Five for Silver: A John, the Lord Chamberlain Mystery (2 page)

Chapter Two

“And you’re certain he didn’t suffer, master? That was surely heaven’s mercy.” Peter made the sign of his religion.

John paused, anticipating further questions about Gregory’s death, but Peter said nothing. The only sound in the garden was the chuckling gurgle of water spilling into the pool from the mouth of an eroded and unidentifiable stone creature set in its center.

“You should rest, Peter,” John continued. “Hypatia can prepare the evening meal.”

“If you please, master, I would prefer to continue with my duties. Hypatia sometimes over-spices the food. Besides, she has enough to do here.”

It was true. Since the young Egyptian woman had come to work for him a few years earlier, John had noticed many more herbs and flowers stealing in amidst bushes and shrubbery. Most of the new plantings were a mystery to the Lord Chamberlain, who could identify the workshop that created a silver chalice by its imperial stamp, but knew nothing of horticulture.

“Sit down, Peter.”

John spoke quietly, but it was clearly an order rather than an invitation. Peter took a hobbling step over to the marble bench facing the pool and lowered himself stiffly. John sat down next to him. The clusters of white blossoms adorning the garden’s single olive tree had begun to open, yet seemed to emit none of their familiar fragrance. The air held the only too familiar charnel smell, but faintly, as if it had drifted over the roof into this inner space or still clung to John’s garments.

“The loss of an old friend is always deeply upsetting,” John said. “I’m sorry I had to be the one to confirm your suspicions.”

His elderly servant shook his head. “I’ve known Gregory was dead ever since the Lord’s messenger told me so. I’ve already prayed for my friend’s soul.” Peter’s army boot face, brown, mottled, and cracked, appeared calm although his eyes were glassy in a hint of tears not quite controlled.

John averted his gaze and instead stared at the cascading water sending ripples across the pool. “Are you certain Gregory didn’t give you some indication he was in danger? Perhaps not in so many words? Some strange business he’d mentioned to you? Something that could pose a risk to him? Try to remember.”

“It is merely as I explained, master. The angel appeared and—”

“Peter, consider how this must appear. You announce a man has been murdered, but have no idea who committed the deed or why. I look for this man and find someone has in fact thrust a blade into his heart. What am I to think? More importantly, what might others, who do not know you as well as I do, think?”

Peter sighed, but remained silent.

“Tell me about this angel again,” John continued patiently. “You say he looked like a man?”

“Yes, but uncommonly tall and fair of face, and clothed in shining robes. There was a glow about him as bright as the setting sun and his eyes burned like the sacred lamps in the Great Church.”

Grasping at wisps of straws, John asked if Peter had recognized the strange visitor.

“Only what he was, master.”

John had questioned Hypatia, who had neither seen nor heard anything unusual the evening before. He had inspected the heavy, nail-studded main door for signs of forcible entry, checked all the windows overlooking the cobbled square the building faced, had even made a circuit around the inner garden, examining its soft earth to ascertain if someone might have entered by crossing the roof and dropping down into the shrubbery. Nothing untoward could be found.

It was obvious the heavenly intruder had got into the house by way of Peter’s imagination.

Peter looked placid enough now, but he had been distraught and inconsolable when he related his tale that morning. John had gone out immediately to investigate the matter and thereby calm his servant’s fears.

Instead he had confirmed them.

Further, Peter had made it clear he expected John to find the culprit. A nearly impossible task. Crimes committed in the street were typically solved when the perpetrator happened to be caught in the act by the City Prefect’s men. However, John thought, Peter’s peculiar foreknowledge of the murder indicated it could be more than a commonplace crime.

“I don’t know much about this friend of yours, except that you’ve been meeting him now and again for years. Tell me about his history, Peter. There may be something in it that will help me find his murderer. For a start, what did Gregory do for a living?”

Peter looked away from John, toward the dark glass of the pool. “I can’t say.”

“He never told you in all the years you knew him?”

Peter confirmed it was the case. “We never spoke much about what we were doing now. As old friends do, we talked about past times. Our days in the army, mostly. Also the writings of the great church men. He had a wide knowledge of John Chrysostom. We’ve had some very lively discussions about his homilies.”

John noted the catch in Peter’s voice, caught the quick blink of his glistening eyes. Those theological discussions would be no more and the thought hung in the air as clearly as if it had been spoken aloud. “You never visited Gregory’s house?”

“No, master. We usually arranged to meet at a specific place. In the Forum Constantine, outside the Great Church, or perhaps at the Church of the Holy Apostles. Sometimes we met in front of the house here.”

“Never at his home?”

“He never said where he lived.” Peter lowered his voice before he continued, although there was no one to overhear. “I think he was ashamed, master. When we were in the army I was a mere cook, not a soldier like him. Yet he befriended me anyway. After his discharge, I suspect he didn’t prosper. Outside the army there’s much more call for cooks than soldiers, especially ones who are older. The excubitors would never have accepted him, for example. His position wasn’t as comfortable as mine, or so I guessed. I never questioned him. I wanted to spare his feelings, you see.”

Yet, John thought, the document the dead man had been carrying suggested he was a prosperous customs official.

“Did you ever observe anything that might have given you an idea of his occupation? His clothing, ink under his fingernails, a wine stain on a sleeve, a particular expression he used?”

“Those are things you would doubtless have noticed, master, but I did not,” Peter replied sorrowfully. “To me he was just an old friend. If he didn’t want to tell me about his humble station in life, I was happy to accept that.”

Would it be necessary for Peter to know about his friend’s circumstances?

Not yet, John decided.

Besides, there might be some mistake, even though he was certain the man he had seen at the hospice was the same man who had met Peter on numerous occasions.

Instead he asked Peter when he had last seen Gregory.

“It was the day Anatolius visited you with that perfumed young versifier.”

John suppressed a smile. “Crinagoras the poet, you mean?”

“I am sorry, master. My mind is calm enough, but I fear my tongue is not.”

“Never mind, Peter. It is to be expected. Were you meeting Gregory before you came to work here?”

“Yes, for many years. After we left the army I did lose track of him, as so often happens. I never expected we’d meet again. Then one morning, during the time I served in Lady Anna’s household, I saw him in the market by the Strategion.”

Peter’s voice strengthened as he recalled the event. “It was a raw day. I had been contemplating going to market, but when I woke up the rain was beating so hard at my window I decided to put it off a few hours. Then the sun showed itself. It was only a brief gleam, as if to remind me I shouldn’t be neglecting my duties. If the clouds hadn’t parted for just that instant, I might never have seen Gregory again. Or, for that matter, if Lady Anna had not instructed me to purchase leeks. It happened that only one vendor had leeks that morning and Gregory was seeking the very same vegetable. Imagine that, master. If he had been hungry for, say, figs, well…”

“If you think about it that way, Peter, all our lives are a quite improbable progression of circumstances.”

“It was a miracle, master,” Peter replied firmly. “Imagine the odds against two old friends meeting in that fashion in this teeming city. I believe if Lady Anna had wished me to buy figs, it was ordained Gregory would have had the same notion and so we would still have met again.”

John wondered if Peter and Gregory had pondered this interesting question during one of their conversations. He thought the story revealed more about Peter than Gregory. “You mentioned you met Gregory during your army days. Where was that?”

“Isauria. We were both in our twenties. This was after Emperor Anastasius put down the rebellion. Our task was to clear the Isaurians out of the mountains where they’d retreated. It took years.”

“I have heard it is a rugged country and breeds rugged men.”

“Indeed it is and does, master. The mountains are made of what looks like bleached, crumbling stone. They don’t look natural at all. Traversing them was like picking a way though a ruined fortress left by some vanished race of giants.”

Peter fell silent. His eyes sparkled. He had returned to another country, more distant than the ends of the earth. His own youth.

“The fighting was brutal,” he continued. “The Isaurians battled for every pass, every boulder. I was only a cook, but I learned soon enough a blade has other uses than slicing onions. Yet, hard as it was, not a day passed when I wasn’t inspired by the knowledge I was treading the same dusty roads as the saintly Paul traveled on his missionary journeys.”

Peter paused. “You can understand, then, that I thought a great deal about Paul,” he went on. “I found it a comfort. If we stopped to rest beneath a stand of pines beside a clear cool spring, who is to say that Paul might not have found the place just as inviting and paused there to refresh himself too?”

John observed that it was certainly possible.

“Many must have passed that way through the years. Gregory and I once found a couple of old coins fallen into a crevice in a flat rock where we’d sat down to enjoy our ration of wine. The coins were dropped there by some traveler, no doubt. I saved one because its inscription showed it was from Derbe, one of the cities Paul visited. I always put the coin out the evening before I was to meet Gregory, to remind me of our appointment when I woke up the next morning.”

Peter looked at his boots and blinked back tears. “I think I will just leave it out permanently now.”

Chapter Three

John sat as stiffly as a bronze statue, trying not to rock the tiny boat. The muscles of his long legs, necessarily drawn up almost to his chin, tingled in protest at his cramped position.

Over the broad shoulder of the laboring oarsman, he could see the customs house rising from the water, close to the mouth of the Bosporos.

The official building was a tall structure, comprised of several unmatched, wooden stories stacked atop a stolid brick base. The edifice totally obscured the rocky outcropping to which it was anchored. It appeared to be rising straight out of the murky water or else attempting to stay afloat. Neither thought reassured John. He kept his gaze fixed on his destination, finding it preferable to looking down into the gentle swells of dark oblivion so near at hand.

“Don’t worry, excellency,” the oarsman said, catching his stare toward their destination. “We’ll have you safe on dry land nigh as quick as a cleric out the back door of a whore house.” The man—Gurgos, he had announced himself—let loose a rumbling laugh.

“We might not be the sort of fancy transport you’re accustomed to, but we strive to do our best,” he went on with a grin. “It’s far better than swimming, like Leander. Did you ever hear the story of Hero, Emperor Constantine’s daughter? He had her locked up in a tower on the island where the customs house is now, to keep her pure, you see. Only that lusty lad had other ideas and swam over to visit her every night, until a tempest finished him off. A very sad tale, excellency.”

John shifted his legs slightly, observing it was indeed a tragic story, but omitting to mention that Gurgos had got the details wrong.

“Sorry about the inconvenience, excellency,” his irrepressible companion went on, looking not at all repentant. “The regular ferry men are all busy hauling the dead. Do you know how many corpses fit into even a small vessel like this? These days everyone with a boat is minting nomismata.”

He rowed silently for a time. John stared at the tower and frowned in thought.

“Yes,” Gurgos went on, “I sometimes ask myself what will be my final destination? The spacious pits across the Marmara, or perhaps one of the city wall’s towers? They’re filling up faster than the emperor’s dungeons these days, so I hear. Then again, there are always a few berths left on those ships Justinian ordered requisitioned. The evenings are cool out on the water, I admit, but we’ll be quite warm when the vessels are set afire and we’re all cremated.”

The boat dipped to one side.

Gurgos raised a dripping oar. “Sometimes folk just drop others off in the water.” He used the oar to push a half-submerged form away from their prow. The corpse bobbed past, staring up at John without curiosity.

“Isn’t this craft rather too small for you to be playing Charon?”

“I’m not complaining. Happy to take whatever comes my way. Fortuna smiled when I spotted this little boat lying against the sea wall. I thought to myself, well, the owner is nowhere in sight and is probably dead anyway, so I took it and set myself up in business.”

The large man seemed determined to tell John his entire history.

“Always been a laborer, excellency,” he continued jauntily. “It’s hard work that pays nothing and gets harder to do as you get older. I admit, until now the closest I’ve been to navigating treacherous waters was making my way through the public latrine at night, but if you see your chance, you have to take it, don’t you? I’m learning fast. It’s been nearly a week since I last capsized, and the patches I put on the boat seem to be holding well!”

Gurgos emitted another laugh worthy of Neptune at his jolliest.

They rocked sickeningly on toward the customs house with all the grace of the three-legged cat John had seen in a particular city square more than once. He was painfully aware of each awkward oar-stroke. Their destination seemed to continually sidle away, but then Gurgos would grunt volcanically and adjust their course.

By the time they drew alongside the custom house dock, John was sweating and the coins he pressed into the giant hand were as wet as if they’d been plucked from the bowels of a drowned ship. “Wait for me, Gurgos. I won’t be long.”

The customs house appeared deserted except for a few gulls perched on window sills and along the ridge of its tiled roof. Several small vessels were clustered around the island. Their sails were furled, whereas they should have been shuttling officials to and from cargo ships waiting to unload grain or amphorae of wine or oil, or to depart with crates filled with the work of the city’s finest artisans—delicately engraved silver goblets bringing a reminder of civilization to tables deep in the forests of Germania, or jewelry to decorate the neck of a wife or concubine in far off Egypt.

The heavy doors of the building opened into a perfunctory marble atrium. It was deserted.

John heard laughter.

Gurgos?

No. The sound was a giggle rather than a bellow.

John stepped between the columns framing an archway in one wall and entered a room as packed with crates and amphorae as the hold of a ship. Confiscated goods, no doubt.

He soon discovered that a portion of a wine shipment had been seized a second time, judging by the glassy-eyed looks of the young man and woman slouched at an ivory-inlaid desk in the center of the room, an open amphora at their feet.

The male sported a blotchy face and managed to project the look of a clerk, despite long hair hanging down over his back in the fashionable Hunnic style. He took another drink from a delicate, pale green exemplar of the glassmaker’s craft that probably would have cost him many weeks of his salary had he decided to purchase it.

“We’re not able to inspect your ship,” he mumbled at John. “Everyone is at home. All sick.”

The plump girl sitting beside him giggled again and tugged clumsily at her half-opened robe.

Her companion smirked. John took a step forward. The Lord Chamberlain realized he was not his normal picture of authority, being rather rumpled and not entirely steady on his feet thanks to the hellish boat ride he had just endured.

“Your name, young man?”

“Me? Why, I’m Emperor Justinian and my companion here’s Empress Theodora. Can’t you see who we are? Perhaps you ought to get out and about more often!”

“There is no-one else here?”

“I’ve already explained that everybody’s busy dying of the plague, so the shipowners have apparently had their wish. Which is to say, the hand of heaven has descended on the tariff collectors. I, Caesar, have thus proclaimed a holiday in celebration.” He lifted his wine over his head and gestured grandly, sloshing its contents on his companion.

“Do you know Gregory?”

The girl looked startled. “You mean the Patriarch? For such we call him. Rather too quick to quote the scriptures, if you ask me, considering he spends most of his time counting coins for the emperor.”

“When was he last at work here?”

“Couple of days ago,” the girl offered.

“Do you have any idea what business he had to attend to in the city that day?”

“The Patriarch tell us where he was going? Not likely!” The young man gave a snort. “Why are you questioning your emperor anyway? Be gone or I’ll call my guards!”

John ignored the young man and addressed the girl instead. “Gregory’s office is where?”

“Smaller of the two rooms on the top floor,” she told him. “He was second in command. Or rather third, counting my emperor here.”

John went quickly upstairs. Two flights of wide granite steps gave way to a much steeper wooden staircase that creaked and groaned under his boots. The wall lamps had been allowed to burn out and the only light available came in through window slits.

Gregory’s office was brighter. It looked toward the Asian shore. The geometric shapes of distant scattered buildings were softened and obscured by mist, giving the view the look of a church mosaic glimpsed through smoky incense. The room smelled, not of incense, but of the sea.

John’s gaze fell on the tortoiseshell-framed wax tablet sitting on Gregory’s desk. It might have been left especially for him to find, since the wax still bore a list of names and addresses in Constantinople. Gregory’s notes to himself? Why hadn’t he taken the tablet with him on his rounds? Possibly he had returned to the customs house having made these calls and gone out again without erasing the list.

In any event, if these were indeed places Gregory had visited during his last hours, they would certainly be helpful in retracing his steps, to discover where he had been, to whom he had spoken, and what those people might know.

It was almost too fortunate a find.

Then again, John had never been indirectly asked by an angel to solve a murder. Perhaps he could expect heavenly assistance.

Lifting the tablet revealed a crinkled piece of parchment on which was inscribed what purported to be a poem, written in Greek:

If the dreadful composition was Gregory’s work, whatever other secrets the man’s life might have held, he was not another Homer.

John made his way back downstairs, the prospect of the return boat journey slowing his step. As he crossed the atrium, the youthful clerk yelled at him from the store room.

“You’re still here? What are you up to, scoundrel? I’ll have you arrested!”

John strode in to confront the youngster. He had regained his authoritative bearing and after a swift glance, the girl tugged warningly at her friend’s arm. The young man shook her hand off. “Who do you think you are! No closer! Unless you mean to kiss the emperor’s feet, that is.”

John produced the official document he habitually carried. “Perhaps Caesar has had too many libations?” he suggested. “Especially since you never imbibe wine. Don’t you recognize your own Lord Chamberlain?”

The clerk fumbled through the document John handed him. No doubt he’d seen enough official papers during his employment to recognize the genuine article. “You stole this!” he sputtered.

“Ah,” John said, his mouth drawing into a thin line, “and do you suppose your future would be much brighter if I am not in fact the Lord Chamberlain, but rather a man who has just murdered the Lord Chamberlain and relieved him of this document and his clothing?”

As the truth began to penetrate the clerk’s alcoholic armor, his face became very pale.

The girl leapt up, threw herself to the floor, and grabbed the hem of John’s robe. “Please, please, excellency,” she wept. “We meant no harm. Don’t send us to the dungeons. Not the red hot tongs and all them sharp knives…I’ll do whatever you want…he’ll do whatever you want…”

John pulled away. “That won’t be necessary. Just curb your tongues in future, or you may find them removed.”

***

Peter did not admit John to the house, having apparently put aside his duties for the day after all, as John had advised.

The sun was setting, but the atrium lamps were unlit. The quiet water in the impluvium reflected the dull, rose-tinted sky visible through the rectangular opening above.

John went upstairs. No fragrance of recent cooking emanated from the kitchen, only the dusty odor of last year’s dried herbs. Hypatia was nowhere to be seen, although a scorpion-like clay creature, one of her numerous charms against the plague, squatted on the kitchen table.

Peter must have forgotten to instruct her to assume his culinary duties for the evening.

John took a jug of wine and his cracked cup into his study.

His servants were available only when ordered to be there. John preferred solitude. He did not like people hovering unbidden at his elbow and had never cultivated the aristocratic knack for regarding servants as little more than animated furniture. How could he, he who had once been a slave? Such unorthodox convictions caused him to traverse the streets and alleys of Constantinople alone and unguarded, a practice others considered unthinkably dangerous for a courtier of his high rank.

A Lord Chamberlain was powerful enough to do the unthinkable if he chose.

Besides which, he was no stranger to using a blade when necessary.

He sat at his desk and sipped raw Egyptian wine. Beyond the diamond-shaped panes of the window overlooking the palace grounds and the sea beyond, the sky was fast growing dark. Might one of the myriad distant lights beneath the emerging stars mark the customs house he had just visited?

He imagined Peter working in the study, cleaning the window perhaps, never knowing he was laboring within sight of the building where, at the same instant, the man he knew only as an impoverished former soldier was likely to be warning a wealthy shipowner that a cargo of silks could not be unloaded until the tariff was paid, even if the merchant considered the amount demanded to be larcenous.

Peter, John thought, would doubtless be singing, and tunelessly at that, one of the lugubrious hymns he favored, dismissing dust as Gregory dismissed the disgruntled merchant, who would stride angrily off, his retinue of bodyguards trailing behind.

He’d still have to pay the appropriate tariff.

Did Peter truly not realize the position his old friend had held, the power he wielded?

Should John reveal what he had learnt? Would Peter’s new knowledge allow him to shed further light on Gregory’s murder? Sometimes we know things that we recognize only when our perspective changes.

John turned his attention to the wall mosaic. In the shadowed room he could not distinguish details, but he knew by heart each of the pagan gods who populated the sky as well as the faces of the bucolic mortals working in the fields below. Most familiar was the one he had named Zoe, a young girl whose glass eyes seemed to hold an expression conveying she had glimpsed all the sorrows to which flesh is prey.

There was an unnerving naturalism about her, as if the image had been taken from life. John thought it possible she was the artist’s daughter. The mosaic had been in place when he purchased the house, having been installed by the previous owner. It was strange to think that if his surmise was correct, the model for Zoe could well still be alive. John might see her one day while inspecting some artisans’ enclave, or she might appear in one of the hallways of an imperial residence, perhaps even be glimpsed moving down an alleyway off the Mese.