Three for a Letter (15 page)

He lurched forward and fell to the floor.

As she walked calmly from the room, Sunilda paused in the doorway to glance back at him.

“When I am queen, you will not be returning to Italy with me, Godomar. And while everyone seems to think I’m in danger, I can assure you, there are many here in much greater danger.”

Chapter Nineteen

Since Poppaea’s poisoning, Zeno’s household had eaten almost as simply as peasants. Meals were plain, free of the possibility of camouflaging deliberately tainted food with spice or sauces, and all were prepared under the watchful eye of some person of undoubted trustworthiness, usually one of Theodora’s ladies-in-waiting.

The breakfast of wheat cakes and wine well suited the Lord Chamberlain’s taste, for his culinary preferences had never risen to match his high position at court. When they had finished their frugal meal, John and Felix retired to Zeno’s study to discuss their two prisoners. Codices and scrolls were piled untidily on the desk. The room carried a hint of the dusty smell of desiccated papyrus.

“At least I’ve breakfasted as if I’m at home.” John spoke first, breaking the uncomfortable silence they had maintained since their meal. “If only court ceremonial wasn’t always accompanied by such rich repasts.” He was thinking of the endless banquets he had not only to plan as part of his official duties, but also to attend. The recollection reminded him of those strange festivities in Poppaea’s room that had apparently been visible only to her and to Sunilda.

His half-jocular comment, however, did not seem to thaw the frost in his friend’s demeanor.

Felix sat heavily down on a low bronze stool behind Zeno’s desk, almost vanishing behind a mountain of half unrolled scrolls. “A crust of bread and some watered vinegar can be a veritable feast when you’re out on campaign,” he complained, “but if I have to be nothing more than a child’s bodyguard I’d just as soon eat better than that. Besides, you can poison a cup or a jug or a plate of food wherever it might be sitting. You don’t need to skulk about in the kitchen to do it.”

John agreed his statement was certainly true.

“We were wasting our time looking for Barnabas, just as I said,” Felix continued. “He’s long since run away. Did you suppose he might have contrived to be carted back into the villa concealed at the bottom of a basket of loaves? Or disguised as a large duckling? Not that anything that happens in this house would surprise me, I must say. But we’ve already got the two bastards responsible in custody, thank Mithra, so perhaps now my men and I can take them and return to the city.”

“Not until they tell us what we need to know,” John said quietly.

“Leave that to Justinian’s torturers!”

John pushed the scene in Poppaea’s room out of his mind. Turning his gaze to the study walls, where painted philosophers strolled along paths that appeared so realistic he might have walked down them directly into Zeno’s untidy garden, he said, “I’m not certain it would be wise to take Briarus and Hero to Constantinople yet, Felix. We both know what fate awaits them in Justinian’s dungeons.”

Felix grumbled an unintelligible reply and yawned mightily.

“You need more rest, Felix,” John said. “I’m beginning to wonder if your obvious exhaustion springs from something other than staying up all night patrolling over-zealously.”

The captain muttered a ripe curse and hastily changed the subject. “You’ve already talked to the prisoners more than once, John. Of course they’ll both claim to know nothing about murders or poisons, but surely you can’t believe that Briarus knows nothing of his master’s whereabouts? What’s to be gained by keeping them locked up here? Once they’re gone, Zeno will stop asking me about Hero and complaining about his wretched automatons not being ready for the festival every time I see him.”

“I don’t intend to question them further right now,” John replied. “I want to give them another day in isolation to give them ample opportunity to contemplate what fate awaits them in Constantinople. By tomorrow morning, they’ll doubtless be happy to reveal everything they know.”

“You’re too kind-hearted, John,” Felix said without a trace of irony in his tone.

John allowed his gaze to wander the walls along the shaded paths as he contemplated the arrangements needed to transport the unlikely accomplices safely to the palace grounds.

A light step sounded in the corridor and he turned to see Bertrada peering around the ivy tendrils painted on the doorframe.

“Lord Chamberlain,” the nursemaid whispered. “I’m happy I found you alone. I have a terrible confession to make. It’s very embarrassing. Something I wouldn’t want certain parties to hear.”

Scrolls toppled off the desk and rattled to the tiles as Felix was suddenly on his feet and in full view. “It isn’t necessary to be afraid, Bertrada.”

The girl gave a tiny squeak of shock, and turned away to flee back down the corridor.

“Please,” John told her, “come in, Bertrada. As the captain says, you have nothing to fear.”

She bit her lip as she took a reluctant step into the room, glanced at Felix and then averted her eyes. “Lord Chamberlain, if I could speak with you alone…” she began hesitantly.

“If it is anything that concerns the safety of the household, then Felix will have to hear it,” John said quietly.

Bertrada, who had been looking at the floor, pushed her hair back and looked up at John. “It’s about Hero, Lord Chamberlain. He’s innocent, I swear it.”

“You have some proof of this?” John thought it was doubtful. “And if you do, why have you suddenly decided to come forward now?”

Bertrada looked toward Felix again, then quickly away. “Well, it was seeing him brought into the villa under guard, with half of the household gawking at him, just like Briarus. I thought surely someone would soon realize it was all a terrible mistake and he would be freed, but he’s still locked up.”

“I see,” John said. “And why do you insist that Hero was not responsible for Gadaric’s murder?”

The girl’s eyes filled with tears. “It’s shameful to admit, Lord Chamberlain, but I was with Hero at the time.”

She stole a swift look at Felix. He said nothing but simply walked to the study door, moving as slowly as a condemned criminal going to his death.

As he passed by Bertrada she caught at his sleeve and looked at him silently.

John was struck by the incongruity. Felix, a big scarred veteran with a few streaks of white in his beard, Bertrada a young girl. It could almost have been a parting between father and daughter.

“Felix, don’t be angry,” Bertrada begged. “That’s all over now, I swear it. Please…”

The excubitor captain shrugged her small hand off his arm and vanished down the corridor.

“I will order Hero released immediately, but he must not leave the estate,” John finally said. “You were right to tell us, Bertrada, and I realize to do so has cost you greatly.”

***

Briarus yanked harder at the ornamental hanging. One of the nails attaching it to the wall popped loose and skittered across the tile floor but no sound came from the corridor. Evidently the excubitor had heard nothing or, more likely, his patrolling had taken him to the other end of the long hallway running the length of this wing of the villa.

Briarus smiled grimly. His temporary lodging was nothing more than a windowless room that had been decorated with a few wall hangings of little artistic merit in order to hastily convert it into a bedroom for one of Zeno’s numerous summer guests. The dense, leafy vegetation depicted on the fabric was crudely sewn, neither natural in appearance nor pleasingly ornamental. Castor would never have allowed it to be hung in his house, Briarus thought, but much could be forgiven for the unpleasing decoration had provided him with a weapon.

He got down on his hands and knees to find the nail, which had bounced off the tiles onto the woven carpet stretched between bed and door. To his disappointment, the small length of metal was not only bent but also much shorter than he had hoped. At first glance it suggested no way it could be used to his advantage. It might inflict some damage thrust into an eye, perhaps, but he was unlikely to be able to get close enough to an excubitor to accomplish that. He stuck it into his belt anyway, just in case. Then he sat down on the edge of the bed and waited.

Briarus had not always labored as an estate manager. He had risen to that position largely by waiting. It had occurred to him early in life that although each day contained only so many hours, each one of those hours contained Fortuna’s handiwork. Whole days of hours, even weeks or months of them, might stream by, all useless in accomplishing an individual purpose. But there were so very many hours and their flow so unceasing, that if one waited watchfully, eventually some opportunity would present itself. So, over the years, he had seized this chance and that, and then another.

Even as he worked in his comfortable post on Castor’s estate, Briarus had waited for a better opportunity to present itself. So when disaster fell upon him and the excubitors had marched him off to this soft but secure room, he had simply gone on waiting, certain that one of the hours still between him and Justinian’s dungeons would offer him the chance he needed to escape.

Nevertheless, being locked in the cramped room was burdensome. Aside from the bed and a small wooden table, there were only a clay lamp, a religious tract, and a chamber pot whose necessary use had rendered his surroundings somewhat malodorous. He intended to complain about that at the next opportunity, but unfortunately the Lord Chamberlain had not appeared to question him again.

Not that Briarus would have anything more to say about the matter, having immediately pointed out the noticeable lack of proof of any misdoing on his part. Unfortunately, he knew very well that this undisputed fact would not be something he could turn to his advantage once he was escorted to the palace.

Now the night was well advanced. Briarus fingered the tract but made no effort to read it. At this point he was more intent at avoiding eternity than in preparing for it.

During the day, listening occasionally at the door, he had overheard a man berating someone of the household for a dalliance and, later on, his guard sharing scurrilous jokes about the empress with someone with a booming laugh. Swift, light footsteps had run past once or twice, accompanied by childish laughter. He had eavesdropped on grumbling about the heat and learned that someone in the house liked to sing hymns, although unhappily in a dreadful, tuneless manner. Nothing that he had heard seemed useful in resolving his current dilemma.

Now as he sat quietly pondering the situation he heard a footsteps outside. They sounded almost too quiet. Stealthy, in fact. He padded over to the door and listened intently.

There was no sound of a key being turned but rather an odd scratching. Something was scrabbling at the wall outside.

Then Briarus smelled lamp oil, its light odor hitherto masked by the stench from the chamber pot.

Looking down, he saw that a stream of lamp oil had run in under the door and was rapidly soaking into the carpet.

He reacted quickly, reaching down to pull it away from the oil before it became saturated.

It was too late.

His hand closed on flames as a rivulet of fire raced into the room.

He grabbed the chamber pot and threw its contents over the carpet but it had no effect. The glowing fire spread rapidly across the floor as Briarus began to shout hoarsely, pounding at the door.

A wave of heat washed against his back. Turning, he saw the bed was catching fire.

Streamers of flame crackled up the wall hanging. Briarus opened his mouth to yell again and heated air poured down his throat like boiling water. Smoke filled his lungs.

Coughing and cursing, he kicked at the door frantically. Surely he would be heard and help would arrive. Where was his guard?

He screamed louder, choking on the swirling smoke.

Briarus was still waiting to be rescued when he lost consciousness and fell to the blazing floor.

Chapter Twenty

John raced across the atrium toward the sound of hoarse shouting and arrived at Briarus’s temporary quarters to find Felix wielding an axe powerfully against its door. Splinters flew, then the onlookers were assaulted by a gust of scorching air carrying whirling sparks and a cloud of thick smoke out into the corridor.

Coughing convulsively, Felix pulled a body away from inside the room and the flames licking around the doorpost. He bent over the limp figure and gave a grim shake of his head.

“Suffocated,” he growled to John.

Several servants rapidly formed a line and passed slopping buckets filled with water from the courtyard fountain hand to hand. The threat of fire had spurred Zeno’s generally lackadaisical staff to efficient action. Unfortunately the buckets of water simply vanished into the room to produce clouds of hissing steam with no apparent effect upon the conflagration. A large scrap of flaming wall hanging whirled out of the smoke and landed in the corridor. Felix leapt forward and stamped the flames out, accompanying his heavy-booted dance with lurid curses.

Suddenly a noise like distant thunder rose over the crackling roar of the flames. Heat and smoke were forcing the men further away from the room as Zeno trotted briskly into view, closely followed by two husky servants pulling a cart carrying a deep wooden vat. The cart rumbled to a stop and at Zeno’s order the two men sprang onto raised steps attached to each side of the cart and began vigorously working the narrow beam linking a pair of rods extending up from inside the vat.

It was a large water pump, John realized.

Zeno rushed to the front of the device and grasped the leather pipe protruding from its base. As the pumpers strained at the beam there was a clunking, wheezing noise as pistons started to do their work. Suddenly water gouted out of the pipe with enormous force.

Zeno directed the powerful stream first at the walls of the burning room, then into its corners, soon smothering the worst of the flames. Before long the bucket carriers were able to assume their work and eventually advance into the room to douse the smoldering remnants.

Zeno bustled over to John with a proud smile. “It’s Hero’s work, of course. A wonder, isn’t it? A real life saver.”

“It didn’t save Briarus’s life,” Felix pointed out, “although it’s certainly prevented the villa from going up in flames. Fortunately, the fire hadn’t got into the walls.”

Zeno looked stricken. “Castor will be devastated at this news,” he said somberly. “He absolutely depended on the man, you know. Briarus was a good businessman and an excellent employee by all accounts. Yet a despicable villain too, as it turned out! Dare I say that it’s only fitting that the gods gave someone who murdered a child such a terrible death?”

“We haven’t definitely established that Briarus was the culprit,” John reminded him.

“Well, John,” Felix put in, “I have to say that if you’d taken my advice and sent both prisoners immediately to Constantinople, we would have had a chance to find out the truth of the matter. As it is, how are you going to explain this latest development to Theodora’s satisfaction?”

Zeno blanched at the mention of the empress and observed in a timid voice that he trusted that there would be no repercussions over what was, in all truth, merely a terrible accident.

Felix grunted. “An accident? When one conspirator dies hours after the other is set free?”

John requested that a servant be sent to summon the Egyptian inventor for further questioning and that the rest be dismissed to their beds.

Likewise, the excubitors were ordered back to their duties with the exception of the man who had been on guard in the corridor.

“You were obviously not at your post when this fire broke out!” Felix barked at the latter. “Otherwise the alarm could have been given earlier. Where were you?”

“There was a suspicious noise in the back courtyard, captain. Since the prisoner was securely locked in, I went to investigate. I discovered that the statue of Eros was knocked over and its arm was smashed.”

“That statue was a gift from a close relative,” remarked Zeno. “The lady is deceased now, alas, so she won’t mourn its loss.”

“How long were you absent?” John asked the guard.

“There was someone moving about in the bushes so I searched them for a brief while, excellency, before returning to my post and immediately raising the alarm.”

Felix scowled. It was obvious that a lot more would be said to his subordinate once the two men were in private. Meanwhile, he curtly dismissed the excubitor, who escaped thankfully down the corridor in the footsteps of the servants departing with their buckets.

John was inspecting the corridor wall beside the door of the damaged room when Hero appeared. He greeted the man coolly. “I am surprised you didn’t arrive with that fire-fighting device of yours.”

Hero lifted the stump of his arm. “I’m afraid I’m not much good at operating such machinery, Lord Chamberlain. Ironic, isn’t it?”

Zeno broke into the conversation, effusively describing to Hero the ease of obliterating fires when equipped with such an ingenious water pump. He then hurried off “to calm everyone down,” as he put it—a task for which the elderly and excitable man was particularly ill suited, in John’s opinion.

“I am not quite so enthusiastic about your mechanical contrivances as your employer,” John remarked as Zeno’s orange-clad form disappeared from view. “Of late, they seem to be appearing rather too frequently in the general vicinity of those who have recently died.”

Hero placed his palm in a protective gesture on the side of the vat. “What do you mean, Lord Chamberlain? If it weren’t for this contrivance we’d all be standing in the garden watching the villa burn down like a city tenement.”

“I wasn’t referring to the pump but rather to this strange lighting contrivance.” John indicated a recess in the wall by the door to what had been Briarus’s room. The small niche and its contents were badly charred, with a black streak stretching from it to the water-puddled floor tiles.

“My self-lighting lamp? It’s a clever device indeed, Lord Chamberlain. It’s operated in a most cunning manner with the aid of a water clock, not unlike the automatically lit lamps inside the whale.”

John observed quietly that he was less interested in discovering how the lamp worked than the manner in which it appeared to have malfunctioned. “From the stains on the wall,” he continued, “it’s fairly obvious that lamp oil was somehow spilt, caught fire and then ran under the door.”

Hero inspected the blackened wreckage inside the recess. “Yes, that does seem to have been what happened,” he admitted thoughtfully. “Its oil supply is in a container set into the wall but it couldn’t have leaked accidentally. I have some expertise in designing such things and I can assure you that the arrangement was perfectly safe.”

Felix and John regarded him silently. It was obvious they were thinking about the mechanical whale, which had also been judged to be perfectly safe.

Hero’s jaws clenched in anger. “Surely it is clear that someone tampered with the lamp?”

“And who would know how to do that? Apart from a person with some expertise in these things—such as yourself?” Felix pointed out.

“Lord Chamberlain, this was a terrible event.” Hero waved his hand at the wreckage visible through the doorway a few paces from them but did not glance down at Briarus, who lay even closer. “But whoever did it remains at liberty.” He turned his gaze toward Felix although he continued to address John. “It is my opinion what whoever killed Gadaric murdered Briarus and as I believe you now know, the night that the boy was murdered, I was with Bertrada.”

***

At John’s brisk knock, Bertrada angrily yanked her bedroom door open, her lips already forming a virulent protest. Recognizing the Lord Chamberlain, she hastily amended her manner.

“I thought it was Godomar, excellency,” she explained in a nervous tone. “He’s always creeping around to spy on what we’re doing. He claims it’s his duty to keep an eye on all of us. The Evil Eye is what I call it!”

John, thinking that Godomar no doubt had good reason to keep a close watch on the young nursemaid, stepped into the room. He gestured the girl to sit down on her rumpled bed. She was wearing only the flimsy tunica she slept in. It revealed a form that was still boylike and angular.

“You surely cannot have slept through the recent uproar?” John said.

“No, I didn’t. It’s certainly a terrible thing that has happened, excellency.”

“And how do you know if you have not been out of your room?”

“I heard about it from a servant who went by a little while ago. Of course I heard all the commotion but I knew I should remain here with Sunilda,” she continued, looking toward the door connecting her room with her charge’s bedroom.

John suggested that apart from devotion to her duty, might she also have remained because she expected a visitor, perhaps one who could be described as a military man?

She blushed as she denied the charge.

A few brief questions elicited the information that no-one had visited her since her young charge had fallen asleep and she herself had retired to bed.

“But someone has tracked mud in on his boots,” John nodded toward the obvious evidence on the floor.

“Sunilda’s always playing in the mud.” Bertrada shook her head and smiled. “I have often had to correct her about that. It’s not at all lady-like.”

“I ordered Hero released because I believed what you told me,” John said, “which is to say that you were with him on the night Gadaric was murdered. Now, no sooner is Hero a free man than someone else is dead, and again through the agency of one of his mechanical devices.”

Bertrada’s face flushed as she insisted Hero was innocent of wrongdoing. “There is a room at the back of the workshop. We met there that night…” She hesitated, biting her lip for an instant, before continuing in a low voice. “Our entanglement was a mistake, I see that clearly now, excellency. Do you think Captain Felix was terribly hurt to learn about it? He is a fine man.”

John ignored the question and instead instructed her to relate her movements on the night of the banquet in detail.

“Both children were put to bed early and were soon fast asleep,” the girl replied, looking ashamed. “There were guards all over the place with the empress being here, not to mention many of the banquet guests had their own bodyguards. So I just assumed this villa was as safe as the palace.”

“Indeed? As you now realize, it’s exactly as safe as the palace, or in other words, not at all. So you crept out to visit Hero? Didn’t anyone remark on your leaving the children unattended?”

“Why would they? I’m their nursemaid and it’s not for servants to question me. Besides, Calyce and Livia sometimes take charge of the children. So has Godomar, on occasion.”

John questioned her concerning the time when she had left the children asleep.

“I couldn’t say exactly, but it was after the banquet had started. I could hear all the laughter and chatter going on and the clatter in the kitchen as I went out to the workshop. There were lots of servants scurrying about the corridors but they didn’t take much notice of me.”

The information was of little use, John realized, since the banquet had been in progress well before the whale appeared on stage. “Was Hero there when you arrived?”

She confirmed he was.

“He didn’t keep you waiting?”

The girl shook her head. “Nor did he leave at any time, excellency, and neither of us emerged until we heard screams coming from the villa.” Her face darkened. “Would you like me to describe further how we passed the hours?” she blurted out angrily.

“You would perhaps do better to describe that to Felix, Bertrada,” John replied evenly. “It would prove most instructive for him, although not in the manner that you meant.”

Bertrada looked stricken. “Hero is nothing to me, Lord Chamberlain. I was lonely, it was a whim, an accident. He is but a boy compared to Felix, I swear it.”

John felt sudden fury boiling in his veins. Bertrada had been lax in carrying out her duty and a tragedy had ensued. Yet now, apparently, she was still more interested in pursuing affairs of the heart.

“The captain is of no concern to you nor can he ever be,” he replied in an cold, controlled tone. “And as for boys, it is important right now that you assist in every way you can to find Gadaric’s murderer. The boy was in your charge, remember. His family entrusted him to your care but you failed them. Now he is dead and they will never see him again.”

Bertrada’s eyes filled with tears. “I try not to dwell on thoughts of his death, for it is unbearable to contemplate.”

Was that true? John wondered. Zeno had offered his own excuses for his seeming lack of concern over the boy’s death. He was preoccupied with the upcoming village celebrations. If Calyce grieved, her hot pursuit of Anatolius gave no evidence of it. In general, the mood of the occupants of the villa seemed remarkably unaffected by Gadaric’s terrible demise. Was it surprising? The boy’s true family, those who might have cared, had sent him away to live among strangers and strangers could not feel the same as they would.

As he stepped out of Bertrada’s room John glimpsed a movement at the end of the corridor. Someone passing by, or hastily retreating? A tall figure. Godomar?

He thought of pursuing but did not. Zeno’s halls were always busy and especially tonight, with everyone roused by the fire.

He was struck by the uneasy conviction that with each passing hour events were running further out of his control. He could not be everywhere at once observing everyone at all times. Now two people had died. Barnabas was still missing and so was Castor.

A strange pairing, to be sure, but the key had to lie with the two missing men. Yet John could think of no other place to search for Barnabas, and as for Castor—whatever Briarus knew had just been extinguished with the estate manager’s life. And while John found himself staring at a blank wall, it was entirely possible that someone, somewhere, was already embarking on a course of action that would result in yet more disappearances—or even deaths.