Two for Joy

Chapter Twenty-eight

It was yet another dawn arrival. John and Peter had entered the city lounging casually in the back of a farmer’s cart. If anyone had been assigned to watch against the exiled Lord Chamberlain’s return, he must have been asleep at his post for the two men were soon slipping unmolested across the cobbled square between the barracks and John’s house.

Although the house might not have been watched from outside it was certainly well guarded within. Darius, sworn to protect Isis’ door wherever that door might be, answered John’s summoning rap promptly.

“By Zurvan’s beard! What are you doing back here? And Peter, why are you wearing such fine clothes?” Darius shut and barred the door after quickly scanning the empty square. “What a night this has been, Lord Chamberlain,” he went on. “I was afraid your knock meant another sobbing woman seeking sanctuary!”

John gave him a questioning look. “You’ve been visited by sobbing women?”

“Well, only one, but that’s enough for me,” was the reply. “But more importantly, won’t Justinian have your head removed if he learns you’re back?”

“Perhaps not, after he’s heard all we have learned,” John said, hurrying up the stairs.

As he entered the kitchen he immediately recognized the woman whose pale patrician face was surrounded by greasy black ringlets.

“Lucretia! I am honored,” he said.

She sat sobbing quietly, ignoring Isis, who was pouring wine out for her. Peter hobbled in and although he said nothing John could read his servant’s horrified expression perfectly. His master’s wine being freely imbibed by two women, neither of them a relative, and the sun was barely risen. The scandal of it, the wagging tongues! Thank heavens nobody outside the house would hear of it.

“Master,” Peter said loudly, valiantly grabbing the wine jug and his master’s honor from Isis’ grasp, “perhaps some refreshment?”

The spectacle of a sumptuously robed servant waiting upon a Lord Chamberlain who was supposed to have fled at least as far as Cappadocia by now reduced Lucretia’s weeping to sniffles. She rose and embraced John. He rested his face on the top of her head for a few heartbeats before gently disengaging her arms and turning away, seemingly unconcerned by the astounded expressions blooming on Isis’ and Peter’s faces.

“Peter, take some wine yourself,” John instructed, warming his hands at the cheerily glowing brazier. He looked over his shoulder, cutting off his servant’s protests. “To keep up your strength, as a soldier always should.”

Darius’ bulk loomed into the room. Seeing it crowded, he leaned against the door post, his muscular arms folded.

“How is Felix?” John asked Isis, who had recovered her equilibrium. After years in her profession, few things threw her off stride for long.

“He is recuperating nicely, thanks to Hypatia’s ministrations. Her herbal knowledge is most impressive. She’s been quite busy since you left, chopping and measuring and cooking her potions.” She pointed toward the row of fragrant pots set along the base of the kitchen wall, mute confirmation of her words. “Your house is a positive hive of activity, more so than mine ever was, I do declare. But why are you here? None of us expected to see you so soon again, if indeed at all.”

“I will explain later.” John laid his hand gently on Lucretia’s arm. “Your husband Balbinus is searching for you, Lucretia,” he said quietly. “Why have you come here?”

“I came here because I was unable to see Anatolius. The house slaves would not allow me to enter and they refused to take a message to him. I suppose they thought I was some common woman, trying to cause trouble.” She dabbed at her eyes. Her hands were red and rough, the nails broken.

John glanced at Isis.

“No, she just arrived. She doesn’t know,” the woman muttered. Lucretia looked alarmed as Isis took her hand. “My dear, your friend is under arrest, accused of murder,” she said as gently as she could.

Lucretia gave a choking gasp and sat down abruptly.

Hypatia squeezed past Darius, who was still leaning on the door post. She might well have been standing in the hall listening to their conversation for some time, because she did not question John’s surprising reappearance. Instead she knelt by her pots, stirring them one by one.

“There is almost always a man behind a woman’s sorrow,” she announced to the room at large. “Or if not a man, then men.”

“How true, how true indeed,” Isis said with a sigh.

Lucretia looked haggard, much older than the last time John had seen her. That had been on the occasion of her wedding, a marriage that had broken Anatolius’ heart, or so Anatolius had claimed not long afterwards.

Lucretia mentioned the name almost before John had completed his recollection of the event.

“Lord Chamberlain,” she said, “I had planned to give certain information to Anatolius. I felt I could trust him to see that the right people received it.” She reddened slightly at this admission of that old relationship. “But since I cannot and I am among friends, I will tell you. You were at the shrine to meet with Michael. I observed you there and hid, in case you saw me and told my husband where I was. Forgive me for that.”

John said there was no need to ask for forgiveness.

Lucretia thanked him and then went on. “You were there but a short time and therefore did not hear what I did. I went to the shrine because of Michael’s words. How could I not be attracted by one who seeks to exalt the vessel of our humanity, used and mistreated as I have been?”

Isis gave a slight sniff of disapproval. “I appreciate your distress, child, but there are plenty who wouldn’t feel too used at being matched with a prosperous senator.”

Lucretia ignored her comment. “But what I heard and saw as I helped tend the sick and wounded disturbed me greatly. Michael’s followers occasionally spoke of matters that did not seem entirely appropriate for men of peace.”

“Certainly some do carry weapons,” Peter put in. “We’ve seen that ourselves.”

“And I have seen the results of the wielding of those weapons,” Lucretia said. “But more than that, I overheard some discussing how the city would soon be at their feet and the price they would exact upon it. That did not sound much like the talk of pilgrims to me. But then came mention of supernatural weaponry.”

John glanced over at her with keen interest. “Go on.”

Lucretia shrugged hopelessly. “They realized I was listening and moved away. Then I recalled one of the excubitors had advised me to leave for my own safety and thinking that it was now time to take that advice, I departed. If only he could have taken his own counsel. As I crept out, he was being carried to his grave by two of his comrades at arms.”

John offered a silent prayer that Mithra would accept and reward the unknown soldier who had succumbed to wounds gained by carrying out his duty.

“But,” Lucretia went on, determined, it seemed, to drain the pool of bitterness festering within her, “I do believe that aid is coming from an unexpected quarter, John. For soon the holy man, if he is indeed a holy man, will also be taking his last journey.”

“I don’t believe that he’s in danger from Justinian mounting another attack,” John assured her. “If Michael is caught he will surely die, but it will be in a far subtler way than by being put to the sword.”

“As far as Michael is concerned,” Hypatia put in, “I have a suspicion that Justinian cannot bribe him as he can the Persians, if you’ll excuse my saying so, Darius.”

Darius grunted agreement from the doorway. “I only wish Khosrow would pass some of Justinian’s tribute money along to my family. Then they could live like, well, like Khosrow!”

Lucretia spoke again. “Justinian will not need to purchase peace. As I said, Michael is not long for this world. He displays the marks of shackles. He’s a fraud, I’m convinced of that, but while he is now free of his chains, yet those chains still bind him, and securely at that, to an imminent death.”

“Now you sound as mysterious as a prophecy from the oracle at Delphi,” John said. “With Peter’s assistance, I’ve learned some surprising things about Michael and his followers and you’re certainly correct to suspect the intentions of some of his acolytes at least. But nothing we discovered suggests that Michael will die in the immediate future.”

“Then I will interpret my prophecy, as you call it,” Lucretia replied grimly. “Michael’s leg is mortifying. I saw the creeping lines of poison radiating away from those disgusting shackle sores myself, like the rays of some dark sun. He won’t be seeing too many more sunrises, that’s certain.”

Hypatia poured a pungent mixture from one of her pots into a clay bowl and vigorously stirred the liquid with a wooden spatula. “Isn’t his leg being treated? Honey, that’s the stuff for preventing infection and healing sores. At least that’s what we use in Egypt, but you have to be quick with its application if it’s needed. I’ll wager they sent you away with honey on your ankles when you acquired that tattoo, Isis?”

Isis stretched out her leg and pulled her garment up far enough to reveal her tattoo. “They did indeed and, as you can see, it took beautifully.” Neither the darkly outlined vertical rectangle with a pinched waist and flared base nor the horizontal bars across the top of the tattoo were blurred.

“But that shape, Isis!” exclaimed Lucretia. She bent down to study it more closely and then straightened. “That strange arrangement of dark lines…it almost reminds me of what I saw on Michael’s ankle, half obscured by his terrible sores.”

“Perhaps deliberately obscured,” John put in. His thoughts leapt like the flames in the brazier.

Isis shook her head in disgust, an expression that rarely crossed that worldly madam’s face.

“I have been away from Alexandria a long time,” she declared, “but surely my penitent sisters have not sunk to such depths as to permit men to enter the order? To think they would stoop to defile it for the sake of a few more coins from clients whose filthy tastes cannot otherwise be satisfied. It is enough to make me ashamed of my profession!”

Felix was propped up on his pallet, staring dolefully at the plaster wall, when John entered the small room next to Peter’s. Felix looked, John thought, like a caged bear, too large for the cramped space in which he was confined.

“John! Thank Mithra! The emperor has come to his senses and pardoned you?”

“No, he hasn’t.” There being no chair, John hunkered down on the floor beside the bed.

A look of horror crossed Felix’ bearded face. “If you are not pardoned, then even being here puts you under sentence of death, you know that well enough.”

“We are all under sentence of death. Some of us have a better idea of when it might be carried out. Right now I need your assistance.”

“Anything, of course,” Felix growled. His mouth tightened in pain. “Although I fear my offer does not amount to much in my present state.”

John replied that it was not Felix’s skill at arms that he needed just then. “What I am going to do is catch a very subtle murderer,” he continued.

“Do you mean whoever murdered Aurelius or Philo?”

“Yes, not to mention a few other people. The stylites, for example. There was nothing supernatural about their deaths, Felix. They were murdered and fire was the weapon used.”

Felix’s expression turned thunderous. “And fire was used against my men at the shrine. Some kind of incendiary device, do you think? I didn’t actually see what happened. I was inside the building by then, bleeding half to death on the floor. But my men swore there was fire from the sky.”

“That’s what they would have half expected, since people have been talking about nothing else for days,” John pointed out.

Felix muttered he should have guessed the truth of it even in his wounded state, since he had heard tales of the empire’s enemies using such weapons on eastern battlefields. Yet he had hesitated to believe those stories. How could fire be harnessed?

John smiled thinly. “Well, Felix, consider. What if you took a divided clay pot and filled one half of it with an inflammable concoction of elements that burns when wet, and the other half with water? Then having sealed it well, when that pot is thrown…”

“…it smashes,” Felix said triumphantly, “and the elements mix and burst into flame!” He frowned. “But clay pots sink, John. What about this fire on the water Hypatia keeps chattering on about?”

John admitted he did not know how that particular conflagration had been accomplished. However, since it had roared out from the mouth of the Bosporos and the shrine stood beside that very waterway he could certainly hazard a guess as to who was responsible.

“I suspect,” he went on, “this or perhaps another inflammable mixture that water cannot extinguish was involved. Imagine a large amount of this substance, something that floats on water, poured into the Bosporos so that its current carries the inferno down to the city. A rare and terrible weapon indeed. Michael is most certainly involved, Felix. There’s no doubt in my mind about that.”

Felix winced as he shifted uneasily. “Strangely, when you think about it, Michael’s trumpeted his guilt in the matter all along, hasn’t he? But since he hasn’t set foot in Constantinople since he arrived, who’s his accomplice?”

“I believe I know,” John replied, “and I intend to prove it and certain other related matters to Justinian, thus freeing Anatolius and ensuring that justice is served.”

Felix twisted around on the pallet, an effort that drained the color from his face. “This is all very well, John, but surely no one knows better than you that justice is seldom on speaking terms with the truth. And as far as Anatolius goes, I fear that the emperor is more concerned right now in dealing with Michael and defusing the threat posed by him and his rabble, inside and outside the city. What’s worse, by the noise I can hear even up here, your exile did little to calm the mood in the streets.”

John smiled. “I am not so certain that Justinian did not send me away in part for my own safety. Theodora has, as you know, long harbored a deep hatred toward me and during such unsettled times… well, let’s just say that certain very useful opportunities might have very well have presented themselves to her.”

“You think the emperor cannot control the actions of his own wife?”

It was a question John did not have to answer.

“So you are willing to wager that Justinian is not so badly disposed toward you as it would seem on the face of it?” Felix went on. “Well, John, I’ve done more than my fair share of gaming but I’ve never yet gambled with my life.”

“Of course you have, Felix, every time you went into battle! But more than that, I’ve discovered something that will immediately discredit Michael in the eyes of his followers and render him powerless to further threaten the emperor.”

Felix raised his bushy eyebrows in inquiry.

“Michael is not what he appears to be, Felix. Philo hinted at that and he was correct. That’s all I’ll say for now. Now, about that assistance you can render me. Darius has agreed to accompany me but he’s only one man, however powerful. I know there are certain of your excubitors who serve Mithra above even the emperor.”

“That’s true enough. At the barracks near the Chalke you will find a friend of mine, Cassius. He, and whichever men he chooses, can be trusted completely. I’ll write a note for him. He’ll destroy it immediately he’s read it, so don’t worry about that. But what will you accomplish by confronting Michael? That shrine he’s taken over is not a court of law. He could have you killed on the spot.”

“Your excubitors’ presence will prevent that, Felix, and there will also be an impartial witness, one who can vouch for what he observes and whose sworn word will be accepted by both the emperor and the populace in general.”

Felix doubted John could find such a person.

But John had already resolved the dilemma. “It will be quite simple,” he replied, “for his wife is under my roof. I mean to take along Senator Balbinus.”