One for Sorrow (22 page)
T
he establishment of Madam Isis was but a few steps from the entrance to the tenement where Maera and Sabas lived.
As John entered Isis’ house, he saw Darius, the doorkeeper, had not yet been liberated from the incongruous role of an enormous Eros. Darius shrugged in response to John’s look of inquiry, making the tiny wings attached to his broad shoulders flutter.
“Fortunately, we won’t be a Temple of Venus much longer. After Berta was murdered, Madam decided we’d have to change.”
“To a motif that will suit you better, I trust.”
Darius shrugged again. “I doubt it. It won’t be a military encampment. I’ve suggested that more than once.”
“I’m afraid I’ve come to ask more questions, Darius. They concern the evening of the celebrations.”
Darius grimaced. “Most of the city was making merry but here we never worked harder. But as I told you already, I didn’t see or hear anything out of the ordinary.”
“And what about the night Berta was murdered?”
Darius shrugged again, flapping his stiff little wings. “No one. We had a few travelers—pilgrims by the look of them though they claimed to be traders. Except for them, it was just regular clients. You were here that night yourself, with Felix as I recall.”
“What about Thomas?”
“The redhead who claims to be a knight? I don’t think he’s been here since you first brought him. But I don’t stand guard every hour of the day and night. Madam can give you the names of the other guards and perhaps they will remember something useful.”
“There’s just the one door into the alley?”
“Yes. Some of our more discreet guests use it. Often those of high rank.” Darius raised an eyebrow, creating an alarming effect for an oversized Eros.
John asked to be shown the door in question. Darius summoned an assistant to take his place, then led the Lord Chamberlain through a beaded curtain, along a wide door-lined corridor, and down a windowless hall lit by torches at each end.
The plain wooden door Darius halted before was a stark contrast to the elaborately carved main entrance.
“At our establishment, unlike the palace, the beggars enter in grand style while it is the powerful who often make their way inside in humble fashion.” Darius grinned and gave the door a rap with his enormous fist.
John had been examining the walls and floorboards.
“Something has occurred to me,” said Darius abruptly. “You asked about whether a completely bald man was in here the night of the celebrations. I didn’t see anyone like that. But then again, more than a few who visited that evening were wearing fantastic headdresses or masks. A ridiculous-looking bunch.”
“Ridiculous, indeed,” agreed John. “And by the way, your left wing is crooked. Madam wouldn’t appreciate that. Could I trouble you to stand aside, Darius?”
The big man stood back as requested. John bent closer to the doorframe. After a short time he straightened.
“This doorway appears to have been cleaned but in the crack down here, I can see what looks like dried blood. I shall have to speak to Isis.”
When John entered her chambers the usually cheerful Isis was in a disagreeable humor. “If I say your friend Leukos did not set foot in this place that night, then he did not.”
“He might have used an assumed name.”
Isis laughed. “Who doesn’t? Believe me, if the Keeper of the Plate was here, I’d know about it.”
“A bald-headed man?” John persisted.
“Or a man with a birthmark on his bottom shaped like a bust of Caesar. We had such a guest last week, in fact.”
“Did Leukos ever come here?”
“No, John. If your friend had been here, I would know. Why are you asking?”
“One of his servants told me he sometimes went out at night at odd hours and never said where he was going. He was a single man.”
“Mine is only the best house in the city, not the only one,” Isis pointed out.
“And something else. I have just looked at your door, the one opening into the alley.”
“What about it?”
“When I examined it, I found traces of dried blood near the bottom of the frame. I’m hoping you’ll be able to explain how it got there.”
***
Gregorius shifted his heavy sack to his other hand and peered nervously up and down the street. The usual assortment of pedestrians strolled along by the towering wall of the Hippodrome. No one looked suspicious. He had half-expected to catch someone ducking into one of its entrances or stepping quickly into a shop. If anyone had in fact done so they had been too quick for him.
As soon as he emerged from the Hippodrome on his errand he sensed he was being followed. Perhaps it was his imagination. He had been on edge ever since his teammate was killed by the sabotaged chariot.
Such attacks weren’t uncommon. Whoever had tampered with the chariot must have intended for the axle to snap during a race. The fool might have wanted to insure he won a bet against the Blues and hadn’t given any thought to, or cared about, what happened to drivers whose chariots crashed.
Gregorius continued to study the street, hoping someone might peek out from a hiding place, but no one did.
There was always bad blood between the Blue and Green factions. Well, Gregorius would be out of the Constantinople soon enough.
This would be his final delivery.
And he’d be glad to leave too, with the Lord Chamberlain taking so much interest in his activities.
He continued on, the sack over his shoulder.
Immediately he felt the gaze on the back of his neck again.
Detouring into the Hippodrome, he went up and down several ramps connecting the upper and lower levels, zig-zagged through stables and storage rooms, and exited by a delivery gate which opened onto a tangle of alleys. By the time he reached the tenement that was his destination he felt certain he had lost his pursuer.
He trudged up creaking wooden stairs. The smell of boiled fish hung in the air. On the fourth floor he rapped at a door which was opened by a gaunt woman. He stepped inside and dropped his sack on the floor.
Three small girls leapt on it but their mother, who might have been beautiful if able to eat regularly, shooed them away. Then her eyes narrowed as she stared over Gregorius’ shoulder. “You have brought a friend.”
Gregorius looked around.
The Lord Chamberlain stood in the doorway.
John smiled faintly. “You led me on a good chase, Gregorius. When I happened to see you coming out of the Hippodrome, I wondered where you were going with that sack.”
“Well, Lord Chamberlain, now you know.”
“I know very little. What is in the sack?”
Gregorius bent down and opened it to reveal a jumble of loaves, onions, cheese, and other edibles. “Food for this poor woman and her family. What did you expect?”
“The Blues have been helping us since my husband died,” the woman explained. “We found ourselves in the same position as Theodora’s family many years ago and now we are being aided as they were. My husband died a few days ago. Like Theodora’s father, he was a bear trainer who entertained at the Hippodrome.”
John sat in his quiet study with a jug of wine, trying to make sense of what he had learned. The trace of blood he had found on the door of Isis’ establishment had come to nothing. According to Isis the bloody corpse of the bear trainer mauled to death in front of her house had been carried in that way to avoid soiling the entrance.
The lack of blood beneath Leukos’ body where it lay in the alley was not so easily explained. Nor was it clear why Leukos would have visited the patriarch, if in fact the bald man observed by Sabas had been Leukos. Could John trust what the injured, feverish laborer claimed to have seen?
John’s gaze fell upon Zoe. He began to ask her opinion but stopped himself. What sort of man was it who could talk to a mosaic girl more easily than to his own daughter? Who understood glass but not flesh and blood? But then glass could not grow and change and a mosaic girl could not speak, although it sometimes seemed she did. John averted his eyes.
Wasn’t the Inn of the Centaurs the cynosure of it all? When he confronted Gregorius at the home of the deceased bear trainer’s family he immediately recalled how he had first seen the young man, soaking wet after an immersion in the fountain. The charioteer was staying at the inn, as was Thomas. The soothsayer had been living there. Leukos had visited the soothsayer at the inn.
Gregorius’ mission to the bear trainer’s family had been innocent enough, which was not say that he did not supplement his racing earnings with a little smuggling as he traveled around.
Xiphias may have been involved in some sort of illicit trade as well. Was he so terrified by John’s investigations that he had killed himself?
Or was it apparently killed himself?
And had Thomas and Xiphias spoken or not? Thomas admitted he was pursuing Ahasuerus for a relic he believed was in the soothsayer’s possession. Why then had he spoken with the Keeper of the Plate? Did he suspect Ahasuerus had already disposed of the Grail to Leukos, that it was in the palace, and Xiphias might be bribed to help it disappear?
And what about Berta? She had entertained Thomas and the soothsayer in different ways. Had those chance meetings entangled her in the same web in which Leukos had become entangled?
What web was that?
The sky looked threatening. It seemed that the spring rains would never stop. Dark clouds loomed low, and there was that eerie hush that signaled yet another storm would be upon the city within the hour. Gusts of heralding winds swirled about the house. Several large seabirds strutted on the cobbles below, shrilly squawking. Their ghastly cries suggested the screeching of the Harpies tormenting their prey. John shuddered.
Zoe stared at him with eyes blacker than night.
John examined the facts he had gathered, each one akin to a glistening bit of glass. He shuffled them around. He could almost see the pattern. Place this piece next to that and then this other over here and soon they would form a lifelike picture. As lifelike as Zoe and then, like Zoe, they would speak to him and whisper the name of Leukos’ murderer.
John poured wine and pondered. Without realizing it, he dozed.
A figure in a dripping hooded cloak stood before him. An emaciated hand pushed back the hood to reveal the time-worn face of Ahasuerus.
“I thought you had embarked on your journey across the Styx,” John heard himself say.
The old man chuckled hoarsely. “That is a journey that I will not take for a long time. However, I am off on another sort of journey. Did you ever hear that the mantis warns travelers of danger, pointing the way to go to avoid it? Well, I’ve been hiding. For a while I was over there in the stables debating whether to stay.” He gestured vaguely in the direction of the barracks. “When I awoke today what did I see but a mantis. It was pointing toward the sea. Even a soothsayer need not cast pebbles to know that it was urging me to depart.”
“You look exhausted. Should I ask Peter to bring something?”
“Thank you, but I am not hungry. Tell me, Lord Chamberlain, where do you think I have been?”
“As I told you, I feared you were dead.”
A gust of wind rattled at the window, underlining the old man’s words. “I will tell you where I have been. I was summoned from the inn to see Patriarch Epiphanios. I cast the pebbles for him. Later, as I stood on the docks intending to take ship, something struck me squarely in the shoulder blades and I fell into the water. And, Lord Chamberlain, I cannot swim.”
In the grip of nightmare John felt as if it were he who had plunged into the water.
“But as I told you, it is not time for me to take that journey into darkness. I survived. I hid. Now I have come on this rainy night to cast the pebbles for you.”
***
John awoke in the gray light before dawn. The memory of his dream returned slowly. On the floor of the study several glistening patches of moisture marked where the wind had blown rain through cracks around the window frame.
In the enclosed garden of the patriarchal palace pale morning light cast time’s faint shadow across the face of a sundial.
Nearby, Patriarch Epiphanios bent over, examining a flower bed. At John’s approach, he straightened up with obvious difficulty. He looked frailer than he at their last meeting.
“The dial reveals the hour, the flowers reveal the season,” the patriarch commented. His skin showed the translucence of old age, as if the body were giving up its corporeal qualities. “What do you wish to speak to me about, Lord Chamberlain?”
“I don’t know that this is the place.”
“A delicate subject? Don’t worry. We will not be overheard here. I prefer to be out in the garden today. The walls of my rooms feel much too close.”
“Leukos, the Keeper of the Plate, was your frequent visitor.”
“That is so.”
Sorrow in the patriarch’s expression confirmed what John had suspected. “Leukos was your son.”
The patriarch smiled faintly. “Very few know that. How did you?”
“He was seen visiting at odd hours, using your private entrance. I was always been puzzled by his lack of a family, or any hint of family history. Most people will mention their relatives even if they are far away or long deceased. And when I spoke to you in the Great Church you seemed inordinately interested in his funeral.”
Patriarch Epiphanios shook his head. “How is it that God should choose a man to serve him in the highest capacity, and yet allow such a servant to remain enslaved by the same appetites as bedevil any man?”
“You may wish to keep this.” John held out the silver necklace he had found in Leukos’ pouch. The patriarch took it in a shaking hand, and brought it closer to his tired eyes to examine the entwined fish.
“Thank you, Lord Chamberlain. I gave it to Leukos as a keepsake. It was his mother’s. She is dead. She was married.”
“You took good care of your son, even if you could not acknowledge him publicly. It was you who asked the emperor to stop me from investigating further?”
“I was afraid you would discover the truth.”
“I would not have sought to use the knowledge against you. My only interest was in seeing my friend—your son—avenged.”
“He is avenged. The soothsayer is dead.”
“Ahasuerus wasn’t the murderer. The murderer is still free.”
“But the soothsayer stabbed Leukos. His dagger was in Leukos when you found him, wasn’t it? As I told you before, two matching daggers were found in the satchel he left behind when he threw himself into the sea.”
“You also told me that your guards had gone to the inn to arrest Ahasuerus for the murder and brought him to the guard house at your residence even before those daggers were found.”
The patriarch put a trembling hand to his forehead. “Did I? Yes, of course. Pardon an old man’s faulty memory. My guards had received information pointing to Ahasuerus. The daggers confirmed what they were told.”
“I regret I find your story hard to believe.”
The patriarch’s lips tightened and his hand moved to his side, fingers whitening as they pressed into his ribs. He made no sound. Then the spasm had passed—or else, John thought, he had given himself enough time to formulate a response.
Epiphanios gave a dry, bitter laugh. “Trying to hide anything from you is like trying to hide it from heaven. Look there. Do you know what I had planted?” He indicated the plot he had been examining when John arrived.
“I’ve never been skilled at identifying plants.”
“It is monkshood. I hope to see it reach its full growth one more time. My physician has been giving me a concoction of it for the pain. It makes me feel very cold. I think it numbs the soul as well as the body. The Greeks say the plant springs from the spittle of Cerberus. Were I a pagan I would expect to be seeing the beast soon. As it is…” The weak voice trailed off.
“As it is?” John prompted.
“I am afraid when my angel leads me up to heaven, the demon toll keepers on the way will charge me heavily for my sins. You are quite right, Lord Chamberlain. It was not the soothsayer who murdered my only son. It was I.”
It was obvious the patriarch was near death. Had he lost his mind as well? Or was it the effect of the medicine he was taking? John asked for an explanation.
“I murdered Leukos,” the patriarch repeated. “It was that vile soothsayer who wielded the dagger—who else? But it was I who placed Leukos in his path. I asked him to consult Ahasuerus on my behalf, to inquire about the Grail. What greater relic could I have acquired for my—for Justinian’s—new church?”
John recalled what the servant Euphemia had said about strangers bringing things to Leukos’ house late at night. “It wasn’t the first time Leukos had rendered such services, was it?”
“He blessed the city with more than one sacred relic. Sellers of costly goods sometimes acquire other sorts of treasures and Leukos was in a position to know when such valuables became available.”
“How did you know the soothsayer purported to possess such a relic?”
“Rumors he had it in his possession reached me. There was also an adventurer in pursuit of the Grail.”
“Is that why you had Ahasuerus escorted away from the Inn of the Centaurs in the middle of the night? You were afraid the adventurer, or let us name him, Thomas, would purchase the relic before you could?”
“The soothsayer and I negotiated a fair price. Then he left.”
“And went straight for the docks to take ship. He didn’t have to be prescient to realize you might not want to risk anyone finding out you had purchased this supposed holy relic from a fortune-teller.”
The patriarch rubbed his eyes. “It was a misunderstanding. My guards were instructed to see he was sent safely out of the city. It appears he panicked and threw himself into the sea.”
John supposed there was no way he would know whether that was the truth or not. He noted Epiphanios had not explained who had told him the soothsayer owned daggers identical to the one found in Leukos’ body.
The patriarch stared down at the sundial. “Did you know this relic is said to be a heal-all?”
“So I have heard.”
The patriarch’s eyes looked glassy in the thin light filtering out of the cloudy sky. John could not tell whether it was the sheen of tears or the effect of physicians’ concoctions.
“My son died because I was so afraid of death that I grasped at a chance to preserve my own life.” A quaver had entered the patriarch’s voice. He smiled wanly. “You realize I am only telling you this because I am a dead man, Lord Chamberlain?”
“And the Grail?”
The patriarch reached inside his robe and produced a jewel-encrusted box.
“Come closer, Lord Chamberlain.”
John stepped forward.
The patriarch’s hands trembled as he opened the lid of the box. “The Grail,” he breathed. “It cost me dearly but now the most holy relic in Christendom will reside for all eternity in the empire’s greatest church. Perhaps now I will be forgiven for all my sins.”
John stared down into the box.
Inside lay a round stone, green, flecked with red, perhaps three times the size of the stones Ahasuerus had given his clients, but otherwise identical.