by Mary Reed
“Whatever truth there might be in what you say, you would be well advised to return to Egypt before anyone else knows you left. You won’t be safe here.”
“You are offering to allow me to leave unmolested. Is that what you’re saying?”
“I am giving advice.”
“We have much in common, Lord Chamberlain. We both know what it is to be hated by Theodora, to be persecuted and plotted against, for no reason beyond her envy, her dread that anyone except her might have Justinian’s ear.”
John observed the same applied to many people.
“But the two of us, she hated us specially, hated us for years. You know how she had me exiled to Cyzicus and ordained a deacon against my will, how she forced Justinian to confiscate my estates.”
“He allowed you to retain enough to live comfortably,” John pointed out.
The Cappadocian’s dark eyes narrowed and he drew his lips into a tight, plump line, the first signs of anger he had shown. “Live comfortably in the middle of nowhere as a deacon? Even that was not enough for Theodora. When the bishop of Cyzicus was murdered she contrived to have me accused. I was not convicted, because I did not kill the bishop any more than I killed the empress. Yet I was stripped, scourged, and put on board a ship bound for Egypt. In order to survive I had to beg at every port. Think of it. I was reduced to begging.”
“Count yourself fortunate. I was once reduced to slavery, although not by Theodora,” John replied. “She treated countless people unjustly. I have been thrown into the dungeons. But, like you, I survived. That is all past. Theodora is gone.”
John saw the Cappadocian’s florid face ran with rivulets of sweat. “You think the past vanishes? Has your long ago encounter with the Persians vanished? Do you think I can forget being thrown into an Egyptian prison? And how, a few years later, she tried to convince two young members of Cyzica’s Green faction to testify I had indeed been involved in the bishop’s murder? Only one refused even under torture, so she had the hands of both cut off.”
John was well aware of the story and did not doubt its veracity. He said nothing.
The Cappadocian ran a hand over his shaved head. The hot sunlight had turned his scalp a fiery scarlet. “You know what is the worst of it, Lord Chamberlain? She used my only child, my innocent young daughter, to lead me into a trap. Think about that. You have a daughter yourself. What if Theodora and Antonina deceived her in order to destroy you?”
He scowled and continued. “Yes, it was Antonina who assisted her. She convinced my daughter Belisarius desired to overthrow Justinian and needed my support. But when I went to the appointed place and spoke to Antonina about the matter, I discovered Narses had been listening with an armed guard. I was seized and sent into exile. Now my poor daughter will carry until the end of her life the burden of what she inadvertently did to her father, simply because she was an unsophisticated young girl.”
“Those who hold positions of power can’t help but subject their families to the dangers of court intrigue.”
“You know that yourself, Lord Chamberlain. I know you suspect me. But when you discover that I am innocent, you will realize we are natural allies, having suffered the same injustices. I remind you that I only know how to cook the sort of nourishment those in holy orders consume. I learned that skill after I entered on my religious career.” He smiled and spread his arms, calling attention to his monkish garb. “Antonina, on the other hand, knows how to cook potions and poisons.”
“You hid in the kitchens because you could pass for a cook?”
“And also because it is a good place to hear what’s going on in the palace. When meals are delivered people are often in the middle of conversations, and servants are regarded as furniture, totally deaf. An hour after the venison in honeyed sauce is placed on the banquet table everyone in the kitchen knows that a certain senator is having an affair with the wife of a prominent official in the prefecture. I had good reason to be in the kitchens, but poisoning Theodora wasn’t one of them. Antonina, on the other hand-”
“You aren’t the first to point out Antonina dabbles in potions. But then you have as much a grievance against her as you do against Theodora. It would doubtless please you if she were executed or hauled off to the dungeons.”
“Certainly. You see, I am frank. Not that Antonina will wield any influence a month from now. How long do you think Belisarius will keep his position without Theodora blocking the ascent of Germanus? A changing of the guard is coming, Lord Chamberlain. I have no grievance against Germanus, nor he against me. The two of us have never opposed one another. In fact, we have much in common.”
John directed a thin smile at the fat man. “So you agreed to meet me here to make an offer?”
“No. Not yet. I am merely indicating that I will be willing to make you an offer when I am in a position to do so. But first, you will clear me of wrongdoing, Lord Chamberlain. I have every confidence in you.”
Chapter Forty-two
John returned home to find Gaius in possession of both his study and a wine jug. The physician’s slurred speech made it plain he had stormed the territory and commandeered the wine some time before and was ready to continue campaigning, given the opportunity.
Already chagrined over the Cappadocian’s brazen claim on his services, John was not pleased to find his hospitality had been seized as well.
“What do you think you’re doing, Gaius? Did you come here to treat Peter or treat yourself to my wine?”
“John,” Gaius said with a hiccup, “I was hoping to find you in residence. Been waiting a while.” He laid a finger alongside his red nose and winked. “As you have no doubt deducted. Good at that, John, always have been. But you’ll need Mithra’s help this time.”
“So do you, my friend.”
Gaius ignored the remark. He peered around the room as if eavesdroppers were concealed behind its sparse furnishings, “At least I have good news about Peter. He’s out of danger. I wish I could say the same thing about myself.”
John sat down at his desk and raised interrogative eyebrows at the physician.
Gaius leaned forward and continued in a whisper. “I am not so intoxicated as I appear, John. I can see clearly how Justinian’s madness is growing. I hear the head gardener was arrested this morning. A man who has done nothing but served the empire all his life! The talk is he was heard railing about the empress in a fashion he should not have done, but if people will raise their voices in inns, what can they expect? And he knows his plants. Knows which are poisonous, you see?”
“If railing about Theodora were the real reason for his arrest half the city would have been arrested by now. Besides, how could he introduce poison into Theodora’s food? He never sets foot in the kitchen.”
“Could have had an accomplice,” Gaius pointed out.
“And paid him with what to risk his skin? A lifetime of free cabbages, all the roses he likes? However, I can put your mind at rest. I saw him not an hour ago on the palace grounds hoeing the vegetables and looking the same as ever.”
Gaius gave a grimace rather than a smile. “Rumor has many heads, cut one off, two grow in its place. You never know when the excubitors will knock at your door, or kick it down, more likely, and you’ll be dragged away. It isn’t so much death I fear…I’ve seen enough of death…but the dungeons. As a physician I am too aware of the body’s capacity to suffer. I have been summoned to keep alive the poor wretches the torturers weren’t yet done with.”
He gulped down more wine and burst into tears.
John cast about for a way to divert his friend’s attention from the imagined imminence of death. “It’s always been that way at the palace. This is nothing new. It doesn’t-”
“No, nothing new, nothing new,” blubbered Gaius. “How many great men have we seen paraded off to be executed? Senators, generals…”
“Who are you speaking about, Gaius? Exile is much more-”
“Not even religious vestments can save you from the emperor
’s wrath. Remember the heretic Anthimus? I treated him for an abscess. He was patriarch, then suddenly he was gone. Like magic. Vanished, never to be heard of again.”
“None of us are ever entirely safe, Gaius. But consider. How long have you served the emperor? Why would he turn on you now?”
Gaius gave no indication of hearing. “You know Menas replaced Anthimus, so naturally Theodora hated Menas even if she never said so. And with this business of the Three Chapters, Menas had reasons to want Theodora out of the way, before she-”
“You’re not making sense,” John interrupted.
“You don’t think so? I worked at Samsun’s Hospice when it was headed by Menas. You don’t think they’ll be whispering he employed me to do away with Theodora?”
“They?”
“Yes, they. Who is more dangerous at court than they, John? The unidentifiable purveyors of gossip, those who put the wrong words in the wrong ears? They are the scourge of the empire.”
John decided his friend was intoxicated beyond reason. He changed the subject. “Tell me about Peter. He is over the worst, you say?”
Gaius wiped his nose with the heel of his hand. “Yes. That is to say barring a relapse. See,” he burst into shrill laughter, “I am covering all eventualities. But I think he will mend. Possibly with a more pronounced limp than before, but he’ll be able to race up and down stairs again soon enough. He attributes his recovery to holy oil. I suppose it was unbelievable to him my own ministrations might have had some benefit.”
“Peter is a Christian,” John reminded him.
Gaius snuffled. “If healing were that simple all I’d need to do would be to travel from shrine to shrine collecting souvenirs. Holy water and oil and those blessed coins made from the mud at the bottom of stylites’ columns. Just give those to my patients. The Christian ones, at least.”
“I am sure Peter appreciates your efforts.”
“Perhaps. Well, it might be that the oil had an effect, if he believed it did. What if our thoughts affected our humors?”
John had no opportunity to answer. The conversation was interrupted by rapping at the front door. The sound was not loud, but under the circumstances it might have been a peal of thunder.
“It’s them!” Gaius cried, his face, aside from the reddened nose, paler than John had ever seen it.
“I don’t think they would bother to knock so politely.” John went downstairs, not at all confident it wasn’t more trouble for him.
He hoped it would be news from Cornelia, but the heavy door swung open to reveal Joannina, panting and disheveled.
“Lord Chamberlain,” she cried, gulping back tears. “Vesta’s been taken away! Please help her!”
John drew her in and closed the door.
Gaius had staggered to the top of the stairs. “Don’t worry,” he called up to the physician. “It’s only Joannina.”
He lead the sobbing girl into the garden, trying to calm her by assuring her he would do what he could once he knew what her visit was about.
“Vesta, my lady-in-waiting, was just arrested by the excubitors!” Joannina managed to blurt out.
It was fortunate Gaius was safely upstairs, no doubt with his nose buried in a wine cup again, so he did not hear the statement. John encouraged the girl to continue.
“We had been out together looking at jewelry and when we returned, there were excubitors waiting for her. They said incriminating herbs had been found in her room, ingredients for poison.”
Though unable to speak, rooms were more forthcoming than many people, John thought. “How did they know they were poisonous rather than cosmetic?”
“I don’t know but that’s what they said. And they said Vesta had murdered Theodora.”
John wondered who had told the excubitors about the herbs.
“Why would Vesta want to murder the empress?” Joannina was saying. “Anastasius and I, our marriage, the empress wished it. Now she’s gone and my parents can interfere…it may never happen…my lady-in-waiting was devoted to me, why would she try to thwart it? And now she’s in the hands of the imperial torturers and…and…what will happen to her?”
It was a reasonable question, but not one John was prepared to answer, given Joannina was upset enough without knowing any details of what went on in underground cells.
Chapter Forty-three
Justinian was not in the great reception hall or his personal quarters. An assortment of silentiaries, eunuchs, courtiers, and servants sent John here and there and as time passed he couldn’t help imagining what horrors the emperor’s torturers might already be applying to Joannina’s young lady-in-waiting. In his role as Lord Chamberlain, John had been obliged to attend several inquisitions. He had not been able to eat for a long time after any of them.
John finally found the emperor hunched over a table in the imperial library, surrounded by disordered mounds of codexes and scrolls of a religious nature according to the few titles he could make out. Justinian often spent entire nights poring over religious tomes, assisted by theologians in his employ, trying to come to some understanding of the unknowable or, lately, attempting to forge a compromise between beliefs which by their very nature admitted of no compromise. It was a strange occupation for a man who had just sent a girl to be tortured,
Justinian looked up, clearly annoyed. His eyes glittered feverishly. “What is this, Lord Chamberlain? You have broken my chain of thought.”
“My apologies, excellency. It is a matter of urgency.”
“It usually is an urgent matter, isn’t it?” Justinian folded over the corner of the illuminated page of his codex and closed the jeweled cover. “We will dispense with the usual amenities for that reason. Proceed.”
“A lady-in-waiting has been arrested after a search of her room led to the discovery of-”
“Yes, yes, I have given orders concerning the girl,” Justinian interrupted, fingering his ruby necklace in an absent-minded fashion.
John realized with a shock the emperor was wearing a piece of Theodora’s jewelry. A cold chill ran up his spine as if a snake was wriggling up his back. With a silent prayer to Mithra for aid, he said, “I believe this is a grievous error, excellency.”
“Do you expect me to countermand my orders?” Justinian asked. “Much blood has been shed on the matter you are investigating. What is a little more if it leads to the truth? You may speak frankly.”
“I wish to point out that if the girl dies, we have lost a valuable source of information.”
Justinian waved his hand. “Consider this beautiful necklace, Lord Chamberlain. Rubies as red as blood, each connected to its neighbor by a fine golden chain. We might draw a comparison between your investigation and the truth. The golden chain of truth, dotted with regrettably bloody incidents, leading finally to the clasp to be undone, the solving of the mystery.” He smiled and fondled the necklace again.
“Still, I am reluctant to shed innocent blood,” he went on, a statement of such immense hypocrisy John wondered the emperor did not choke on his words, “and on the other hand we must not lose a possible source of information.”
“Indeed, excellency,” John agreed.
“Why did they search the room?” Justinian asked.
“I do not know at present,” John admitted.
“It is of no importance. What is important, if indeed she poisoned our dear empress, is establishing on whose behalf she was working. The real murderer is whoever hired her, the name of whom my torturers are bound to discover.”
“I confess I am worried, excellency. A delicate young girl like that might not survive questioning long enough to reveal her employer. The culprit could well be counting on that.”
Justinian acknowledged it was a possibility.
John offered another silent prayer to Mithra and continued his persuasive efforts. “Another difficulty is she could say anything, give any name that occurs, and then I would waste time following a false trail, giving the murderer an opportunity to elude justice.”<
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“Yes, I see your point, Lord Chamberlain,” Justinian replied. “We must have a proper inquiry You may rescue her, assuming you arrive in time. I will send for you when I wish to have a full account of what you have learned.”
As John bowed himself out of the library, the emperor opened his codex and bent his head over it. He held the sullen red-gemmed necklace flat against his chest, as if again embracing his dead wife.
Chapter Forty-four
John raced down the stone steps leading to the dungeons in a controlled fall and then sprinted along the corridor at their foot. His chest burned with exertion. He had run all the way from the meeting with Justinian.
It was one thing to die in combat but the death meted out in the crude cells he raced past was quite another matter. Though torturers sometimes withheld death, permanent injury was inflicted quickly.
A scream sounded nearby, ascending into throat-aching shrillness and then down into loud sobs mixed with entreaties for mercy.
The air stank of smoke, seared flesh, blood, and less savory odors.
John suppressed a gag.
Turning a corner he saw firelight reflected on wet stones from the open door of the nearest cell.
