by Mary Reed
***
They were almost too late.
As John and Felix hurried across the Mese, a man bolted from Timothy’s emporium, raced down the street, into the Augustaion, and headed toward the Great Church.
John and Felix gave pursuit. By the time they reached the church vestibule the man had scrambled up onto the high pedestal supporting the sculpture and was embracing Christ’s legs. The man began to harangue the shocked onlookers.
“Don’t put your faith in the Lord!” he screamed, his agonized tones echoing in the cavernous space. “For He is full of deceit! He did not allow me time enough to complete my task!”
“That’s the gray-haired fellow who tried to help the carter the other day.” Felix looked at John in confusion. “I thought we were after a murderous grocer. Why did this man run off when he saw us?”
The man heard him and shouted down, with a twisted smile. “Because I realized you were coming after me. I am the man you’re seeking, fool! It was me, Timothy, who delivered the death blow!”
He tightened his grip on the figure of Christ. “Yes,” he shouted even louder, “that carter often passed down the Mese in the course of his work. I had to watch him, the murderer of my son, drive past almost every day. Ah, but I was just waiting for my chance. When he gave it to me by coming to your aid, I stabbed him. In all the confusion no one noticed. You might say I helped him. Helped him on his way to Hell!”
A woman screamed and made the sign of her religion. Some men began shouting virulent curses at Timothy. Curious spectators were filling the vestibule, a number of them drawn from the church itself by the commotion. A group of Blues, sensing the anger in the air, appeared from the street to add their vulgar jeers.
John caught bits of panicked conversations.
“What is it? What’s happening?”
“…dead. Murdered!”
“…treachery, so they say.”
Suddenly several more Blues, obviously intoxicated, burst into the vestibule. “Beware the Gourd!” They surged unsteadily through the crowd to join their companions. “We’re in for some sport now!”
“Justinian’s dead!” one of the new arrivals screamed. His shrill, slurred cry cut through the clamor echoing in the vestibule.
“No!” another shouted even more loudly. “Justin was murdered! His bodyguards have all been executed! Justinian has proclaimed himself emperor!”
Archdeacon Palamos appeared from the body of the church, shooing away several small boys who sought to follow him. “Someone remove that blasphemer immediately!” he shouted in thunderous outrage, pointing at Timothy.
Felix grabbed the grocer’s legs and got a boot in the face for his pains.
“Archdeacon,” John said swiftly. “You must hear what this man has to say.”
Palamos stared at Timothy in horror. Wild haired, his eyes glaring, the grocer resembled a demon.
“Yes, listen to me, archdeacon!” Timothy demanded. “I executed the cart driver and others too, all of them connected with this blasphemous statue. I started with Hypatius, one of those who sponsored it. That was as quickly done as it was with the cart driver. Yes, I wept tears of joy over the carter. It’s amazing what you can do in the middle of a rioting crowd without being noticed.”
“Come down and speak to us privately,” Palamos coaxed.
Timothy simply laughed and continued. “The sculptor, Dio, he was another.”
“You were outside the monastery and overheard Fortunatus tell me where Dio could be found?” John guessed.
“You are clever, Excellency,” Timothy said, “but not half as clever as I am. I already knew where Dio lived. Hadn’t Hypatius bragged all over the city about the expensive sculptor he had employed? No, Dio would have died sooner had he not been away the day I first visited his studio. However, when I overheard Fortunatus say he would shortly be back, I was there first thing next morning to warm his homecoming.”
“And to set the Prefect’s men on me,” John said.
“A marvelous stroke of good fortune, that was. I noticed you coming up the Domninus as I was leaving. I’d been keeping my eye on you as much as I could anyway, ever since my assistant told me you’d been asking about Hypatius. So I helpfully alerted the first of the Gourd’s men I could find.”
“You wouldn’t have to look far,” Felix growled. “They’re everywhere. What’s more, they’re sure to be here soon to deal with this disturbance. John, we’d better grab him and make our escape while we can,” he muttered in an undertone.
John shook his head. “We must make certain of the facts, my friend, while we have the archdeacon as a witness. Tell me about Viator, Timothy.”
“Viator! Wasn’t that a wonder? I asked for the Lord’s help in finding all the people who were involved with this disgusting sculpture, and was granted heavenly aid! It was a true miracle! To begin with, at least. Even you and your friend were part of it,” he said to John. “I hadn’t yet been able to find out from whose warehouse the marble had come. Then you obligingly led me to it. Not only that, you also frightened the importer so badly that he ran away practically unguarded. I soon stopped his flight with a blade in the ribs!”
“So Dominica and Fortunatus were spared because they chose not to talk publicly about their co-sponsoring the sculpture with Hypatius?”
“Again you are wrong! I knew them for the murderers they were. I own a perfume shop too, you know. My wealthy clients tell me many things. They might have thought nobody knew, but their contributions were common knowledge among the high born.”
Timothy’s gloating grin turned into a sorrowful scowl. “The problem was they were too well protected. The widow never stirs without a small army of guards. As for Fortunatus, it’s true he has a name of good omen, yet he does well to skulk in the monastery. I had planned to climb over the wall one night and see if I could catch him at his devotions.”
Palamos shuddered. “I’ve heard enough. This man is Satan himself.”
“You think I’m Satan?” screeched Timothy. “Think it then. I’m just doing the Lord’s job since He wouldn’t do it Himself.”
“Satan walks among us all right,” bellowed a nearby Blue, a young man with a spotty face. His voice was thickened by wine. “It’s not the madman perched up there, though. It’s the King of the Demons who’s just mounted the throne, not to mention the new empress!”
A portly, middle-aged man with the look of a clerk in his stooped shoulders and pale face pointed an accusing finger at the younger man and yelled furiously at him.
“Whoever rules, the populace is going to suffer! You should be on your knees asking for forgiveness instead of stirring up trouble!”
The young man he addressed replied with an exaggerated low bow. “Such fine talk from one about to die!”
“Not at your hand, you idiotic fop!”
“Is that so?” The Blue drew his blade. “I think you are wrong!”
The Blue grabbed the man’s throat, but before he could make another move a familiar voice cut through the tumult.
“No, my young friend. I believe he is right.”
It was the Gourd. He strode through the crowd, which shrank away from him, clearing his path as if by magick.
“No indeed,” he remarked in a conversational tone. “He’s not going to die at your hand. In fact, it is you who will die at mine. But then, you already knew that, didn’t you?” The Gourd hardly paused before casually running his blade through the Blue’s stomach.
Felix stepped between John and the Gourd.
The Gourd nudged the lifeless body at his feet with the toe of his boot, then addressed the stunned and silent onlookers. He tilted his monstrous head toward a knot of Blues. “Quite a few of you may soon be joining this fellow in the afterlife. As I have warned, riots will be crushed without mercy. I do believe that one was brewing here.”
Archdeacon Palamos stepped toward the Gourd. “More killing won’t resolve anything. In the name of the Lord, I comma
nd you to leave this holy place immediately!”
Dozens of the Gourd’s men poured into the vestibule, herding terrified people before them. Another contingent emerged from the nave, having entered through a side door.
The operation was well planned. It would not be long before troublemakers, real and imagined, would be hauled off to the dungeons. Nor would it be long before the Gourd’s men, methodically examining the crowd, discovered the tall thin Greek whom their master wanted dead.
John glanced at Timothy. The grocer still embraced the marble figure. Though no longer the center of attention, he grinned with apparent delight at the incipient slaughter.
Then John turned his gaze on the Gourd and drew his sword. He could do some good before he was discovered.
Felix caught his wrist in a crushing grip and shook his head slightly.
The Gourd’s men had closed their ring around the crowd, forcing it into a tight mass. The portly man cursed as he was crushed against the statue, and again as more men were forced against him by the tightening circle. A number of the crowd sought safety by clambering up onto the pedestal next to Timothy.
“The bastard’s going to set his men loose,” whispered Felix. “He wants a bloodbath. He’ll call it a riot afterward and who’ll contradict him?”
Even as Felix spoke, the Gourd began to raise his sword as a signal for the sort of slaughter John and Felix had witnessed near the Strategion.
Before the signal could be completed, the mass of men clinging to the looming sculpture unbalanced it.
The great Christ figure rocked backward and then toppled forward, shedding human barnacles as those who had sought its safety leapt away.
The sculpture hit the floor and shattered in a thunderous, echoing explosion. Chunks of marble went spinning and rolling across the vestibule.
An unearthly scream mounted into the shadowed vault overhead before trailing away in a chilling gurgle. For a heartbeat John thought of the death bellow of the Great Bull slain by Mithra.
Even the Gourd stood transfixed.
The Christ lay stretched out toward the church entrance like a toppled marble tree. The head lay in one corner. Here was a hand, there a part of the cross beam. One or two of the crowd lay moaning on the floor, but the only person seriously injured appeared to be Timothy.
John knelt beside him.
The grocer’s eyes were closed. Blood flowed from his mouth, but his chest still moved in a shallow fashion.
Felix was at John’s side instantly. “Hurry! We have to get out of here! You’re sure to be spotted!”
“No, Felix. There’s one last thing I have to know.”
He shook Timothy’s shoulder roughly. The grocer’s eyes opened. His lips moved. Blood bubbled out. He spat and began to speak. “He was my son. My only child. He was playing in the street. Didn’t the driver see him? Heaven should have blinded him for it. I have been faithful to the Lord all my life. Why did He take away my son? And do it with a cart carrying a likeness of His own son? Was it some horrible joke? What have I done to deserve this?”
John heard a choking sob. He glanced over his shoulder and saw Archdeacon Palamos standing a few paces behind him. He turned back to Timothy. “Yes, we understand that. But why did you attack Opimius?”
“I saw him talking to Hypatius here in the church…admiring that blasphemous piece…so I thought he must also be connected with it…”
“But in attacking Opimius you ended up killing a devout old servant trying to protect his master.”
“A master so arrogant…he went about with only a tottering old slave…for a guard! He’d still be alive…if he hadn’t fought so hard…I ran off and hid in my perfume shop after stabbing him…it’s in the Augustaion…very close to the alley by Samsun’s Hospice….” Timothy’s voice was fading. “But the old man should not have died…I have prayed for the Lord’s forgiveness…”
“You think your Lord will forgive you for snuffing out the lives of five people?” John said quietly.
“No, not five…I did not mean to kill the old man…so his death does not count.” Timothy’s eyes glistened. “I was only given time to kill four…four for a boy. Yet forty or four hundred…would not have been enough!” Anger made his voice stronger. “And there were others waiting to die too…that drunken physician at the hospice…said he could do nothing for my son…didn’t even try…”
“His Lord may not be very ready to forgive,” Felix observed quietly to John, “for it’s always possible that Timothy will live to see the inside of the emperor’s dungeons.”
“And so will both of you.”
John looked around. The Gourd loomed behind them, sword at the ready, several of his men at his back.
The Gourd inclined his massive head in John’s direction. “Or will you survive? There’s blood soaking through your tunic, I see, John. Been fighting, have you? What does heaven have in store for you, I wonder? I suppose heaven does as it pleases, but since we are not in heaven, what would please me most?”
“Halt!”
A man in full military regalia strode into the vestibule.
“Mithra,” breathed Felix. “It’s the captain of the excubitors!”
The captain, his face a mask of contempt, came to a stop before the Gourd. “By order of Justinian, I place you, Prefect Theodotus, under arrest!” he declared. “Arrest him, Felix!”
Felix grinned and clapped his big hand on the Gourd’s shoulder. “With pleasure!”
Epilogue
John and Felix watched as workers finished unloading a cartload of marble busts and commemorative diptychs, and heaped them haphazardly under a portico before rumbling off.
Felix surveyed the large pile of castoff public monuments. “It looks as if Emperor Justin is thinking of doing some redecoration.”
The obscure square they were crossing had been used for years as a repository for discarded statuary. An eerie crowd of motionless dignitaries surrounded them.
“Look.” John paused to read an inscription chiseled next to the foot of a man dressed in military garb. “It’s Vitalian.”
Felix shivered. “Is this cold ever going to leave? Even the sun doesn’t seem inclined to celebrate Justinian’s sudden recovery.”
“Unfortunately the weather doesn’t pay much attention to what we’d like.”
“Rather like Fortuna.”
“She has been good to us on occasion.” John looked toward the building forming one side of the square. Over its portico sat a statue of Hermes. A few bits of peeling gilt on the Hermes glinted in the thin light.
“Fortuna’s ways are often strange, Felix. What if Timothy had not murdered Victor’s father? If he hadn’t, Victor wouldn’t have been on hand to save my life. I owe my continued existence to another’s untimely death.”
“And if the Gourd’s thugs had succeeded in killing you, who knows how many more victims Timothy would have dispatched before he was caught? I wonder who I would have been working with if you had died.”
“The Gourd wanted both of us out of the way. Didn’t he order both of us to wait out in the cold all night for a riot that was not going to happen, and then send those assassins to attack us when we were exhausted from lack of sleep?”
“You think that was why they waited until dawn? I thought perhaps they failed to notice us behind that pile of debris. Do you think the Gourd was planning to take over by force of arms when Justin died?”
“It’s happened before, and it probably will again,” John replied. “Come to think of it, we’re fortunate the murderous grocer didn’t put his blade in our backs since he followed us more than once. No wonder you kept thinking someone was watching us. Timothy was interested in us only because his assistant told him we’d been asking about Hypatius. If he had concluded we were connected with the sculpture in some way, I suspect one or both of us might not be here.”
Felix scratched his chin. “John, I admit I couldn’t understand why Justinian
had chosen a—pardon me—a slave to undertake such a delicate investigation. Now I see he gave you the task because of your discretion and intelligence. Then, too, your tutoring Lady Anna in Persian presented a wonderful opportunity for him, since it meant that he already had someone in Opimius’ household to act as a spy, however unwilling.”
“We both better use our intelligence and be exceedingly discreet, Felix. It’s been made very plain to me that any knowledge of this investigation reaching other ears will have swift and terrible repercussions not only for us, but also for Anna and her father. I was also informed that we shouldn’t allow ourselves to think the services we rendered our masters will protect us in future either.”
John looked at Vitalian’s marble twin again. “Since Opimius is pagan,” he went on, “I wonder if he thought it a wise move to align himself with Vitalian, a man known and admired for his orthodoxy?”
“It turned out to be a bad alliance,” Felix observed. “But Opimius is nothing if not shrewd. I was on duty when that delegation of senators arrived to present their petition to Justin. It was signed by every single member of the Senate and Opimius and Aurelius formally presented it to the emperor. Justin understood right away when he saw those two advancing toward him together, practically arm in arm.”
Felix scowled at the memory. “To formally petition an emperor to agree to share his throne with an impatient upstart, even if that upstart is his nephew…to demand that an emperor give up power…I wish I hadn’t been witness to such a spectacle. If those senators had had the courage to attempt a proper coup I would have enjoyed putting my sword in every one of them. Unfortunately, it was all legal.”
His scowl grew more pronounced. “Yes,” he went on, “Quaestor Proclus glanced over the petition and explained it to the emperor as if he already knew its contents, which I’d wager he did. It’s a sorry thing to see men disgrace themselves, and none worse than Opimius. After all, he abandoned his principles, and in supporting Justinian has betrayed Justin, a man to whom he had proclaimed loyalty.”
“I think Opimius was acting more out of loyalty toward his daughter,” John replied. “He abandoned his principles rather than Anna. What would have become of her if her father had been arrested and executed for opposing Justinian? Everything the senator owned would no doubt have been forfeited. Anna would have been left not only fatherless, but destitute and homeless as well.”
