by Mary Reed
Limping as she crested the final hill before the shrine, she gasped in shock and horror.
Where during Michael’s sermons there had been a pool of humanity filling the space in front of the building, there was now only a scene of desolation. Bodies lay strewn across the trampled grass. A few excubitors paced around, poking at the fallen with their swords. Some of their colleagues assisted wounded comrades. The small group of acolytes clustered at the foot of the steps leading up to the shrine’s columned portico were under heavy guard. Lucretia fervently thanked the Lord that she could not see Michael among the captives.
Surely they were not going to murder the survivors, she thought, looking again at the excubitors prodding swords at the figures on the ground.
From here and there on what must have lately resembled a slaughtering pen rather than a battlefield, an occasional hoarse shout rose to hang on the morning air. At each shout, one of the fallen was quickly picked up by a pair of brawny excubitors and carried, none too tenderly, into the shrine. So they were finding and tending to the living, she thought. She could be of assistance after all. That had been her first impulse. What she would do afterwards, where she would go, she couldn’t say.
“Guard me, Lord, and keep me safe,” she prayed softly, not certain if she feared detection by her pursuing husband more than the possibility of assault. She quickly walked down the hill.
Soon she was stooping, checking those lying in her path. The first person she found alive was a woman holding her gashed arm, lying on her back staring blank-eyed into the morning sky.
“Tear a strip off your tunic and bind your wound,” Lucretia urged her. “Then come and help with the others.”
The woman smiled benignly, patting Lucretia’s arm with a bloody hand. “But of course I will, my dear. Just as soon as Michael heals me.”
Lucretia looked around in desperation. “I don’t see him here. He could be dead. He may have run away.”
The woman’s smile broadened. “Oh, no, not him,” she contradicted, looking at Lucretia with obvious pity for such lack of faith. “No, he would never abandon us, my dear. Why, we followed him all the way from Sinope. Yes, me and my husband left what little we had. My husband. Where…” Her voice rose to a shriek. “Where is my husband? Is he dead?”
The woman scrambled to her feet and began a frantic search, rolling bodies over to look at their faces. Lucretia trudged after her. One or two other women appeared, also obviously seeking loved ones, stony-faced shuttles weaving back and forth across a tapestry of agony.
Flies were already buzzing at the feast. From here and there came soft whimperings of pain, a muttered curse, fragments of prayers. One woman discovered her lover, another her child, the one still living, the other dead.
Lucretia arrived at the shrine. The acolytes had been herded into the building, from which the sound of low chanting now emerged. Several excubitors sat on the steps. Silent, heads hanging, they stared at the marble beneath their feet with that blank gaze of the physically and emotionally exhausted.
Lucretia looked up at them. They had murdered her only chance of escape. It was suddenly too much for her to bear.
“You call yourself brave men, you call yourself heroes!” she screamed. “You miserable excuses for men, you filthy bastards! Creeping about in the night to do Justinian’s foul work!”
She could not stop her tirade. All the bitterness and anger and fear of the past few days fueled it as she berated the group of excubitors staring down at her as if she had been suddenly struck insane.
“You’ve murdered women! Children, babies even!” she shrieked, wild-eyed. “Pilgrims, people who had done you no harm! May the fire from heaven strike you down! May it roast your eyes out while you live to endure its agonies! May you die of the pox! And may Justinian suffer every agony he and that whore of a wife of his have brought down upon these innocent people, suffer them ten times over!” Her voice had risen to screaming so shrill that, fortunately for her, her words could hardly be understood.
One of the men leapt down the steps and grabbed her tightly by her elbows, fingers digging painfully into her flesh. “Be quiet, you fool!” He shook her roughly. “You’ll cause yourself trouble.”
Lucretia spat in his face. “Ah, so the murderer fears trouble, does he? From an unarmed woman! You coward! What would your mother think, to see her son carrying out the devil’s work?”
The man dealt her a hard slap. His companions started to laugh, calling out obscene suggestions.
Her stinging face brought Lucretia to her senses as the man began dragging her away toward the edge of the grassy space, where bushes clustered along the banks of a small stream. The coarse laughter of his companions followed them, growing louder as Lucretia struggled to escape his grip. He stopped and struck her again, a harder slap. She jerked away and darted around him. His companions’ bawdy shouts changed into jeering. Two of them stood to follow with obvious purpose.
But the man was fast on his feet. He caught Lucretia easily and turned triumphantly back toward his companions. “Stay where you are,” he shouted at the two men approaching. “Find your own prize. This one’s mine and I don’t need your help with it.” He then proceeded to describe in particularly foul detail exactly what he didn’t need their help with.
Lucretia screamed again, provoking another burst of laughter from the two excubitors, who nonetheless went back to their perch on the shrine’s steps.
The man threw Lucretia roughly down behind the bushes.
Before she could think, he was bending over her, his breath hot on her face. “Leave, woman! Go before you get hurt!”
She gazed up at him, dumbfounded. He knelt down beside her. “Don’t you understand? We didn’t kill any women or children. Our captain ordered the pilgrims to go. They were permitted to leave unharmed. The ones who stayed…”
“But I saw children dead on the grass, there were children…”
“In panicked flight people get hurt, children most of all. Most of the pilgrims fled, fortunately for them since our captain’s wounded and has lost a lot of blood. I doubt he can keep order now and not all of my comrades were pleased to see the women escape. A couple weren’t too happy to see the children get away either.” Deep disgust was displayed on his face and in his voice.
Lucretia sat up. The bushes shielded them from sight of the shrine. As the man had dragged her boastfully away she thought she had understood his intent perfectly, but this odd behavior confused her.
“But what you shouted you were going to do just now…why would you want to help me?” she asked suspiciously.
“It is not a Mithran’s way to force a woman. Now, leave.”
“But what about Michael? Is he dead?”
“He wasn’t with those we cornered inside the shrine,” was the reply. “But if he’s dead, at least he chose to stand and fight.”
“You’re lying! He escaped and you know it. I saw your men on the road. They were looking for him, weren’t they?”
The excubitor denied her accusation.
Lucretia grabbed his arm. “But I saw armed men coming in this direction,” she insisted.
Shouts came from the road as she spoke. Alarm washed over her companion’s face. He peered through the concealment of the thick bushes toward the road.
Lucretia looked over his shoulder.
An angry crowd was pouring down the hill. Among them she saw some of the simply dressed but well-armed men she had seen along the road.
The excubitor cursed. His companions at arms were already jumping up, reaching for their weapons. Even Lucretia, totally unskilled in military matters, immediately realized her rescuer’s concerns. This was a different situation altogether.
Before Lucretia could gather her thoughts she heard a familiar voice drifting across the open space.
Michael was standing on the brow of the hill. From where they crouched, she could not hear exactly what he was shouting.
It didn’t matter. He was alive!
<
br /> More excubitors emerged from the shrine, moving quickly to take up their positions, shaking off their weariness. The scattered group of exhausted soldiers was again transforming itself into a fighting unit.
Several acolytes appeared in the portico of the shrine.
“I must rejoin my comrades immediately,” her companion said, unsheathing his sword.
Lucretia pointed out that they were outnumbered at least ten to one.
“But we are Justinian’s men and they are just a rabble,” he replied.
It was then that Michael raised his hands to the heavens.
A lightning bolt seemed to strike the foot of the shrine’s stairs, sending gouts of flame toward the cloudless sky. Two excubitors broke formation, slapping at the flames crackling along their arms.
A second bolt exploded against the side of the shrine.
Now the mob of pilgrims was running, surging across the open space, shrieking and waving weapons with most unholy intent as they trampled over dead and wounded alike in their haste to attack the excubitors.
Lucretia saw nothing more. After the man who had rescued her raced off to carry out his duty, she covered her ears and cowered down behind the sheltering bushes, trying to blot out the sound of hoarse oaths and screams and all the obscene sounds of a battle that was soon over.
When a terrible silence fell, she raised her head, weeping. She had come here seeking refuge and had found only hell instead.
Chapter Eighteen
John surfaced from the deep, dark waters of slumber, his hand moving to the blade at his belt. Something was wrong. He felt a rough surface against his cheek. Bricks. He was half seated, leaning against bricks. He was cold and his left arm, pinned between him and the wall, was numb. His thoughts winged briefly back to distant memories of military encampments, of waking on frozen ground in a cramped tent.
In an instant he realized he was not in an encampment. He was in Constantinople and had become a beggar, or as near to one as he could manage. And like many beggars, he had spent the night dozing out of doors.
He climbed stiffly to his feet in the hospitable doorway where he had found refuge. A few tatters of mist swirled low along the ground. A mangy black cat inspecting breakfast possibilities in rotting refuse piled nearby glanced at him with calm yellow eyes and then trotted away briskly on its three remaining legs.
John shook the numbness out of his arm. His heavy cloak was gone, discarded on the street after he’d left the palace grounds after his brief meeting with Felix in the mithraeum.
After hearing of Michael’s threats to set the Bosporos afire and subsequently learning from Felix about the imminent attack on the shrine, John had realized the situation was too urgent. There was no time to engage informants, let alone wait for them to do their work.
He would have to do the job himself.
So he had discarded his cloak, torn his tunic, rubbed dirt into his hair and on his face and hands. He hoped, by posing as a beggar himself, to gain the confidence of, and confidences from, those who were afraid to speak to the authorities.
As yet, however, his disguise had gained him nothing. The people nesting in corners and clustered around small fires in alleys were as wary of dirty strangers as they were of officials, although less frightened. After all, they were many and he was but one.
The morning was eerily quiet, with none of the usual noisy bustle of merchants opening their shops. No doubt their businesses would remain shuttered today. He wondered about Felix’s raid, muttering a brief prayer to Mithra that the burly captain was unharmed. Whatever had happened, it was obvious that word had not yet been carried back to the city. Otherwise it would not be so quiet.
As for Michael, John thought it more than likely he was dead. He doubted anyone at the palace would feel much sorrow at the ascetic eunuch’s demise. It was commonly bandied about that those deprived of the opportunity to be men had strong tendencies toward treachery. No doubt it was a result of the gross imbalance in their humors. John himself had too often been labeled such a creature.
Unfortunately, it had apparently not occurred to Theodora that martyrs were the worst sort of foes with which to have to grapple.
Pursued by that bleak thought, John set out toward the forum graced by the pillar occupied by the stylite Joseph.
John spent the morning and early afternoon loitering at the edge of the forum in which Joseph’s pillar stood, observing the stylite and the intermittent stream of pilgrims arriving to pay their respects and place offerings in the baskets there.
In mid morning, a vendor set up his brazier and the tempting smell of cooking fish made John’s stomach grumble with hunger. But a beggar, of course, did not have the wherewithal to purchase cooked fish.
Occasionally Joseph would embark on a garbled homily. These half-heard addresses seemed to bear no relation to the number of listeners gathered, if any. But then, John reminded himself, the man was blind.
Regretfully concluding that his vigil had produced nothing of value, John was contemplating going home when a figure loitering in the shadows of the nearby colonnade suddenly emerged into the sunlight. John turned quickly, catching the movement out of the corner of his eye.
“Greetings, excellency. It’s so kind of you to visit us,” it rasped hoarsely.
A demon, without a face, just as Justinian was rumored to be. That was John’s immediate impression as it stepped toward him. Then he realized he was looking not at some supernatural being but a horribly disfigured woman.
“How may we accommodate you, excellency?”
One side of her face had melted and puddled into a formless mass like a candle left too long alight. Her cheek and temple were a reddened ruin in which sat a useless, opaque eye. But tilting her head to look at John with her good eye the speaker revealed that the other half of her face had the delicate features of an attractive woman not yet middle-aged.
“I think you mistake me for someone else,” John replied.
She laughed, setting into motion myriad scraps of brightly colored ribbon tied in her matted black hair. Her laughter was as grating as her voice.
“Not at all,” she said. “It’s obvious to a person with one eye you’re from a wealthy household!” Her filthy but dainty finger pointed at the gold embroidery on the wrist of John’s tunic. “That is very fine workmanship. I’m familiar with fine garments, although you would not think so to look at me now.”
She stepped forward another pace, spreading her thin arms slightly to show off her clothing, a gaudy assemblage of layers of draped and knotted tatters that might have passed for some exotic costume from a less civilized country.
“And how is your master, excellency?” she smiled. “Is he in good health or did you crack open his head before running off with his valuables?”
“I chanced upon these clothes at the baths,” John said, grasping her implication. Perhaps he had not been discovered after all.
“What? And left your rags in their place so that here is a beggar dressed as an aristocrat while an aristocrat skulks home in rags?” Again the hoarse laugh, although whether because she thought John’s explanation comical or extremely unlikely it was difficult to say.
“No doubt you have heard stranger tales,” John replied.
The woman tilted her head, regarding him pointedly. “My name’s Pulcheria, my friend. You’re fortunate that the Prefect is too occupied with other matters to be hunting down runaway slaves right now.”
John said that he supposed he had Michael to thank for that.
“And what sort of employment do you plan to follow now that you are free?” Pulcheria asked him.
John admitted he had not given it much thought.
Pulcheria nodded wisely. “You won’t last long here, I’m afraid. I’ve been watching you. This is all a mystery to you, isn’t it?”
John shrugged uneasily, unaware that he had been observed.
“Oh, I’ve seen the way you’ve been peering about,” she went on. “I may not know wh
o you are, but I do know you aren’t telling the truth. In my line of work my clients lie to me as a matter of course. After a while you get a sense for it.”
“I assure you…”
“Don’t think you can fool a whore! I see you doubt me? Oh, I was pretty enough once, until a customer threw a lamp full of burning oil in my face. As if it was my fault he was too drunk to take what he’d paid for.” She sighed heavily. “But then, it’s always the innocent that suffer.”
John agreed with the sentiment, adding that he was sorry to hear her sad tale.
“Are you?” Her tone was doubtful. “And have you also suffered, my soft-hearted friend?”
“Not all of us are ready to blurt out our lives to the first stranger we meet, Pulcheria,” he said. “But I will admit, as you so rightly say, that this new life is a mystery to me. I fear I may have won myself only the freedom to starve to death, if I don’t freeze first.”
“And here I thought to earn myself a crust from such a fine-looking gentleman. Perhaps, I thought to myself, perhaps he stole the master’s purse as well as his clothes. That’s what I’d hoped.” Her face brightened. “However, if you’re interested, I can turn my poor face away or present myself from whatever angle appeals to you the most. Whatever you choose will be nothing new to me.”
“I regret I am not able to take advantage of your offer,” John replied gently.
The human side of Pulcheria’s face frowned. “If your purse is truly empty then I must find myself another lover, it seems. Still, I like to think of myself as a kind person, so before I do I’ll tell you a few things you need to know. They might allow you to live long enough to earn a nummus or two and then you will remember Pulcheria kindly and perhaps pay me a visit. I am usually to be found here. Now, pay attention.”
She pointed toward the fish seller who had unknowingly tormented John with the enticing smell of grilling fish.
