Six for Gold

by Mary Reed

  Initially he supposed he was disoriented by the darkness, or dizzy from near strangulation. However, after brief consideration, he was realized where he was.

  Dedi had thrown him into the maze.

  Doubtless it would feed the magician’s vanity to hear John beg to be rescued.

  He didn’t know that John would never do so.

  John rubbed his neck.

  Porphyrios had intended to kill him, having already murdered Scrofa. By his own admission he was in Mehenopolis to protect his employer’s interests. If he hadn’t been thrown into a panic by a harmless donkey, he might never have blurted out his true reason for his presence there, not to mention his confession to the death during his conversation with Dedi.

  John considered what to do.

  At some point he expected Dedi to return, hoping to hear him plead for an escort back to daylight. Could John feign unconsciousness and helplessness and thereby take the magician by surprise?

  Should he wait in ambush until he saw the light from an approaching torch?

  That would work if Dedi arrived alone.

  It might also be possible if the magician were accompanied by Hapymen, provided the servant was unarmed.

  Yet John did not care to simply wait and see, the more so since his blade had been taken.

  He felt his way to the nearest doorway, tore a small scrap of material from the bottom of his tunic, and dropped it in front of the opening.

  Now he would be able to tell which rooms he had already visited.

  Then he began to explore.

  Hours later he rested, his back against another rough-hewn wall. Phantom lights, void of color, slid across his vision.

  He had not glimpsed a hint of illumination and had soon lost track of the number of rooms he had traversed. Some featured four doorways, others two or three. A few were dead ends. He had not been able to glean anything useful about the maze from the bits of cloth he had scattered and subsequently re-encountered.

  Thirsty now, he tried to swallow.

  As he had done more than once in his wandering, he placed his ear to the floor and then the wall.

  And as before he heard no sound, felt no vibration. There had been no sign of life in the endless empty rooms.

  He had not encountered a draught.

  How many rooms could the maze possibly have? Dozens? Hundreds?

  He thought of the sheer size of the Rock of the Snake.

  What if the maze had been carved deeply into the outcropping itself?

  The unwelcome thought came to him that he might well die of thirst if he was not soon rescued or found the way out.

  His hand moved reflexively in front of his face, as if to brush away the blackness.

  Yet pilgrims had to be rescued from the maze. Therefore it must be simple enough to navigate it by torchlight.

  John guessed there must be markings, perhaps painted, showing the route in and out. He had already run his hands along enough walls and around doorways to know there were no carvings that would serve the same purpose.

  The uneven walls, some bulging slightly outwards while others curved inwards, made the unseen rooms he had traversed all the more disconcerting.

  He stood, unsteadily. His throat worked spasmodically and painfully.

  He ran his palm along the nearest wall.

  There was something different about it.

  The wall did not so much bulge here and there as curve along its entire length.

  Noticeably.

  What did it mean? That was the problem to be solved. A riddle, almost a game.

  Like Zebulon’s game of Mehen.

  No, John thought, Mehen’s maze was exactly the same as Zebulon’s board. It was hewn out in the shape of a coiled snake.

  Why not? Wasn’t the shrine of which the maze formed a part dedicated to Mehen?

  Despite the confusion of doorways, the path to the center, like the path to the center of Zebulon’s board, wound continuously inward.

  The trick was to move inward without deviating.

  He was certain of it.

  And once he got to the heart of the maze he could easily work his way back out.

  John trailed his fingers along the wall until he reached a doorway and stepped into the next room.

  Working his way around he found the wall on the far side from the entrance seemed more curved than that in the room he had just left.

  If he was not moving toward the center, he reasoned, he would soon reach a dead end.

  Then he would simply try another direction.

  He felt his way through the opening to the next room. Again he placed his left hand on the wall to the left of the doorway, followed it carefully around two corner angles and located the next doorway.

  There was no way to measure the passage of time.

  Occasionally John stopped to rest. He could feel his heart pounding. It wasn’t from exertion, but rather that the darkness pressing in from all sides, blinding his eyes, blotting out the world, was too like his dreams of drowning.

  More than once it occurred to him that he could be wrong about the shape of the maze. He might simply be wandering deeper into abandoned catacombs far away from the chamber that pious pilgrims sought.

  Yet it now seemed as if the curvature of the walls was increasing and the rooms less wide.

  Soon he was certain of it.

  He must be fast approaching the heart of the maze and whatever lay there.

  He sought the next opening.

  And found a door.

  He pushed it open and could see again.

  Ahead lay a long, narrow hallway with light at the far end.

  Several strides took him around a corner, under an archway, and into a chamber whose fitful lamplight had spilt out into the corridor.

  He had arrived at a circular room.

  Clay lamps, arrayed on the floor along the foot of its uneven walls, cast shadows into a dome crudely chiseled from the native rock. Light danced on a tall pole topped by a horizontal cross piece displayed on a low wooden pedestal set against the wall opposite the archway.

  A serpent, thicker than John’s leg, climbed around the pole, its glittering coils moving ceaselessly.

  John realized the reptile’s apparent motion was an illusion created by the flickering lamps, for the upper part of the snake’s body and its head rested on the horizontal bar and their position remained unchanged.

  Now he saw the truth of it.

  The artifact Thomas had been given in Constantinople was not a cross with the top and the figure of the Christian’s gentle god broken from it.

  Clearly it was a reproduction of this effigy—one from which the serpent had been detached.

  This then must be the thing Justinian’s enemies sought.

  A representation of an ancient god.

  Dedi claimed to derive power from it, but he was a charlatan, wasn’t he? The cures the pilgrims sought were empty promises, weren’t they?

  John looked up at the serpent.

  It had been fashioned of copper. The black pits of its eyes fastened on him.

  John suddenly felt cold. There was some quality beyond mere darkness in the shadows of those eyes. It was as if a hole had been punched through the brightly frescoed wall of reality to reveal a void beyond the world.

  He reached up and touched the snake’s glittering coils.

  There was a faint crackle and the tip of his forefinger felt as if it had been stung by one of Apollo’s bees.

  It must have been his imagination.

  He laid his hand against the serpent.

  It felt warm.

  No doubt warmth from the lamps had heated the metal from which it was constructed.

  There was no doubt if any pilgrims reached this circular sanctum they would be suitably impressed and overawed, yet how could the strange artifact triumph against imperial troops or aid a plot against Justinian?

  John looked b
ehind the pedestal on which the idol stood and found what he had expected.

  A wooden trapdoor.

  No doubt the tunnel below led back to Dedi’s dwelling.

  The lamps guttered and smoke swirled. A figure stepped into the chamber.

  It was Peter.

  “Master! I…I made my way through the maze by faith, it seems…”

  Peter’s words trailed off as he saw the effigy. He fell to his knees, sketching a cross with a trembling hand.

  His eyes glistened as he looked at John. His voice was a ragged whisper. “It is Nehushtan.”

  “Nehushtan?”

  “The brazen serpent, master. When the chosen people wandered in the wilderness the Lord sent fiery serpents among them. Moses prayed to Him and was commanded to make a serpent and display it upon a pole, so that whoever beheld the image would be healed. But when it came to be worshipped as an idol in the days of Hezekiah, it was destroyed. Except it was not destroyed, master, for here before us is Nehushtan itself.”

  Chapter Forty-three

  “I told Senator Symacchus I had a lot of experience when it came to relics,” Thomas grumbled, “and didn’t I end up with Nehushtan almost in my grasp? If only the senator had believed me—”

  “There are safer ways to make a living than chasing after such things,” Europa interrupted. She gave her husband’s arm an affectionate squeeze.

  She and Thomas were seated in John’s study in Constantinople, along with John, Anatolius, and Cornelia. The clang of pots accompanied by a hymn drifted down the hallway. Peter was reclaiming his kitchen.

  They had talked for a long time, trying to piece together what they had learned separately.

  “So really you were pursuing an investigation for the emperor, John.” Anatolius’ tone betrayed his irritation. “At least you returned from Mehenopolis more rapidly than you arrived there. I was afraid that before you got back Crispin would summon me to a meeting, and then what would I say?”

  “I’m certain you’d have invented a reasonable story,” John said.

  “Luckily I didn’t have to! Now, let’s see if we agree on what happened. Bishop Crispin learned of the existence of the relic in the maze from Senator Symacchus, who’d been trying to convert him to orthodoxy. Symacchus, who came to sympathize with the monophysites, had been told about it by his Egyptian guest, Melios.”

  “I’ll ask Peter to show you the pilgrim flask Hapymen presented to him before we left,” John said. “It’s identical to one you described in the senator’s collection. According to Hapymen, the wavy line you thought was a river was intended to represent Mehen. No doubt the senator’s matching flask was given to him by Melios when he visited Constantinople.”

  “So the monophysites, having learned of the relic, realized bringing the brazen serpent of Moses to Constantinople would demonstrate clearly to everyone that the Christian god was on their side of the theological dispute.”

  Thomas guffawed. “Which, since they already had Theodora as their champion, would’ve forced Justinian to change his beliefs!”

  “Almost certainly,” Anatolius agreed. “And then who would have held the real power in the empire? Fortunately for Justinian, Crispin and whatever other clerics were involved were good at plotting, but reluctant to set events in motion. That changed when Hektor arrived on the scene. He isn’t one to hesitate.”

  John nodded. “I’d guess that Hektor originally got in touch with Senator Symacchus because he’d briefly been his reader and Hektor was attempting to establish himself as a pious Christian for his own purposes. When he realized the opportunity he’d stumbled over he must have been jubilant!”

  “Doubtless they intended to use Apollo’s services to smuggle the relic out of Egypt?” Europa asked.

  “I believe so. Melios admitted Apollo had performed similar services for him. I believe that Zebulon also had a hand in the same trade. He probably still has contacts in the religious community in Antioch. More importantly, the relic is not much taller than a man. It would fit into a large enough hive or could be cut in half and placed in two.”

  Thomas gave a snort. “I would’ve just put it in a crate and shipped it.”

  “Caution and secrecy are always the best policies when plotting against the emperor,” John said. “Even Hektor was cautious, in his own way. He had to remove Symacchus and his servant Achilles, to make certain their indiscreet chatter didn’t cause further trouble. He also arranged that the meddlesome adventurer who’d appeared on the scene was to be found in circumstances where he would be held responsible for the senator’s murder. That he turned out to be Thomas, with myself on his heels, was just a stroke of unexpected good fortune.”

  Anatolius frowned. “I suppose Hektor and his accomplices came to the senator’s house that evening in order to take Achilles and dispose of him. I’ve given it some thought. It wasn’t just the matter of what he revealed at Isis’ house that condemned him. Remember, Achilles was sent to alert Felix because Achilles was expendable, and furthermore wouldn’t be recognized as a known associate of Hektor’s.”

  Thomas leaned over to John’s desk and plucked up the small enameled artifact which had been the cause of so much misery. “So it turned out this is not a broken cross as we all supposed, but a copy of Nehushtan with the snake removed?”

  “Indeed. The original would be a particularly impressive relic to bring into the city with the plague still raging,” John observed. “Consider. It cured the sick centuries ago and is still believed to be as powerful now as it was then.”

  Thomas laughed. “You’re thinking about the crippled beggar, the one Peter kept telling me had been healed after going into the maze? It seems more likely Dedi arranged for one of the villagers to pretend to be lame, so he could point to him as an example of a so-called miraculous cure.”

  “That might be so,” John admitted.

  Cornelia looked away from gazing out the window. “What do you mean, John? You’re not suggesting the relic is anything but a forgery, are you? Remember, the beggar wasn’t in the maze for very long, yet it took you hours to find your way to the center and out again. The people carrying him should have stayed inside an hour or two at least. That speedy cure was a bad slip on Dedi’s part, I’d say.”

  John agreed it was so. “Still, you have not seen Nehushtan as Peter and I did.”

  Cornelia smiled. “You sound so solemn, I could almost suspect you believe in the power of this relic!”

  “I’m not certain what I think about it. Religion defies proof, unlike murder. I’ve already explained why I believe Scrofa was sent out to kill me.”

  Anatolius looked puzzled. “I don’t understand. If it was Porphyrios who tried—“

  “He obviously didn’t know how to use the weapon very well. He must have taken the cord from Scrofa’s body after he killed him. Maybe he thought he’d hide his tracks by using it. I’m convinced the plotters ordered Scrofa to kill Symacchus and Achilles as well. They were killed the same way.”

  “That makes sense. But if Porphyrios murdered Scrofa, why didn’t you bring him back in chains?”

  “He was gone by the time I got out of the maze. Not only had he admitted to at least one murder, but he’d also tried to kill a Lord Chamberlain. Then there’s the question of his employers’ money. He hadn’t been able to get it, but I have no doubt that once they hear he’s run off, they’ll be convinced he absconded with it. He’ll spend the rest of his life looking over his shoulder until someone catches up to him.”

  “So everything has been neatly solved,” said Thomas.

  “Except for the most important matter,” John pointed out. “There remains the real reason I went to Egypt. The plotters have not been exposed. For that, I will need your assistance, Anatolius.”

  Anatolius looked at John in surprise. “What do you mean?”

  “You mentioned you’ve gained Crispin’s confidence?”

  “Temporarily at least. He’s half-convin
ced I know something about this relic, which is probably the only reason I’m still alive.”

  “Then you must arrange matters with him. He wanted to present Nehushtan to the emperor, and so he shall.”

  Chapter Forty-four

  The audience gathered in front of the ivory double throne occupied by Justinian and Theodora could not have been more unlike the crowd atop the Rock of the Snake, except that they had assembled for similar reasons.

  Glancing around, John recognized senators, aristocrats, and assorted palace officials. Shielded by lesser clergy, the Patriarch—whether by design or accident—stood as far from Crispin as was possible. Hektor had, John noted, stationed himself mid way between the bishop and Theodora. Armed excubitors flanking the imperial couple and stationed around the walls outnumbered the distinguished guests. Felix stood beside the throne.

  Work on the hall had been completed in John’s absence, and now that night had fallen, light from hundreds of lamps set on ornate silver stands or hanging by ceiling chains gilded the panes of the high windows. John glanced upward at the enormous cross that glittered through the mist of smoke. Although it was rendered in nothing more than gold and gems, he had the uneasy feeling it was on the verge of crashing down on the assembly.

  He stepped toward the throne.

  Justinian nodded almost imperceptibly, acknowledging John’s low bow, while Theodora gazed down at him with the fixed, incomprehensible stare of an ancient statue.

  “My dear Lord Chamberlain,” the emperor began in thin tones John doubted were audible to most of the gathering. “We are pleased to extend our gracious thanks for your unceasing labors on our behalf. We were much relieved to hear the sheep which concerned us was not in fact suicidal, but merely the victim of a cruel trickster.”

  He leaned forward and continued. “Furthermore, Lord Chamberlain, you have intrigued us with the information that this strange man concealed a far more important secret.”

  “Yes, Caesar. The magician Dedi is the guardian of an astonishing relic.”

  “We understand Bishop Crispin knows something of this?” Justinian turned his bland, bucolic countenance toward the bearded monophysite.