Five for Silver: A John, the Lord Chamberlain Mystery (18 page)

Chapter Twenty-Three

“Father’s out, I’m afraid.”

Anatolius peered through the narrow gap between the barely opened door and its frame. A brown, well-muscled arm led back to a slim figure clad in a plain white tunic. The silver chain holding Europa’s hair back glinted in the dim atrium.

“How is Peter?”

“Hypatia says he’s fading fast. She spends half her time lecturing him through his locked door and the other half at the hospice fussing over her poor young man. She’s upstairs trying to persuade Peter to come out of his room right now.”

“I’ll wager Peter pulls through. He’s tough as an old boot.”

Europa stepped outside. “It feels strange to be in this city again.” She glanced around the deserted square. “I remember last time you bought a lot of birds from an old woman and set them all free. I admired you for that.”

Anatolius smiled at the compliment.

Europa closed the door firmly behind her. “I need a breath of air. Want to go for a stroll?”

She didn’t look any different than she had seven years before, Anatolius thought. It was almost enough to put Lucretia out of his mind for a brief time. He needed to put her out of his mind.

“As it happens I have to collect a few documents from my office, but if you don’t object to a detour I’d be happy to show you some of the palace grounds afterward.”

They crossed the square and traversed a colonnaded walkway, passing by several excubitors who greeted Anatolius by name. The administrative building where Anatolius worked was half-deserted, a maze of featureless corridors which might have led to the Minotaur rather than a cramped office, filled with incongruously ornate furniture.

“I’ve been doing some copying at home.” Anatolius rummaged through documents on a writing desk which might have been a reliquary, inlaid with ivory and trimmed with gems and gold. He noticed Europa’s stare. “Elaborate, isn’t it? Justinian decided his personal secretary should labor at a desk that honored the transcribing of imperial edicts.”

“I find it hard to believe you’re just a scribbler, Anatolius.”

“Actually, Justinian tells me more or less what he wants to say and then I put his thoughts into the form he would have chosen, if he had time for such trivial chores. Mind you, he wouldn’t appreciate your telling him I said that.”

“I’m not likely to meet him, am I?”

Anatolius pulled a few sheets of parchment from the pile. “You might be interested in this proclamation. There’s shortly to be another statue of Emperor Justin erected. It’s almost completed and eventually will stand near the booksellers’ quarter. No one knows of the decision yet, except Justinian and his personal secretary, one Anatolius—” he bowed— “and now yourself.”

“The sculptor must know.”

“Well…”

“And someone in the imperial treasury, or whichever office paid the sculptor. And what about the sculptor’s wife? Not to mention whoever sold the sculptor the marble, and—”

“You have the same manner of thinking as your father, Europa, and I mean that as a compliment! Ah, here are those documents I wanted.”

He led her out of the rambling office complex, through more colonnades, some so overhung with vines they might have been tunnels of vegetation, and down a steep stone staircase that ended at one of the lower terraces.

From a miniature flower-filled meadow at the base of the staircase, the palace was invisible, hidden behind a line of pines rooted in the next higher terrace and seeming to float in midair. The Marmara sparkled before them.

“I’d almost expect to hear Pan’s pipes in such a pastoral setting,” Anatolius observed. “But it will change soon enough. Justinian has ordered this particular garden replanted with purple-blossomed trees and flowers. Imperial purple.” He paused and then added with a scowl, “Personally, I’d have said that plantings of aconite and hemlock and such would be far more appropriate in a garden designed especially for Theodora.”

“Poisonous plants?”

“Exactly. Not to mention the added attraction of the shining waters of a nice, deep pool. More than one person has been drowned in the imperial baths, and not by accident either.”

Europa looked shocked. “You said that the empress knows just about everything going on in the palace. Do you think she knows Thomas and I are at my father’s house?”

“I would be astonished if she didn’t.”

They gazed silently out over the water for a while and then Anatolius showed Europa a cleverly hidden, twisting path through a thick wall of shrubbery. It led to a clearing holding several rustic benches and a circular, shallow pond graced by a statue standing on a pedestal rising from its center.

“This would be an excellent place to contemplate the inevitable passage of time,” Europa guessed.

“Exactly! The edge of the pool is marked with the hours and the shadow of the reed the marble nymph in the middle is holding serves as a pointer. An interesting conceit, isn’t it?”

“What a strange place this city is!”

“Strange? To a woman who makes a living leaping from the backs of bulls?”

“We no longer own a bull, alas,” Europa replied. “Even if we did, I doubt we’d find much of an audience right now.”

“The situation will be back to normal eventually.”

Anatolius walked over to the pool and hunkered down. He traced a finger over a name scratched into the low stone wall containing the water.

“‘Tarquin,’” he read. “I see Severus, Hektor, and Alexis have also recorded their visits. It seems to have become customary for court pages to scratch their names here.”

“Those boys serve as ornaments to the court, don’t they? What happens to them when they grow up? Do they then perform administrative duties?”

Anatolius thoughtfully ran his fingertips over the faint scratches. “No, they don’t. Their role is being pretty young boys. Occasionally one finds a patron who’ll take him into his home, but most of the others, well, they take what remains of their talents out to the streets, I suppose. Like spring flowers, one day they’re here, the next they’re gone.”

He stood. “Which reminds me. Isn’t it time your mother arrived?”

“She’ll be here by the end of the week at the latest,” Europa replied confidently as they began to thread their way back along the path through the shrubbery.

Chapter Twenty-Four

The deserted street drowsing under a light breeze only added to John’s sense of unease. It had the aspect of a brightly lit stage, awaiting the arrival of a company of actors to begin playing out dramas of life and death to an unseen audience. Perhaps a Greek tragedy, or a Roman comedy purchased from Scipio’s stock.

The door and windows of the bookseller’s emporium stood wide open, as if to entice passersby to enter by foot or for that matter by wing. Here, the blank eyes of the windows seemed to announce, is a place where you can journey far away without leaving your own home, go to lands beyond the seas, hear again the great philosophers and poets declaiming honeyed words and calls to war, learn from mistakes of the past.

Mistakes of the past, John thought. Yes, we could all cite our own examples, and as for lands beyond the seas…but no, he must keep his attention focused on his investigation.

He stepped briskly into Scipio’s shop and was surprised to find it filled not only with books but also with flowers. The floral perfume was overpowering.

The short, shaven-headed proprietor bustled forward. A welcoming smile crinkled his face. His quick glance at John’s garments was followed by a self-congratulatory greeting introducing himself as Scipio, proprietor of this excellent and well patronized establishment.

“Would you care to peruse some of my latest imported works, excellency? Or perhaps you had something specific in mind? Or could it be…” the man lowered his voice, sounding almost furtive, “…you are interested in, er, lodgings?”

It was the same question Triton’s blind landlady had asked him a short while ago. John wondered when he had begun to look like a man in need of a roof over his head. Unless Scipio was hinting that his rooms contained what might be called lodgers in the same sense as those ladies housed at Isis’ establishment, and for the same purpose?

“Thank you, no,” John replied. “Although in fact I am here about a man I’ve been told is lodging with you. His name is Byzos.”

Scipio looked surprised. “You have heard about Byzos already?” He hurried to a table and picked up a thin codex. “I have only this single copy of his work thus far and, under the circumstances, it is sure to become a collector’s item. However, I can give you a good price.”

“I believe you’re speaking about a different Byzos. The man I’m seeking is a cart driver.”

“That’s right. First a farmer, then a cart driver, then a writer.”

“Indeed?”

“It was as I said,” Scipio confirmed. “When we talked it struck me he seemed to have a very poetic nature for a farmer, so I wrote down whatever he said. Literature is mostly aristocrats writing for other aristocrats, when you come down to it, but this is something different.
The Rustic Versifier
is my title.”

He opened the codex and scanned its contents. “How about this small sample, excellency? ‘Country dirt, city dirt. Heaven and hell.’ Profound in its rural way, isn’t it? But perhaps that was too glib. Here is another, only too appropriate to the current situation. ‘The carter calls. Ravens fly up, living ashes from a burning pyre.’”

“Byzos made these observations in conversation with you?”

“More or less. Definitely a born poet.” Scipio riffled through the codex. “Here’s another. ‘Poor fair one. Died with the honeysuckle and only sixteen.’ Be a good epitaph, wouldn’t it, if epitaphs can be said to be good, that is.”

“I’m certain the collection will be of great literary interest at court, Scipio, but my business with Byzos is much more mundane. Could you take me to his room?”

“Very well. This way, if you please.”

Scipio tucked the codex under his arm and led John up a flight of stairs, along a corridor, and then up another stairway to the top story. The higher they climbed, the more nervous the man appeared to become. As so often happened in John’s experience, this led to a torrent of commentary, much of it apparently intended to distance the speaker from any wrongdoing his guest might have committed.

“Byzos hasn’t been staying with me for long, excellency. Ordinarily he could not have afforded my rental, but he came to the city to make his fortune by transporting the dead, and of course in that line of work there is much to be done and a great deal of money to be made…”

They paused on a draughty landing. Scipio looked at John, as if to gauge his reaction to the insights he was providing. “He was a farmer with a large family and too many mouths to feed, trying to grow enough to eat on land blessed with an abundance of rocks and poor soil. There’s more silver to be found in a cartload of corpses than a cartload of cucumbers, he told me more than once.” He tapped the codex. “That’s in here too.”

“Indeed,” John observed, glancing along the hallway and wondering which of the open doors—Mithra, more doors!—led to the absent cart driver’s room.

Scipio did not seem in any hurry to unburden himself of that particular piece of information. “Now you’d think he’d have been afraid to ply such a trade, excellency, would you not? Certainly I would have been, but no, not he. There was a very good reason, for he confided to me when he first took a room that he considered himself protected by a holy relic. Many are buying them, I hear, and in fact I have been considering adding them to my stock to generate a little more income.”

John observed that the plague had ruined many businesses, except perhaps for those who sold wine.

Scipio added emphatically, “Oh yes. excellency. However, I’ve contrived to weather the storm by a most clever notion! It was inspired by a chat I had with Byzos one evening. His room is just down here, by the way.”

He led John toward the far end of the hallway. “You see,” he continued, “he realized that serving the dead and the bereaved are the most lucrative businesses in the city these days. Then it struck me like a bolt from heaven! Nobody wants to see their dear ones hauled away to leaking ships and sent with hundreds of others out into the harbor to be burnt, or thrown into the sea, or some awful pit. I realized I could offer a service that was sorely needed. In short, the departed stay here as guests until arrangements for proper rites can be made.”

Scipio halted and gestured toward an open doorway.

The floor of the room was covered with small stacks of books interspersed with neat rows of the dead.

It was now obvious why Scipio had filled his emporium with flowers and left all the windows open.

“I’ve always had the occasional lodger to help make ends meet. All these rooms I have, I didn’t need them all for storage. Books don’t take up that much space, do they? Mind you, I would not have the gossips say I don’t practice charity,” Scipio prattled on. “I charge vastly reduced prices for the use of my facilities, particularly shared accommodations such as you see here. Still, I do not lose by it since I am able to house many of the departed in each room. Each has his own floor space. I do not stack my guests, excellency. I am very severe about that. After all, even if you were dead, you wouldn’t want a stranger lying on you, would you?”

Glancing over the recumbent figures, John wondered that Scipio could be so matter of fact about his latest venture, since no matter how many silent guests he accepted, it could scarcely be possible to become inured to the tragedies they represented. Something deep in one’s being wanted to turn away in sorrow.

“I should mention that I only accept the departed of refinement,” Scipio was saying. “This guarantees their families don’t have to worry about them lodging in the same room as a common beggar. Oh no, instead they sleep with Homer and Plato. Why, even as their earthly remains linger here among the words of those wonderful writers, they are probably conversing with those very men in…well…in whatever after-life they share. It would make for a good way to introduce oneself, wouldn’t it? ‘Aren’t you the renowned orator Demosthenes? My name’s Byzos. You don’t know me, but right now my lifeless head is pillowed upon a collection of your speeches…’”

“Are you telling me Byzos is dead?”

Scipio scowled. “Certainly. Why do you think this work of his is a collector’s item? He’s the one in the far corner. He died last night.”