Ten for Dying (John the Lord Chamberlain Mysteries) (15 page)

DAY FIVE

Chapter Thirty

At sunrise a placid sea cradled the
Leviathan
, which still lay at rest, helpless as a baby. Already the sound of hammering echoed through the dim hold. The crew had worked through the previous day without managing to finish repairs. John suspected that the damage to the hull must have been more severe than anyone wanted to admit. Obviously Captain Theon did not trust the vessel enough to pull up the anchors and escape the rock upon which they had run partly aground.

Or so John understood. He might have grasped it wrongly, given when approached Theon gave nothing but short grunts of annoyance. After all, who was John to be wasting the captain’s time? Just another passenger, additional cargo. The crew seemed to have been ordered to say nothing about their predicament so John was forced to piece the situation together from inadequate snatches of overheard conversation. It was frustrating for a man to whom Justinian had confided the secrets of the empire.

He was also left to worry that a weak spot might suddenly, catastrophically, give way, allowing the sea to burst into the hold and drag the
Leviathan
down.

John sat below, trying to distract himself by watching Hypatia, seated on the mat that served for a bed, make protective charms.

“In case the weather turns foul again,” she explained.

Peter assisted her, dutifully tearing strips off an empty grain sack. Hypatia tied intricate knots in each strip before fastening the ends to form a loop. She held one of them out to John. “You might want to wear it around your wrist, master.”

John slid the loop over his hand to be polite. It didn’t ease his anxiety. At times he wished he could believe in magick. “Why does this bring good luck?”

“Knots keep things secure, don’t they? And these are very special knots. They hold onto good fortune.”

“I should think a cross would be sufficient,” Peter sniffed.

“Perhaps,” Hypatia replied, “But in Egypt we think differently. And what about what you call your lucky coin? The one you found in Derbe when you were on campaign?”

“Oh, but that’s different!”

“Is it?”

Peter looked baffled and fell silent.

John heard Cornelia’s laugh. She came in from her walk on deck, dropped down beside John, and poked him in the ribs with her elbow. “I think Hypatia has won that argument, at least for now! All the same I’ll be happy when we reach dry land again.”

John nodded. Thinking of the greedy sea slapping on the wooden boards at his back made him uneasy. He distracted himself by turning his mind toward the matter of the stolen relic.

Hypatia had advanced a possible explanation for the visions those in the church had seen. Would it be of assistance to Felix?

“I wonder if Felix has located the stolen shroud yet?”

Cornelia looked at John sharply. “You shouldn’t dwell on that business. Felix can take care of himself. Besides, there’s nothing you can do about it.”

“I could send a letter.”

“A letter from the exiled Lord Chamberlain? You might as well send him a bottle of poison.”

“Yes, you’re probably right.” He looked away from her scowl and watched Hypatia’s fingers move almost too quickly and nimbly for him to follow. She might indeed have been tying up Fate. The knots she was forming looked more complicated than those needed to hold anything physical.

She handed a knotted loop to Cornelia, who put it on.

Peter tore off a new strip to add to the pile beside him. He got to his feet. “That should be enough for now. I need to start preparing our meal. Captain Theon is well provisioned, but I can never find the proper utensils.”

As Peter left, John noted that despite his protest, the servant was wearing his own bracelet.

“If Felix hasn’t found the shroud, he must have at least unearthed new facts about the theft,” John mused. “The question is whether they are sufficient to lead him to the solution of the mystery. If I were there just long enough to hear the results of his investigations, I feel I could help.”

Cornelia gripped his arm and dug her fingers in. “John! What are you thinking?”

“A letter might be intercepted. But if I were to ride back to the city, in disguise, for just long enough—”

“No! Don’t even think about it!”

Hypatia averted her eyes, embarrassed. Who was Cornelia to give orders to the Lord Chamberlain?

“You can’t leave us, John,” Cornelia continued, her voice urgent. “You wouldn’t return. You know that. The emperor would find out and…”

“Yes, you’re right, Cornelia.” John excused himself and went up on deck. He walked with small, uncertain steps, like a sick man, ever aware of the slight rolling of the anchored ship. Wasn’t anyone else troubled by the incessant motion? Would he ever feel solid ground beneath his feet again?

From somewhere below came a burst of hammering.

Then there was an inarticulate cry, followed by shouts, running footsteps.

Crew members were converging near the rail beside the captain’s cabin, looking down into the water. Someone pointed.

He made his way to the crowd as fast as he dared.

The pilgrim Egina was there. She turned an anguished face toward him. “Sir! It’s your servant. He’s fallen overboard.”

Chapter Thirty-one

The enormously fat jailer loomed in the doorway to Felix’s cell. Behind him, two guards held short lances at the ready.

“You are wanted now.” The jailer’s thick lips formed an unpleasant smile as he lumbered in and bent with a grunt to unlock the shackle around Felix’s ankle.

Felix went out into the corridor without protest. There would have been no point in resisting.

Once outside the cell Felix saw that the jailer’s tunic was filthy with stains, as if worn by a butcher. Perhaps the man was a torturer rather than a jailer?

Felix was led past a series of thick plank doors, banded with iron, each with a tiny barred window. From behind one door came low moans of pain, from behind another there issued an even more chilling sound, a snatch of mindless, bubbling laughter.

Here and there the walls and floor were slimy with a rusty excrescence which could have been either mineral or mold. Moving numbly, Felix slipped once and stumbled against a cell door. The jailer—Felix preferred to think of him as a jailer—turned ponderously to grab his arm to steady him. The fat man’s fingers were incongruously long, pale and delicate, the fingers of a woman’s hand.

The air began to have the stench of an abattoir.

They passed through an open doorway into a room brightly lit by oil lamps.

Their light danced across shining metal instruments hanging from the walls and piled on shelves, a display of a variety of cutting edges and razor-sharp points to put an armory, or a surgeon’s office, to shame. Amongst these were countless weirdly articulated devices whose purpose Felix did not care to guess at.

The jailer came to a halt and looked around, the gleam in his eyes matching those of the metal instrumentalities surrounding them. He turned his head toward Felix. The tip of his tongue emerged maggot-like from between his bloated lips, then withdrew as the wistful look of a departing lover passed over his porcine face.

“Ah, what a waste,” he sighed, before grasping Felix by the arm and dragging him forward, through another doorway, and into a whitewashed room with benches along the walls.

The man seated there looked up as Felix entered. He had the profile of a classical Greek sculpture. Though not as old as Felix, his thick curly hair was tinged with gray.

Felix recognized him.

John’s good friend, Anatolius, the lawyer.

***

Anatolius was a lawyer now but Felix still thought of him as the foppish poet he had been when younger. The two men were well acquainted, largely because they had tolerated each other for John’s sake. Now they studied each other uneasily across a wobbly round table at the back of a tavern next to the Baths of Zeuxippos.

With barely a word of explanation, Anatolius had rushed Felix away. Both knew Justinian might change his mind and decide to have Felix arrested again as quickly and inexplicably as he had agreed to his release.

Felix never imagined he could be so happy to see the a cloudy sky or to simply walk out of the palace gate. The sour tavern air smelled sweet. His wine cup shook as he drank deeply, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and shuddered.

“I keep expecting to be arrested again,” he muttered. “How was it you knew?”

“A senator, who insists of remaining anonymous, contacted me, on behalf of a person whose name he was not at liberty to reveal.”

“I…I have to thank you, Anatolius. I was convinced I was a dead man. I don’t know how you managed to persuade the emperor to let me go. You must be a better lawyer than a poet. That is…I mean…”

“I will take that as a compliment from you, Felix. As it happened, Justinian didn’t need much convincing. I suspect he had already made his mind up to release you. He may have some ulterior motive. I can’t say. It was definitely on his orders you were arrested.” Anatolius leaned forward on his elbows and said in a near whisper. “What in the name of Mithra have you got yourself involved with now, Felix?”

“I wish I knew. I told you about the dead courier and the missing relic. But I had nothing to do with them.”

Anatolius glared. “Pretend I am John. Would you lie to him?”

Felix buried his face in his cup and took another long drink. “I’m not lying!”

“Weren’t you expecting that courier? Justinian seems to think so.”

“I…I…meant I had nothing to do with the courier being dead. No idea who he is.”

“What about the fact that his cloak was found at your house. In the servants’ quarters, I was told.”

“You don’t believe it was really found there, do you? Narses must have brought it with him, supplying his own evidence.”

“Then you don’t think the courier’s wife actually identified the cloak as belonging to him?”

“I don’t know that he really had a wife, whoever he was. She’s probably a fabrication.”

“That may well be. I wasn’t told any more than you know. Unfortunately the corpse that at one point was on your property and was later found behind a statue of Aphrodite elsewhere in the city is not a fabrication. You do admit you found the body?”

Felix paused, confused. “Did I? Oh, yes, I suppose I have.”

“Palace rumor says you’ve taken to drink and gambling again. You’re up to your helmet in debt.”

“People at the palace will say anything.”

“Anything is exactly what goes on at the palace.”

Felix tugged at his beard. “All right. Yes. It’s all true. Or was. I’ve sworn to cut down my drinking and I haven’t placed a wager in weeks.”

“Because you can’t afford to or no one trusts you enough to take your wagers? At least you admit your problems. That’s a start. Now I want to know the details, how you see them.”

Assisted by much prompting, Felix obliged.

By the time he was finished Anatolius looked as if he was attending Felix’s funeral rather than talking to him across a table at a tavern. “Let us review what we know. Perhaps it will suggest a road to follow.”

Felix mumbled his wish that John were in the city to assist.

“Indeed, but he isn’t so we must do the best we can all by our poor selves, a simple lawyer and the captain of the excubitors.”

“Former captain.”

“I stand corrected. Justinian has not rescinded your demotion.” Anatolius tilted his chair back until it rested against the wall. “Now, as I understand it, embroiled in certain arrangements we will not mention, you discovered one of your colleagues in this enterprise dead on your premises. There was an official visit but you managed to conceal the evidence, and then removed the body but were seen in the act of disposing of it. Meantime, the deceased’s wife notified the authorities, or so we have been told. This led to the second official visit and subsequent arrest. Along with the guards finding that damning cloak.”

“That sums it up very well. I swear, the man was not wearing that cloak when I first saw him.”

“What was he wearing?”

Felix tried to remember. He closed his eyes and tried to blot out the suddenly distracting noises of the tavern.

“Certainly you can’t have forgotten finding a corpse in your courtyard. It must have been very startling. Or wasn’t it?”

“Yes, yes. I was shocked. That’s just it. The only thing that made an impression on me was that there was a dead man lying against the wall. It must have driven everything else straight out of my mind.”

“But you said you remembered he wasn’t wearing the cloak so—”

“That’s right. Now I recall. His robes were embroidered rather ostentatiously, even for a courtier. That’s what caught my attention.”

“You can’t remember any more details? Could the fancy clothes have included a jeweled cloak?”

Felix shook his head. “No. I’m certain.”

“Do you suppose one of your servants stole the cloak and hid it?”

“What? Found the body and took the cloak, without alerting me?”

“How many month’s wages could a cloak like that be sold for?”

“I see what you mean. I hadn’t considered that, what with fleeing for my life and expecting to be tortured to death momentarily.”

“Quite understandable. You should look into this when you get home. But let’s continue. Meantime, Porphyrius—as renowned and respected as he is wealthy—has you beaten—or so you claim—and threatens that unless you produce the relic recently stolen from the Church of the Holy Apostles there will be dire consequences.”

“And hangs a man to show he does not make idle threats,” Felix added.

“I should like to know why this particular man was chosen. But you said he was, unfortunately, not recognizable. Then there’s the man with jingling clothes from whom you took instructions. Who, like Porphyrius, may or may not be the leader of this enterprise we do not specify. So many things are unknown, and so little of what we know makes sense.” Anatolius paused to take a sip of wine. “The natives of Hell, I think we can discount. I am willing to believe you haven’t been dealing with demons, aside from those who emerge from wine jugs.”

Felix started to retort but bit his lip. Anatolius had saved his skin, and he might well require the lawyer’s assistance to keep it.

“If you promise to supply me with a list of your creditors we’ll say no more about that,” Anatolius told him. “You might not think any of them have a hand in any of this, aside from driving you to become involved in dubious matters for financial reasons, but I’m not so sure.” He pulled out his coin pouch preparatory to paying for their drinks, and gave it a shake. It reminded Felix of the Jingler. “Money is the mother of lawyers.”

“There’ll be no problem with me paying you, Anatolius.”

“I wasn’t thinking about that. I was thinking that no matter what problem clients come to me with, it usually all started with money. I wouldn’t charge a friend. Look, from what you’ve told me we have roads leading to the Hippodrome, the palace, and possibly to an unknown person who could be anywhere directing matters. Not to mention the church authorities naturally wish to have their treasure restored and Justinian ordered you to assist in finding it. There is some irony in that. The kind of irony that puts one behind iron bars.”

Felix licked his lips, dry despite all the wine he’d consumed. “So what do you advise?”

“Given all you’ve told me, speaking as a lawyer, I have to tell you that the only reasonable course of action is to flee the city immediately.”

Felix stared at him, speechless.

Anatolius went on. “But as your friend, if you prefer to stay, unwise as that may be, I am prepared to make some inquiries and see if I can help. Perhaps I can find out who the dead man was.”

Felix nodded his assent. Anatolius put coins on the table. He paused. “Felix, apart from legal matters…you can’t become a slave to Bacchus again. You’re not as young as you were. You’re ruining your health. You look terrible. Look at all the bruises and cuts and the red patches on your hands and cheeks. When I first saw you I feared the torturers had already begun their work. Your payment to me will be a promise to imbibe less. Imagine it is John admonishing you. You know he would if he were here.”

“I told you I’ve sworn off overindulgence. But a drink now and then keeps one calm.”

“Find a better way to stay calm.” Anatolius got up to leave. “And come to think of it, maybe you should visit Isis. You spent plenty of time at her establishment in the past.”

“We both did, Anatolius. But she’s not running a brothel anymore. Why would I visit her refuge for former prostitutes?”

“To let Isis give you some advice on how to mend your ways, my friend. I am serious. If Isis could change her ways to such a great extent, surely you could change a few things about your behavior.”

Felix stayed at the table for a while after Anatolius had gone. He had no intention of visiting Isis. It would be embarrassing for both of them, he imagined. Besides, he wasn’t a prostitute in need of reforming. He was a man who enjoyed his wine.

His thoughts were interrupted by shouts, laughter, and curses. A number of Blues crowded through the doorway.

Though Felix remained rooted to his chair his heart was racing. He had totally forgotten. It had not even occurred to him while he rambled on to Anatolius.

During the night, while he awaited his fate in the cell, the deadline Porphyrius had set for the return of the Virgin’s shroud had passed.