Five for Silver: A John, the Lord Chamberlain Mystery (15 page)

She accepted the statement without question. It would not be unusual for the palace or the City Prefect to take an interest in the murder of a high-ranking customs official.

“I understand your husband was once a military man. How did he come to be a customs official?”

“John Chrysostom got him the post,” was the surprising answer.

“But he died almost a century and a half ago!”

“My husband had a great and abiding interest in him, excellency. When he served in Isauria he would visit every church he saw to ask if it owned any copies of the man’s writings. Whatever he found, he committed to memory as best he could. Thus eventually he carried in his head a library no ordinary soldier could possibly have afforded.”

John realized that the young Gregory had probably shared this knowledge with his friend Peter. “How did he become interested in John Chrysostom?”

“It was because John was exiled to that part of the world near the end of his life. He was part of the history of the mountains, if you wish. The beauty and power of his writing impressed Gregory.” Although the old hands continued to work the wool and spindle, a quaver crept into her voice. “Gregory chose a phrase from them for his tomb inscription long ago.”

“Since he was a Christian as well as formerly a military man, might I venture to guess it questions the supposed victory of the grave?”

The spindle stopped for an instant. Then she plucked hastily at the thread, smoothing out an errant thickening. “Why, yes, excellency. You are also a man of the church?”

“I am often at the Great Church.” John did not explain that, as Lord Chamberlain, it was part of his duties to arrange and oversee the emperor’s ceremonial entrances into the church, and that further, it was extremely wise for him to attend its services, despite holding other religious convictions.

Angelina forced a smile. “But I was telling you how Gregory obtained his post, wasn’t I?”

She lifted the spindle and pushed down the multiplying coils of thread. “It was in Isauria that he took a spear in the arm.”

There was the slightest hesitation in her words. The ancient wound she had mentioned might well have reminded her of the more recent and fatal wounding.

“He couldn’t remain in the army,” she continued. “He always said it was a sign sent by heaven. In any event, he came back and took a clerical job at the customs house. As it happened, one of the higher officials there was also a student of John Chrysostom’s writings. He learned that Gregory shared his interest and when they began discussing matters of religion he soon recognized my husband’s intelligence and talents.”

Her hands continued like separate creatures, going about their own business. “He was blessed to be given a path leading so sure-footedly from a soldier’s life in the wilderness to great wealth here in the capital,” she went on. “I know Gregory wouldn’t like to hear me complain it ended as it did. That would be ungrateful and unreasonable, he would argue.”

“Did your husband discuss his work much with you, Angelina?”

John was not surprised when she told him he had not. Was there any connection between Gregory’s post and his death? Was his death related to Nereus’ oral will? Tariff collectors were so much disliked that it was not surprising that the church, seeking to remind the faithful of future accountability, had populated the soul’s road to heaven with demonic customs officials.

John asked whether anyone with whom Gregory had recently transacted business might hold some resentment against him.

“No, excellency. He felt he was simply taking wealth on behalf of our Christian emperor from those who had more than enough. He personally donated a great deal of his own wealth for charitable purposes, particularly to the Church of the Holy Apostles.”

“Did he receive any unusual visitors during the past few weeks?”

The spindle was full. Angelina placed it in the basket set beside her stool and brought her gnarled hands together in her lap, folding them together as if in prayer. “As I indicated, I did not know much about my husband’s business. Indeed, you exhibit considerable knowledge of him.”

“Peter related a few things about your late husband to me,” John explained.

“Peter?”

“Gregory’s old army friend.”

“I’ve never heard Gregory mention him.”

“Peter is the man Gregory met every week or so to talk about theology and—”

John was unable to finish because Angelina sprang off her stool, a dove taking awkward flight.

“Bless you, excellency!” She burst into tears. “You were sent from heaven. Now I see it all! Sent from heaven!”

She looked up at the whitewashed ceiling. “Gregory, forgive me!” she cried, and then addressed John. “All these years when Gregory was going off to his meetings with this Peter you’ve just mentioned, and never saying why or who he was visiting, oh, Lord forgive me, I supposed he had been seeing another woman.”

Chapter Nineteen

Loud voices from the atrium distracted Hypatia. The scorpion’s tail snapped off in her hand.

She set the lump of clay she’d been modeling on the kitchen table and quickly wiped her hands on a rag. The door slammed below and someone stamped angrily upstairs.

Europa burst into the kitchen, eyes bright with anger.

“I wish we’d never come here, Hypatia! I’m telling Thomas I want to leave!”

She found a cup, filled it from the wine jug, and drank thirstily.

“You didn’t enjoy your visit to the Great Church?”

“I’d hardly reached the Mese when a man accosted me.” She took another gulp of wine. “It was my father. I’ve just been escorted back home as if I were a child. Now he’s gone out again. The streets are dangerous, I was told. Ha!”

Europa’s tone of voice, her slim physique and deeply tanned skin, the mouth set in a thin line of anger reminded Hypatia of how much his daughter in some ways resembled the Lord Chamberlain. She murmured sympathetically.

Europa continued to fume. “I didn’t notice any danger in the streets. The last time I visited this city they were swarming with people. Now it might as well be some old ruin in the middle of the desert. The most threatening thing I saw this morning was some half-naked old man singing lewd songs.”

“That sounds like the holy fool everyone’s talking about, mistress.”

“I’ve heard better lyrics on the docks.”

“I saw him dancing with a dead woman,” Hypatia recalled with a shudder.

“Let him try dancing on a live bull! Come to think of it, I wouldn’t be surprised if father asked me to give up my profession because it’s dangerous. I hope mother arrives soon. She’ll set him straight.” She glared darkly into her cup and then pulled a stool over to the table. When she sat down her movements were as fluidly graceful as a dancer’s. She poured out more wine. “Have a libation, Hypatia. You look overheated.”

“That would hardly be proper, mistress,” Hypatia faltered.

“This is not what many would call a proper household, is it? So it will be all right. How is Peter?”

Hypatia shook her head. “Fading, judging from his voice. I talk to him through the door when I take him food and water. He doesn’t eat much, but the water’s always gone next time I look.”

“He didn’t like Thomas when we were here last, I recall, but it’s a shame to see him so ill.”

Feeling awkward, Hypatia sampled the wine. “You’ve been involved with Thomas a long time then?” she ventured.

“No. We’d gone separate ways after he escorted mother and me back to Crete. It’s just during these last few months, after he ran into us by accident, that I’ve got to know him well.”

“Thomas is a fine fellow, mistress.”

“He is, though some might call him a barbarian because he was born in Bretania, practically on the edge of the world. A country permanently shrouded in fog and mist, he tells me. A most romantic place. He’s traveled a lot and seen more of the world than I have, and that’s saying something.”

“I’ll wager he has many stories to tell!”

“Oh, he can be a regular Herodotus, if you can persuade him to talk about his past. He’s a very discreet fellow.”

“A quality to admire.” Hypatia shoved her empty cup aside. It had occurred to her that if the Lord Chamberlain were to return, he would not appreciate finding his servant sharing wine with his daughter. She picked up the half-made scorpion and began nervously forming the clay.

“He’s a sweet man, Hypatia. Oh my, yes…” Europa smiled to herself, but did not elaborate.

“I met someone sweet recently,” Hypatia heard herself confessing.

Europa leaned forward. “Someone special?”

“Well, he might be.” Hypatia’s voice caught. Surely she shouldn’t be confiding in Europa? Yet somehow she could not help herself.

She worked at the clay furiously. “His name is Pamphilos. He’s a patient at the hospice where I’ve been helping Gaius. He was badly burned with lye. Somehow he’d been thrown into one of the towers being used for disposal of the dead.”

“How horrible! Will he live?”

“Yes, but his face…”

“He’ll need your comfort then,” Europa said kindly.

“Once he was handsome, mistress. Even now you can tell that was the case. He is so kind and charming. He thought I was an aristocrat from a rich Egyptian family. I told him I was merely a servant. ‘Surely you jest?’ he said. ‘You don’t have the bearing of a servant.’”

“Evidently he is a golden-tongued young man!”

“I admitted my master was not just anyone, but rather the Lord Chamberlain. Pamphilos insisted it was a scandal that I should be anybody’s servant and that half the men at the palace would throw themselves at my feet if given the chance.”

Hypatia had formed the clay into a rudimentary face. It reminded her too much of her patient. She squeezed it into a lumpy mass. “He is so romantic, mistress! He even kissed my hand once and said all five fingers should have silver rings on them.”

Europa, overlooking the fact that Pamphilos had counted thumbs as fingers, asked why he would pick silver rings and not gold.

“He said gold rings were so commonplace that the true romantic would always choose silver. Especially as silver is sacred to the moon, the friend of lovers,” Hypatia explained with a blush.

“Indeed. Well, he sounds quite a fine young man. You should take no notice of looks, Hypatia,” Europa said. “In the dark, you won’t notice a few scars. Thomas has more than one.”

They were giggling together when Thomas appeared in the kitchen doorway. “What’s so funny? We could hear you laughing all the way downstairs!”

Hypatia blushed.

“How did a great big man like you creep up here so quietly?” Europa demanded in mock anger.

Thomas looked bemused. “You’ve been imbibing! Both of you!”

Europa pouted and shook her head. “No, no, dearest. Only me. Hypatia has been a good girl.”

Crinagoras peered over Thomas’ broad shoulder. “Thomas has been escorting me while I visited my favorite bookseller, and I must say Scipio was very impressed. He’d never seen me accompanied by a bodyguard. It makes one feel a new man, walking the streets with a guard at one’s side.”

Thomas smiled benignly.

“Would you escort me again now, Thomas? I’m meeting Anatolius.”

“I think not,” Europa said severely. “Thomas’ services are needed here.”

Crinagoras stepped into the kitchen. “We haven’t agreed on a fee for today’s work yet, but now that I see you two lovely ladies, let me offer some thoughts, fresh from the oven of my inspiration. I’ve been summoned to entertain Theodora at the Blachernae, I may add.” Crinagoras set his soft hand on Thomas’ shoulder. “How much is that worth, my friend? To be entertained like an empress?”

Thomas had no opportunity to answer since Crinagoras began to declaim, waving his hands around after the fashion of an intoxicated mime.

“For you, dear friends, I wish only happiness and the joy of never knowing the suffering experienced by me, sad Crinagoras, parted forever from the maiden Eudoxia by duplicitous death. May the ship of your happiness rise on the ocean of my tears, may you climb toward endless joy up the tower of earth excavated from the pit of my despair. May—”

“Cease at once!” Thomas commanded.

Crinagoras broke off, his face expressing confusion and incipient hurt.

“You must write it all down, lest it be lost forever,” Thomas continued.

Crinagoras beamed. “Of course, Thomas. How stupid of me not to think of it. I shall write it out for you to savor at your leisure as many times as you please. You will have it by sunset tomorrow. And now I must depart.”

As he scuttled off downstairs Thomas pulled at his ginger mustache and smiled with satisfaction.

Europa broke into a broad smile as Hypatia gave him a questioning look.

“I never learned to read,” he told Hypatia with a grin.

Chapter Twenty

Anatolius waited for Lucretia in the atrium of Senator Balbinus’ house. Time seemed to have stopped, as frozen as a water clock left outside on a winter’s day.

Perhaps he had arrived at a time of crisis? At this very instant Balbinus might be struggling for another breath, one that would never come.

He listened, but could not hear even a muffled sound of a commotion.

Perhaps Lucretia simply did not want to see him?

He reminded himself of Crinagoras’ advice. It couldn’t have been given more than an hour ago, yet it felt like days.

“Follow your heart, my friend,” the other had said. “Where would we be if Cupid were cowardly? Think, Anatolius. If you don’t comfort her now, how will you ever be able to approach her afterwards?”

Crinagoras had reached up and tapped the mosaic on the inn wall. “You must emulate these brave charioteers. The first to the turn wins. In romantic matters, propriety must sometimes be left behind in the dust.”

Anatolius’ feelings about another visit to Balbinus’ house were ambiguous, but the statement had persuaded him. Now, however, he had begun to have second thoughts.

Anatolius’ mouth tasted sour. Did he smell of wine? He hadn’t drunk much. Why then did he feel dizzy?

“Now, off you go.” Crinagoras had practically pushed him out of the tavern door. “Fair Lucretia has not forgotten you. Didn’t you tell me not long ago that when Senator Balbinus’ party passed by you in the Augustaion after they left the Great Church, Lucretia looked back over her shoulder at you? Didn’t your gaze nearly meet hers?”

Anatolius’ grip tightened on the small scroll he held. The parchment felt damp.

No, he decided, this visit really was not proper.

He turned to leave.

“Anatolius.”

Lucretia stepped into the atrium.

The sight of her stopped his breath.

Glossy ringlets, tamed by a mother of pearl comb, surrounded her pale, patrician face. She wore a simple robe of white linen, decorated around the collar with pale blue gemstones unwittingly echoing the purplish smudges under her tired eyes.

She must be exhausted from attending Balbinus night and day, Anatolius thought.

She invited him into a reception room he had never glimpsed. Dazzling bright, with walls of snowy marble, and white alabaster urns in its corners. A couch and two pine wood chairs were inlaid with cream-colored ivory. As he sat down opposite Lucretia he thought she might have been one of Peter’s angels, and this the antechamber to the old servant’s heaven.

“Why are you here again, Anatolius?” Her voice was low and breathy, as always.

“I wanted to offer any assistance I could render. Because…because…well, you remember…”

“My husband is dying. How exactly do you propose to assist me in the matter?”

Anatolius began to feel ill. “I’m sorry, Lucretia, I realize this visit may seem presumptuous.”

“It most certainly is presumptuous.”

“I will leave.” He stood.

“Wait, Anatolius. I know you have a kind heart and came to see me with the best of intentions. I appreciate your sympathy.”

“Everyone at the palace is saddened by his illness, Lucretia. I…I am saddened.”

A faint, ironic smile flickered on her lips. “If you have come to commiserate with me on my husband’s death, I fear you are somewhat premature.”

Anatolius reddened. “He’ll be well soon, Lucretia. It’s just, I mean, if the worst happens…if there should be any legal difficulties…the Lord Chamberlain has the emperor’s ear and as you know he is a good friend of mine. So I thought if I reassured you…well, you would have assistance if it was needed in that, um, remote possibility it would help ease the burden…” He floundered to a halt, having forgotten the carefully constructed speech he had rehearsed.

What a sorry excuse it sounded when spoken aloud.

How could he have taken that fool Crinagoras’ advice?

“I see you’ve thought very hard about how you might help me, Anatolius. Thank you.”

He glanced down at the sodden little scroll in his hand. How near she was. He could not recall when last she had been so close. How could he remind her of waking together in moonlight, of worshiping Venus in warm summer-leafed groves, of intimate hours lit by a flickering oil lamp?

He tried to recollect all he had intended to say. The words had fled in abject shame. He felt as if he was a soldier who had girded for battle, only to be struck down in the enemy’s first wave of arrows.

“I’ve been a fool, Lucretia.” He felt even more foolish for having said it.

“Who isn’t at some time or other?”

“Do you ever think of me?”

“Of course. However, I am Senator Balbinus’ wife and have been for some time.”

Anatolius set the scroll on the couch beside her. “Something I wrote for you, Lucretia, as I used to do in the old days.”

Lucretia looked down at the gift, her face inscrutable. She did not pick it up.

Neither did she push it away.

Anatolius found courage to speak. “Let me believe there is hope, Lucretia.”

She did not raise her head. “Believe it if it pleases you, Anatolius.”

“Lucretia, if you had not married Balbinus, you would have married me. We both know it.”

Lucretia finally looked up at him. “No, Anatolius. I would not have married you.”