opportunity, asked about the course of treatment the physician had prescribed for Aurelius.

“When he first came to me with his bladder complaint I prescribed warm naphtha, the usual thing for that sort of discomfort. But when that didn’t heal him, I realized he was suffering from a bladder stone.” Gaius’ expression darkened. “John, why are you questioning me so closely?”

“Simply put, the senator was poisoned-and here is a room full of poisons.”

“He hadn’t taken naphtha for three or four days, if you’re implying that I tampered with his medication. He was fasting, or at least he should have been, because had he not passed the stone, I would have had to resort to surgery.”

“He was telling everyone at the banquet he had been cured by Michael’s blessing.”

“I heard him,” Gaius said shortly. “Regrettably, it resulted in heated words between us. Strange how it hadn’t occurred to him that his miraculous cure may have simply been my ministrations taking effect. As I pointed out to him, unlike miracles which are instantaneous, medical treatments often take some time to work their full effect.”

“However unfair he might have seemed by crediting your cure to Michael, still, it’s undeniable that the two of you argued before he was murdered.”

“That was the wine talking.”

“If wine can talk, doubtless it can also wield a weapon, and while some men find Lethe in their cups, others find the Furies. Did you think I would not notice your servant’s face the other night? Her bruising was as purple as your nose and its cause was the same.”

Gaius looked ashamed. “I regret striking the girl, John. I have apologized to her. But surely you don’t really think I murdered Aurelius?”

“You informed half the guests at the banquet that he was bent on ruining you by telling everyone they could be cured immediately by going to visit Michael. Your devotion to Bacchus is common knowledge, Gaius. It’s already cost you a number of your patients. You can’t afford to lose the rest.”

“That’s ridiculous, John! To murder a man, a senator, because-” Gaius’ face reddened with anger.

“Too much wine makes men do ridiculous things. Or murderous things,” John pointed out.

“Indeed? And did the senator’s most excellent wine also make me set fire to that poor girl from Isis’ house? I was certainly not responsible for either death. You’re grilling me like St Lawrence or a street vendor’s fish,” Gaius concluded plaintively, “and I considered you a friend.”

“I am your friend,” John replied quietly. “But as a physician you will know that cures necessitate investigation and investigations are not always painless.”

Gaius turned away. Grabbing a heavy pestle, he angrily pounded it down into the mortar.

“You misunderstand, Gaius,” John assured him. “I must speak to all who attended Aurelius’ banquet. I am going now to question Isis further.”

“Good!” Gaius did not look up as he ground the mixture in the mortar to smoother consistency. “And while you’re there you can inform her that her girls will have to soak their contraceptive pessaries in olive oil for a while, since I can’t spare lead ointment for them right now. On the other hand, I soon should have rue enough to mix into abortion potions. That’ll certainly please her.”

Madam Isis was outraged. “Soak them in olive oil! As if that would do any good! What’s he trying to do, ruin me?” She paused, reflecting for a moment. “Ah, I have it, John. There’s a honey seller just off the Forum Tauri. Honey can be got a lot cheaper than Gaius’ services, and it’s better than olive oil for the intended task. Since the honey seller visits my girls often, I’m certain we could arrange to exchange services. I’ll send Darius around to ask about that right away. Now why didn’t I think of this before? Think of the money I’d have saved!”

Isis was about to sweep out of her luxurious sitting room in her usual maelstrom of colored silks and exotic perfume when John stopped her. “There was another guard at the door when I arrived.”

“I sent Darius out to purchase stronger locks and more bars for the windows. Iron bars. If he’s back, he’ll be outside further securing the house.”

The madam left the room long enough to give instructions.

“Not that there haven’t been one or two of my girls who, honey or not, have been rather careless,” Isis told John upon her return. “And then there’s poor Darius, he’s absolutely distraught about Adula. Confidentially, John, he’d become very fond of the girl. Of course, she doted on him. And it was a terrible death.” She glanced down at the burns on her hands, mute witnesses to her fruitless attempts to save Adula.

John moved uncomfortably in his chair. It was padded much too amply for his spartan tastes. “Isis, I’m here to speak to you about that very girl. You say her name was Adula?”

“Yes, or at least that was what we called her. What she was called by her father, or in any event the man who claimed to be her father when he showed up at my door trying to hawk her for twice as much as I was willing to pay, who can say? He never told me.” Isis half reclined on her couch. The delicate table beside it bore its customary jug of wine and silver bowl filled with fruit. On this occasion, she did not seem inclined to sample either.

“You mentioned Darius was very fond of the girl. There was a special relationship with her, perhaps?”

“Special?” Isis laughed. “Darius frets over all of us. He’s a regular mother hen. He did admit to taking some liberties with Adula, but there’s nothing unusual in that, men are men and always will be. If it were otherwise, I’d be out of business. He’ll recover his spirits soon enough.”

“Can you tell me anything about Adula’s background?”

Isis shook her head. Her cheeks were hollower than John had seen in the years he had known her. While it was true that her thinner features hinted at the finely chiseled face that had made her a rare beauty before she “retired to a desk post,” as she liked to put it, they more strongly suggested incipient exhaustion.

“She was from one of those peasant families scrabbling to survive, or so said her father or whoever he was.”

“Did she entertain any regular clients? Any particular favorites?”

“Favorites? Well, Senator Aurelius has never frequented this house, if that’s what you’re thinking. As for his son, I’m not aware he ever visited with her. Everyone knows he’s attracted to the aristocratic type, and he’s quite willing to put down an extra coin or two for one who can play the part well,” she concluded.

John nodded, embarrassed that Anatolius’ private preferences in such matters were a well known matter of commerce in Isis’ house. “So there was no particular reason you chose her to be among those accompanying you to the senator’s banquet?”

“Nothing beyond talent and enthusiasm. Besides, it is good for a country girl to see how wealthier citizens live, don’t you think? It gives them an indication of what is possible in Constantinople. After all, we all know what Theodora was before she married Justinian, don’t we?”

John agreed, adding, “Of course, there were many men at that banquet who might have been here at one time or another, even though they all professed ignorance of your house when questioned.”

Isis waved her beringed hand. “Please, John. You know I cannot answer the questions you are about to ask. My livelihood depends upon my being discreet even when my clients are not. But I will tell you this,” she continued. “Just looking over the guests I recognized enough familiar faces to keep you busy interviewing for, well, for much longer than I suspect you have available to solve the matter.”

John asked her to recount whatever she had observed of Adula’s death. Unfortunately, Isis had been too intent on her flute-playing to notice anything until the screaming began. John made a mental note to request that one of the Prefect’s men interview the other girls who had been present. Suspecting such questioning would be fruitless, he did not wish to waste his time on it. People tended to see what they expected to see. And unexpected events, catching them unready, were seldom carefully observed.

He asked Isis once more if she were certain she had no information to offer.

She shook her head. “Nothing except that I hear that around the city it’s being said she was struck down because of her evil ways. If that’s true, I might well be next.”

John murmured that he doubted it, the sins of her house were not the worst in Constantinople by any means, and concluded with a slight smile, “Indeed, compared to some, your girls are still innocents.”

Isis leaned forward intently. “At least, they are innocent of anything but quenching the natural fires of the fleshly sort. Personally, I don’t believe those other fires had anything but a human origin and I suspect that you agree with me.”

“Of course I do, but then neither of us are Christians.”

“But how do one’s religious beliefs change deductions arising from the facts?” A shadow passed over her face. “To tell you the truth, I blame myself for it,” she said, dabbing at her suddenly wet eyes.

John looked at her questioningly.

“Isn’t it obvious what happened? There were torches everywhere, in the corridors and rooms, along the colonnade. And I insisted my girls wear those elaborate costumes. A spark must have fallen into the folds of Adula’s clothing and smoldered there until it burst into flame. And now those zealots are taking credit for what was nothing but a terrible accident!”

Before John could reply there was a brisk rap on the door. A blonde girl dressed in a softly folded, short linen skirt and little else padded barefoot in. Her sapphire colored eyes betrayed lively interest in this richly dressed man in her owner’s private sitting room.

“I found Darius and he has departed to the honey seller’s shop as directed, madam,” she said respectfully.

“I shall have to talk to Darius at some point, Isis, but for now I must be away myself, since I have others to consult upon this matter,” John said, concealing a smile at the girl’s obvious curiosity. “Besides, you are becoming too philosophical for me, especially since there is a talkative old Greek philosopher living under my roof at the moment.”

Isis laughed. “Come and see me again soon, then. I promise you I shall have some of that awful Egyptian wine you love and we’ll talk only about the old days in Alexandria and the latest palace gossip.”

John nodded gravely. It was a long standing jest, for although years before they had both lived in Alexandria at the same time, their paths had never crossed in that huge city.

On their way down the hall, the barefoot girl giggled nervously. He glanced quizzically at her, asking what was amusing her.

She looked at him in panic. “Oh, sir, excellency, I mean, I beg your pardon. It is just that, well, there’s an old Greek philosopher visits me every market day, as regular as the sunrise, and I couldn’t help laughing, thinking about him. I shouldn’t say anything. Madam will be furious that I talked about one of my clients. It’s against her rules.”

“I won’t betray you, don’t worry. But what makes you think he is a philosopher?”

The girl looked nervously back at the door of Isis’ sitting room, caught between the known perils of her imperious employer and the possible dangers that could emanate from angering this obviously important stranger.

“I would not offend you,” she began hesitantly.

“I doubt you could offend me. I’m just curious,” John assured her with a slight smile.

“Well, it’s this, excellency. When he comes up to my room he watches while I get undressed. But after that…well…he has me pose, like a statue, this way and that.” She demonstrated, flapping her arms, looking more like a small, ungainly bird than any classical sculpture John had ever seen. “He keeps me at it until the last drop runs out of the water clock. After an hour, or sometimes two, my arms feel ready to fall off.”

“And so you think he’s a philosopher because he has you pose like a statue?” John asked, thinking that the girl would get far stranger demands if she stayed very long in Isis’ house.

The girl giggled again, her light blue eyes bright. “Oh, no, excellency. I know he’s a philosopher because he just sits on the edge of my bed for the entire time and drivels on about various ancients’ theories on the nature of beauty. And that’s all that happens.”

“I’ve never set foot inside a house like that in my life!” Philo angrily grabbed a thick stick from a pile of kindling in the corner of the kitchen.

John, seated at the table, half-expected him to bring the stout stick down on his knuckles as he had once or twice when John had misbehaved in his student days. However, Philo contented himself with vigorously stirring up the brazier, sending golden sparks floating ethereally upward. “I am shocked that you could even consider accusing me of such base licentiousness, John.”

The sun had just set. It had been a weary day and John’s mind was moving much too slowly to keep a proper guard on his words. Too late, he regretted mentioning the young prostitute’s remarks.

“I was concerned about your safety, Philo, that’s all,” he explained tiredly. “How a man conducts such personal matters is entirely his own business.”

Philo threw the slightly charred stick back on the pile. “As well it should be. And to change the subject entirely, that old scoundrel Peter is still lying abed.”

John had already noted that the kitchen smelled merely of smoke. Only a ghostly trace remained of the welcoming fragrance of simmering meats and sauces that normally greeted him each evening.

“You really must do something about him, John.” Philo sat down on the stool he’d pulled closer to the brazier and warmed his hands. “When he did not appear this afternoon, I eventually went up to see how he was feeling.”

“He was still resting as I had instructed?”

“Ah, so you had ordered him to stay abed? However, we did have some words.”

“Peter is my servant, Philo, not yours. And, if may I remind you, a free man,” John pointed out shortly.

“I meant it in the sense that we had some fascinating discourse, John. In fact, we had quite a long and most interesting conversation. He insisted on trying to explain to me how this god of his can possess distinct but inseparable natures. Nothing but convoluted word play in my opinion, but I do believe we might have gained a good orator there if he’d had some proper training as a young man.”

After his tiring and tedious investigations John did not care to consider such a spectacle, so he contented himself with commenting that he was happy that the pair had found something in common.

“Oh, he’s a veritable library of knowledge on religious heresies. Eutychianism, Manichaeism, Docetism… It’s quite remarkable how many ways they have found to slice up that deity of theirs. Yet sink a knife into some poor dumb beast to honor an older god and you are immediately called a blasphemer of the highest order!” Philo rubbed his hands together. John was not certain whether he was still trying to warm them or was simply enthused by the topic under discussion.

“Anatolius has made similar comments but he is young and often careless in his speech,” John said. “I hope you are old enough to know better than voice such opinions too loudly.”

“Do you think I’m that much of a fool with these Michaelites stirring trouble up for all of us with their odd ideas?”

John shrugged. “I’m amazed that Justinian would think he can reconcile their beliefs with orthodoxy. Perhaps he sees some subtle shading we do not. But,” he continued wearily, rubbing his eyes, “it’s been a difficult day. I will be retiring early, I think.”

He got up. As they had been talking the last embers of sunset had faded. The flickering orange light of the cheerful brazier danced across the room’s plain plaster walls.

Philo also stood. “John,” he began hesitantly, “I have something to confess. I went out earlier. I followed you.” He quickly recounted his meeting with Hektor. “I’m ashamed to say it, but the child frightened me so much I came back immediately and sat in your garden to compose myself. It took some time, I fear.”

John no longer felt tired. Hektor would not be spying for any good reason. Had the boy somehow discovered Theodora had ordered John to desist from investigating Senator Aurelius’ death and intended to foment trouble?

“No need to feel ashamed, Philo,” he finally said. “You have good reason to beware of Hektor, and so do I.”

“John, if I have put you in any danger…”

“No. Not at all. In fact, it’s fortunate you followed me, because now I’m forewarned about Hektor’s sudden interest in my movements. But, please, don’t follow me again. You were a wonderful tutor, Philo. I owe my life to you. But take my counsel on this and stay inside in relative safety from now on.”

Philo replied with uncharacteristic hesitancy. “One thing more. I…found that message Anatolius copied and left here on the day of the banquet.”

He led John to the study and removed a piece of parchment from beneath the shatranj board.

“An unfortunate place to lose it,” John remarked, “considering how unlikely it is that I’d ever touch that wretched game of yours.”

Philo, looking sheepish, handed the document to him. “I thought Michael might have concealed some meaning within the text. I was trying to decipher it for you.”

“Before you lost it?”

John read the copy letter quickly. It contained the usual lengthy honorifics, followed by a demand for an audience. Then came the dire prophecies Justinian had described. John sighed. There seemed little to be learned from it. Had Anatolius placed himself in danger to no gain?

“Of course,” Philo was saying, “Anatolius may have copied the words accurately but not their arrangement. These things can be very subtle indeed. Not everyone grasps this significant detail.”

John’s attention was suddenly snagged by one of the sentences. He reread it, half aware of Philo droning on beside him, having realized that by seeking cryptic hidden clues the philosopher had seemingly overlooked the content of the message itself.

“Philo, did you notice this?”

The old man glanced at the letter.

“It is this sentence,” John pointed, “‘And lo for each of these holy entities the heavenly fire shall claim a sinner, so that all the world shall rejoice in the might of the True Number.’…”

“That must refer to some formula,” ventured Philo, eyes brightening at the prospect of a mathematical puzzle to solve.

“No, Philo, I don’t think so. According to the second letter, these Michaelites worship a fourth holy entity, the human vessel, that they consider co-equal with the usual trinity. That makes four. So their so-called True Number must be the same. Thus this supposed heavenly fire was prophesied as taking four lives. But on that night only three died.”

Philo understood immediately. “Could the girl at Aurelius’ house have been the fourth?”

“Possibly. But possibly not, for I heard Michael predicted more fiery deaths in a sermon the same evening as Aurelius’ banquet.”

“Then what can it mean?”

John was about to reply when there was a thunderous knock on the house door. Going downstairs, he curled his fingers around the hilt of the dagger at his belt.

Cracking the door open cautiously, he was surprised to see Darius looming outside.

“Madam informed that you wanted to question me, so I thought I should attend at once.”

John let him in and shut the door against the windy night.

Philo had vanished when they entered the kitchen. Since he could not have avoided hearing Darius’ distinctive voice booming up from the entrance hall, perhaps he was not anxious to have one of Isis’ employees confirm his recently denied patronage of her establishment.

“It’s a bitter night and I would have been happy to speak to you tomorrow,” John said, gesturing Darius to take a seat.

It was obvious from his visitor’s red eyelids and blotched features that Darius had been weeping and was attempting, with little success, to suppress more sobs. “I was right next to her, Lord Chamberlain,” he said. “It was my job to guard madam and the girls and I could not even do that.”

“You did all you could.” John looked pointedly at Darius’ enormous hands. They were covered in blisters from his efforts to extinguish the fire that had killed Adula. He hoped Gaius would not charge too steep a fee for the amount of unguent that would be needed for those burns. Better still, he thought, he would arrange for it to be given to Darius at no charge and pay the cost himself. “You will display the scars from your brave efforts for the rest of your life. And rest assured, we will find out who is responsible for her death.”

“No. No, I fear not.” Darius’ eyes glistened. “It was surely the work of some dreadful and malign deity.”

“I am certain that there was no such intervention involved, Darius. Now, reflect. You were closer to the girl than anyone else. Perhaps you saw something unusual, something strange, that might be helpful in discovering the villain responsible?”

Darius shook his head. “I’ve spent hours thinking about it, over and over, trying to remember exactly how it was. But all I can remember is that one instant I was standing there and the next, there was a terrible scream. I looked at Adula and already she was being consumed by flames.”

John went to the kitchen window. Its glass was opaque with condensation. He ran a finger around one of the small rectangular panes and the lights of the city leapt into view.

“Everyone has said that, that the fire was suddenly just there. Yet it must have originated somewhere.”

“I believe it came from within, John. Her eyes… they looked as if there was an inferno raging behind them. I can’t forget that…”

“Perhaps you heard something?”

“Well, there was madam’s flute, poetry being declaimed, people talking and laughing. Just the usual things you would expect to hear at a gathering such as that.”

As Darius wiped his eyes with the heel of his hand, his sleeve slipped back to reveal oozing burns on his wrists. Most men with such wounded flesh, John reflected, would be crying from pain rather than with grief.

“It is a strange world, Lord Chamberlain,” Darius went on. “Everyone knows that you and Senator Aurelius were sent on a diplomatic mission to Michael. And now the senator is gone. He is not the only one dead, either. If I was asked, I would tell the emperor that if he wants these deaths to stop he should make peace with Michael. No human hand can stop him.”

Having secured the house after Darius’ departure, John retired. On the way to his bedroom, he paused for a moment at the doorway of his study. For once, his gaze was drawn not to the mosaic girl Zoe but to the pagan gods cavorting lustily in the heavens above the bucolic scene. As the flickering light from the lamp he carried gave lewd animation to the figures, he wondered afresh. Had that subtly shifting scene been specified in its owner’s original commission or was it a sly joke on the part of the artisan, directed at the despised tax collector who had owned the house until his head was sacrificed by Justinian in an attempt to placate an enraged populace?

The old gods in the mosaic reminded John of Aurelius, a staunch pagan yet, he sensed, despite his jesting almost convinced he had been granted a miraculous cure by a man whose religion he did not follow. Darius likewise was no believer and certainly no coward, yet he was already frightened sufficiently to counsel immediate surrender. It was obvious that if Michael could so easily persuade the minds of men like those, it was equally certain that Justinian would not be able to control Constantinople’s largely Christian population for very much longer.

John’s last glance around his study touched the shatranj board. A thin smile briefly illuminated John’s lean face. During his brief discussion with Darius, it had occurred to him that small though the scrap of parchment that had been hidden under it was, it was the only thing offering a shred of hope. Its message demonstrated that Michael was not as all-knowing as everyone appeared to believe.